A Sea of Clouds

By the time all the craziness ended, I was flopped over the railing of the ship, coughing in exhaustion. We couldn't even catch our breath before Luffy said, "Hey guys! Look outside the ship!" We all instantly got up, looking around and below the ship. "Its pure white!" Chopper commented, a large smile on his small face. "Clouds?! How are we staying on them?!" Nami questioned. "Of course you can stay on them! They're clouds!" Luffy explained, instantly getting rejected by me, Zoro, Chopper, and Sanji. Usopp was still out for the count though, and Chopper seemed to have noticed.

"Oh no! Usopp isn't breathing!" Chopper shrieked in horror. "What?! Do something! CPR!" Luffy joined in on the panic. "Okay! I'll give (y/n)-swan CPR!" Sanji swooned, having seen me first. I pushed him aside and ran to Usopp, "I can do it! I've got practice!" I claimed, dropping to my knees next to chopper who was doing chest compressions. He nodded to me, but before I could do anything, Usopp got up, looking around dumbly. "Clouds.. What?! No there's too many! What is this?!" he screamed. Then he looked at me, blinking. "What were you doing, (y/n)?" "CPR." "Ah, yes CP- HUH?! (Y/n) gave me CPR?!" he screamed again, backing into the railing with a red face. Sanji kicked him into another section of railing at that while I laughed. "No, Usopp, but I almost did. You woke up since Chopper gave chest compressions before I did anything," I explained. He stared at me for a while, holding his face, before falling completely on the ground again. "Oh no, Sanji killed me, I need help," he gasped out, closing his eyes. This caused Sanji to start stomping on him, "DON'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF (Y/N)-SWAN'S KINDNESS, YOU GARBAGE!" the blond scolded, beating him into a pulp. "AHHH YOU'RE KILLING HIM!" Chopper sobbed out. I sweatdropped and walked over to Nami, who muttered about how the log pose was still pointing up. "That means we still have to go up, huh.." I hummed, holding my chin in thought. Robin nodded, "It seems we're in the middle section of the cumuloregalis clouds." I shook my head and asked, "But how would we get higher?" Her response was an "I don't know". 

Usopp miraculously healed himself, and decided he was going to play around and swim in the cloud ocean. Luffy and Chopper cheered him on, but Sanji interjected, saying that he shouldn't be reckless since no one knew how the clouds worked here. "An ocean's an ocean!" Usopp replied, jumping into the clouds below with his goggles on. 

"Um.. he's.. been down there a while.." I said, nudging Luffy's side. When we got Usopp back on the ship after the hard work of Robin and Luffy, the guy seemed to be traumatized, laying on the floor and repeating, "Sky Island scary." He did it to himself though, so I only laughed at him. Next thing we knew, Chopper was saying broken sentences trying to explain what he saw in his little look out session, but it was too late already when we all noticed a guy skating across the clouds towards us. Sanji tried to talk with him, but turns out the guy's goal was to eliminate us. "Looks like he wants to fight," the cook said, huffing out some smoke. "Fine by me!" Zoro added. "What's going on?!" Luffy asked, very confused, before all three of them got kicked in the face by the masked guy. I stumbled back in surprise that they'd lose to that guy so fast, and Nami seemed to be just as confused as me. "He's gonna shoot us!" Chopper wailed, doing a little panic dance which I found to be one of the funniest things I ever seen. Too bad what he said was true, though, so I had no time to laugh and instead got ready to take the attack upon myself. Well, before an old dude clad in armor kicked the masked guy into the sky ocean. He landed on the ship and introduced himself as the Sky Knight.

"What the heck is going on?! Who was that guy?! And what's with you guys?!" Nami asked a series of questions, then looked at the three dudes who got beat in an instant, "You're pathetic! Losing three against one!" "Pretty sure you'd lose faster.." "EH? What was that (y/n)?!" "Nothing!"

"It must be because of the thin air," Robin reasoned. I hit my palm with my fist, "Oh! That would make sense!" 

"Are you Blue Sea people?" Sky Knight asked. Apparently, that's what they called us here, according to the old guy. "That explains it. This is the White Sea, 7,000 meters in the air. The White-White Sea even further above reaches 10,000 meters high. Ordinary Blue Sea people can't possibly endure it here."

"Alright! I've gotten used to it!" Luffy said, hitting his chest with his fist, Zoro agreeing with him. I was getting used to it to, but there was no way I'd do it that fast. "No, no, no, no, no! That's not possible!" Sky Knight interjected. I giggled, seeing his expression of disbelief. Chopper asked a question, but Sky Knight dove into how he would fight the guerillas for us for a price since we didn't know how. He started talking about Extols and Whistles but we had no idea what he was saying, Sanji telling him so.  "You came here via the summit of High-West did you not? Then you must've passed an island or two!"

"Wait! You mean there are other ways of coming to this sky ocean? And there's multiple islands?" Nami inquired.

"Don't tell me you came here via the-" "We rode the knock-up stream." Robin stated, interupting and answering his question.

He must have been mighty impressed by the navigator, because he gave us the expensive sounding whistle to us as a present, stating that his name was Gan Fall and the bird was Pierre, well, a bird that transformed into a horse with wings because he ate the Horse-Horse fruit. Or rather, Pierre was he lamest looking pegasus I could have ever imagined. "In the end, he didn't tell us anything at all," Robin commented, causing Usopp to agree with her. I shrugged, "It probably would have just costed money anyway." Nami nodded to my words.

Luffy proposed using the whistle to ask questions, instantly getting stopped from doing so by the orange head and the long nose, who told him to only use it for emergencies. "For now, let's just take the ship somewhere else," Zoro suggested. Chopper pointed out a weird cloud, which the older woman of the three of us said that it seemed to be a waterfall. "Alright, it's decided then, let's go there for now," the green head stated, everyone complying. It was only now that I realized that he actually has three golden earrings on his left ear. I shuffled my way over to him while the ship floated over to the falls. He turned to me, an eyebrow quirked and his regular neutral frown on his face. I reached a hand out a swiped my hand under the earrings, letting them lay in my hand so I could look at them. "Wow! They're real gold! When did you get these? The piercings I mean," I hummed, shifting my eyes from his ear to his face. He was already staring at me, face contorted in surprise, until he grew flustered and pushed me away from his face, "Why're you so damn close, you weird woman?!" he huffed out, his tan cheeks flaring up. "Weird?! You're the one acting weird here! Answer the question, dork!" I commanded, crossing my arms. "Dork?! You tryna die?!" he threatened, though his reddened cheeks didn't do much to back up said threat. I guess he doesn't usually get into situations like this. Especially with those of the female gender, which was honestly surprising, given his looks. I snickered. "OI! WHAT'RE YOU LAUGHING AT?!"

"Both of you shut up! Someone find out what's up with these weird clouds!" Nami shrieked at us. I snickered some more as he fumed, unable to do anything. Even if he did, Sanji would have white knighted for me and stood in his way. Luffy zipped by me all of a sudden, bouncing on the huge grey clouds. He was soon followed by Chopper and Usopp, who was over his traumatizing experience. After some distractions, we finally found a way through the giant cloud balloons, heading to a gate that the long nosed man spotted. When we closed in on the giant gate, a small old lady stepped out of a door, being pointed out by the sniper.

"Look! She has wings on her back!" Chopper said, his expression one of shock. "It's an angel! Is that what angels are like?! She's like a pickled plum!" Luffy added, earning a smack to the head from me. "Don't say that about the angel!" I spouted out. I couldn't help but notice, though, that when she walked out, she was 

"I am Amazon, the Heaven's Gate inspector. Sightseeing? Or perhaps war?" she asked with a gravely voice, but not sounding aggressive at all. "Ah I guess you could say sight seeing.." Nami answered, getting interrupted by Luffy saying, "We wanna go to the sky islands! They're past this gate right?" That's when Zoro piped in, asking, "What's this about 'war'?" She stood silent for a minute before calmly stating, "It doesn't matter anyway. If you're going to the upper area, pay the entrance fee of one billion Extol per person. That's the law." Everyone started talking about how much that was in Berries, or how we would afford that. Nami asked her what would happen if we didn't have the money, but she replied that we could just go in anyway. "I am neither a gatekeeper nor a guard. I simply ask your intentions," she informed. We decided to go up, but I could have swore I remembered something about paying fees from my dad... oh well! The ship was grabbed by a giant "Express Lobster" and we were being rushed up the cloud waterfall/river thing. 

We finally got to the next level, and everyone was completely fascinated, including me. As soon as we got to an island, Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper all went to play. "I FINALLY GOT TO THE SKY, DAD!" I called out, a large grin on my face as I jumped over the railing of the ship and landing on the pillowy ground covering in a few inches of water. Sanji jumped off the ship next, doing a bunch of weird flips before he hit the floor beside me. "That's the spirit Sanji!" I cheered, kicking some cloud water onto him. His eyes turned into hearts and he twirled around, singing about how I was beautiful when I smiled or something. Zoro called us morons from the ship but I don't really care, because I am ecstatic right now! This place is so beautiful and fluffy and.. and.. I DON'T KNOW! EVERYTHING I COULDA THOUGHT OF! I flopped onto the cloudy beach of the island and squealed in delight. I rolled onto my back and smiled even brighter, watching the South Bird fly from the ship and into the distance.

"But why do I get wet in a sea of clouds?" I heard a deep, grumpy, voice grumble, getting closer to where I was. I rolled onto my side and watch Zoro pick up a whole fox, then putting it down while apologizing to it. Since I was already on the floor, I noticed some.. strange scars above his ankles. Sanji randomly appeared in front of me, sticking a flower in my hair, and then running off to give one to Robin and Nami. "What the heck is with that?" I asked Zoro, compleyely ignoring what just happened and pointing to his legs. He looked down and then at me, "I was going to cut my legs off since I was stuck in wax," he grunted, his expression plain. "Ah I see.. AS IF! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?"

A harp suddenly started playing in the distance, taking both of our attention away from his stupidity, and over to some person on a cloud that was on the beach. "Hey, there's someone there! Over there!" Zoro called, pointing at the person. Everyone looked. Turns out.. it was.. an angel?

"Heso!"

---

Ya know, I was thinking, and even if Zoro is usually pretty level and calm, with no shits to give, when something catches him off guard or irritates him, he's just as loud and weird as the rest of them. Kinda why he's always fighting with Sanji since they piss each other off being polar opposites. Simp and not simp. To be or not to be.