Chapter 3: At the Bottom of the Sea, Destination Fishman Island
"Tear-Stripe Guy's ability!" Luffy exclaimed, his eyes wide with amazement.
Without a moment's hesitation, he stretched his rubber arm, grabbed the railing, and propelled himself directly in front of Itachi, studying him with unabashed curiosity.
"What happened to your arm just now?"
"My arm?" Luffy blinked, then grinned. "Oh! I'm a rubber man! I ate the Gum-Gum Fruit!"
To demonstrate, he took a deep breath, inflated his stomach to enormous proportions, and began floating in the air like a human balloon, spinning slowly as he continued talking.
"Rubber..." Itachi glanced at Luffy, then at the skeletal Brook, then back at Luffy. The sheer strangeness of this ship and its crew defied everything he knew.
"Hey, Tear-Stripe Guy! What did you do to that pirate? You just looked at him and he collapsed—exactly like Zoro did!" Luffy called down from his airborne position, still spinning lazily.
"OI! BAKE!" Zoro's voice cut through like a blade. "Don't look him in the eyes! Are you trying to get caught too?!"
The warning snapped the others to attention. Every Straw Hat suddenly became acutely aware of where they were looking—or rather, where they weren't looking.
"That's right! You still haven't explained where you came from or what you can do!" Nami stepped forward, making a point of staring at Itachi's forehead rather than his eyes.
Itachi exhaled slowly, then jumped down from the mast, landing lightly on the main deck. The crew tensed visibly as he approached, but he made no aggressive moves.
"Everyone, please rest assured," he said calmly. "As long as I do not actively activate my genjutsu, no one will be caught by accident. It requires conscious effort on my part."
He paused, then decided that directness might serve better than continued confusion. "My name is Uchiha Itachi."
"I was originally a shinobi of Konohagakure—the Village Hidden in the Leaves—in the Land of Fire. Later, I became an S-rank missing-nin. Currently, I am a member of the Akatsuki organization."
The names clearly meant nothing to his audience, but he had offered what truth he could.
"Uchi... ya... Ita... chi..." Luffy struggled with the syllables, scratching his head. "Man, that's a tough name!"
"The Akatsuki organization..." Robin murmured, turning the unfamiliar term over in her memory. In her two years with the Revolutionary Army, she had traveled extensively and learned of many secret organizations. This was not one of them.
"SHINOBE!" Nami's sudden shout made several people jump. "Did you just say you're a SHINOBI?!"
"Yes. A shinobi."
The effect was immediate. Luffy, Chopper, and Usopp's eyes lit up like lanterns.
"Do you know ninjutsu?!" Luffy demanded.
"Earth Release! Shuriken! And clones!" Chopper added excitedly.
"I know a little," Itachi admitted with a slight nod.
Brook stroked his bony chin thoughtfully. "Ninja... if we're speaking of the origins of ninja, that would traditionally be Wano Country." He tilted his skull. "You said your country is the Land of Fire. Are you certain it's not Wano?"
"I am certain. The Land of Fire."
"How peculiar," Brook murmured. In all his decades of sailing, he had never heard of such a place.
Robin searched her memory as well. "Which of the Four Seas is the Land of Fire located in?"
"Four Seas?" Itachi's brow furrowed. "I do not understand your meaning. The Land of Fire is one of the Five Great Nations. It borders the lands of the other four great nations, and there are no large oceans surrounding it."
He was genuinely perplexed now. The Land of Fire was a major power. How could no one have heard of it?
The Straw Hats exchanged glances. The disconnect between their worlds was becoming increasingly apparent.
Before anyone could pursue the matter further, a chill began creeping through the Thousand Sunny.
"The temperature's dropping," Sanji observed, exhaling a plume of vapor. "Something's changing."
The light was fading too, the hazy sun above growing dimmer by the moment.
Nami wrapped her arms around herself. "It's going to get colder. Everyone, get your coats."
"But does a body even get cold?" Brook began.
"Brook doesn't HAVE a body to get cold!" Chopper finished for him. "He's a skeleton! He can't feel temperature!"
Brook collapsed dramatically, sprawled across the deck. "Yohohoho... you stole my line again..."
"Yohoho yourself! This isn't the time!" Usopp snapped.
"Coat?" Luffy finally deflated his balloon stomach and dropped to the deck beside Itachi. "Hey, Tear-Stripe Guy! Do you have a coat?"
"No."
It was a simple answer, but the truth. He had arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back—wherever "here" actually was.
"Wait here!"
Before anyone could stop him, Luffy dashed into the cabin and emerged moments later with a spare coat, which he thrust toward Itachi.
"Nami said it's going to get cold! Put this on!"
"Don't just trust random people!" Zoro whacked Luffy across the head with the flat of his blade.
Itachi accepted the coat with a slight bow. "Arigatou."
He pulled it on as he continued. "To summarize: I can explain my background in more detail later. For now, I would like to know—where exactly are you headed?"
"Fishman Island, obviously! It's 10,000 meters below the surface!"
"Ten thousand meters... beneath the sea..." Itachi looked around at the deep ocean surrounding them. Luffy's claim seemed impossible, yet here they were, somehow alive and breathing at what should have been crushing depths. "Fishman Island..."
He made a decision. "Then I would ask that you allow me to accompany you, at least until we reach this island. After that, I will find my own way."
"Don't be so formal! Come with us!" Luffy's grin was infectious.
"WE'VE BEEN SAYING—" Nami, Zoro, and Usopp chorused in unison, "DON'T TRUST STRANGERS SO EASILY!"
"But he beat that guy who attacked us, didn't he?" Luffy countered, as if this were the most logical reasoning in the world.
Before the argument could continue, Franky spoke up. "Speaking of which, we're heading into deeper water, right? So why is it getting colder?"
"Franky's right," Nami confirmed, her navigator's instincts kicking in. "The deeper we go, the colder it gets. But it's not just temperature—the currents change too."
Brook lifted his skull from the deck. "Beneath the surface, there are deep-sea currents invisible to the naked eye. They move completely differently from surface currents."
"Currents within currents? Brook, you know a lot!" Usopp laughed.
"Yohohoho! I have lived considerably longer than you, after all!"
Itachi studied the skeleton with renewed interest. He still couldn't fathom how a walking, talking skeleton could exist—let alone one with such apparent knowledge of the sea.
"Ah, Ita... Itachi-san," Brook began, struggling slightly with the name.
Before he could continue, Luffy interrupted cheerfully: "Brook ate the Revive-Revive Fruit! His power lets him come back from the dead once! That's why he's a skeleton now!"
Brook collapsed again. "Luffy-san... why must you always take my lines?"
"Stop being so dramatic!" Usopp smacked Brook's skull repeatedly.
Fruit? Itachi filed away another piece of confusing information. Luffy had mentioned being a "rubber man" as well—some kind of power derived from eating fruit, apparently.
"In any case," Nami continued, "the ocean currents beneath the surface are complex. There are upward currents and downward currents. What we're riding now is a downward current—taking us from the surface to the deeper layers."
She checked her instruments. "We should be around 4,000 meters deep now. Once we catch the right current, we can ride it all the way to Fishman Island."
Luffy, Zoro, and Chopper all tilted their heads in perfect unison, identical expressions of complete confusion on their faces.
Even Itachi found himself impressed despite his bewilderment. "Four thousand meters beneath the surface... remarkable."
He had fought Kisame on and beneath the waves many times, diving deep to continue their battles, but never to such depths. The pressure alone should be unimaginable.
As they spoke, Robin—who had been quietly reading on the bow—suddenly looked up. Her eyes caught something in the water beyond the bubble.
"Everyone," she called out, rising gracefully. "We're here."
The effect was immediate. Luffy and Chopper scrambled to the bow, pressing against the bubble to see.
"A downward current?" Zoro asked, temporarily setting aside his suspicion of Itachi as he joined them.
Before the Thousand Sunny, the ocean simply... dropped away.
A massive waterfall—kilometers wide—plunged into the abyss below. But unlike any waterfall on the surface, this one flowed downward into darkness, a river of seawater falling forever into the deep.
And the Sunny, caught in its grip, began to descend.
The ship tilted gently, then more steeply, sliding into the current's flow. Outside the bubble, the water rushed past in a silent torrent, carrying them deeper into the unknown.
Itachi gripped the railing, watching the abyss open beneath them. Whatever world this was, it operated by rules entirely foreign to him.
But for now, he was here. And for now, these strange, trusting, bickering people were his only connection to survival.
He would watch. He would learn. And perhaps—if fate was kind—he would find answers.
The Thousand Sunny plunged into the depths, carrying its unlikely passenger toward Fishman Island.
(End of Chapter)
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