Rescue Mission
Starter for @withinkandquill
Pain. Shouting. Cold. Darkness.
“Shit.” Sanji coughed violently as he forced his eyes to open, quickly closing them again with a groan at the sharp pain the light assaulted him with. He brought his arm up to cover his eyes as the pain continued even behind his eyelids. “Damn it, what the hell?” After his head stopped stabbing him, he attempted to open his eyes again, this time with significantly more success. His confusion only grew as he took in the seemingly vacant beach around him.
Everything suddenly came back to him in an instant. They were on their way to the next island, when another pirate crew attacked them out of the blue. This one had multiple devil fruit users and while they were able to hold their own at first, they all quickly became overwhelmed. It would have been a piece of cake for them had they not spent the past few days fighting off constant attacks both day and night. Their luck hadn’t been great recently and it seemed to only be getting worse. If Sanji didn’t know better, he would think one of the others stole one of those cursed objects from the ruins of the last island Robin kept mentioning, though that was probably just to tease Ussop, Chopper, and Nami and didn’t actually have that much truth to it. Sanji smiled a little remembering Robin’s small smile at the reactions of their more sensitive members.
Sanji had used skywalk to get above the fighting and focus on one of the stronger devil fruit users; an ice user who was able to create footholds to stay above their ship and send spiked icicles down toward his crewmates below. With his own ability to summon fire and stay in the air, he was managing to at least keep the man occupied for the time being while the others fought off the ones below. As the battle continued, however, even his stamina was starting to run short, and the man didn’t seem like he was even breaking a sweat yet, though that could be a side effect of the ice powers.
His concentration was cut off when he heard a pained cry from their resident doctor and youngest. Sanji made the mistake of whipping his head away from the ice user down to the ship below, eyes widening as he took in the disaster that was the fight. Already, Nami, Ussop, and now Chopper were downed with Robin, Brook, and Franky not too far behind, swaying and panting with exertion. Zoro and Luffy weren’t doing much better than Sanji himself, they were keeping the stronger guys busy but were also visibly becoming exhausted.
He quickly focused back on his enemy, but his momentary distraction was all that the ice user needed to land a proper hit, even with observation Haki. He gasped as a rather large icicle impaled him straight through the side. He tried to regain his focus and get the fire around his leg to spread upwards, but his exhaustion mixed with the new injury made it impossible. As he tumbled into the ocean, the cries of his nakama were the last thing he registered before he hit the freezing water and blacked out.
