One Piece: Dream of Immortality-Chapter 683: Flash From The Past

"That’s the end of the game, folks! With the Straw Hats’ tower crumbling down at the last second, it’s a complete toss up for who has actually won this one! All the players will have to remain in place to determine where they stand, and any movement until that determination will result in immediate disqualification!" Itomimizu explained.

"Yohohohoho~! That won’t be necessary!" Brook’s voice boomed. Where he had gotten a dial megaphone was anyone’s guess. "The most astute among you might have already noticed, but we have a missing teammate."

The groans of frustration and disappointment immediately sounded out from the Whitebeard pirates. It didn’t take a genius to surmise what Brook was implying, and Itomimizu was quick on the uptake.

He turned his high definition broadcastden den mushi toward a tall hill some distance away. The tallest hill on the island in fact.

There stood Charlotte Pudding, striking an arrogant pose and laughing like a true villain.

"This is incredible! What a thrilling twist! Why, I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of commentating Davy Back fights!" Itomimizu was genuinely amazed. "It’s so deceptively simple, having a back up strategy such as this. The true difficulty was in deceiving the other team so thoroughly that they never bothered to do the same! That’s easier said than done when it comes to the Whitebeard pirates, folks! They aren’t just a bunch of musclebrains, even if that’s what they want you to think!"

Whitebeard was the wily kind of pirate, which was a deadly combination with how strong he was. Most pirates wouldn’t think to coat all their ships to sail them beneath the surface before assaulting Marineford like he did. It’s why the marines had such a hard time with them, since they couldn’t whittle down his forces in a naval battle first. Say what you will about the marines, but few could match them shot for shot in a battle of cannons. Whitebeard knew this very well, and so he simply didn’t try.

"The star of our show is coming down the hill now! Perhaps we can get an interview?" Itomimizu wondered aloud, ignoring the glare that Foxy was shooting his way.

Pudding was welcomed like a hero by the other Straw Hats, though she only had eyes for one of them.

"You looked so cool, Pudding-chan!" Sanji greeted her warmly. "You should have seen their faces! You completely fooled them all!"

"Ah, uh, of course I looked cool!" Pudding tried and failed to maintain her confidence. "Nobody is cooler than me, Mwahahahaha!"

"Miss Pudding! Your adoring fans want to know-" Itomimizu was interrupted by Pudding uppercutting him on the chin, knocking him out cold instantly.

*Pweeet!* "You can’t attack the commentator!" Foxy jumped on the chance to reprimand the Straw Hats.

"My game is over, so it doesn’t matter. If you have a problem, then I can shove that whistle down your windpipe," Pudding threatened.

Foxy wasn’t exactly a coward, and he certainly wasn’t the type of man to back down from a challenge to his authority, but there was something dark in Pudding’s eyes that told him it would be unwise to push it.

Of course, things like ’survival instincts’ had never stopped him before. He opened his mouth to argue, when something strange and unexpected gave him pause.

A massive flash of green coincided with the setting sun. The storm could conceal the sun, but the flash was much closer, just there on the horizon.

"I’ll let you off with a warning, this time," Foxy shook off the eerie feeling the flash gave him. It had taken the wind out of his sails, so he’d just look for another opportunity to screw over the Straw Hats. He would have his revenge!

...

Brook felt his nonexistent heart plunge into his nonexistent guts as soon as he saw it.

He didn’t know what it meant, but he was absolutely certain that the green flash was familiar to him. He had seen it once before, many years ago, just before he had spent a year wandering as a disembodied soul in search of his rotting corpse.

He’d forgotten about it entirely before now. Why would he think about it? For all that he had known, it was just a phenomenon related to the function of his devil fruit.

That was now called into question as he witnessed it for the second time.

Everyone around him dismissed it quickly, no doubt thinking it to be just another quirk of the Grand Line. It was not a terrible guess to make when you sailed these seas, though it was wrong this time.

Correction; almost everyone. Dalma Tia had her eyes locked onto the horizon where it’d occurred, and did not dare to avert her gaze. She even flat out ignored the young man who had been (poorly) attempting to flirt with her.

She knew something, Brook discerned. What she might know about a phenomenon that Brook was sure had something to do with death, he couldn’t guess, but it was definitely something more than he did.

"Miss Tia?" Brook asked as he approached. "Is there something wrong?"

Better to probe first, to see how she reacted to various lines of questioning.

"Nothing at all," Tia answered, almost wistfully, to his surprise.

"I’m not sure that I believe you," Brook responded truthfully. The woman wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy person to begin with. He certainly wasn’t going to let this go so easily.

She finally looked away from the horizon as she regarded him. "I suppose that there is plenty that is wrong, but it is not something you can do anything about."

"Oh?" Brook prompted her to continue, but she did not.

He’d be squinting his eyes at her in suspicion right about now, if he had the eyes and eyelids to do so. Alas, he was a skeleton and facial expressions often eluded him these days.

Since he couldn’t glare the answers out of her, he did the next best thing.

"Cherry! I need your eyes!" Brook found just the woman he needed! Nobody glared like she did!

"What for?" Cherry didn’t deny him instantly, so that was a good sign.

"Dalma Tia is acting awfully suspicious! She knows something about that green flash that she isn’t telling!" Brook explained. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"That’s a sign of someone traveling between the realm of the living and the dead, or vice versa," Cherry said, like it was an obvious and well known fact.

"That makes sense, but why do you know that?" Brook tilted his head to convey his curiosity and confusion in equal measure.

"I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard about it from others, and in ancient texts. It is not a barrier that is easily traversed, and I could not tell you how to accomplish it," Cherry studied him. "I guess you’ve done it before though, huh? Did you see the flash when you came back to life?"

"I did indeed, though I didn’t understand the significance until now! Very astute of you!" Brook praised. "Do you think someone has crossed from... the other side?"

Cherry shrugged. "Or the other way around, but that doesn’t seem as likely. I suppose we should be prepared for a fight, in the worst case. Whoever tries to crash this party, though, is going to have a bad time. That much is certain."

Brook had to agree with that. Three Emperor level powerhouses and quite a few solid combatants besides. Truly, if someone started some trouble, they wouldn’t be the ones to finish it.