/sainkuu for reading Raftel. It has been a long and difficult journey from start to finish to play out such strong emotions without sounding strange or emotionless.

Kanthia answers some reviews.

Shadw- Thank you…but what did you find so messed up about Raftel?

Griever5- Nee. Thank you for all your wonderful reviews- it makes Kanthia happy inside to see someone who takes his or her time to review more than once.

EH?- Um, thanks for the poem. Whee.

Beans- Nee, that is so nice to say…Kanthia has never written a 'must-read' before. And perhaps people don't review because they are afraid of what I will do to them…

OverChasm- Squee! Huggle! Huggles for OverChasm

imjuzakyd- Me so sorry for being confusing. What happens in Chapter the Seventh is quite simple: Luffy is about to be killed by the Marines and Ace and Vivi are watching from the crowd. Ace tries to use the Hiken but is stopped by Vivi as Dragon (Gold Roger) bursts into the throng. Still grieving over Smoker's death (Luffy killed him), Tashigi kills Dragon with Smoker's own weapon. On the execution platform, Luffy is about to be executed when the One Piece takes over the mind of a person in the crowd and causes him to ask about the One Piece, since the treasure thrives on fresh blood and is entertained by weak dreamers. The rest is left to History as the Second Age, in which Pirates have more faith in their nakama and care less about just gold, begins.

After that, it goes back to the One Piece. If you remember, the One Piece promised Luffy either to die as the Pirate King or go backing time and have one event changed so that he could never get to Raftel in the first place. It discovers that if Luffy had never sailed into a whirlpool so early on he never would have met up with Coby, never would have met up with Zoro, never would have made it to the island where Nami was trying to steal the map from Buggy and so on and so forth.

The rest of the chapter ties up lose endings. And then it ends and goes into the epilogue.

Insomnia's Phone Number- Thank you so much, I was always worried that I was portraying Luffy out of character.

meethzoonk- You're very welcome.

bffimagine – ZoLu? Sort of. I've always imagined Luffy putting just a little more trust in Zoro and visa versa because they were together first. And I wanted it to end with just the two of them as well.

KuroKame- Yes, after writing this I have wanted to set out for Raftel and put an axe through the One Piece. Although I'm not sure if that would work that well…

Ano...much more people with many wonderful reviews, but Kanthia must be on her way to the wonderful land of not here. Which means that Raftel's sequel, Once More from the Top is at least two months away. Gomen nasai!

/kanthia