A/N: The first time Chopper learns that when Nature-logic meets Zoro-logic, Zoro-logic wins.

Chopper didn't like heights.

He wasn't acrophobic, which was to say his fear wasn't the paralyzing, all-consuming and irrational sort that no amount of reason could get through to. In fact, his discomfort towards heights was the appropriate and perfectly natural response Nature intended him to have. He was a reindeer; if Nature meant for him to enjoy being suspended in neck-breakable heights, he'd have been made a bird. As a reindeer, it was instead ingrained in him to utilize the merits of higher ground-a wider scope of vision to look out for predators-and yet be wary of the entailing dangers. If a reindeer stepped too close to the edge and slipped, instant death would be mercy for in the deathly winter of Drum Island, the weak and injured were left to a slow, lonely death.

Ingrained instincts aside, the fact remained that Chopper didn't enjoy the feeling of the ground dropping away from him when he were thrown up into the air from the impact of an enemy's attack. His heart always skipped a beat when he reached the peak of his arc in air, the frozen moment he was trapped, groundless, before he began to fall.

Chopper dealt with this by compartmentalizing; he shelved the discomfort and niggling fear aside to give way for duty and responsibility because he was not just a reindeer but a doctor as well and in times like this, the bird caught in Merry's rope net of the mast needed him to be a doctor.

The bird was freed quickly enough, having only been caught because of its own panicked thrashing. Once Chopper calmed the bird down and untangled the knot, it chirped in gratitude before taking flight.

Which was a good thing.

Except that in his urgency to reach the bird, Chopper hadn't noticed that he had come so far high.

The sensation was not too different from when he led Dr. Kureha's sleigh down the mountain balanced on nothing more than a slim rope. Then again, his mentor's safety had been entrusted to him and the rope was suspended so tightly that it had only felt as if Chopper was running down a narrow pole. These ropes were loose and shaking and Chopper had to struggle to keep a steady balance, willing himself to move.

"Chopper," The doctor's ears perked at the call and he looked down to find Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro down by the deck and looking around, obviously in search for him. The crew's cook, Sanji made a point that though they might finish eating differently due to certain infinitely stretching rubber pits that were dubiously called stomachs, they'd at least start meals together.

(It was almost like family and Chopper blinked very carefully at that thought.)

"Come on down," Zoro had found him and was looking up, a hand raised to shade his eyes against the glare of the sun. "The ero-cook throws a hissy fit if we don't start together."

Chopper wanted to go down and have lunch together too. They were his new friends who'd invited him to sea and the flutter in his heart whenever he saw them smiling at him, open and beckoning, kindled within him a fierce protectiveness he learned from his surrogate father. He wanted to come down and join them too but-

"I can't," Chopper cried out helplessly holding on to the ropes harder. His footing was uneasy, not solid like the ground at all and his voice cracked. "I-I can't climb down."

If Chopper were looking, he would have seen Zoro tilt his head.

"Then jump."

Chopper didn't realize he had been rigid with tension until he relaxed, didn't realize he had closed his eyes until he opened them. Tightening his grip on the ropes, he carefully peered down to look at the swordsman properly. When their gazes met, the older pirate raised an eyebrow.

"If you can't climb down," Zoro sounded almost impatient. "Then just jump."

In the end, Chopper didn't jump but released his grip, tipping back. And as the clouds slid backwards, for the eternity of a moment, he was suspended in the sky.

Chopper knew that gravity would take its toll. Yet he was no longer afraid for though he was clumsier than a chick on its first flight, he would plummet towards the ground, falling, falling, falling-

Until he didn't, because Zoro would catch him, grunting a little, and maybe bending his knees a little more to absorb the impact but his grip would be steady and Chopper would be safe. Zoro wouldn't let Chopper fall.

Zoro will never let me fall, Chopper thought, and in the frozen moment he was trapped, groundless, Chopper looked up into the sky and relaxed, wondering if this was how it felt to fly.