Stallion of the line 48 (Patreon)

I don’t own and can’t draw. Howdy, all. Since my One Piece muse is still going strong, this was in the Ranma poll again and thus won again i

I don’t own and can’t draw.

Howdy, all. Since my One Piece muse is still going strong, this was in the Ranma poll again and thus won again in May. Unfortunately, Tomon couldn’t get it back to me before the end of the month. However, this has now been Grammarlied and seen by Tomon and Hiryo alike.

Enjoy! 

Chapter 48: Declarations, Dreams and Returns

The Swallow circled Alabasta, keeping the island at the edge of the horizon from the ship’s spyglass, allowing Luffy’s Kenbunshoku to reach out ahead of them. Considering his Kenbunshoku range was much farther than anyone could see, this allowed Luffy to observe not only the waters around the island but also deep into Alabasta’s interior. He was looking for any groups of strong presences, figuring that if there was such, it might be a group of marines.

Normally, Kenbunshoku wouldn’t be that helpful in such a case, unless the individual knew who they were looking for, or if the individuals thus being observed were doing something obviously combative, but Luffy’s Kenbunshoku was boosted by the Goro Goro no Mi. Like Enel before him, Luffy could literally read the surface thoughts of individuals within his range if he so wanted. Normally, he very much didn’t want to, but here, Luffy let himself do so.

Meanwhile, Vivi had gotten out of her chair to prepare. This took a while, something that Luffy teased her about as they had nearly finished a complete circle of the island before even her hair and makeup were ready. “Wow, you’d think you were a princess or something, Vivi.”

“Oh, really? A princess? I hadn’t noticed,” Vivi said, moving up behind Luffy for a moment and hugging his head to her bosom. A bosom that currently had nothing on it, causing Luffy to twitch as he felt the skin-to skin contact on his neck. Vivi didn’t do anything more, however, simply leaning down to give him a gentle kiss on his cheek before pulling away.

“The public here will always see me as a princess, and I need to play up that image, which, unfortunately, is a lot harder with only my own hands and this small mirror,” Vivi admitted before going on more softly. “But I hope to always just be Vivi to you, Luffy.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that at all,” Luffy said, shaking his head and keeping his head facing forward with difficulty. “Pirate, Princess or tease, I’ll treasure you all the same, Vivi.”

Despite being the one to start that bit of teasing, Vivi had to blush at the emotion that Luffy was able to impart in his words and quickly changed the subject, asking if he had found anything. He hadn’t, and she smiled in relief. “In that case, continue to circle the island. We’re looking for the second-largest port in Alabasta. It’s named Xandria. You’ll know it by the color of the lighthouse. It’s bright pink.”

“Excuse me?” Luffy blinked his tone and face deadpan. “Pink? Someone painted a lighthouse pink?”

“They did,” Vivi agreed with a giggle. “I think it was at first done for a joke around forty years ago, although why, I don’t know. My Dad always blushes whenever I bring it up in front of him, so I think it had something to do with how he was courting my mother at the time?” She shrugged. “Anyway, repainting it that color kept on going for a few months, and then it just became a tradition.”

“And the only thing that lasts longer than a tradition is a… what is it, a temporary measure?” Luffy snorted.

“Yep.” Vivi nodded into the mirror as she finished her makeup, having been the one to use that phrase in a joke on the way to Amazon Lily. “Anyway, Xandria’s the home of the newspaper that Morgans gave us the name of. It’s also the port that first welcomed my mother when she came to Alabasta after their marriage was arranged. My coming back to Xandria is not only useful but symbolic.”

Beyond owning his own newspaper and publishing company, Morgans was connected to hundreds of smaller newspapers worldwide. In this way, he could spread important local news or help the WeeGee suppress information when he was working with them. He didn’t have quite as many news outlets under his control as the World Government did, but he still had his fingers in more than they were going to be comfortable with going forward.

“Hmm… maybe. But you’re not gonna stay. You think that’s going to cause trouble?” Luffy wondered.

“Probably not from the common men and women on the streets,” Vivi answered, her voice a mumble as she got her bra on with the use of two sand arms. Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Ugh. With that, several more sand arms appeared from a mound of sand she created at her feet, helping to lift her dress in place and then button it. “My friends and the palace staff, that’s a different story.”

“Heh, well, so long as we’re not gonna be mobbed, I’ll take it. I figured Igaram at least would try to kill me before we left,” Luffy joked, only not really. He fully believed that, given his histrionics, when Vivi called home the first time, Igaram would indeed attempt to murder Luffy.

“Oh.” Vivi stared straight ahead for a moment, the multiple arms of sand around her, pausing as well. “I had forgotten about that.”

Luffy laughed, shaking his head. “Right, I’m gonna call ahead. Hopefully, Igaram will have softened his stance on you joining my crew.”

To that, Vivi didn’t say anything, which did not fill Luffy with confidence. Regardless, Luffy still called the number that Vivi had given him for the Alabastan palace. After getting a functionary, Luffy was, alas, unsurprised to hear Igaram’s voice bellowing in his ear. So much for him calming down.

“You, you damn pirate, return the Princess at once!” Igaram shrieked. “Because of you, because of you, Vivi-sama has a bounty! A bounty!!! I won’t have it, I tell you I won’t have it! I kill you!”

“Hey, now. I didn’t kidnap Vivi. She’s with me of her own volition,” Luffy said, adding mentally, on many levels. “If you’re gonna blame someone, blame the World Government for their heavy-handed tactics in recruiting her into the war against Whitebeard. Besides, you should know why we’re here: to use my flag to defend your island. Unless you think the World Government’ll still protect you despite Vivi’s joining us?”

“This and that are two different things! I fully understand that we will be asking you for protection, Straw Hat, but that does not mean that you can just, just keep the Princess in your crew and go gallivanting around the world with her! Vivi-sama’s place is here with her people and family!”

“Actually, I quite like a good galivant. Sorry, Igaram,” Vivi intoned from behind Luffy, not sounding very sorry at all. “But part of the agreement between us is that I remain in Luffy’s crew, paying for the protection of our kingdom with that service. That’s something I will gladly do,” she added before Igaram could build up steam to another harangue. “Besides, you, of all people, should know that the Tenryubito could never ignore the opportunity to target us if I remained in Alabasta.”

Luffy nodded at that, having heard about the reason behind the Tenryubito’s antipathy towards the Nefertari family from Vivi. Alabasta had been one of the original twenty countries that had joined together to create the WeeGee. Yet when the time came for the Nefertari to join the other royal families in Mary Geoise, they refused, instead remaining in their country. The rest of the ruling families who would become Tenryubito had taken that poorly and called them traitors to this day because of it.

“B, but we would protect you, Princess! You’d certainly be more protected here than among the Straw Hats. They’ve all got to be the next best thing to suicidal, given how often they run into trouble.…” At that point, Igaram’s voice faded as someone in the background began to shout at him, and soon, Igaram was shoved aside by the king.

When he spoke into the Den Den Mushi, Cobra sounded far more sanguine about things. Indeed, he sounded almost cheerful. “You’ll have to forgive Igaram. He’s having trouble reconciling the fact that my little girl is all grown up, making her own choices. For myself, I’m satisfied with those choices. Given my family’s strained history with the Tenryubito, and, through them, the World Government, something like this could even be called inevitable.”

Cobra’s voice became dark for a moment, almost grim, before he continued, his voice softening. “I am simply happy that you will continue to be by her side, Luffy.”

Something in the way the king said that made Luffy wonder if he knew more about their personal relationship than Luffy was honestly comfortable with. If it’s so, hopefully, he’s the only one, he thought wryly. I don’t need Igaram ta have another reason to kill me. “Of course, I treasure all of my crewmates; that’s never been a question.”

“Good. Anyway, while we have your flag stitched and ready to fly across the country, I believe our public needs to understand a bit more about why we’re doing so before we raise it. Vivi, you mentioned wanting to lay the foundation for that move yourself, so I haven’t taken any action on that yet. In fact, I haven’t done anything about addressing why you suddenly have a bounty or anything about the story that the World Government put out to accompany it. I simply said that you would be returning here to tell the truth of the matter.”

He chuckled a bit. “Given recent events, that’s worked so far. Trust in the marines is at an all-time low in Alabasta. But it’s been more than three weeks since the news of Whitebeard’s War broke. We can’t allow the so-called truth that the World Government has posted to have longer to settle into people’s minds.”

“Don’t worry, Father. I have plans in that area. It is time to kill two birds with one stone or rather three birds, considering we never were allowed to tell the truth about how the Straw Hats were the ones who saved our country,” Vivi said with a smile even as she set her tiara on her head, as she considered the original, cover story they, that is, Alabasta rather than the WeeGee, had come up with.

On the surface, the Alabasta government had agreed to go along with the idea that it was the Marines who had dealt with Crocodile. Beyond that, the story that Cobra and Vivi had hoped to feed the WeeGee itself was that Vivi had basically contracted with the Straw Hats to remove Crocodile for money. If the WeeGee dug deeper, Vivi and her father had hoped that the WeeGee would ‘discover evidence’ that would point to the Straw Hats double-crossing their family and stealing far more money and resources than they had been promised.

Of course, that hadn’t worked. Vivi’s close friendship had been revealed to the marines, hence why she had been forced to join their war efforts. Nevertheless, Vivi could not say she was unhappy with the outcome.

“Good. Now, where will you be landing? I will have Pell meet you there to help you and Luffy get to Alubarna faster.”

“That’s not actually necessary, although a guide would be nice.” Luffy smirked, unseen by the Den Den Mushi, which, in the palace, shifted its own expression to match. “Heh, I see the full implications of my new moniker haven’t sunk in yet, huh?”

The line was quiet for a moment, and then Cobra chuckled dryly. “No, it hadn’t actually. Neither you nor Vivi had mentioned the implications of that the last time we spoke. I take it that on top of putting your flag up in the various ports, we might want to look into building large lightning rods?”

“Got it in one,” Luffy agreed, glancing over his shoulder at just the right time to stare at Vivi’s now dress-clad rear for a few seconds before shaking his head. Later for that, we’ve got things to do before I can go all lecherous on Vivi again. And heck, it’s been ten days, man! I wanna train almost as much as I’d like to cuddle. “As for where we’re putting to shore, we’re coming into Xandria at Vivi’s request.”

“Ah… Good choice,” Cobra stated, a chuckle visible in his voice as well as a certain amount of nostalgia. “I think I can discern what my daughter has planned already, and I will warn the national broadcasting system to be prepared. You don’t do things by half, do you, daughter mine?”

“You taught me to always do something well, Father, and I mean to do so.” Vivi smiled as she moved behind Luffy, placing her hands on his shoulders. “And that sounds like an excellent idea.”

Father and daughter talked for a few moments, while Luffy steered the ship around the island, now keeping within sight of the shore until he saw the pink-painted lighthouse sticking up out of a port city. Huh, it really is pink. Eh, tacky. But then again, it isn’t the tackiest thing I’ve seen in this world.

Soon, they were entering the port area, sliding up to a small dock designed for smaller vessels to one side of the main dockyard area. The rest was dominated by large galleons. There weren’t nearly as many vessels here as there had been when the Resolve had first docked in Alabasta, but what there were was much bigger than the ships Luffy could remember from that time.

The moment their strange ship settled into the water alongside the docks, a man with the hat of the Port Authority made his way down the Quay towards them. “Huh. Those hats seem kind of universal, don’t they? Vivi, are you going to be up to dealing with the local Port Authority, or should I do that?”

“No, I’ll do it. I’m all done.”

Luffy turned to get his first full view of Vivi dressed in her princess outfit. Gone was the lazy girl next-door look that Vivi preferred to wear on a day-to-day basis: the loose T-shirt and sweatpants or sweat shorts or the heavy, warm coat for when it was cold. In its place was a dress that flowed down from her neck, hugging her body and showcasing her femininity, yet without revealing more than a bare hint of anything underneath. It looked light and airy, fitting the environment of Alabasta, but was clearly of high quality. She wore no jewelry beyond a small, simple silver tiara, but then again, Vivi really didn’t need to, not with that dress and her hair loose, falling down her back like a river of blue silk.

“You look amazing,” Luffy said, staring at her, a warm smile on his face. “Then again, you’d look amazing dressed in a burlap sack. Ready to wow the crowd?”

“That is the point of this getup, yes,” Vivi agreed with a chuckle, gesturing for Luffy to hop out of the boat first.

The man working for the port authority was already waiting nearby, and as Vivi stepped out of the Swallow, his eyes widened, taking in the sight of the Princess.

Before her disappearance, Princess Vivi hadn’t really been that much of a public persona beyond the capital, Alubarna. There had been a few rumors about her being a bit of a tomboy, but that was about it. Since the defeat of Crocodile’s mad scheme, however, Vivi had become quite well known, traveling around Alabasta using her powers, introducing herself to various functionaries, and becoming more involved in the governmental side of things, so the man easily recognized her.

Even if that hadn’t been the case, Vivi’s wanted poster, despite the fact that it caught her in a moment of anger mid-battle, would have been enough to tell the younger man who this was. “P, princess! I, I… I did not know this craft belonged to you! I’ll waive the docking fee, I, I, is there anything that the Port Authority of Xandria can do to help you?” he stammered.

“No, no, we’ll pay it,” Luffy said, plucking the notebook from the man’s hand, noting how much a ship their size would need to pay, and then handing it back before pulling out the money. “Taking advantage of that kind of thing wouldn’t be a good precedent, even on an island that’s going to be flying my flag soon.”

It was only then that the man took notice of Luffy himself, making Luffy have to bite his lip to keep from snickering. The official stumbled backward, bowed hurriedly, and with a last glance towards Vivi, part admiration, part concern, raced off. “U, um, I er, hope you have a nice day, Princess!”

“Heh. I will bet you fifty beli that while he might not think the WeeGee’s story is true, he does think I kidnapped you or something, and he’s off to report to the authorities,” Luffy joked.

“Oh, I hope not. I know precisely how short a time it would take you to deal with such,” Vivi chuckled, shaking her head in a no, indicating she was not about to wager on such a thing.

This proved foresighted of Vivi, as within moments, a large crowd of dockworkers had gathered, raising improvised weapons and shouting at Luffy, incensed by whatever the official had told them.

“Release the Princess, you kidnapper!”

“How dare you take advantage of our Princess again, you pirate!”

“Princess, you’re safe here! Get away from him!” were just some of the shouts of the crowd of dockworker as they raced to surround Luffy, waving their weapons at him threateningly but not coming any closer than a foot beyond the reach of a billhook. They seemed unwilling to attack him outright due to Vivi’s presence at his side, although Luffy felt the special math of a crowd would push them forward soon.

With a put-upon sigh, Luffy stared all around him, then over their heads as more people began to gather from deeper into the city, coming out of shops, moving around stalls, or simply turning their heads in the direction of the shouting. Hmm… now, how to deal with this? “They do know you’re a logia, right? You don’t exactly need their protection.”

“Indeed I do not. But thank you for not trying to taunt or rile my people up further. I can see you thinking it, Luffy,” Vivi said, slapping Luffy upside the head lightly. This sight caused many of the dock workers to blink and slowly start to lower their weapons, as she had hoped. Even the ones who hadn’t heard Luffy and Vivi speak were now looking on in confusion, their furor dying down. “Just because you’ve been bored doesn’t mean you can take it out on my people like that.”

“I wasn’t thinking that… too hard anyway,” Luffy snorted. “I might put Pell, that Chaka guy, and the rest of your royal guards through the ringer, but that’s for later. Right now, don’t you have something you want to do?”

“Indeed I do.” Vivi looked around at the crowd, addressing them as she continued. “Thank you for the warm welcome, everyone, but I was not kidnapped by the Straw Hat Pirates. I work with them willingly rather than keep fighting for the marines. I will be making an announcement about that point soon, but for now, could you please let us go into the city? I have an appointment I wish to keep.”

It wasn’t actually an appointment. It was more that Morgan had warned his local newspaper about what to expect, as well as provided a vague idea of when Luffy and Vivi were expected to arrive. With a scoop this big, Vivi didn’t doubt for a second that any reporter worth his salt would drop everything in order to accommodate her.

Vivi’s words took out all of the tension and building fury out of the crowd, and she stepped forward, with Luffy behind her, falling into a position more akin to that of a bodyguard than anything else. He pointed this out to Vivi, adding, “Although it’s actually close to the truth, considering how much Nami would hurt me, to say nothing of Sanji and Chopper, if anything happened to you while I was around.”

“True,” Vivi laughed, which finished the job of removing any anger toward Luffy from the crowd. As the pair moved, the dockworkers stepped aside, bowing their heads towards Vivi, but she simply smiled at them all and moved on happily. Soon, they had moved away from the docks deeper into the city, where Vivi continued to be recognized. Some of the children even ran up to her, holding flowers and other things, while the shouts of ‘Princess Vivi’ reverberated, showing Luffy precisely how popular Vivi was in her own country. Eventually, she began to ask for directions, and, stopping every block to smile or pat heads, Vivi continued to lead the two toward their eventual destination.

OOOOOOO

“Land ho!” a voice shouted from on top of Garp’s head. There, a young girl who was oddly wearing a miniature version of the all-black skirt/blouse and fishnet combination that the CP9 assassin Kalifa had worn stood on top of the old man’s head, staring ahead of them through a spyglass. “Honestly, this is somewhat disturbing. I did not think that many people had the endurance to Geppo from one island to another.”

“What part about Hero of the Marines was vague, girl,” Garp grumbled. “And would you get down from there? It ain’t like with your height, you’ll spot the island much faster than I will. Honestly! You’re more trouble than both the other brats combined.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think,” another voice said, this one coming from underneath Garp’s right arm, where a boy dangled like a sack of potatoes. About as young as the girl, he shared the same dark black hair, although his hair was cropped short, whereas she wore hers long down to her shoulders. And whereas she looked like she had dressed up for some reason, he was dressed in a somewhat dirty martial arts gi. “On the other hand, we all know Gina’s troublesome as the weather in the Grand Line already.”

“Say that to my face, I dare you, Gregor!” Gina barked, glaring down wrathfully past Garp’s head and shoulder towards the youth.

“What, you mean like I did yesterday?” Gregor taunted back.

The squeal that Gina let loose at that point sounded barely human, and she leaped off of Garp’s head like she was diving down towards the water below, her hands outstretched for Gregor’s throat. However, before she could get there, Garp bounced slightly backward, then flicked a knee up, causing her to need to push off the knee lest she take it to her face. A second later, her rear bounced on Garp’s shoulder. “Wait until you get to land before you kill your brother, okay?”

Not completely unaware of the fact that if Garp hadn’t done that, she could have fallen into the water far, far below, Gina subsided. She instead kicked down at her brother’s head, who dodged despite having to crane his neck to look up at her.

“You two are such brats, I swear!” a third child’s voice grumbled. This boy was a little older than the twins were, his tone coming out almost world-weary and far more jaded. Wearing the same outfit that Gregor did, his face was marked by a long scar across his forehead, and his eyes were an unusual pale gray. He was also completely bald, the baldness of an ascetic, not someone who actually lost his hair. Something he had gone to great lengths to point out to Garp when Garp began to call him Baldly upon first meeting.

These three children were supposed to be the next generation of CP9. All trainees were supposed to be the sons and daughters of World Government officials, who had been given up to the clandestine program as a sign of loyalty to the World Government. Garp had found these three at the CP9 training center he had demanded the location of from Chief Warden Magellan. Once he had arrived, Garp had discovered that the indoctrination hadn’t taken hold on them as it had in several of their fellows.

For Roscoe, the bald boy, the reason behind that was clear to Garp the moment Roscoe turned on one of his trainers, breaking the guy’s knee with a Shigan before Garp could reach him. He was not the son of a World Government official. The World Government official who sent Roscoe to be trained had decided, instead of giving up his own son, to create charges against Roscoe’s actual parents, send them to prison and send Roscoe to take his son’s place after giving him brain trauma.

However, Roscoe, despite being only three at the time, had apparently remembered it. Garp supposed he had almost an eidetic memory, as not only could he recall that, but he’d also learned quite a bit more of the Rokushiki just by watching their trainers perform them than the other trainees. Hence, the reason why the trainer had taken a Shigan to the side of the knee, even if the move had broken Roscoe’s finger.

The two twins, seemingly, simply hadn’t come from a good family and had been more raised by servants than their parents, who had then given them up to the CP9 program. Because of this, unlike the other kids in the training program, they hadn’t bought into the World Government dogma prior to arriving at the CP9 training center, and thus, the indoctrination there hadn't worked either. They had still fought Garp along with the other teens, but more halfheartedly. Better, they had been willing to surrender once they saw their trainers go down missing heads or bodies after stupidly assuming Tekkai could stop Garp’s blows, whereas the other kids… hadn’t.

Admittedly, Garp left the other kids alive. Garp was many things, but he was never going to be a child killer. On the other hand, he hadn’t left any of their trainers alive, nor had he left any of the next stage of trainees, the group of agents who were around the same age as his grandson and were almost finished with their training, alive.

This was the group that Nero had been the most advanced prior to his being sent to join the existing CP9 members in their operation against the Straw Hats and Franky. They hadn’t lasted long against Garp, but all of them had been fully indoctrinated, unlike the younger group.

He’d also shattered every ship in the small port on the island and then made certain not a single Den Den Mushi after making sure every building in the training center was smashed flat. Whether or not the World Government would send someone to restart the remaining kid’s training, Garp didn’t know nor care. All he wanted to do was deprive the World Government of as many assassins as possible and he had done just that.

That was how Garp found himself here, heading to an island where he would hopefully find his never-do-well son, accompanied by three irritating brats. Well, at least Baldly is mostly silent. The twins argue enough to make up for it, though!

Tired of listening to the two argue for now, Garp cut in, asking Gina for more information on the island, just to get her to stop arguing with Gregor more than anything else. “Anything unusual about it?”

“Besides the fact that it is flying the revolutionary flag?” Gina demanded archly. “Well, there look to be towers surrounding the one area that looks like it could actually make for good port from here, and they look a little weird.”

“Define weird,” Roscoe demanded.

“They didn’t really look… built, I suppose? More like, well, a very un-artistic person’s image of what a tower should look like. And they are all one piece, coming up from the land as if they are part of it.” Gina scowled a little as she had trouble putting into words what she was seeing.

“Probably some kind of Devil Fruit then,” Garp mused, shrugging his shoulders. “Whatever. The important thing is that the revolutionaries are here. They’ll be able to look after you three and get me in touch with my annoying son.”

“Perhaps, but does your son know that you’re actually trying to contact him?” Roscoe said hesitantly.

Garp fell silent, and all three kids grew sweatdrops as Gina leaned away from Garp’s head for a second to give him a very deadpan stare. “Really? You’re still wearing your admiral’s uniform!”

Garp ignored her and continued on his way right up until they were spotted by people in the towers ahead of them. Very quickly after that, they came under fire.

“I knew it! Why are all men such idiots!” Gina shouted, throwing her hands up in the air, then squeaking as Garp began to dodge, forcing her to grab hold of his neckline with a death grip. “And you shut up, Gregor!” she shouted at her brother, who had instantly begun laughing at her squeak of fear. “At least you’re safely being carried. I’m up here bouncing on his shoulder!”

“Whose idea was that, huh!?” Garp bounded up and over a few cannonballs, twitching his shoulder forward. This tossed Gina off her perch. She had barely a second for her eyes to widen before she found herself ensconced under his arm along with Roscoe, the two of them squished together like one parcel.

“This is most undignified!” the young girl squealed.

Roscoe said nothing, trying hard to keep a blush from appearing on his face as the two of them were pressed tighter and tighter together underneath Garp’s arm. Both of their eyes widened a second later as Gregor found himself tossed up into the air so that Garp could get one of his fists free.

Gregor tried to flip himself upright to kick off the air with Geppo. Yet while all three of them had developed their leg muscles to the point that they could use a limited form of Kami-E, Geppo was something else entirely.

Thankfully, he did not fall to his death.

“Long-range Galaxy Fist!” Garp bellowed, thrusting his fist forward, armored from knuckle to elbow. A blast wave of condensed, highly concentrated air, almost like a Rankyaku but in fist form and far more powerful, flashed out from his fist. It looked almost like a storm front about a mile wide and twenty feet tall, filled with destructive potential, making any Rankyaku their trainers had ever shown them seem puny in comparison.

The effect was even worse. The attack crossed the intervening distance with all the speed of one of the cannonballs that had been fired at them and then crashed into the towers that had ranged on them, smashing them hard enough to shatter stone and crack cannons. As the youngsters stared, the distant towers began to crumble despite their odd appearance, and people quickly vacated the premises. Garp hadn’t put as much into that attack as he could have if he had wanted to destroy the towers immediately, killing everyone within. Rather, the strikes had simply started to shatter stone and the cannons sticking out of the cannonades, making the towers collapse slowly. It was a sign of control that was even more impressive to the three youngsters than the power behind the attack.

By the time Gregor found himself grabbed out of the air by the scruff of his neck, the towers had been completely abandoned, and the people within were trying to form up to face Garp, spreading out throughout a town that already looked as if it had been the site of some combat, although there were still dozens of people out and about.

Normally, when Garp showed up in a town, there were a lot of people who recognized him. Here, however, they recognized his uniform before his face, and what few people had still been outside shouted and screamed for cover, rushing into buildings all around them. “It’s the Marines! They’re here to throw the revolutionaries out!”

Before Garp could address that, the ground underneath his feet began to heave and quake. Tossing the kids to either side, he laughed. “Why don’t you three get somewhere you can watch the action? I’ve been feeling a little restless lately, anyway.”

The trio did not need to be told twice, and all of them raced off in different directions, with Gregor and his sister ending up inside a second-story house overlooking the street. Once hidden behind a wall from the streets below, both of them leaned down, gasping and rubbing their legs. “Drat it, Kami-E still takes it out of me,” Gina grumbled.

“W, who are you kids?” a woman demanded, causing the twins to turn and stare, only now realizing that this apartment had people in it. A family consisting of a boy a few years older than the two of them, a mother and a father.

“Um… Prospective recruits for the Revolutionary Army, I suppose,” Gregor said, scratching his short hair and bowing towards them. “Sorry about this.”

Meanwhile, down on the ground, the ground itself had suddenly risen to try to envelop Garp, but Garp smashed down into it with another love tap, this one a bit more powerful than the air attack he’d used a moment before. The ground and the surrounding buildings, which had also begun to shift and move like water, was blasted apart just like liquid would have been under his attack, and suddenly, a giant of a man appeared there, thrusting forward with a trident.

“No, no, no, you Marines will never reclaim the silent from us, from the beautiful me!”

The person’s voice did not match the words at all, nor did his appearance. He was huge, easily taller than Garp, but also grossly overweight, somewhat hairy, and with a paunch on him that little children could use as a trampoline, a fact shown off by the fact he wasn’t wearing a shirt.  Instead, he only wore a bandolier across his chest.  Below that, he wore a short skirt of some kind that barely covered anything, which was even more horrifying than the rest in Gina’s opinion, and long socks. Ugh! Please tell me he’s wearing something under that skirt! Oh god, I’m going to be sick!

Garp smacked the Trident wide easily, backing away a step. Instead of looking worried or annoyed, he looked as if he was dry heaving, his reaction mirroring Gina’s. “What the hell are you wearing, man?! Looking at you hurts my eyes worse than Kizaru’s flash bomb attack.”

“Mah!” The man almost seemed to take affront at that, pausing in his attack and acting as if he had been deeply insulted. “How dare you say that to a woman!”

Gina just could not let that stand. “You, you’re calling yourself a woman! Were you hit on your head as a child? That is a gross dishonor to real women the world over!”

“And what would you know, little dog of the World Government?! Freedom of expression is all that matters!” the man thing below shouted back up at her.

“No, there’s this thing called reality that matters more!” Gina bellowed back, her teeth and mouth almost shifting into that of a shark for a second, a trick that she seemed to have picked up while dealing with Garp’s Monkey-style nonsense.

“That just goes to show how little you know, little girl! I’m not going to take insults from someone who looks like she’s barely out of her nappies,” the man said before turning back to Garp, going to strike him again. As he did, the man noticed that Garp hadn’t moved, and in fact, his head slumped forward. “What the?”

Nearby, Roscoe, who had taken refuge on top of a building, groaned. “Oh, don’t tell me he fell asleep again? Well, I suppose here, at least, none of us will be dumped in the ocean. That blue whale was awfully shocked when we fell down on top of it.”

Seeing his opponent had fallen asleep and not of the sort to care if he had, the giant fat man thrust his trident forward, slamming it into Garp’s chest. “Mah, don’t blame me for your death, old man, blame your own silliness for---” the fat man’s voice cut off as, instead of seeing his trident’s points stab into the sleeping Garp, he saw the trident’s tines bend, then shatter. “What the heck? Is that Tekkai? But it is so powerful!"

“Ohh…” Roscoe breathed out, staring down at Garp. “His body’s evolved to defend itself while he’s asleep? That’s impressive. Automatic Tekkai Utsugi.”

With a start, Garp woke up just as the fat man was about to back away and disappear into the ground, the ground coming up over his legs. He hoped to retreat and maybe try sniping the vice admiral from a distance.

Before he could finish, though, Garp’s fist caught him in the chin, knocking him out with a single blow. “That was rude. You didn’t even try to talk to me before attacking. Have a nap. They’re good for you.”

“You’d know,” Gregor drawled as he and Gina hopped down to join Garp. Roscoe followed quickly, the only one to not grunt at the impact of the ground on their abused legs. “Although I have to say that I don’t think this probably isn’t the best impression to make on your son’s followers.”

“Why? I haven’t killed any of them yet,” Garp shrugged, moving over to the giant man, who Garp recognized now as one of the revolutionary commanders. Marley or something? Shrugging that off, he grabbed the man by the foot and began to drag him, grimacing a little internally as his own foot began to bother him.

Chopper had, somehow, done tremendous work; indeed, many might have called him a miracle worker. Somehow, he had given Garp a few injections and then done something while Garp was sleeping so that the bones in his foot had been able to recover somewhat from being essentially turned into paste by Sengoku. Garp had lost any kind of motion in his toes and ankle, but even now, less than two months since the injury, he could use his foot just fine. At this point, he had been using Geppo for six days nonstop (barring naps) and felt just fine.

At first, Garp hadn’t wanted to do that. Even he wasn’t so stupid as to think that Geppoing, yes, that was the technical term the marines used for that method of traveling, with three kids, would be a smart idea. As much as he downplayed it, Garp knew his narcolepsy was an issue for people who weren’t tough enough to be chewed on by a Sea King like a chew toy and survive none the worse for wear.

Because of that, Garp had first stolen a ship from the CP9 training center, giving the trio of kids a quick and dirty course in sailing as they headed to another island. Unfortunately, the ship had been too large for them to really control very well, and it’d taken him weeks to get even to the nearest island to this one, an island named Fiandro in West Blue. There, unfortunately, he had found that there was no trade going on between the Revolutionary Army’s newest ‘conquests’ and their neighbors, who were still part of the World Government.

At that point, Garp had no choice but to use Geppo to continue their journey. With that and his own skill at navigation, he had been able to set a course for the island he thought his son was operating out of at the moment, although it had been further than he had anticipated.

Of course, both the fight in the town and Garp’s earlier destruction of the towers protecting the tiny port did not go unnoticed. By the time Garp dragged Marley out of the town, several of the other Revolutionary Officers had arrived, racing along the road on horseback from deeper in the island’s interior. Thankfully, one of them at least recognized Garp right away. This was Sabo, one of his two honorary grandsons, and his face paled as he gaped at Garp.

“SABO!! Good, if you’re too-clever-by-half ass is here, then my ungrateful son’s gotta be, right?” Garp laughed.

“Gaah, Garp!? Oh fuc---um, so, er…” Sabo began to panic a little, while beside him, a young girl with blond hair and a pink outfit quailed. “Ah, you’re the admiral they warned us about? But I thought, why… You didn’t go back to the Marines, did you? You’re still against the World Government, right? But then, why’d you…”

“Meh, pretty much. Hah, rejoin the Marines, my ass! Not after what I did to Sengoku. Ugh, a whole life down the drain…no, I’m not bitter about it, grrr….” Garp growled, causing everyone within his vicinity to shiver. “Anyway, your people attacked me first, and then this one… Well, let’s just say I might not know fashion, but I know what I don’t like,” Garp finished, heaving Marley or whoever he was up off the ground with one arm, before tossing him to one side, completely ignoring the glares that some of the Revolutionary Soldiers were still giving him or the fact that more than a few hadn’t lowered the rifles.

He then grinned at Sabo, some of his good humor returning, much to the relief of everyone around him. “By the way, Sabo, don’t think that you’re going to get away without feeling a few Fists of Love yourself. Running away and joining the Revolutionary Army, faking your own death so that only Ace and Luffy knew you were still alive? You’re going to get a pounding for sure, although not nearly as bad as if Luffy hadn’t told me about it when we met up in Water 7.”

Sabo’s eyes widened as his face paled, and he backed away rapidly, waving his hands wildly in front of him. “Now, hold on a minute! That was all Dragon’s idea! He wanted me to make a clean break of it and…”

“No excuses!” Between one second and the next, Garp crossed the intervening distance faster than any of the officers or soldiers gathered with Sabo could see, not even with Kenbunshoku. The next instant, Sabo cried out as a blow to the top of his head blasted him into the ground up to his stomach like he was a nail and Garp had used a hammer on him.

“OWWW, you old… grrr…” Sabo whined, holding his head. “Dammit! No wonder Ace and Luffy are so dumb, you gave them both brain trauma!”

“Bah, you think I can’t pull my strength? It almost sounds like you’re asking to be given another one,” Garp warned with a laugh.

“Now, now.” Sweatdropping, Revolutionary Officer Koala stepped between the two men, holding her hands up warily. “I, um, understand you think that Sabo deserves some punishment, but surely there will be enough time for that later.”

“Traitor!” Sabo shouted, shocked.

Ignoring him, Koala smiled winningly up at Garp. He’s supposed to be weak to women smiling, right? Right?! “Right now, exactly what brought you to this island, Mr. Garp?” She glanced over his shoulder at the three children, who she estimated could not be more than nine or ten at best. “And who are those three?

Blinking, Sabo leaned around Garp as best he could to gaze at the three kids as well. The two boys stood there stoically while the girl had moved forward slightly and was gazing at Koala from a few yards away. Her head was cocked to one side, and she was rubbing her chin thoughtfully as she took in Koala’s appearance.

“Huh, come to think of it, the two boys look as if you stole them some dojo somewhere, and the girl looks as if a secretary who doubles as a streetwalker dressed her,” Sabo stated bluntly.

“Excuse me!” Gina growled, turning her attention to Sabo, stamping a foot down on the ground in annoyance. “I’ll have you know this is fashion!”

“Somewhat poor fashion,” Sabo shot back.

“I don’t want to hear that from someone who goes around with that fat tub of lard with the identity crisis or looks like someone mixed a butler’s uniform with a homeless person’s outfit and called it fashion!”

Koala giggled at that, though she thought Sabo looked dashing in his outfit, and it was only the fact it was currently somewhat ratty that caused it to look ill-used. “Nice one. Still, where did you come from, little miss?”

“They were being trained at the CP9 training center. The indoctrination didn’t take so well with these three, so I decided to take them with me,” Garp interjected blithely, waving off Gina, who scowled furiously at him. “Better they choose to fight for you all’ than be forced to fight for the World Government. The girl’s name is Gina, her twin’s named Gregor, and the other one’s Roscoe. Roscoe is the only one that’s already said he wants to sign up with you. The other two…”

“We want to go back home and… Discuss things with our parents as to why they suddenly sent us to the World Government. After that, someplace to hide out quietly would be nice,” Gregor intoned, his eyes flashing with murderous intent.

Koala blinked at that, then waved cheerfully at Gina, who returned the gesture. “Well, in that case, let’s get the three of you some food, and Gina, I’m sure we could find some better clothing for you, let alone the boys.” With that, Koala led the way back into town, the three children following her, leaving Garp with the Revolutionaries.

Sabo slowly stood up, still rubbing his head. Dammit, I know I covered the top and back of my head with Busoshoku, but that blow still hurt! How does he do that?! “Come on, Gramps. I’ll take you to Dragon.”

Garp nodded, and the two of them were soon hopping through the air deeper into the island, bypassing farm fields and forests alike. About an hour later, they came upon the castle of the former king of the island. This was a massive, sprawling edifice built into the side of a mountain, with crenellations rising up and up into the clouds above. The place looked like something out of a fairytale, except for the fact that its doors were smashed off its hinges, several portions of its battlements had been blown out and two of the towers that had been built on the side of the mountain were destroyed.

Looking at all this damage, Garp frowned a little. “You’re not rebuilding this place? Or are you assuming Marley can use his powers to re-create those defenses for you at a moment’s notice?”

Sabo smiled a little. “Heh, it’s Morley, actually, and as for your question, Gramps, a little of this, a little of that. You’ll learn more if Dragon agrees to tell you when you join up with us.”

“Cheeky little bastard. You’re assuming I’m going to join the Revolutionary Army,” Garp said before putting the matter out of his mind. Whatever his adopted grandson and his son had planned, it had nothing to do with him at the moment.

As they descended, they found Dragon waiting for them in the open gateway, along with one of the other members of the Revolutionary Army’s command core, Flag Bearer Belo Betty. Huh, she’s here and not in East Blue? Weird.

There had been a time when Garp had wondered if Betty, or worse Ivankov, was Luffy’s mother, but thankfully for Garp’s sanity, he’d never been able to find any evidence to point to either of them or indeed a clue as to who Luffy’s mother had been at all. Whoever it had been, Dragon had buried any evidence of their connection deep, and the woman had never reached out to Luffy, unlike Dragon.

Who Luffy’s firmly rebuffed every time, Garp thought complacently, not realizing that a portion of that refusal to acknowledge his father came from Dragon’s decision to leave Luffy with Garp himself. That thought still uppermost in his mind, Garp grinned at his son. “Yo, brat, you still sore about Luffy’s comments to you in Logue Town?”

Dragon scowled a little, his impassive face cracking. “I don’t know, are you still sore about him saying he wouldn’t join the Marines so often? Or how he looks up to Shanks more than he ever did you?”

“OY, right back at you! How does it feel to think that Shanks, who Luffy knew for all but a few months, became his father figure instead of you?!” Garp growled back, getting into Dragon’s face and smacking his forehead down into the other man’s. Dragon responded to this by giving Garp the same treatment, the two glaring at one another from barely an inch away.

To one side, Betty stared at this, then, as Sabo took several steps back, decided to follow his example. “Um, should we just leave them, or would that just make things worse?”

“Heck, I wouldn’t have even tried so hard to get them to join the Marines if you had stayed with the Marines like you should have!” Garp continued.

“You say that now when you have left the Marines? Hello, this is Mr. Pot calling Mr. Kettle. It seems as if we’re both black! And don’t think for one moment I don’t know what kind of training you put my son through! Heck, when we met, it was still the main reason why he didn’t trust me! Because I left him with you,” Dragon growled back.

“You take that back!” Garp practically bellowed, grabbing his son by his lapels and lifting him up off the ground a few feet, shaking him. Dragon was in no way a small man, but he didn’t have Garp’s inches or width in the shoulders. “I know it was only half the reason!”

“It was still half the reason you mean,” Dragon snorted. “The Marines and their ideas of justice was the other half.”

Garp growled, then dropped his son, backing away a bit. “Low blow, brat.”

“Maybe, but still true for all of that.” Dragon looked at Garp thoughtfully for a second before shrugging. “Come on, the least I can do is offer you a drink as you tell me why you sought me out. I’ve already gotten a report about the trio of trainees from the CP9 program. But that wouldn’t be enough to bring you out here to see me personally.” He glanced over at Sabo, who stiffened. “And later, Sabo, we’re going to be talking about operational security and what you can and can’t tell those brothers of yours.”

Sabo blanched as Garp chuckled, admitting without words that Ace and Luffy were indeed the source of his knowledge as to what island Dragon was on a few weeks back. That wouldn’t have helped either of them much as they hadn’t ever been to West Blue, but Garp had. Indeed, he’d been on this island before hunting down a pirate crew at the behest of the local king.

Leaving a white-faced Sabo and a snickering Betty behind him, Garp followed his son into the former palace before pausing, reaching over his shoulder to a bag tied to his bag. It was a normal seaman’s bag, but what was contained within was in no way normal. “By the way, speaking of those three, here. Nearly forgot about the things.”

Dragon paused mid-step to look over at what his father was holding and blinked. He recognized the two small caskets for what they were: treasure chests that had been designed to carry Devil Fruits. “Really? Where did you get two of those from?”

“I have no idea how, but the CP9 training center had already been able to gather these two. They’re both Zoan Devil Fruits, the Jaguar and Jackal models, specifically. They didn’t get to award them to any of the trainees who were nearly ready to finish their training, though.”

Dragon took them, then handed them over to Belo, who had followed them inside along with Sabo. “Put these someplace safe. I’ll have to think about who to give them to very carefully.”

He glanced past Betty towards Sabo, who had already peeled off. More, Dragon was certain, in an effort to get away from Garp and him than the fact that he had actual work to do. “At the moment, I’ve only got one candidate I’d like to give one of those to.”

“Koala loves swimming way too much to take a Devil Fruit,” Betty agreed with a laugh. She was a paramecia type, and all the other officers also already had a Devil Fruit.

Dragon nodded, then turned away, leading the way upwards through the castle by way of a nearby stairwell as he resumed speaking to his father. “How long are you here for?”

“Not long. I just wanted to drop those kids off and then get some information from you. You wouldn’t happen to have anyone who knows where that mad scientist Caesar Clown is, would you? Only he apparently was the one to supply a few Zoan-type Devil Fruits to the World Government, and I think I should stop that,” Garp said, a dangerous grin on his face.

“Ah, I do, but I also have bad news about that. Apparently, while Ceasar has been selling some of his artificial devil fruits to the World Government, he’s also been selling them to the Beast King. Kaido was recently seen in South Blue, clashing with Marines very near where my intelligence apparatus had discerned where Caesar Clown was.”

Garp grunted at that, scowling a bit. Kaido was one of the few fighters in the world that Garp didn’t honestly know where he stacked up to any longer, thanks to his old age. It wasn’t a thought that came easily to Garp, but after seeing Whitebeard go out as he did, Garp had become all too aware of his own advancing age.

In his younger years, sure, Garp had beaten Kaido down and even captured him a time or two before the oni had been able to break out, once Garp moved on to other things. However, Kaido was in his prime now, and Garp wasn’t, which probably meant it would become an endurance contest between them. If Garp could get in a few good blows right off the bat, then he could probably win. If not, then not, which made any conflict between them chancy, to say nothing about the rest of Kaido’s crew.

Shanks, HAH! Could beat that brat like a drum. Well, so long as he doesn’t have time to get tricky with that Devil Fruit of his. And what is the story behind that, anyway? There was something seriously off about how the Gorosei responded to that bit of news a few years back. Mihawk, again, bah. I could splatter his oh-so-pretty face across whatever island we fought on, even if the blasted hunting hawk would leave me with a few scars. Big Mom…eh? Maybe, it depends on how many of her Homies she has on her when we fight, I guess. I’ve never really understood her powers well enough, so I don’t know how that fight’d go if it dragged out.

The Beast King, on the other hand, his durability against my decreased endurance? That’s not a gambit I’d wanna make. He’s the only one of the three remaining Yonko I could see as being on the same level as me and the Gorosei, from what Peter showed off. As for other fighters, Aokiji might get to that pinnacle at some point, but he’s not there yet, and Dark King’s probably got the skill, but like me, age’d be a factor. Although I still wonder if Peter being so strong really means the others are fighters, too? That kinda never occurred to me before. Old assholes.

Fully aware of the sophistry in that thought, yes, Garp knew he was old, and yes, he could be called an asshole all too easily, Garp said aloud, “Well, there goes that plan. Still, there are a few other ways I can hurt the World Government.”

Dragon glanced at him at that but said nothing. Garp noticed the glance, though, and his jaw clenched, knowing where this was going. “What?”

“Why?” Dragon asked simply.

The question didn’t need any elaboration. That simple word covering a whole gamut of various things, starting and ending with why Garp was there with them rather than with the Marines, and Garp knew it.

“Are you seriously fucking asking me that!?” Garp growled.

“Yes, I am.” Dragon turned to his father, grabbing the older man by his forearm, holding him in place and staring into his face. “Every calculation, every time we planned for the future, every single time we tried to add in a variable to shake your loyalty to the Marines, you remained with them. Even when Ace was captured, my analysis of you, Garp, was that you would stick with what you knew, to what you were convinced… no, to what you convinced yourself was right. So why?”

Garp growled and wrenched his arm out of his son’s grasp, breathing in deeply, almost like a bull about to charge, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply stood there, staring down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. “Luffy threw it in my face,” he stated coldly. “The fact that there would be some day where I’d have to choose between my own conscience and my orders. When that choice finally came, when Tsuru, one of my best friends, used three Shichibukai to kill my grandson? I, I chose blood over loyalty.”

Looking back on it, Garp wasn’t really certain, which had hurt worse, which had weighed in his mind more heavily. The idea that the World Government had decided that his grandson was such a threat that they needed to send three Shichibukai against him, or the fact that the plan to do so had come from one of his best friends. He’d already been on the edge with what Sengoku and the rest planned to use Ace for, but after that, Garp had burnt every bridge and wasn’t going to look back. “Don’t get me wrong, Dragon. The Marines do a lot of good, more good than bad. But I couldn’t look away from what they were going to do to my grandsons. And after that, well, the die had been cast. I wasn’t about to return to the Marines once I learned that Luffy, the sneaky little git, was still alive. It just made it a bit awkward.”

Dragon stared at him, then began to chuckle. “Really? The blunt approach worked on you? Luffy must have been very persuasive, as I seem to remember trying that same route more than once.”

“Luffy’s blunt approach got me thinking. It was the World Government’s own actions that made me act in turn,” Dragon said, although his lips did quirk. “But yeah, subtlety wouldn’t have worked so well on me, I’ll admit.”

Dragon continued to chuckle as he turned away, opening a door on the palace’s third story that had become the main office for the Revolutionaries during their stay here. “Well, tell me more about the ways you want to hurt the World Government, and I will see what we can do to help.”

“Eh, I really don’t need more help in that area. Some food, drink and supplies that are good for the road and a ship that I can operate myself would be a major help. Well, that and taking those three kids off my back anyway. Literally.”

Dragon looked at him quizzically, then laughed again. “You used Geppo to get here? That’s both impressive and silly, just like you.”

Ignoring how several nearby Revolutionary soldiers were gaping at the fact their boss, a dour and grim individual at the best of times, was actually laughing at something, Dragon ushered Garp inside. “Give me an idea of what kind of ship you can handle on your own, and we’ll see what we can do. But first, tell me, did Whitebeard really--”

“Yes,” Garp said as the door closed behind him. He stared at the far wall for a moment, not seeing Dragon or anything else in the room. Instead, he saw Whitebeard’s body standing there again, the massive blood-soaked grin on the half of his face that was still there, the fact his body still stood even as the last bits of Akainu’s island collapsed under him. Newgate grinned in the face of death, just like Roger did. Mad bastards, the both of them. “Yes, Edward killed a Gorosei. Fuck, if ya can get there, ya might still find the sea emptying down into the fucking chasm he carved doing it.”

The others were still staring at the doorway when Dragon’s bellow of laughter came through it so loud that they had to cover their ears.

An hour passed as the father and son pair talked before a runner ran into the room. He paused in the doorway, gaping at the sight of Garp, nearly smacking his head against the lintel he jumped so high. “Garp the Fist! Wha, wh…”

“That’s enough soldier. The World Government was actually telling at least a portion of the truth when it said that Garp had been convinced to turn against them.” Dragon looked over at Garp with a smirk. “They’re actually being very careful about not labeling you a full traitor, did you know that? I have to assume that’s because of how popular you are among the Marines.”

Garp rolled his eyes but didn’t reply, and Dragon turned back to the messenger. “What is it?”

Recovering, the runner saluted. “Sir, Blue Pigeon and Spark Hat have just been reported back on Shifting Sands.”

Garp looked a little confused, and Dragon shrugged. “We don’t have enough white Den Den Mushi to go around just yet. Give us a few years, then maybe. As it is, no. So we use codenames like that a lot. Spark Hat is Luffy and Blue Pigeon…”

“Princess Vivi,” Garp finished nodding. “I take it you’ve already reached out to Alabasta?”

“The instant news broke that Princess Vivi had betrayed the World Government,” Dragon answered. “Alabasta is not only one of the richer islands within Paradise now that Crocodile’s efforts to destabilize it has ended, but also one of the original Twenty. Who knows what kind of secrets they have we could use? But Cobra rebuffed me, saying that they would only be joining with the Straw Hats.”

Dragon looked back at the messenger. “Is there any indication as to what Luffy and Vivi are up to?”

“Yes, sir. Our agent there, you know he’s part of a local newspaper, he said that there’s going to be a public announcement. One of his rival newspaper’s reporters is going to conduct an interview with Princess Vivi, which is apparently going to be broadcast over the island’s public announcement system. He’s ready and waiting to use his Den Den Mushi to repeat it.”

Dragon hummed pensively, then stood up. “What do you think? Should we go and listen?”

Garp snorted. “I got the impression that Vivi was a very thoughtful, very kind young lady who hated corruption almost as much as I do. This could be interesting.”

It was.

OOOOOOO

For a time, Vivi and Luffy’s progress was stopped because the crowd got so bad that Vivi was forced to rely more on her sand powers. She created a small whirlwind of sand, rising into the air above the crowd, waving at them while Luffy bounced up into the air behind her, using Geppo rather than his own logia powers, considering how noisy and attention-grabbing they were.

“Thank you for your welcome, everyone, but please, don’t let my being here disrupt your day!” Vivi began, waving down at the crowd, heading in the direction of where she’d been told the local public broadcasting tower was.

In this manner, they were able to bypass most of the crowd, although many followed after them. They landed on the roof, entered quickly, and there, Vivi sent a runner to the local newspaper, using the name Morgans had given them to use. Within minutes, a somewhat harried-looking middle-aged man with a paunch entered the building and was ushered up into the sound studio where Princess Vivi waited, still gasping from his climb up the stairs.

Introductions were made, and the man gratefully settled into a chair across from Vivi, looking between her and Luffy. As he got his breath back, his eyes seemed to suddenly gleam with interest, or perhaps knowledge-lust? Luffy wasn’t certain, but the look in the reporter’s eyes reminded him a little bit of Robin’s, even if they were nowhere near as nice to look at. “W, well, It’s an honor to meet you, Princess… and um, um, Lightning King. I, er, I was told on my way up here that you would be basically putting out something for local consumption on the broadcast system, while I take notes in order to share it for the more international audience. Is that correct? Or have plans changed?”

“No, that’s quite correct. I’ll be giving what amounts to a small speech, and then, when that speech gets to the part about my part in Whitebeard’s War, you can start requesting further information,” Vivi stated firmly. “I will state plainly that I retain the right to not answer if I do not like the question.”

“Of course. Whatever this is, it will be big news regardless of how you decide this interview will go,” the man said quickly, which was probably also in his orders somewhere. He looked up at Luffy, a sudden flash of fear crossing his face, erasing the previous look of avarice from it. “And um, w, will I be interviewing both of you?”

“Nope. Right now, it’s just the Princess. I’m not gonna be part of her public statement, although after you get to current events, I might join in if I haveta. Mostly, though, Morgans himself will be interviewing me and the rest of my crew later,” Luffy answered.

He and Vivi had discussed this, and Vivi had felt that for this interview, which, as the man said, would mostly be for local consumption, it was best that it all come from her. Honestly, he had no idea about a lot of what she was going to say and was curious about what she would preface the bit about Crocodile and about Whitebeard’s War.

I would’ve thought that she would jump right to Croc to explain how we’re on such good terms, then build on that to the events of Whitebeard’s War but she told me she wants to say something else first. Whatever. No skin off my back. “In fact, I’m going to step out. I’ll be up on the roof. Call me if ya need me.”

With that and a pat on Vivi’s head, Luffy made for the door. The door had yet to close behind him before the reporter shot out a question. “Before we begin, Princess, is there any truth to the rumor that there might be something romantic going on between the Lightning King and yourself? Is that the reason why you leaped at the opportunity to join his crew despite being on opposite sides to start with during the War of the Best?”

Instead of getting annoyed at either the inquiry or the fact that the interviewer had decided to spring that on her, Vivi merely laughed gaily, having anticipated that insinuation and knowing that humor was far better a defense than any angry protest against such. She let her laugh go for a few seconds before shaking her head. “No, although I understand why that would seem a great way to sell newspapers, the untouched Princess falling in love with a pirate captain. But that is all it is, a story. I suppose I am pretty, and Luffy quite handsome, something I am aware of. But I’m no Pirate Empress, and Boa Hancock certainly doesn’t share. I’m just glad that she didn’t smack me down for a few inadvertent slips of the tongue I had when we first met.”

The man scribbled that down quickly in his notebook, looking faintly disappointed, by which time the door had closed, cutting them off from Luffy’s gaze. Alone in the hallway, Luffy let himself breathe a sigh of relief. That would’ve probably gone badly if he’d shot that question at me. I can prevaricate and dance around the truth, but not if I’m put on the spot like that so quickly, and lying in that kind of situation’s damn hard, unless it’s in a fight.

Shaking his head, Luffy made his way down the hallway, past a few of the other sound rooms as he went and several locals. In one room, it looked as if someone was already using the broadcast system, which Luffy could hear through a few open windows. “… Princess Vivi will be speaking shortly. We hope that her explanation of the bounty and everything else will be included in this announcement. Please, stand by.”

Deciding to get away from the locals, many of whom were glaring at him, Luffy was soon back up on the roof, where he settled down to the lotus position, closing his eyes as he concentrated on his Kenbunshoku. With the lightning fruit helping him, regardless of how well someone was trying to hide their presence or their emotions, he’d be able to sense any threat incoming.

Once he was certain that no such threat would suddenly appear, Luffy opened his eyes, reached into his pouch and pulled out the Den Den Mushi that he had pulled from the ship.

His pouch, not his ki space. Sensory deprivation did not make for a happy Den Den Mushi… or a particularly sane or usable one.

Two clicks later, Sanji’s voice rang out from the Den Den Mushi. “Hey, Shitty Spark, or is this Princess-chwan? If it isn’t Princess-chwan, give her the Den Den Mushi, you useless lightbulb. I’d rather much rather hear her voice than yours.”

“Hello to you too, Curly,” Luffy snorted. Ever since they’d left the Calm Belt behind, everyone had taken to using codenames while talking like this. Well, most of them had. Sanji and Zoro had taken to making up nicknames for the pair in the Swallow, and these were no exception, although Sanji’s nicknames for Vivi were, obviously, far kinder than for his captain. In turn, Mossy and Curly had replaced Zoro and Sanji’s initial codenames of Sword Swinger and Leg Day.

“Are the rest of the crew around?” Luffy asked. “We’ve arrived at our destination, and our diplomatic officer is going to put on that presentation she told us about a few days ago. I figured that you all might want to listen in.”

“Of course, I would love to hear whatever our Blue Rose has to say! And I suppose I could get Tangerine Queen, Coffee Beauty, Angel, our glorious Empress and Green Flower to listen in, too. And the shit Sword Swallower and the rest of them, I guess.”

“What was that, Baka Cook? You want to be sliced into sashimi? I can do that!”

The fight in the background went on for a few moments. This went on for some time, but eventually, Hancock restored order by the simple expedient of freezing both men for a few seconds. When she reversed their petrification, neither was in the mood to continue.

This occurred just in time for the Princess’ speech to begin. Luffy set the Den Den Mushi next to him and looked towards the nearest communication tower, closing his eyes and listening while also concentrating on his Kenbunshoku.

“Hello everyone! My name is Princess Vivi Nefertiti, and I love my country,” Vivi began to cheers from the crowd of civilians that were now packing the roads all around the tower. When she went on, thought, it was to almost complete silence as everyone listened intently to what their Princess had to say. “I love having a drink of cactus juice in the morning, staring out over the desert as the sun falls, the colors of evening melding into the sands. I loved hearing the sound of the wind as it passed over the sands, the chiming noise as it worked its way through the metalworker’s quarter of Alubarna every night. I love the Dance of Bastet on New Year's. Being there with Terracotta-san among all those other girls my own age was amazing every year I could go.”

Down below, a young woman manning a food stall blinked, then gasped and said loud enough to be heard over the crowd. “Wait, that was the Princess? Oh my god, I danced alongside the princess!?”

“I loved taking part in the Festival of Ra as a child beside my father,” Vivi continued. “I remember standing in the audience, just one child among many being held up to the sun by her father as the priests shouted their benedictions, even if the flare of the sun in my eyes had me nearly crying from the pain.”

There were some chuckles at that and more than a few whispers. Luffy couldn’t tell what everyone was saying, but the feeling he was getting from the crowd was a bit of shock and a lot of pride. It seemed as if the things that Vivi had named were things that everyone in the country, rich or poor, could enjoy, not something only the rich ever did. The last in particular caused a ripple of laughter from children and parents alike, while the young woman who had apparently danced with Vivi was now talking excitedly to several other people about that to people around her.

“I learned to love my country at my father’s knee before I could even walk and the people in it more so. The palace servants were not just servants to me but rather friends and acquaintances. Terracotta-san in the kitchen, always there to give me sweets and advice in equal measure. Igaram was always willing to sing or play the piano to keep me interested in history lessons. My guards, Pell and Chaka, were dear friends and trusted companions… except for when I wanted to sneak out of the palace. And when I did, I loved the silence of the city at night, the warmth and expansive noise of the day. I love our people, so warm and welcoming, so fierce and determined.”

Now, the feelings Luffy’s Kenbunshoku was conveying to him were happy, joy that their princess seemed to think so highly of them along with pride. She’s a bit too wordy, but damn if Vivi’s feelings aren’t coming across.

“I learned to love all these things from my father, just as I learned that with that love came duty. I thought for the longest time that it was simply a fact of life. That as a princess, as a royal, I should feel obligated to my people, that I should always do what I felt was in my people’s best interest rather than simply my own. I was seven years old when that notion was disabused at my first Levely.”

Here, the tone of the minds Luffy’s Kenbunshoku was touching became confused, coming down from their softy mushy feelings and pride in Vivi and Cobra. Luffy was also wondering where this was going to go. Wait… didn’t she say something about that fat hippo from Chopper’s Island?

“Oh… I wonder where this will go?” Hancock mused from the Den Den Mushi nearby, proving that the device/creature (Luffy really wasn’t certain which was more applicable) was able to relay Vivi’s words. “The Levely is the meeting that occurs every four years between fifty of the world's strongest kings and queens affiliated with the World Government. I suppose Cobra must have brought Vivi to it to hobnob.”

“There, I made the acquaintance of another king, a king who proved my rose-tinted outlook of the world false, for he had no understanding of duty to his people. Wapol had no love for his people and could not care less about their well-being or that of his country. Instead, he simply saw them as tools, as things that he could command at his whim to do what he wished.”

“My father humiliated him a little bit in the meeting, calling him to task about those very points, and later, he tried to make trouble with me, slapped me, in fact. He did so to make my guard, Igaram, to attack him,” Vivi’s grim voice shifted to one almost cherubic for a moment before becoming serious again. “An act that would’ve led to war.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Nami growled, with Chopper and Sanji snarling in agreement. It occurred to Luffy to remind them all that they’d beaten Wapol and sent him into the ocean, but he decided against it in favor of listening to Vivi’s words.

“I took the slap. I convinced my guards that it was an accident. I stared Wapol down, then in what was my first brush with true corruption. It would not be my last. Not on that day, nor in my life. The truth of the Tenryubito, those descendants of past kings and queens who live on high in Mary Geoise, proves that the phrase absolute power corrupts absolutely is all too accurate.”

Vivi’s next words came out as if each was a bullet in a chamber, fired out one after another as fear and shock flashed through the crowd. “Slavery. Rape. Murder. Torture. All these, the Tenryubito are guilty of. I saw slaves following some of the Tenryubito around when I was young and was horrified then. I tell you all now that any horrible story you have ever heard about them probably pales in comparison to the reality. The Tenryubito, as corrupt and venal and hateful and evil a group of people as you could exist, and it is to my everlasting pride that my family chose not to join them in the Holy Land. That my ancestor chose duty then, and we Nefertari have done so ever since.”

“OH my…” Robin murmured, the Den Den Mushi blinking a little as it took on her form while Hancock was gleefully chortling in the background. “That is not going to go over well. The World Government doesn’t like it when you point out how evil it is, after all.”

“Meh, they already want us dead. Our princess saying stuff like that won’t want them to kill her any more than they already do,” Luffy said, reminding Robin strongly about how he had comforted her after their run-in with Aokiji. “As for the people of Alabasta, same thing: we were going to protect them anyway.”

“AAAHHHH, you young fools, you don’t get it! Shouting that kind of thing, informing a whole nation of it, that’s as good as declaring war on the World Government, not just independence!” Gloriosa’s voice sounded out from the background in the Den Den Mushi, although she was too far away from the device to impart her presence into it like the others had.

Unlike Hancock did a second later, the face on the Den Den Mushi shifting to match that of Luffy’s Empress. “Too late for that, old crone. Or did my role and that of my ladies in the events around Impel Down skip your mind somehow in your old age?”

“Yet it is not just the Tenryubitos which are corrupt. No, it is the entire edifice of the World Government. In this nation, in this nation that I love, we recently had an example of that kind of corruption. When the Warlord Crocodile, a sanctioned pirate of the World Government, attempted to take over this nation. Now, I ask you, my people, if he had, would the World Government have stepped in? Would they have stopped him?”

Vivi paused a moment, then continued. “No. They would’ve allowed him to take command of our country, to rule as King, because they hate my family and because they have already allowed one other warlord to rule as a king in the New World. There was a precedent. And it was not the Marines who figured out what was going on, regardless of what the World Government attempted to convince you of. As much as I have a good deal of respect for the common marines, it was not them. It was Igaram and I who did that. I disappeared for two years so that I could infiltrate Crocodile’s organization, Baroque Works.”

This drew exclamations of surprise. One voice in particular rose from nearby, shouting, “Wait, it was Vivi-sama herself who figured out what those people tie the weird tattoos were doing and outed them!?”

As the tale continued from Vivi’s perspective, Hancock chuckled throatily. “It seems as if our little snake has very sharp fangs. If she is as popular as we believe she is in Alabasta, this will effectively turn public opinion entirely against the World Government and everything to do with it. I do not believe that anyone there will ever object to you flying your flag over their nation now, Jagged Light.”

Jagged Light was the codename that had become official for Luffy and, frankly, was way better than most of the curses and nicknames Zoro and Sanji had thought up over the past days. If only in terms of keeping his real identity under wraps. Although perhaps only slightly. We need to think about better ideas in that area.

“Maybe not, but it will also have put a big target on Alabasta’s back for certain, just like Red Breast said.” Luffy frowned, shaking his head, as he used Robin’s codename. “Thankfully, I’d already begun to dictate to Blue Cactus occasionally about training exercises and so forth since we hit the Grand Line. We’ll probably have to stay here at least two days, make sure that the locals start training and can start to build up to the Rokushiki at least before leaving.”

“Also recall, Captain~,” Robin spoke up once more, giving the word ‘captain’ a certain emphasis that Luffy began to blush, understanding what word she had substituted for there. “That Alabasta is actually an incredibly rich country. Vivi mentioned more than once that they had already begun to rebuild their monetary reserves to the point where they were before the civil war, thanks to seizing Crocodile’s ill-gotten gains. They also have a strong standing military. They won’t be able to stand up to the Marines, of course, but they should be able to look after themselves with only a little bit of help from us now that their internal issues are solved.”

Unsaid was the point that using a Buster Call on an island as large as Alabasta would also be incredibly difficult. It would pull in several dozen bombard-type ships, and even then, the island’s interior would be well out of range from normal marine-style guns. Yes, most of the island’s cities were along the shore, but not all of them. Alubarna certainly wasn’t, nor was Rain Dinners, Crocodile’s former domain.

“Maybe. Still, better safe than sorry. Don’t worry. We’re going to be pushing hard to get back waaay faster though. I was soooo bored,” Luffy mock-whined.

“Rea~lly~?” Over the Den Den Mushi, even one like this one, which was locked into their little group, Robin wasn’t about to hint at anything that could be going on between Luffy and the Princess or herself and Luffy. Still, just like when she had used the word captain, the amount of meaning Robin could pack into that one word was quite exceptional. “I feel so sorry for you. Does that mean you will simply return carrying the Princess? That might be a little painful for her. Air friction is a thing, after all… or could she simply form into her element and let you carry a solid sculpture?”

“Ehh… Maybe? I’ve a few ideas I want to put past Tangerine Queen that might help, as well as Super Robot,” Luffy prevaricated.

“Well, far be it for me to try and convince you to take your time, but you might wish to get back here quite quickly. Not only will you need to devote at least a week to my… needs, but there is also the reason why Blue Knight called to take care of,” Hancock interjected.

Luffy nodded at that, then looked up to the sky, seeing a distant pinprick growing larger in the distance. Reaching out in that direction, he felt a mind he hadn’t felt like this before, but which, like Vivi during the battles around Impel Down, he felt he should recognize in some fashion. A moment later, a few errant thoughts within that mind gave him enough of a clue.

Although I suppose seeing what had to be a giant flying bird in the distance and feeling not one mind but two should probably have given me a clue, Luffy admitted ruefully. “Well, regardless, I’m going to cut this conversation a little short. I don’t think that our Princess’ presentation is going to be telling you all anything new any longer, and the local hawkboy just entered my range, along with someone else.”

That someone else proved as Vivi finished speaking about how the Straw Hats had agreed to help Alabasta, purely for friendship’s sake, to be the newest Royal Army division commander, Koza. Oh crap, I hope this isn’t going to turn into an old boyfriend meets new flame kind of thing, Luffy reflected as the other young man hopped off the giant hawk, which quickly transformed into Pell.

Twitching a little and looking at the other young man, Luffy quickly pulled himself together, grateful for Pell being there as he stepped forward to shake Luffy’s hand.

Luckily, Koza didn’t seem to have any suspicions about Luffy and Vivi’s relationship. Instead, he simply grimly stared at Luffy, almost as if he was trying to intimidate him. “So, you’re Straw Hat?” He gestured with one hand towards the nearby speakers, where Vivi had begun to describe the cover story that the palace had put in place, why, and how the World Government had discovered the true depth of her connection to the Straw Hats and used it against her. “I’m not saying the World Government was right in doing that. But there is a reason why there are so few islands here in paradise that flies the flag of one of the Yonko.”

He stepped in close to Luffy, glaring at him. Luffy had a good inch on him in his male body and was broader across the shoulders by bit as well. “Can you get here fast enough if we come under attack by one of the other powers in the world? Are you strong enough to defend an entire island the size of Alabasta?”

“I’m as fast as lightning,” Luffy said, with absolutely no hyperbole in his voice, simply a statement despite the small smirk on his face. “And as for being strong enough to defend your island, yes. Yes, I am. Better, I’m going to continue to get stronger. I’m going to continue to grow, and I’m going to teach you and others in your army as much as I can so you can all grow, too.”

“That would be helpful. Vivi spoke of some of the techniques that your crew trained in while she was aboard the first time,” Pell interjected, laying a hand on Koza’s shoulder. “While the technique that I saw used most often, the ability to walk on air, wouldn’t be all that useful for me, the ability to absorb hits certainly would, which is something I saw your swordsman do during training.”

“Vivi and I worked on a manual for those two, and the others like them. The Marines call them the Rokushiki. Beyond that, Vivi and I will be here for at least two days, during which time I’ll help you and a few others you choose train in those techniques to get you started, Pell. I’ll also give you a rundown of Haki and what it is. That’s the next step up from the Rokushiki.”

“The mysterious power that allowed you to defeat Crocodile?” Pell nodded. “I’ve actually been researching that on my own, but any help you can give I would be thankful for.”

Luffy nodded, then looked back at Koza. “And what about you? Vivi told me that you and a lot of the former rebels had joined the Army, specifically the interior defense force or something?”

Koza nodded but still was looking at Luffy askance. The idea of putting the future of his entire nation in Luffy’s hands was obviously not one he agreed with.

Luffy could understand that. Frankly, looking back on it, Luffy might well have been wrong to not try to argue Vivi around, but at the time, with his blood up and everything, the long-term ramifications of Vivi betraying the World Government as she had just hadn’t occurred to him, and besides, by the time that the two of them met face-to-face, it’d been a done deal anyway.

Now, though, Luffy would sooner die than betray Vivi’s trust in him. So he simply looked back, cocking an eyebrow. “Are you going to join the training as well?”

“Probably not. I was assigned to the local garrison here, and I will want some time to settle in before taking on any new--" The man began before suddenly pulling out a sword and trying to slash at Luffy. Koza was fast and extremely precise, performing a perfect I-ai strike with his short scimitar.

Luffy, however, still sensed it coming and simply turned into lightning. This let the strike pass straight through him, and a second later, the sword hilt, or perhaps just the guard, transferred enough electricity into him to shock Koza enough to let go of the blade. Wringing out his hand, Koza stepped back, staring at Luffy, who simply stared back.

“If you’re trying to test me, then you better bring someone with a logia of their own or Haki,” Luffy said, almost apologetically. He understood where the guy was coming from, and maybe on more than one level, but, well… Time for a wake-up call.

“Koza, Crocodile could have conquered your entire country with only a little bit of effort. That’s how strong logia are. Element-type logias are worse. Before I had this devil fruit, I fought the man who had it, and he could erase islands with balls of lightning a dozen miles wide. Using it, I stood among the real monsters in Whitebeard’s War, and I was not found wanting.”

I was probably the weakest guy there, and I know I got lucky with Akainu, Luffy admitted internally. That guy’s Busoshoku was freaking ridiculous, and if I hadn’t cost him an arm when he tried to go element against element with me, it would’ve gone far worse. Don’t even get me started on Sengoku or that Peter guy. Still, I was at least able to survive on that level. It’s a start.

“You have no idea about the powers of the New World. I do. I’ll admit that the distance is still a problem, but not for me on my own… So long as I have an Eternal Pose with me anyway and a large enough lightning rod to aim for.” I think… I haven’t actually tried to travel that kind of distance, but Kizaru did it to arrive at Impel Down, so it should be possible, Luffy added mentally.

Thankfully, those things aren’t alive, and for whatever reason, I can transform my clothing into lightning affects them too, just like weapons,” Luffy said, directing that last sentence towards Pell as Vivi’s tale reached the part where the marines had basically drafted her into the war against her will. “How weird is that?”

“I found the same thing funnily enough. If I have guns,” Pell gestured behind him to the small of his back. “I can bring them with me whenever I transform into my full hawk form, and they even appear where I can use them. I also know that Crocodile did the same thing with his golden hook.”

The two of them discussed that and further training for Pell, as Koza slowly regained feeling in his hand before quietly joining in, looking a little shamefaced. They eventually stopped talking just to listen to Vivi explain Whitebeard’s war from her perspective, which she called a “pointless, stupid, vainglorious exercise of ego over reality, of hatred winning out over fact. It is not my story to share, but the World Government wished to kill Portgas D. Ace for something well beyond his control as well as use him as bait to draw in the Strongest Man in the World. Instead of just drawing in his father, they drew in his brother as well: Monkey D. Luffy. The same man who helped save this country from Crocodile because he called me his friend.”

At that, Luffy grinned, and Pell chuckled, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Whatever Koza’s reservations about the idea of Alabasta becoming Luffy’s territory, Pell felt he understood the youth’s motivation and found it incredibly noble.

“I’m still not certain how he was able to do so as Luffy hasn’t told me the whole story, but he was somehow able to infiltrate Impel Down and…”

Seeing that neither of his companions was going to start speaking as they listened intently to the Princess, Luffy sat down again, once more using his Kenbunshoku to cover the entire city and then some, watching warily for danger. This looks like it’s going to take a bit. Thank goodness we got here so early, or else another day would’ve gone by without any training. UGH.

OOOOOOO

Garp and Dragon stared at the Den Den Mushi, and then Garp began to bellow in laughter. “Good God! And I thought my grandsons had balls of steel! He’s airing so much of the World Government’s dirty laundry, fuck, I don’t think anything like this has ever been done before. Unless you lot have done it?”

“We have and more besides, but only after a country has been emancipated from its previous leadership. And none of the Sacred Twenty ever…” Dragon slowly shook his head. “Sabo told me that Luffy ate the Goro Goro no Mi, so I suppose distance really doesn’t matter to him, but even so…”

Dragon turned abruptly away, looking over at one of the other men in the communications room. “Were we able to get a white snail out to Karasu?”

“Um…” The man so addressed quickly pulled out a sheaf of paper, flipping through it. “Yes, sir. It says here he took possession of one four days ago.”

“Good. Get a message to Karasu via our White Mushi. I want him in the air within the hour, heading to Largos. From there, it’s just a few days' journey for him to Alabasta. I think we should reissue our offer to Alabasta. We won’t ask Cobra to join us, but they might want access to our resources, and who knows what kind of secrets they know about the World Government and the Holy Land?” Dragon smirked a little.

“I’ll be stopping by there at some point too. With Caesar under Kaido’s protection, there’s only a few other ways I can hurt the World Government, and most of them are in Paradise,” Garp stated before slapping a hand on Dragon’s shoulder hard enough to send the young Monkey D. stumbling. “For now, though, I want some food!”

“Just so long as you don’t fall asleep while eating again, old man. If you do, I’ll assume you’re dead and have you buried,” Dragon answered tartly, rubbing his shoulder a little.

OOOOOOO

Vivi did not go into details about the various battles, instead covering the conflict in broad terms, lambasting the World Government and the Marine upper echelon all the while. She kept on making a point of being sad for the common marines and said more than once that it was a pity they had their lives sacrificed on the altar of the World Government’s ego, but that was more than enough. The audience had fallen mostly silent during the tale with Crocodile, only cheering and whooping at the end, and then had fallen silent again in anger and fury when their princess had been basically forced to join the marines or be declared a criminal for her friendship with the Straw Hats.

The fact that Vivi had befriended the Pirate Empress drew cheers and thousands perverted whistles throughout the city, to say nothing of the whole island, at the idea of the Pirate Empress. How the Pirate Empress had basically convinced Vivi to join what she thought would be the winning side met with some mutters, even if Vivi didn’t go into detail, and Luffy’s sudden appearance in a flash of lightning just as their personal battle was going against them gained more cheers from the crowd.

At that point, the interviewer, who had only been asking for clarification on certain points during the Crocodile segment of Vivi’s tale, began to speak up again. He wanted to get more detail about how the Marines had forced her to join up, the verbiage used during that confrontation and what Viv had felt at the time. After that, he tried to wrangle more details about Whitebeard’s War, but Vivi demurred at that point.

“I’m afraid for more of the action, you would have to speak to someone who saw more of it than myself. Hancock, her crew and I were mostly a sideshow, even if we were tying up a few of the marine’s better fighters. Regardless, it was at that moment during the height of the battle that I formally requested Luffy’s protection for my country, and he accepted without reservation.”

“Er… heh, um, well, even without that, well, when Mr. Morgans told my employers that this would be indeed big news, I think he was underselling it quite a bit. I… I honestly don’t know how much of this my employers will be willing to put in writing, even here in Alabasta, with your public announcement serving as proof, let alone elsewhere. But, I well, I think for now I’d like to ask for more details about your time aboard the Straw Hat vessel, and then, if he is willing, ask some questions from, um, Straw Hat himself.”

Luffy stood up, looking over at Pell and Koza. “That’s my cue, I think.” Zooming around the building in his lightning form, Luffy entered via one of the nearby windows to the sound room where Vivi and the reporter were. Within seconds, he appeared inside the room itself and was amused by Vivi’s subtle eye roll at his showing off, while the reporter startled, gasped, then said hastily, “Er… Well, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t seem as if the World Government’s appellation for Monkey D. Luffy is more accurate now. He does indeed possess the Goro Goro no Mi!”

On the one hand, I’m kind of annoyed at that, as it almost certainly means that people will start to bring Seastone, let alone Haki. But it isn’t like I’m going to be keeping a secret any longer, Luffy thought before shrugging and leaning against the wall, playing up his hick accent a bit. “Yo. I heard ya wanted to ask me something?”

“I, I think we covered a lot of ground today, so I’m not going to ask any background questions. Only a few where it comes to Alabasta itself, the Princess, and er, well, your motivations,” the reporter said, losing a good deal of his forward momentum.

“My motivations? Well, my chief motivation is to become the Pirate King,” Luffy said, keeping his tone as bland as possible, then laughing as the man went to nod, only to freeze and stare at Luffy. “Got you! But yeah, that really is my dream, my goal. To become the strongest and the freest man in the world!”

“I, I see…” The man stared at Luffy. It took him a good deal longer to recover from that than it did from Luffy’s sudden appearance, but when it did, he kept on hammering that point. “And um, your, your motivations for putting this island under your protection? What do you expect from Alabasta?”

“My reason was Vivi asking me to,” Luffy stated bluntly. He thought about it for a few seconds and shrugged. “As for what I want from Alabasta, I want it to become strong enough to look after itself. Don’t get me wrong, King Cobra and his folks can call me in if the islands are in danger, but I would only prefer to be called in for true dangers. I want to help the local army get strong enough to deal with any normal pirates, slaving bastards or whatever might come calling on their own. Beyond that, I might ask for a few things while I’m here: books, maybe some sailing supplies, but that’ll be it. I’m far more interested in adventure than real estate and far more interested in helping people stand up for themselves than just being another person to stand over them.”

Vivi beamed, finding it harder to keep a look of love from her face at that moment than she had to keep a look of panic earlier when the reporter had asked her if there was anything romantic going on between her and Luffy. “A far cry from the tithe, isn’t it?” Vivi stated. “That money is going to do our country a lot of good going forward, as well as the money we’ll start making when we don’t have to pay World Government tariffs on everything that comes through our kingdom.”

“I… I see. Really, just for friendship’s sake? You took on a warlord when you were a rookie pirate, for friendship’s sake? You fought the World Government for your brother’s sake? And now you’re just, you’re going to let Alabasta use your flag to protect itself again simply because a friend wants you to? I, I don’t know whether to call you hopelessly naïve or brutally straightforward.”

“OOH, I like the term brutally straightforward.” Luffy laughed, shaking his head. “To my mind, friendship matters a lot more than money or gold and dreams most of all. That’s the kind of pirate I am, a Peace Main Pirate if we’re going to use the ancient term, not a freebooter.”

Now seemed almost struck dumb by how simple Luffy is motivations were, yet how powerful. He stammered for a moment, then turned his attention to Vivi, asking politely, “Um, the Princess is going to continue to serve on your crew, correct?”

At that, Luffy winced a little, knowing that it wasn’t going to go down well with the crowd outside. “That’s true. She’s gonna be acting as my diplomatic officer. I… kind of need one of those.”

“He does. Trust me, he so does,” Vivi murmured, shaking his head. “Especially since, in this case, diplomatic officer doubles as someone who actually thinks about things ahead of time that don’t include fighting.” That was a bit misleading, but they weren’t here to share all their secrets, after all.

“Oy! Fighting is important! Getting stronger is the thing, right?” Luffy mock protested.

Vivi simply sighed a put-upon sigh and gestured to him with both hands as if to say, “See what I have to deal with?”

“Um… Well,” the reporter said, trying hard not to snort at Luffy, who was simply giving Vivi a blank look. “UM… Well I, I suppose that concludes this interview since we were just supposed to cover recent events and your interactions with Alabasta. Er, thank you for allowing the Princess to put our nation under your flag, sir, I suppose…”

“Thank her, not me. Vivi’s the one that wants me to do that,” Luffy shrugged.

The reporter nodded dully, bowed towards the Princess, and asked her if she had any final thoughts to share, which Vivi didn’t. She simply repeated that she loved her country and hoped that, going forward, Alabasta would become an even better place to live, a stronger nation, and that she looked forward to the adventures she would undoubtedly have with Luffy and his crew.

The reporter stood up, pulling his pad of notes with him, almost looking dazed as he headed towards the doorway. As the door closed behind him, Luffy turned to Vivi, smirking a little. “Well, that went well, don’t you think?”

Vivi laughed in turn and gestured Luffy towards the door himself. “Come on, Pell must have arrived by this time. I want to go see my father.”

Luffy replied that he had, along with Koza, who, when the two of them made it back up to the roof, was the first to greet them.

Vivi smiled at her childhood friend, holding out her hand to him. “Koza, good to see you. I take it you’re going to be staying here in Extalia?”

“I am, yes,” Koza said, stammering a little and blushing just a slight bit as he looked at Vivi before glaring over at Luffy. “Are you certain that you couldn’t convince Straw Hat here to let you remain in our country, Vivi? With your Devil Fruit and these training techniques he’s come up with, perhaps we wouldn’t need to ever call on him personally to protect us.”

There was very obviously a personal component to that, but it went straight over Vivi’s head. Even if it hadn’t, her answer would’ve been the same, a firm shake of her head no. “I’m afraid not. Besides, the World Government would want me dead after today’s business if they didn’t already. With Luffy continuing in the future to give them more reasons to hate him personally, Alabasta on its own will be a small thorn in their side compared to a battle ax in their shoulder.”

Vivi laughed then, leaning in almost conspiratorially. The fact that this inadvertently gave Koza a look down her décolletage was lost on her, as was the now slightly larger blush on his face. “On a more cheerful note, this way, I both do my duty to my country in ‘paying back’ Luffy by joining his crew and also have adventures just like I always wanted to when I was younger. You know how often I snuck out of the palace to have fun with you and the others! This is just that, only on a far larger scale.”

Yeah, but without him around, Luffy thought, wincing slightly at Vivi’s obtuseness when he came to her childhood friend’s interest in her. Luffy wasn’t certain if it was a full-blown crush, but there were certainly some romantic feelings there. Although how he thought there was ever any chance of that after his whole revolution and Vivi’s undercover years, I got no idea.

Pell seemed to think much along the same lines as Luffy and coughed delicately, bringing Vivi’s attention to him. Stepping around Luffy and Koza, Vivi went up to the older man, giving him a hug, which he returned. “Pell, I know all this took you and the rest of the palace by surprise, but…”

“Honestly, Princess, I always felt that you might go the pirate route after what happened with Crocodile. Your anger at the way the World Government dealt with everything was a sight to see, and I know that you and My Liege have long bemoaned the amount of corruption within the World Government. I’m just happy that you found such a good crew to become a part of.”

Vivi smiled at that, then gestured out into the skies beyond the rooftop. “Thank you, Pell. Now, should we get going? Koza, it was nice seeing you, and I hope you enjoy your stay here and continue to enjoy your new job. Luffy and I might see you when we come back this way for our ship, but for now, I want to see Father and ask him what he thought about my speech.”

Without another word, Vivi turned into sand and began to swirl away through the air. Pell and Luffy followed each in their own way, although not without giving commiserating looks towards Koza.

Watching them go, the blonde man sighed, shook his head, and headed towards the doorway leading down into the building.

If there were any kind of markers between Extalia and Alubarna that Luffy had ever learned or remembered, he might have tried to convince Vivi to simply leave Pell behind. As it was, he didn’t, nor did she know any, never having traveled this route before. This meant they were stuck to Pell’s speed, although that wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The Falcon Zoan could, in fact, fly a good deal faster than a natural bird, even one his size could have managed. He did so by using his wings far more often than any bird his size would be able to, not coasting on the wind but rather flapping along at need, going as fast through the air as most birds could do in a dive.

They arrived at the palace late in the afternoon. Descending, Luffy landed with a crackle of lightning. As he landed, Igaram charged out of a nearby doorway leading into the gardens. “YOU!! Have at thee!”

For a moment, as he stared at Igaram, Luffy had serious Soun flashbacks because the man was armored from head to toe in what looked like a mix between an Arabian bedouin and a knight, complete with a facemask and helmet. Not only that, but the guns and he that had previously been hidden in his curls were all out firing towards Luffy as he charged, along with two large-barreled guns in either hand. He also had what looked like several swords and a pike of some kind on his back.

“You, you pirate scum, you rat fink bastard! You, you poisoning the Princess’ mind with your pirateness! I’ll have your head!” Igaram roared, charging forward, not realizing that all of his shots had already gone through Luffy’s lightning form.

Thank goodness that Seastone bullets are so freaking rare. Seastone became harder to work with the smaller the amount you were trying to shape. It became increasingly brittle, apparently, which was why even the Marines didn’t have many seastone musketballs, let alone actual bullets.

“Oh, dear,” Vivi murmured as she landed next to Luffy. “Ano, Igaram, what part of the fact that I’m joining the Straw Hats willingly was vague?”

Igaram was not listening. He was in full Affronted Retainer™ mode right now, with a healthy dollop of Father Figure Fury™ adding to it, having assumed something of that role, while the pair was undercover. As he continued to hack at the dodging Luffy, he didn’t even seem to notice that the person he was trying to protect it arrived. “Kill you, kill you, kill you, kill, kill!”

“…” Vivi deadpanned, then gestured down at the ground, her arm turning into sand for a moment. Once her now longer arm was connected to the ground, she turned a long furlough of the ground into the sand until it arrived underneath Igaram’s feet, where it widened at her command.

Igaram abruptly found himself hip-deep in sand. He had still been charging forward towards Luffy, who had just flipped away, and now fell forward, smacking his helmeted face into the solid ground at the edge of the sand pit. “Arg, wh, what?”

“Well, that isn’t the way I would have dealt with it, daughter, but I suppose it worked well enough,” Cobra said from the same doorway Igaram had appeared from, shaking his head. Chaka followed him out onto the gardens, along with a few other guards, although the guards kept a wary eye on Luffy. “Igaram, do I have to send for Terracotta to get you under control? Vivi has already made her choice. All we can do is be happy that Vivi is happy and make the best of it.”

He smirked over at Luffy. “Which, personally, I am going to enjoy. Sending this year’s tithe to the World Government knowing precisely how corrupt they all are, although I am glad, Vivi, that you made a distinction between the Marines' normal activities and how the World Government occasionally abuses them. The idea behind the marines is a good one. It is not their fault that the hand that wields them is so corrupt.”

Vivi nodded back at that, stepping around where Igaram was now, rubbing his head and looking around as if wondering where he was and why he was dressed in such a warlike fashion. Vivi gave her father a hug, sighing happily, as his arms wound around her in turn. “Thank you, Father. That means a lot to me. I was wondering if I was taking too harsh a stance, but, well, I had a lot to get off my chest.”

“Indeed, I could tell that. Although why this is the first time I’m hearing about your little tussle with that waste of flab, Wapol, is something I’m going to have to talk to Igaram about in depth later.”

“Don’t be too hard on him, Daddy. I knew your reaction to Wapol slapping me wouldn’t be all that calm either, so I ordered Igaram to keep it a secret,” Vivi replied with a chuckle. She then turned to Igaram and gestured at the ground again.

A second later, Igaram arose out of the sandpit. “And if you could give my apologies to the garden staff? Perhaps they could put in some new water feature in the sandy areas?” Vivi asked, sweatdropping a little bit as she realized what she had just done to their gardens.

Laughing quietly, Cobra gestured a few of the guards forward. “If you could help Igaram divest himself of his panoply of weaponry? It’s a little early for dinner, but I would like to speak to you and your Captain, Vivi. You’re not the only one that has things to get off his chest.”

Vivi looked at him quizzically, but Luffy shook his head firmly. “Nope.”

Igaram looked over at Luffy at that point as if remembering what he had been doing a moment ago. Alas for Igaram, the other guards had already reached him and began to pull weapons off his back and out of his hands. “You!”

“Me,” Luffy quipped, shaking his head, before looking over at Vivi, then pointing very firmly towards the outer wall of the garden. “Whatever talk you want to have can wait. I need to get some training in, and I want Vivi to do the same. Besides, this will allow me to evaluate your troopers and start to teach them the Rokushiki.”

Frowned, then shrugged. “I suppose a few hours more won’t hurt.” He then smirked a little. “That will allow Terracotta to remonstrate properly with her husband after all.”

“But, your Highness, surely you can’t believe that allowing Vivi-sama to leave again with this pirate is…” Igaram began.

“Is entirely her own choice. If Vivi believes that her destiny or dream takes her out to the ocean, who am I to stand in her way?” Cobra smiled faintly but approvingly at Vivi. “At one point, my daughter’s dream was simply to protect this country. It has evolved since, and I am proud to see it.”

Vivi smiled at those words. Her dream at one point had been to protect her country, to break the chains that Crocodile had wound through its entire society. But even then, that had simply been part of a greater dream. A greater dream to change the world for the better, to make the world simply a better place. Perhaps it was strangely quixotic, but she felt that going with Luffy, partaking in his adventures, would indeed make the world a better place, even if the rest of the world saw him as a pirate. Judging by his adventures so far, anyway.

“Good. Anyway, Chaka, hell, gather up like five or six of your best fighters and head out into the desert. You’ll know when, when you see the lightning and sandstorms,” Luffy answered.

Pell interjected, saying he would come straight with them while Chaka would gather their fellows. Moments later, the three of them were a-wing once more, heading over the capital city and out into the desert beyond. They soon stopped, and Luffy, once more in his physical body, squared up against Pell. “Come at me with everything you’ve got. You too, Vivi.”

What followed was somewhat humiliating for the greatest warrior of Alabasta. Luffy either dodged or simply took every attack he made, including his special dive bombing attack, which used rotary canons to deliver death on anyone below. He went through the entire magazine of both canons and did nothing to Luffy except make him dodge the bullets. When he saw that Luffy could then tank some of his greatest punches and kicks, Pell realized that Luffy had only dodged in order to show that he could.

Vivi was a little more dangerous. Contrary to his earlier words, Luffy didn’t use his logia when fighting her. Instead, he used the Rokushiki and Kenbunshoku, not returning any attack just yet. He wanted to see what she could do with a tremendous amount of sand and a lot more space to work with than they had had on the Everlasting Resolve, while heading to Amazon Lily.

He wasn’t disappointed per se. Vivi has control of her Devil Fruit was actually extremely good. Her use of multiple hands, multiple copies even, of her own body was a step above what Crocodile had done. Her mastery of the Desert Slash was good, and she could launch several of them from multiple directions, controlling the sand in every direction while on the ground. Further, Luffy’s ability to sense her was mitigated by Vivi’s own ability to transfer her awareness around through the sand that she was currently touching.

The two of them were still at it when Chaka and the eight guards he had chosen to start Luffy’s training arrived. At the sight of them, Vivi called a halt, waving her hands and grinning cheerily at two of her friends who had apparently been given positions equal to the others, who she also recognized. “Natto, Kebi! Luffy, these two are some of my childhood friends. The other four are the toughest of our palace guards, Barrel, Brahm, Arrow and Hyota.”

“Good to meet you all. I’m Luffy, Vivi’s captain. And now, your new trainer.” He took a step forward, motioning Vivi to one side, which she obeyed, turning into sand and racing away before reforming on a nearby sand dune that had been created during their brief spar. “Come at me all at once so I can tell where you all are in relation to one another and where I want you to be. After that, I’ll be giving you some exercises to do.”

The newcomers all looked at one another, but Chaka didn’t hesitate. He shifted into his hybrid form and charged forwards, twin tulwars flicking out from his scabbards, slashing down towards Luffy.

Luffy held up his hands, blocking both blows with his palms, pushing Chaka away, then twirled around him to lash out with a kick at one of the other charging guards. The man was tall, even with a hunchback, and wielded two polearms, giving him a lot of range, which he showed by lashing out like a dervish at Luffy with both of them. Only… “Dude, the problem with polearms is that when someone gets under your range…”

Putting action to word, Luffy bounced up, landing lightly on one of the polearms, skidding along it into a kick to the head that sent the man flying. “You’re kinda screwed. If you’re gonna carry two weapons, make them support one another. And…” Landing, he ducked around another strike from Chaka before lashing out with a punch that caught one of the second attacker’s polearms right behind the head. Luffy had timed it just right so that instead of snapping the pole, the hit smashed it out of the man’s hand. “There’s a reason why most polearms demand two hands ta wield.”

“Get in here, you lot!” Chaka bellowed. “He was serious, damn it, remember this is the man who killed Crocodile!”

At that, all of the guards, the Four Tsumegeri Guards and the former rebels charged, engaging Luffy in close quarters. None of them could even land a blow on him, alas, unless he wanted to let it land, which he did at one point, saying aloud, “This is one of the techniques I’m going to teach you all. Tekkai.”

At that, Hyota’s sword, which reminded Luffy rather strongly of an anime series from his previous life, slammed down into Luffy’s chest, only to shatter like glass. Hyota backed away in shock, and leaping up over another blow from Pell, who was head and shoulders faster and better trained than the others, Luffy held up a finger. “And this is one that I think you would be best able to use with your talons, Pell, even though I don’t like to use it much. Shigan.”

With that, Luffy thrust his finger forward into the side of the odd axe-flute weapon that Barrel was using, puncturing straight through the metal. When he pulled his finger back out and flipped back over a strike from Arrow, Luffy left a neat round hole behind. “Metal, stone, flesh, that technique will allow you to puncture straight through. Now, this one is…”

And so it went, with Luffy introducing them all to the techniques he wanted them to and turning what had been a humiliating half hour into an instructive hour. He then had all of them, even Pell and Chaka, start doing exercises that would allow them to build up the muscle necessary in their legs to perform Geppo, Soru and Rankyaku. “It will take you all probably weeks, maybe months to be able to build up to even Soru, but it will be time well spent, believe me. I’ll leave a notebook with exercises for this and the other Rokushiki, as well as Haki, the next level of training. After you've all put up a large enough lightning rod, I’ll even be able to stop by every other month or so to check on your progress. And I better see some or else!”

Already feeling more drained than they had ever felt before, the guards and the former rebels all groaned, while the two Zoan types grinned, nodded firmly and quickly began their exercises. It was evident that the pair would need to acquire weights at some point to help them build muscle, but for now, the speed exercises for Soru and the finger exercises for Shigan would do for Chaka and Pell, respectively.

With a crackle of lightning, Luffy disappeared from where he had been standing in front of the group, appearing beside Vivi. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m very glad that you’ve been able to refine the training beyond what you forced your crew through, Luffy. I’m also very happy that you didn’t decide to start teaching them Kami-E by simply shouting ‘dodge’ at them, as I know you have done on occasion with Nami and the rest,” Vivi drawled, shaking her head before smiling. “It’s a good first step. Once they start getting the hang of some of the techniques, Pell and the rest will start teaching others. It’ll spread quickly, I think. Give Alabasta half a year or so, and we’ll be so strong that no pirate group or marine ship is going to want to mess with us, particularly on our own ground.”

Luffy nodded, then grinned almost evilly. “Good. Now, where were we? Oh yes, I got a good idea of what you’re capable of with your Devil Fruit and everything now. However, I think you need to work on defense, specifically against someone who can seriously hurt a logia. And the only way to make your Kenbunshoku better is to force it to be, to force you to keep up with an enemy who can move too fast for simple reaction time to help you.”

“EEP!” Vivi whimpered a little. “Mercy?”

“Nope. Although I will do you the courtesy of not putting a blindfold on you and forcing you to sit in one place as I try to smack you with a stick like I did with my crew. I want to see how you use your Devil Fruit powers to dodge an attack that can really hurt you, even in your logia form.” With that, Luffy held up his forearms, coating them with Busoshoku. “For now, I’ll only use Busoshoku. When the sun starts to go down, I’ll shift to lightning to give you a sense of fighting against other logias. We’ll go until the sun goes down.”

“Ugh…” Vivi shook her head, quickly putting some more distance between the two of them with a burst of Soru, the movement enough to make her legs ache for a second like she had just sprinted up a sand dune. “I feel as if I’m in danger again, only this time, I definitely don’t like it.”

Looking around and making certain that the others weren’t in hearing range, Luffy smirked, a certain look entering his eyes. “Don’t be like that Princess. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Vivi blushed a little at that look but then yelped as she was forced to dodge a black-clad fist that zipped through where her head had been a moment ago. “That’s cheating!”

“Pirate, remember? Besides, your enemies won’t exactly play fair,” Luffy retorted as he continued to attack.

“True, but I doubt they’d use seduction like, oh, never mind!” Vivi grumbled as she began to dodge wildly, soon not having any air to waste on words.

By the time evening came, all of the native Alabastans were wrung out, exhausted, and sore. Even the two Zoans had pushed themselves far harder in training today, with a clear goal in mind, than the two officers had in years, something they both confided to when they all sat down to dinner. In a normal royal palace, Luffy would be sitting with just the royals, but Cobra cheerfully demanded his officers join them whenever they had the chance.

The conversation around the dining table was mostly about training and the future, specifically what, if any, specific plans Luffy had going forward. He had a few, many of which made Cobra shake his head in mock sadness and shock, while Igaram bit his lip hard to keep from objecting. To aid this effort, Terracotta, his wife, who rather disturbingly looked like Igaram, gripped his knee so hard under the table it felt like he was losing feeling in the limb.

In the end, he didn’t say anything to Luffy, instead trying to convince Vivi to stay. This didn’t work, as he really didn’t have any arguments against her previous points: that she needed to pay for their country’s protection by being in Luffy’s crew, that she was happy to do so, and that it would shift a large portion of the WeeGee’s anger onto the Straw Hats, who were already far larger targets than Alabasta. Even after the day’s revelation, the WeeGee was much more likely to go after a crew of pirates who would continue to gain in infamy than Alabasta.

Grumbling, Igaram let it go and was soon forced joining Cobra in a discussion about how best to copy the manual that Vivi had written up about the Rokushiki at Luffy’s dictation. At the end of the meal, however, he was still very angry at how his princess had become a pirate. Or perhaps, like Cobra, he had an inkling of the real reason why Vivi was so eager to stay with Luffy, as, after the meal, he made an ‘I’m watching you’ motion towards Luffy even as he allowed his wife to drag him away.

As the servants came forward to clean up the table, Cobra gestured for Vivi to walk with him. When she gestured for Luffy to join them, he hesitated. The King stared hard at Luffy for several seconds, then sighed. “Very Well. I suppose that your captain should know this secret too, especially given the title of D.”

Luffy cocked his head quizzically before leaning in and whispering into Cobra’s ear, “You do remember that I was there when Robin tried to read your Poneglyph, right? You haven’t gone senile on me in the past few months, have you?”

Cobra scoffed, and Vivi lightly whacked her boyfriend/Captain on the shoulder. “Of course, he hasn’t. My father is still going strong.” If he wasn’t, I would be far less willing to travel with you, even with all my reasons to do so.

“I wouldn’t go that far, daughter mine, but I’ve got at least a few more decades in me,” Cobra quipped, shaking his head. “And no, Luffy. It isn’t that. Or… it isn’t precisely about that particular item.”

Now, seeing both Vivi and Luffy were confused, Cobra walked off, leading them through the palace to his private quarters. There, he moved to a side table next to the bed. Both the tables and bed looked ancient, hand-me-downs of kings past. “Is anyone observing us?” He inquired as he looked over at Luffy, having gotten a good idea of the Kenbunshoku over dinner.

Luffy shook his head instantly. He was getting better at keeping a portion of his mind tuned to his Kenbunshoku at all times and had been doing so since Cobra had led the way out of the dining hall. “There are two servants, back the way we came from and two guards further down the hallway outside. The servants are finishing removing the last of the dishes from the dining hall. The guards are just stationed there and talking quietly.”

“That is an awfully terrifying ability…” Cobra mused before leaning down toward the table, moving the wick lamp there to the bed. With it out of the way, Cobra quickly began to manipulate portions of the wooden table in various ways, each of them shifting out of position one after another before the top of the table came apart in a way that reminded Luffy of a Chinese mystery box.

Within was a small key, which Cobra took out. He then closed the box, replaced the lamp, and motioned the two, now very curious onlookers, to follow him back out of his suite.

Soon, he led the way towards the two guards. He nodded to both men, who nodded back, watching the trio pass by without comment, which occurred again and again, as they headed down through the palace now, into the cellars and to a vault there, which was currently guarded by Hyota and Arrow, both of whom looked much worse for wear after earlier.

Behind Cobra, Luffy smirked at the wary looks that they were giving him, and the bemused looked at Vivi. Despite training for longer with Luffy, she looked almost chipper after the evening meal. While she hadn’t been able to train to use any of the Rokushiki in the months they’d been apart, Vivi had worked on her endurance almost as much as her Devil Fruit.

“You two do know you could have asked a squad of the normal guards to take up this duty, right?” Vivi pointed out, shaking her head at how exhausted both men looked.

Hyota scoffed, trying not to show how sore and battered he felt. “We would never, Princess! This is but part of our sworn duty, and we will never be found wanting.”

“Well, thank you for your service, as always.” Cobra chuckled, patting Hyota on the forearm, the only area he could see on the man’s arms that wasn’t bruised in some fashion. “Alabasta is blessed to have such men as you.”

Stepping between both men, who had straightened at his words, Cobra pulled out a key from a pocket. It wasn’t the key that he had gotten from the mystery box but another key, with which he unlatched the lock on the treasury. He entered quickly, beckoning the other two to join him. “I think you will find this bit of information about Baroque Works most interesting…”

Ignoring that as being more for the guards than them, Vivi looked around quizzically. Vivi had been in the royal vault several times, and she was familiar with its basic look. Several larger barrels filled with jewels or raw ingots of gold and silver, as well as shelves of sacred texts for the various religions of Alabasta, all of which Cobra, as King, was nominally a part of. Important documents, deeds, registries and so forth were stored along another wall, while a smaller area at the back was currently lined with bars of gold. Enough gold to make Nami go googly-eyed, she reflected.

After the door had automatically closed behind them, Cobra began to move to the wall, holding all of the sacred texts. In the corner where that wall joined the back wall, he felt along the edge of one of the stone shelves. A second later, there was a click, and then he knelt down. “Ugh, my knees are not what they used to be,” he muttered before, with a grunt, he began to tug at a gold bar on the ground.

It looked like any other bar in the pile, but when he pulled it out, a small portion of the ground came up with it, like a hidden cap almost over a rectangular opening. Within was a small latch, within which Cobra inserted the key from his room. Opening the tiny door, Cobra reached in, pulling out what had to be the most tattered, ratty-looking piece of parchment that Vivi and Luffy had ever seen.

“That… that’s a lot of security for something so small, Cobra,” Luffy pointed out bluntly. It was also giving Luffy some very weird vibes through his Kenbunshoku. Is, is that thing alive? No. Impossible. Not even if the paper were somehow infused with a Devil Fruit would that make sense. But…

“I quite agree. But it is important. It is important enough that the World Government would sooner see Alabasta and every one of its citizens burned to a crisp than let it see the light of day. Even their rage against you, Luffy, for your actions in Whitebeard’s War would pale in comparison.”

So saying, Cobra held the piece of parchment out to Vivi, his face solemn. “This letter is a secret of our family, a secret that we have kept to ourselves for over nine hundred years.” Luffy’s eyes widened, twitching up from the piece of parchment to Cobra, who glanced at him, smirking just a little even though his words became oddly formal. “That’s right, Monkey D. Luffy. This parchment has survived for longer than the Void Century.”

“… And might have something to do with it,” Luffy said, looking down at the letter and wondering if he should tell Robin about this when they met up again.

Vivi was, oddly enough, thinking the same thing and also wondering if she should touch the letter at all. “I, I’m interested to know father, but… Will that thing survive if I touch it? In fact, how is it holding up when you’re holding it now?”

Cobra laughed. “I asked the same question at one point. However, this letter is astonishingly durable. I wouldn’t recommend tossing it into a fire or anything like that, but it can certainly survive you holding it as you read what is written here.”

“It’s got Haki infused in it, it’s gotta,” Luffy interjected. “I can almost feel it. How the heck did someone infuse something permanently with Busoshoku?! And why isn’t it colored black?” He nearly demanded, leaning forward.

“I wondered if that might be it when you explained to us what Haki was. As for the how? I have no idea,” Cobra stated, holding out the parchment. “The writing within speaks of several secrets, but that is not one of them.”

Gingerly, Vivi took the letter from her father and began to read it. Luffy peered over his shoulder but couldn’t read it because it was written in ancient Alabastan rather than the common language. “It… It’s an apology letter, one from my ancestor, Nefertiti D Lili, to her younger brother. Wait, D.!!!!?”

Vivi looked up at her father in shock. “What does this mean? What does the D. mean!? I thought, well, I thought that was just part of Luffy’s name, but, but this… I, what?”

“Eh, the D. thing isn’t just me, my absentee father or Gramps. There’s Gol D. Roger, remember, and Gramps never mentioned being actually related to Gol. There’s also Marshall D. Teach that asshole Blackbeard. Robin even mentioned knowing a Jaguar. D. Saul, who was a giant. No,” Luffy mused, scratching at his hair under his hat thoughtfully. “The D. means something, refers to something else. It could be family lines, but if so it’s very distant ones, like hundreds of years in the past.” And I really don’t want to know how it could be passed on to a giant. Talk about problems with scale. Be like a housecat getting with a Sabertooth tiger.

Vivi very carefully did not say something like ‘thank goodness for that’ in front of her father, while Cobra simply shrugged. “A hint to what it might mean is at the end of the letter, daughter mine. Beyond that, the mystery of the D., or rather, the Will of D., is something that I have no idea about.”

He chuckled before falling silent, letting Vivi read through the letter.

“… In supplication, not loyalty. It says… I wish my ancestor had written more detail! But this reads more like, well, a stream of thought mixed with an apology than anything written out to serve a specific purpose. But it gives me some detail on the creation of the World Government… Apparently, the World Government wasn’t created solely by Sacred Twenty coming together. Rather, there was another power that they all agreed to join already there on Mary Geoise. Willingly in many cases, but it’s clear by her writing that this other power was by far the greater. The Empty Throne wasn’t empty at that point… hmmm…”

Vivi paused, digesting that, before going on. “Lili was one of the Twenty, but instead of laying her sword at the throne with the others, she only agreed to lend Alabasta aid to the efforts and join the fledging World Government. This… this is followed by a line about, “For that, I will have to apologize to Joy Boy? Is that a nation or a person? Another name lost to history, I suppose.”

“Indeed, and like the Void Century, it is a term that the World Government would kill to keep secret. My father warned me about searching for information on it,” Cobra confessed. “He said he had lost an uncle to that search and that he was not the only one the family had lost. Even the most clandestine, secret investigations wound up with our family losing people.”

Vivi stared at her father while Luffy’s eyes narrowed. “Just like the Void Century then. Remember, Robin’s home island was wiped out by a Buster Call, thanks to looking into it. Whatever secret’s hidden in that timeline, the WeeGee is willing to slaughter to keep it.”

Somewhat shaken, Vivi turned back to the letter. “Lili refused, however, to join the other royals in Mary Geoise… ‘I chooseth mine own country, mine own lands rather than to be one voice among a multitude that mayest supposedly ruleth the world, bound together. There are a few paragraphs of diatribes against this or that king at that point, denouncing their abilities and… other things. My word, Lili had an amazing range of curses, didn’t she?”

“Hah, our ancestors did indeed have a fine flair for language. I’ve used some of those curses myself a time or two at the Levely,” Cobra snorted.

Vivi smiled, then continued to read. “It also says that she tried to strike out against the World Government by… by scattering the Poneglyphs!” Vivi looked up at her father in shock, and he nodded.

“We do not know the how of it. Lili never really returned home after refusing to lay her blade down at the feet of the not-so-empty throne. All that returned home was that letter. Her younger brother took over the kingship. Since then, we have kept that letter safe. We have kept our single Poneglyph safe, the only one that arrived here. What she was doing with the others, how they came to be in her possession, we have no idea. But she certainly did her best in scattering them.”

“…” Luffy took all that in, wondering what Robin would think of it all and knowing she would be beside herself for having not been here to read the letter in person. Still, at least Vivi and I can tell her what was in that letter. That’ll have to be enough.

Vivi finished the letter, reading the last paragraph aloud.

“Someday in the future, the edifice of shadow that bestrides the world wilt fall. Its own weight and vainglory wilt see to its corruption, but a hand wilt be needed to lay it bare, the hand of the one carrying HIS will, the will to break all chains and give freedom to those with no hope. I order thee, my brother and his descendants, to carry the weight of history close to thee. To bear the flag of dawn to come in your actions and heart, to always be true to our ideals. In doing so, I hope that even if thou durst not bear mine will, thou canst in some fashion, forge thy own fates, thy own D. estiny, and in the light of the Sun to come, bear witness to a new beginning...”

For some reason, those words contained a power to them, almost as if they were tied intrinsically into the Haki embedded within the letter. So much so that Luffy, despite his mind practically full of questions, simply remained silent, as did Vivi for a time, simply digesting them and the rest of the letter.

When she spoke, it was with an almost hesitant tone, as if she wasn’t certain what she was saying and certainly wasn’t certain what she was thinking.

I see what you mean, Father. The term destiny is spelled with a D and a period between it and the rest of the word. Is, is that what it means? That we all have a set fate save those with the will of D.?”

“Bullshit,” Luffy scoffed, shaking his head firmly, a look of disgust on his face. “There’s no way that’s true. Can you imagine how boring life would be if you knew that you had only a certain fate and could only achieve so much? I’d hate that. That’s the thinking of people who have given up hope, and I know for damn sure you’ve never done that, Vivi, not even once.”

Vivi tried hard to keep a blush from appearing on her face at the respect that Luffy spoke with as he looked at her, while Cobra merely raised an eyebrow before chuckling again. “I also don’t think it’s nearly that straightforward. There is something in that term, what it might be, I do not know, but it is special in some way. I believe that wholeheartedly, even if my attempts to discover what it could be has never gotten very far.”

“I felt you needed to know now, Vivi, the full reason for the hatred the World Government has towards our family, even if they could not act upon it openly. I also wanted to tell you how proud I am that you are following in our ancestor’s footsteps and defying them so well,” Cobra continued, gathering his daughter into a hug. “I wish I was strong enough to do that, but I am not. You are.”

Luffy looked away as father and daughter hugged for a moment, giving them what privacy he could. Eventually, he went over and examined some of the imagery on the holy books, letting the two royals talk about some of the other revelations in the note as well as things about the history of their family that now made more sense to Vivi. Eventually, though, they got to the idea of what the dawn could mean in this case, but once more, Cobra was no help.

“The breaking of chains implies that even back then, slavery was rife among the Sacred Twenty,” Cobra nearly spat out the last two words, his lips curled into a sneer of truly patrician proportions. “But what the Dawn could mean in relation to that concept, I have no idea. There seems to be a quasi-religious tone to the cadence of that segment of the letter, but beyond that, I have no idea.”

Luffy rejoined the conversation at that point, humming thoughtfully as he examined the paper with his Kenbunshoku, while also listening to the two Nefartaris discussing this or that theory. He got nothing out of the examination, though, and eventually shook his head. “Well, for now, I think we just don’t have enough information to speculate. Maybe Robin will when we share all this with her. For now, though, it’s getting late, and it’s time for us to turn in.”

Cobra nodded at that, and once he had hidden the letter away again, the king led the way out of the cellar and up through the castle. He bade them both goodnight at the entrance to his suite and, Luffy thought, pointedly told Luffy that his room from last time had been made available to him once more. Then he bid them goodnight and entered his bedroom, equally pointedly not walking his daughter or their guest to their supposedly separate bedrooms as a host should have.

“Do you think he--?” Luffy began, only for Vivi to shrug.

“Almost certainly, but I doubt Daddy would say anything. He’s always been very clear that he wanted me to find someone to love without the normal royal arranged marriage nonsense. Evidently, his father and both his sisters were forced into arranged marriages, and only his own ever became more than that,” Vivi answered with a light giggle before biting her lip coquettishly. “Come on. I’ll, I’ll show you my room.”

Luffy shook his head. “Not a good idea. We don’t want the servants or guards to talk, remember?” The fact there weren’t any guards directly outside of Cobra’s suite was a sign of the safety and trust that the king put into his retainers, but gossip was gossip, and Luffy knew that they’d pass by a few guards at the very least before they got to Vivi’s room. “You go on. I’ll meet you there.”

With that, Luffy turned into lightning and sped out of the nearest window, leaving only a crackling noise behind him. He didn’t go far, simply zooming down to the garden he and Vivi had arrived in earlier. From there, Luffy walked normally up to the bedroom he’d been given in the guest wing the last time. Thankfully, Igaram was nowhere in sight, something that surprised Luffy a bit. Huh. Or… crud, that might mean he’s staked out Vivi’s room, right, or is there to try and convince her to stay behind, anyway. I haven’t figured out if he thinks I’ve corrupted her personally or just the whole making her a pirate thing.

Reaching out with his Kenbunshoku, Luffy let his technique cover the whole palace and then beyond. He could sense Pell wining up into the air for some reason, heading towards the northern section of the city. Chaka and most of the other guards were initially in one room on the second floor, before Chaka left, heading next door. There were ten servants still moving around the palace, but most had already retired to their rooms in another wing of the palace.

Ah, yep, there’s Igaram right in front of Vivi’s room. Dang glad I bowed out when I did. UGH. I think I’ll just wait, or… Getting an idea, Luffy smirked and began to pull out some more clothing from his ki space. He used some to make a bundle that kind of looked like his head, placing it in the bed along with a few of the pillows. I doubt that anyone’s gonna stick their heads in here or anything, even Igaram but better safe than sorry.

With that done, Luffy began to change clothes, smiling slightly. Soon, he was dressed in pantaloons, his straw hat, a belt and the captain’s coat he’d bought in Mock Town with Robin. It was still a bit too big for him, but the coat, colored red and black, looked pretty good in the mirror. He had it loose over his shoulders, held in place by a tiny chain.

Dressed in this extremely piratical outfit, Luffy went out to his balcony, where he leaped upwards. He began to use the Umi-Sen-Ken, scaling up the wall in silence. He had to shift around a few corners to get near Vivi’s room, but by the time he arrived, she was finished speaking to Igaram. Once more, all according to plan, Luffy thought with a smirk as he climbed up higher than her balcony, clinging to the wall with an ease that would probably terrify any of the palace guards.

“—Talk to you tomorrow, Igaram, and I hope by then you’ll have gotten over this reaction to my decisions, as you are not going to change them,” Vivi finished speaking. This was followed by the sound of a door closing and Vivi grumbling under her breath.

Luffy waited a bit, feeling a strange amount of excitement as he heard and sensed the Princess moving around. The sound of her dress being removed sent a shiver down his spine. But only when Vivi murmured, “I wonder how long it will take Luffy to arrive?” did Luffy decide to move.

He jumped down, landing lightly and opening his mouth to say something, but what it would have been would forever remain unsaid save for the first, “Ahah!” because that was as long as it took Vivi to lash out towards him with a Desert Slash. The solid sand flashed toward him so fast that Luffy had no choice but to turn into lightning, letting the superfast sand pass through him, turning into tiny granules of glass that clattered on the balcony or continued to drop down far below.

Luckily, Vivi saw who she had attacked a second later and stopped. “Luffy!?” she hissed.

“Er, good reflexes, love,” Luffy snickered, scratching at his pigtail in embarrassment. “Er, suppose I asked for that, huh?”

“Oh, oh, yoooou!!!” Vivi growled, moving forward before stopping as she took in Luffy’s outfit, a flush appearing on her face. EEEEE! This looks exactly like a cover of one of my spicier romance novels! Most of Vivi’s thoughts about what she had learned earlier that night fled her as softer, moister thoughts filled her brain. “I, um, oh my.”

Seeing Vivi in her sleepwear was having much the same effect on Luffy, if in a far more primal manner. Vivi was currently wearing a pair of extremely short boy shorts that barely came down to mid-thigh, and before she had attacked him, Luffy had seen all too easily how well it covered her pert rear. Above that, Vivi wore a top that looked like the top half of a negligee, which barely came down to the bottom of her chest, showing that, while she wasn’t as big up top as Robin, let alone Hancock, Vivi had absolutely nothing to be ashamed about there, particularly in pertness. Luffy wasn’t certain what that kind of shirt could be called, but he definitely liked it, as, besides clearly showing that Vivi wasn’t wearing a bra, it left her stomach bare, which was somehow just as enticing as the rest to Luffy.

Deciding to get back into his persona for this roleplay, Luffy strode forward, wrapping his warms around Vivi, pinning her arms to her side. “Ahah, my dear Desert Princess, you should know better than to try to sleep without guards nearby…” He scowled a little, sighing, giving it up. “Dang it, coming up with lines like that is hard. I had a way better line in my head. Vivi. Your quick reaction time ruined it!”

“Hehehe!” Vivi giggled, leaning her forehead against his fest for a moment. “In that case, I will apologize, and l will take your attempt at setting the scene as given.” She leaned there for a moment, putting her arms around his waist as Luffy loosened his own grip around her. “But truthfully, while a very large part of me would like to continue, I still would like to talk about what we learned from my father more.”

“Eh, what’s there to talk about?” Luffy kept his tone deliberately light. “Your ancestor was a really brave lady, we’ve got a lot of mysteries to pass onto Robin, more reason to hate the WeeGee and the Tenryubitches. So what? You’re still part of my crew. You’re still with me, Hancock and Robin. Does anything in that letter really matter right now?”

Vivi blinked, staring up at Luffy’s face for a moment. After a few seconds of examining his expression, Vivi realized that Luffy was serious. More than that, he was right. They could discuss the letter and everything Nefertari D. Lili had written there with Robin and maybe get some answers or at least put the information they’d learned in the hands of someone far better educated and able to make something from it. Talking about it between themselves now would serve no purpose.

“You know what, Luffy? I think you’re right. Currently, there is nothing we can do about that information. I…”

Lime Start:

That was as far as she got before one of Luffy’s hands wound its way into her hair, pulling her head back lightly. The next second, Luffy’s lips found hers, and Vivi, despite herself, responded ardently. Soon, Luffy’s tongue was in her mouth, and Vivi whimpered needily, pressing her barely covered breasts into his chest, pushing aside the edge of his captain’s coat. The next second, with one arm still pinning Vivi’s against her sides, Vivi felt Luffy’s hand move from where it had gripped her hair down to her rear.

The next second, she was in the air, with Luffy’s tongue still playing hers, moaning as she found herself completely overwhelmed by her Captain. Only when she was in midair did she start to come back to her senses. Just as she did, Luffy pulled back from Vivi’s lips, moving his own up over her cheek to her ear, which he nibbled on before whispering. “Ahahah, before this night is done, Princess, this pirate will have ruined the greatest treasure in this kingdom for all others!”

While a part of Vivi’s mind noted that Luffy’s lines were still a little too kooky to be believed, the rest of her shuddered, her hips bucking involuntarily against Luffy’s already risen ardor. Bastet’s blessed tits, yes! she exulted as Luffy’s mouth found hers, drowning out her moan.

However, despite how aroused Vivi was right now being manhandled so lovingly by her lover, the feel of her rear impacting on a bed and the sight of her room’s so-familiar ceiling above Luffy’s head caused her to come back to the here-and-now. CRUD. As much as I want this… Vivi pulled back lightly from the kiss, shaking her head. “W, wait, Luffy.”

Luffy stopped instantly, his look shifting from lustful to concerned and loving in an instant, a sight that, if anything, made Vivi love him all the more. “Ooh, sorry, are your arms hurting? Was my hug around them too tight?”

“No, that, that was fine, Luffy.” Vivi graced him with a brilliant smile that caused Luffy’s heart to pound more than their previous activities. “But, um, we really can’t do anything here. As much as I love the idea of, well,” she giggled throatily. “The idea of my Pirate Captain sneaking into my boudoir to ravish me in my own bed, the walls of this palace aren’t nearly thick enough to allow that. Regardless of the hour, there are guards and servants always moving around the palace, and particularly around the royal quarters. We… we can’t…”

Vivi trailed off as Luffy’s look shifted into a scheming, almost impish look. “So what you’re saying is I need to find some way to keep you quiet?”

At that, Vivi blinked, but before she could say anything, Luffy swooped in again, kissing her. For several moments, they made out, and Vivi could feel her resistance, her need to remind Luffy they couldn’t hint at anything going on between them, slowly fading under her rapidly growing arousal. Then Luffy pulled back again, letting Vivi breathe as he whispered against her lips. “You know, you were so eager that time on the sandbar that we haven’t actually experimented much in the way of foreplay…”

Vivi blinked, then giggled even as Luffy began to kiss along her neckline and collarbone, one hand moving around her stomach, his fingers letting trails of fire on her skin with tiny, infinitesimal electrical jolts. “I think we actually did quite a lot of foreplay. What did you think all that was in the Swallow leading up to that point? We had literal days of foreplay!”

“We had days of kissing and making out. That isn’t all foreplay is about, Vivi.” Luffy chuckled throatily, then lifted Vivi up off of her bed with two hands on her dress-clad rear. “I think the princess captive should be made to be silent,” he then growled, reaching toward Vivi’s booty shorts. At least, that was what Luffy thought they were called.

Vivi still had no idea what he was doing but decided to trust Luffy had an idea. She watched as he slowly pulled off her shorts and panties, kissing her legs and thighs all the while. Seeing Luffy kneeling before her like this at the foot of her bed was turning Vivi on almost as much as his kisses and caresses, and she’d already been more than a little turned on. So the Princess found herself lewdly spreading her legs, biting at a knuckle to keep from moaning as her hands found their way into Luffy’s hair.

Luffy responded to this by leaning up from where he had been licking at the inside of her calf up to her moist pussy. There, he licked her once, just once, from top to bottom, and Vivi whimpered, throwing her head back as the sensation hit her. But that one lick was it for the moment.

Soon, Luffy finished peeling off Vivi’s shorts, followed by her panties. He then held them up, holding them out towards her face for some reason. She blinked and opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, only for Luffy to push them into her mouth, accompanied by Luffy’s attempt at an evil chuckle. “There, Princess, now no one will hear you scream.” He paused then, taking in her expression, and reached forward, falling back out of character as he leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers. “Too much?”

Vivi’s hand with one of hers, squeezing it, looking a little annoyed still but also reflective. It was in keeping with the fantasy that Luffy had been acting out earlier before she had tried to interject some reality back into things, and although the texture of her panties wasn’t exactly pleasant in her mouth, her maids here in the palace routinely did sprinkle our clothing, both underwear and otherwise, with a light touch of perfume, so it wasn’t horrible.

She slowly nodded, wondering what else Luffy had in store for her, only to gasp as Luffy began to move down her body, feather light touches on her stomach followed. Then abruptly, Luffy pushed up her chemise, grasping one of her breasts just hard enough to draw a bit of pain. This was followed by his tongue flicking at her nipple before he began to suckle, And Vivi began moaning again.

Those moans increased moments later to the point where her makeshift gag couldn’t quite block it out when Luffy moved down her body. His tongue once more found her cleft, slowly flicking up and down her pussy. Vivi had never felt anything like that before, and it only got worse when he found her tiny hood and began to suck on it, causing Vivi to buck up off the bed.

Vivi’s moaning continued to get worse as Luffy slowly pushed her backward until he was kneeling between her splayed out legs, still suckling at her pussy. She bucked, heaved, and writhed, her hands in his hair as Luffy continued to eat her out through not one but two peaks before he even began to insert his fingers, his other hand kneading and squeezing Vivi’s rear and hips. Vivi found herself screaming when Luffy, showing the skill with all things physical that had always been his hallmark as Ranma, found a spot inside Vivi’s pussy by curling his fingers just right.

She was so loud despite the gag that Luffy took a second to concentrate more on his Kenbunshoku rather than helping Vivi ride her third orgasm of the night even longer. Thankfully, there were only two guards at present within the royal wing of the palace, although there were four more out in the gardens below Vivi’s room. Deciding they might be a little too close, Luffy quickly flicked out his free hand from Vivi’s rear to a pillow. He then smacked it into Vivi’s face, growling, still in character, “Quiet, Princess! We can’t have my fun ruined by your guards!”

That didn’t get through and, honestly, didn’t work since Luffy couldn’t reach up to Vivi’s head and keep the pillow in place from this angle, not without using his lightning form. Which would cause, well, light that would probably grab the attention of the guards down below. However, Vivi did at least stop screaming through her panties, if only due to nearly going comatose as her third orgasm left her breathless.

Luffy pulled back, finding his face and hand liberally drenched with Vivi’s juices. “Mmm…tasty,” he mused, licking at his lips.

Vivi did not respond, instead staring blankly, completely out of it. Seeing that, Luffy, deciding to keep in character, smirked, pulling her panties out of Vivi’s mouth, tossing the wet piece of underwear away. Luffy then reached down and pushed down his pantaloons, freeing his cock, which was as hard as an iron bar at present.

Slowly coming back to herself, the first thing Vivi saw was Luffy’s face looking down at her. He smiled gently, lovingly, then slipped back into character and smirked, licking his lips as he looked down at Vivi’s face. The next thing she felt, as Luffy pulled away, was Luffy sitting on her upper chest, his cock bouncing off her face. “Now, Princess, what kind of pirate would I be if I only saw to your pleasure. It’s your turn to work for a change,” he whispered.

Vivi needed no urging and lifted her head. She opened her mouth, sticking her tongue out as she did, letting Luffy slowly push his cock into her mouth.

From there, Vivi’s issues with making noise were resolved for a time in a most enjoyable manner as the night continued.

End Lime

The next morning, Vivi found herself alone in her bed. How he had managed it, Vivi didn’t know, but somehow, after she had passed out (AGAIN) from their lovemaking, Luffy had moved Vivi, changed the sheets on her bed, tucked her in and removed any and all evidence of their lovemaking. As two of her maids bustled in, the only thing out of place was a large bushel of flowers, and Vivi could only think, Alright, that’s just ridiculous! How did he do that?! I also could swear that I heard stone cracking at some point, but I don’t see any sign of that.

She paused and shook her head, shifting into the sand and flowing out of bed and towards her personal bathroom, waving a sandy hand towards the two maids even as the Princess made certain they did not see any hint of her body. Which, she saw a moment later, was indeed marked in numerous places by Luffy’s attention.

I am so grateful I’ve perfected the ability to transform into sand underneath my clothing! Vivi reflected, staring at her image in the pickup. I think I will go without real legs or hips again today. Good grief, no wonder Robin agreed to share Luffy with Hancock. I don’t think I could survive two nights like that in a row, let alone more!

To take it a step further and make certain no one understood the true depth of their connection, Luffy had already left the palace by the time Vivi sat down with her father and his advisors for breakfast. He had headed over to Alubarna’s metalsmith district, where he would remain, helping the locals create plans for and then mold a truly gigantic lightning rod.

By the end of their two days in Alabasta that lightning rod would be finished, rising higher than the palace from the top of the clock tower where Crocodile’s final trick, the bomb set to destroy Alubarna. From that same clock tower, the Straw Hat’s flag flew, as it would in every city by the time Vivi and Luffy left, happy that and how the training cadre was doing, even after only a few days.  Nor was the lightning rod the only way over those two days that Luffy had used his Gloam Paddling skill.

Vivi cocked her head as she looked at the Swallow, which very much did not look the way it had the last time she had seen it two days ago. “Several questions occur to me, Captain. One, where did you find the time to do this?”

“Well, while you and your father were going over trade deals, training schedules with Pell, and so forth, I had to do something with my spare time. I had the rest of your guards already doing what training they could, and I didn’t need to be there to yell at them. And before you ask why, Princess, I felt that the reason why we had so much trouble going at any speed when we had to deal with actual waves was how close to the waves we were. So…” Luffy gestured to the Swallow. “I decided to do something about that.”

The Swallow’s size prow to aft hadn’t changed over much, and the canopy looked unchanged, as did the engine. But that was all. For one thing, the engine, the turbine of which had been right at the top of the water, was now well out of it. This was because the Swallow’s sides, which had been wooden, had been covered by a wall of copper that had gone on to raise the ship’s top to nearly the same height away from the water as that of the Everlasting Resolve’s main deck. The original Swallow almost sat in a taller mold of copper, yet the ship still retained its immensely streamlined shape, and Vivi could tell it would be able to cut through the waves easily.

“I had wondered why the palace had received a bill for two tons of copper. Impressive.”

“Yeah, well, I hope that it’ll work. I mean, I tested it out this morning, but I didn’t push out past Alabasta’s weather zone,” Luffy admitted.

“Well, only one way to find out.” Vivi held up a hand on which an Eternal Pose for the snow island they had run into after leaving the Calm Belt sat. “With this, at least, we should get close to the Calm Belt. Moving from there to the Calm Belt will be harder, but we should still be able to do it. Nami talked me through how to use three Eternal Poses to find an actual direction last night.”

While I was hiding from Igaram again,” Luffy snorted.

Without another word, he used Geppo to hop to the top of the ship, where he opened the canopy. Vivi turned, waving to the small crowd that had come out to see her off. This included her father and Pell, who had carried him there, a few locals, Koza and several of the local garrison, but that was it since it was so early that the sun had barely begun to peek over the horizon. All the better to avoid causing a big production out of this. “Everyone, I’m off!”

“I won’t tell you to be safe, daughter mine,” Cobra snorted. “I really doubt safety will ever be a priority for the man who will be the Pirate King or his crew.”

“True. But at least I can help them from making enemies when they don’t have to or, worse, mean to,” Vivi responded with a laugh. She hugged her Father, Pell and then shook hands with Koza before turning into sand, fusing the wind coming off the ocean to flow up after Luffy. There, she turned back into her normal body and waved again even as Luffy started up the ship’s engines. He had to pour more power into them than he had before, but that was fine by Luffy. The ship still moved and that was all that mattered.

Vivi continued to wave until the shore was out of sight, and the Swallow began to pick up speed, leaving Alabasta well behind them.

OOOOOOO

“Princess, Rayleigh has returned.”

Hancock looked up from where she had been arguing with Elder Nyon, her brows furrowing. “Has he really returned with everything that we wanted him to buy for us? I must confess that while I was certain he could easily carry the amount of beli we were giving him to purchase everything, returning with it all is something different entirely.”

“He says he has, mistress, but he will need some help to pull it all up. I don’t know what he means, although he had a huge hawser around his middle when he came up out of the water.”

That just made Elder Nyon and Hancock both more confused, but Shakky, who had been sitting beside Elder Nyon, snickered. “My man’s a coating expert, Hancock-chan. Did you just think that that was a strange affectation or something Rayleigh did to wile away the time?”

“I did not, nor did I think that he would have any trouble with the various sea kings that make the Calm Belt their home. However, I did not put together that coating expertise with his ability to transport tremendous amounts of material,” Hancock stated with as much dignity as she could muster in the face of the former queen’s smirk. Needless to say, this was quite a lot.

She stood up abruptly, gesturing Elder Nyon away. “I wish to see this.”

Hancock wasn’t the only one. Indeed, Franky, Zoro (although how he had been able to find his way down to the dockyards was a mystery to Hancock), Nami, and Laki were all at the docks. True to the messenger’s words, Rayleigh wore a massive hawser over both shoulders and around his waist, which he was in the process of untying as they arrived.

“Ah, good!” he said to Zoro and Franky, tossing the rope over to the nearest one of them, which happened to be Franky. “The two of you can finish pulling them up out of the water. That’s the hardest part of this kind of thing. I’d have done a better job of things if I wasn’t in a rush, but the new marine commander in Shabondy just received two Pacifista, and I didn’t want to take chances.”

The two men looked at one another, shrugged, and, working in tandem hand over hand, they began to tug at the rope. For a moment, the rope only began to go taut in their hands. Then, with a grunting heave, as the others watched and, in Nami’s case, shouted needless advice, the pair stepped back and back again. With every step, they grunted and pulled, heaving the rope further out of the water, or rather, the items that were connected to it.

The frontmost portion of a large bubble appeared, followed by still more of the bubble, until a large barge around the sides of Franky, laid head to toe four times over burst out of the water. The bubble that had been coating it popped the moment the far side of the barge was floating low in the water, leaving the small, extremely primitive-looking barge to wallow in the water. On top of the barge were hundreds of cut logs of Adam Wood.

Seeing the barge start to sink under its own weight, thanks to the amount of weight it was carrying in wooden slats, Hancock began to bark orders. “Marigold, help me get some of those logs off the barge instantly. Sandersonia grab six or seven Kuja and get them over here to help. Laki, sky cloud around the barge to give us more footing. Nami, help or get out of the way.”

With the two men holding the rope taut to keep the barge in place, the others instantly moved forward, pulling slabs of wood off of it one or five at a time in the case of Marigold. Hancock could handle two, one over each shoulder, but the moment more Amazons arrived, she disdained such work, shifting to a more advisory role.

No sooner had that barge been unloaded that Rayleigh moved forward, helping to pull that one barge out of the way. “Did you think I was the only one I brought? You wanted me to buy copper, Adam Wood and iron. I’ve got all three.”

“Franky, help them unload the next when we pull it out. It’s gonna be even heavier and sink faster,” Zoro ordered as he moved forward to grab the new hawser from the back of the initial barge. “I’ll hold it in place.”

Franky agreed with that, and the two of them, along with a recovered Rayleigh, moved forward and took up the rope at the back of the first barge, which connected it to the next one. Soon, another barge emerged from the water, and Franky and Rayleigh moved forward to help unload it while Zoro stood there straining, the weight of the last barge in the water still threatening to pull this one under as well as its own weight.

By the time they finished, it was near midday. By that time, the warehouses of the Kuja were bulging with Adam Wood, copper, iron, and a few other things that Franky had requested Rayleigh to buy during his time in the archipelago.

As she stood in the doorway of one of those warehouses, Nami stared at the copper ingots within, shaking her head. “So this is what we spent all our hard-earned money for? Beli for copper, that just feels wrong!”

“We owed it to them,” Zoro grunted from behind her, shifting a last barrel of copper ingots in, three under each arm. “Don’t try to argue with me again about that which, you know, Luffy would’ve agreed with me and Hancock on that.”

“I know, but it still feels wrong!” Nami almost pouted, shaking her head.

“Look at it this way, Nami. Most of this stuff is going to go into the island’s defensive guns and the defensive ships to protect Amazon Lily when we restart our adventure. The rest will go to their flagship, which will mainly protect Amazon Lily. That means we won’t have to stop our own adventures to come back here every time the island’s attacked,” Zoro pointed out.

“There is that, I suppose,” Nami said before gulping a little as her friend Sandersonia came over, patting her companionably on the shoulder.

“Well, now that this is all done, we can get back to training. Come on, Nami, you are with me and Makino today.”

“Speaking of training, I’m back now,” Rayleigh spoke up, looking over at his two victims. “Zoro, Hancock, I’d like to see what the two of you are capable of firsthand. Let’s head over to Rusukaina and…”

OOOOOOO

While the revamped Swallow zoomed through the Grand Line at a speed that only a handful of other vessels could come within cannon range of matching, the news coos flew once more. Morgans had not cut out nearly as much of the revelations that Vivi had shared as the reporter had thought he might for international consumption. The only segments he’d removed from his international newspapers were the revelations about the Tenryubito and their true activities.

Such things were, of course, the subject of rumor across the world. However, unlike the Marines, who continued to scramble to rebuild their numbers and fighting potential, the Tenryubito had their own hatchet men, something Big News Morgans was aware of thanks to a few contacts he had inside the World Government. He very much did not want the Celestial Knights to decide to come after him of their own accord.

However, Morgans did allow his newspaper to print everything about the true downfall of Crocodile, including the lead-up to it, and about how Princess Vivi had been essentially forced by the Marines and the World Government to participate in a war she did not agree with. He even had Vivi’s opinions on everything related to Whitebeard’s War, which differed significantly from the story that the World Government had published several weeks prior, printed in his newspapers.

Alas, for Morgan’s sense of mind, this was more than enough to get him on the World Governments shit list.

“We must silence Big News Morgans one way or another. The World Government can no longer afford for Big News Morgan to be an independent actor,” Topman Warcury nearly snarling the words into a Den Den Mushi.

On the other end of that Den Den Mushi, Aokiji counted to ten on his fingers where they were splayed out on his desk, trying hard to keep from snorting in mixed anger and amusement. “Tsuru and I warned you that our cover-up was doomed to failure. You ran with it over our objections. Morgans publishing Princess Vivi’s isn’t nearly as bad as it’s going to become in the future.”

“What?” Topman demanded, calming down a little from his initial vitriolic reaction. Around him, the other Gorosei also frowned, staring down at the newspaper, wondering what they had missed.

Their newest member got it first, although when he spoke, his voice was almost missed by the Den Den Mushi, thanks to him sitting further away from it than Warcury. “There’s a mention of other interviews in here,” Figarland growled. “Exclusive interviews, it says here, near the end of the dialogue with that traitor Nefertari. We should’ve wiped out the entire family centuries ago. Blood will always tell, after all.”

“Our predecessors had no way of proving duplicity on Lili’s part. Coupled with the fact that she never returned home, it was deemed that the rest of the family was not culpable in her decisions, even if they decided to follow her command to remain in Alabasta. If you are asking for us to have come up with an excuse to remove them, in the centuries since, Alabasta has never missed a tithe, something none of the other Sacred Twenty can say.”

“Yet now this Vivi has certainly given us reason to move against her kingdom, hasn’t she?” Figarland nearly demanded. “Burn it out from under her. Excise this rot before it gets worse!”

“No,” Aokiji said, his tone firm and unyielding as his fingers froze the top of his desk. He sat up on his chair, keeping his voice from turning into a growl with even more difficulty than he had needed to use to keep from showing his amusement at the Gorosei’s reaction to the news.

“No, we can’t. Big Mom is still acting out. We thought she was stopping, but instead, she’s just giving more of her kids a chance to expand her territory. Kaido and the forces he led into South Blue are roaming freely there. Even containing the carnage is stretching us dangerously thin. Issho and Aramaki might have Devil Fruit-given abilities that can eventually raise them to admiral rank, but neither of them are trained enough to step into Akainu’s shoes. That leaves me and Kizaru, or a group of fifteen-plus Vice Admirals that we’d need to send to Alabasta if Straw Hat Luffy was there. And mark you, we’d probably lose a goodly number of those troops. Even me and Kizaru might face defeat against a logia sand user with all of Alabasta to play with and Monkey D. Luffy.”

Which isn’t even taking into consideration the fact that the Revolutionaries are almost certainly going to ally with Alabasta, Aokiji added mentally.

The Gorosei all glanced at one another, wondering internally if perhaps their direct involvement might be called for here. After a moment, however, they all subsided, even Figarland, and not entirely due to simple cost-benefit analysis.

The fact of the matter was, for the four more senior members, Shepard Ju Peter’s demise was a horrendous shock to their worldview. It had brought home that despite the powers vested in them by Imu, they could still be killed, killed by enemy action. To people who thought that the only way they would ever die was old age, and even that well beyond what anyone normally would have called old age, knowing that they could be outright killed by an enemy despite their near-godlike powers was horrifying.

“I could perhaps rouse my Celestial Knights for this,” Figarland offered.

Aokiji almost allowed a sneer to appear on his face, but knowing that the Den Den Mushi would copy it, he fought back the urge. Oh yes, please, send this almost altogether unknown group of so-called elite soldiers against someone as unpredictable and dangerous as Monkey D. Luffy. Please, that’ll be an interesting experiment!

“I would advise against that,” he said aloud. “For one thing, the news is already spreading. Attacking Alabasta might be useful for other reasons eventually, but it wouldn’t stop Big News Morgan from spreading the news that he’s already got. Instead, it would just prove you had something to hide. For another, remember that Luffy’s logia power is lightning. Even if he isn’t on the island now, assuming you can attack it without coming into direct conflict with him is stupid.”

Figarland instantly pushed himself out of his chair, fury gripping him at what this lesser being had just said to them. “How dare you, you lowborn scum!”

Undaunted, Aokiji continued on. “If you want a target, Big News Morgans would be a better one. Find where he is, or, given the last report we had about him, locate his current headquarters and silence him directly. That would be a far better use of your Celestial Knights.”

In all honesty, he had no intention whatsoever of allowing anyone to try to fight Straw Hat Luffy right now. Setting aside his actions in Whitebeard’s War, Luffy was, as he had declared in the one part of the interview in which he took part, the very model of a Peace Main Pirate. Much like Shanks or Whitebeard, he wasn’t the type to raid, or pillage, much less rape. The Beast Pirates, on the other hand, as well as the hundreds or even thousands of other pirate crews out there like them, very much were.

Big Mom is in some kind of third category, Aokiji admitted ruefully. She’s actually a decent ruler for her own islands, but she shows no qualms whatsoever about punishing them horribly for not producing whatever sweet they’re supposed to, is utterly ruthless to outsiders and is prone to bouts of madness that runs over anyone and anything in her way.

Setting that aside, Luffy and the rest of his crew are not a problem we need to solve right now. They’re a problem for the future, certainly, but they’re also a problem that we can address once we're back to full strength and the rest of the world has started to calm down a little. Once Vegapunk’s experiments bear fruit, Amazon Lily and perhaps even Alabasta are weights around Luffy’s neck. Additionally, we’ve already initiated a process to put him in direct conflict with Big Mom.

He said some of those thoughts aloud, albeit far more diplomatically, and the fury of the Gorosei began to subside just as the door to Aokiji’s brand-new office as Fleet Admiral opened to allow Kizaru entry. Aokiji waved him into a chair, his attention still on the Den Den Mushi. “How are talks going with the Germa 66?”

Topman smiled thinly. “They are going well. You no longer have any reservations?”

“I never said that. We will need to take steps to ensure that their clone soldiers do not retain any loyalty to the Germa family over their orders and officers. I freely admit we need the manpower. Garp’s betrayal has hammered our recruitment efforts, even if the stopgap act I put in place has stopped people from actually leaving the Marines. We need time, gentlemen, time to rebuild our numbers and reclaim more of the islands that the revolutionaries took. Your move with Chinjao was shrewd, but the revolutionaries didn’t actually fight his forces when they moved in. They were already all gone, along with most of the local population. Which means we are still dealing with food production issues. We can’t go looking for more conflict.”

The Den Den Mushi went quiet for a time as the Gorosei deliberated on this point before one of them came back. This one was new to Aokiji, and whoever it was didn’t bother to introduce himself. “Formal talks between our delegates and the Germa 66 are due to start in two weeks. Do what you can to keep Kaido’s rampage in South Blue contained if possible. You are correct; we have plans going forward to redirect Big Mom’s activities, and they may bear fruit quickly. However, we are getting reports now of Shanks striking out at specific islands from his own territory.”

“I’m looking at Kizaru right now, and while he’s not 100%, I’m going to be sending him in with one of the two men I think might become admirals in the future. Zephyr’s forces have also been redirected back into the New World. Combined, I hope that they can at least force Shanks to reconsider things.”

Kizaru’s eyebrow rose to the point it was visible over the man’s sunglasses, which he wore even here inside, but he waited quietly until the talk with the Gorosei finished before asking, “You’re not sending me straight to Alabasta? M~y, M~y, that’s something of a disappointm~ent. I was looking forward to a rematch.”

“A rematch against someone who probably healed from every wound he took in the battle around Impel Down within a day? Hina’s report on Luffy’s ability to heal himself far faster than even most Zoans is probably as accurate as everything else she told us about him, even if it’s clear Hina didn’t tell us everything,” Aokiji said, shrugging his shoulders as he spoke to the man, holding his hand over the Den Den Mushi’s microphone.

While Aokiji wasn’t so stupid as to think pirates couldn’t hide the Goro Goro no Mi from Hina, Luffy’s ability to turn into a woman with cold water was something else altogether. When you get right down to it, that ability was really what let him infiltrate Impel Down and start the disaster going. Not the Whitebeard Pirates and not his logia ability. “That’s not a matchup I’m going to toss you at any time soon, Kizaru. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“Mah, M~ah, I can take hi~m, remember, I was already battered from my match with Garp so~--”

Aokiji slammed a hand down on his desk, his normal tired air disappearing as he glared across at his fellow logia. “Stop underestimating him! That has been our primary issue with Luffy from the start! Even I was guilty of it. We look at him, we see his age, we see how short a time he’s been on the Grand Line, how small his crew is. All of that paints a false picture! We think of him as a normal pirate, but he isn’t. Luffy’s too good at adapting, and he’s growing in strength too quickly! You might know some of his tricks, but he knows yours too!”

Kizaru blinked back at the man, somewhat startled by his exclamation, and Aokiji sighed. “Whatever happens in the future with the Lightning King, he’s not a problem now. Yes, I know that that goes directly against what I just said about his growth rate but he’s a Peace Main Pirate. I’m not going to prioritize him over monsters like the Beast Pirates or this new pirate group that’s just started out of North Blue, who actually go around and massacre marine bases. We need to pick our battles. We need to watch, wait and grow, hence my 'Waiting Justice' mantra. If you didn’t understand that before Kizaru, understand it now.”

Kizaru stared across the desk at Aokiji, wondering internally if the Gorosei had truly grasped the extent to which the Marines would differ under Aokiji from what they had been under Sengoku. Sengoku was ruthless, authoritarian, and a firm believer in the World Government and the need to maintain peace through superior firepower. Aokiji’s not in that same mold, which, admittedly, probably makes him the perfect person to rebuild our losses.

“Is it true that Strawberry is dead?” Kizaru asked.

“Yes. Strawberry was serving under Zephyr and refused to retreat when ordered to do so. Kaido, or one of his crew, anyway, killed him. And that’s not the only loss we’ve been taking since Whitebeard’s War. I’ve done what I can to keep our losses to a minimum, but we are still hemorrhaging lower-ranking troops and ships. Strawberry isn’t even our only loss among our real fighters,” Aokiji growled. “That’s why, when you and Fujitora lead a force out against Shanks along with Zephyr, your mission will not be to fight to the last but to hopefully convince him that his actions are doing more harm than good for the world. He’s another Peace Main Pirate. You might be able to convince him or at least make him realize he will be facing a far harder fight than he wants to face.”

“The Gorosei wouldn’t like that kind of talk, even when it comes to Shanks,” Kizaru warned. Both men were very aware of Shanks’ nearly unique status.

“At this point, I don’t care. We’ve got far bigger problems than whether or not the Gorosei like my decisions. Now get going, and Kizaru? You better start training your Busoshoku more. When I see you next in person, I want you to be as good at it as I am now. And then, I’ll want you to get stronger, understand? I’ll be doing the same thing.”

“Mah~, mah~, that sounds like so much work, though,” Kizaru sighed before standing, saluting lazily, and exiting the room.

Aokiji stared after him for a few moments, hoping that he had gotten through to the other man before shaking his head, turning, and getting on with his work. There was always more paperwork to do, always another problem to solve, another disaster to deal with. Now more than ever before. “Why did I want this job again?”

OOOOOOO

“Marigold-sama, this is Rindo up in the observation tower! We’ve got a ship coming in. It’s coming in fast, too fast for us to make out any details, but I don’t think it matches the Swallow.”

Marigold frowned as she stared at the Den Den Mushi in consternation. “What do you mean it doesn’t match the Swallow?”

“It looks a little more built up out of the water than that ship,” Rindo answered instantly. “And did I mention it’s going really fa--” Rindo’s cut off as she saw a lightning blast shoot up from the ship. “False alarm. Hebihime’s Lightning Man just released a lightning bolt.”

The thoughts and opinions on the various men who had suddenly been allowed to live on Amazon Lily were decidedly mixed, but overall, most of the population had decided to follow the Empress’s lead on this score. The fact that one such man was in a relationship with their Empress was another thing altogether, but there, at least, they could see his strength, and that was enough for nearly all of the Kuja. Even if they still preferred to see him and the men through the lens of that connection to Hebihime-sama rather than as individuals.

“Good. Is Robin still up there with you?”

Rindo replied in the affirmative, and Marigold thought about who among the Straw Hats was still within the city limits. “I’ll have Nami and Laki meet them down at the peer with Sandersonia.”

Robin was using her powers to help with the construction of the observation dome and the twin artillery cannons. Hancock and Zoro were out on Rusukaina with Rayleigh, while Sanji and Chopper, Marigold knew, were out in the forest. The two of them were practicing in the woods, doing a specific set of exercises that Rayleigh had helped them come up with. Makino and Brook were similarly out in the woods doing another set of exercises devised by the Kuja, along with a good dozen of Marigold’s folk.

Even Perona was out training somewhere, along with still more Kuja, although in her case, she was working on controlling her hollows and helping the locals train in various methods to become stronger as well. Laki was still in town, working with Nami on Soru and Kami-E. At the moment, with the plans for their future training needing to be a little more nuanced, Rayleigh had decided that those two techniques out of the Rokushiki would serve them best. Both of them already had a decent grasp of those skills. They just needed to perfect them and make using them automatic rather than something they needed to consciously work on.

The revamped Swallow slowed down as it drew closer, eventually coming to a stop against a quay several billets away from the Everlasting Resolve. As the Swallow powered down, Luffy looked in that direction, cocking his head. “Even from here, I’m kind of getting the impression that Eve seriously doesn’t approve of this ship.”

“Of course not. Eve’s the ship of the future Pirate King, not this ship. We’ll need to soothe her ego when we go aboard to head to Shabondy Archipelago,” Vivi chuckled as she undid the latch to the canopy. Seeing who was waiting for them, she instantly began to wave. “Nami! We’re back.”

“And all in one piece, too. I’d almost been afraid that the two of you were zooming into an ambush. It’s hard to reconcile the idea that the World Government and the Marines aren’t this all-powerful force with unending resources, you know?” Nami said, moving forward and helping Vivi up onto the docks before giving the slightly younger girl a hug, grateful that her best friend had returned. Nami got along okay with Robin, even after her self-created debacle in Skypiea, and she also got along well with Laki. However, Nami and Laki were very different girls, and Robin was just a little too mature for them to become as close as Nami was to Vivi. Well, that and Robin’s sense of humor always threw Nami.

“Hey, you two,” Luffy said, hopping up out of the ship himself. “Nami, um, It’s honestly kind of good that you’re one of the ones to meet us. I… I kind of have to apologize to you.”

“If this is about not giving me personalized training or something, you can stop right there!” Nami held up her hands in an X. “I know why you kept on putting my training on the back burner. I’m not a frontline fighter. Sanji, Zoro, even Franky and Chopper benefited way more from your training than I would have.”

“Maybe, but that still doesn’t make it right. I shouldn’t have prioritized anyone. That’s not what a captain should do, play favorites like that.” Luffy shook his head. “I’m going to come up with a personal style for your staff-based style that you can then integrate into whatever final weapon you and Laki come up with.”

It had been decided some time back that Laki and Nami needed more personalized training to make the best of their knowledge and non-combat abilities, but how to go about that hadn’t been decided until Rayleigh had followed up on something Sandersonia had mentioned to Nami: that there was a Sky Island that specialized in weather prediction and manipulation. Not only did Rayleigh know about Weatheria, he knew how to get there. It would take some time to set up, but it was possible to take both Laki and Nami to the Sky Island for training or resource gathering. The plan was to go there in about four months after things had started to calm down a bit throughout the world and to take Hancock’s vessel to do it, as they would need to pass through areas with a marine presence into an area controlled by Whitebeard’s allies.

“Nami’s actually getting better at Kami-E, to the point where it’s is going to give way to Kenbunshoku soon, at least according to Sandersonia. Me, not so much. I’m also in a holding pattern on my personal combat style, but there, Rayleigh and Hancock both had a lot of good ideas I’ve been making plans for,” Laki said, coming forward to give Luffy a handshake, then ruffle Vivi’s hair. There was just something about the blue-haired young woman that made Laki want to treat her like a little sister, even if, in many ways, Vivi was the more mature one of the pair. Heh, and I’m not talking just about her tits being a size larger than mine, Laki thought with a smirk.

“Understood. But even without dials, there are a few combat techniques I can teach you with a rifle. And have you thought about putting a bayonet on it? Just in case?”

“Yep, I’ve thought about that one and a whole lot more. Instead of simply being a gunner, Rayleigh and Hancock have convinced me that there’s a lot I was overlooking because it was stuff that my enemies used against my tribe back on Skypiea,” Laki admitted, shaking her head. “That was foolish of me, frankly. I should have learned from what you and I went through against the Buster Call on Water 7, but I didn’t.”

“We all make mistakes like that sometimes.” Luffy could still remember a time when, as Ranma, he hadn’t wanted to learn the Toughness Training because the Anything Goes Aerial Style was entirely based on dodging rather than tanking hits. And then there had been his decision to not use his Devil Fruit powers, wanting to keep them as an ace in the hole. Yet he’d taken it to the point where Luffy had allowed his crew to get hurt during the Thriller Bark incident. In the end, that had worked out, but it could very easily not have.

“Regardless, we’re going to take the time to correct that before we head to the New World and a lot of other stuff, apparently,” Luffy shook his head. “For now, though, where are Robin, Hancock and the rest?” He could use his Kenbunshoku to find them but felt it would be more polite to ask.

The previously silent Sandersonia pointed upward to the massive mountain high above them, explaining where Robin was first and then where Hancock and Zoro could be found, as well as the rest of them.

Nami helpfully provided a few nautical-style directions, laughing lightly. “Have I mentioned how nice it is to be in the Calm Belt, where everything is so nice and normal?”

“Nice and normal, hah! That’s only because you’re on Amazon Lily. If you had to deal with the Sea Kings and the lack of wind or current without one of our snakes, you’d be singing a different tune,” Sandersonia snorted.

Nami stuck out her tongue at her friend while Luffy reached out with Kenbunshoku toward the mountaintop, where he could indeed feel Robin’s mind. “Well, I think I’m going to go see Robin first, then head over to Hancock and Zoro to join in the training.”

It was a little before lunchtime, so that felt like a good use of the rest of the day to Luffy. “Sandersonia, if you could start training Vivi more in dodging without looking? Like Nami, I think she’s close to a breakthrough on Kenbunshoku, and her training with her Devil Fruit is actually pretty darn good.”

“Translation: he doesn’t want to put a blindfold on me and start whacking me with a stick to train me in Kenbunshoku, so he’s delegating,” Vivi said, smiling faintly.

“No comment,” Luffy said, disappearing to the sounds of laughter from the four girls, even Sandersonia.

A second later, Robin looked up at a bright flash above her head as Luffy appeared there. “Luffy! You’re back, I see. I--”

That was as far as Robin got before Luffy landed in front of her, picked her up from where she had been kneeling, and into a kiss.

Robin had summoned several thousand arms all around and down the slope, helping to transport tools and material to the observation center. Now, it was all Robin could do to keep those hands where they were, unmoving as Luffy kissed her, threatening to break her concentration for a moment until loud shouts of consternation reached his ears.

At that, Luffy pulled back, looking a little apologetic, but not much. “I missed you, Robin.”

With a scowl of reluctance, Robin tilted her head towards the nearest of her conjured arms. “I missed you as well, but unfortunately, I’m rather busy at the moment.” She then smiled, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. Drat my need to be the mature one here. “We will have time tonight to ‘talk’, and there will be time for the two of us to do far more than just ‘talk’ when we head to the Archipelago. Go give our Empress some attention for now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Luffy said jokingly before kissing her again on the lips, disappearing in a flash. This left a slight tingle on her lips, causing Robin to shiver slightly. Oh my, it seems as if Luffy has learned to be adventuresome with his powers. I wonder where that will go, the mature beauty thought, biting her lip before shaking her head and getting back to work.

Moments later, Luffy crossed the distance between Amazon Lily and Rusukaina. The two islands were almost within sight of one another from the top of Amazon Lily’s main mountain, and that meant that by the time Luffy had reached the shoreline nearest to the other island, he was able to pick it out with his Kenbunshoku, or at least the animals on it, which meant he hadn’t even needed Nami’s directions. Moments later, he was close enough to find Zoro and Hancock’s familiar minds, making out Rayleigh’s by default as the only other sentient mind on the island.

Rayleigh was the only one who sensed Luffy coming. But instead of simply letting Luffy arrive, Silvers Rayleigh leaped into the air, crossing the intervening distance from where he had been standing to where he sensed Luffy’s lightning form was going to touch down within a blink of an eye. His sword flashed out, covered in Busoshoku. This instantly disrupted Luffy’s lightning form, literally smashing him out of the lightning bolt.

“GAAHHHH!!” With a cry of pain, Luffy found himself not landing lightly but suddenly sent sideway to crash into a stone block, shattering it, then rolling through it and into another.

“Ow,” Luffy growled as he pushed himself to his feet, his body feeling as if Kizaru had disrupted his lightning form a few dozen times in a single second. “I’ve felt that type of hit before, but that hurt way worse than anything Kizaru did to me!” And I didn’t feel it coming at all. That’s got to be another use of Kenbunshoku. It’s like when I fought Hancock, Kizaru and the other high-ranking fighters, but even worse.

“That was Emission Busoshoku Haki,” Rayleigh said simply. “It is an advanced form of Busoshoku that emits from your body rather than simply coating it. It can hurt logia types far more than even Busoshoku, to say nothing of the next level up, Emission and Haoshoku Injection mixed. That can even stop you from even using your Devil Fruit at all—”

Rayleigh’s little speech was interrupted by Hancock, who twisted around a strike from Zoro, lashing out with a kick into his leg to dump him on the ground, then used that pivot to hurl herself towards Luffy, her arms outstretched. “Luffy!”

One moment, Luffy was glaring at the Dark King. The next second, he had his arms full of happy Empress, kissing his lips as hard as she possibly could, her tongue already out and searching for his own before he could even gape at her. Grinning into the kiss, Luffy held her, his arms around her waist, Hancock’s arms around his shoulder, kissing her as fervently as she was kissing him.

Zoro began to make gagging noises, the sound even weirder and harsher on the ear than normal gagging, thanks to Wado Ichimonji still being in his mouth. “UGH, come on, you two, could you do that somewhere else, please!? For my stomach’s sake, if nothing else.”

Hancock pulled back from the kiss to give Zoro a death glare. “Shut up, male! Your captain and I have far more important things to concentrate on than your petty concerns! Be silent or be stone!” Then she dove back in, with Luffy meeting her halfway.

While this glare cowed Zoro, Rayleigh was not willing to just let the two lovers have their reunion. Instead, he raised his blade coated with Busoshoku Emission once more and lashed out toward them, creating a crescent-shaped attack of crackling black and orange energy.

Hancock and Luffy both felt the attack coming, and they dodged, coming apart as Luffy rolled to one side, unwilling to use his lightning form to try to dodge that again so soon after the pain he felt a moment ago, while Hancock bounced up into the air and over the attack. The attack swept through the area where they had been kissing and continued on, slicing into the foliage in a wide swath that extended out towards the ocean, cutting through hundreds of trees and several animals.

Showing the ferocity of Rusukaina’s animals, many other beasts descended on those now dead, devouring them quickly. Yet more raced away, even a few that had been close by, wondering if they would be able to strike at Hancock and Zoro once they had weakened one another; now they were horrified at the show of force from Rayleigh.

Not so much Hancock. She rounded on Rayleigh, her entire body flickering with Busoshoku as Haoshoku roiled off her in nearly visible waves. Indeed, it was to the point where it almost looked like a battle aura to Luffy, much like he had seen from Happosai and a few others in his past life.

“Old man, I have put up with a great deal from you in the name of training to get stronger, but my darling has returned, and I demand some time with my paramour!” Hancock screeched, sounding almost as unpleasant as Kodachi at her worst, yet somehow still looking gorgeous, an exceedingly odd dichotomy that had Luffy simply staring for a second. “Leave us alone or die!”

In the face of this assault, Rayleigh proved to be the greatest of men, for he did not immediately quail under Hancock’s roar of feminine fury. Instead, he simply raised his blade, tapping it gently against his shoulder, the picture of insouciance. “No. This is the first time Luffy’s been here since I arrived on Amazon Lily, and I want to see where he stands in terms of his strength. I am not going to allow you to kidnap him for your hormone’s sake, Hancock. You’ll have all night to do whatever the pair of you desire. Right now, your time is mine.”

Hancock growled, but Rayleigh remained unmoved, making Luffy shake his head in awe. Someone who isn’t immediately cowed by feminine fury, that’s like seeing a blue moon! However, when Rayleigh looked his way, Luffy shunted all such thoughts to one side. Gathering lightning into one arm, Luffy covered his other arm in Busoshoku. “Bring it, old man. Let’s see if your legend’s really all that.”

Rayleigh smirked at that. “I will endeavor to live up to your expectations.” Then, even as Hancock continued to harangue him, he launched a new attack on Luffy.

Luffy dodged, flowing to one side through the lighting of his arm, creating a lightning clone for himself that he shifted his consciousness to even as he canceled his Busoshoku on his arm. A second later sprinted forwards before changing to lightning and quickly changing direction to dodge another attack before coming in again from behind.

However, Rayleigh’s Kenbunshoku was up to sensing where Luffy was coming from, even as Luffy now actively tried to suppress it. This was something he’d first learned how to do in his battle against Hancock on Thriller Bark and had used to good effect in the battles around Impel Down. Yet here, it felt as if his Kenbunshoku was sort of sloughing off Rayleigh’s presence, not gaining any purchase to either suppress Rayleigh’s own or block it in turn.

Rayleigh twisted around, his sword still coated in that strange-looking Busoshoku, and Luffy barely got his own Busoshoku arm up in time to block the strike.

“AGGH, the fuck?!” Luffy found himself crying out in pain as bones shattered inside his arm, even as his Busoshoku wasn’t overcome. Then he was I the air, the power of the strike hurling away.

“As I said before, this is Emission,” Rayleigh intoned, although his voice was almost conversational even as Hancock launched an attack his way with a Mero Mero Beam. He twisted, bringing the sword up and deflected the attack away before needing to shift his head away from a punch from Luffy, then dodging around a series of blows from Hancock, whose wordless battle cry of “RAGGGH!” drowned out the sound of lightning and the crash of sword on Busoshoku.

A second later, Hancock was sent flying, and Luffy’s face slammed into the ground, Rayleigh’s Busoshoku-clad hand on the back of his head, driving him down. To Luffy’s shock, instead of simply not being able to turn his head into lightning, Luffy couldn’t even feel his Devil Fruit responding at all as Rayleigh’s will bore down into his own.

Fuck, well, here goes nothing! With an internal curse, Luffy deliberately released his own Haoshoku. It roared up around him, slamming into Rayleigh’s hand, forcing him to jerk his hand away and stumble back.

But instead of being surprised or annoyed, or even startled at all, Rayleigh laughed. “Yes! That is the way. We’ll also be testing your use of Haoshoku. It’s good that you can call it up on command, but you haven’t used it enough! It isn’t some kind of leashed animal that you only use occasionally. It is a part of you. Bring it out, control it, direct it just like Busoshoku or Kenbunshoku. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be able to use all three to the level of a real Yonko, not just someone who might eventually be given the title by default.”

Even as Luffy settled into a stance and Hancock moved to stand with them, Rayleigh turned to Zoro. “You too, Zoro. Get in here. Until the sun goes down, the three of you should do your damndest to try to kill me. Because I’m going to be doing my best to put you into the ground as well. That’s the best way to learn what it is like at the top.”

Needless to say, the three younger pirates did not succeed. Rayleigh was just on a whole other level, and by the time night started to fall over this area of the Calm Belt, Luffy was exhausted. He also knew that if his ki healing wasn’t so efficient, he’d be a mass of agony. As it was, he simply was dead tired but relatively unharmed.

Hancock had no such ability, and her natural durability had been overcome several times. She was bleeding from several cuts along her arms and chest, something that Luffy felt was something of a travesty. Her lower legs had also taken several cuts and bruises, and one bruise covered the side of her head enough that it had closed one of Hancock’s eyes. Yet even so, she still stood, her hands up in a combat stance, even as Rayleigh called a halt, while Zoro, well, Zoro was embedded in a piece of stone nearby, his swords having fallen every which way, utterly unconscious from the last exchange between him and Rayleigh.

In return, Rayleigh had reluctantly decided that such three on one sessions would not be an everyday occurrence, if only because he, unlike Luffy, couldn’t heal so quickly. The three had pushed him hard, and while he didn’t have nearly as many bruises, his normal ‘seaman down on his luck’ look had segued into ‘seaman who just been shipwrecked’ coupled with ‘attacked by wild beasts.’ He had numerous bruises and more than a few cuts on him, visible beneath his nearly wrecked clothing, but in comparison to his enemies, he still looked relatively fresh.

When Rayleigh called a halt, Luffy almost slumped to the ground, but he knew that if he did, he’d simply pass out. Fuck me, is this what my crew feels like when I put them through training? Am I in the wrong here to push us all so hard? No, it’s just because I’m not strong enough yet, that’s all. This will help. It will, Luffy told himself, pushing himself upright and moving over to his crewmate.

Getting Zoro out of the rock he had been embedded in took a while, and when he did, Luffy saw that Zoro was even worse off than Hancock was. He wasn’t bleeding as badly, but his body was literally just a bruise from the knees up, and a cut had appeared across his face, bleeding into one of his eyes, while one arm was covered in cuts from the palm upward.

“So, that’s the first mate of the Pirate King,” Luffy drawled, pulling out and tossing Zoro a wrap of bandages. “I figured he’d be impressive, but I didn’t think he’d be terrifying.”

“Honestly, looking back on it, I think that says more about you than him,” Zoro joked before becoming serious. “That’s the level we’ll have to reach.”

“Wrong. That’s the level we will reach, Zoro. I’m going to be the Pirate King, I’m going to be the strongest and the freest man in the world and my whole crew is coming along for the ride,” Luffy retorted.

“Bah, as if I would do anything less to become the best swordsman in the world,” Zoro retorted. Despite their battering, the two men grinned at one another, exchanging a fist bump, while Hancock stared, shaking her head.

Looking at the two men, Rayleigh laughed, his eyes far away for a moment, seeing himself and a young Gol for just a second.

Seeing as none of his three trainees (read: victims) were in any shape to use Geppo, indeed, even Luffy wasn’t up to calling on his lightning form, Rayleigh had to paddle them back to Amazon Lily. At first, he had thought that simply camping out on Rusukaina would be a better idea, that needing to wake up and fight the local monsters would toughen them up all the faster. However, Luffy’s Kenbunshoku, along with Hancock’s, was such that doing so with them would serve no purpose. Zoro’s Kenbunshoku wasn’t nearly as advanced, but Rayleigh felt, although he could be wrong about this, that Zoro was close to unlocking his own Haoshoku.

Which is somewhat astonishing, Rayleigh thought as he rode through the waters of the Calm Belt. He could count on the fingers of both hands with several fingers left over the number of people in the world who had Haoshoku, and to find two of them on the same crew was astonishing. Even one as impressive as Luffy’s crew, and I am not just talking about their combat potential but also their skill. Franky’s abilities put his former master’s skills to shame, and then there’s that Nami girl. Someone able to predict the weather on the Grand Line is honestly amazing and will be a major power-up in the future for this crew in battles on the ocean.

Speaking of… “By the way, have you all thought about what you wanted to do with that secondary weapons system? The second turret construction on your ship that you haven’t done anything with yet?” Rayleigh inquired.

The first member of the Straw Hats that the group from Rusukaina saw was Franky. He had been looking over the changes to the Swallow and now whooped at seeing his captain. “Oy, Luffy! How’d you and the little Princess like my Suuuupper creation? I see you made a lot of changes to it.”

“Yeah, sorry, Franky. The original ship did amazing here in the Calm Belt, but well… we really should have thought about what the Grand Line would do to it more, I think. It was way too close to the waves. At anything close to the speed we were going in the Calm Belt, it was like we were running into so many low walls, one after another,” Luffy confessed, grateful Franky didn’t seem to be angry about the work done on the small ship.

“Hmm… yeah, I figured that from the changes. Copper because it was easier for your Gloam Paddling, right?” Franky guessed, falling in step with the others as they walked along the wharf. “Was there anything else wrong with it? Considering how fast I had to put it together, I’d assume so. Though, Swallow? Really? That’s a suuppper laaaame name, Luffy.”

Luffy dutifully reported the other issues he and Vivi had encountered: the lack of windows, the need for better batteries away from the main power line, and a few other things they had discovered. “Frankly, it’s a neat little ship, and it served its purpose, Franky, but I don’t think it's got much of a future to it. I mean, Vivi and I got by because we’re logia, but if me or, say, Zoro or me and anyone else had to be in that enclosed space for so long, um… well, the smell would become an issue kind of quickly.”

Franky, Hancock, and both Zoro and Rayleigh stared at Luffy, and he laughed. “Fun fact: not only does transforming into his or her element let a logia user kill off any disease and possibly poison, we didn’t exactly test that, but it also deals with body odor. The more you know.”

Hancock blinked, turning to the side and staring out over the ocean past the numerous torches that lined the quay. Why… was that a rainbow that just appeared there?

Zoro and Franky began to laugh, and Franky shook his head with a sigh. “Well, back to the drawing board on that one, then.”

Still laughing, Luffy nodded, looking over at the Everlasting Resolve as he felt the antipathy from Eve suddenly die down to a bare whisper, replaced by satisfaction. Heh, yeah, I’m gonna need to spend some time aboard her, aren’t I? Even if the rest of the crew had done so in the weeks he’d been gone, it was obvious Eve needed some reassurance. “Anyway, what have you been up to?”

“A lot, Cap’n,” Franky replied, becoming serious. Serious and somewhat annoyed. “Look, I know we really wanted ta build Amazon Lily’s defenses up and that we needed to build Hancock-sama a ship, but being at the center of both those projects is taking time from my own training and rebuilding of Eve.”

“Eve? You shorten your ship name to Eve?” Rayleigh inquired with a chuckle. “Why not call it the Lass, then? Or just Resolve?”

“I’ll explain later,” Hancock stated before agreeing with Franky. None of her own shipwrights were anywhere near as good as Franky and working with Adam Wood was difficult and tedious. “At this point, with you back to use your Gloam Paddling, I think that Franky can be pulled from the Observation Dome and our defensive cannon projects, but I insist Franky keeps working on my ship.”

“Agreed. How about this, Franky? Hancock’s going to be sore for days, even with Chopper around to help her heal up. You and I spend the morning sparring. I’ll help finish the cannons and the telescope. Then you can spend the afternoon on Hancock’s ship and the evening sparring with either Sanji or Makino.”

The days when Makino was actually more dangerous than either Zoro or Sanji were well in the past, but she still was a dangerous and durable combatant with her skills at Gun Fu. She was also a nimble fighter, and Luffy knew Franky had issues fighting against such.

“That’ll do for now, Cap’n. Just remember, I’m a cyborg. Part of my becoming stronger… well, it’s gonna involve taking myself apart and rebuilding me stronger and faster. More guns and stuff like that. I’ve already got plans to replace my Beans Left, Fresh Fire and Master Nail systems with better ones based on dials rather than gears. Even my cola intake could use an upgrade.”

Franky paused, frowning and looking over at Rayleigh. “Old Man Rayleigh, he told me about an island in North Blue that was used by this super wild group, MADS. I want to hit that up in the future.”

“Hmm… let’s put that on hold for now, Franky. I’m not saying you shouldn’t head there, but not right now. We’ve got to go and talk with King Neptune and Jinbe soon. Heck, we might be leaving for that in like four days or so.”

“Travel time will continue to eat into training time if you insist on returning here to Amazon Lily,” Rayleigh murmured, getting a grunt of agreement from Zoro. “I would say that, like Laki and Nami with the Sky Islands, Franky should be allowed to go exploring and see to his own training when we can drop him off on the island I’m thinking of. If they get into trouble, you can arrive wherever they are quickly enough to help, regardless of where they are, thanks to your Goro Goro no Mi.”

“Ehh… I don’t know about that either, old man,” Luffy said, shaking his head. “I’m not saying it isn’t possible. Lightning is freaking fast. But Light’s near to instantaneous, and even if the light Kizaru can turn into isn’t like the light we all see by, it still took him some time to arrive at Impel Down. There’s got to be a reason for that, above the whole not knowing when to stop without a mirror thing.”

“True. I would suggest that, along with creating the cannons, you help create a lightning rod here on Amazon Lily. Then, when you are coming back from speaking to Jinbe and Neptune, you practice the ability to travel long distances in your lightning form,” Rayleigh advised.

Hancock blinked, then smiled happily at that idea. “Yes, indeed, Luffy. Anything that gets you back here after you have to leave my side again can only be a good thing.”

Luffy instantly agreed to that, and the group continued on through the Kuja’s city. However, as they went, the sky, which had been overcast since before Luffy reached Rusukaina, finally began to disgorge the rain that it had promised for so long.

Staring up at the sky, Luffy stood, letting it just continue to pour down over her as the rest of her companions raced ahead. She just sighed, shaking her head, reaching into her ki pocket for a swimsuit top. Luffy’s shirt hadn’t survived the fight with Rayleigh thanks to a ‘stray’ air blast from Hancock, and Luffy had simply rolled with it. “Fine. I suppose I was lucky up to this point. I’ll stay in this shape for now.”

Funnily enough, Luffy instantly became aware that this form had its advantages. First, when she entered the palace, where the receiving hall had been quickly transformed into a dining room, the redhead found Sanji there, holding out both a warm towel and a plate of food, which he held out with both hands as he bowed. “A young lady, how horrible it is for the very gods above to weep in the face of your beauty, I…”

It was at that point that Sanji, who had been in full Mellorine Mode™ (after all, nearly everyone had been caught out in the rain, and rain plus Kuja/Nami and the rest equaled YES) looked up from Luffy’s chest. As he did, the heart that one of his eyes had turned into cracked, and his words faded. He straightened up, scowled, took a drag from his cigarette, then, trying hard not to let his eyes flick downwards towards Luffy’s modest chest as he glared at his captain. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I’ll forgive ya for the eyeful ya were taking for the towel, Sanji. Get.” Luffy waved Sanji off, taking the towel and drying off quickly before grabbing up his own plate. Waving cheerfully at calls from both his crew and Kuja, all of whom had seen his curse before. She looked around and found Hancock lounging on Salome next to Robin, who was sitting in a thick, padded chair.

There, Luffy discovered another nice aspect of this form. It made for good snuggling. With Robin on one side, Vivi sitting on Salome’s tail at their feet, and Hancock on her other, Luffy sighed as she leaned into first one girlfriend’s shoulder, then the other. Bliss.

He and his lovers talked quietly for a few moments before Franky came up to Luffy. “Yo, before I forget again, Luffy. I’m gonna be going with you, Robin and the little Princess ta Fishman Island. There’s someone I want ta meet there.”

Luffy just nodded. “No problem, my man. Heck, that way, we can get in more sparring against one another on the trip.” She looked over at Robin. “Speaking of, why did you want to go there again?”

“Because from the information I gleaned from the Poneglyph in Skypiea, I will find others along the route that the previous Pirate King followed. It stands to reason that he passed through Mermaid Island at one point.” Robin stated firmly. “Besides that, Jinbe mentioned a giant, ancient ship that I would dearly like to examine.”

“Ah.” Luffy looked down at Vivi, nudging her with a knee.

Vivi looked up from where she had been stuffing herself with a tiger meat shish kabob, blinking, then nodding. “Um, speaking of ancient past, um, I discovered, or really, my family had a final secret that—”

“If you say there was another Poneglyph in Alabasta, Princess, I’m going to get angry,” Robin interjected her smile, which had been quite wide since Luffy had joined her on the couch, becoming quite dangerous for a moment. Meanwhile, two hands, which had been working on Vivi’s hair, tying it into a long braid, began to tug on it instead.

“EEP! No, nothing like that!” Vivi shook her head. “IT was a secret my family has been keeping. It does have something to do with the Poneglyphs, but it isn’t one of them.”

“Well, that’s alright then. You can tell me about it tonight in bed,” Robin said, suddenly all real smiles once again. She sent a sideways look towards Hancock. “We’ll take my room here in the palace unless, of course, a day of sparring has made Hancock too sore for other cardio exercises?”

“Bite your tongue, woman!” Hancock growled, to which Luffy smirked, leaned over and whispered into her ear. At that, Hancock blushed, then smiled. “Or not. You might have need of it later.”

Robin laughed, and Vivi blushed rosily at the implications. Yet she still leaned into Hancock’s uninjured leg, a sigh of contentment filling her as she watched the meal all around them, a meal that had quickly devolved into a semi-feast. Feeling one of Hancock’s hands resting on her head, joining the hands conjured by Robin, her thoughts much like Luffy’s of a moment ago.

Brook was the next of Luffy’s crew to interrupt them. “Yohohoho, what I nice scene you four make. Might I see your panties, ladies?”

“If I wasn’t in such a good mood, I’d clutch you.”

“Too tired to use my Mero Mero on you.”

“I’m still wearing my boxers under these shorts, Brook, but if you insist.”

Vivi’s response was a fist of sand rising from one leg to slam into a gagging Brook’s chest, sending him stumbling, followed by another, even as the other two natural ladies laughed at Luffy’s response. Despite the abuse, however, Brook settled down to sit across from Luffy, looking over Vivi’s head at his captain. “I had hoped to speak to you tonight about something, Luffy. I have been wondering something. Something odd. According to Sanji, your ki ability, you described it once as the power of the soul, much like Haki is the power of will.”

Luffy blinked, her brows furrowing. “Ah… that’s a really deep conversation, Brook. One that I don’t think a party like this is the proper place for. Still, why’d you ask?”

“That would be because of my Devil Fruit, Luffy. You see, it has not only made me revive from death, as the name of the fruit implied. I have recently been discovering other strange things about it, things that make me wonder about the nature of the soul and if it can be manipulated…” Brook explained.

“Huh… Okay, yeah, in that case, I think we do need to talk,” Luffy mused. “Talk and experiment. I’ll speak to ya tomorrow afternoon before heading to Rusukaina. How’s that?”

Knowing that Luffy wanted to spend the night talking mainly to Hancock and Robin, Brook readily agreed to that. The upshot of that conversation would be that, like Franky, Brook would be joining them on the trip to Fishman Island.

So would Sanji, although, unlike Brook, that decision would come this very night.

The party was still going strong an hour later when Sanji whirled up to the quartet of women, Luffy not having bothered to transform. If he had, he wouldn’t have been able to sit on the same recliner as Robin, being taller and too wide in the shoulders for it to be comfortable for both of them to sit there side by side.

That was Luffy’s story, and she was sticking to it. No, it had nothing to do with how much more sensitive her skin was in various places or how doing so might have dislodged the tongues that Robin had conjured up behind her ears, hidden by Luffy’s hair.

“Ah, lovely ladies and you too, you shit captain. Is there anything I can do for you all?” Sanji pirouetted in place before bowing floridly towards Vivi. “Especially you, Princess. Is there any delicacy your heart requires?”

“Hey Sanji, why weren’t you over on Rusukaina with Zoro and Hancock? I would’ve thought you’d love the idea of sparring with Zoro under Rayleigh’s training regime,” Luffy asked, while Vivi shook her head in the negative.

Sanji grimaced while Hancock chortled. “He actually should be, but heh, Rayleigh has no interest in just letting your first mate and your cook wail on one another. It was supposed to be a free-for-all. Instead, Sanji--”

“Sanji, don’t tell me…” Luffy interrupted, staring at Sanji. “I swear if you—”

“I can’t fight Hancock-chwan! I just can’t!” Sanji nearly wailed, shaking his head wildly from side to side. Yet somehow, his hair didn’t move much at all.

“Yeah, but then you try to attack me or Rayleigh when we’re fighting her too, you Aho Cook!” Zoro bellowed. “You ruin our training time every time you’re there, and not just with your dumbass hairstyle.”

“Why youAAAK?” Sanji roared, turning in preparation to launch himself towards Zoro, only for Luffy to raise a hand, flicking out a fork to smack into the back of his head.

“Sanji, come on! I’d have thought that you’d have gotten over that whole ‘can’t fight women' thing with how often I sparred with you in this form,” Luffy groaned. “Seriously, you’re on an island with hundreds of women who all pride themselves on their strength, and you’re gonna disrespect them by not fighting them?!”

“I would never disrespect women, you idiot! I just refuse to harm them, that’s all,” Sanji announced firmly, causing Luffy to snarl a bit and Hancock to shake his head.

“What about fighting Franky and Chopper two-on-one then?” Luffy demanded while Hancock scowled at the cook.

“Franky’s usually too busy, and Chopper isn’t strong enough to give me much of a match,” Sanji shrugged.

Chopper growled from nearby. “I heard that, you asshole! Next time you get hurt trying to run after one of the Kuja, I’m not going to patch you up!” He looked at Luffy, snickering. “You know those two he was with before, Marguerite and Aphelandra? They’ve been avoiding him for most of the time you’ve been gone, and none of the Kuja will even come near him, Franky or even Zoro these days.”

“What, why?” Vivi blinked in surprise. “I thought they were a little sweet on him. Don’t tell me they were really just acting that way to learn about his cooking skills!”

“Ahahah, no, nothing like that. It’s just that most Kuja don’t know anything about conception and birthing, and when they were told about it, Aphelandra and Marguerite didn’t take it well. Then they spread it to the rest of the Kuja.” Nami snickered. “I gotta say I think it’s kind of stupid, but it’s certainly been hilarious to watch.”

“Ah, my sweet tangerine, my lovely Nami-chwan, you’re so beautiful, yet so cruel! I would put up with any vile calumny but to be in your presence~~!” Sanji swooned, racing over to bow over Nami’s hands.

“So, what, the rest of the Kuja have been avoiding him?” Luffy guessed, looking around the room and seeing the truth of it. The Kuja in the room, bar Sandersonia and Marigold were all watching the boys warily. When Sanji turned in their direction, they all twitched away as if he were contagious.

It got so bad that, as Luffy watched, several of them raced out of the palace. “NO!! I don’t want to be infected!”

Gloriosa had been watching all this from a corner next to Nyola. Now, she looked over at her fellow geriatric. “This is your fault, you know.”

Nyola mock-gasped, giving the former Empress a shocked look. “What did I do?”

“You put it into those fool girl’s heads that being pregnant was like having a parasite in them, then didn’t try to correct that rumor when it started going around!”

“Well, neither did you nor, come to think of it, did any of the other ladies who’ve been with a man,” Nyola retorted.

“I don’t care. You still started it. You fix it!” Gloriosa growled. “Or else!”

As the two oldsters fell into an argument with much finger pointing and gesticulations, Luffy sighed as she watched Nami send Sanji off again for some more wine for herself, Makino and Laki. “Ouch. Okay, so I kinda feel bad for him right now. And… admittedly, we’ve tried the stick approach with breaking Sanji out of that habit before… Huh. I wonder if this will work. OY! Sanji, come here for a second.”

This didn’t work. The cook ignored Luffy as he did the other men in the room. Well, other than shouting insults at them along the lines of “Get it yourself, lazy ass!”

Wondering what Luffy was up to, Robin called out, “Sanji-kun.”

Instantly, Sanji crossed the intervening distance between where he had been standing pouring a glass of wine for Nami and the newly-arrived Perona, almost like he had mixed Soru to go that fast and Kami-E to cross the distance without running into one of the crowd. “Yes, Robin-swan! What can I do for you, lovely lady?”

Taking her cue, Luffy spoke up quickly. “Listen, Sanji. If you come with me to Rusukaina tomorrow to join the free-for-all and actually try to fight Hancock when we head to Fishman Island, you can come with us.”

This seemed to cause Sanji an existential crisis. He paused, his one eye turning first into a heart, then a regular eye and back again, his smile flicking on and off at the same time. “EHHH! Fishman Islands, that means mermaids, but, but fighting Hancock-Swan, I, but mermaids, but hurting a woman, yet mermaids, but, but hurting the most beautiful woman in the world, but mermaids…”

“I am not just the most beautiful woman in the world,” Hancock announced proudly. “I am also one of the three strongest women in the world!” And even that’s if you count Tsuru as a woman and not a stretched-out prune. “To put it bluntly, Sanji, the fact that you think you are so strong that you can’t go all out against me is among the most demeaning things I’ve ever heard, hence why I turned you into stone and left you that way for a day the last time you did it.”

Vivi blinked. “What, really? Ouch.”

“But, but surely I could get by just—” Sanji stammered, nearly pleading.

“Nope!” Luffy shook her head. “You can’t get by just fighting me in this form or join the free-for-all and target everyone but Hancock. We’re going to leave here in… three?” He looked over at Hancock, who scowled but eventually nodded. “In three days. If you can’t actually hit Hancock and hit her with your full strength, no half-measures, you’ll stay here. Where, apparently, you’re in look-but-don’t-touch hell,” Luffy taunted.

Sanji cracked. Literally. His whole body imitated glass, and he just shattered, turning into a pile of pieces for a second. Ahh, sometimes I love this world, Luffy snickered.

A moment later, Laki reached down and grabbed Sanji by the ear, instantly reviving him. “Don’t worry, Luffy. If your attempt at motivating him won’t work, he can be my and Makino’s targets for practice while you’re gone. He needs to get better at Busoshoku anyway, right?”

“Ah, my sweet angel, so cruel, but I, my… I will… try…” Sanji blubbered.

“By the way, Vivi, what’s your official dream?” Nami asked, coming over to grin down at her friend, although she made no move to hug her or sit with her at the feet of Luffy and the Pirate Empress. Somehow, Vivi’s position there seemed both deliberate and suggestive, and Nami had no wish to either interfere or join the tableau. “I never got around to asking, but we’ve all got specific dreams we’re looking to achieve.”

“Hmmm,” Vivi hummed, pondering that for a moment while Luffy looked down at her with a supportive smile. “I suppose my father said my dream had grown. It, when I met you, I just wanted to protect my country, to break Crocodile’s hold on it. Now?” Vivi thought about how best to put it, then smiled. “I suppose that my dream is to see a world where the law of the world is for everyone, not just a few. A world where no one has the right to own anyone else, where it no longer can be a crime for anyone to simply exist, and where your own deeds are what defines you, not just what you’re born as.”

Vivi grinned, pointing at Nami. “Sorry if that seems a little too wordy, Miss ‘I want to make an accurate map of the whole world’.”

Nami looked down at her friend, then shook her head with a laugh. “Eh, it might’ve taken you way more words to describe it, but that doesn’t make it any less world-changing, Vivi.”

“Yep, you’ll fit right in with this crew,” Luffy said, hopping to her feet and pulling Vivi to hers. “Hey, crew, let’s hear a cheer for our new diplomatic officer!”

The cheer that followed rattled the windows of the palace and every other building in the Kuja’s city.

End Chapter

I hope this is the last chapter where the word count gets out of control. I hope. We will see, as this story is again part of the Ranma story poll.

For those who might bring it up: I do not think that being a D. has everything to do with being related to someone else who was a D. Further, while Cobra and Vivi had access to this message in canon, neither of them in canon knew they were D.s either.  So here, they don’t think about it just yet.  The mystery isn’t a big one in comparison to some of the other revelations. Robin might bring it up in the future, but not right now. 

For those of you wondering, I haven’t put up a poll here on fanfic because I don’t know what my priorities will be after I finish rewriting ATP. I hope to have finished or be close to finishing that project by the time you all finally see this chapter. Beyond that, the winner of the Patron Only poll will determine whether or not the winner of the Ranma poll will be the one to come first. If you'd like more say in the stories I update each month, head over there and sign up. It’s seriously cheap, and you get access to a lot of goodies.