Stallion of the Line 52 (Patreon)

I don’t own One Piece, it belongs to Oda, that magnificent bastard. Nor do I own  Ranma ½.

This was the Ranma poll winner. It isn’t quite as long or detailed as I would like, but hey, I had less than five days to write it, so, there we go. Enjoy.

It has been Grammarly-checked and now, as of the 9/9, looked over by Hiryo.  

Chapter 52: Troubled Tides Part 2 (Smooth Chef’s Day Done Dirty)

About two hours before events kicked off around the Smooth Sailing, the captain of the ship found herself sitting at a small food stall, one silver eyebrow rising as she watched the admittedly kind of cute chef working across from her. “Hmm… should I be jealous or appalled that you can switch your focus so quickly from me to food?”

“Not from you to food, my lady, from you to cooking you the most delicious meal that I can with the available ingredients!” Sanji caroled, looking up from his work for a brief instant to smile at Smoothie, Big Mom’s thirty-fifth child.

Not that she looked like her age of thirty-five, really, or had much in common with her mother except maybe her size. Still, most New World pirates would have recognized her by sight. Sanji didn’t and honestly might not have cared if he had.

As he looked at her, Sanji’s one visible eye turned into a heart for a moment as he took in how Smoothie was sitting, one long leg pulled up onto the stool, showing off a fair bit of thigh over the top of the counter.

“Oh? So, if this food is awful, I’m supposed to blame the ingredients and not the cook? What is that phrase? It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools. Or is that different for chefs?” Smoothie teased, although while her voice and words sounded like she was joking, her gaze had turned frosty. While Smoothie wasn’t anywhere near the foodie her mother was, either in terms of the size of her meals or how much she liked eating delicacies, Smoothie was still a woman of some size. She needed a good deal of food and for certain knew what she liked.

Not, she reflected, that I think this meal will be all that bad. The ingredients for certain weren’t going to be the issue here, considering that the blonde cook was making a fried rice dish, with a side of fried squid, and finfish cutlets in some kind of sauce, a meal basically made out of everything fresh and available here on Fishman Island. Further, while she was more of a drink mixer and bartender than anything else, Smoothie knew a good deal about cooking secondhand thanks to the various siblings she had who had taken up the craft and Streusen.

From what she could tell, while the cook’s moves were a little grandiose, he wasn’t screwing anything up or mixing in anything unusual.

“Not at all. If my food does not fit your palate, I will toss myself into the ocean forthwith, never to rise again. Regardless of ingredients or tools on hand, a true master chef can make do. It is simply that the type of menu he can create will perforce vary,” Sanji retorted, shaking his head at the tall, attractive woman’s words.

I wouldn’t put her face or upper body against any of the girls on the crew, let alone someone like Hancock, but her legs definitely give her a step, ha, up. That little smirk too, on the fact that she’s playing into it, makes this far more fun than I’ve had for a while.

Until they began to avoid him like the plague, flirting with the Kuja had been interesting and fun, but mainly based around cooking, sparring, and surreptitious touches and simple compliments. Verbal sparring had not been in the Kujan repertoire. This woman, on the other hand, like the mature beauty she was, knew the game, even if she seemed a bit rusty.

“And before you try to threaten me to make certain my food is the best I can make; I will remind you I already agreed to put my life on the line. To demand more than my life, what would you have of me? And should I prove still worthy of my hire, what would you be willing to pay in turn?”

Smoothie burst out laughing at that, shaking her head. She had indeed warned the man that he was putting his life on the line to try and feed her earlier. The exaggerated eyebrow wags he was giving her now, well, one eyebrow really, but very exaggerated given how swirly it was, told Smoothie in no uncertain terms what kind of wager she’d need to put up to match the one he already put down. “Well played. But I just realized you haven’t even told me your name.”

It hadn’t taken them all that long to find a food stall that would allow the blonde to cook for her, of course. Given Smoothie’s known abilities and the weight of her mother’s flag behind her, it would be a very stupid stall owner who tried to argue with her when Smoothie demanded access to his kitchen. Thus, she didn’t have much time to get any real information out of the young man. He’s what… nineteen? Twenty? Certainly no more than that, although his looks… they remind me of something.

“Sanji, pirate chef of the Straw Hats, at your service, milady.” Sanji bowed dramatically, even as he continued to cook quickly, setting out the first dish, fried squid with a set of different dipping sauces for Smoothie to choose from.

Smoothie took a moment to break apart her chopsticks as the name of his crew registered, as well as Sanji’s own name. Black Leg, is it? Good God, that picture is a travesty, if a hilarious one. Was he stung by a bee when it was taken? It’s also not what I am reminded of when I look at him.

Shrugging that confusion off for a second, Smoothie took the first bite of Sanji’s meal. Blinking, she stared at the dish for a second in surprise. Fried squid should not taste that good! What kind of herb did he put into the coating? And what is with this sauce, so spicy, yet not as if I need water, more like spicy-sweet? Bizarre but tasty!

“And might I know your name as well? Or should I simply call you Rose?” he inquired, his eyes flicking down to where the Rose tattoo on Smoothie’s thigh was still visible from where she had hooked a foot under her on her stool.

“Smoothie,” she introduced herself easily, deliberately not using her last name or anything else that could tell the blonde anything about her family or crew. “And I will declare now, my good chef, that your life is not forfeit. This is incredible. I’m looking forward to the next few dishes.”

“I aim to please with every dish I set out, although I regret to inform you that there isn’t anything here I could use to create a truly scrumptious dessert. I could experiment a little bit, but only if you are feeling adventurous.” Not that Sanji would ever serve anything that didn’t match his standard, but the number of desserts that could be made from the things on hand in the stall, which was all based on produce regularly from Fishman Island, was small.

“Despite my name, I’m not actually that big of a dessert person most of the time,” Smoothie demurred. Besides, thinking about desserts will just make me think about the suites that were here to load up on and that’ll put me in a bad mood again, she grumbled internally, shaking her head. She wanted to forget all that nonsense for a moment, as well as the fact that her real goal here, to bring Jinbe under Mama’s banner, had been stymied for so long, which was in itself frustrating and annoying.

On the other hand, here I am sitting right across from a Straw Hat. One of the crew that’s been making so many waves since it first hit the Grand Line. The crew of the ‘Fifth Emperor’ or whatever the news calls him these days. Let’s see if this one will share anything.

“Still, the Straw Hats, I’ve heard their name. You’re quite the big deal in the news,” she said leadingly.

“Alas, we do seem to be cursed to live in interesting times, more because my captain is someone who sees a wall and decides that the only way through it is by smashing his head into it repeatedly than anything else, in my opinion,” Sanji deflected. He had no desire whatsoever to share crew secrets or even talk about his captain or the rest of the assholes at all, and while normally Sanji would be willing to talk about the ladies of the crew, doing so in front of another lady would obviously be a bad idea.

“But tell me something, you are obviously part of a Longleg tribe. I’ve met and fought Longarm Tribe members before; do both tribes come from the same area of the world? And if so, do you get along? Note, I didn’t ask if all the Longleg ladies were as gorgeous as you. That would be an impossibility, or else it would’ve been international news by now that there is a whole tribe out there whose beauty is like that of the angels above.”

“Ha, smooth,” Smoothie applauded, even as she noticed Sanji’s deflection. “As for the Longarm and Longleg tribes, they do come from the same island and are very much enemies. Not that it matters much to me. I never lived there, after all. Still, I don’t think you can simply sweep everything your crew has done under the label of bad luck. Particularly not your invasion of Impel Down. You made a mockery of the World Government’s hidden prison, got out, and survived the War of the Best. That’s not bad luck, that’s prior planning.”

Smoothie spoke of the War of the Best with respect. Whitebeard’s death and the demolition of the Marines was easily the biggest event since Gol Roger’s death. And Big Mom’s reaction to it had been… turbulent to say the least, both personally and on an imperial level.

“I might’ve denigrated my captain’s ability to think in anything but a straight line, it’s true. When Luffy does decide to think outside ‘rargh charge’, he does it rather adroitly,” Sanji admitted, before making another attempt to change the subject, turning it back on Smoothie. “But you have a crew? None of our crew has ever made that big of a study, but I have to presume that you come from the New World?”

“We do. We’re kind of big news there, but we haven’t done anything recently, nothing like your crew has,” Smoothie lied through her teeth. I wonder if Perospero-nii-san finished with his assigned conquest? Or Katakuri-nii-san with that mission Mama sent him on? I want to check in, but if I do, then I’ll need to admit we still don’t have a full cargo load of sweets, let alone Jinbe’s agreement to ally with Mama like she wants. UGH… “But is it true that your captain is the grandson of Garp? How the heck did that happen?”

Sanji’s reply of, “Trust me, all of us have occasionally wondered the same thing,” would probably not have been enough of an answer, if not for the fact that he had just placed shrimp fried rice in front of her. The smell wafted up into Smoothie’s nose and thoroughly distracted her.

She took a bite of it quickly, her eyes lighting up. “Oh my! This is excellent. Simple fried rice should not taste this good! I don’t suppose I could convince you to jump ship and join my crew, could I?”

“Alas, while you are indeed gorgeous, especially with your silver hair and how well it stands out against your skin, I must decline. Predominantly, because without me, I’m afraid that my crew would either starve to death or drown their sorrows in alcohol,” Sanji joked, exaggerating just a bit. He knew that Luffy and Makino could both cook to a certain extent, as could Nami, but that was a far cry from being able to cook full-time on the Grand Line, with everything that could stop a crew from getting the vitamins they needed.

For the first time, one of Sanji’s comments got straight through Smoothie’s defenses. Up to this point, she’d been mostly playing, enjoying the attention of the younger man as it had been a long while since anyone had tried to flirt with her. However, it had been even longer since she’d ever had real, honest compliments on her appearance, and even then, most of them had centered around her legs, as Sanji’s compliments had earlier.

Smoothie was also somewhat self-conscious about her silver hair. Many of her siblings had taken to calling her an old lady because of it whenever they were annoyed with her when she was younger, giving her a bit of a complex about it for a while.

It took Smoothie a few minutes to recover from the fried rice and compliment, but when she did, she did so with a faint blush on her cheeks, which Sanji took as a win. “Well, I suppose in terms of hairstyle, it would take one to know one, considering we both have something in common when it comes to that area.”

Sanji chuckled, as that was indeed true. Both of them had bangs over one of their eyes. “It is a delight to share something with a lady such as yourself, be it food or hairstyle.”

The woman shook her head before turning her attention back to her meal, pausing for a second to ask for a drink of water, only to find one had been placed beside her before she could even get the words out. From that point on, getting any information from Sanji about his crew fled Smoothie’s mind for the moment, and she concentrated on the food and the flirtations, honestly enjoying them now.

These flirtations even included a few surreptitious touches. When Sanji set another glass of water down in front of her, taking the one that she was holding, he let his hands linger on hers for a moment. In return, when Sanji placed the last of the three dishes he’d cooked for her down, Smoothie placed a gentle hand on his, causing Sanji’s eye to turn into a heart again, which itself was hilarious to watch.

Soon though, despite the flirtations going on between them, the impromptu meal was finished.

Smoothie sipped from some kind of kiwi-tasting drink that Sanji had devised while Sanji flattered the stall owner on his knives, and left one of his recipes behind for the man instead of payment. Finished with the merman, he turned back towards her, bowing so grandly he nearly smacked his head into the stall’s bar. “Well, my lady, it was an exquisite time cooking for you, and I trust that this has thoroughly proven my earlier words?”

“Your skills did that with the first dish, let alone the two after that. In fact, I find myself somewhat reluctant to step away.” Smoothie surprised herself with her last few words, as they were quite real. I really should be getting back to the ship; I know Tamago is due back along with Pekoms, but we’ve always got the Den Den Mushi if we need to communicate with one another...

“Well, while the meal is over, that does not mean we need to part company. Perhaps I could accompany you for the day, Madame? Seeing the sights with a friend is always better than alone, and far, far better when with a beautiful woman,” Sanji said, bowing, and frankly entirely forgetting everything he had wanted to do in terms of supplies, seeing the sights, and everything else.

Not even his desire to return to Mermaid Café that evening overrode his interest in flirting with this woman. After all, above the waist she has everything the mermaids would, and Ms. Smoothie is quite a bit ahead of them in everything below it. Which, on her, is right at eye height to boot! I can ogle all I want without being seen as a pervert, simply someone who doesn’t want to hurt his neck craning it to look at her face.

“W, well, I suppose I had been thinking about getting some new boots,” Smoothie almost stammered, then, in an effort to regain control of the situation a bit, reached out, slowly tracing a finger down Sanji’s cheek to his chin. “Hmmm~~~, perhaps if you’re a good boy, I’ll even let you help me try them on.”

While Sanji normally wasn’t so much into feet, that idea had a lot of appeal with this particular lady. Thighs! Acres of acres of thighs! He found himself bobbing his head rapidly, trying hard not to literally pant like a dog.

Smiling and now entirely in control, Smoothie turned away from the stall, and Sanji literally floated after her for a few moments.

The shopping district that specialized in footwear, which wasn’t exactly popular even for Fishmen, was several streets away. This allowed Smoothie to start questioning Sanji, always keeping it light, always keeping it as if she was simply curious, someone who followed the news quite a bit and was interested in hearing about other female pirates, particularly Hancock.

The news that the Lightning King and Hancock were in a complete alliance was beyond fascinating, especially considering what it had led to already. There weren’t any Kuja among the Big Mom Pirates, obviously, although Smoothie did know that her mother had a connection with the Kuja of the previous generation.

Or was it the generation before that? Smoothie wasn’t certain. She had called Hancock an, “Upstart,” several times, though, and, “not nearly as strong as Gloriosa!”

Beyond that, Smoothie picked up a few other nuggets of information about the Straw Hats that were sure to be useful down the line. Particularly the fact that the princess Vivi had joined them not once, but twice and that their navigator could actually predict storms on the gradient line, which was astonishing even in Paradise, and that currently, their plans were to simply grow stronger, train, and prepare for the New World rather than run right into it.

In return, Smoothie made sure not to share anything about her crew in general. With Sanji bobbing in and out of Mellorine Mode™, this was remarkably easy, without something for them to concentrate on other than her. She still told him about her large family, though and a few of her younger sisters, particularly those who had gone into cooking.

Honestly speaking, she thought that Pudding and Sanji could get along quite well, if Pudding could get over her hatred of men. Regardless, she was wondering if maybe the Straw Hats might be convinced, one way or another, to join up with the Big Mom Pirates in the usual manner. And if not, we can always destroy them later. Although, I bet that once Mama tastes Sanji’s cooking, she won’t ever let him go. Hell, she might go to war for him!

They were nearly to the shoe store, when a bomb placed on the hull of the Smooth Sailing underneath the water exploded. Within moments, the chaos erupted along the docks, completely unnoticed by the various civilians around Sanji and Smoothie.

It remained that way for Sanji. While he had developed a certain amount of Busoshoku, he was nowhere close to developing Kenbunshoku. Quite unlike Nami and Vivi, who were well ahead of the curve when it came to that particular ability.

However, Smoothie did have Kenbunshoku. Her range with the technique wasn’t all that good, and her abilities with it were nowhere near the level of her older brother Katakuri, who had developed Future Sight to the point his skill with it was among the best in the world. Still, as the battle on the docks pushed inward, Smoothie began to sense something at the edge of her range; the fear and concern of the fleeing civilians grabbed her attention.

Frowning, she looked around, ignoring the latest compliment Sanji had given her. This time it had been about her lips, and how kissable they were, but that didn’t matter any longer, as Smoothie's instincts were telling her that turmoil in the distance had something to do with her crew. Drat, I’ve gotten turned around a bit as we’ve traveled. What direction is that?

Grabbing one of the locals, she pulled him into the air, ignoring his sudden squeal of surprise as she pointed almost over the top of a few of the buildings. Most buildings in this area of the island were two-story buildings, and she was nearly tall enough to reach the top of such without needing to stand on her toes. “You, what is in that direction?” she growled.

While Sanji watched on in concern, the man babbled, then quickly answered. “If, if you go far enough in that direction, you’ll get to the Bubble-Coating Docks.”

Grimly nodding, Smoothie dropped the man, staring in the direction of that she now knew was the same where her ship and most of her crew were. She pulled out a Den Den Mushi and put it to her lips. “Tamago, Pekoms, report.”

Nothing. For a moment, that fact didn’t register, then Smoothie pulled her Den Den Mushi away from her mouth, staring at it. The thing was awake, but its antennae were shifting in every direction, searching but not finding her officer’s Mushi. “The FUCK?! We’re being jammed!?”

Not even looking at Sanji, who was also now looking a little worried, Smoothie bounced into the air, racing in the direction of the turmoil she had been feeling.

For a moment, Sanji looked after her, then he pulled out his own Den Den Mushi. He tried to call Eve or Franky, but got nothing. “So… it’s not just Smoothie-swan’s crew. Blast it. Is this something the New Fishman Pirates are doing?”

Getting a bad feeling, he jumped into the air and zoomed after Smoothie. While she had seemingly learned Geppo, she didn’t know Soru, and he was able to catch up to her relatively quickly, just as she spotted a strange, egg-looking gentleman in a pink suit on a roof below. He arrived on the same roof as the man was speaking.

“-have quite a hard-boiled situation to deal with, Commander,” Tamago tried to keep his voice level, making Sanji wonder why Smoothie was being called commander instead of captain. “The New Fishman Pirates have attacked us! They planted a bomb underneath the water without even my sensing them. The Smooth Sailing has been sunk, cracked open like an egg, soir!”

For just a moment, Smoothie paled, so much so it was visible thanks to her tanned skin, and Sanji was tempted to reach forward and help her, if not for the size disparity and where his hands would land if he tried. Although that would be… no, no, this sounds serious. You must be serious, yes, Sanji. Ignore the fact Smoothie’s rear is to you at present and s, s, set a, a, aside f, fl, flirting, for n…now… Sanji thought, clenching and unclenching his hands, trying hard not to twitch in place at the unholy nature of that thought.

As Sanji was dealing with his equivalent of an existential crisis, Smoothie was also dealing with the weight of what this meant. It wasn’t the loss of her ship that appalled her, no, it was the loss of the cargo. The several tons' worth of Fishman Island sweets they had thus far gathered, that they had promised to Mama. If we return empty-handed…

Big Mom treasured three things above even her family's lives. Loyalty, food and promises for food. Even Smoothie’s position as one of the Three Sweets Commanders wouldn’t save her from Big Mom’s displeasure. She might even force me into a Leave or Life Game with Soul Pocus!

Aware of what his commander was thinking, Tamago went on hurriedly, glancing aside at Sanji suspiciously, even though he didn’t recognize him. “Furthermore, the New Fishman Pirates seem to be in league with the Straw Hats. They shouted so, and when confronted, Shipwright Franky, who was in the area to back up the attack on Smooth Sailing, fought Pekoms and me alongside several of them before running off. I was actually searching for him again when you saw me, soir.”

At that, Smoothie’s head turned as if on a swivel to glare at Sanji, who backed up rapidly, her glare helping him through his momentary mental trauma. “Now hold on a minute, my crew and I have nothing to do with the New Fishman Pirates. In fact, we were attacked before coming to the island! I have no idea why they would attack your crew, or why they’re shouting the names of ours.”

Smoothie, however, was in no real shape to take in his words. Like everyone else in the family, she feared her mother like fire. She didn’t care any longer about the fact that Sanji was cute, or that she’d actually been having a good time with him, or that he was such a great cook. None of that mattered. All that mattered was making certain that the people behind the destruction of those sweets paid for it.

Maybe if Sanji had mentioned his captain was on Fishman Island, Smoothie might have reconsidered. She was far less arrogant than many of her siblings. But as it was, he hadn’t, and a confrontation was now inevitable.

Between one instant and the next, her leg came up in a snap kick, which only Sanji’s training against Zoro, Hancock and Luffy on Rusukaina allowed him to dodge. The air pressure of that attack hammered into the building behind where the trio had been standing, and the entire thing seemed to almost explode on impact, bits and pieces of the wall flying everywhere.

“I am Minister of Juice and Sweet Commander Smoothie of the Big Mom Pirates. You’ve cost Mama a type of food she was looking forward to at her next tea party,” she growled. “Your whole crew’s life is forfeit for this, regardless of your captain’s infamy, Black Leg?”

“Hmm? That’s Black Leg!? He looks nowhere close as hard-boiled as his picture, bon,” Tamago muttered, shifting to one side to attack Sanji too.

Realizing that any talk was going to be impossible right now, Sanji kicked off the ground, hoping to try and escape, only for Smoothie to appear in his way, her leg lashing out again. This time, Sanji couldn’t dodge and quickly pulled up his Busoshoku. Smoothie’s kick bounced off his Busoshoku, but the momentum of the strike still sent him flying sideways until he got his legs under him and kicked off the air, using air walk for a second.

“Tamago, keep looking for Franky, but first, I presume Pekoms is still by the docks?” When Tamago nodded, she pointed in that direction. “If he’s done beating off this attack, have him try to get the sweets out of the water, and try to figure out where the jamming is coming from. We’ve got enough Den Den Mushi, spread out and figure out where it is somehow!”

Tamago might have wondered how to do that, as they had no idea how wide the jamming zone was, but before he could, Smoothie was off, racing after Black Leg. Shrugging, he turned back the way he had come, scowling just a bit at how that would give Franky more of a head start. He had proven quite tricky, throwing Tamago off his trail again.

Sanji rolled to the side midair, kicking off the air at a diagonal, lashing out with a kick at Smoothie’s face as she closed. His hesitation to attack a woman, however, slowed the attack more than it should’ve, and Smoothie batted it aside with one hand, her sword coming up and out of its scabbard in a diagonal slash that would have chopped Sanji in half if he hadn’t blocked it with Busoshoku. Even so, the strike had him gritting his teeth, and he was hurled upwards and to the right, with Smoothie following quickly.

Recovering faster this time, Sanji lashed out with a series of strong, powerful strikes, which Smoothie either dodged or blocked. This time, though, his use of Busoshoku actually registered as she grimaced a bit at one hit to her forearm. When next she launched her own attack, her foot was similarly covered with Busoshoku. The concussive blast when Sanji raised his leg to block it reverberated through the air around them, and a building directly below them crumbled from the top down.

Again and again they exchanged kicks and blows, moving around above the city for a few seconds, then down into it as Smoothie smashed Sanji through several buildings with a kick. He bounced up instantly afterwards and attacked once more, this time getting through her defenses with an adroit feint and a lashing kick that took her in the side. However, Smoothie’s sword came down again, nearly cleaving him in half once more from head to tailbone.

But he dodged at the last second, and his foot came up and into a sideways strike at her sword, crashing into it with so much Busoshoku-assisted power it was almost enough to break through her own hasty coating of the weapon. The hit nearly also took the weapon out of her hand, spinning Smoothie around in place, but she went with it, her elbow up and into his face, causing Sanji to twitch backward.

Whatever this man is, he’s definitely not a rookie, she thought. Busoshoku, and the ability to think so far ahead that my Kenbunshoku can’t see his full plans and speed to boot. He actually might be a little bit faster than me. She whirled into an attack in close for a few seconds, one leg twitching back and forward like a lever crashing several times into his defense, before her other leg came from above. That one got through, hammering into his shoulder with enough force to slam into the ground, but did no real damage even as his Busoshoku broke at that point. But not nearly strong enough.

Desperately, Sanji dodged her attempt to grab onto them with her free hand, and Smoothie scowled a little bit at her own decision to bring out her sword as he went on the attack. Forcing her to use her sword and legs to defend, even as she started to quickly gain an advantage. I should’ve gone unarmed here; then I would've been able to use both my arms to activate my Devil Fruit. If I could do that, this fight would be over, and I’d have a prisoner, if not a corpse, in my hands and be able to go and find this Franky character or maybe even the king to get some fucking answers!

Once more, Smoothie’s attack broke through Sanji’s defense with a lever-like kick, this time slamming him up and towards a building, but instead of hitting the side of it, Sanji kicked off the air just a little bit to redirect himself into a window, rolling all around what looked like a young lady’s bedroom.

In point of fact, there were two young girls there, both mermaids, late or mid-teens if Sanji was any judge - and he was - and Sanji bowed lightly towards them before kicking off the ground towards the inner doorway leading into the rest of the house. “My apologies, ladies, for this dramatic entry and exit. If I survive the day, please do look me up at Mermaid Café. I promise you a meal most exquisite!”

With that, he was out the door, leaving behind two blinking young mermaids.

Sanji dove out of a window on the other side of the building, only to need to dodge a slash from Smoothie’s sword as she came down from on high. However, once more, Sanji’s ability to dodge stood him in good stead, despite the horrible memories even thinking of that word brought to him occasionally. I will never thank you verbally for your training, Luffy, but thank you.

He twitched backward and sideways just enough for the blade to graze across the back of his shoulder rather than into the top of his head, leaving a long slash through his clothing, but doing no damage. In the next eyeblink, Sanji whirled into a kick midair, which Smoothie blocked with her forearm. However, when she went to grab onto his leg, he twitched backward again, well remembering what her Devil Fruit power was.

Once more in midair, the two of them traded more kicks and punches before another blow got through. This time, Sanji ducked underneath a kick, almost kneeling in midair, to do it. Then he pushed up off the air with one leg, his other raised into a straight upward Mutton Shot.

It crashed into Smoothie’s chin, and she staggered backwards, but simply smirked, her pommel coming around again to crash into his chest. “Congratulations, you can hit me. Now, actually make it count, brat.”

A second later, she cursed herself, as Sanji was sent sideways into and through several buildings. “Drat, I should’ve gone for a grapple there.”

None of these were inhabited, but the power behind her strike meant that all of them collapsed to the ground, sending bits of masonry, shell, coral, and other building material in every direction and creating a lot of dust.

“Fuck me, and this day had been going so well too, even if those rumors of the mermaid princes I heard earlier were interesting. I wonder, if going to the palace would’ve been a better move?” Sanji groaned, shaking his head woozily. Fucking hell, she nearly broke my ribs even with my Busoshoku. She already broke it once. If she keeps doing it, there’s no way I can win this… Although, I’m taking it as seriously as I possibly can, with my opponent being a beautiful woman.

There was, despite Luffy and Hancock’s training, still some hesitancy in Sanji when facing a female opponent. This was exacerbated by the fact that he had been flirting so outrageously with Smoothie for at least two hours before everything did a one-eighty. Yet if I keep on hesitating, I’m going to die here. Well, unless my captain zooms to my rescue, and who would want that, he thought, pushing himself upright with just as much pride as pure willpower. Time to get tricky.

Certain in her victory, Smoothie strolled through the wreckage of the houses Sanji’s passage had destroyed, raising a hand negligently to grab at a flung bit of masonry, about as large as her forearm. Sanji had just launched her way through the debris and dust with a kick from his leg like someone sending a soccer ball her way.

However, to Smoothie’s shock, when she blocked it, the impact slammed into her hand almost like she just tried to catch a cannonball, causing Smoothie to curse and step back. Another one came her way, and she raised a leg to block it, but the pain made her hiss. “What the heck? There’s no way that little man can kick a simple rock fast enough to hurt me like that. What is he doing?”

Smoothie had never run into any of the Kuja before this and thus didn’t have any idea of the way they could imbue their arrows with what amounted to bursts of explosive Busoshoku. It wasn’t quite the same advanced technique that Rayleigh was hoping to teach Hancock and Luffy eventually, Infusion, as the Kuja didn’t have Haoshoku to infuse into their Busoshoku. But they had developed a kind of bastardized version. It wasn’t anywhere near as powerful, but it could be imbued into objects more easily, if only for a short time.

Several more bits of rubble came her way, and Smoothie smacked them aside or sliced them in half with her sword, idly noting that a few of the smaller bits exploded midair before they could reach her. That gave her a hint of what was happening here, and she charged through them, slamming, slicing and dicing each attack in turn. Then, with her Kenbunshoku warning her, she whirled to the side, bringing up a leg to block a kick from Sanji as he closed.

Another kick flashed up towards her face, which Smoothie blocked again, this time with her open hand. However, when her fingers tried to curl around his foot, Sanji had already pulled back, lashing out with another kick to her leg that landed and almost overbalanced Smoothie for a second.

With that brief opening, Sanji shifted to the side, then came down and into her from behind, his knee crashing into the back of her skull. Busoshoku met Busoshoku, and her head went forward just a little bit before she flipped herself, whirling like a top midair bring her leg down into another kick, crashing into Sanji before he could shift away. Once more, Sanji was blasted away like a shotput, slamming into and through still more buildings from passersby.

“I’m getting rather annoyed at being smacked around. This is like what I imagine facing Garp is like,” he grumbled, shaking his head.

Sanji was used to someone having better technique or style than he had. Luffy had proven time and time again to simply be better at martial arts than Sanji was, up to and including solely leg-based styles. Rayleigh’s training had also shown him the heights the Straw Hats needed to reach, even in his old age, showing skill and power alike. Hancock was also a better leg fighter than he was, though the margin was much closer.

Yet, all of them held back in terms of raw strength when facing Sanji. Even Rayleigh did, if only because he didn’t like having to keep on chasing people he smacked around. Smoothie, though, seemed to be playing with him almost like a cat would with a mouse, enjoying the small chases almost as much as simply batting the mouse between her hands.

Pushing himself to his feet, Sanji glanced around for a brief moment as Smoothie closed. Seeing what kind of building he’d been smacked into; he kept the smile off his face with difficulty as an idea came to him. He quickly twirled in place, his legs igniting, and then, as Smoothie closed, instead of attacking, he leapt to the side. Smoothie blinked in surprise, then, her Kenbunshoku warning her, she ducked under a hurled cask of something, which split midair above her.

Smoothie was already moving even as it did, but the smell hit her like a freight train, and she gagged, one hand going up to her nose. “What in the name of the heavens is that!?”

“A very old style of fish sauce, my dear, called garum, I believe. Its process is so putrid that it is actually outlawed on most islands,” Sanji explained with a smirk, even as he sent another cask of garum less far along in the process than the first one at her. Thus, when the top came off, it was far smellier and also had bits of fish and other decomposing things.

Even Sanji, who had at one point been forced to cook with garum for a week in punishment by Zeff, reeled away, while Smoothie gagged, quickly dropping her sword and grabbing her face with both hands even as she wildly dodged another open casket coming her way.

“If any of that stuff gets on me, your death won’t be quick, Black Leg!” she shrieked as a few droplets came her way. Thankfully, her Kenbunshoku was up to the task of telling her where they were going, and flicks from a hastily raised finger created small miniature air shocks that blasted them backwards and away. However, that weakened her hold on her nose and she stumbled.

This, in turn, allowed Sanji to launch two more large vats in her direction, then duck out of the small warehouse. “GAH!!!”

Outside, to his shock, Sanji found himself hailed from an alleyway as numerous fishmen kept running away all around him. “Cook-aniki, over here!”

Sanji raced in that direction and found Franky in what looked like a pretty good facsimile of a merman costume. “Franky, what in the fuck is going on!?”

“I have no idea, cook-aniki! The Big Mom Pirates, they were attacked by—”

“I know!” Sanji interrupted, growling. “Believe me, I know! I was, I was getting somewhere with this hot, older woman with legs that, that went on forever and no!” Franky backed away quickly as Sanji shook himself. “Concentrate, Sanji. You can’t return to gazing upon Nami-chwan, Vivi-chwan, Robin-swan or even Hancock-sama if you let the sexy leggy woman kill you.”

“What should we do?” Franky questioned. While Franky had led his own gang on Water 7, he knew that Sanji was higher up in the totem pole, such as it was, of authority among the Straw Hats. He also knew that Sanji had a very good analytical mind, even if Franky also had his own plan going on, at least in terms of getting away.

“Keep evading for now! If you think you can take on the guy chasing you, do it, but don’t get in over your head. I’d offer to try and meet up, but I think Smoothie could beat us both with one gorgeous leg tied up behind her back,” Sanji said, wiping some blood away from his mouth from the reverberations of the blows that he had already taken.

“I’ll try to keep Smoothie away from you, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you at all other than that. She’s just too fast for me to promise much help. Good lucKKK—"

At that point, Smoothie crashed into the ground next to them, and a kick crashed into Sanji’s side before he could move. He was barely able to even breathe, let alone summon up his Busoshoku, and found himself spitting blood as something in his side broke. Sanji was hurled sideways and forward through several more buildings and then out into a cleared area between the various towns and villages of Fishman Island.

Smoothie cracked her neck explosively for a second, then glared at Franky. Luckily for him, this was because he had gagged and moved backwards hastily away from her due to the current smell coming off Smoothie, not because she recognized him. Franky’s effort to make himself look like a fishman had worked, at least far enough to fool someone who had only seen his wanted poster a few times.

“You got anything to say, fishy?” she growled, her hands twitching as if to grab and squeeze. She had used her powers to wipe off the garum gunk, but the smell still remained.

“No ma’am!” Franky squeaked before hesitantly pointing back in the direction he had come, which, alas, was also the direction Sanji had been sent toward. “Um, the, there’s a per, perfume store that way.”

Smoothie’s eyes narrowed, and her hand lashed out and down, crashing into him with enough force to implant the ‘fishman’ in the side of the building. “Thanks.” Ignoring the groaning fool, Smoothie sped off on her long legs after Sanji, eager to finish this and move on to hunt down any other members of the Straw Hat Crew who were here on the island. But not before stopping by the perfume store.

OOOOOOO

For a second, Franky simply groaned, staring after Smoothie for a moment. Damn, tall as hell, and a hair-trigger temper, what a combination. Although I can at least see why Sanji had that moment of Mellorine-ness, as the cap’n called it once. Heh, we’re eye level with her best attribute for sure.

With a small snort at his own thoughts, Franky pushed himself out of the hole his body had made. “Still, I doubt I’ll be getting any help from cook-aniki, I guess. More like, better him than me. For now, I’d better keep trying to get back to Eve. Then maybe I can get out of these… these pants.”

Franky shivered, looking down at his outfit. The fake tail construct and its accompanying hover bubble really wasn’t what anyone else would call pants, but to Franky, they covered his legs entirely from his waist down, so they had to be called that.

No one in his life ever agreed with him, but Franky knew it as fact: pants were out to get him. Whenever he wore anything that covered his leg more than his normal speedos, something bad happened to him. Several times, when Tom forced him to wear them, he’d been in accidents in the dockyard. His pants tore and tripped him more times than Franky could count as a toddler. Once, he’d even almost drowned thanks to his pants (don’t ask), and of course, there was the fact that Granny had forced Franky into pants to celebrate Tom’s being declared innocent, only to be forced to watch Tom be taken away.

The fact that Franky’s attempt to stop the sea train had ended in him nearly dying didn’t really register for Franky. Tom being taken away was way worse in his mind.

Still, needs must, and after the battering he’d taken from Pekoms and Tamago, and how quickly Tamago had found his trail afterwards, Franky had been forced to take emergency measures. That had included deliberately collapsing a building on top of the two of them, then finding a workshop and creating his disguise before Tamago could push himself out of the rubble.

Damn, I knew that Busoshoku was important, but seeing Tamago use it so well, and then being able to use Kenbunshoku to find me in a real fight, well, it just makes Luffy’s words about it seem more important than ever. I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to use it, with how much of my body’s metal, but…

“I need to get stronger, need to get harder!” he growled aloud as he wound his way through whatever town he was currently in. He’d kind of lost his way a bit during his flight away from Tamago. “Staying the same wouldn’t be super, and if I’m not super, I’m not anything!”

Unaware of the looks he was currently getting from the civilians as they started to poke their heads out from hiding places or inside buildings after Smoothie and Sanji had left the area, Franky continued on his way for a few seconds. He did, though, notice that the civilians quickly began to retreat again an instant before a voice from above caused Franky to toss himself sideways. “Unfortunately for you, you raw egg, you’ll never be boiled, soir!”

Tamago came down from on high, his extended leg crashing into the ground with punishing force, shattering the road for several yards in every direction, before he whirled, his thin blade coming around to impact the shorter man’s raised arm, skittering off, down into the air bubble around Franky’s waist, puncturing it quickly. “I will give you credit for coming up with an effective disguise on the fly, but Kenbunshoku can allow one to do many things, and I was able to pick up your signature when I came back this way to meet up with Commander Smoothie. I don’t know how you fooled her, but you will not fool me, soir!”

Tamago twisted away from the first strike and lunged, faster than Franky could track. He tried to stumble backwards, but his pants betrayed Franky, and he found himself falling backwards almost as a normal merman would have without the hover bubble. “Dammit, I knew pants would get me killed someday! The least super piece of clothing in the world, I swear!” he growled as Tamago stood over him, his sword poised to thrust down into Franky’s neck.

Staring down at his opponent, Tamago shook his head. “Bon, has anyone told you, hatchling, that you are a rather odd person, s'il vous plaît?”

“I don’t wanna hear that from you, you half-hatched bastard!” Franky shouted as he raised his hands upwards, slamming them together in an effort to try and catch Tamago’s blade. Tamago pulled back his blade, missing the fact that something was going on inside the fake merman suit, Franky’s legs coming apart into his Centaur form. The foremost legs came up, grabbing at Tamago’s super long legs, causing him to stumble for just a second.

Then, Franky’s upper body surged upwards in what Tamago had to admit was a magnificent show of core strength, and a punch lashed out, crashing into Tamago’s face, shattering his glasses and causing him to stumble even further back.

This was enough for Franky to push himself to his feet with his back legs, and now he stood, facing Tamago again. As Tamago looked at him, he saw the cyborg’s legs had literally come apart at the seams in various places. They now looked, in Tamago’s opinion, somewhat like a horse crossed with a spider. The four legs of a horse, but each leg is so thin, they look more like a spider’s.

It was such an unusual sight, especially with the ripped bits of merman outfit on it, that Tamago simply stared for a second, then shook his head, flicked his sword up, and charged. “If you think that strange configuration can save you, I will be very gleeful to disabuse you of the notion, soir!”

Franky backed away for several moments, his arms up, his one remaining shield arm up in shield configuration, blocking what strikes it could, while he deliberately stabbed one foot down harder and harder on the ground.

Seeing that Franky was defending well, Tamago began to use his feet more, sending more kicks up into Franky, nearly completing the destruction of the arm that had already been badly mangled in the fight by the docks with Pekoms. One kick in particular caught Franky on the elbow, causing him to hiss in agony as he felt something really important in there break.

Yet Franky was still able to duck his head under the following kick, redirect a sword strike with his shield, and try for an elbow blow.

Tamago almost negligently backed away from the elbow strike, only for Franky to shift his attack mid-blow, thrusting his shield forward into Tamago’s sword before he could pull it away. “Impact Shield!”

His Kenbunshoku being of only limited utility in close combat, Tamago was surprised by this move and couldn’t cover his sword with Busoshoku fast enough. The sword shattered, and Franky continued the move, whirling like a top at his waist, bringing his arm around again. “Impact Whirl!”

This time, though, Tamago lashed out with his own kick, the Busoshoku-infused kick crashing into the shield. Busoshoku-enhanced kick met impact dial-enhanced shield, and the impact dial won, if barely. Hissing, Tamago retracted his leg quickly, then lashed out downward into one of Franky’s strange legs.

Franky moved it at the last second to avoid the strike, and then went for a headbutt to Tamago’s center of mass. Tamago was too tall for Franky to aim higher.

This proved to be a mistake, and Franky reeled away, his eyes dazed for a second as his head had impacted Tamago’s shell, only to find it coated with Busoshoku. He was barely able to get his shield up in time to block another kick, as Tamago growled something about, “losing a sword is a swordsman’s shame,” which Franky barely heard through the ringing in his ears.

The fight had taken them across the street and into an alleyway, shattering the corner of a building as they passed. Built of coral, shell, and very rarely stone, a lot of the buildings of Fishman Island just weren’t up to taking much damage, and Franky blearily noted that the building was already in danger of collapsing. Can I get lucky enough to use this trick again? he thought, before lashing out with his horribly damaged arm into the side of the building.

It didn’t work. Despite how battered the building already was after losing a corner of it and a portion of its top earlier to Smoothie and Sanji’s engagement, Franky’s right arm was a wreck, and he couldn’t put any power into the strike.

Worse, the attempt cost Franky, as Tamago’s foot crashed into his chest. The blow dented the metal there, breaking several of the ribs behind it as Franky was hurled off of his four feet and sent soaring along the road to crash into a store where the road met another one going perpendicular to it.

Groaning, Franky switched his feet back to their normal configuration as he tried to push himself to his feet, hastily raising a hand to his basically crippled arm. There, he pressed a few places on his collarbone, front and back, before pulling a small something that popped out into his palm.

That was all Franky had time to do before Tamago was on him again, lashing down towards Franky’s head from behind.

If that blow landed, it would be all over. As tough as Franky was from the front, his back, and specifically the back of his own head, didn’t have all that much in the way of metal.

Thankfully, Franky twisted around and raised his arm to block. Franky’s outer right forearm basically exploded on impact, destroying both the last bits of shield and the machine guns built into it, but other than causing him blinding agony, it really didn’t matter. That arm was toast, anyway.

Ignoring the added pain, Franky rolled as he landed in the rubble, bringing up his other hand, shouting, “Strong Left!”

Tamago braced for the incoming impact, lifting a foot to block it, only for Franky to click something in his outstretched arm, then open his hand. The small flash dial exploded in light, coming apart due to a crack in its shell, releasing searing light in every direction.

“AGHH, AGAAIIN, soir!!” Tamago howled, holding one hand over his eyes, bitterly lamenting the fact that his sunglasses had been shattered earlier in the fight. He reeled and tried desperately to concentrate on his Kenbunshoku, but his ability with that wasn’t good enough to push through the blinding pain in his eyes, and he missed Franky lashing out with a kick.

An impact dial built into the bottom of his foot crashed into one of Tamago’s knees from the side, and the Longleg Tama Tama no Mi Zoan howled as his leg gave out under him, slamming him into the rubble of the shop. Even so, his other leg came out in a flashing kick as he rolled to that side.

Franky was barely able to get his one remaining shield up to block the blow, absorbing the impact. Knowing that he couldn’t capitalize on his fortune, Franky leaped through a nearby window, rolling as he hit the ground outside, before running off again through the streets, ignoring the dozens of fishmen and mermen all around him who had cowered in place or hidden in buildings.

I can’t keep fighting this guy, need to get to Eve, can’t let them get her! Franky thought, before seeing one of the transportation tube/water rides nearby. “SUUUPER!” With a roar, he leapt forward, diving into the water and letting the current carry him away as Tamago pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

“Bon, blast and tarnation, raw that man might be, but he’s got a brain at least, soir,” Tamago grumbled, looking down at his leg, then testing his weight on it before wincing. He doubted he’d be able to use air walk like this. While he was a Longleg Tribesman, Tamago was also far heavier than most, and while the technique had come easily to him, he wasn’t a master of it as Smoothie was, able to use it via one leg at a time.

“To think a rookie pirate would force me to use this technique. Perhaps it is I who has yet to truly be boiled, bon,” he murmured, before his body began to flash with light, enough that many of the nearby Fishman looked away hastily.

The tube hurled Franky from one town to another through a series of winding, swirling loops that, if he hadn’t been in blazing pain and worried for his life, Franky realized somewhat woozily he’d probably enjoy. Heck, he had enjoyed them earlier.

More importantly, when it deposited Franky at the next stop, he found himself in an area of Fishman Island that hadn't yet felt the impact of the violence elsewhere. The tube ended at a small, shore-like area designed to deposit passengers, complete with a replenishment service for the hover bubbles merfolk needed to get around.

Hastily buying one that would allow him to take to the air, Franky got his bearings quickly as several nearby guards, the police force of the island, noted how badly battered he was and came over. Their faces, one fishman and one merman, looked torn between worry and suspicion, but they weren’t attacking him on sight, at least, and Franky would take that.

Franky barely waited for them to get within shouting range before explaining, “I’m Franky of the Straw Hats! The New Fishman Pirates attacked the Big Mom Pirates, and they started attacking everyone back. They’re rampaging down by bubble-coating area right now! I saw a lot of your friends and other people heading in that direction before, but against New World veterans, I don’t know if it’ll be enough. There’s also some kind of jamming going on. I can’t raise anyone on the communication snail.”

“Creel eating bastards! We haven’t been able to contact our high command for a while now either. It’s pushing thirty to forty minutes or so since we couldn’t raise anyone,” one of the men said, pausing in place, before his face firmed. “We need to get word to the palace.”

“We need to consolidate. Most of our forces are out with Jinbe and his crew, and Prince Ryuboshi, to help deal with the New Fishman Pirates at their base. I don’t think there’s more than a few hundred of us scattered across the whole island. Hody and his ilk must’ve set this attack up on the Big Mom Pirates well ahead of time,” the other man muttered, frowning and scratching at his gills.

“That’s fine for you all, but I need someone to run to the docks where the Everlasting Resolve is parked. I’ve got one of their officers after me, and I don’t know how long using that tube is going to throw him off, or how fast he can cross the distance,” Franky warned.

Gulping, the first speaker nodded, taking charge quickly. “We’ll get one of the aerial taxis here quick, and it can take you straight there. I’ll even go along with you. We can kill two tunas with one spear thrust that way.”

He turned to his fellow and ordered him to rush off to another nearby guard post, while directing the cyborg to follow him over to a shop that apparently sold access to some of the flying fish-based taxis. Soon, they were in the air on top of a large sunfish, zooming through the air towards the royal docks.

As they went, the man blew on a large conch shell, three long ululating cries interspersed with harsh coughs. This seemed to be some kind of emergency signal. Soon, handfuls of royal guards on police duty came up out of the town they were flying over, meeting up with the one on the starfish. Several orders were hastily relayed, and three of them, all mermen with powerful tails, began to fly still higher in the air, their tails whipping back and forth as they made for the top of the main bubble housing Fishman Island at what amounted to sprinting speed.

Others raced down into the various towns, and soon, the call was out: the Big Mom Pirates had proven treacherous, and everyone was to take shelter. Soon, merfolk and fishmen alike across the whole island were on the move, organized by the remaining royal guards, heading to various reinforced zones, primarily in the richer districts like Gyoncorde Plaza.

Meanwhile, as Franky went to work trying to repair himself as best he could, with the tools he always carried in his stomach area, he asked for some cola. Soon, a few guards did so, and Franky gladly refilled his energy reserves. The cola of Fishman Island wasn’t as powerful or long-lasting as normal cola was. It didn’t seem to have the same kind of sugar, but with how battered and tired Franky was, he would take all he could get.

“Damn that jamming. It’s making it impossible for us to organize anything large-scale. Well, that and the fact we don’t actually have that many forces on hand any longer,” the guard who was using the conch to signal others to hurry up towards their position complained, looking worried. “I just hope that the princess hasn’t been caught up in this, and those three can get through to Neptune-sama.”

“Eh, can’t say anything about yer king, but I was in contact with my captain when he was up in the palace. Apparently your princess and our princess are going around together. I wouldn’t want her ta fight any other of their officers one on one, but Vivi is a super tough girl. She’s sure to look after your princess,” Franky opined. “Though I agree with ya, the jamming is suuper uncool.”

Ugh, repairing myself with one arm is way harder than with two, even if I’m able to see what I’m doing without using mirrors and things this time, Franky mused, grimacing as he stared down at his work. “Still, maybe we can figure out some kind of plan to at least slow down the Big Mom Pirates. If we can get Eve out into the waters around the island, that’ll give us a lot more firepower for sure...”

OOOOOOO

Thankfully for the guard’s sensibilities, the princess had not, in point of fact, been caught up in everything. By the time the attack on the Smooth Sailing began, she had left Fishman Island behind with Vivi, Sandersonia and Megalo. Once aboard the slow-moving bus that would take them to Sea Forest, the two princesses had continued their talks, with Vivi gently coaching Shirahoshi on how to essentially start acting like a real princess rather than “One of those silly girls who always assume that because they are a princess, someone must come to save them. Mind you, it’s always nice when it happens. I had someone save me and my country alike, and I desperately needed it. But you don’t learn how to rule by being saved all the time, by being protected.”

Meanwhile, Sandersonia had remained somewhat silent in the background, simply gazing around them. While the Kuja had been to Fishman Island before, she had not spent much time exploring the ocean floor like this, and, while it was still too dark for her sensibilities despite Eve’s towering roots nearby, it was somewhat fascinating. Almost soothing, really.

When they reached it, Vivi looked over the Sea Forest, or as it was known among humans, the Ship’s Graveyard, with interest. Despite its unimaginative name, the place was a riot of colors, with thousands of different coral growths rising throughout the area, lit by Eve's nearby roots. Those roots lit the area like a shallow pond on a sunny day: with blue, but bright light. Thousands of small crabs and other crustaceans scuttled through the living coral, unbothered by the fact the area was currently covered by an air bubble for some reason, while a dozen shipwrecks Vivi could see from the air above the bus stop stood out starkly here and there. Above, whales floated gently in the currents, while thousands of displaced fish swarmed around the edge of the bubble, so many they looked like a solid mass.

It looked fascinating from above, and Vivi was honestly interested in simply walking through it. As a desert princess, she could count the number of forests she’d been in on one hand, most of them during her time with Baroque Works or as part of the Straw Hat Crew. Being surrounded by growing things was something Vivi always enjoyed, if simply for the novelty of it, and this would be the first time she had ever been near living coral, let alone so much seaweed. I wonder is it as slimy as it looks?

However, just because they had gotten away from Fishman Island before the troubles with the Big Mom Pirates began, didn’t mean they had completely avoided it. Shirahoshi was one of the central figures of the Ryugu Kingdom, despite her time being locked away for her own good thanks to Vander Decken. She was as beloved among the normal populace as any member of the royal family, or even indeed more so thanks to her beauty and innocent nature, so the New Fishman Pirates kept an ear out for anything involving her.

They’d watched from a distance while on Fishman Island, watching how Vivi protected the princess, seeing her sand powers. This was obviously some kind of Devil Fruit, but they hadn’t been in a position to intercept them on the trip from Fishman Island to the Sea Forest.

Now, they moved in, hoping to attack the two princesses in the forest.

As they did, Sandersonia frowned a bit, staring around them. Sandersonia didn’t have that good an understanding of using the technique passively outside of combat. She could tell there was something there, but that was all.

Both the princesses and the New Fishman Pirates were unaware that this brought them closer to two other individuals. One was quite a ways away, admittedly, observing events through a special spyglass from well outside the forest. This was Agent Green, the fishman operative of the World Government and a Cipher Pol Zero member.

Green supplied the weapons and then caused the ship carrying them to crash and be found by the NFP. He had supplied the plan to attack Smooth Sailing to Jean and even passed the Straw Hat flags to Jean and the various New Fishman Pirate groups operating within the island itself.

With his mission to cause the ship carrying the weapons to sink accomplished, Green had then retreated to this position to watch over the area where a Poneglyph was rumored to be, to see if Robin would discover it, which she had. However, Green had also been ordered not to engage her until all other objectives of the operation had been met. At this point, with the CP agents also suffering from radio silence, he had no idea how the rest of the plan was going, but Green had his orders and would indeed only watch and wait.

After all, if we can simply instigate trouble between the Big Mom Pirates and the Straw Hats, regardless of the outcome here on Fishman Island, that will still be a strategic victory. Still, seeing someone actually examine a Poneglyph, understand it, and write down notes is somewhat disturbing, given my standing orders about such artifacts and those who can read them.

New orders and old doctrine were warring within him as Green watched the two princesses arrive, along with their fishman tales. But he still remained still, quiet and watching.

The eel had deposited them by the bus stop outside the forest and was about to leave, but waited, then nodded to Shirahoshi as she asked him to stay in the area. Shirahoshi could easily carry Vivi all the way back to Fishman Island if she wanted to, but it wouldn’t be all that pleasant for Vivi because they didn’t have an air bubble for her.

The trio made their way into the forest, heading toward one specific place: a small pavilion set up in honor of the previous queen, Otohime. As they moved, Shirahoshi’s attitude began to dip, becoming more somber as they continued. Vivi, tried to cheer her up, telling Shirahoshi about what few memories she had of her own mother, something the two princesses had in common.

Sandersonia, on the other hand, kept her attention on the area around them and, at one point, saw something spinning in from the distance.

“Good grief, Decken is quite a persistent character. Vivi, incoming. Do you want me to—?”

“No need, thank you, Sonia,” Vivi demurred, turning away from her talk with a slightly happier looking Shirahoshi. Raising a hand, Vivi sent a wall of sand upward to intercept the incoming object. This time, the object was an away boat with what looked like a long metal prow for some reason, but that really didn’t matter to the sand that Vivi controlled. She caught it, crushed it, and then allowed the bits and pieces to drizzle down into the air of the forgotten forest, including the wrecked, tortured mass of metal.

Shirahoshi smiled faintly, scooting just a little closer in midair towards Vivi even as she addressed Sandersonia’s words. “If he wasn’t so persistent, I wouldn’t have needed to be so protected.”

“Oh, I know, and I can completely understand why your brothers and father reached that decision. That is, what, the ninth attack Vivi’s had to deal with?”

“I think it’s the eleventh, actually. Decken’s being more persistent than usual today for some reason,” Shirahoshi worried.

“Whatever happens, Decken’s living on borrowed time regardless. Luffy’s going to stomp him into the ocean floor, and I don’t know if that’s a euphemism or a prophecy.” Vivi shook her head before twirling around quickly as a noise from the undergrowth caught her attention.

Vivi saw an arm appear and several eyes peering at her from various places, making her blink in surprise. “Robin?”

“Robin, your crewmate? You mentioned that she was a historian of some kind, right?” Shirahoshi remembered, staring at the strange hand that had appeared out of the coral as it waved at her gently. “Oh, I know where she might be. It’s much deeper into the forest, but if you want, we can make a detour there.”

“Would you mind?” Vivi asked.

Shirahoshi shook her head. This close to her goal of paying her respects, and having been protected so often by Vivi, Shirahoshi felt it would be churlish to demand they continue to her mother’s crypt.

The three women turned in the direction of the arm, moving deeper into the forest. This added only about fifteen minutes or so to the walk - or float, in Shirahoshi’s case - which Vivi was pleased about. This forest was definitely unlike anything she had ever seen before, and it was fascinating to look around, seeing all the tiny crabs and the dozens of varicolored corals everywhere.

They didn’t know this would, in turn, allow the New Fishman Pirates to come closer.

On the other hand, the New Fishman Pirates didn’t see the eyes that began watching them as soon as they entered the forest. Robin had not survived for nearly two decades on her own after the destruction of Ohara by being complacent. Even in a place like this, she had a dozen eyes watching her back at all times.

Alas, she hadn’t spread them out far enough to find the unseen Agent Green, who remained well beyond the outskirts of the forest, ensconced in a small bed of coral just outside the air bubble around the forest, watching everything with an advanced spyglass.

Soon, the two princesses pushed out of the forest and into a small clearing, where a large square stone construct sat. It looked as if it’d been placed there by design: the cleared-out area and how solidly it sat there, but it was equally obvious that this placement had happened a long time ago. Moss and grass had begun to grow up along the bottom, and several of its sides were covered in algae from when the Sea Forest was without its current air bubble.

Still, there was no question what it was, and Vivi paused, staring at it thoughtfully. So, another Poneglyph, just like the one my father showed me a few months after the Straw Hats left Alabasta. I wonder, is it also connected to the ancient super weapons, or does it contain historical text, the kind that Robin truly desires to find? I hope it’s the latter.

Robin stood in front of it, taking notes in a small notebook. Two hands held the notebook while her real hand wrote in it, but she turned to look at the two princesses despite this. “Vivi, Sandersonia. How are you?” She welcomed the shorter girl, smiling warmly at her before glancing at the towering, yet still very young-looking mermaid with her. “Would you mind introducing me to your largish friend? Is this who I think it is?”

My word, but she is quite large. Almost reminds me of Saul. Although her expression and sheer innocence make me want to pat her on the head, Robin mused.

“I’m quite well, thank you, Robin. A few random attacks from far away from a certain Vander Decken, but Luffy is on that, so I doubt it will be a problem going forward. And yourself? Is this one of the Poneglyphs you wanted to find?” Vivi inquired.

Silently, Sandersonia turned aside, cocking her head thoughtfully as she took in the Poneglyph, the sight of it driving out the feeling of danger nearby. It looked… oddly familiar to her for some reason. Almost as if she had seen something similar several times before in her life on Amazon Lily. Strange. Not the writing, but the substance it’s made from. Huh. That’s kind of interesting considering these things are supposed to be indestructible.

Behind Sandersonia, Vivi smiled and gestured up at her companion. “And yes, this is Princess Shirahoshi, the youngest daughter of King Neptune and the former Queen, Otohime. Shirahoshi, Nico Robin, resident archeologist and intelligence officer of the Straw Hats.”

“In a way yes, but in a way no. It has some historical information, but solely about the Ryugu Kingdom, and the history of this island,” Robin said, lying more than a bit as she smiled up at the Princess. “How do you do, Princess? If you are assuming that I will kneel, curtsy or what have you, I’m a pirate, and we don’t go into that kind of thing.”

The light joke caused Shirahoshi to giggle a little, and she held out her hand for a handshake, gently shaking Robin’s far smaller hand up and down. “It’s fine, my family and I, we don’t go into that kind of thing all that much… well, when we can get away with it, anyway.”

Robin smiled faintly, then asked politely what the two of them were doing here. When informed that Shirahoshi wanted to visit her mother’s grave, Robin grew somber, thinking about her own mother for a moment, then about what she had heard about Otohime since coming to this island. She asked if she could join them.

Before Shirahoshi could answer, though, Robin turned away, surprising the other three by addressing the forest to one side of the clearing. “If you gentlemen are here to cause trouble, might I ask you to get on with it? Skulking around in the forest out there near something so historically important makes my fingers itch, and you don’t want that.”

“…I think Luffy’s way of dealing with threats is rubbing off on you, Robin,” Vivi murmured, her lips twitching while Shirahoshi flinched and backed away fearfully, looking in the same direction as the other two women.

“Your fingers are going to be the last of your worries, filthy human!” shouted a new voice, as a group of New Fishman Pirates came out of the undergrowth. They all smirked, spreading out quickly, while Shirahoshi looked on worriedly, until she glanced sideways at Vivi and the others. Vivi was simply staring at them impassively, while Robin was giving the impression of someone staring at some trash that she wanted to remove.

Sandersonia was even worse, a sneer on her face showing her opinion of the men in front of her. She wasn’t quite the man hater Hancock had been prior to meeting Luffy, but she still disdained a certain type of man and these fit that bill easily.

“Ya should never’ve left the palace, Shirahoshi! But now that you have, we’re going to drag you in front of Big Boss Hody in chains. And you three, well, if ya don’t surrender, we’ll just puncture the bubble around this area, flood it and kill you!”

The watching Agent Green hummed thoughtfully to himself, wondering if that would actually work. While it was a plan developed by the morons that they were manipulating, it still seemed somewhat acceptable. If that was the case, then dealing with Robin would be very easy indeed. I could even capture the Princess and… Nevermind.

Agent Green watched as the two New Fishman Pirates that had been left out by the outer bubble around the forest fell from where they had been swimming, arms and necks twisted in unnatural angles by a Clutch from the unseen Robin. I could still puncture it myself, but to do so, I’d probably have to get close enough for some of her outer eyes to see me. Which would be going against my current orders. Blast.

Still, if she removes them at any time…. Satisfied with an idea that could both honor his current orders and his long-term indoctrination to hunt those with knowledge of Poneglyphs, the agent settled back down to watch events once more.

The two near the bubble weren’t the only ones to have been clutched in that moment. Indeed, all of the pirates fell screaming in agony as hands appeared all around their bodies, twisting and stretching, with only a few not being turned entirely into pretzels. Two of those roared and charged, only for Sonia to deal with them with a series of palm strikes, looking almost bored as she did. “So much for so-called fishmen superiority. They’re just a little tougher than normal people. Which puts them well below us.”

“Mah, I had forgotten how satisfying it was to use Clutch on a host of incompetent idiots. Thank you for the reminder,” Robin somewhat agreed, smirking just a little bit. “Perhaps from now on, gentlemen, you will all remember that having working limbs is a privilege.”

“Heh.” Vivi giggled at that, while Shirahoshi twitched a little. She was disturbed by the agonized cries of the fishmen and how many of them looked as if they had been twisted into shapes that no living person should be able to survive.

“They shouted something about Hody Jones there. The same Hody Jones that the Army and Jinbe were going out to deal with? I have to assume this mission was put in place before that attack began, but they seemed awfully confident that they could deal with even Jinbe, didn’t they?” Sandersonia mused.

“They did, yes. Hence why I left a few of them able to actually talk. If you give me but a few moments, I’ll have all the information they know, fufufufu,” Robin chortled.

While Sandersonia grinned cheerily at that, the sound of Robin’s laughter caused Shirahoshi, who’d already been disturbed by how quickly Robin had dealt with the fishmen, to shift entirely behind Vivi. Since Vivi was currently in her normal body, that was kind of hilarious, in Robin’s opinion. It also made her want to pat the younger girl’s head even more. Still, she refrained for now.

True to her word, it took Robin barely a few threats and her hands appearing and disappearing in front of one of the fishmen’s eyes to get a few answers out of him. While the two men didn’t know the entire plan, and in fact had nothing to do with the plan that had hit Fishman Island, he had known for a long while about the Energy Steroids that Hody Jones had gotten his hands on, and how, with that and their sheer numbers, the NFP felt they could overcome even Jinbe.

While Shirahoshi looked worried at that, Robin shook her head. “I don’t know Jinbe all that well despite spending some time with him on the Everlasting Resolve, but I know his strength is real. This steroid might slow the New Fishman Pirates' defeat, but that’s all.”

“That’s true. My sister even acknowledged his strength before our meeting your crew,” Sandersonia agreed. “And I can count on the fingers of one hand how many men she respected back then, with at least one finger left over.”

“Who?” Robin asked quizzically.

“Rayleigh, obviously. Whitebeard, because as much as they didn’t get along, not respecting him was the mark of an idiot. Jinbe. That was it,” Sandersonia reported with a wry chuckle. “Meeting your crew has more than doubled that amount, although I don’t know if what she feels for Zoro or Sanji is quite respect in that same form.”

“You can respect Zoro’s combat skill and disdain his lack of direction and ego,” Vivi agreed. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Furious at being dismissed, the prisoner shouted, “You don’t know our strength, you don’t know our numbers! Hyouzou, Ikaros, Boss Hody and the rest, they’ll deal with that traitor! With the Energy Steroid, they’ll deal with it and avenge us, you…”

Deciding that the fishman’s consciousness was no longer necessary, Sandersonia slapped him upside the head hard enough to send him into the land of the comatose. “Regardless, personally, I think that this enhanced strength of theirs isn’t going to be nearly enough.”

“Agreed.” Robin nodded. “Furthermore, it isn’t as if we would be able to do anything if the fighting is happening out in the ocean, and so far away from her current position. For now, let us proceed to your mother’s grave, Shirahoshi; although, I think we’ll need to remember to call someone to pick up these idiots. We can’t just leave them to die. All mangled and broken as they are, they would make for awful skeletons at the very least, to say nothing of their cries and screams disturbing anyone who comes here after us.”

Shaking her head at her oldest lover’s sense of humor, Vivi shifted over to walk beside Robin, leaning into her for a moment, giving her a squeeze. “I’m sorry that this Poneglyph didn’t tell you what you wanted to know. I know how much that annoys you.”

“At one time, it wouldn’t have just annoyed me. It would’ve broken my spirit. To give so much to find a Poneglyph, to get so close, only to find nothing of importance on it.”

Nothing of importance beyond the knowledge of this strange weapon, Poseidon, anyway, but I think I will talk to Luffy about that before talking to anyone else. It doesn’t really sound like a weapon at all, but I can see why it could be one. As for the promise of this Joy Boy person, well, that, I will talk to Shirahoshi about presently, if in a roundabout fashion. And the fact it is clear another Poneglyph was here in the distant past… that’s something I will bring up with my captain and Neptune very… firmly, Robin thought.

Setting that aside, Robin smiled at Vivi. “However, now? With Luffy, you, Hancock and the rest of the crew behind me? The journey doesn’t feel so long any longer.”

Vivi smiled brightly at that, and Robin turned to look over at Shirahoshi. “However, I do have a few questions about your mother, Princess, if you don’t mind answering them. I learned a great deal about Otohime simply by walking around Fishman Island. She was much loved by your people.”

Shirahoshi nodded, smiling widely, if wetly, as tears began to appear in her eyes. “She, she was a wonderful mother. She always took time to play with my brothers and me. A, As queen, Mother wanted the best for everyone; she wanted peace for everyone, for understanding.”

“That was the impression I got as well. Although, I have to wonder where the idea of migrating to the surface entirely came from,” Robin mused leadingly. “Surely someone as empathetic as Otohime understood that simply living us on the surface wouldn’t be enough to combat the tensions between your folk and ours. I’m just wondering where she got that idea.”

Did Otohime know about Joy Boy's promise? Robin wondered. Was the idea of someone helping to transport Fishman Island to the surface passed on through the royal line? If so, they must have thought Joy Boy had the strength to do that.

“I don’t think it was so much that living on the surface would allow us to start living among humans more equally,” Shirahoshi mused, needing to think this through. “It was simply a way to ensure our people’s happiness. You, you must understand, even with the roots of Eve allowing sunlight to travel down to our kingdom, all of our people, fishmen and merfolk alike, yearn for the real sun. We yearn to be up where we can feel the real sun on our skin, rather than simply the artificial light of Eve. We all know deep down that it isn’t real.”

Shirahoshi frowned, her shoulders drooping as she continued. “You also have to understand, you’ve come to this island after more than a decade of peace brought about by our flying Whitebeard’s flag. Before that, when I was a toddler… my brothers told me about it. There was a lot of discrimination, a lot of violence, and not just between us and the pirates who came down here or Tenryubito and so forth trying to take slaves, but also discrimination against fishmen from merfolk. It was, well, what little I remember, it was really hard, and it just seemed to my mother that integration was the only way, hence the petition she was always going on about.”

Robin hummed at that, not agreeing or disagreeing and set aside her thoughts on Joy Boy for now. The old Queen’s methods certainly weren’t something she would’ve done, as in Robin’s opinion, turning the other cheek so often only ended up with your face caved in. Still, it was very obvious that Otohime had been a visionary of some kind, and highly charismatic to boot. “And now, that hatred still exists among the New Fishman Pirates, but not among the normal population? There’s no internal discrimination?”

“I, I think so. My oldest brother always says the island’s peace is somewhat skin deep, and that we should’ve moved against the New Fishman Pirates long ago. But, well, we didn’t want to seem as if we were coming down on fishmen in general by attacking their old district. And the hatred they felt towards the humans, it was… it was understandable,” Shirahoshi admitted. “The humans still prey on us occasionally whenever they can catch us away from the island, and it was a human who killed my mother, despite Mother having just protected another human.”

“So, guilt and regret stopped you from controlling them. I don’t like it, but at least I can understand it, if only slightly. Although, I don’t doubt that my captain was quite adamant about forcing the issue,” Robin mused, to which both princesses nodded, filling her in on what had happened during the discussion at the palace.

This took the trio into the clearing around the mausoleum where Otohime and other royals were buried. Otohime’s grave had been made into the centerpiece of the area, a full crypt that would have looked vaguely Greek to Luffy if he had been there. It was tall, made of white marble, with pillars all around it, and a small raised sarcophagus in the center. The bars were so close-set that even a normal human-sized person wouldn’t be able to get close to the sarcophagus.

That hardly mattered to Shirahoshi, who quickly knelt before the crypt, her head bowed and her hands clasped in prayer. Megalo also seemed to bow his head, while the three pirate women fell silent in respect.

For a moment, they were all silent as they stared down at the grave, then Megalo, glancing at the princess, began to make noises. Shirahoshi turned in his direction, a smile on her face, as she raised a hand to gently pat the shark on the head in much the same fashion that Robin had been fighting the urge to do to her for some time now. “What is it, Megalo?”

The shark ‘spoke’ for some time, and Shirahoshi blinked, her brows furrowing. “Wait, what? It, it wasn’t a human?”

Vivi, Sandersonia and Robin looked at one another in confusion, then watched as tears began to appear in Shirahoshi’s eyes as Megalo continued to speak. “Oh, I, I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” she whimpered, slumping in place.

“What did he say? What wasn’t a human?” Vivi asked, reaching out a gentle hand to pat Shirahoshi on the side.

“I, I didn’t witness my mother’s death. I was close, but I didn’t see where the shot was coming from. All I, all I saw was Mommie falling, and I, I screamed, and… but at the same time I…” Shirahoshi dithered, tears welling in her eyes.

“Calm down,” Robin soothed, moving forward to pat Shirahoshi on the other side. “No one is going to judge you for missing something or doing something you shouldn’t have when you were so young. I’d offer you a handkerchief or something, but I don’t carry one, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be large enough to do the job. Just calm down, please…” Robin then smirked just a little bit. “I really don’t want to find out if tears contain enough salt in them to act as seawater to a Devil Fruit user.”

Sandersonia was the only one of a height to even try to give Shirahoshi a hug, and this the Kuja, perhaps feeling some empathy towards the younger girl, did, her arms barely able to wrap around Shirahoshi’s waist. “There, there. Whatever it is, it can’t be so bad as for you to break down and erase all the effort we’ve been doing to keep your spirits up, right?”

The joke and the kind gestures seemed to help, and Shirahoshi started to calm down. Eventually, she explained what Megalo had told her. That it had been a human pirate who had shot the Queen, only to be stabbed through by Hody Jones when he was an officer of the royal guard. Instead, it had been Hody Jones who had shot her and staged the entire thing.

“You, do you see what I mean? The hatred we all started to feel for humans then, which caused so many issues between us, the fishmen, and the humans for months after, it wasn’t real. But at the same time, it would’ve caused even more trouble between us if it was known a fishman had killed Mom….”

“It might have. Or it could have been used as a way to exercise the cancer within your society,” Robin argued, shaking her head while trying hard not to glare at the shark as Sandersonia did the same, thinking about how many steaks Sanji could make of it. Megalo’s withholding that information like that was, in both women’s opinion, ridiculously stupid. It meant that what fragile peace had been built under Whitebeard’s name had been based on a lie. And any peace based on a lie couldn’t last.

Still, it was a shark. They weren’t exactly known for their brainpower, and Robin turned away after only a second.

“Look at it this way,” Vivi interjected, more philosophically. “It is simply one more reason to bring Hody Jones to justice.”

At that, Shirahoshi nodded firmly, and the quartet of women turned to return the underwater bus. Soon, with Robin using her Devil Fruit to turn off the area’s air bubble, they boarded the bus and headed back to Fishman Island, unaware of events there...

OOOOOOO

“Woo, that shadow out there is that giant whatever, and the Flying Dutchman. About damn time!” Luffy cheered, as he and the small force with him finally came within physical sight of their quarry. At some point Vander Decken (the IX, but Luffy didn’t care) had turned his ship away from the loop he had been making around Fishman Island, heading further out into the sea. That had basically made their search into a stern chase, but thankfully, the eel that Luffy was riding, the mermen and fishmen with him had enough speed to close the distance, if slowly, with the walking mountain that was Wadatsumi towing the ancient Flying Dutchman.

As Fukaboshi barked out orders to the platoon of troopers with them to get them to start speeding up, Luffy looked over at Manboshi, his smile disappearing as he held up his Den Den Mushi. Its eyes were still rotating wildly, while the rest of the snail’s face remained in sleep mode. “Sanji and Franky aren’t answering. What about you?”

“I’m also still not having muuuch luuuck,” the younger prince sang, shaking his head. “I’ve called the gate guaaaards on the outer shell of the islaaaand, I’ve called the palace, I’ve trieddddd to reach specific stations all on the island ittttself. We should stilllll be within the convention distance, but no one’s answeringggg. We could be further away thannnn I thought, but…~”

“Doubtful,” Fukaboshi commented as he joined the discussion, scowling.

Luffy and the two princes had tried off and on to call back to Fishman Island for the last hour or so, growing more worried each time their Den Den Mushi refused to connect. It was a weird phenomenon, and none of them knew what it could mean, although Luffy worried it might be how the snails reacted to being jammed.

But at the same time that Fukaboshi had started to worry about the lack of communication from Jinbe and Ryuboshi, Luffy had found Decken and his crew’s minds. With that, they decided to finish off this problem rather than return home and lose all their progress.

It would only take one informer in the wrong place back on Fishman Island to warn Decken that the royal house had allied with a Kenbunshoku user whose range could allow them to hunt Decken down. He’d then simply run away deeper into the ocean, too far to be hunted, and keep on hurling stuff towards Shirahoshi all the while. Without Vivi around, that would force Shirahoshi back into her armored cage.

“The math hasn’t changed, but my concerns have gone up,” Fukaboshi grumbled, shaking his head.

“Yeah, well, I started ta worry around thirty minutes ago right beside ya. Let me try one more member of my crew.” With that, Luffy called Robin, and this time, the other side picked up quickly, the Den Den Mushi coming to life from its previously slumped position. Its eyes transformed, then its face shifted slightly to more resemble Robin.

In Luffy’s opinion, it was a very pale imitation, but he was too happy to hear her voice to comment on it.

“Luffy? Is there some trouble going on with the search for Decken?”

“Not on our end, no. But we’ve been trying ta call back to Fishman Island, and we’re not getting a response. Are you there, or still out on your search?”

“We are heading back at the moment on one of the local transport vehicles from the Sea Forest, which I understand is… Twenty-two nautical miles away from Fishman Island or so?” Robin paused, seemingly to check that with her companions before speaking again. “I’m here with Vivi, Sandersonia and the princess. Shirahoshi wished to pay her respect to the late Queen at her mausoleum.”

Robin didn’t mention what she was searching for. Not talking about Poneglyphs over Den Den Mushi transmissions was second nature to Robin, and even in friendly territory she saw no reason to break that habit.

“We tried recently to call ahead to see if Jinbe and company were done with fighting Hody and his army. Ryuboshi picked up, for just a moment admittedly, as he was in combat at the time. Everything seems to be going, if not well, then predictably, on that front. The New Fishman Pirates seem to have gotten their hands on some kind of energy steroid, and it is slowing the fighting down tremendously,” Vivi interjected.

“The royal energy steroid!?” Fukaboshi growled, baring his teeth for a moment. “That has been a secret of my family for generations! To have it stolen, I have to assume that was part of why Hody Jones was actually in the military at all. But if they attacked, are you and my sister all right, Princess Vivi?”

“You don’t know the half of it there, but I think your sister should tell you the rest of it in person. As for us being all right, yes, we’re fine,” Vivi answered before Robin took over the explanation.

“The buffoons who attacked us did so in a rather foolish manner. If they had simply waited to attack us while we were heading back to Fishman Island on this fish-bus and then popped the bubble, both Vivi and I would have faced a watery grave, our bodies lost in the darkness of the bottom of the ocean, or later found floating, bloated on the surface. Instead, they decided to grandstand.”

Robin stated that last word with all of the disdain of a housewife forced to deal with a dead rat, causing Luffy to grin, shaking his head at his lover’s words and tone, while Manboshi shivered a bit at her description. In the background of the communication, Shirahoshi’s voice could be heard shouting, “—so scary!”

Robin ignored her and continued unhurriedly. “Afterwards, I kept two of them intact enough to answer questions. Astonishingly, after only a few seconds of threats rather than outright torture, they were willing to tell us everything they knew about what was going on. However, none of what we learned mentioned anything going on within Fishman Island itself.”

“True, but if my brother has told you all that the battle against Jones and his crew is still ongoing, then I doubt the NFP would have enough force to send into Fishman Island to cause trouble. Admittedly, if they did, we wouldn’t have enough force to stop them, but I refuse to think that with the combination of the Royal Army, Ryuboshi, Jinbe and his crew wasn’t enough to stop the NFP in place,” Fukaboshi mused.

“Eh, I did warn ya I felt a lot of minds out there that time our loop around the island brought us close to the action,” Luffy reprimanded.

“Perhaps, but there is another group on the island currently that could be making trouble,” Robin reminded everyone. “The Big Mom Pirates I warned everyone about.”

At that, Luffy cursed. “Damn, that makes too much sense. They wait for the army to clear out, then they start trouble. By the time Jinbe returns, they might have your King in custody or something. If they don’t know me and my crew are here, that kind of plan makes even more sense.”

“That cannot be allowed,” the older prince said, shaking his head, while Manboshi growled, clenching and unclenching his hands around the reins of the eel ship. He then turned to his troopers and barked out a few commands. The whole platoon and the eel sped up quickly, as he turned back to the Den Den Mushi in Luffy’s hand. “I know that you two Devil Fruit users and my sister are in a precarious position right now, and I will not order you to return to the Sea Forest, as I don’t know which one you’re closer to. But please, look after my sister when you get to Fishman Island, and if you can, try to contact us when you do so.”

“We will, but if the Big Mom Pirates are somehow jamming the Den Den Mushi, if we return to the island, we might enter that interdiction range,” Vivi warned, before going on more warmly. “And you don’t have to worry about Shirahoshi. She and I are good friends now, and I will keep protecting her until you all return.”

“Big brothers, please, don’t worry about me right now!” Shirahoshi interjected, surprising Manboshi and Fukaboshi alike. Not only because she was doing so, but because Shirahoshi’s voice sounded so firm. “Finish Vander Decken and get back to our people quickly. Even if the pirates aren’t able to get to our Father, the Big Mom Pirates could still be making a lot of trouble for our people. There’s only so much our new allies can do with just two members elsewhere on the island. We can’t let that happen!”

Both brothers looked at one another as Shirahoshi spoke, then a wide smile appeared on Fukaboshi’s face. “Of course, the people are our first priority. We will see you when we get back, Shirahoshi.”

Luffy hung up, and Fukaboshi shook his head. “It seems as if your princess has been very good for ours. That was perhaps the most forceful words I’ve ever heard from Shirahoshi. It’s lovely to see.”

“That’s nice and all, and I’m happy for it, but I think we do need to get back there as fast as possible. So, when we get close, you and your people need to gird yourselves. I’m gonna speed run through as much of this fight as I can right away,” Luffy warned, shifting his shoulders and cracking his knuckles grimly.

OOOOOOO

As she hung up the Den Den Mushi, Robin shook her head. “Blast. I suppose I should have known it was impossible for us to be so close to another big-time pirate crew and for—"

“Vivi?” Sandersonia cut in. She had been silent before this, but now she spoke up as she noticed how jumpy Vivi had become, her arm shifting into sand, readying what looked like some kind of sand-flinging defense. “What is it?”

“I… I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, but I, I feel as if we’re being watched,” Vivi admitted. “I can’t figure out why or from where, though.”

“Scary!” Shirahoshi stammered, looking as if she was going to break down in tears before firming her face and shifting forward. “No, no more weeping. More doing.”

Robin turned her attention to the water around them as Shirahoshi pulled her head out of the bubble slowly, shifting forward a bit in the water where she was swimming alongside the bus to talk to the bus’s trained fish. Robin had thought the eel’s face was somewhat lugubrious, but it now brightened noticeably as Shirahoshi petted it, while Robin turned her attention to trying to spot anything out of place.

However, even with the nearby roots of Eve, there were far too many shadows out there for her to see much of anything. “A survivor from the NFP buffoons, do you think? It could be your Kenbunshoku training warning you about something.”

“I don’t know, like I said, I can’t tell anything,” Vivi answered, her tone frustrated as her hand kept shifting configuration. “I just feel as if we’re being watched.”

“I can sense something out there, but it’s at the far range of my own Kenbunshoku,” Sandersonia added, scowling. “I wish my training with it had advanced during our training with you Straw Hats, but it hasn’t yet.”

“Hmm…” Robin frowned, an inkling of concern passing through her for a moment before she shook her head as the bus jolted forward, moving faster through the water. “Well, hopefully we’ll be leaving whoever it is behind now.”

“Hopefully,” Sandersonia agreed before turning to the others, the Kuja warrior cracking her knuckles explosively as Shirahoshi swam alongside them. “So, what should we do when we get back?”

“If there’s trouble, we should learn more when we pass through the outer gate. When we get to the island itself, depending on the information, Vivi will remain with Shirahoshi and continue to defend her until Luffy and the princes return. I will start gathering information while you will move to find Franky or Sanji, whichever is closest to us when we arrive. I can almost set in stone that my crewmates will be fighting the Big Mom Pirates somewhere,” Robin commanded, her tone shifting into a resigned drawl at the end.

“Duh,” Sandersonia and Vivi answered as one, causing all three women to giggle even as they worried about what they would find back on Fishman Island.

Elsewhere in the darkness of the ocean, well within Sandersonia’s Kenbunshoku range but using a mental technique to hide himself that all Cipher Pol agents learned, Agent Green watched. He watched and did nothing. Sandersonia and Vivi’s wariness was visible from here with his enhanced spyglass. To attack, with Shirahoshi, a mermaid, in the area and able to get away, possibly while carrying Nico Robin and Nefertari Vivi, was unacceptable to his current orders.

It is perhaps ironic that the World Government’s training of its elite unseen assassins worked against it here. If someone like Rob Lucci had been there, and able to act given the water and everything, he would have had enough independent thought to realize the treasure that three Devil Fruit users in such a compromising position were. It would have perhaps given the game away, given Vivi’s wariness and Shirahoshi’s presence, but the upshot would have been well worth Cipher Pol showing its hand.

But Green didn’t have that autonomy of thought. CP-0 wasn’t as bad as CP-4, but they still would not move on their own, especially not against explicit orders. So he watched, following at a distance as the quartet of women returned to Fishman Island.

OOOOOOO

In another place, the other Cipher Pol agents also continued to watch events as best they could. Which, for Organizer, wasn’t all that much. He lacked Kenbunshoku, and, hidden as he was with the Mushi Jammer, had no way of interacting with events beyond his small hiding place. That was fine by him, though. Now that he had set things in motion, Organizer knew his part in this operation was done until it came time for the team to exfiltrate.

CP-4, the unnamed, unemotional watcher, did what he had been trained to believe was his sole purpose in life since he was a toddler: he watched and made mental notes. Currently, he was watching the battle between Pekoms and a group of local royal guards. He had followed Smoothie’s orders via Tamago, and he and half of the remaining Big Mom pirates were rampaging across the island.

This was also the only action the CP-4 agent could view at present. He wasn’t anywhere near mobile enough to follow Sanji and Smoothie’s duels, and Franky had broken contact with both the agent and Tamago back on the docks. Now, as he watched, a new variable was added to this heretofore straightforward aspect of the conflict the Cipher Pol agents had instigated between the two pirate crews. Specifically, he watched seventy more fishmen swarm down from on high, led by who the agent knew was King Neptune on his steed, the whale Hoe, and the Minister of the Right.

“Your rampage has gone far enough, pirate! Men, capture or incapacitate his crewmembers, and get your injured fellows out of there, Jamon,” Neptune ordered, as he concentrated. Although out of practice, Neptune had been a warrior in his days that had swum the seven seas, and now he charged forward and down towards Pekoms fearlessly.

“Yes, Your Majesty!” his men roared, spreading out as they came on.

“Gao, so, you lot are part of this just like Commander Smoothie thought. You really think your tiny island can stand against Big Mom, grrr!?” Pekoms growled, one fist flashing up to deflect the king’s trident.

The weight of it, though, took him aback, and he stumbled back. Neptune was on the large side for his race and merfolk, fishman or merman, were normally far stronger than humans could be. Or even whatever Pekoms was. Neptune’s staff, therefore, wasn’t the gold it looked like, but rather gold wrapped around solid osmium.

Or rather, what Earth would call osmium, one of the heaviest substances known to Man. On the Blue Planet, however, it was called Supremium, a name that Franky, at least, would appreciate. It was very, VERY rare, and could only be found on the ocean floor in several small, scattered areas, but the trident had been in Neptune’s family for generations.

It worked to cause Pekoms to stumble, opening him up to a sweeping blow from Hoe’s tail as the whale turned, Neptune launching himself off Hoe’s back to land nearby, standing upright on his tail. The two advanced as one, spreading out, coordinating in a way that spoke of long years of training together, with no verbal orders needed.

Pekoms went flying backward, grunting at the impact, but a turtle shell burst from his back as he hit the ground, letting him roll upright for a moment before he charged himself forward. “Come on then! You won’t be the first king I’ve crushed in Mama’s name, grr!”

While that fight was going on, Agent Eyes watched from afar. He had situated himself on the roof of a clothing store, the Criminal Brand store, ironically, to monitor the whole island and beyond, into the waters within the bubble containing the island with his Kenbunshoku.

Eyes could feel the fight between Pekoms and Neptune. He could follow the battle between Smoothie and Sanji, although there, he was very careful, not pressing in hard enough for Smoothie to notice him in turn. That battle was going badly for Sanji, but the man refused to stay down and led Smoothie further away from where the other Big Mom Pirates were, even Tamago. The Long Leg Zoan was now furiously blitzing towards where Franky and another group of the royal army were, barely a few blocks away from where Pekoms was.

Tamago had spotted them from where he was flying above the island in his second form. Tamago now resembled a young chick bursting out of its egg, complete with wings, which allowed him to fly. His glasses and his teacup hat were still both gone, of course, not being part of his Tama Tama no Mi powers, but this form was faster, stronger, and calling upon it purposefully… by cutting his own throat to induce the change… had also healed Tamago’s nearly crippled leg from his battle with Franky.

The Big Mom Pirate Knight level combatant didn’t notice that several of the fishmen floating in the sky via hover bobbles didn’t carry weapons. Instead, they carried signs of some kind, forming a message between them. Now, as Tamago zoomed down towards Franky, the battle changed. As Agent Eyes ‘watched’ through his Kenbunshoku, one of the Everlasting Resolve’s turret-based guns fired.

This was Franky’s Cola Cannon, the equivalent of a slightly smaller Gaon Cannon that, in another dimension, that world’s Straw Hats would have on their ship. It had seen some action in the War of the Best, and now it spoke in anger once more, the blast catching Tamago in the air.

Tamago’s new form didn’t give him any added durability, and as he hadn’t been using his Kenbunshoku at the time, the blast hurled him out of the air. It didn’t hurt all that much, but it sent him flying well away from Franky and the men with him. Freed now, Franky turned and raced on through the air towards Eve.

Growling, Tamago pushed himself out of the rubble of some kind of eatery, pushing a bit of fishcake off his face. “Well, that was irritating, peep. What kind of weapon is that? I didn’t see a shell or anything; it seemed like pure energy, but not light or plasma, peep. I also didn't expect a gun like that to be so accurate, or for their ship to become part of this battle at all, peep. I suppose the reports of the Straw Hats having more members than their bounty posters suggest are accurate, peep. Still, there’s an easy way to deal with it, peep. I can just sink the blasted thing, peep!”

With that, Tamago was in the air once more, racing not towards Franky this time, but towards the Straw Hat ship. It, however, was moving already, shifting away from the docks despite having no visible crewmember.

As the Gaon Cannon fired again and Tamago dodged, Eyes frowned in puzzlement, concentrating as best he could on that ship. There was something highly unusual. It felt… off to his Kenbunshoku. Eyes had never felt anything like it, and he should have been able to sense the minds of whatever crewmen were still aboard. However, he couldn’t. There was just that odd feeling, and… nothing else. Very strange.

Cutting along the shore of the coral-made island, the Everlasting Resolve moved towards Franky, cutting down the distance between them, even if it forced Franky to change his course to match. As he did, Tamago made for the ship again, but the Everlasting Resolve opened up with its secondary guns, hitting Tamago with several of them as he used his Busoshoku to defend himself.

The impacts still battered him backward until he started to use Geppo to cancel out the momentum of the strikes, but it slowed him down further. Before he could close on the ship, Franky was there.

“SUUUPERRRR!” Franky bellowed as he jumped down onto Eve’s deck. “Eve, concentrate on reloading the guns. You four, get into the conning tower and the kitchen. You’ll find a separate fridge there, the smaller one. Grab every Cola bottle within it and bring it out. Then one of you take the wheel, and get us further out to the ocean.”

“Aye, aye, Franky,” Eve whispered from nearby, her lips, painted a deep violet for some reason Franky refused to think about right now, appearing on the wall of the Gaon cannon for a second. “Just remember, with people aboard, I can’t do much.”

“I’ll keep them on the main deck and in the conning tower. You just take care of the secondaries, aiming the Gaon Cannon and the engine room.”

“Gotcha. And can I say that I love how you put in that bypass so I can switch to coal power quicker when the cap’n’s not around?” Eve whispered once more, before the lips disappeared with a blink as a fishman poked his head out from the hatch leading into the bridge.

He tossed out several bottles of cola, which Franky grabbed. “We’ve got two more armfuls of that stuff coming out soon, but, but where did the helmsman go? He wasn’t here when we—”

“Don’t mind,” Franky interjected, opening the door into the aft turret, where he began to plug in some of the bottles. We’re gonna need to fill up the internal cola reserves while we’re here. Amazon Lily doesn’t have enough cola to fill it up, and we hadn’t thought of it before this, but maybe Fishman Island does. Their stuff is weaker than surface soda, but still. “Just put it out of your head, my guy. It won’t be super of you to question things.”

“But—”

Without looking, Franky raised his repaired hand to point at the royal guardsman. That was, essentially, pointing the one remaining weapon in that arm he’d been able to cannibalize together. It didn’t have much ammo, and his arm looked more like a scrapper’s post-modern sculpture of an arm than anything else, and Franky couldn’t move his fingers or shift his arm from the elbow, but it still worked as a threat, if nothing else. “What did I just say? Wouldn’t… be... super…”

“Gulp, er, right,” the man whimpered, backing away rapidly.

At that moment, Tamago came in once more, lashing out with Rankyaku-like attacks from mid-range, dozens of them in an eyeblink. Coming in from an angle, the strikes hammered into the ship all across its port side and along its main deck, but thanks to the Adam Wood, did nothing. In return, a few of the secondary guns, those that could range on him, fired, forcing Tamago to dodge, which he did, his Viscount Hiyoko form letting him do so easily now that he was used to them.

The Gaon Cannon fired again, and this time, Hiyoko dodged, only to run into a few pellets from the secondary guns. “YES, that’s the way!” Franky shouted, grabbing two bottles of cola himself, while a guardsman took over pumping cola into the aft turret. Drinking quickly, Franky readied himself for battle once more.

Tamago, seemingly only a little battered by the secondaries, closed again.

Eyes kept his attention on that fight for a moment, not because of the actual action, but because of the ongoing oddity that was the Everlasting Resolve to his senses. There was still some underlying presence there, something different from the minds of the locals and Franky where they stood aboard it. This feeling was very unusual, and Eyes wanted to make a note of it as much as possible before letting his attention wander to everything going on all at once.

Meanwhile, by the docks, Agent Orange remained watching the water around where the Smooth Sailing had sunk. Here, as per their orders, half of the Big Mom Pirates remained, diving down into the sunk ship, hefting up the various bags of sweets to get them out of the water.

Agent Orange understood why: their fear of Big Mom. In his opinion, it was a perfectly understandable fear. Big Mom was capricious and narcissistic in the extreme, and anything to do with food, and worse, depriving her of food, was a very easy way to get yourself killed in all manner of horrible ways.

However, that meant they were in the way of the secondary objective of this part of the operation: stealing an object that was within that hold somewhere.

For several minutes, Agent Orange, a member of CP8, his group’s specialty was in surveillance of specific targets and the collection of specific items. Much like Agent Green, he was having trouble reconciling his long-term indoctrination and the importance of a side objective with his current orders to ensure no sign of World Government Involvement could be discovered.

After a few moments, Orange saw more fishmen arrive in the water.

This group was one of a few dozen small, five-sized-person-strong groups that Ikaros had sent around the main bottle as the battle around the Fishman District began. That main battle wasn’t exactly going well for the New Fishman Pirates. Jinbe wasn't named the Knight of the Sea for nothing, and only the energy steroids were keeping Hody Jones and his officers in the fight. Indeed, many of the other New Fishman Pirates had taken to using the pills too, three or four pills at a time, to enhance their strength or heal from the disastrous wounds.

That meant they were still in the fight and, thankfully, they still had the numbers advantage against the Army that had been sent out after them. This allowed groups like this one to bypass the battle and join their fellows on Fishman Island itself.

There was no big plan behind this move. No desire to try and peel off troops from the battle the rest of the New Fishman Pirates were dealing with. No, Ikaros, like his boss, was more of a nihilist than anything else. The harder the main battle went against them, the more Ikaros wanted to make certain the normal inhabitants of Fishman Island felt their fury and remembered the hatred that had spawned it against humans.

Or that had been the plan, anyway. Jean’s group had been entirely wiped out by this point. Yet, with the Big Mom Pirates busy with salvage and, worse, in the water, the small group of reinforcements hit them like a hammer.

Seeing still more of the Big Mom Pirates dying in the water even as they made the NFP bleed, Orange, in a way Green could not, decided the outcome far outweighed the risks. Moving forward from his hiding place among two wrecked bubble coating depots, he grabbed up twin daggers from a fishman corpse, the blades made of sharpened coral, wickedly barbed. With local weapons in hand, he slid into the water well away from the current center of the battle.

There, he pulled on a mask that covered his face, with a small rebreather set into the mouth area. With that in his mouth, Orange, a typical human in appearance, complete with an outfit that made him look like a random sailor, moved forward slowly.

Ahead of him, one pirate had gotten lucky, stabbing a hard finger into a fishman’s leftmost gill. As the fishman gagged and screamed, the pirate’s dirk came up, stabbing into his side. The fishman wasn’t a type that had any natural armor, and despite his greater strength letting him bat the man away through the water like he weighed next to nothing, he began to scream as he flailed at the dirk stuck in his side.

Before the man could recover, Orange closed behind him, stabbing him neatly in the neck from behind. He barely had time to scream, bubbles bursting from his mouth into the water around them, before he died, and Orange moved on, using his corpse to shield himself from being seen by a few other fighters.

The next two combatants on this side of the recently sunk pirate vessel were equally matched. One human was using his greater experience and reaction time to avoid the blows from a much stronger fishman. The fishman wielded a spear, the human pirate a saber.

Unseen by either, the overall battle was going against the Big Mom Pirates. The New World veterans were barely holding their own in a battle on the other side of the vessel and in another, smaller clump directly above the wreck. This group was also blocking the easiest access into the ship via the open main hatch into the hold and was being reinforced by three more pirates as Orange released his first victim’s corpse to float upwards in the water.

That was fine by Orange. The wreck blocked them from seeing him, although he did make a note that there might still be a few pirates within the sunken vessel. If I had Kenbunshoku, I’d be able to tell how many, but I can’t.

Both fishman and slightly more skilled human died within seconds of one another as Orange rose up out of the water behind where the two were locked in combat. His dagger stabbed in, severing the fishman’s spine just above the small of his back as his other hand lashed out, grabbing the human’s leg and dragging him further down into the water. It was quite shallow here in comparison to elsewhere even within the bubble, but with that simple downward jerk, the pirate panicked, trying to break free and reach the surface.

Before he could, Orange slid his dagger, whipped clean of fishman blood by the water all around them, into his kidneys. Like the fishman, the human released a howl into the water, unheard by any, even the combatants in the battle going on above the ship, as busy as they were with their own fight.

Another two pirates died in quick succession, one screaming as a fishman bit off his arm, the other stabbed through by a spear, even as he drove his own sword into his killer’s eye. Two more pirates came out of the hold, joining the fight at that point, but as many of the humans tried to make for the surface, the fishmen didn’t let them, pushing aside others and targeting those humans specifically.

As the fishmen dealt with the pirates, the agent moved back down through the water, until he reached the original hole in the hull, where the bomb had shattered its keel. There, Orange entered, only to come face-to-face with another swimming pirate. Even as the pirate raised his sword, Orange darted in, killing him swiftly, his dagger stabbing straight up through his chin and into his brain.

Then he was past, swimming around the spasming corpse and the blood that gushed out of it, mentally making a note that he’d have to find some clothing to change into afterward. The water meant the blood didn’t really get on his clothing, but how wet it was would be a tell.

Now inside the vessel, Orange quickly began searching for what their spies told him the Smooth Sailing had aboard, purchased at its last stop before coming to Fishman Island. Eventually, in Smoothie's personal quarters, he found it. A small locked box, the size of one of Smoothie’s fists. Opening it with an adroit finger, Orange breathed in a sigh of accomplishment.

There, nestled on a cushion of velvet, was a Devil Fruit. It was shaped like a dragon fruit, but the color was wrong: a deep blue background with light green and red dots across its surface. The type was unknown, though Orange knew it probably wasn't a food-based type, or it would have been sent back to Totto Land instantly. Still, the Big Mom Pirates had made exceptions to that general rule before, and the World Government had no desire to let any pirate crew add another Devil Fruit to their power.

Closing the box, Orange put it under one arm and headed out the way he had come. He was exiting the ship once more, only to stop in surprise as a trident nearly took him in the face.

The NFP fishmen had finished off the Big Mom Pirates, or forced them to retreat out of the water. There were four of them remaining now, and all of them circled Orange like a pack of sharks.

Blast it all, I was so close! Orange hissed in annoyance under his breath mask as the NFP attacked, uncaring that his appearance didn’t match the pirates they had been fighting. One of Orange’s daggers shattered from a strike from one trident even as he successfully redirected the thrust, while another almost impaled his leg. A sword came for his head, and Orange dodged, forced to drop his prize as he pulled out his second dagger.

Its lock destroyed when he opened it earlier, the box’s top flopped off as Orange fought off the mermen. He found his strength nowhere near enough to match them, and he was trapped in an enclosed space that cut down on his durability. As he fought, the Devil Fruit sank like a stone, the curse upon the fruits and those who used them activating quickly. Soon it hit the crushed coral sand below the docks, and then began rolling out to sea, while Orange fought for his life, cursing his own actions.

OOOOOOO

For nearly thirty minutes, the group around and on the royal eel had remained silent after hanging up the call with Robin as it raced through the waterways. Now it was panting heavily now from its exertion, yet the royal eel kept going doggedly, and now, the eel and the guards were close enough to be sighted in turn by their quarry. Shouts of consternation could not be heard over that distance, but Luffy watched as the giant tiger blowfish turned, releasing the rope it’d been carrying, pulling the Flying Dutchman along.

The Flying Dutchman, which for some reason was centered within an air bubble, began to settle down towards the bottom. Soon nearly three dozen fishmen and even a few mermen roared out from the ship towards them, exiting the bubble and coming their way.

“Really?” Fukaboshi muttered, staring. “That’s it? I’d feared air cannons, or a much larger crew. Are we being underestimated?”

“Doesn’t freaking matter. They’re meat, and we’ve got shit to look into.” Luffy stepped towards the front of the bubble on the eel's back, looking up at the large prince to one side. Funny how I’ve already gotten used to how much larger mermen and fishmen can be than normal people. Hell, he’s taller than Whitebeard, but by this point I just don’t notice. “Ready?”

Internally thinking that there really was no way to ready oneself for what was about to happen, Fukaboshi nodded grimly, while Manboshi gripped the reins of the eel tighter in his hands. His people fell back and away on the prince’s wave, forming up behind the eel for a second.

An eyeblink later, Luffy released his control of his Haoshoku. The released willpower roared out from his body, a contained explosion of power, creating a tremor in the water as if a localized earthquake had just hit, a visible wave going out from his position in every direction.

Despite the warning, several of the guards behind Luffy found their consciousness completely overwhelmed by Luffy’s willpower. Their eyes rolled up in their heads, slumping in place and starting to float upwards only to be grabbed by their fellows, who were gasping, their faces and bodies showing the strain. Even the two princes were rattled, with Manboshi needing to bite his lip to keep himself awake, while Fukaboshi stopped swimming for a moment, losing his position in the formation as he drifted down towards the ocean floor.

That was simply the back blast of Luffy’s attention. All of the pirates coming towards them fell unconscious, slumping forward, shouts ending mid-cry, weapons falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. Some, still retaining their weapons and heavier than the others, slumped down towards the ocean floor. Others started to float upwards, their body’s buoyancy dragging them towards the surface far, far above the battlefield.

Luffy’s range with this technique was so wide that it also hit the Flying Dutchman, and most of its crew fell unconscious. The giant anglerfish that seemed to be producing light for Wadatsumi and the ship he carried in his other hand instantly went belly up, its animal consciousness completely subsumed by Luffy’s will. Even Wadatsumi staggered, blinking several times and raising one hand to his head, moaning quietly.

The only one immune to it to the level Fukaboshi had shown was Decken, who simply staggered a little. He then set his many feet, staring out as the eel and the troopers surged forward once more, his arms falling from their normal crossed position, his fingers twitching.

“W, what the hell!? Get up, all of you, I think!” he shouted, kicking some of his men, but failing to rouse them. “Get up I say, you useless sacks of flotsam, I think! Wadatsumi, deal with them! They’re trying to get in the way of my love for Shirahoshi, I think! It’s never going to happen! She will be my bride, my gorgeous jewel, I think!”

While too far away just yet to make out the words of the bullhead shark fishman, the effect was immediate. Wadatsumi stopped shaking his head, raising a giant fist as he took a ponderous step towards the attackers.

“I’ll deal with the giant. You all deal with Decken and whoever he’s kicking awake over there,” Luffy ordered.

“Do so, but try not to kill him. Wadatsumi is actually young for his specific fishman type, the equivalent of a preteen. He’s just fallen into bad company,” Fukaboshi requested, wondering idly how Luffy was going to deal with the death pressure down here. A normal human would be crushed like a can in barely a few seconds without the protective barrier of a bubble coating.

The answer was by ignoring it. Luffy was many things. Normal was distinctly not one of them.

Luffy took a deep breath, then pushed himself up and out of the bubble, ignoring the feeling of his body changing as she did, kicking out strongly toward the giant. She easily rolled away from the fist, grabbing onto the giant’s forearm, letting it pull her upward and back towards Wadatsumi’s upper body for a second, before swimming forward strongly.

The giant stumbled back, waving his other hand at Luffy, but to her, it might as well have been moving in slo-mo. Luffy ducked around it, while behind him, Fukaboshi and Manboshi led their troops onto the deck of the Flying Dutchman.

Decken had been able to rouse five crewmen quickly, but they were still groggy, and no real match for the Royal Guard at the best of times. Each of them found themselves facing six or more of the platoons that had come out with Luffy and the princes, while the two princes went after Decken himself.

“You, why do you stand in the way of true love, brothers-in-law? Ah, it is a travesty, I think!” Decken wielded two gigantic axes. He moved surprisingly quickly, attacking the two mermen when they came through his ship’s bubble before they could recover. Lashing out at both of them, he forced Manboshi back with an adroit twist of his wrist and a backward slash that nearly caught the younger man as he scrambled back.

“Who the hell are you calling brother-in-law!?” Fukaboshi roared, pushing forward with the raw strength of his tail. His trident, a smaller version of the one his father used, was coated with a bit of Busoshoku and smashed into the shaft of his second axe, shattering it. Fukaboshi bulldozed in, the butt end of the trident coming up in a wicked arc to crash into Decken’s chin. Decken stumbled back, spitting out a tooth, then ducked under a follow-on blow from Fukaboshi, bringing his one remaining axe around, but Manboshi hooked it with his twin swords just as Luffy got close to Wadatsumi’s face.

Busoshoku covering her arm, Luffy rammed her fist into the center of Wadatsumi’s head, causing him to stumble, crying out in pain so loudly that it hurt Luffy’s eardrums even through the water. That didn’t stop her attack, though, and more blows rained down, hitting the exact same point with all the power of a teeny tiny meteor. Or at least, tiny in relation to the giant.

After a fourth strike, Wadatsumi fell to his knees, his hands waving at Luffy, trying to squish her, but too slowly. Luffy rolled forward and away from them, then, when the hands shifted up and over Wadatsumi’s head in a wide arc, ducked in between his fingers, kicking out at the same spot as before. Once more, her foot, coated with Busoshoku, hit with far more force than it should have, and Wadatsumi stumbled still further forward, one hand going down to the ocean floor, his other hand still trying to crab at Luffy.

Again, Luffy was just too fast. Wadatsumi’s own hand smacked into the giant fishman’s face for a second, and then Luffy’s fist again punched through an opening between two of his fingers into his forehead. The continued impacts to his head, rattling the brain within, did what Luffy intended. Three more strikes, and Wadatsumi’s head rolled up into his head as he slumped unconscious.

Che, I should’ve done that in at least half as many strikes. Guess this guy’s head is more durable than it looks, Luffy lamented, before swimming back towards the eel, grabbing it and pushing her head into the bubble. There, she breathed in deeply, a grimace of annoyance crossing her face. “Next time, remember to bring along a damn bubble thing,” she muttered. Using the water-equivalent of Geppo really takes it out of you in terms of your cardio.

She looked up as Fukaboshi appeared alongside the eel, where it was treading water near the Flying Dutchman. “Well done. Fighting Wadatsumi would’ve been far more trouble without you around, to say nothing of this whole mission,” he congratulated Luffy, shaking his head at how durable this strange human, with his even stranger transformation, was.

“I take it you’ve got Decken in custody or ready for a pine box?” Luffy asked.

“Pine box?”

“Euphemism, means he’s dead and ready to be buried,” Luffy groaned, rolling her eyes at herself for thinking a merman would get that phrase.

“Ah, well, no, he’s unconscious and will stand trial. He isn’t entirely whole. I disliked being called ‘brother-in-law’ intensely and decided he needed to pay for it with a few of his limbs. But they have tourniquets on them, and Manboshi tossed him out into the water once we fit him with a breathing bubble. Manboshi wanted to see what was in the Flying Dutchman’s holds. He can rarely go on a treasure hunt, no matter how minor,” Fukaboshi chuckled, then sighed.

“Honestly, this was quite anticlimactic. Decken has been causing trouble for our family for more than a decade now, but once we actually brought him to battle, he was no match for me and Manboshi.”

“EH, it’s often that way with bandits. Especially those without any real ambition. Just like your Hody guy, Decken was a very big frog at the bottom of a small well,” Luffy answered, pushing herself upright, then looking at the Prince seriously. “Now, how fast can we get back?”

“I’m going to leave most of our men here with Manboshi, so as soon as you can make certain that the giant fellow isn’t going to wake up. If that can be accomplished, keeping Decken and his crew under wraps is simple enough, as seawater is doing his normal job on Devil Fruit users. Well, Devil Fruit users other than yourself, I suppose.” The older prince snorted, his lips working just a little bit. “I’ve already picked out two of my men, fellow mermen who have won rewards in the past for their speed. Between the two of them and myself, we will carry you back as fast as we can.”

“In that case, give me a few minutes to pound Wadatsumi’s brain box a little more, and then we can go,” Luffy said, nodding firmly.

OOOOOOO

Hody Jones groaned as he was hurled backwards with such force that he crashed into and through a building in Fishman District. Then another, then another. Then a fourth. The impacts to his back quickly blended together at that point, and Hody gritted his teeth to try and stay conscious until his flight stopped and he found himself rolling along the bottom of the ocean floor. Woozily looking around, Hody found that he had been smashed into and through the whole Fishman district from one end to the other.

Snarling, Hody grabbed at a small pouch at his belt, stuffing still more of the energy steroid pills into his mouth. Surging to his feet, Hody swayed in place as he waited for the increase in power. Above him, he saw Hyouzou, who had also taken some energy steroids, attacking both Jinbe and several nearby guardsmen, along with a few of his own troops. For some reason, alcohol and the energy steroids didn’t seem to mix well, and Hyouzou had simply gone crazy, cutting anything that entered his range.

However, he wasn’t actually hurting Jinbe, not all that much anyway. A few cuts had appeared on Jinbe’s body here and there, but the large whale shark fishman was ignoring them. A single blow lashed out, forcing Hyouzou to duck and weave through it, and Hody heard Jinbe sigh. “It’s like facing a swordsman paired with a master of the Drunken Fist style. Rather annoying,” even as he lashed out with another blow, this one from Fishman Karate rather than a simple normal punch.

The water around Jinbe’s outstretched fist reverberated, creating a shockwave that shattered several of Hyouzou’s swords and hurling him sideways, although the drunkard seemed to recover quickly.

As he felt the stirring power of the energy steroids he'd just taken building within him, Hody took a second to look away from Jinbe, staring out around him. The battle had spread farther than he could see without binoculars, yet it was obvious that it wasn’t going his crew’s way. While the Royal Guard were, individually, nothing to write home about, they worked far better in smaller groups than his own troops. Jinbe had also wiped out a significant chunk of his people in the first few moments of the engagement.

Ryuboshi was also doing a very good job of keeping an eye on the whole battle, something Hody had tried to disrupt moments before he took his impromptu journey through the Fishman District. Now, Hody could see Ryuboshi darting into one particular fight around Ikaros. The second prince’s sword lashed out, catching the multi-armed squid fishman’s spears, then darting down and into Ikaros’ foot, causing him to squeal in pain as blood burst from the cut.

Ryuboshi then darted away, gaining distance, forcing Icarus to try and chase after him, only to be hit from behind by one of the men he’d been attacking. He turned, lashing out with his spears, killing four royal guards around him, but opening himself up to Ryuboshi again, who had pushed around and come back in, lashing out not at Icarus’s body, but at his wrist. His sword sent a cutting wave of water through the water around them, removing one of Ikaros’ hands entirely in a welter of blood that rapidly spread in the water to join the thousands of other such sprays going on everywhere.

“Biyorikogun!” Dosun roared nearby, and he turned in that direction to see several Royal guardsmen being flattened by Dosun, who then roared and brought up his hammer to strike at Aladine, Jinbe’s second in command. Aladine ducked under the blow though, and the two of them exchanged several strikes for a few seconds before Aladine’s sword cut across Dosun’s throat, opening it up from one end to the other.

“Unfortunately for you lot, we’re not going out of our way to take prisoners today,” the New World veteran said coldly, darting up and over the dying officer. As he did, he stabbed downward, having seen the healing powers the energy steroid could give someone, even someone dying. His blade, which gleamed black with some strange energy Hody had never seen before, punched straight through Dosun’s head from the back.

“Damn you!” Hody roared, raging in that direction, causing Aladine’s eyes to widen as he sent several thousand darts of water through the water so fast, they created super cavitation waves of force.

Aladine brought up his sword, trying to call on his Busoshoku to defend his whole body, but while he was a New World veteran, that didn’t automatically mean he was all that capable with it. While his arms and chest tanked several hits, his tail had several small chunks gouged out of it, and his sword was smashed out of his hand. The next second, Hody’s fist crashed into Aladine’s chest, sending him down to crash into a bit of coral beneath them, shattering the millennia-old coral in an instant.

Groaning, Aladine pushed himself up out of the rubble, while Hody raised his foot to hammer down a blow that would cave in the man’s skull, only to have his arm grabbed from behind, and then for his eyes to widen as he was hurled through the water by an overhand throw from Jinbe. Hody crashed into the ground, but rolled as Jinbe landed, a punch slamming into the ocean floor where he had just been, kicking up and into the water, racing upwards, then whirling around and down, a purloined trident in his hand, which he thrust down so fast it created a large shockwave in the water.

Jinbe met him, swimming strongly upwards as well, batting aside the trident and deadening the shockwave with one hand, his other coming up in a palm strike that Hody dodged before lashing out with a blow of his own that Jinbe blocked with his forearm.

“Why?! Why, damn you!? You should hate the humans as much as we do. You should want to conquer them, to turn them into slaves instead! You were on Fisher Tiger’s Crew. You know what they’ve done to us!”

“You speak in generalities a lot, but I have yet to hear what the humans have done to you personally,” Jinbe retorted. “I don’t know if you’ve ever actually left Fishman Island, Jinbe. Is this all simply inherited hatred for you?”

“What!? You think that makes it better? You think that because I haven’t personally suffered my hatred is less!? It is the humans’ fault that we live in squalor in this district! It is the humans’ fault that our heroes keep dying! It is the humans’ fault for the slavery, for everything! Hate the humans!” Hody roared, his voice carrying across the whole battlefield through the water. “If you die today, fling your hatred into their teeth, make it a curse upon them all!”

To this, Jinbe was unmoved. “The problems between merfolk and fishmen did not originate from humans. Moreover, while I will admit to have seen a lot of horrific things aboard Fisher Tiger’s ship, falling into the same evil, trying to do unto the humans what they have done to us, that is not the way forward,” Jinbe argued, smacking the next blow aside.

Hody caught his wrist and hammered two blows into Jinbe’s head, which caused him to grunt a bit but barely shifted his position in the water, before an elbow strike caught Hody in the center of his chest, nearly doubling him over. “That is not what Otohime-sama would’ve wanted. That is not what Fisher Tiger would’ve wanted. Or he would not have given his life to help defend humans from other humans?”

“You dare! You dare speak such atrocity, such blasphemy?! You will never defeat us. You do not know our strength, our hatred!” Hody roared back, blocking a blow from Jinbe, then backing away, rapidly dumping an entire mouthful of energy steroids into his mouth. He howled as the power ran through him, his eyes turning red, his skin turning even whiter, as he bulked up even larger than before, now dwarfing Jinbe by at least four feet. “I’m going to bury you here! Bury you and the whole kingdom!”

“More and more you show yourself to be a fool. I said it once. Your power is stolen, not earned, not trained. And it is nothing to me, let alone to the true powers in the world out there.” Jinbe cocked his fist back, the water around them shifting, swirling and evening as he slowly moved his wrist in a circle. “It is time to end this.”

OOOOOOO

Even as that fight started to reach its crescendo, the battles occurring across Fishman Island continued. King Neptune and his forces continued to fight Pekoms on the shore of the island, while Eve moved in the open ocean around the island within the bubble, Tamago swooping in and around the ship, annoyed that his long-range attacks weren’t doing anything, and unable to close in thanks to several of the fishmen having taken to the water around the ship. There, they concentrated on defense, creating geysers of water around the ship whenever he tried.

That kind of thing wouldn’t be enough to stop Tamago on its own, but as a Devil Fruit user, seawater would cause his body to become paralyzed for a short time. Which, given Franky’s skill and the fire of the ship, might be enough to knock him out of the air. Tamago knew that would be the end of him, and his Rankyaku couldn’t punch through the dense geysers of water long enough to get through. He was getting more frustrated as he couldn’t close and finish the fight as he should have been able to and his control of his Kenbunshoku was slipping as he grew angrier.

Many of the regular crewmen of the Big Mom Pirates had been dealt with by the locals at this point. While monsters like Tamago and Pekoms were well above the level of the regular guardsmen, the veterans of the New World were still outnumbered and weren’t strong enough to fight the merfolk on an even footing. Thus, besides Pekoms, there were only four other crewmen still fighting, which included, though Pekoms didn’t know it, the men he’d left behind at the docks. All of whom had been wiped out by the second wave of fishmen bare a handful already wounded, who had been moved into several separate houses near the coating docks.

If Smoothie had been free to influence events, that would’ve been different. Her powers could have allowed her men to power up and become strong enough to fight the mermen on an even footing. But Sanji, and his little garum trick, had completely grabbed her attention, to the point she was concentrating solely on destroying Sanji.

Meanwhile, Pekoms was finding his Turtle Zoan defenses tested by the king. Not to the point where he was in danger of being defeated, but he was certainly not able to force the king back. Not with Hoe there, and the two of them working as such a well-oiled unit. Whenever he got through to Hoe, Neptune would use Fishman Karate moves to hammer him away. Whenever Pekoms tried to get through Neptune’s range, his trident and size keeping Pekoms at bay, Hoe’s tail would slam into him from the side. Pekoms wasn’t fast enough to dodge, and his Kenbunshoku ability was swamped by speedy opponents like this, plus the number of guards and even civilians who charged forward to try and help their king; such was their love for the royal family.

Thus, when the trio of pirates and the young princess came through the island’s outer gate, only the trailing Agent Green was aware of it. He watched for a few moments, then darted away, intent on entering from another angle and making physical contact with one of his fellows.

Coming through the outer gate put the quartet closest to the battle between Tamago, Franky and the guards helping him and Eve. However, they were close enough for Sandersonia to sense what was going on deeper into the island. After spending a few minutes to tell the others that Robin’s concerns were accurate, she added, “Neptune seems to be facing against one of the Big Mom Officers. The other one’s being kept at bay for now but I don’t know for how long.”

Robin nodded, humming thoughtfully. “Alright. I will leave you all here and join the battle against the fellow who looks like a chick breaking out of an egg.” I wish I had gotten any of their names before this, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much. “Shirahoshi, you should use your speed to get Sandersonia and Vivi to the shore as fast as possible. Between you three, I trust you can both turn the battle going on there against the officer there and help elsewhere.”

“What about Sanji? And how are you going to get over there? With all the Rankyaku and everything being tossed around, closing with Eve is going to be tough,” Vivi questioned, while Sandersonia looked at Shirahoshi speculatively.

At nearly fifteen feet, she wasn’t used to feeling small or considering herself ‘carryable’ but Shirahoshi was forty feet tall, tail to head, so maybe? Shirahoshi seemed to think so, as she was already nodding firmly at Robin’s words, her tail twitching back and forth in preparation for charging off. She even looked back at Sandersonia, and despite her fear, she nodded firmly, raising her arms out of the water.

As Sandersonia hopped forward onto Shirahoshi’s upstretched hands, Robin smirked just a bit. She crossed her arms, whispering, “Cien Fleur, Wings!” Hundreds of arms sprouted out of her back, forming two bizarre-looking wings for a moment. “I think I can manage,” she said, as those wings blackened with Busoshoku, the same covering more of her body as she rocketed up and out of the bubble on the eel-bus’s back.

For a moment, the others just stared after her, and then Sandersonia smirked. “Well, that’s going to be a hard act to follow, but let’s see what we can do, hmmm, Sand Princess?”

“Indeed,” Vivi agreed, hopping over to lightly land on Sandersonia’s lap, where she was being held out of the water by Shirahoshi’s arms. “Ready, Shirahoshi?”

Without a word, Shirahoshi’s tail moved, and they rocketed away, quickly leaving the eel behind them to continue on its course alone.

End Chapter

I wanted to put in Luffy’s return to the island in this chapter, but then I realized I needed to show Sandersonia and Robin’s training up to this point. What better way than facing two Knight-level combatants? And really, once Luffy returns to the island, everything’s gonna end reeallllly quickly. Even Smoothie, who really hasn’t yet shown her DF power to its fullest, isn’t going to be able to hang with Luffy for long. Indeed, given the setting, Jinbe would be more than a match for her too. Not if she was backed by her crew, but as it is?

Anyway, there’s that, and the fact I only had five days or so to work on this. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this chapter.