A Systematic Tale: The Pirate! 38 (Patreon)

Chapter 38:

Mont Blanc Cricket's plywood castle shrank behind them until its painted towers went flat against the green of Jaya, and even Masira's enormous waving arms were only a speck on the beach. 

The old man himself hadn't waved. He had stood with his arms crossed and his chin up, the way a man stands when he refuses to be seen crying. Lucy had waved back at him with both hands until Nami told her she was going to dislocate something.

Now the Black Pearl was at sea again, and for once she wasn't happy about it. Cricket's wooden wings jutted from her flanks like a pair of oars someone had nailed on sideways, and the bolted tail fin knocked against her stern with every swell. Every few minutes a long, aggrieved groan traveled up through her timbers. 

William had decided it wasn't a structural complaint but a personal one. She had agreed to the holes. She had not agreed to like them.

"I know," William murmured, laying a hand on the railing as he passed. "It's only until the sky. Then we'll take them out and patch you up."

The railing warmed under his palm, and the groan softened into something closer to a sigh.

At the helm, Nami had the Log Pose strapped to one wrist, its needle still pointing stubbornly at the sky. That was no help at all when the stream they needed lay somewhere past the horizon. 

For that, she had the bird.

The South Bird was tied by one leg to the mainmast with a length of rope Lucy had insisted on knotting herself. The knot was enormous, structurally insane, and completely inescapable. 

The bird's head pointed due south with the rigid, quivering devotion of a compass needle. The rest of it was very clearly furious. "Jo-ri," it said. "Jo-ri. JO-RI."

"He says," Chopper translated, sitting cross-legged on the deck with his hat pushed back, "that he's a proud son of the southern forests and he won't be insulted by a—" He paused. "I don't think I should say the next part."

"Say it!" Lucy crouched in front of the bird with her chin in her hands, delighted. "What did he call me?"

Chopper giggled. "He called you a… a bald monkey with a hat."

Lucy gasped with joy. "I'm not bald! Look!" She swept off her straw hat and shook her head until her black hair flew in every direction. "See? Hair. Tons of it. You're the one who's all feathers and no brain, birdy."

The bird looked offended. "JO-RI!"

"He says you don't even know which way south is," Chopper translated again.

"I don't need to!" Lucy jabbed a finger at the bird's beak, which was pointing very determinedly past her left shoulder. "You do it for me. That's your whole job. You're like a giant feather arrow." She reached out and flicked the beak sideways. It snapped straight back to south with an audible click. She flicked it again. Click. "Shishishi! Chopper, look, it boings!"

Chopper sighed. "Lucy, stop, he's getting really upset—"

"Jo-ri jo-ri jo-ri—"

William walked over and crouched beside her where she lay on the deck, still giggling, her hat tipped over her eyes.

Lucy pushed the brim up and beamed at him upside down. "William! Come here, you have to see this, he does a thing—" She sat up, caught his wrist and tugged. "Flick his face. Go on. It's the best thing ever. He boings."

The bird gave William a look of profound betrayal in advance.

William smiled at her. He couldn't help it. Lucy delighted with something was one of the best sights in this world or his old one, and she was always delighted with something. But the smile came out soft and small, and he let her keep hold of his wrist.

"In a second," he said. "Lucy, there's something I need to tell you. About when Kuina and I went back into town."

He had meant to say it lightly. He didn't quite manage it.

Lucy had learned a great many things in the past few weeks. She had learned what kissing was for, and Haki, and how to wait when everything in her wanted to charge. She had learned that the storm in her chest could become a storm in the sky. And she had learned to read William. Nami read people carefully, adding up their faces like a ledger. Lucy read William the way she read weather—by feel, all at once, before she knew she was doing it.

So she saw it immediately. His ears had been perked and forward a moment ago. Now they tilted back and sank flat against his red hair. Behind him, his tails usually curled and flicked and wandered toward her on their own. Now both of them sank to the deck and lay still, only their tips twitching.

Her catboy only looked like that when something hurt.

The laughter went out of Lucy's face. She didn't let go of his wrist. If anything, she held it tighter, and the air around them grew faintly heavy, the way it did before the first drop of rain.

Behind them, the South Bird felt a shift in the wind it couldn't explain. It closed its beak and said nothing at all.

"Okay," Lucy said quietly. "Tell me."

So William told her. He told her everything that had happened in Mock Town, starting with why Kuina had wanted to go back there in the first place. He told her how the two of them had gone looking for Zoro and learned that he had turned down a place on Blackbeard’s crew. Blackbeard had knocked him unconscious and carried him off anyway.

Halfway through William’s explanation, Lucy went unusually silent. 

At the helm, Nami had been eavesdropping shamelessly as she steered. By the time William finished, she was gripping the wheel so hard her knuckles had gone white.

Nami's first instinct was to say serves him right.

The words were ready. She had been carrying them since Loguetown. She still saw Zoro turning his back on Lucy, who had died and come back in a single horrible afternoon, and walking away as if she were a debt he'd decided not to pay. 

Nami had called him a coward to his face. She'd called him worse to Tashigi. She had meant every word, and part of her still did.

But she also knew what Zoro had been before Lucy ever found him—Roronoa Zoro, the Pirate Hunter. He had made his living cutting down exactly the kind of scum Blackbeard collected. 

Whatever else he was, a deserter, an idiot, a drunk who smelled like a tavern floor, he had never been for sale.

Blackbeard had offered him a crew, a name, and a rematch with the woman who wore his dead friend's face. Zoro had tried to take his head off instead.

Nami respected that. She hated that she respected it. But I respect it all the same…

The wheel creaked under her grip, and Pearl let out a small, pained groan. 

Nami made herself loosen her fingers. “Sorry Pearl…” Nami still forgets her strength from time to time.

Nobody spoke. Chopper, Vivi, Robin, Kuina—one by one they all looked at Lucy.

Lucy hadn't moved from where she sat on the deck. Her hat had slipped low, and its brim threw her eyes into shadow. Sparks crawled over her shoulders and down her arms. 

The South Bird's feathers lifted on end, and Chopper's fur did the same. William stayed where he was beside her, one tail resting on the deck a few inches from her hand, close enough to reach but not touching. He had learned when to hold on and when to wait.

The silence stretched until even the wind seemed to hold off.

"Thanks," Lucy said at last. Her voice was quiet, which was strange enough to make everyone straighten. "William. Kuina. For going to check on him."

Kuina opened her mouth, probably to say she hadn't done it for Lucy, or for Zoro, or for anyone but herself. Then she closed it again. "…You're welcome."

"Blackbeard's not gonna break him." Lucy lifted her chin a little, though the brim still hid her eyes. "Zoro's stubborn. He's more stubborn than me. He'll get out."

Robin was the first to speak, and she chose her words with care. "Forgive me, Captain. I never knew him." She set the book in her hand down on the rail. "But I've known men like Teach. He doesn't keep his prisoners comfortable, and he doesn't keep them long. If this man was your friend—"

"We could go after them," Vivi said, stepping forward. "Pearl is faster than anything Blackbeard could be sailing. We'd catch them before nightfall. If he matters to you, Lucy, we'll help. All of us!"

Pearl's timbers hummed in agreement. Even with Cricket's ugly wings bolted to her sides, she would have turned around in a heartbeat.

Lucy shook her head. "He wouldn't want that." She said it simply, the same way she said the sky was blue or meat was good. "I know him." She was quiet for a moment, picking at a splinter in the deck with one sparking fingernail. "He left. He said my dream died in Loguetown. If I go get him now, after all that…" Her mouth twisted. "He'd hate it. He'd rather lose an arm than get saved by me. So he's gonna cut his way out by himself, because that's what Zoro does." She shrugged. "And if he wants to see me after, he can come find me. He knows what I look like."

Nobody argued. 

There was nothing in it to argue with. 

The sparks guttered out one by one. Lucy pushed her hat back up with her thumb, and when her eyes came into the light again, she was smiling. It was her real smile, wide and a little crooked. If her eyes were wetter than usual, nobody on deck was rude enough to say so. "Nami!" She bounced to her feet and spun toward the helm. "How long till the sky island?"

Nami let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. That's my captain, Nami thought, and couldn't decide whether she wanted to hug her or hit her.

Nami glanced at the South Bird's beak, then at the horizon. Then she looked at her captain, still bouncing on her toes with that slightly wet smile, and decided Lucy needed something else to think about.

"Not long," she said breezily, adjusting the wheel a quarter turn. "Definitely not long enough for you, or anyone else, to drag William below deck."

William had chosen that exact moment to stand up. He choked on nothing at all and doubled over coughing, his ears snapping flat against his skull while both tails shot straight up behind him like startled exclamation points.

Lucy went red. For one second she looked like she might actually be embarrassed. Then she spun toward the helm and jabbed a finger at Nami so hard that a single spark leapt off the tip and fizzled in the air between them. "You can't say that!" she shouted. "You're the one who hogged him! We were supposed to be getting clean and you went and took him into the shower and you were in there forever and nobody else got a turn!"

"I was… very thorough," Nami said serenely. "...Hygiene is important."

Lucy pouted. "That's not hygiene!"

Nami smirked. Her eyes flicked over to William. "It was extremely hygienic. Ask William. He was there."

Every head on deck turned toward William. He was still coughing, with one hand braced on the mainmast. He coughed harder.

Near the bow, Kuina had gone completely scarlet. She had been doing so well. For nearly an hour she hadn't thought about the washroom door swinging open, or the steam rolling out into the corridor, or Nami kneeling on the wet tiles in front of William while he— She shut that thought down hard, but her face had already given her away. 

She turned the full force of her glare on her sword, as if Wado Ichimonji had personally betrayed her.

The deck under her boots gave a small, smug creak.

"Don't," Kuina muttered at the planks. "Don't you dare."

The Pearl creaked again, longer this time, with an unmistakable lilt at the end. A loose rope line near Kuina's shoulder swayed toward her like a nudging elbow. Kuina slapped it away.

Vivi had both hands over her mouth and was failing badly to look like she wasn't listening. Chopper looked from Lucy to Nami to William to the crimson Kuina, and his small face settled into deep, weary resignation. "Humans," he told the South Bird, "are the worst."

"Jo-ri," the South Bird agreed fervently.

Then a sound rose from the quarterdeck that made several of them turn and look.

Robin was laughing loud enough they could all hear her. From anyone else it would have counted as a chuckle. But in all the time they had known her, Robin's laughter had never been more than a quiet fufufu. This was practically cackling. 

Vivi stared at her. Even Nami looked over in surprise.

"Forgive me," Robin managed, not sounding sorry in the slightest. She dabbed the corner of one eye with a knuckle. "It's only that I was on my way to the washroom myself this morning. I turned the corner just in time to see our first mate close the door." She tilted her head toward Lucy with a look of perfect, sympathetic innocence. "So you have my condolences, Captain. We were both robbed."

"See?" Lucy rounded on Nami, triumphant and outraged at once. "Robin got robbed too! You owe us!"

"I don't owe anybody anything," Nami said. "Early bird gets the catboy."

"I am standing right here," William croaked.

"We know, sweetheart," Nami said, and blew him a kiss without taking her hands off the wheel.

Suddenly the ship started to tilt hard. For a moment, it felt like the deck dropped out from under them. As if the whole ocean had tipped and was pouring itself somewhere.

"What the fuck?" Nami lunged for the wheel with both hands and planted her feet. The serum let her hold the Pearl's rudder steady against a pull that would have torn an ordinary navigator off her feet.

Everything that wasn't tied down went sliding. A coil of rope skittered across the deck. Robin's book went over the rail before she could catch it, and her mouth tightened in what was clearly grief. 

Chopper, small and round and caught in mid-sentence, simply left the deck. His hooves scrabbled at nothing as he tumbled toward the low side of the ship and the churning water beyond it.

One of William's tails shot out and snapped around Chopper's middle, plucking him out of the air a foot short of the railing. The tail reeled him back in and held him firmly against William's hip, hat and all.

Chopper dangled there, wide-eyed and panting. "Th-thanks."

"I've got you," William said. His other tail had already found the mainmast and wrapped around it twice. 

"Ara." Robin had braced herself against the quarterdeck rail with three extra arms sprouted from the wood behind her. She didn't sound alarmed so much as interested. She lifted one hand and pointed calmly to starboard. "That looks dangerous."

Everyone looked.

A hundred yards off, the sea was turning. There was a vast spiral of water revolving around a darkening center. Its outer rings were already sweeping past the Pearl's hull and dragging her sideways, faster and faster, into the pull. Foam boiled at the edges. At the heart of it, the water dipped into a funnel that went down further than any of them wanted to think about.

A lot of the people aboard couldn't swim… 

"Pearl!" Vivi had both arms locked around a stay line and her rifle strapped tight to her back. "Pearl, get us away from it! Turn, turn!"

The Pearl's timbers groaned. She began to heel, eager to obey—

"NO!" Nami hauled the wheel back the other way, and the ship shuddered, caught between two commands. "Don't you dare, Pearl! Stay on course! Into it!"

"INTO IT? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!?" Vivi's voice cracked. “THAT’S A BLOODY GIANT WHIRLPOOL!” 

Nami shook her head. She knew exactly what she was doing. "Cricket said the Knock Up Stream always comes right after one of these sudden whirlpools! The sea goes down first, then it comes up! If we want the sky, we have to be sitting right on top of it when it blows!"

There was a short, terrible silence, filled only by the roar of the water.

"Nobody," Vivi squeaked, "told me that part!"

Robin's smile had gone noticeably thin. At the bow, Kuina had drawn her legs under her and pressed her back to the bulwark. She was gripping Wado Ichimonji's sheath with white knuckles and staring at the whirlpool the way she would stare at an opponent she couldn't cut.

"Yeah, I kept that bit to myself." Nami grinned over her shoulder, windblown and wild-eyed and clearly enjoying herself far too much. "Figured if I told everyone we'd be sailing straight into a giant hole in the ocean, you'd all freak out…"

"WE'RE FREAKING OUT NOW!" Kuina shouted. "YOU FAKE FIRST MATE!"

Nami stuck her tongue out at her.

The Pearl stopped fighting the current and leaned into it. Cricket's bolted wings shrieked in their fittings as the spiral took hold. The ship began to circle, the deck tilting further, the sky wheeling overhead. In the middle of the slide, Lucy came skidding across the planks on her heels, laughing, her hat clamped to her head with one hand.

William caught her with his free arm and pulled her in against him.

She came easily and fitted against his side as if she'd been made for that spot. She was warm and soft and humming with static, her heart going fast where her chest pressed against his body. He bent his head to her ear so she'd hear him over the roar. "Hold on," he said. "We're about to be on the sky island!"

Lucy tipped her head back to look at him. Her eyes were enormous and shining, and there was no trace of the sad girl who had sat on the deck a few minutes ago. There was only the captain who had once looked at Reverse Mountain and laughed. "LET'S GO!" she cheered, punching the sky with her free fist.

The whirlpool stopped turning.

For one instant, the sea went perfectly, impossibly still. Every rope, every timber, every breath on board went quiet. Even the South Bird stiffened on its tether.

Then the ocean beneath them exploded!

…William blinked his eyes open. 

The sky above him was a deep blue, darker than any sky daytime he had seen on the surface, as if someone had turned down the color.

William pushed himself up onto his elbows, then to his knees. His ears twitched, catching rustles and groans around him. The rest of the crew was waking too, scattered across the deck where the climb had thrown them. 

Nami was hanging off the wheel by one arm, blinking dazedly. 

Vivi was sitting up against the mainmast and checking her rifle on instinct. 

Kuina lay flat on her back near the bow, sword still clutched to her chest, staring upward as though the sky had personally offended her. 

Chopper had rolled into a coil of rope and was untangling himself with wounded dignity. 

The South Bird was still tied to the mast looking ruffled and dazed with its beak no longer sure which way to point.

William got to his feet and looked over the rail.

White. Everything was white. Where the ocean should have been—there was a sea of clouds stretched to every horizon, rolling in slow, soft swells that broke against the Pearl's hull in drifts of foam. It caught the sunlight and threw it back so brightly he had to squint. Ragged towers of cumulus rose from it here and there like islands, and between them the white sea glimmered and moved like living water.

The White Sea. He knew it from glossy color pages he'd read on his phone in a dorm room another world away. Seven thousand meters up. We're actually here.

He couldn't stop smiling. The grin spread across his face until his cheeks ached. He drew a deep breath to whoop—

—and nothing came into his lungs.

His lungs pulled, and there was nothing in the air to pull. His chest heaved again, harder. His vision sparkled at the edges, his throat locked, and a hot spike of panic shot through him. Every animal instinct in his body was screaming at once. He grabbed the rail with both hands, his nails turned to claws that gouged the wood. His tails bristled to twice their size, and the sound he made was half a wheeze and half a strangled hiss.

A hand landed between his shoulder blades. Just one firm, deliberate pat, enough to break the panic. "Don't fight it," Robin said quietly at his side. Her hand stayed on his back and began to move in slow circles. "You're gasping for air that isn't there. Shallow breaths, William. Small ones. In… and out." Her palm moved with the rhythm she wanted from him, and he followed it without thinking. "There. Again."

It was hard. Every instinct demanded big, desperate gulps. But he made himself take small sips of air, and after a few of them the black sparkles at the edges of his vision began to fade.

"The air is thin this high," Robin went on, in the calm voice she might use to explain a passage in an old text. "I've spent time on high islands before—mountain peaks on the Grand Line where even the locals walked slowly. Your body will learn. You're a Zoan." Her hand kept circling. "Your Zoan heals faster than anyone I've ever seen, and it should adapt to this just as quickly. Give it a few minutes."

William nodded, still breathing in small, careful sips. His tails slowly deflated. One of them, apparently deciding Robin was responsible for his survival, curled loosely around her ankle and stayed there.

Robin glanced down at it and said nothing. She didn't move her foot, and her hand went on rubbing his back long after he could have managed without it.

When he finally straightened, the world had stopped sparkling, and his lungs had decided to cooperate. Around the deck he could see the others going through the same thing. Vivi had a hand pressed to her chest and was breathing carefully through her nose. Kuina had sat up and was breathing in measured, disciplined counts, as though altitude were just another kind of kata. Nami looked flushed but steady—the serum seemed to be doing its job. Chopper, a mountain reindeer from a winter island, looked mostly fine and slightly smug about it.

Then a shout came from the bow.

"WHOOOOOOOO!"

Lucy was standing on the figurehead with one foot on the railing. Her arms were flung wide and her hat hanging down her back on its string with her hair whipping in a wind that seemed to come from nowhere. She was leaning out so far over the white sea that Nami would have been yelling at her if Nami had the breath for it.

"IT'S ALL CLOUDS!" Lucy threw her head back and laughed at the impossible blue sky. "WILLIAM! ROBIN! LOOK! THE OCEAN'S MADE OF CLOUDS! IT'S FLUFFY!"

She wasn't gasping. She wasn't even winded. She bounced on her heels and shouted at the top of her lungs as if she were at sea level. Sparks danced lazily across her shoulders, and the air right around her seemed to shimmer, faintly denser than the air anywhere else on deck.

William watched her and felt the smile come back, slower this time and softer.

Canon Luffy struggled up here, he thought. Everyone did. But canon Luffy had been made of rubber, and Lucy was made of storm. Her body was weather now—wind, pressure, cloud, the whole atmosphere bound up in a girl in a straw hat. 

"She seems fine," Robin murmured beside him.

"Yeah," William said, watching his captain laugh at the sky. "I think the sky likes her."

William turned to Robin before he left the rail. Her hand was still resting against his back. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek, quick and soft, just below her cheekbone.

"Thank you," he said. "For talking me down."

For a moment Robin didn't move at all. Then the corner of her mouth curved, and a faint color rose in the cheek he had kissed. She looked away toward the white horizon as if the clouds had suddenly become fascinating.

"You're welcome," she said. "Go on. The others will want you."

His tail slid reluctantly off her ankle, lingering a moment longer than it needed to. Robin watched him go. Then she touched two fingers to her cheek and smiled privately to herself.

William made his way across the deck, testing his lungs with each step. They held. The air still felt thin, but his body was already adjusting, just as Robin had promised. His heart was slowing, and he no longer had to fight for each breath.

He found Vivi still sitting against the mainmast where the climb had left her. Her knees were drawn up and her rifle lay across her lap. Her eyes were closed and both hands were pressed flat against her stomach. She was breathing in a slow, deliberate pattern—in through the nose, a pause, then a long breath out through pursed lips. Her white-and-gold outfit had come through the Knock Up Stream remarkably well. Her blue hair had not. It was wild and windblown, half of it tumbling out of its tie, and a few strands stuck to her damp forehead.

William crouched in front of her. "Hey. You okay?"

Vivi opened one eye, then the other. When she saw who it was, her face softened.

"I will be," she said. Her voice was steady, if a little breathless. "Soon enough." She took another slow breath and let it out. "Igaram taught me this, years ago. It's a breathing exercise for when the heat in the desert gets too much and you feel faint. I never imagined I'd need it for this."

She tipped her head back against the mast and looked past him, past the rigging, at a sky so deep a blue it was nearly violet at the top. Her eyes went wide. "William," she breathed, "we're really in the sky."

She said it the way someone describes a dream, half afraid that saying it aloud will wake her.

"My tutors taught me geography from the time I could read. History, navigation, every island in Paradise that had a name worth knowing. I've been to the Levely. I've sat in rooms with kings." She laughed softly, shaking her head. "And not one of them ever told me there were seas above the clouds. Nobody believed it. Nobody even asked."

She reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were cool and trembling slightly, though not from fear.

"Three years ago I left home thinking the biggest thing I would ever do was save Alabasta," she said. "And now I'm sitting on a ship that's a woman, on an ocean made of clouds, seven thousand meters above the world, holding hands with a catboy." Her laugh came out shakier this time, full of wonder. "If I tried to write this in a letter to my father, he'd send doctors."

William grinned and squeezed her hand. "Then it's a good thing we don't need any more doctors. We've already got the best one in the world right here."

He nodded across the deck. Vivi followed his gaze and laughed.

Chopper had abandoned his tangle of rope and was crouched by the starboard rail with his nose almost touching the planks. In front of him sat a small, white, faintly translucent blob about the size of a loaf of bread. It had clearly been flung aboard during the climb. 

Chopper prodded it with one hoof. It wobbled. He prodded it again, and it wobbled harder and made a sound like a tiny, offended hiccup. "Hey!" Chopper's head snapped up, his eyes huge. "Hey, everyone, come look! I found some kind of weird-looking fish thing! It's all puffy, and it's got fins, and I think its scales are made of cloud!" He bent closer, completely forgetting to be cautious. "Maybe it's a sky fish! Do sky fish breathe air or cloud? Do they have gills?"

"Chopper," Nami called from the helm, "do not lick it."

"I wasn't going to lick it!" Chopper hadn't been going to lick it. Probably.?

William stood and offered Vivi both hands. She took them and let him draw her up. She swayed a little as the thin air caught up with her, and he steadied her with a hand at her waist until her feet were sure beneath her. She smiled up at him, cheeks pink from more than the altitude. The smile lingered as he let her go. She brushed a stray strand of blue hair out of her eyes and went to see whether Chopper's sky fish had gills.

William moved on toward the quarterdeck, where Nami and Kuina had ended up only a few feet apart.

Nami had already let go of the wheel and was leaning against it, arms folded, watching the white sea roll past with an expression of fierce professional interest. She was flushed and her chest was rising a little faster than usual, but she looked steady and entirely herself. Whatever the serum had done to her, it had given her lungs a head start. 

She caught him checking on her and waved him off with two fingers. I'm fine. Go.

Kuina was not fine.

She was still sitting on the deck with her back to the bulwark, where she had ended up after the climb. Wado Ichimonji was propped against her shoulder. Her breathing was still disciplined, in counts, the way a swordswoman is trained to breathe through pain. But the counts had grown ragged, and her face had gone pale under its usual color. A sheen of sweat stood on her upper lip. She was gripping her sheath so hard that her knuckles stood out white, as if holding on to the sword would make the air thicker.

William crouched beside her and held out his hand. "Here. Let me help."

Kuina's head came up fast, and her eyes narrowed. William could practically see the words lining up behind her teeth: I'm fine, I don't need help, I've been breathing on my own for twenty-one years, thank you very much—

Then she actually looked at him.

He was simply worried. It was there in-between his brows, in the way his ears had tilted toward her, and in the steady, open hand he held out and kept holding out as he waited for her to decide. He looked at her as though it mattered, very much, that she was all right.

The complaint died somewhere in Kuina's throat.

She put her hand in his without a word. He pulled her up gently, ready to take her weight if her knees buckled. They didn't, quite. He kept a hand at her elbow anyway until she nodded that she was steady.

Kuina looked away, toward the white sea or the sky or anywhere that wasn't his face. Her cheeks burned. She told herself firmly that it was the altitude. It was not the altitude…

The words sky fish hit Lucy like a dinner bell.

She had been halfway up the foremast shrouds, trying to see whether the clouds went on forever. Her head whipped around, and she let go of the rigging entirely. She dropped six feet to the deck, landed in a crouch, and was across the ship in three bounding strides before anyone could tell her to slow down.

"A SKY FISH?!" She skidded to a stop beside Chopper and dropped onto her knees so fast she nearly knocked him over. "Where? Where?! Is it that? It's that, isn't it? It's so squishy! Is it a baby? Does it have a mom? Can it fly? Does it swim in the clouds or on the clouds? Chopper, does it have bones? What does cloud taste like? Is it sweet? It looks sweet. Like whipped cream. Does it taste like whipped cream?"

"I don't know yet, Lucy, I only just found it—" Chopper started to say.

Lucy was already poking it with a stick.

William stared at it. Where did she get that stick?

He looked around the deck. There were no trees, no driftwood, and nothing broken. Cricket's wings were still bolted to the hull, all their planks accounted for. He looked back at Lucy, happily prodding the sky fish while it hiccupped in outrage, and decided that some mysteries of the universe were not meant to be solved.

"Okay." Nami left the helm and came down the steps with her arms folded, the voice of fiscal and culinary reason. "Before anyone gets ideas, nobody is cooking that."

Lucy's head snapped up. "Whyyyy?"

"Because we don't know what it is. We don't know what it eats or what it's made of. We don't know whether it's poisonous." Nami pointed at the blob, which chose that moment to puff up to twice its size and deflate with a whistle. "That is a mystery with fins. I'm not losing my captain to a mystery with fins."

"But it looks edible," Lucy said, as if that settled the matter.

Nami rolled her eyes. She loved Lucy but seriously it was a miracle Lucy never poisoned herself. "Everything looks edible to you."

Lucy flopped dramatically backward onto the deck, arms and legs splayed, stick still in hand. She let out a long, tragic groan from the very bottom of her stomach. "This is why we need a chef!" she wailed at the sky. "A real one! Somebody who knows which stuff is poison and which stuff is delicious, and who can make poison stuff delicious anyway! Somebody who makes meat every day!" She rolled onto her side and gazed mournfully at the sky fish. "I'm sorry, little guy. I would've loved to num num on you."

The sky fish hiccupped. It did not look sorry about that...

Nami sighed, but her mouth softened. She had been thinking the same thing for days. "Maybe we'll have better luck up here," she offered. "If there's a sea in the sky, there's probably an island. If there's an island, there are people, and people have to eat. Somebody up here has to know how to cook a sky fish."

Lucy sat bolt upright, her despair gone in an instant. "A sky chef!" Then her eyes went wide with a better idea. She spun around on her knees and pointed the stick straight at William.

"William! Your magic box thing! The System!" She bounced. "It gives you stuff when we leave islands, right? Did it give you a chef for Jaya? Did it give us a cook? Maybe it's in your pocket! Check your pocket!"

"It doesn't give me people, Lucy, it gives me—" William stopped. He frowned. The System hasn't given me anything for Jaya yet.

His mind raced through the possible reasons. So far the System had given them a reward for every island they cleared, and they had sailed away from Jaya successfully, hadn’t they? His tails flicked behind him.

Wait a minute, he realized. We haven’t technically cleared Jaya yet.

Centuries ago, a Knock Up Stream had blasted half of Jaya into the sky. That missing half was somewhere up here. It might be floating above the clouds now, but it was still technically part of Jaya. Which meant no rewards until they left the sky as well.

Should he be happy about that or disappointed?

He shook his head and realized everyone was staring at him.

“Sorry, Lucy,” he said. “No rewards yet.”

Lucy whined. "Your magic is being stingy," she told William accusingly, pointing her mystery stick at him. "It gave Nami super muscles, and Chopper a giant book, and Robin a magic purse, and you a book about going crazy, and me it gave—" She stopped. Her eyes went huge.

"Wait!" Lucy sat up so fast her hat flew off her head. She caught it by the string and yanked it into her lap. "I still have the fairy ticket! The feast one! With the fairy queen lady!" She was already turning the hat over and digging into the lining with both hands. "If she's a queen, she's got to have a chef. Queens always have chefs. Vivi's dad has, like, a hundred! Maybe the fairy queen will let us borrow one! Or keep one! Or—"

William's ears shot straight up.

Oh no. He had completely forgotten about the ticket. One tear and Lucy, plus anyone the System counted as crew, would be whisked off to a fey court in another world. On a ship seven thousand meters in the air. With no idea how long fairy time ran, or whether fairy food was safe to eat, or what the Queen of the Fey would want in return for a dinner invitation—

"Lucy, wait, maybe don't—"

Lucy gasped.

It was a real gasp, full of horror and betrayal. She was holding the hat upside down over her lap and shaking it. A few folded berry notes fluttered out, her emergency money, right where she always kept it. Nothing else.

"It's gone!" She shoved her whole hand into the crown and felt around, then turned the hat inside out and peered into it as though the ticket might be hiding behind the straw. "It was right here! My ticket to meet the magic fairy queen lady! I put it right next to my emergency money so I wouldn't lose it! Where did it go?!"

At the edge of the group, Nami let out a long, quiet breath.

She hadn't thrown the ticket overboard. Not exactly. She had learned her lesson from the fishing rod, which she still didn't regret, but she knew a magic summons into another world might come in useful someday. Someday, after a great deal of planning. Probably with a written contract.

So three nights ago, while Lucy slept curled up in a ball in Cricket's living room, snoring loud enough to rattle the windows, Nami had very carefully slid the golden ticket out of the hat's lining. It was now locked in the bottom of her strongbox, beneath a tray of rubies, behind a false panel that only she and the ship knew about.

Somewhere beneath their feet, Pearl gave a single quiet creak that sounded remarkably like a snicker. Nami nudged the deck with her heel. Shh.

She loved Lucy. She loved the girl Lucy had become since Loguetown, quick and thoughtful in ways that still caught Nami off guard. The Lucy who had once charged straight at everything now made plans, listened, and had put her pride aside at Jaya to keep her crew alive. But a smarter Lucy was still Lucy. She still decided things in a heartbeat and still jumped first, and given the choice between a feast and caution, she would pick the feast every single time. Nami was not about to let her teleport them all to fairyland in the middle of the sky because she was hungry.

So Nami put on her most sympathetic face and lied shamelessly.

"Aw, Lucy, I'm sure it's not gone," she said. "You've been rolling all over the deck, and you slept in about five different places on Jaya. It probably fell out in your cabin or something. We'll look for it later, okay?" She clapped her hands briskly. "Right now we have bigger problems. We're on a sea made of clouds with no idea where anything is. Let's figure out what we're doing first."

Lucy looked at her. Then she looked mournfully into her empty hat.

"…Okay," she sniffed, and jammed the hat back on her head. "But we're looking later."

"Absolutely," said Nami, who had no intention of looking anywhere, ever.

William, who had watched the whole thing, caught Nami's eye. She winked at him. He very carefully kept his face blank. One of his tails, however, curled into an approving little hook behind him.

As if Nami's earlier words had been a signal, the fog on the horizon began to lift.

Great curtains of white mist parted to either side, slow and deliberate as stage curtains. Behind them, something new came into view.

It was a road, or the closest thing the sky had to one. Its surface had a pale, pearly sheen, like milk with sunlight poured through it, and it rose gradually as it went, curving gently upward toward a bank of towering cloud so far off that it looked like a painted backdrop.

The whole crew went quiet.

Vivi was the first to find her voice. She drifted toward the rail with one hand pressed to her chest, eyes wide. "It's like…" She shook her head slowly, almost laughing. "It's like a road to heaven!"

"Well." Nami stepped up beside her and squinted at the milky path. She glanced down at the Log Pose still strapped to her wrist, its needle now pointing upward and a little ahead. "I guess we're supposed to go that way." She rested a hand on the railing and raised her voice slightly. "Pearl? You think you can handle that?"

The Black Pearl answered with a long, low groan that rolled up through every timber on the ship. Her sails filled with a wind none of them could feel. The wheel turned smoothly on its own, a quarter turn to port, and the Pearl swung her bow toward the milky road and glided forward with no hands at the helm at all.

"Show-off," Kuina muttered. The deck creaked smugly under her boots.

They sailed for about half an hour.

The Pearl moved over the cloud sea without the hard slap of water, gliding through soft, rolling swells that hissed against her hull like surf on sand. Sunlight poured down from the impossibly blue sky. 

Lucy hung over the bow rail and narrated everything she saw to anyone who would listen.

Every so often, a sky fish broke the surface. Some were small white puffs like Chopper's prize, which he had relocated to a bucket and was studying with fierce scientific devotion. Others were longer with fins that shimmered. They leapt alongside the ship and vanished back into the white. 

Lucy whooped at every one.

But not everything in the milky depths was small.

The first time William saw a shadow pass beneath the hull, every hair on his tails stood straight up. It was enormous and unmistakably a predatory shape sliding through the cloud a few meters below the surface. It came close enough that the swell of its passing rocked the ship. 

It turned lazily and came back for a second look, circling the hull.

Then the Pearl looked back.

Nobody saw anything change. But every person on deck felt a sudden cold pressure in the air. It was the part of the Black Pearl that remembered Davy Jones's Locker, and the ship spirits she had eaten, and what she was beneath her polished railings.

The shape below jerked, convulsed, and fled. Two more large shadows came to investigate over the next twenty minutes, and both did the same—a slow, curious approach, a sudden flinch, and a hasty retreat into the depths. 

They swam away the way any sensible animal flees something much higher on the food chain.

"Sharks," Robin said, leaning over the rail beside William with her chin in her hand. Her eyes followed the last fleeing shadow with open delight. "Sharks, in the sky. Isn't that wonderful?" She sighed happily. "I knew there would be fish, of course. Where there's a sea, there's life. But sharks." She smiled to herself. "I wonder how they breathe. I wonder if the cloud carries oxygen the way water does. I wonder what they eat."

"US! They eat US—probably," said Kuina flatly.

"Possibly." Robin seemed entirely untroubled by this. "But not today."

Vivi had pressed herself firmly against the mainmast, as far as possible from the rail, ever since the first shadow appeared. She was very, very glad that nobody aboard had decided to jump in and see whether you could swim in clouds. The thought had crossed her mind at least six times, along with a vivid picture of Lucy cannonballing over the side shouting it's fluffy! only to sink like a stone, with nothing but sharks for company.

At the rail, William smirked to himself. In canon, that was the very first thing Usopp did.

He could still picture it, the original crew arriving on the White Sea and promptly doing something incredibly stupid with it. And there was nobody here to do it. Usopp was a world away in Syrup Village, sulking aboard the stolen Merry. Lucy, thank God, had learned that falling into anything wet was a bad idea. 

Everyone else on this crew either couldn't swim or had far too much sense.

He looked over at Lucy, who was leaning so far over the bow rail that only her toes still touched the deck, watching a school of sky fish arc past beneath her. One of his tails reached over on its own and hooked around her leg.

Just in case.

Lucy felt the tail loop around her ankle and looked down.

She grinned. Without taking her eyes off the sky fish, she reached back and ran her fingers along the soft red fur from base to tip, slowly and deliberately. It was the touch she had learned turned William's knees to water.

It worked. A full-body shiver ran up his spine. His ears flicked, and a helpless, rumbling purr slipped out of his chest before he could stop it.

"Lucy," he hissed.

"Shishishi." She kept stroking. "You started it…" Then her hand went still, and her head turned fast to starboard. "Ooh. William. Look."

Off to the side of the milky road, maybe thirty meters out, a cluster of clouds rose out of the white sea. They didn't move like the rest. The cloud sea rolled and swelled like water, but these lumps sat still. They were thicker piled on one another in great round puffs like a heap of enormous pillows. 

As William watched, a sky fish leapt out of the sea, landed on one of them, and bounced right off again with a soft, springy boing before plopping back into the white.

"They're bouncy," Lucy whispered reverently.

Island cloud, William thought, recognizing it at once. Solid enough to stand on. The Skypieans build whole towns on— And right on the heels of that came a second thought. "Lucy, wait—"

She was already moving. Lucy grabbed him by the front of his jacket with one hand and swung herself up onto the bow rail, dragging him with her. Before anyone else on deck could react, a small dark cloud boiled into being beneath her feet, crackling at its edges with sparks. 

She jumped onto it and pulled William along.

"LUCY!" Nami shrieked from the deck.

"Back in a minute!" Lucy called cheerfully over her shoulder as the storm cloud shot out over the sea of clouds. William's tails thrashed in alarm as he looked straight down into a drop of soft white nothing with sharks swimming somewhere beneath it.

"If you drop him in the sea, I'm going to sell your hat!" Nami shouted.

"I won't drop him!" Lucy laughed back.

Vivi had both hands clapped over her mouth. Robin laughed. Kuina put her face in her palm. Pearl creaked in what was either worry or envy.

Lucy leapt the last stretch with William in tow. They landed together on the nearest puff of island cloud.

It held like a mattress, like a trampoline, like the softest, springiest thing William had ever touched. They sank into it up to their shins, and then it threw them back up into the air with a deep, pillowy whump.

Lucy shrieked with delight. "IT'S BOUNCY!" She came down, sank, and launched again, higher this time, arms flung wide. "WILLIAM! IT'S SO BOUNCY! THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!"

William came down beside her. His feline instincts had a short, violent argument with the idea of having nothing solid underfoot. Then they abruptly decided this was fantastic. The next time the cloud tossed him up, he twisted in mid-air on pure reflex, tails spinning for balance, and landed perfectly on all fours. The surprised laugh that burst out of him was almost as loud as Lucy's. "Okay," he admitted, breathless and grinning, "okay, this is pretty fun."

She grinned. "Right?!"

They bounced. They bounced high enough to see the Black Pearl gliding along the milky road, with Nami at the rail shaking her fist at them. They bounced low enough to sink almost to their hips and get flung back up again. 

They bounced in sync, and out of sync, and once they collided in mid-air and tumbled down in a tangle of limbs and red tails.

Then, on one of the bounces, Lucy came down right in front of him, grabbed his collar, and kissed him.

It was quick and clumsy, a smack of lips on the way down. The cloud threw them apart again before either of them could deepen it. Lucy laughed in mid-air and came down, aimed, and caught him again on the next bounce. This kiss was a little longer, and her cold nose bumped his cheek. Then up again, and down again, and another kiss, this one landing half on the corner of his mouth because she misjudged the timing.

"Lucy," he laughed against her lips as they sank into the cloud together, "you're going to make us crack heads."

"Worth it," Lucy said, and on the next bounce she wrapped her arms around his neck and didn't let go. 

Back on the Black Pearl, the women watching Lucy and William bounce wore unmistakably jealous expressions.

Nami let Lucy have her fun for a couple more minutes. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and called them back. She could see something in the distance.

William and Lucy landed back on the deck.

Lucy strutted back across the deck looking extremely pleased with herself. Her lips were pink and kiss-swollen, her hat sat crooked, and she wore the wide, smug grin of someone who had just gotten away with something and would happily do it again. 

Kidnapping her catboy boyfriend whenever she felt like it was, after all, a captain's privilege.

William followed a few steps behind, hair windblown and tails still twitching, wearing the slightly dazed expression of a man who had been kissed in midair more times than he could count. He didn't look sorry about it either.

Nami looked at the two of them, sighed through her nose, and pointed ahead. "There. Look."

The milky road had been climbing steadily, and a building had appeared beside it, perched on a raised shelf of island cloud. It wasn't much, just a small, tidy booth with a curved roof and a little porch, like a tollhouse on a country road. 

A narrow archway of carved cloud rose just past it, spanning the milky path. Beyond the arch, the road went on upward into a bright haze that hid whatever lay at the top.

The Pearl slowed on her own and drifted to a gentle stop alongside the booth.

The door opened, and an old woman came hobbling out onto the porch. She was tiny and stooped. On her back, poking out through slits in her plain dress, was a pair of small white wings.

Lucy's jaw dropped. "She's an angel!" she whispered so loudly that everyone heard it anyway. "William, she's a real angel! A grandma angel!"

Robin had gone very still, her eyes fixed on the wings with a scholar's fascination. Vivi bowed politely on instinct with a princess's reflex. Kuina's hand drifted toward her sword, then stayed there uncertainly. It was hard to know how threatening a grandmother with wings was supposed to be.

The old woman adjusted her glasses and looked them over—the black ship, the strange crew, a reindeer clutching a bucket, a boy with cat ears and two tails, and a girl in a straw hat practically vibrating with excitement.

"Travelers from the Blue Sea," she said in a thin, creaking voice. "If you wish to continue, you must pay—the toll."

At the helm, Nami's first instinct roared up from somewhere deep inside her. A toll? On a road made of clouds? In the sky? Absolutely fucking not. She had refused to pay tolls on bridges, in harbors, and once at a well. In every place she had ever been, a toll was just robbery with paperwork!

But she had been trying to be better lately. A little. About her greed. Only a little. She wasn't going to go crazy about it. So instead of telling the angel grandmother where she could stick her toll, Nami took a deep breath, folded her arms, and asked in the most reasonable voice she had ever used in her life, "How much? And what's it for?"

The old woman reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a bulky old-fashioned camera. Click.

The flash went off in Nami's face. Nami blinked at her, stunned.

"Entry into Skypiea," the old woman said, winding the camera with a ratcheting sound and aiming it at Lucy next. Click. "This is Heaven's Gate. I am Amazon, its gatekeeper. The fee is one billion extol." Click, at William, who flinched. "Per person."

On the deck, Nami's arms slowly unfolded. "One," she said, "...billion." A billion of anything was a lot. Nami had spent eight years memorizing exchange rates, interest rates, and the resale value of everything from gold bullion to secondhand harpoons. Extol was a new one. She narrowed her eyes at the old woman. "How much is that in beri?"

"Ten thousand extol to one beri," Amazon replied pleasantly, and snapped another photograph, this time of Chopper. Chopper squeaked and ducked behind his bucket.

Nami did the math. It took her about half a second. "So that's a hundred thousand beri a head." Her eyes slid across the deck, counting. Lucy, William, Vivi, Robin, Kuina, Chopper, herself, and Pearl, if a ship that was also a woman counted as a head, and Nami had a horrible feeling the angel grandmother would count her. "Eight hundred thousand beri. Almost a million beri to drive up a cloud." She scoffed loudly. "You're trying to rob us blind, lady. I know robbery. I invented some of it."

Amazon only smiled, which was somehow worse.

Nami opened her mouth. She hadn't decided whether to haggle or to start shouting, but either way it was going to be loud.

"We're not paying," William said.

Nami's mouth stayed open, and she turned to look at him in surprise. Every head on deck turned too.

William leaned on the rail with his arms folded and his tails swaying lazily behind him, looking far more relaxed than anyone should while refusing a toll to the literal gatekeeper of heaven.

He knew how this went. Whether they paid or not, it made no difference. Enel would come for them either way. The so-called god of Skypiea treated everyone on his island like ants under a magnifying glass, and the toll was just a way of sorting the ants. Pay, and they'd be tourists Enel ignored until he got bored. Don't pay, and they'd be criminals his priests hunted from the start. Either way, there would be lightning in the end, and he would rather know where it was coming from.

Besides…

"Come on." He grinned. "What kind of pirates pay at toll booths?"

Lucy burst out laughing. "Shishishishi! He's right! Pirates don't pay tolls! We're pirates!" She slung an arm around William's neck and nearly pulled him off his feet. "That's my catboy!"

Behind them, Vivi let out a long, weary sigh. Royal upbringing and three years of paying Baroque Works' dues had left her with deep respect for paperwork, and she clearly felt they should at least ask what happened if they didn't pay. Kuina pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed too. Then she looked at the gate, at Lucy's grin and William's smirk.

Neither of them argued.

Robin, for her part, simply smiled behind her hand as though this was exactly what she had expected.

Nami stared at William for a long moment. Then she stalked across the deck, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, hauled him off Lucy, and kissed him hard enough that his tails shot straight up.

When she let go, she was grinning and her cheeks were flushed. "That," she declared, jabbing a finger into his chest, "is why I love you."

William, who had been thoroughly kissed by two different women in the past ten minutes, could only manage a dazed little purr in reply.

On the porch, Amazon lowered her camera. She looked over the whole crew again—the girl in the straw hat, the catboy with his eyes half-closed and still purring, the navigator wiping her lips with deep satisfaction. Then she gave a small, unbothered shrug, as if nothing that had just happened had anything to do with her at all. "If that is your decision," she said mildly, "then you may pass. Whether you pay or not makes no difference to me."

She raised the camera one last time. Click.

XXX