Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Soft, slow waves rose high against the hull of the Going Merry as it cut a gliding shape through the chop. It was still some minutes before he would see the mysterious woman who would eventually claim him, body, heart, and soul, and it had been some hours since Zoro had seen the last Marine warship off the stern. More still since he had heard the horns and yells as that captain’s troops had stormed Mr. 2’s very decorated ship.

A strange sacrifice, in the end, though not entirely unwelcome—they may well have been in shackles in some Alubarna dungeon if not for the Baroque Works agent’s odd ploy, Zoro considered.

“I guess the Navy isn’t coming after us,” he said, half over his shoulder to the rest of the Strawhats, and half in a breath of relief. A chorus of half-hearted mumbles came up behind him and so he spoke again. “I think we lost them.”

Silence. Zoro turned around, scowling. Lined perfectly, slumped over the Merry’s house rail, were Usopp, Luffy, Sanji, Nami, and Chopper. Each had tears welled in their eyes and they were staring back toward Arabasta. One of them sighed and Zoro’s scowl deepened. “Is that all you can say?”

Almost in perfect unison, the five sniffling crew members, from captain to cook, navigator to doctor, raised their voices. “We miss Vivi!”

“Quit crying!” Zoro snapped. “If you couldn’t stand to leave her, then you should have kidnapped her.” It seemed the most reasonable thing, in his mind; she didn’t want to leave, but the rest of the crew clearly couldn’t handle her leaving. They obviously didn’t see eye to eye with the swordsman though.

“What? Barbarian!” Chopper yelled. Nami echoed similarly, calling him “mean,” while Sanji’s unsurprising “mosshead” rose above the din. What was surprising was Luffy’s attempt at an insult: “Three-Sword Style.”

Usopp, who’d been about to add his own loud complaints to the mix, instead stared at the Strawhat captain. “Wait, Luffy, that’s not an insult.”

“Four-Sword Style then.”

Usopp scratched his head. “That’s not any better. Listen, how about you try something like fermented soybeans? Tell him he stinks like natto.” Luffy seemed to like that, but Zoro had already wheeled away, looking back at the horizon and its strangely empty presence. “Fine,” he shot back, “bawl your eyes out.” There were still no approaching Marine warships, thankfully, even if the rest of the crew didn’t seem—

“Well, it’s about time,” a captivating voice cracked through the sniffling. “I thought you’d never leave that oversized sandbox.”

Zoro was nearly about to agree with his crew member when he realised he could still hear all of them talking over his shoulder. Whoever this woman’s voice belonged to, it wasn’t Nami. She was still with the others. His hand flashed to the hilt of the Wado Ichimonji by his side and he turned, lifting an eyebrow.

He wasn’t expecting what he saw: Miss All Sunday, though not quite. Gone was the white fur-lined robe she’d been wearing in that town on Cactus Island. The corset and skirt were missing too, as were the mysterious Baroque Works agent’s white cowboy hat and the high-heeled boots. Instead, the surprise visitor was simply wearing a long-sleeve shirt and purple dress pants.

Zoro realised he hadn’t seen her at all in the battle at Alubarna. He’d seen plenty of Baroque Works characters crawling over the kingdom’s capital, not least of all Mr. 1—face down in the street when Zoro had seen him last—and his partner, Miss Doublefinger. This strange woman though, hadn’t appeared.

He unsheathed the Wado Ichimonji and took a step toward the  Baroque Works agent. “Here to avenge your comrades, eh? Well, bring it on.”

Zoro’s blade never lifted any further though. He was ready to draw and swing, one swift, clean cut, but Luffy’s voice caught him mid-stride. A question, from the captain. “Oh huh, it’s you. You’re still alive?”

It was all the time Miss All Sunday needed. “How rude,” she said, stepping up. Hands grabbed and gripped at Nami’s polearm, wrenching it from her grasp. The same thing happened to Zoro too, with his half-drawn sword clanging sharply to the ground from a swift slap of an arm that had, quite shockingly, sprouted from his side. “Don’t point those things at me. I’ve told you that before.”

Zoro whipped around, but Miss All Sunday already had her back to him and the rest of the crew. She bent down, unfolding one of the deck chairs Usopp had hastily put away when he was cleaning.

Nami moved faster than Zoro, stepping toward the intruder and raising her voice. “How long have you been onboard?”

“Oh, a while,” Miss All Sunday replied. “I was below deck reading a bit, and while I was waiting I took a shower.” She snapped the chair out all the way and walked back into the sunshine. “I borrowed these clothes too. They’re yours right?” Nami snarled at this, and Zoro heard at least one nasty insult in the barrage from their navigator, but the Baroque Works woman hadn’t seemed to notice. “Monkey D. Luffy, you haven’t forgotten what you did to me, have you?”

Luffy looked shocked. “Hey, don’t lie! I didn’t do anything to you!”

“I suffered a great deal because of you. Now, take responsibility.” She sat down, folding her arms behind her head and crossing her legs. For a moment, as she sat, she arched her back, and Zoro found himself unable to do anything but stare. Even in what looked like some of Nami’s most modest clothes, and by a long way too at that, he couldn’t help but lock his gaze over the Baroque Works agent. She, thankfully, hadn’t noticed—she was already closing her eyes and letting the sun wash over her.

“What do you want anyway?” Luffy asked.

Miss All Sunday’s eyes popped open again and she leaned forward. Zoro’s hand tensed, though he wasn’t sure if it was to reach for his next sword or some involuntary reaction to the woman’s black hair falling over her shoulders. “I want,” she replied, “to join your crew.”

All thoughts of swords and black hair vanished from Zoro’s mind. Join the crew? This woman was a Baroque Works officer. Her merry band of strange characters had been trying to kill Vivi since Cactus Island. He had barely survived his ordeal with Mr. 1, and her master, the Warlord of the Sea, had left Luffy for dead in the sands of Arabasta. She had happily served him. Tried to trick them. Join the Strawhats crew. Now Zoro knew which one he had been tensing for, and it wasn’t any black hair. He bent down, scooped up the Wado Ichimonji, and slid it back into its scabbard, though he kept one hand on the hilt.

Miss All Sunday was still speaking.

“—to die, and instead of that you made me live,” she said. “That’s your crime. I have nowhere to go now and I certainly don’t have anywhere to return to. So, Monkey D. Luffy, let me join the Strawhat pirates.”

Zoro was about to laugh when Luffy spoke. Easy, trusting, happy-go-lucky Luffy, the captain of the Strawhats and Zoro’s sworn leader. “Well, I guess it can’t be helped… okay.”

Uproar. Nami and Usopp exploded, grabbing at Luffy’s back. Chopper could only stare, his mouth agape as he looked from Luffy—of course, smiling from ear to ear—to Zoro, to the rest of the crew, and then to Miss All Sunday. Strangely enough, Zoro saw, that Sanji seemed to be doing what seemed like a jig across the deck of the Merry. Figures.

“Luffy, have you thought about this,” Zoro tried to say to his captain, but his voice was lost under the growing yells.

“Don’t worry,” Luffy said to no one in particular and to everyone barking orders, begging him to change his mind, or just yelling, on the Merry. “She’s not a bad person.”

While that remained to be seen, the Strawhats certainly seemed happy to take Luffy at his word, or were quickly charmed by the woman—Nico Robin.

Chopper and Luffy were the first to fold, Zoro saw. All the Baroque Works woman had to do was bring out some more of those strange hands from the Merry’s deck and the pair were cackling, immediately occupied. Sanji didn’t need any convincing either, though with how beautiful the interloping Miss All Sunday was, Zoro was far from surprised. There was no great shock when Nami agreed to let her stay once several jewels were thrown into the mix—Robin had apparently stolen them from Crocodile on her way out of Arabasta after deciding he wouldn’t need them in Impel Down.

Usopp was a little harder to break down. He insisted he and Nico Robin sit down for an interrogation after declaring he was the best and wisest investigator on the Grand Line. The stowaway had laughed at this, a soft husky laugh that peeled over the deck of the Merry and carried off into the waves.

“I was an archaeologist by the time I was eight,” Robin had explained to Usopp, “then I had a bounty put on my head. I come from a family of them—archaeologists, that is. Though, with the bounty, I spent 20 years hiding from the World Government. They sent plenty of marines after me, and bounty hunters. A child can’t live on the high seas alone. I survived by joining various pirate crews. As a result, I became an expert at operating in the shadows. I can be a big help to you.”

“Hmm, you’re very confident,” Usopp had asked. “What’s your speciality?”

No surprises here, Usopp had panicked once Robin answered “assassinations” and he had begged Luffy to throw her off the ship. But, in the end, the sniper too had given in once Luffy had asked Robin to sprout hands out of his battered straw hat and pretended to be Chopper with the hand-antlers waving in the air.

They were still laughing and rolling about when Robin walked up to Zoro. He had been watching from a distance, leaning against the railing of the Merry’s cabin, keeping a careful eye on the Baroque Works officer and her smile. He tensed when she approached, though he kept his arms folded.

“This is nice,” she said. “Is it always like this?”

Zoro didn’t turn his head as she leaned next to him. “Pretty much.”

“I see.” And that laugh, her laugh again. It peeled over the waves, lifting above the swell against the side of the ship and even cutting over the chortles and howls of Chopper, Usopp, and the captain on the deck below.

Zoro could feel the Baroque Works woman looking at him but he didn’t meet her gaze. He knew what she looked like. He didn’t need another look.

“They look nasty,” she said, but Zoro couldn’t see what she was pointing at. “Your wounds. Chopper said you ended up facing Mr. 1 and his Dice-Dice Fruit in the streets of Alubarna. Very impressive that you managed to—”

“Don’t imagine I’ll be as easily tricked as my crewmates,” he snapped, talking over her soothing voice. “It wasn’t one day ago you were trying to kill Luffy. I don’t care what he says, or what you say for that matter. We’ve been fighting you Baroque Works idiots since Whiskey Peak, we’ve seen what you can do. What you’re capable of doing.”

Robin was quiet for a moment. “I don’t blame you, swordsman.” Zoro flicked his eyes to her now, and he saw she was staring right at him. He caught her eyes first, their blue gaze matching his without blinking. They were dark and wide, though the sun cut through them and set a dim sparkle he hadn’t noticed before.

Whatever she said next, he didn’t quite hear. Her hair had shifted again, draping over her wide shoulders and settling in a bunch just above her collar. He did hear her next sentence though: “—wasn’t my choice.”

That was enough for him to bite back. “You looked like you had plenty of choices last time you stole onto the Merry, assassin. If that Warlord truly did have you on a leash it must have stretched across half the Grand Line, and then some again.” He snapped his glare back to match Robin’s gaze. “Maybe it’s still stretching.”

Her calm demeanour disappeared for a second and her eyes locked onto his. Even glaring, narrowed, they caught the sun, Zoro noticed. “I never would have served Crocodile if I had had any other choice,” she said, not quite biting, but as close as Zoro had seen to her being on edge either time she’d appeared on the Merry. Her narrow eyes held his and she looked like she was about to say more, then they relaxed, softened down, and the blue seemed to lighten again.

Instead, she pursed her lips. The movement was small, but it tightened her jaw and, ever so slightly, a dimple popped in on her cheek. Zoro’s eyes flicked to it, back to her eyes, and then onto her lips. He had to speak, before he looked anywhere else. “Sing sorry stories as much as you want, Nico Robin. Not every Strawhat is so easily won.” As he spoke, Zoro tensed his shoulders. His sword hand, flexed hard and stiff, was just inches from the hilt of the leaning Wado Ichimonji again.

Robin looked like she was about to shoot back when Luffy and Nami suddenly marched past. Luffy, a smile spread across his face, was bugging his navigator. Vivi, Karoo, and the war against Crocodile’s agents in Alabasta must have finally passed from his mind. “Do you think the next island will be snowy?”

“Haven’t you had enough snow?” she asked.

Robin sat up from the railing. “After Alabasta, if I’m remembering right, then there should be an autumn island coming up next.”

“That’s great then,” Luffy declared, “I like autumn too.”

Zoro opened his mouth to tell Robin off for getting involved when something whizzed past his eye. His hand tensed and shot to his sword hilt. Another something rocketed past, burying in the Merry’s deck with a twang! He looked up, just in time to see another little something tink onto the railing. Robin was forgotten. “Rain?”

“It’s not rain,” Sanji called up from the deck below. “Something’s fall—”

The cook was right: something was falling. Zoro imagined that was what he had said before the roar of the crashing galleon overtook everything. Huge chunks of the ship were clattering around the Merry now, rocketing into the deck, the mast, and the sails. Zoro’s hand fell away from his sword and he grabbed the railing with one hand. With the other, he reached down scooping up Chopper and clenching him to his chest as what looked like half a bow slammed down beside them. Chopper was yelling and somewhere off in the falling debris, Zoro could faintly hear Usopp screaming something to himself too. “It’s a dream, all a bad dream! Don’t worry, just relax, and close your eyes… then slowly open them, and see it’s a nice peaceful morning.”

“Luffy, protect the ship! She’ll break up!” Sanji barked from somewhere nearby. Zoro couldn’t see the cook or the captain. He held Chopper tight, flexing his arm over the little reindeer’s head. He could feel his young crewmate shaking, his fur standing on end. A sharp slice of wood crashed down onto Zoro’s shoulder seconds later. He bit back a gasp. “It’s going to be okay Chopper.”

Then, with a splash, a crash, and an aching groan, it was over. One, two, three more tinks! rattled around Zoro and Chopper, then the sounds died away.

Zoro lifted his arm, looking around. He could see Usopp and Nami huddled by the Merry’s mast, which had been battered and bruised by the steel of the falling galleon. Robin was standing at the foot of the stairs, her Devil Fruit arms receding out of the sides of the ship’s brace. Sanji was a little lower, just by the door, which looked to have sustained some of the worst damage of the shock shipfall. And Luffy was standing near the Merry’s great white goat head, holding his hat and staring up at the clear blue sky. His extended arms were shrinking back to normal size.

The Strawhat captain had one question. “Why is it raining ships?”

Chapter Text

The skeleton Usopp was holding—or rather, screaming over—could easily have been a few days old, or it could have been on the wreckage for a hundred years. Its sunbleached grey sheen made it near impossible to tell, from what Zoro could see at first glance, and Usopp waving it around wildly between his yells and cries and trying to throw it overboard wasn’t helping the examination either.

“Bones!” the sniper yelled again, heaving the clanking corpse over the Merry’s railing and preparing to haul it into the water.

Zoro caught his arm. “Wait, there may be clues.”

Usopp, eyes still wide, looked down at the skeleton again. Its skull was teetering close to popping off the dusty spine, lolling in a half grin that stared up at the sniper. “Clues? He must be a hundred years old!”

“Exactly,” Zoro said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like answers to what just dropped straight onto our heads from the sky.”

Nami gasped behind them. “Our log pose,” she said, calling the rest of the Strawhat crew’s attention and tapping the glass pane on top of the wristband mechanism. “It’s broken. It’s pointing upward and not moving.”

“Broken?” Usopp said, stepping around Zoro’s outstretched arm and away from the casually lolling skeleton.

Their navigator, Zoro could see from the Merry’s railing, was right. The needle of the log pose had indeed pulled upward and was now aiming directly into the sky, its red diamond tip quivering ever so slightly every time Nami swung her wrist around to keep an erect strain of the white spire in the same direction.

Robin was already moving, striding over to look at the pose. She only looked for a moment before declaring, “It’s not broken. Look, it’s still working, it’s just that the magnetic field of another island has made it switch headings. And, if it’s pointing skyward like this, that can only mean one thing: our log pose has lost its original island and instead been captured by a sky island.”

Zoro gritted his teeth at Robin’s claim that it was “our log pose” but none of the other Strawhats seemed to notice. How can they not care? Chopper had already put his head behind a railing and Usopp’s eyes were flying back to where he had dropped the now-sinking corpse. “Is that where the ship and skeletons fell from?”

Robin shook her head. “Actually, it’s not just the island. I think it might be a sea that’s floating in the sky.”

“Well now that’s just made me even more confused,” said Sanji.

Confusion clearly wasn’t creeping into the captain’s mind though, considering he leaped to his feet and pointed skyward. Luffy’s grin, contagious as ever, was stretching to below his ears as he yelled. “The sea floats in the sky and there’s an island on it? Let’s go! C’mon guys, raise the prow, raise the prow!”

“Actually,” Robin continued, “to be honest, I’ve never seen this sky island. I don’t know very much about it. Don’t take my theories for a fact, Strawhat.”

“Don’t raise the prow either,” Sanji added, “because that’s impossible.”

Nami was just as incredulous as the rest of the crew, the now-dancing Luffy aside. She looked at the log pose again, its red diamond tip still quivering in the glass and pointing at the sky above them. “This is impossible, even if it is pointing like you say. How can an island, or a whole wide ocean for that matter, just be up there floating in the air? Like I said, the log pose must have been broken by the debris.”

“No, navigator, it’s not the log pose.” Robin reached out and steadied Nami’s shaking hand to look at the pose’s standing point. “No matter what happens to this ship, no matter what kind of crisis we face, we must never suspect the log pose. That is an ironclad rule, in any journey in the Grand Line through Paradise or the New World. If we ever doubt anything on these seas, it should be our senses and what we believe can truly happen. I will tell you, from all my travels here, I have learned one thing that will always hold true: there will always be an island wherever that needle eventually points. There’s definitely one where it’s pointing. What we have to figure out now is how we can actually get up there.”

Zoro barged between the two women, his three swords clanging as he moved. “Who are you to tell our navigator she’s wrong?”

“I’ve been on these seas a lot longer than you, swordsman,” Robin shot back, nearly shouldering him out of the way as she strode over to the biggest chunk of debris that had fallen onto the Merry—a long, rotted box. As she approached it, Sanji kicked the top off to reveal another corpse, this one wrapped in tattered robes and lying with its now quite broken old arms across its caved-in ribcage.

Zoro glared at the Baroque Works woman. She hadn’t noticed his glare, though Sanji did and matched his gaze with a furrowed curly brow of his own. The cook is already in her camp, Zoro thought. Figures. He took less than an hour to bend to the will of another beautiful woman. Nami had wrapped him around her finger in seconds. So too Nojiko in Cocoyasi Village, and then Vivi as soon as she’d joined the crew in Whiskey Peak. Robin could have been holding a dagger to Luffy’s throat and Sanji would have been bending over double.

Robin, ignoring the pair’s fiery glances, or simply not seeing them, was rifling through the skeleton box. Her hands carefully crept over the twisted legs, hip bones, knocked-in ribs, and broad shoulders before coming to rest on the cracked skull. She grasped the faded bone and tugged it out.

Zoro sighed. “Well, any clues?”

“This hole is man-made,” Robin replied. She pointed to two thick dents in the top of the skull where something had been driven into the crown. “These look like the marks of brain surgery. Right, ship’s doctor?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the little reindeer replied. Chopper had been hiding, or rather leaning into, the mast watching Robin go about her work, but he answered quickly when she called. “A long time ago, there were some people who used to make holes in the skull because they thought it would relieve the pressure of tumours. That was a long time ago though, no one does that anymore.”

“I think this man died over 200 years ago,” Robin said. “He was in his mid-thirties, from what I can tell, and got sick on the high seas. I think he died before the rest. Compared to these others, his teeth are actually quite well preserved. There’s tar on them, here, and here.” She carefully placed the skull back into the box and flitted her fingers down the rest of the sundried body. “His clothes are unique to a particular area of the South Blue, though not any kind of fashion that’s been there any time recently.”

She sat back to look for something else down the side of the rotted box and Zoro realised he’d been watching her work intently. Watching her eyes drift up and down the bones to read their story. He shifted one hand onto the hilt of a blade and leaned back against the railing. If she was going to try anything against the Strawhats, it wasn’t going to be while she was digging through old bones, at least.

“I’d say that ship was an old exploration vessel,” she said, just as something cracked out from underneath the dead man’s hipbone. She pulled out a book nearly as dusty as its old owner and brushed off the cover. “Yes, here it is. The Saint Briss, from the South Blue kingdom of Briss, like I thought. This log says it set sail from there 208 years ago.” She pressed her finger against an image on the first page. Zoro could see it had indeed been a great galleon, once upon a time, complete with two double-sails, sides of canons, and a figurehead carved out to look like a snarling turtle. On the flag was a filled circle with four triangle edges, just like the one now drifting into the sea just off the Merry’s starboard bow. “This is the ship that fell on us, same symbol and all.”

“You figured all that out from a bunch of bones?” Nami asked, and Zoro thought he heard an air of admiration creeping into the navigator’s voice.

“Well, they say dead men tell no tales, but that’s not always true,” said Robin. “In fact, if this Saint Briss was an exploration ship that had come all the way from the South Blue oceans to here in Paradise then it should be carrying a lot of records onboard.” She stood up, looking out to where the main bulk of the Saint Briss had smashed into the sea. “Ah, but it looks like it’s already sinking.”

Zoro’s eyes widened. Yes, the Saint Briss was sinking just like Robin had observed, but it wasn’t just taking its dusty old records with it—the Strawhats captain and sniper were going down with it, it seemed.

“Luffy, hang on!” Usopp yelled, his arms flapping as fast as he could muster. He was standing on the crow’s nest, one of the last sections of the Briss still above the water, trying desperately to keep out of the rising tide at the same time as reaching out to grab Luffy from the chop. The Strawhat captain, meanwhile, had already slipped into the water and was fast disappearing, his muscles frozen up and refusing to move in the ocean swell.

“What are you idiots doing?” Nami yelled.

“Is someone going to—” Robin was asking, rushing to the railing, but Zoro had already caught her and muscled past her. He hit the clip on his belt, letting his three long blades clatter to the deck at her feet, and dove.

Chill water engulfed him immediately, sending a shock up his spine.

Saving Luffy from the ocean was never easy, Zoro had found, when he simply didn’t move while drowning. Adding a panicked Usopp to the same rescue attempt only made matters harder still, and so Zoro was grateful when Chopper and Sanji reached down to scoop the two soggy explorers off his back. It wasn’t a hard climb back to the deck but every shift of his now-soaked through white shirt. The heavy wet fabric clung to his shoulders and chest, shifting uncomfortably as he moved. And where were his swords?

“Your blades, swordsman,” Robin said, handing him the three scabbards. 

Zoro glowered, snatching them out of her hands and clipping his belt back around his wet trousers. “Don’t touch those.”

For a second, Zoro thought he caught Robin watching his blades from where they left her hand all the way down to being belted around his waist, her eyes lingering as he pulled the clasp tight, but once he snapped his gaze to hers he saw Robin was already staring back. Those dark eyes again.

“Take a look at this,” Luffy called, holding out an old roll of parchment he had tucked into his pants. For some reason, it didn’t even look as drowned as Zoro felt. Figured. “Is this a map of the sky island?”

“There is a sky island! We’re going to a dream island,” yelled Chopper, and Luffy and Usopp took up the little reindeer’s chorus.

Nami cut their cries short. “Don’t get too excited. Remember, we don’t know anything for sure. As Robin said, don’t take theories for facts. And besides, there are an awful lot of fake maps in the world.” Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper’s faces fell, sinking from wide smiles to darkened frowns. Nami shook her hands. “I mean, sorry, I’m sure it is real guys. But we just don’t know how to get there.”

“You’re our navigator aren’t you,” Luffy asked. “Do something! Surely we can just sail up there into the sky.”

“The needle is still pointing up,” Robin interjected.

“Robin’s right, it’s not going away, we just need more information. If that huge ship, the Saint Briss, was up there and fell down on top of us, then there must be a way for us to get up there too.” Zoro didn’t like where this was going, and no sooner had he thought that to himself than Nami was already looking at Sanji and him. He felt the cook stand a little straighter beside him as Nami’s gaze fell on them. “I think some of us are just going to have to search that wreck for records. We’ll have to salvage it.”

Zoro, Luffy, and Sanji found themselves sinking quite quickly, the darkness hugging around them as they drifted towards the murky wreck below.

“This is Luffy,” Luffy said out of the double barrel contraption floating next to Zoro. “There are a lot of monsters down here. Over.”

The captain was right too. Now that Zoro’s eyes had acclimated to the dim sheen of the ocean’s banks, he could see several rather large beasts cutting through the water. Just close to the trio, closest to Sanji’s barrel at the end, Zoro could see a huge swirling snake lazily shifting its bulk as it wriggled on. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if it shifted its head a little, spotted the cook, and took a bite.

“This is Sanji,” Sanji said back up the piping running to the Merry. “I think it’s looking at us.” That wasn’t so true though. Its eyes had passed the trio on its way through, but even in the dim light, Zoro could see it was staring out toward nothing.

Their descent took them past the coiling serpent, and soon they touched down on the outer hull of the smashed shipwreck. After a moment of scrabbling, Zoro found a latch on the longest gun door and heaved it open. Luffy swam past first, barely squeezing his double barrels through the gap. Zoro nearly laughed as he watched the captain's inquisitive face float by, rounded by the glass circlet in the upper barrel. The cook went next, dropping onto the cracked deck of the Saint Briss with a dampened thud.

Once inside, Luffy was the first to pick something up, heaving a dark green vase off the deck. He only got a quick look at it and the heron marking on the lid before the whole thing disintegrated into dust in his hands.

Sanji was next down. He quickly disappeared into the cabin and for a moment Zoro lost sight of him in the rubble. When the swordsman breached the hole in the side of the shiphouse, he found the cook staring at an old photograph of a woman with curly brown hair. Zoro could see over his shoulder she was smiling, and her eyes were closed.

Luffy tapped Zoro on the side of the barrel. “Look,” he said, pointing at an old chest buried over in the corner. The words ‘ Saint Briss’ were emblazoned across the front and although some rust had crept onto the steel bindings across the top of the box, it looked from a distance like it had survived the drop quite well. As Zoro swam closer, grabbing a rusted old harpoon on the way, he could see even the lock had stayed safe.

No matter. A thrust with the harpoon, and a second, battered the lock off all the same and the chest popped open. Luffy muscled up beside Zoro in the water, his barrel shaking with the anticipation of treasure.

Instead, all they saw was a single white feather floating at the bottom.

“Uh,” said Luffy, about to complain, but he didn’t get a chance—a huge steel hook exploded out of the wall beside the trio with a crunch, wrenching the wood and steel up as it grabbed hold. Alongside it, a second and a third popped from the wall, blasting splinters and nails across the water-logged cabin room. Zoro forced his sword out of its sheath.

Then, there was a pop, and a bubble burst out of one of the hooks. It expanded, washing over the Strawhats and ballooning to the outer walls on the other side of the Briss cabin. Luffy looked around. “Air?”

Without waiting, he reached up and hoisted the first barrel off his head. Zoro lunged forward, grabbing at it to force it back down, but Luffy pushed him off and threw the top cover to the side. “Zoro, wait,” he said, jumping out of the bottom rigging. “See, we don’t even need the barrels now.”

Zoro looked around the room, at the expanded air pressing against the side of the cabin’s interior, and shrugged. Sanji had already begun tugging his barrel over his head and Zoro followed suit, casting his aside. It was nice to be rid of it.

“They filled it full of air,” he said. “I wonder who’s trying to bring this up.”

The answer came nearly immediately. Like the hooks before, one chunk of the Briss cabin wall folded in, splintering and cracking as a huge shape burst in, fists raised. “Who are you?” the monkey cried. “How dare you invade my territory!”

“Hey,” Luffy said, crouching on his abandoned barrel. “A monkey.”

The monkey stopped in its tracks, rubbing its head. Zoro could see it was wearing large yellow workman’s overalls and headphones with the word ‘Masira’ emblazoned on the side of the ears. “You think I’m hunky?”

Luffy agreed immediately. Sanji looked from one to the other, lighting a cigarette at the same time. “What kind of conversation starter is that?”

Zoro huffed. “The real question is who the hell are you?”

The monkey, still rubbing the back of its head, looked from Luffy on his barrel to Sanji with his cigarette, and then to Zoro, his hand on the hilts of his three blades. “I see… what can I say? I’m Mas—” His eyes fell on the carry bags Zoro and Sanji had tied to their waists. “Are you trying to steal this salvage?”

He sprang like lightning, darting for Luffy first. Zoro flicked the Yubashiri out of its scabbard and leapt in front of his captain, swinging the grade blade down over the monkey’s back as he charged. The stranger howled, wheeling about and snapping a large fist into Zoro’s chest. The swordsman gasped; the impact had caught him right on the wound Dracule Mihawk had carved across him at the Baratie. He buckled.

Sanji leapt in next, swinging a flying kick into the monkey’s head. The huge intruder was flung back, smashing into the side of the cabin wall and falling motionless for a moment. “Let’s get out of here,” Sanji snapped over his shoulder and Zoro nodded.

The water, Zoro realised; Luffy couldn’t make it out of the sea without swimming, not after he’d dumped his barrel to explore.

Well, nothing for it—he would have to swim with the captain, whether that dragged him down into the depths or not. He couldn’t leave Luffy in what would very quickly become his watery tomb.

Zoro heard a huff as he grabbed his captain around the shoulders and pulled him tight, but he didn’t have time for Luffy to argue. Besides, it would have been some stupid argument too—“I’ll just learn how to swim now!” he would have declared, no doubt. Zoro nearly chuckled, but for the task waiting ahead of him now.

He braced, tugged Luffy a little tighter, took a long, slow breath in, and leapt, his shoulder smashing through the rotten old boat wall.

Except, instead of pushing into water, Zoro landed flat on the Merry’s deck. Sanji tumbled down beside him. No time to worry about where the ocean had disappeared to. “Set sail!” Zoro barked, looking over to where Chopper and Usopp were standing with mouths agape. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Thank goodness you’re alive,” Usopp yelled, his eyes welling with tears. “Yes, we need to get away from that turtle this instant!”

“Turtle?” Zoro said, standing. “What turtle? There was a big monkey down there. He was kind of friendly with Luffy at first, but once he spotted that we were there to find clues on the Briss the guy just went totally berserk and attacked us.”

Except, when Zoro turned, he realised Usopp had not been spinning his latest outrageously tall tale of heroism for the rest of the Strawhats and whomever else might listen—there was a monstrous turtle lounging in the water beside the caravel, one lolling eye peering over to where Zoro stood on the deck.

“What is that?” he yelled.

Usopp was the first to reply again: “You just noticed that thing? That’s the thing that ate you all up, ship and all.”

Zoro was about to point out it was staring at something besides the ship when two things happened. First, Luffy popped up at his shoulder, pointing out just how dark it was. And, if the second thing hadn’t happened, Zoro would have agreed with him; it was very, very dark now that they were back on the Merry. Zoro could barely see in the gloom.

Of course, that was quickly forgotten when the second thing—Masira smashing onto the side of the ship, bending the wood railing and snapping one clean through—happened. Zoro flicked his sword back out of its scabbard as the salvager landed on the Merry. “That stupid monkey, he’s going to wreck our ship!”

Masira too, flailing about on the railing and ranting about his territory and his treasure and how Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji had tried to take both away from him with their journey to the bottom of the sea floor, was soon forgotten when a third and final thing happened over the two ships cresting the waves.

“Boss, look out!” yelled one of Masira’s crew members from a ship Zoro just spotted floating close by the huge, lumbering turtle.

And now, with his eyes drawn to Masira’s ship, then to the mysterious turtle, then finally to its eyes and where they were pointed, Zoro saw what the turtle had been staring at. Luffy was looking too; he must have realised the sun had been blotted out by something. A deathly silence fell over the crew, both on the Merry and across on the huge salvage vessel floating nearby. Not even Usopp or Nami, prone to yelling and hysterics, made more than a peep as they looked up into the sky. Up, up, and up they looked.

Five towering monsters loomed over them.

Black, shadowy, and gargantuan. Each had a long spear in its hand and wings on its shoulders and they rose so high above the Merry and Masira’s ship and the strange turtle that the Strawhats had to crane their necks to see the top. One, the central figure, had its spear hefted and raised.

“Monsters!” Luffy and Masira barked in unison.

Zoro was already moving, and for once the rest of the Strawhats were on the same page as the swordsman. Chopper and Zoro grabbed the first of the sweep oars and tugged as quickly as they could. Chopper had already shifted into his more human form, muscles straining as he tugged in great arcs.

Behind them, on the second sweep, Zoro could hear Luffy, Usopp, and Sanji doing the same, frenzied pulling and pushing as they forced the Merry through the waves. Away from Masira’s ship. Away from the turtle. And most importantly, away from the looming, monstrous figures that had blotted out the sun.

After several minutes of panicked rowing, the Strawhats collapsed. The sun had returned, sparkling over the ocean again. The monkey, turtle, and terrifying figures had all long vanished from sight just as quickly as they had all popped up.

“Impossible…” Nami whispered, mostly to herself.

Even Usopp, who Zoro was certain had the biggest imagination of all the crew, couldn’t believe it. “Nothing could be that big.”

“Something’s not right today,” Sanji said, lighting another cigarette as he panted on the deck. For once, Zoro agreed with the blonde cook. One thing after another it seemed, with the Merry caught right in the middle of everything.

“A falling galleon was bad enough,” he said. That wasn’t it though. The Saint Briss had collapsed onto the Merry, then the log pose had pointed into the clouds. That monkey had barged into the salvage swinging fists and attacking Luffy, and the only thing that had helped the Strawhat captain get out was apparently a turtle.

Then there were those shadows in the sky. Towering, terrifying monstrosities looming over the horizon, blotting out the sun. Zoro had never seen anything like that before in all his years sailing the East Blue.

And then there was Nico Robin. She was still on the ship, talking to the other Strawhats like she was welcome. She had dug through those bones, sent Luffy and Sanji and him down into the depths. Claimed she knew about the sky island, but not really. Told Nami the log pose was always better than her. Won the crew over with her laugh and her stories and her jewels. What was the Baroque Works woman playing at?

Zoro stole a look as he gulped in air. The rest of the Strawhats were doing similar, catching their breaths from the quick escape. Robin was too, though Zoro couldn’t remember her rowing when they’d run out the sweeps.

She was leaning against the taffrail, her black hair tangled against the wood. Her long legs were braced against the deck and her hands clenched against her sides. She seemed calmer than the others, strangely, though still as shocked as any by what they had just witnessed emerging in the sky. Now, back in the sun, he let himself have a longer look. Even sitting, she looked far taller than Nami. Even than him. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of her face, dropping onto her neck. He watched her heaving chest slow, her breathing catch, and her shoulders stop lifting as she regained control.

Robin caught his lingering gaze for a second and the corner of her mouth fluttered. Then she looked away, back towards the shadows.

Of all today’s problems, she may well be the worst.

Chapter Text

“Don’t fight. Don’t do anything to stir up trouble here,” the newest Strawhat crew member had told Zoro and Luffy as they left the Merry.

Like Zoro was going to listen to Nico Robin’s command. Luffy had seemed receptive, especially once Nami repeated the same order, but Zoro was far less inclined to do what the Baroque Works woman wanted. Maybe it was some game she was playing. Mr. 2 would be in a Navy prison by now. Crocodile and in all likelihood Mr. 1 too—if the latter had ever peeled himself off that Alubarna street Zoro had left him on. They were surely bound for Impel Down and no escape.

The rest of the Baroque Works crew though, Zoro couldn’t be sure. The last time they had seen Mr. 3 he had been floating facedown in that Bananagator cage. Similarly, Miss Goldenweek, Miss Merry Christmas, and Mr. 4 had all been defeated in Alubarana—but whether the Navy found them was another question.

Really, Zoro thought, there was only one Baroque operative he knew for certain wasn’t out in the world, even counting Mr. 0, Mr. 2, and Mr. 3; that pathetic swordsman that had run out the recruitment spiel on Sixis.

So were the rest of them still in cahoots with their charismatic Miss All Sunday, planning revenge or some other scheme? Why would Nico Robin not want them fighting here in Mock Town unless she was planning something?

In fact, she had even been the one to bring them here, by finding that eternal pose. She had suggested it was stolen from Masira’s boat, but Zoro didn’t remember her over there any time after he, Luffy, and Sanji had escaped the Saint Briss. She wouldn’t have been able to snatch it once the shadows appeared.

“We’re going to need more information,” Nami had said once she’d realised the trio had brought absolutely no treasure back from the Briss’ wreck. “Now listen, if we’re going up to the sky, whatever happened to this ship up there could easily happen to us too. We need all the information we can get. You were down there looking for rusty swords, dishes, and live octopuses when we really needed a ship’s log or even a map!”

Robin had cut in then. She was lounging on the railing on the way up to the Merry’s half-deck, rolling something around in her hands. “You seem to be having a hard time,” she had said with some sympathy to Nami, who was stomping by.

“It’s not going to get any easier,” the navigator snapped back, though her frustration was evidently not aimed at Robin. She had shot a glare back over her shoulder toward where Zoro and Sanji were standing watching Luffy kick around in the pile of refuse they had brought up to the deck. “This is a ship of fools. And now we’ve totally lost our way too, thanks to those three finding nothing of worth!”

Robin had handed her the glittering thing she was rolling around in her hands then: a log pose, Zoro could see from down on the gun deck.

“An eternal pose!”

Robin had smiled, that mysterious half-smile Zoro had already gotten so used to seeing. She leaned on one arm, her gaze fixed on Nami. “I stole it back there, from the ape’s ship.”

“Oh Robin, this is brilliant,” the navigator replied. “You’re the only ally I have.” She had turned the pose over in her hands several times, watching the dial stay steading against the shifting glass. “Jaya. This must be their home base.”

“Jaya?” Luffy asked. He had crept up to the upper deck, munching a bento tray Sanji had dolled out for the crew. “Are we going there?”

Nami rounded on him. “You’re the captain Luffy! It’s up to you where we go.”

And so, here the Strawhats were: Jaya. As perfect a place as any for a Baroque Works ambush, Zoro supposed, but Luffy didn’t seem worried as the three of them—Luffy, Zoro, and Nami—trudged into Mock Town.

“There are all sorts of characters here,” Luffy said.

Characters was very right. The three Strawhats had barely gone five paces when they saw their first fight; a very tall, very drunk warrior was yelling over the slumped body of his fallen enemy, sabre in hand and whiskey bottle rattling around in a gloved claw. A few steps on, two more slumped bodies littered the dirt track, though these looked to have been felled by the bottle rather than the blade.

Another, a squat man with suspended quivering under the weight of his rotund belly and crushing the folds of his ruffle was taking a slow draw of a very long pipe like every puff may be his last. His glare followed Nami closely as they walked until Zoro gently pushed a blade out of his hilt every so slightly.

Collapsed pirates seemed to be a trend. The trio didn’t exactly step over the next they discovered, but the sickly-looking fellow with as sickly a horse certainly didn’t move out of the road as they trod on by. His horse coughed just as much as he did. Strangely enough, he seemed to be offering apples to anyone that would come close enough, though a snappy slap from Nami was enough to dissuade the Strawhat captain from investigating.

A little further on, with the Mock Town buildings looming up around them now, Zoro spied a wide man with a glittering belt yelling from a rooftop. He wouldn’t quite tell what he was hollering, but a swaying pirate on the road below was grumbling that the man didn’t even have a bounty on his head. Another called him a grappling champion, which was enough to draw Luffy’s attention before Nami grabbed him by a shoulder and steered him back on the right path again.

Every so often, a gunshot went off. Neither of the three could see the gunman, nor whomever had been shot at, but they could hear the yells and cries that followed—or the silence, one time. Other steps were dogged by the ringing of blades, the screams of joy and frustration, and more than once someone staggered out of an inn or a house and cracked a fresh bottle of dark whiskey or ale.

Zoro smiled. “Seems like a fun place.”

Inside the Pub And Pies was not much different. The pirates and seafarers here seemed happier, cheerfully talking among themselves as they downed tall foamy mugs of ale and lager, carved off great chunks of ham from the pig legs slammed onto their tables, and cut the fresh-smoked fish down to the bone. Some were dicing in the corner and one group, three men and two women, were deep in a quiet game of cards. As Zoro, Luffy, and Nami entered, the closest windmilled a high card onto the table with a whoop.

Nami, who had reached the bar stools first and taken a seat, was reading out a brochure about the town as Zoro grabbed his first drink. Luffy was already half a long drawn gulp into his pint glass. “—and killings are commonplace here, but the pirates never lay a hand on the townsfolk. What good is money if there isn’t anywhere to spend it, right?” Nami looked around at the mess of pirates laughing and cavorting around them. “I don’t know guys, this town really gives me a bad feeling.”

“I suppose that’s a normal reaction to the place, but we don’t get many normal people in this town,” the bartender said, adding Nami’s pitcher to the cluttered bartop. “If you really don’t like it here, your log pose should reset in four days. If you’re smart, you’ll get about leaving quick, before y’all get caught up in anything here.”

“Four days huh?” Nami said, looking at her log pose. “I say we leave in two.”

Zoro certainly heard her and figured the navigator’s plan was a good one, but Luffy had already lost interest. Instead, he was bumping shoulders with a large man to the right of him. The stranger, already glaring at Luffy, had a long white shirt unbuttoned completely to show off his huge, black-haired chest, which ran down to a golden belt. He was midway through jostling Luffy. “You have to agree that drink was really bad!”

Luffy was having none of it. “Nuh-uh, that drink was really good!”

“Something wrong with your tongue?” the stranger asked the Strawhat captain. “Something wrong with your brain?” the captain shot back.

Zoro slipped one hand off the bartop and fingered the hilt of the Wado Ichimonji. Luffy could handle himself, but this stranger may have friends somewhere around. He couldn’t see any, but something about the man yelled… many. More than one, at least.

“Hey, you wanna fight?” the two were barking at each other and Zoro’s fingering turned to a tight grip on his sword hilt. Nami had already stormed up to the pair of them though and was berating Luffy for antagonising strangers.

The stranger stopped his yelling as he noticed what Nami and Zoro were wearing behind Luffy; especially Zoro’s blades. “Are you pirates?”

“That’s right,” Luffy snapped back.

“Then what’s your bounty?”

“I have a bounty of thirty million.”

The stranger eyed Luffy from the tip of his straw hat to the bottom of his sandals. “You, a thirty million Berry bounty? That’s impossible, I’d say—you’re a liar!”

The bartender appearing beside the pair broke up any further discussion; he was holding two big bags of food which he handed to the stranger and Luffy. “Here you go, fifty cherry pies, as you ordered. And for you, Strawhat, the meat.”

Nami’s eyes bulged. “Luffy, how much meat are you buying?”

Luffy turned to defend himself and the stranger chuckled, grabbed the bag from the bartender, and with one last glare at Luffy and his bulging sack of meat cutlets, walked out the tavern doors.

No sooner had the saloon door swung shut behind the large man though and someone else was striding through. This pirate was even taller and was wearing a huge tasselled blue cloak with gold trim along its sides that matched his bright blonde hair. His eyes locked onto Luffy, still sitting at the bar, and he strode in.

“Anybody seen a pirate in a straw hat around here?”

The three Strawhats looked over their shoulders, sizing up the new pirate striding into the bar. “Looks like this guy has some kind of business with you Luffy,” Zoro said, keeping one eye on the new arrival.

The blonde man locked eyes on Luffy and strode to the bar. “Strawhat Luffy. They’re telling me your head is worth 30 million berries. Is that right?” He gestured to the barman, who was carefully watching the group, an already well-cleaned glass turning lazily against a cleaning towel in his hand. “Give me your most expensive drink. And what’s this kid been drinking? Get him whatever he wants too.”

The barman, still keeping his eyes on the pirates, traded the towel and clean glass for two fresh pint bottles and poured out two ales. Luffy’s nose turned up at the brown swill swishing around in the glass, but he raised it, took a swig, and looked over at where the blond pirate was drinking his own. “You’re alright mister!” the Strawhat captain declared.

Zoro relaxed a little—too much. He had relaxed for just a moment, but it was enough to leave him unprepared for the first flurry of action from the towering blonde captain. Idiot, he thought, diving for his blades.

As fast as the Strawhat swordsman moved, the blonde pirate moved faster. In one huge swing, he grabbed the back of Luffy’s head, driving it clean through the wooden bar. Drink and Strawhat alike smashed through with a mighty crack. The pirate was laughing as he forced Luffy’s head down.

“Get them, Bellamy!” someone cried in the crowd behind them. Another matched the yells with: “That Bellamy’s is really something, eh!”

Zoro leapt, steel in hand, arresting the pirate’s drive. The pair froze; the pirate holding his hand through the shattered splinters of the bartop and Zoro with his sword in hand, pressing the edge to the attacker’s neck. But, even as he tensed for a backswing to lope the man’s laughing blonde head clean off, something caught him, pulling the blade short. “Don’t fight,” rang in his ears, though when he looked across at Nami, he saw she hadn’t said anything; the navigator’s mouth was simply agape.

“Don’t do anything to stir up trouble here.”

Zoro clenched his teeth, twisting the Wado Ichimonji ever so slightly. The honed blade caught the edge of Bellamy’s neck, drawing a flick of blood that dripped down the length of the silver. The hulking pirate locked eyes with the swordsman, not moving his head. “What’s your problem, low-life?”

“You’re the one with the problem, friend.”

Zoro heard someone rushing up behind him; he tensed again until Nami yelled close by his ear: “Wait Zoro, we haven’t learned what we need to know yet!”

The swordsman held his blade steady and grimaced when Bellamy stepped away. All he had left on the blonde pirate’s neck was a small snick, and now he had to watch him laugh in his and Luffy’s faces.

The next words spoken silenced the whole bar though, and Zoro didn’t have a chance to think about letting Bellamy leave. “Bartender,” Nami said behind him, “We want to to the Sky Island. Can you tell us anything at all?”

The whole bar stood still, then erupted. Some of Bellamy’s pirates who had walked in after him were guffawing on the ground. Others, those who had been drinking in the bar before the tussle, were hooting and hollering. Even the squat bartender, whom Nami had addressed directly, was only laughing. “Gimme a break!” one of Bellamy’s pirates yelled. “Did you say, the Sky Island?” another barked before losing himself to laughter.

Nami was unphased. “But our log pose is pointing directly to the sky. That has to mean something, stop laughing!”

Her pleas only kicked up more laughter from Bellamy’s pirates.

“What a bunch of lubbers you are,” Bellamy spat as his chuckles died down. “Where’d you hicks come from anyway? You believe that ancient legend, about the island in the sky? What rock did you crawl out from under?” He chuckled, leaning on the shattered bar. “New currents are being discovered on the Grand Line all the time. Take the Knock-Up Stream, for instance; you probably didn’t even know it existed. Ships that fall victim are hurled upward and come crashing back down to the sea.” As he spoke, he acted out a ship plummeting back into the blue sea with his hands, keeping his eyes locked on Nami. “Long ago, ignorant seafarers—just like you, I suppose—saw them falling out of the sky and thought there must be an island up there. ‘Surely there must be another world up there in the sky,’ they said in wonder. Ha! There’s always a scientific explanation for strange phenomena.”

He slapped the bar with the flat of his hand. “In time, the truth behind such silly myths always becomes that much clearer. What a disappointment; I was going to see if you had what it takes to join my crew in this New Age of Pirates. That obviously isn’t going to happen now though. You’re too gullible.” He spat, then looked out across the silent room of the bar, pointing at the pirates he didn’t recognise. “Listen, the age of pirate pipe dreams is over. El Dorado? The Emerald City? The One Piece? Fools blinded by fantasy treasures can’t see the riches lying right at their feet.”

“In this age, some of the most able seafarers get themselves killed chasing such foolishness, and then people say, ‘They were lucky to die chasing their dream.’ Ha, ha! I say they’re all losers.” As he yelled, he hefted back a fist. “When I see these fools wasting their lives on silly dreams, I just go berserk.”

The pirate’s first blow caught Luffy square on the chin, bowling the little Strawhat captain back onto the ground. If it had been anyone else, a mist of blood may have sprayed from his firmly-struck mouth.

As it was, the rubber boy crumpled.

Nami yelled, rushing to Luffy’s side, but something caught Zoro in place. He had his hands on the Wado Ichimonji hilt still, but he’d resheathed it. Don’t fight. He didn’t want to listen, but something deep in his chest said he had to. Don’t fight. Don’t do anything to stir up trouble. Except now trouble had found them, and his captain was on the floor, and he had to do something to—

“Zoro,” Luffy said, sitting up. “Don’t fight them.”

Bellamy’s right-hand man laughed. “The Navy’s getting pretty generous these days, handing out thirty million Berries for a wimp like this.”

“Pacifism… sounds like an excuse for cowardice to me,” Bellamy said, throwing back a drink from the bar. “Not only are they clearly so weak, they got no pride. They stand here without the heart to fight, and yet, their heads are full of dreams. They’re worms.”

The pirate captain lurched forward, taking another swig of his ale. He swirled the drink around his mouth as he strode over to Luffy. Silence from the Strawhat captain, who watched Bellamy approach. The height between the two became even clearer as Bellamy stopped right in front of the Strawhat captain. Then, he leaned back and sprayed the swilled ale across Luffy’s face, spraying the stone-standing pirate.

This nearly broke Zoro. Don’t fight. He had his captain’s orders ringing in his ears—or was it Robin’s request—but his sword was right there. A second to draw, another half-second to make it Bellamy. Then that nick on his neck could become a torrent of blood. There’d be no laughing then.

But Zoro hadn’t moved, not even as his head screamed for him. Don’t do anything to stir up trouble. “Get these cowards out of my sight,” Bellamy commanded as the ale dripped down Luffy’s face. “They make me sick.”

The first blow that cracked against Zoro’s shoulder pushed his sword hand away from his blades, but he wouldn’t have drawn them anyway. Another struck him clean against the temple, sending him tumbling to the ground. Don’t fight. Luffy’s command. Maybe. A leg, a kick, a cough of blood as he was hit again. Don’t fight, not here. He wanted to reach for his sword, but those words rang in his head. Don’t fight. Robin’s command. Definitely. Why was he listening to that order?

He could hear Nami yelling, but all that died down quickly once Bellamy’s men had hefted him and Luffy out onto the street. Nami followed, the doors slamming shut behind her. Zoro could see Luffy’s face, puffed and bruised, but not bleeding. Looking a little better than his cracked and battered head, he could only imagine.

“The sky island really does exist,” Nami hissed back at the doors.

“Why are you so upset, missy?” The question came from the other side of the street. Zoro couldn’t see where; he could barely hear with the ringing in his ears. One of those kicks had landed square on the side of his head.

Nami said something back and the voice came again: “There’s no reason for you to be angry—your friends won that fight.” Nami replied, but Zoro couldn’t hear then the deep voice chuckled. “Your comeback was impressive too. You’ve got some real guts there!”

Zoro struggled to his feet, dusting himself off. Beside him, Luffy was doing similar, ending his patdown by plonking his straw hat back onto his head.

“Luffy…” Nami said. “Zoro…”

The stranger wasn’t finished speaking. “That new age that they spoke of in there, that they were so eager to claim was already coming. It’s rubbish!” Zoro looked at the speaker and realised it was the same lumbering, pie-loving man Luffy had locked horns with at the bar before Bellamy had stormed in. “The age of pirate dreams is over? Hey?” The man burst into laughter, a great loud belly rumble. “Zehahahahahaha! Listen here: people’s dreams don’t ever end! Ain’t that right?”

Luffy looked the sitting man in the eyes but said nothing.

“It isn’t easy to be great,” the stranger continued. “Let them laugh! You’re aiming for the top, and you don’t always need your fists to show your might. Zehahahahaha!” With that he stood, scooping up his bottle of whiskey. “Well, I won’t keep you anymore, you seem to be in a hurry.” He took another swig, smacking his chops as the whiskey splashed down his chin. “I hope you make it to the Sky Island.”

Chopper and Usopp had been quite worried for Zoro and Luffy when they returned to the Merry, though Sanji had seemed more concerned about whether Nami had been hurt during their adventure into Mock Town. Once Luffy broke down the story for the rest of the Strawhats, the others calmed down a little and the captain and swordsman got a chance to lay down and catch their breaths.

Everyone calmed down, that is, except the navigator.

“It may be over for you, but it’s not for me,” Nami snapped. “How can you call yourselves men? Men don’t shrink from a fight. We should blow this whole stinking pirate town to smithereens!”

Zoro shrugged and Luffy didn’t seem to have noticed her yelling at all. Chopper stepped up, rubbing his hoofs together. “Did you guys at least find out anything else about the Sky Island while you were in town though?”

Nami’s glowering eyes burned into the little reindeer, who shirked away after asking his question. “Sky Island? Who cares about that? Sky Island… everyone started laughing at us at the mere mention of that place. They seem to think it doesn’t exist—and I’m inclined to believe them, it does seem kind of ludicrous.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Robin replied. The crew snapped to the steps up to the railing, where Nico Robin was standing. She had traded the clothes she had borrowed from Nami for another outfit again, Zoro noticed. Her wide-brim Miss All Sunday hat was back, but in place of the rest of her Baroque Works uniform, she was wearing purple travelling pants and a long-sleeved coat of the same colour. It may have been the most Zoro had seen the tall woman wear. Her midriff was still uncovered though, he drunk in, down from her stomach to the curve just above her—

“Where were you?” Zoro snapped, shaking his thoughts away. “We went into Mock Town and we certainly didn’t see you there at all.” As he spoke, his hand was already drifting to the blade hilts jumbled together at his side.

“I went shopping for these clothes,” she said, with the sway of her hips. Zoro watched, unable to avoid another look. Whether Robin noticed or not, she continued: “And I was asking around about our island in the sky. I figured the least I could do was try and find some information.”

Nami scowled. “That’s right, this is all your fault!” She stormed over to the newest Strawhat, prodding her finger into Robin’s chest. “You put those ideas about a Sky Island into our heads, and look where that got us. Well, you can count on this: if I find out that it doesn’t exist, I’m sending you to the bottom of the ocean.”

Robin replied by pulling a rolled-up piece of paper out of where it had been tucked in her jacket and handing it to Nami.

“Hey, it’s a treasure map!” Luffy yelled, jumping up.

“That’s right,” Robin replied. She pointed to one side of the parchment as Luffy grabbed it out of Nami’s hands. “This little town on the left here, Mock Town, that’s where we are right now, or about as close enough.” She dragged one long finger across the drawing to the other side of the Jaya drawing. “Then this X, on the opposite coast, is where the biggest weirdo on the island lives. His name is Mont Blanc Cricket. I went into town looking for anything anyone knew and all things led me to one place. He was chased out of town for talking about dreams.” She smiled at Luffy, who had gone back to pouring over the parchment. “Seems you have something in common.”

Luffy smiled and rushed the map over to where Chopper and Usopp were waiting. The three quickly began pouring over the sheet for any other clues. Nami joined them, claiming she would have a “better eye for anything actually important.”

Zoro didn’t move. His hand was still clenched over his swords. “What are you playing at Nico Robin? First, you talk about the Sky Island, then you mysteriously find the next clue in our little adventure. Seems a little too perfect for me. And I see you’re back to wearing your Baroque Works hat too.”

Robin looked at him. Those blue eyes seemed to engulf him for a second, sizing him up. His heart kicked up a beat. Then she smiled, and Zoro grabbed his blade firmly. Her whole face creased into a beam as she laughed. “Is that what your wandering eyes mean, swordsman? You are trying to figure out what side I’m on? And here I was thinking you were looking for something else there.” She stepped closer. “Pity.”

Zoro’s breath caught in his throat. The rest of the Strawhats still on the deck of the Merry were preoccupied with the treasure map. Sanji had disappeared back into the kitchen to do gods knew what. It was just him and the Baroque Works woman at the prow and she was edging ever closer. To attack? Was this her plan?

Her gleaming blue eyes glittered. The swordsman was frozen.

At least, he managed a breath. “Stay back. That’s close enough Robin.”

Robin didn’t listen. She was right in front of him now, close enough for him to feel her breath caressing his cheeks. Her eyes were orbs this close, swallowing up his gaze and drawing him in. If he hadn’t already fought back his breath, he would have lost it again. As it was, it was a struggle to fight the urge all the same. The breath, warm, soft, came again, playing across his lips. Then, he looked down. There was barely anything between them now; she was nearly pressed against the hilts of his blades, hanging just out from his hips. Hers were swaying slowly as she moved in, demanding his attention. Calling. He followed her curves back to her neck, her jaw, then her lips.

Robin spoke. A melody, like the first notes of a lover’s waltz. “You know, I like it when you use my name, swordsman.”

Then the breath was gone, her blue eyes broke away from his, and Robin was walking away before Zoro even had a chance to do anything. He hadn’t drawn his sword. He hadn’t stepped in. The great bounty hunter had just frozen.

He breathed, deep and long.

“I can’t wait to go to the Sky Island!” Luffy yelled, breaking whatever trance Zoro had fallen into. He looked over. Chopper, Usopp, and the captain were still engrossed in their map, nothing else on the Merry catching their eye. Sanji was, at that moment, reappearing from the kitchen with two plates of something steaming. Nami had taken up a perch on the upper railing and was watching the horizon, her precious log pose close by.

And there was Robin, disappearing into the swinging door to the upper gun deck. The Merry’s hammocks were there, alongside the rest of the crew’s travelling stores. She would be alone in there, Zoro knew, for a time.

He shook himself and sat down on the prow. She can’t be trusted. Every Baroque Works agent had carried out plans within plans. Crocodile had worked them on the string, playing to his tune in Arabasta. Miss All Sunday may have been his highest-ranking lieutenant, but she had been dancing the same tune.

“Can I look at those wounds?” Chopper said. Zoro nearly jumped—he hadn’t heard the little reindeer coming—but instead, he lazily cast a single-eyed glance towards his shipmate. The doctor may have been asking quite politely, but the fact he had already brought his kitbag suggested he was going to take Zoro’s “no” as an answer. So, grunting, Zoro nodded and leaned back on the railing. Chopper smiled and opened his bag, pulling out a gauze to wrap across one of the biggest slashes down Zoro’s neck.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” the reindeer asked as he spread the poultice.

Zoro shrugged. “It didn’t seem worth it Chopper. Not every fight is going to be.”

Chopper looked up at Zoro with wide eyes. “That’s so cool Zoro. How do you know if a fight is going to be worth it? I thought every battle would be worth it for a warrior like you, or like Luffy!”

Zoro looked at the door to the gun deck. He would still see Robin’s inviting shape lingering there. Still feel that warmth on his cheeks. That command rang again: “Don’t do anything to stir up trouble. Don’t fight, Zoro.”

“You just know, Chopper. Sometimes, you just know.”

Chapter Text

It had taken the Strawhats some time to get the Merry ready to sail again, especially when Chopper had insisted he first treat Luffy and Zoro before they joined the work on deck, but by mid-afternoon, they had been on their way.

Usopp had quickly roped Chopper and the still-sore Zoro and Luffy into helping him with ballast repairs. Sanji had been called down to help by the sniper but deftly managed to avoid the hammer work by suggesting he was working hard on something for everyone in the kitchen, though all Zoro had actually seen him bring out as they sailed was that scalding bergamot tea he was always making for Nami.

“Geez,” Usopp said, wiping sweat from his brow as he hammered, “that darned orangutan very nearly wrecked the ship with his silly jumping. Wait ‘til I get my hands on him, I would have kicked him all the way out of the Grand Line!”

Zoro looked around the Merry. From where he was sitting, driving a new ballast sheet onto the mast, he could see more marks, pocks, and blistered wood across the deck than untouched wood at this stage. The ship hadn’t been right in the thick of things everywhere they’d been on the Grand Line, but Nami had taken the caravel from Baratie to Arlong Park and then the storm at Loguetown had knocked her around too. The Marines certainly hadn’t been bothered about peppering her with cannonballs either, though that made the most sense—several huge pockmarks were branded on her sides.

Perhaps the worst had been that fool, Wapol, and his big mouth on Drum Island. His chomping had carved right through the poor Merry’s railings until the Strawhats had stopped him. Who knows how much of the ship he had in his belly? 

Same too, that silly Dead End Race that Luffy had made them go in; the voyage from Hannabal to Partia must surely have been littered with debris from Kaya’s ship. Perhaps that great whale, Laboon, had even swallowed a few chunks after the Strawhats came down from Reverse Mountain onto the Grand Line too.

“It really is in bad shape,” Zoro said. “Maybe it’s time we got a new one.”

Usopp’s hammer dropped to the ground and the sniper’s eyes bulged as he glared over his shoulder at Zoro. “How can you even say that?” Chopper, hammering next to him, looked just as shocked by Zoro’s suggestion.

“Hey, don’t worry Usopp,” Luffy said. “The Going Merry’s part of our crew. She’ll be as good as new again once we’re done fixing her up!”

But, even as he said that, the Strawhat captain took a great, well-meaning swing against the bow rail and drove his hammer straight through the wood. With a great crack! a chunk split off, tumbling down into the sea, leaving a jagged wound in the rail. “Oops,” Luffy managed, sheepishly looking over at Usopp.

Before Usopp could dive at the captain, Nami broke the tension.

“Hey, this is the place on the map!” she called down. She was standing on the as-yet-unbroken portside railing, running her finger along the dusty old parchment Robin had given her and looking out to the ocean. While the others were working on the Merry’s repairs, Nami had been guiding the ship around the edges of Jaya and its many, many rocks. “What’s that man’s name again?”

“Mont Blanc Cricket,” Robin replied.

“That man who talks of dreams…” said Nami. “What kind of dreams was this Cricket talking about that the people of this island kicked him out for Robin?”

“I don’t know all the details,” Robin said. “But apparently this fellow claims there’s a huge hoard of gold hidden somewhere here on Jaya.”

Nami’s eyes bulged. “Like a pirate’s treasure trove?”

“Well, I don’t know about that…”

Nami had lost interest in Robin’s explanation though and was instead staring over the newest Strawhat’s shoulder. Zoro followed her gaze. His eyes fell on the same thing that had caught her attention; a massive white castle was on the shore ahead of the Merry. Its massive parapets loomed over the ship, four canons aimed out to the sea, and standing out against the white stone of the facade were three great pink domes. The bulbous twirled tops stretched up to the right, left, and right through the middle at the highest peak, with the tallest and mightiest of the three flanked by two conical yellow towers that jutted into the sky like spears. At the base, two green swirls were etched into the walls near the door.

“That’s Mont Blanc Cricket’s house?” Nami yelled, finding her voice.

Usopp was gaping too now. “Whoa… maybe he’s like, super duper rich or something?”

Except, as Zoro looked closer, something seemed strange. He could see the flags at the very tips of the yellow towers weren’t fluttering. The canons seemed to have never been fired, though there were painted scorings on the white marble. None of the curtains in the shutters fluttered, and even the stone caught the light strangely.

Then he caught it—the whole castle was one huge painting.

“Look closer, fools,” he chuckled.

Sanji seemed to have caught on to it at the same time Zoro had and was already laughing too, a cigarette smouldering in his hand. “A man of big dreams, eh? Well, at least we know one thing about Mont Blanc Cricket: he likes to create an illusion.”

Luffy scratched his head. The captain may have been struggling with the concept because as the crew lay anchor and piled off onto the coast near the structure, he was wandering around first staring at the large mansion painted on the front of the wooden slabs, and then to the normal half-house behind it. After he had done several laps, he looked back to those still near the Merry. “It’s only plywood!”

“There’s only half a house here,” Zoro agreed. “The rest is just fake.”

“What a cheapskate,” Sanji said, kicking one of the walls.

Nami scratched her head too and followed Luffy’s beaten path, wandering around to the back side of the huge painting. Zoro followed, keeping one hand on his blade. The pair circled the real section of the house once, twice, and then ducked their heads through a window. The inside was as empty as the rest of the coastline.

Nami sighed, as much in relief as anything else. “Whether he’s one of those illusionists or not, he’s not here, is he.” Zoro shrugged and began walking back to the Merry. At least they wouldn’t have to fight this Cricket for coming onto his land, wherever he was. Nami moved to follow him, but paused. A huge pile of books and papers on a table just outside the door had caught her attention. She began riffling through them. Almost immediately, one close to the top took her fancy and she fished it out of the rest of the papers. “What’s this, a storybook? King of the Liars. Ha, that’s a catchy title.”

“King of the Liars?” Sanji said, coming up behind her. “That brings back old memories. I actually used to read that book a lot, when I was a little boy.”

“You know about this book?” Nami asked. “It says it was published in the North Blue.”

“Yeah, I was born in the North Blue. I grew up in the East Blue but I was originally from there—and this story is pretty popular up north. People say it’s just a kid’s story, but I’ve heard he really did exist, this Noland guy.”

Nami dusted off the front cover. The title, King of Liars, was emblazoned across the top in bright blue writing. There was a publishing stamp slapped onto the corner, while most of the front was dominated by a cartoon drawing of a little man with a great brown bundle of hair pointing out to sea. He was standing at the prow of a small ship and excitedly smiling about something. With a slow crack, Nami peeled back the cover and began reading the first page to the rest of the Strawhats.

“A story that happened over four hundred years ago,” she began. “In a country, somewhere in the North Sea, there was a man named Mont Blanc Noland. He was an explorer who always spoke of past adventures, but the people of the village didn’t know if these tales were really true or not. One time, Noland went on an expedition and came back to report to the king. ‘I saw a mountain of gold on an island across the great seas,’ he said. To see for himself, the brave king took two thousand warriors and crossed the great seas in his ship. He fought powerful storms and huge sea monsters. Finally, the king, Noland, and one hundred soldiers landed on the island. But what they found there was nothing but jungle. Noland was sentenced to death for his lies. These were his last words: ‘That's it! The mountain of gold sank into the ocean!!!’ The king and the others were shocked.”

The last page had another cartoon drawing of the man, Noland, smiling behind bars. Nami slowly read the last words. “Nobody believed Noland anymore, but Noland never stopped lying until he was dead.”

There was a splash behind them, then another, and the Strawhats wheeled around. Usopp was opening his mouth to yell at whoever had made the noise when he spotted a soaked figure emerging from the water’s edge.

Usopp gaped at the stranger. “Who are you?”

Zoro sat up from where he had been lounging listening to Nami’s reading, his swords clattering against the ground as he rose. The stranger hadn’t made a move toward the Strawhats yet. Water was pealing off him, dripping onto the grass around his bare feet. The man leaned back into a fighting stance. “You’ve got guts, making yourself at home on somebody else’s property. The waters around here belong to me.”

Sanji glanced at the rippling water behind the man. “Usopp, save Luffy.”

Zoro’s eyes widened as he realised what Sanji had beaten him to by a second—Luffy had been the first splash they had heard. He must have been pulled into the ocean by this mysterious man.

Usopp nodded and sidled past where the man had emerged then, quite ungracefully, dove into the water and disappeared with a ripple.

The stranger looked to the crouched Zoro and Nami, who was still standing with the book open in her hands, to Robin and Chopper watching from a little further on, and then back to where Usopp had dove into the water. Lastly, he glanced at Sanji just behind him. The cook was barely moving, but he was doing just enough to block the panting stranger away from where Usopp was looking for Luffy.

“You’re after the gold, aren’t you?” the stranger said. “Then die.”

The man, whom Zoro noticed looked like he was wearing a large brown chestnut on the top of his head, leapt at Sanji, lashing out a foot. Sanji bent out of the way, then folded in on himself as a second kick barrelled past his head. He’d been quick, but not quick enough to stop the third strike, a hurled open palm into his gut. The cook exhaled, barely keeping his smouldering cigarette between his teeth.

“Sanji!” Chopper and Nami yelled in unison.

The cook coughed and stumbled, just catching himself in time to block another long, low-swung arm coming up from his left with one leg. The two balanced together, arm and leg interlocked. Still straining against the leg with one hand, the stranger drew a weapon and squared it right in front of Sanji’s nose.

The pistol went off in Sanji’s face with a loud cracking boom!

Fool cook. “You underestimated him!” Zoro yelled. He was already lunging, stepping over Sanji’s fallen body. One blade flashed out of its scabbard. The Yubashiri. He curled his body into a hunched ball and charged.

Except, there was no enemy. The man had tumbled and was shaking on the ground. His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was spluttering.

Zoro slashed the Yubashiri back into its scabbard and dashed back to Sanji. The cook was rolled on the ground near the shaking man, cigarette dropped into the dirt. When Zoro reached him, Sanji’s eyes flashed open.

“I’m okay,” he grunted, sitting up. “He missed with that shot.”

Behind them, Usopp breached, spluttering and coughing as he broke the water. He kicked to the embankment, heaving a frozen Luffy in his arms as he swam. Zoro let himself smile; no Strawhat had been hurt by the stranger. Or worse.

The Strawhats had quickly figured out that the strange man who had attacked Sanji was Mont Blanc Cricket in the flesh, once he woke up. They had let him lie for some time after his appearance, with Chopper soon hypothesising he had been taken by the bends—a condition some deep sea divers suffer if they come up out of the water too quickly. “You see, the sudden decompression causes air bubbles to form in the blood and tissues,” the little doctor explained as he patted a cold wet towel on Cricket’s head. “These bubbles expand and cause problems in the vascular system, muscles, and joints.” There was only one answer, Chopper claimed: the man must have been diving day after day without resting.

There was a back and forth among the crew about whether he was going to attack them again, and while Sanji and Zoro were quite adamant they shouldn’t trust the stranger after his ambush, the rest decided to let sleeping divers lie. By the time he woke up, the swordsman and the cook had been talked down.

Cricket had introduced himself after the grogginess had passed and some of the other crewmembers had begun doing the same back as he came to.

The Strawhat captain wasn’t too interested in formalities. “Hey, Mr. Diamond Head!” Luffy called. “I’ve been waiting to ask you something.”

Cricket looked up from where he was resting on the side of his small, unmade bed. He glanced over when Luffy arrived with a yell. “Thanks for all your help Strawhat, and sorry for the trouble. I made a silly mistake, you see; I thought you were more of those fools who’ve been trying to steal my gold.”

“Gold?” Nami whispered. “You have gold?”

Usopp shot her a dirty look. “Don’t even think about it.”

Cricket ignored them both, lighting up a cigarette and blowing out a long, wispy column of smoke. “You wanted to ask me something? What is it?”

“We want to go to the Sky Island,” Luffy said. “Please, tell us how to get there!”

“More importantly, does it really exist?” asked Chopper eagerly.

Cricket laughed, rolling his head back as he roared. His outburst caught Nami’s stinging glare, though with his eyes closed and his head sprung back he didn’t see the navigator's daggers. Soon, he stopped laughing. “I don’t know, but I knew a man who said it does, little reindeer,” he said. “He was known as a great liar though. Someone who was always being laughed at. Noland. Earned himself the title King of the Liars, before he died.” Cricket took another long drag of his smouldering cigarette and shifted on the bed. “He was my great, great, great grandfather. Anyway, it’s a silly story about a distant ancestor. I probably only have a drop of his blood in me. The whole Mont Blanc family was exiled to a life of shame. Even now, we are badmouthed. Ridiculed, just for being born. But nobody in the family really hates Noland for what he did.”

“Why not?” Usopp broke in to ask.

Cricket eyed for a second, dragging out a third puff. “Because Noland was, out of all things, a very honest man. When Noland was defending his claims, he said, ‘I know, the mountain of gold sunk into the sea!’ The storybooks showed him with a great big smile on his face, but he was actually shedding tears of hate and injustice when he died. The island that people went to, was really the place where Noland himself found the golden city. It was definitely not just his imagination, and he certainly wasn’t just making up lies. Noland claimed the golden city had fallen undersea because of shifting landscapes from earthquakes.” The sitting man sniffed. “Everyone just thought he was making false claims. No one would believe his gold city story after that. His death penalty was carried out surrounded by witnesses just laughing at him. Sarcastic, painful laughter.”

Usopp leaned forward. “Then you’re attempting to prove that Noland really is innocent then, by trying to find the golden city under the sea?”

Cricket whipped around, his smouldering cigarette falling from his mouth. In his hand was an old flintlock pistol, hammer drawn back and the silver-hemmed barrel pointed at the Strawhat sniper’s eager face. “Quit talking shit!” Cricket snarled. Usopp stumbled back, his back hitting the wall as he fled, but the rising man didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he just kept talking. Zoro’s hand drifted to his blade hilt. If he was going to shoot at Usopp, he wouldn’t survive even trying to pull the trigger.

“Whether or not my ancestor was an honest person or was really a great adventurer has nothing to do with me,” Cricket said, gun still waving in Usopp’s face. “Because that fool’s blood flows in my veins, total strangers made fun of me all through my childhood. To a kid’s face. Do you know what that’s like? That’s how I grew up, just for the crime of being one of Noland’s descendants. Over the last 400 years, in some kind of useless attempt to restore our family honor, countless Mont Blancs have gone to sea, and all of them have disappeared without a trace. I was ashamed of my family, and what they had done. What people thought of us. So I left home. I left home and became a pirate. I didn’t set out to be one. I just wanted to get away from Noland’s curse. Then, ten years ago, my ship happened to land on this island here, Jaya, after an adventure.”

He chuckled softly and holstered the gun. Usopp breathed a sigh of relief. Zoro, standing close by, relaxed his shoulders. He saw Luffy was doing similar, his curled fists unfurling as the weapon disappeared back into the raving man’s belt buckle. At least the captain would have been able to stop any stray bullet.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Cricket said, paying no heed to Luffy’s curled fists or Zoro fingering the long hilts of his blades. “As the one who hated the Mont Blanc family the most, hated Noland and what he’d done to us the most, I was the only one who actually landed here in Jaya and found where Noland had been. But as I stood on that cliff, the waves rolling in, crashing against the edge of the island, staring out at no trace of a city of gold, I realised the fates had done something to bring me here. There was no escaping it. I had to settle my battle with the man who ruined my life, once and for all. Before I die, more likely here on the cliffs themselves than anywhere else, I intend to set that record straight.”

Luffy stepped up to Cricket laying on the bed. Zoro thought, for just a second, that the Strawhat captain was going to console the man. But, of course, his captain had simply grown tired of listening to long tales.

“I’m tired of these stories,” Luffy declared, bumping past Usopp. “Like I said, I want to go to the island in the sky!”

Zoro half expected Cricket to reach for his pistol again, or for Usopp to grab Luffy as he stood back to his feet, but both must have been stunned by the Strawhat captain. “Heh, such an impatient lad,” Cricket said. “Didn’t I just tell you that the one who spoke of the Sky Island was Noland the liar? If you believe his tales, you’ll become a laughing stock out across the seas of the Grand Line, just like me and my family.”

Luffy grinned. “Are you saying that Noland went to the Sky Island too?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly say he went there,” Cricket replied, reaching over to the bench beside his bed. There, among the clutter, he grabbed a thick red-bound book, cracked open the first handful of pages, and passed it to Nami. “Read this passage.”

Nami took it carefully, flipping the pages back to the cover. “This is Noland’s log?” Cricket nodded in reply and Nami flicked back to where he had opened it. “Amazing. A log from four hundred years ago…” She began to read aloud. “The age of Kaien 1120, June 21. Clear skies today. Sailed from the lively town of Vira. Will follow the Log Pose and sail straight east-northeast. Got hold of an unusual item from a merchant ship today. It’s a one-man boat that they were calling a ‘waver,’ which one rides like a ski. This strange vessel can even sail on windless days by creating its own wind, but there’s a knack to operating it I have not yet been able to master since being given it. The crew are enjoying it now. The power to run this vessel is found only on Sky Islands. I have heard there are many things with special properties up there. Speaking of Sky Islands, a fellow explorer once showed me a living skyfish, which was amazing to behold. It is a land our ships have never visited. But as a sailor, I wish to someday visit this mysterious sea in the sky. Mont Blanc Noland.”

By the end of the log, Luffy’s eyes were bulging out of his head. Usopp and Chopper weren’t doing much better either, with the little reindeer nearly running around in circles listening to Noland’s writing. Zoro smiled as he watched the doctor huddle in with Usopp and Luffy and give a cry of happiness. His smiles had been fewer and far between while the Strawhats had been crossing the Arabasta desert to Alubarna. “A sea in the sky!” Chopper yelled. “That’s just what Robin said we were looking for!”

“Yeah!” Usopp said. “And, according to this, people didn’t doubt the existence of any of the Sky Islands four hundred years ago either.”

“It really does exist!” Luffy yelled excitedly.

After Cricket’s story, he had told the Strawhats about two more things. Zoro had been half-paying, listening to the chestnut-topped man while simultaneously trying to catch a quick few minutes of sleep. The aches of that beating in the Pub And Pies still hung heavy on him, but it was nothing a short kip wouldn’t fix.

While he drifted in and out of consciousness at the edge of the hut, he had heard Cricket reading the next journal from Noland’s story: “May 21, 1122. Arrived on Jaya. When we got to the island we heard the strange sounds of a jungle bird and the tolling of a giant bell. The sound that giant bell of pure gold made, way off the distance, resonated and resonated as if to celebrate the untold riches of the ancient city. Through these vast seas, over countless generations, a great civilisation blossomed.

Through one half-lifted eye, Zoro could see Luffy, Chopper, and Usopp sitting right in front of the diver, heads of hands, listening intently. Sanji had been dishing out pints of ale he’d ferreted out of somewhere. Cricket read on after taking one of the drinks. “For those of the crew whose lives span but a few decades and think we know everything are left speechless. The sound of that great golden bell stopped us in our tracks.”

He closed the book. “There’s one thing that matters more than anything else in Noland’s passage; that jungle bird. If you want to get to the Sky Island, you’re going to have to ride one of the most dangerous spectacles of Jaya: the Knock-Up Stream. It’s directly south of here, which means you’ll have to follow a bird.”

Luffy had folded his arms. “Can’t we just go straight?”

“This is the Grand Line!” Cricket had stood, pointing out to sea. “Once you’re out there, on the high tides, there’s no way to know your directions. You know as well as any how strange these waves can be. You’ll be lost before you even get a whiff of the Knock-Up Stream, let alone your Sky Island’s berth.”

“I get it,” Nami said. “The Log Pose can actually only guide us to the next island we’re going to. It’s no good for finding any specific patch of water, like this stream. And, our compasses won’t work either. So how will we know how to head south?”

“You’ll have to rely on the bird,” Cricket said. “Some animals just have an innate sense of direction. This South Bird, it’s the best of all of them. No matter where it is, whether it’s flying over land or sea, its instincts always show it the right direction—a straight pistol shot to where south really is.”

Luffy had burst out laughing then, pointing to where Zoro was quietly lounging in the corner. “Hey Zoro, you’re worse than an animal!”

Zoro had sat up, snarling. How dare he. “You should talk!”

Nami put her hand on Zoro’s shoulder, pulling him back. “Now’s not the time, boys. If we want to get to the Sky Island, this sounds like it’s going to be our only way.”

“It’s the middle of the night!” Usopp said, shaking his head. “Better to wait until morning, otherwise we might get lost in the jungle forever.”

“No, you have to go now,” Cricket had said. “We shouldn’t have been lounging around in the first place, because that Knock-Up Stream is going to go off tomorrow. I’ll get to work on your ship right away, you all get out there and find that South Bird before sunrise.” He glanced at Usopp. “No time for whining!”

And so, the Strawhats had found themselves standing just inside the edge of the island’s jungle, armed with nets and a vague description of their quarry—a strange bird that had to be found before sunrise. Luffy scratched his head. “Where is this bird?”

“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be wandering around in this jungle,” Zoro said.

“The only clue is its weird cry,” Sanji said. “It looks just like that bird of gold. That guy, Cricket, he said we’d know it when we heard it, so keep your ears out and watch for anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

The gathered Strawhats all began to set off in the same direction until Robin had a suggestion: “We have three nets here, wouldn’t it be smarter if we split into three groups to find this South Bird?” she said. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”

Luffy’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, you’re right. And that means I can be the first one to find that bird and smash it!”

“No, we have to catch it,” Chopper said.

“Please, don’t ma—” Zoro began to say, but it was already too late; Luffy pointed to Chopper, standing closest, to go with him and had paired Sanji, Usopp, and Nami up as a trio at the same time. Those two teams had left just one final grouping: Zoro and Robin. It was almost like the Strawhat captain had planned it, though Zoro knew there had never been an inkling of forethought in Luffy’s head.

He looked over at Robin as the other five marched away. She could have been smirking, though her mouth hadn’t moved. It was that bright twinkle in her eyes that seemed to give away how funny she found the whole situation.

“Something funny, assassin?” Zoro said, then set off after the others.

Robin laughed and promptly started walking in the opposite direction. “Well, apart from the fact that you’re already heading back to Cricket’s house instead of into that jungle, not really. Come on swordsman.”

Zoro scowled. She was right; somehow he’d picked the path that they’d come down to get here and was facing the back of Cricket’s half-house and the coastline instead of into the jungle he’d been looking at. Strange.

The two walked in silence for a time, until Zoro drew his blade and swiped at a huge centipede that was unwinding itself from a tree branch. The monstrous bug must have been as big as Zoro’s torso and its antenna had been twitching as he walked. Better to be safe than sorry and make sure it didn’t do anything after they walked on. Robin didn’t like this though, and told him as much.

“You don’t have to kill them. Poor things.”

Zoro huffed. “Don’t lecture me. That one was challenging me, the way it was watching us like that. I wasn’t going to trust that it would just leave us alone.” He looked back over his shoulder at Robin. “You can never tell when something will show its true colours. May as well kill it early. Remove all doubts.”

There weren’t any more subtle ways of saying it. Robin knew he didn’t trust her, and he wasn’t going to change his mind. Luffy may have stupidly put them together, but it didn’t mean Zoro had to play nice with the Baroque Works woman.

Robin must have thought differently. She sighed. “How long can you keep up this game, swordsman?”

“As long as I think you’re a threat to the crew, assassin.” He slashed down another prowling bug; this one had been buzzing down toward the two of them, its wide, clear wings cutting the wind with a snap, snap, snap. His clean swipe had sliced straight through its bobbling body.

“The only reason I’m on this crew,” she said, keeping a distance from his swinging blade a few paces behind him, “is because of your captain.”

Zoro looked over his shoulder, glaring. “Luffy can be like that. We stopped for food on a sailing kitchen and ended up with—”

Robin cut in before Zoro could say any more. “I saved his life. In Alubarna, while you were off doing gods’ know what.” Zoro bristled, but Robin didn’t pay it any attention. “Crocodile had a poison for Luffy, and he’d used it. Luffy struggled with it for a while and fought through the pain. Eventually, he defeated the Warlord, but it was too much for him and he was battling to stay awake. So I gave him the antidote.”

It seemed a perfect plot in Zoro’s mind—if everything went wrong, Crocodile would have his right-hand woman bring out just what Luffy needed. With Crocodile defeated, they’d need a backup plan to continue their scheme. What better way to do that than by infiltrating the very pirates who had defeated Crocodile’s far-reaching Baroque Works? The why, he couldn’t quite put his finger on; that would be the most vital clue.

“I still don’t trust you,” he snapped. “I won’t ever trust you. Don’t forget that.”

Robin laughed behind him. “You don’t have to trust me, swordsman. After I gave Luffy that antidote, even when I asked to stay and die under that Alubarna rubble, your captain forced me back to the surface. I didn’t want to live. He made another choice for me. I’m not quite sure I forgive him, but we’re here now either way.”

Zoro stopped in his tracks. “Didn’t want to live?”

“That’s right. I’ve been searching for something for nearly twenty years. I thought it would be buried under Alubarna, but it wasn’t. My last hope, and I’d run out of leads. I told the Arabasta king I had nothing left to live for and I lay down to die. Honestly, I was just tired. Too many obstacles had stood between me and my dreams. Ever since Oh… ever since I first left home, I’ve been tired of this life.”

Robin stepped up to stand abreast with Zoro and looked at him. They were as close as they had been on the Merry. That warm breath was playing across his face again. This time too, as he looked, he could see a softness behind her glittering blue eyes. They caught his. Held them. He found himself losing thought in them again. He couldn’t break away this time, and so he looked closer. Softness, a great, rolling blue softness. Not the eyes of an assassin. The eyes of a woman looking for something.

He leaned in, slowly. No, not a softness in those eyes; a sadness.

There was nothing between the two, not now. In this jungle, there were only Nico Robin’s blue eyes. Her warm, dancing breath. Everything she—

Zoro shook himself, shifting his blade up. “If you really want to die that badly, throw yourself overboard next time we’re out on the seas. You should drop like a stone, and we’d be as rid of you as you’d be of everything else.”

He had shocked himself. Did he really believe that? She was standing here before him, pouring out her heart. Some coy trick? Her long gaze, her body so close to his, another sly trick? All his own lies? No, no, he couldn’t risk doubt. If he doubted his intuition and was wrong, every one of his friends could die.

Liar or not, he had to keep everyone safe.

Robin was stunned. She too had been frozen in place, but the blade and Zoro’s sharp words shook her. She stepped back, pursing her lips and running her eyes across his whole body. “You intrigue me, swordsman.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, stepping toward Zoro as she did, but was caught but a breaking sound; “Jooooh! ” Something echoed out of the jungle ahead of them. “Jooooh! ” There was a heavy pause. Then again, “Jooooh! ”

Zoro and Robin looked over at the same time, snapped out of the trance in the dark undergrowth of the jungle. “The bird,” Robin said. Zoro nodded. Whatever dance they were playing here, they knew it paled next to finding that strange bird before the morning sun broke over the jungle. Robin set off at a jog, clambering over the next log that lay in their path. He slid the Yubashiri into its scabbard and set off running after the strange assassin.

The cry came again. “Jooooh! ”

His eyes never left Robin’s shape as she led the way.

Chapter Text

Luffy hadn’t waited long, storming off toward Mock Town without a word. It only made sense, Zoro thought. When the Strawhats had returned with their freshly captured South Bird bundled in a net—a success that had taken the crew far longer than Zoro cared to admit—they had stumbled across a terrible scene back on the coast; a battered, bruised, and bloody Cricket mumbling about pirates.

Even worse, the Merry was looking just as bad, though missing the blood. Hack marks and pockmarks littered the shattered hull of the caravel.

It hadn’t taken the Strawhats long to find a clue about what had happened: Bellamy’s mark had been emblazoned across a nearby tree in rich purple paint. Zoro had spotted it first and pointed it out to Luffy. All the captain wanted was directions.

“If I follow the coast, I’ll come to that town we were in again, right?” he asked Robin. She had pointed him right to the road in question.

“I’ll be back by sunrise,” Luffy had promised before disappearing.

Nami had kicked up a bluster, stamping this way and that, shouting after Luffy and calling him all sorts of names. A few times she spat out “three hours!” like a punch, curling her mouth and it as she yelled. Then, once she’d run out of steam over the captain’s disappearance, she turned on Zoro. “Why didn’t you go with him?”

This had annoyed Zoro, who had just started collecting wooden planks for the Merry’s repairs on Usopp’s orders. “Huh? Don’t fight, go fight. Don’t go, go and follow Luffy. Make up your mind.”

“But they beat you up too. Don’t you want revenge?” Chopper had asked.

“Get beat up? Those guys weren’t worth it Chopper,” he had answered. “It can be so heartbreaking when you’re left with only pity after a fight.”

That had been enough for Chopper, who had left Zoro alone to start on his section of the work. Nami too stopped kicking up quite the stink at him, though she had still grumbled in his direction as she started work beside him.

Nearly a hundred hammer strokes later, he felt Nami’s eyes bore a hole into the side of his neck again. Her swings on the plank they had been working on had slowed down and she seemed eager to speak.

“What are you staring at?”

Nami shrugged. “Something’s going on with you.”

“Oh, is that right?” He crashed his hammer into the nail again. Again. Again. The wood stopped shaking, and the steel rivet buried properly. “You’re the one who thinks something is up. You tell me.”

Nami hadn’t followed suit with his rapid blows; her hammer was hanging loose in her hand as she sat down properly, still staring. “You’ve been surly since Mock Town.” Zoro banged another nail in, driving it into the wood in one swing. “No,” she paused. “Not Mock Town, even before that. Not as early as Alubarna, I think— we were all too exhausted to really do any sulking after everything there.”

“Is that what I’m doing is it, sulking?”

Nami chuckled. “You’ve certainly not been lighting up the Merry with your cheer, if that’s what you’re implying.” She looked out across the other Strawhats, all of whom had some manner of working tool, wood, plank, or steel rod in their hands as they hurried worked on their battered caravel. “Robin.”

Zoro tensed, then forced his shoulders down. It was too late though, because Nami had spied his sudden involuntary move and was already looking over to where Robin was quietly talking to Sanji. He tried to play it off like he had been stretching his arms for another hard swing and crashed his hammer down again. This drove the rivet too deep, scoring a chunk of the wood and sending splinters flying.

“What’s your problem with Robin?”

Zoro looked over at Robin. Whatever she was talking to Sanji about must have been quite interesting because she was smiling broadly. Her dark hair had fallen over the tilted side of her face, half covering her eyes and leaving a curtain over her grin. Her whole body tensed every time she popped a plank in.

He realised Nami was glaring at him. “Nothing. Nothing important.”

She didn’t seem to be taking that as his only answer though, because she slapped his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. “Tell me! Zoro, if it’s important, or if it’s something that’s going to affect the rest of the crew, we have to know.”

Zoro drove in another nail. This time he avoided the splintering, perfectly tapping the rivet in. I have to tell someone, he thought. Nami was as good as anyone on the crew. At least she would listen. “She’s not safe.”

“Not safe? Come on, Zoro, she’s a Baroque Works assassin, I know she’s not safe. None of us really think she’s just turned around her game so quickly like that. Well, maybe Chopper,” she added, looking over at the smiling reindeer. Zoro could barely see Chopper’s face under his wide-brimmed hat but he imagined he was smiling. Close by, Sanji chortled at something Robin had said as he hammered and Nami sighed. “Maybe Sanji too. But the rest of us are keeping a close eye on her, just like you. If something happens, I know that you and Luffy can handle it and make sure nothing goes really wrong.”

Zoro stopped his hammering. It wasn’t just that. But how could he tell Nami about the Baroque Works woman’s approach on the prow? The way she had moved as she cornered him there. Her hips, swaying like a wind-swung bell. Her breath, playing across his face as she whispered to him.

“There’s more than that,” he said. The hammering was forgotten.

Nami’s eyes lit up at this. “Something already happened?”

“Well, not exactly. Not like you’re thinking. I know she’s dangerous, but so far she’s actually been quite the opposite. I’m not even sure if what happened was something that I was imagining or not.”

“Well, spit it out then!”

“That first day, after Alubarna…” he began, then paused. What had really happened? She had spoken to him, yes, but he had confronted her. Her blue eyes had caught him, but had she really been looking, or was she watching for signs of danger? She had just stolen onto an enemy ship, enemies she had been fighting only days before no less. She had to be on guard at all times, especially when the crew’s swordsman was questioning why she had appeared.

Then there was their meeting after she had given Nami the map. Her breath, dancing on his cheeks. She had told him to use her name. Robin. But was that her being friendly, trying to be playful with her new crewmate? She was just as nice to Chopper, to Usopp and Sanji, and especially to Nami and Luffy. He had watched her, she had called him out for his wandering eyes, simple as that.

He couldn’t find the words. “That first day… Mock Town…”

“Listen, Zoro, I can’t help you if you tie your tongue up like this, so spill.” Her smile had faded away and she was glaring at him. “Drop the gruff bluster or get back to hammering those nails silently. You can make sure to do mine while you’re at it too, if you want to be so silent and clammed up.” She huffed, kicking her hammer toward him. “Why don’t you tell me when you really want to talk?”

Zoro bristled. It wasn’t so easy to put into words what happened, and besides, how was Nami going to understand what he was trying to say? He wasn’t even sure anything happened now, so how was she going to help?

Luckily, the swordsman’s saviour came in the form of a hurried Usopp, who marched up not realising he’d cut Zoro off from saying anything else. Instead, he had a declaration. “Hey, Zoro, Nami, we can put the rest in the stores. The Merry is pretty much ready to go, or at least enough that Luffy is going to be happy to take her out.”

“Where is that idiot anyway, the sun’s already up!” Nami said, standing. “He’s forty minutes late, we’re going to miss our chance.” She planted her hands on her hips and stared down the road away to Mock Town. “He better be dragging some heavy gold bullions back for us and that’s what’s stopping him from being here.”

“I don’t think Luffy cares about the time,” Usopp said.

Chopper looked over from where he, Sanji, and Robin had been working, worried. “Maybe he got beaten up again?”

“Well, if he did, I’ll never forgive him,” Nami snarled, slamming her fist on the Merry’s railing. The reminder Luffy had disappeared seemed to have been enough for her to finally let up on Zoro. Maybe he’d only bought time with his stuttering. Maybe Nami would forget it entirely. Right now, at least, she had turned her mind to one thing only, at least: their missing captain. “Even if he had actually made it back on time. At this rate, we’re going to be watching that stream knock up totally nothing.”

Then, all of sudden, as if Nami’s brooding had summoned him from where he had been waiting just around the corner, Luffy called out: “Hey!” He was running down the road, a broad smile stretched across his face. From where Zoro was crouching, it didn’t look like he had even a tiny nick on him.

“What were you doing?” Nami yelled. Zoro sighed in relief; she seemed to have already forgotten his bumbling words.

Her shouts weren’t worth it; Luffy had already pulled up short on the shoreline, his eyes lighting up. He’d just spotted the work Cricket and the other Strawhats had completed on the Merry, from the patched-up hull and mast to the broad steel wings Cricket had personally overseen in the breaking light of the morning. “Wow!” Luffy said. “That’s so awesome, it looks like the Going Merry flying edition! I bet it can actually really fly too, right guys?” He clambered up, leaping over one of the steel wings. He was panting and sweaty, but as Zoro had seen, he was unhurt. “All right, let’s go.”

Nami smiled, rounding on the others. “Let’s set sail!”

“Boy!” Cricket yelled from back on dry land. “This is where we say goodbye, so let me tell you one thing that I’m certain of—no one has ever proved that El Dorado or Skypeia doesn’t exist! People may laugh and say they’re silly legends, made-up stories. Well, let them laugh; that’s what makes a great adventure!”

“A great adventure… right!” Luffy said back with a thumbs up.

The morning sun was just cresting over the mountains on Mock Town when Nami called down from the gun deck. She had been guiding the Merry out past the island’s rocks for some time, closely watching the South Bird’s unwavering straight glare toward what Zoro could only imagine was perfectly southward.

Before her summons, the rest of the Strawhats had been relaxing in the breaking beams of the new day. Luffy had told Zoro what had happened in Mock Town the night before, all in riveting detail, though it boiled down to just one thing; Luffy had marched right into town demanding to find Bellamy. When the pirate finally emerged there had been pomp, bluster, and bravado, including a fancy display of his Spring-Spring Fruit that had seen him bounding from house to house to try and scare Luffy. The Strawhat captain had answered ever so simply: a monstrous punch to the face. Bellamy had been face down in the dirt struggling to move when Luffy left town, he told Zoro.

While Zoro, and Chopper, who had been eager to find out what Luffy’s adventure had been like, listened to the tale, Usopp had been hammering several last bits onto the new trappings of the Merry under the watchful eye of Robin, who had been lounging on the starboard stairs with a dusty old book in her hand. Sanji had been somewhere inside the cabin, but even the cook emerged when Nami called.

“Okay, listen up,” Nami said, gesturing for the rest of the crew to gather around her. “It’s about seven now, and we should reach the spot Cricket told us about at about eleven a.m. He also said the Knock-Up Stream doesn’t always erupt at the exact same spot, so we have to keep an eye out for the position once we’re close by, okay?”

The rest of the Strawhats nodded. Zoro noticed Chopper was shaking a little, his fur on his back standing on end. He put a hand on the reindeer’s shoulder and the vibrating stopped, every so slightly. The doctor looked up at Zoro and smiled, then waddled off to double-check the ropes he’d tied earlier that morning. Usopp, who had already got his marching orders from Nami, was already there, wrenching another chord as tight as it could go. Everyone is on edge, Zoro thought. Who wouldn’t be; they were about to send themselves flying into the sky off the back of an ocean explosion.

Everyone save Robin, who went right back to casually lounging on the stairs, her long legs arching as she leafed through that tattered tome.

Zoro didn’t have long to think about what the Strawhats were truly looking to undertake, or the way the newest Strawhat’s cheeks scrunched ever so slightly as she concentrated on her reading, because Nami was already yelling and tugging on the tiller. “That’s the Emperor Cloud!” she called. “That’s the cloud Cricket said to watch for… but it looks like it’s earlier than he was expecting. We haven’t found the Knock-Up Stream yet.”

The navigator was pointing out in the distance to a flashing, dark bunching of clouds creeping its way across the sky towards the Merry.

Zoro didn’t look long. He was already flicking his eyes across the rest of the water in front of the ship, trying to find what Cricket had carefully described to them before they had set out: a foaming dip in the ocean. The Knock-Up Stream starting to form. Zoro couldn’t see anything like that out the port side.

Usopp’s eager yell came from starboard. “There, over there! It’s the Knock-Up Stream, I think. Nami, head for that whirlpool over there!”

Before Zoro could move, the Merry rocked, shaking his legs. Luffy, who had just been turning to look at what Usopp had spotted too, grabbed back onto the railing and stood for a second, legs wobbling.

“The waves suddenly got higher,” Sanji called from somewhere behind them.

Usopp again, panic rising in his voice. “Are we going to sink?”

The Merry rolled again, water spraying up the side of the hull and onto the deck. Zoro reached out and pulled Luffy back from where he had been standing agape before dashing from the rolling side to the stairs leading up to the tiller. Nami was looking out past him to where Usopp’s whirlpool was gurgling up. Her eyes were narrowed and Zoro could see just a slice of pink tongue stuck between her teeth. The perspiration on the side of her face could have been sweat or sea spray. “Nami, what do you need us to do?”

Her eyes never broke from where the Merry’s beak was breaking against the waves. “Make sure no one falls off when the ship lifts.”

Zoro nodded. He could do that.

The swordsman didn’t have to wait long for a problem to arise. The rolling of the Merry was enough to shake anyone’s feet, but Usopp, who had been standing right against the railing to spy the stream, must have been caught by a bursting wave over the side of the caravel because he was sliding in a muck of water at his feet. “Ah!” he yelled. “I’m going over!” He was right too; another huge buck of the tossed ship sent him careening right over the edge of the railing. Zoro dashed over the sliding deck, his swords clanging against his leg, and barely hooked his arm around the sniper’s armpit.

Usopp dangled, more over the railing than on the ship, his eyes bulging at the angry swell rising and falling beneath him. He gasped as Zoro heaved him back onto the slick deck, pushing back from the edge.

“Don’t go overboard again,” Zoro growled at the sniper. Usopp nodded frantically, his eyes not quite finished bulging from the scare.

“I’ve never seen such an enormous maelstrom,” came Robin’s soft voice from nearby. 

That certainly didn’t help Usopp’s panic and he leapt back to his feet, barely balancing on the wet wooden deck, and grabbed Luffy by the scruff of the shirt. “We have to stop Luffy, stop this! Let’s go back! There’s still time to turn around. Don’t you see, it’s going to swallow us up whole. The Sky Island is just a dream anyway, just a dream! A dream in a dream really, if we really think about it hard!”

“A dream in a dream,” Luffy yelled back over the churning current, not looking at his panicked sniper. “Now that’s a great adventure Usopp, don’t you think? Besides, if we don’t do this, we’re going to regret it for the rest of our lives.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Nami called down from the gun deck. “It’s far too late for us—we’re going straight in now!”

The Merry was listing in, foaming waves lapping higher and higher along her already pockmarked body. Where once the deck was tossing and turning, now the bumps came with a leaning slant. It was all Zoro could do to keep standing as it listed; if Usopp fell again, he doubted he’d make it in time.

A huge, low noise roared up beneath the hull of the ship. Zoro couldn’t see where it was coming from, but judging from where Luffy was staring with a wide grin plastered on his face, his rubbery legs bending with the rock of the waves, it was likely bellowing right out from the gathering maelstrom. Nami’s eyes narrowed as the deep booming grew in crescendo. “That’s the tremor before the explosion, watch out!”

“Navigator!” Robin yelled, sprayed with water as the rumbling rose around the bucking Strawhats. “What about the Log Pose? What does it read?”

“It’s pointing straight up at that Emperor Cloud there!” Nami called back, gesturing to her wrist. “The wind is perfect now, and I think that Emperor Cloud is heading straight for the whirlpool!”

“It’s all up to the current now!” Sanji yelled from somewhere out of sight. Chopper must be there with him, Zoro thought. Keep him safe, cook.

“I’m sailing right into the current,” Nami’s voice lifted above the crashing waves again. From where Zoro was standing he could barely see her now, the whitewash pummeling the deck and her standing post at the tiller. He hoped she was tied to something up there. She called down again: “I think if we can make it right to the center of the whirlpool, we should be okay! Let’s just hope the ship holds up!”

Woom… Woom.

Zoro grabbed the railing and looked out to where Luffy had his eyes locked. The swirling maelstrom was just beneath them now; Nami had done an excellent job guiding the Merry right into the current.

Woom… Woom!

The grand Emperor Cloud was hanging right above them now too, sapping away the sunlight that had been beating down on the deck just moments ago. The spray crashing over the ship had taken on a deep grey hue, its crystal blue shimmer hidden by the arching shadow of the monstrosity.

Woom… Wooooom!

Zoro looked across the deck. Usopp was closest, both arms near-tied together in a knot around the railing. His eyes were closed and his top teeth were biting into his lip. Luffy was just behind him, his wide smile unbroken by the rolling wet of the storm. Robin was nowhere to be seen in the spray.

Woom… Woom! Woom… Wooooom!

Chopper and Sanji too were gone. Zoro had heard them yelling earlier, Sanji’s warning about the current, so they must still be on the ship. Maybe they had Robin with them. And Nami, proudly erect against the blasting wet of the waves, both hands on the tiller, her eyes fixed on the angry cloud blotting out the sky above them. If anyone had to keep their focus, it was the Strawhat navigator.

Wooooom! Wooooom!

“The sea’s gonna blow!” Usopp cried, his voice lifting to a howl.

A breath. Zoro tensed his arms.

Then, a mighty roar under the ship—Woooom! A-bloosh!

The world exploded in water and spray, foaming across the deck and into the sky. Even in the darkness under the Emperor Cloud, Zoro could see the world peeling away as the Merry launched skyward. The rocking and shaking of the maelstrom seemed like a perfectly balanced board compared to the rolling of the caravel now it was airborne, racking against the ever-climbing detonation that had caught them.

Usopp, now obscured from Zoro’s view, screamed. “We’re gonna capsize!”

“Grab on to something!” Nami called. The navigator too, was gone from sight; nothing but seafoam and stinging rain filled Zoro’s eyes as they rose.

Except, no—there, sliding along the tilting deck, scrabbling to grab a wooden lift, was the Baroque Works assassin. Her slick fingers hit a catch and slid off, sending her careening ever closer to the Merry’s railing. She was falling, Zoro could see, and the way the ship was bucking meant she was tumbling for the edge.

An easy way to be rid of that woman, he thought. And yet, he was already clambering over the slick, sliding deck.

“Zoro,” Robin gasped as he moved, her hands slipped off another board. “Help me!”

Somewhere else on the Merry, he could hear Sanji yelling. “If we tilt back, it’s all over! It’s only a matter of time before the ship flips over!”

“Hoist the sail, now!” Nami’s barking order came roaring back. “This isn’t just a wall of water is it? It’s the ocean! That means we can sail on it just like the way we would for any current. Can’t you feel that? It’s heat, from the steam! The explosion seems like it’s created a huge blast of warm—”

Zoro didn’t hear the rest. He had to think about his hands, and where they landed. One misjudged grip on the soaked wooden planks of the ship and he would go careening off the edge just like the Baroque Works woman. She was already helpless to save herself… except, why didn’t she use her blasted Devil Fruit power; those creeping, crawling hands would hold her firm in a second. The answer hissed into his head. The water. She’s been caught by the sea . Of course: her powers had been stolen by the spray.

The Merry rocked again, washing Zoro’s thoughts away. Nami must have been adjusting the ship on the edge of the explosion, guiding it skyward. There was nothing he could do to help her guide them safely; Robin was all that mattered now.

She slipped again, tumbling away from him. The deck was bending even further as he scrabbled, tilting so he was nearly climbing it down rather than crawling. He heard Nami call a command somewhere out there again—“We’ll catch the wind at the starboard and sail port!”—before the screaming wind whisked it away. All he could see was Robin and that yawning edge. She was calling to him as she fell. Faster. Faster. He was barely going to make it. Just a little bit further! he could hear his thoughts screaming.

He dove, arm outstretched. He couldn’t let someone fall, not like this. Robin. Or was it Kuina falling in front of him? It doesn’t matter! The Baroque Works woman was inches from the railing, water spitting over her in gushes now. She looked like she was barely conscious; the sea must have been raging against her fruit’s hidden powers.

His first swipe at her missed and she crashed into the wooden planks holding the Merry’s railing on the starboard side steady. They creaked, bending under her weight. Zoro could hear them snapping.

He caught Robin with the second swipe, pulling her into her chest.

The Merry shook just as he hit the railing, his arms wrapping around Robin. A steaming, roiling jet of water cascaded over them, drenching them both and sliding Zoro down the planks toward the edge. He kicked out, one leg clattering into a rail post. He heard a sharp crack! but it was enough; the pair went tumbling back.

They landed with a thud. Zoro nearly lost his grasp around Robin and he squeezed tighter, just for a second. He heard her gasp. Her eyes were blinking—her strength must have been slowly returning.

A yell, from somewhere else on the ship, cut through his concentration: “It’s going to be alright!” That must have been Sanji, yelling for Chopper on the other side of the water-soaked deck of the Merry. Zoro barely heard.

“It’s going to be alright,” he said softly, holding Robin. She smiled.

Zoro’s stomach gave out, flipping end over end in a violent eruption—the Merry had exploded away from the column of water, gliding in the arcing wind with a weightlessness Zoro hadn’t felt any time but when he was falling. He looked down at Robin again. Or maybe it was that smile.

“It’s incredible!” Luffy yelled. He was nearby, Zoro saw, a wide smile still stretched across his face. He seemed to have been spared from the rollicking waves in a way Robin hadn’t been because he was close to where he had been when the Merry had cracked into the air in the violent eruption. “Zoro, the ship’s flying!”

Zoro looked out over the railing, loosening his grip on Robin. The caravel had indeed pitched out off the water, just like his stomach had been telling him—and the captain had been yelling, of course—and was coasting several metres above the glistening watery column, powering onward and upwards.

Usopp, similarly soaked and with a far smaller smile on his face, was just beyond the Strawhat captain. His eyes didn’t look like they had stopped bulging by even an inch since they had spotted the Emperor Cloud. “Oh boy… no kidding.”

Nami, still standing erect at the tiller, wiped her brow. “With this wind, if the current holds, we can make it all the way to the top!” She smiled down at the rest of the scattered Strawhats triumphantly. Zoro could see her eyes silently counting each crew member. “Guys, I think we’re going to make it!”

“Well, whaddya know…” Zoro said, panting as he let go of Robin and rolled away. She was gasping slower, catching her breath. Safe.

Not, however, unspotted as Zoro had hoped. While Nami had been counting the crew, she had caught sight of Zoro holding onto Robin, even with how quickly he had let her go after the water stopped splashing over the sides. Her eyes widened as she caught the pair tangled together, first with panic at the sight of Robin struggling to stand. Then, even from where Zoro was sprawled on the deck, he could see the navigator’s eyes gleam with something else; realisation. Maybe she didn’t understand exactly what had happened, but she had spotted something no one else had and she knew it.

Nami’s earlier prying was far from over, Zoro supposed.

“You’re amazing Nami,” Sanji said, breaking her gaze away from Zoro. She smiled at the compliment, which was soon matched by Chopper and Usopp cheering as she balanced the lofted hull of Merry against the air rushing off the rising wave.

Luffy, who certainly hadn’t noticed anything beyond the looming cloud, grabbed his fast-fluttering straw hat and pointed up with a huge smile. “Sky Island, here we come!”

Chapter Text

Zoro’s head was ringing. He could feel the deck of the Merry lulling beneath him, steadily rocking to a standstill. What had happened?

The Knock-Up Stream. That great explosion of water and wind, a torrent lifting the Straw Hats and their little caravel into the sky. He had seen Luffy and Nami, Chopper and Sanji. He had saved Robin. They had been stable—Nami had seen to that. And then, another roaring billow of water from the heart of the stream. None of them had been ready for that. Not as dangerous, not this time. But he’d lost sight of Luffy and Chopper and Sanji. That blasted cook had better have kept Chopper safe.

“Did we lose anybody?” he gasped, rolling over.

“Hey, hey, you guys!” Luffy was calling. He was already standing at the railing of the Merry, looking out at where they’d landed. Zoro heaved himself up and joined the captain at his vantage point. “What is this place?” Luffy asked. Zoro didn’t answer; he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. The sky looked the same—maybe bluer, even—but the sea, if he could call it that, was the whitest he had ever seen. Then, as he looked closer, he realised it wasn’t a sea at all, but a rolling mountain of clouds the Merry had somehow found itself nestled upon, balancing softly like the dusting on a raspberry cupcake. Squint as he may, Zoro couldn’t even begin to see the end of the rolling white clouds.

“What is this place?” asked Luffy again. “It’s pure white!”

Chopper waddled up beside Luffy and Zoro. Wherever he must have been, the cook must have been keeping him safe in the last part of that bumpy ride. The little reindeer’s mouth dropped agape. “Clouds? There are so many!”

“This must be the sky ocean,” Nami said. The navigator was standing a little further down the same railing of the Merry, and though she was sweating from the Knock-Up Steam climb, she looked more focused on their new surroundings. She glanced down at her Log Pose, which was still standing erect, straining upward. “That’s odd. Look at this.” She gestured the wristband in Zoro’s direction. “It’s still pointing up. Do you think it was broken after all, or did we land in the wrong place?”

Zoro shrugged. This looked like an ocean in the sky and they certainly weren’t anywhere he’d seen on the Grand Line before, but there was nothing around.

“This must be the middle layer of the emperor cloud,” Robin said, appearing at Nami’s other shoulder and peering at the pose. “We may have to go even higher to find an island where we can actually land, but I’m not quite sure.”

“Even higher?” Chopper gasped. “Is that possible?”

Before Robin could answer though, Luffy barrelled past the rest of the crew to where Usopp was clambering up onto the aft railing. The scrawny sniper had tugged off his shirt, buttoned down his overalls, and flexed with a wide grin. “First course of action, Captain Usopp will go for a swim!” he declared.

“I’d be careful,” Sanji said, watching from a distance. “We don’t know anything about this ocean yet. Robin and Nami are still figuring all that out. I’d—”

Usopp wasn’t listening. The cook had made a good point, Zoro conceded, but the sniper wasn’t going to be convinced. With one final flex, another loud declaration—“Don’t be silly, all oceans are the same!”—and a jump, he dove.

He disappeared through the thick white surface with a sploof!

A breath passed, then another. Zoro, along with the rest of the Straw Hats, waited for Usopp to break the surface again, a wide grin on his face. Only, seconds were passing and the clouds had already lazily drifted back into their billowy shape again, closing over like the sun disappearing behind the horizon.

“He’s not coming back up,” Chopper said hesitantly.

Robin leaned over the railing, her eyes glued to where Usopp had vanished from sight. “I was just thinking, does this ocean even have a bottom?”

Chopper gasped. Luffy and Nami, caught dumb by the same thought forming in their minds, just stared at Robin. Sanji grimaced, his teeth biting down on his smouldering cigarette. “I warned you fools!”

“Did he fall through the clouds?” Zoro barked, grabbing the rails. Beside him, Luffy was already moving. He yelled the sniper’s name and fired his arm into the clouds. It stretched, stretched, stretched, the bending chord of the captain’s fired punch bursting the pillowed surface of the sea.

“Stretch your arm as far as you can!” Nami yelled.

Luffy, still stretching, turned back to the crew. “I can’t see through the clouds.”

“Leave that to me,” Robin said back, bringing her hands across her chest and closing her eyes. Zoro had seen this before; it was the Baroque Works woman’s Devil Fruit at work. Hands, arms, legs—she could summon them all with a command and a thought. This time, the command was, “Ojos Fleur!”

Eyes sprouted on Luffy’s arm as it stretched, popping open and blinking as they looked around. Zoro could only imagine it was happening all the way down the captain’s reach, peering out in search of Usopp. For a second, he thought he just saw one of the dark blue eyes flick in his direction, catching his gaze, and then it slipped below the sea’s powdered surface in hunt of the sinking sniper.

Another breath. Chopper was staring intently at where Luffy’s arm had disappeared. Luffy too had his face scrunched up. Robin was standing, her arms poised, a soft bead of sweat bending down her cheek.

The Baroque Works woman quivered as she held her powers in place. Just once, softly, but enough to catch Zoro’s breath. His chest tightened. He couldn’t look away.

It was her speaking that snapped him away. Her eyes popped open and she smiled. “There, there he is!” She tensed her hands again, pulling them tight to her chest as she drew more of her power. “Seis fleur!” she said, breathy. She was straining against some weariness Zoro couldn’t see, but her happiness seemed to have won out. She looked over at the Straw Hat captain and nodded. “I have him Luffy—pull him up.”

Luffy nodded back and began heaving. Sweat broke out across his forehead as he tugged, wrenching against something. “Fuuuu… nnngggh,” Luffy gasped as he pulled. Usopp shouldn’t be that heavy, should he?

Usopp popped out again with another sploof! He was dangling at the end of Luffy’s stretched arm, gasping for breath.

But there was something else coming up too, Zoro saw, looming behind the barely breathing sniper. The huge shadowy shape rose fast, barrelling up and crashing through the soft surface of the clouds. Tentacles lashed and cracked as it breached, reaching out for the Merry, the dangling sniper, and anything else close by. Where there would have been water, clouds drifted off it as it surfaced. Its eyes locked on the deck of the ship.

“Ah, something followed him!” Nami barked, diving behind the mast.

Zoro looked around. Chopper was dashing after Nami, his face frozen in a look of shock, while Sanji was stepping forward. He could beat him though. The cook hadn’t been standing at the railing. Zoro’s hand went for his sword blade, the Sandai Kitetsu calling out to him with a soft hum from the scabbard. It wanted to fight. He slashed it free, leaping off the guard rail with a crack. “Nothing to be scared about!” he bellowed as he leapt, mostly to the fast-fleeing Chopper, but to the crew too.

Where there should have been resistance, the Sandai Kitetsu slid straight into the bloated tentacle of the roaring beast, sinking to its fiery hamon markings. Zoro narrowed his eyes, though when the tentacle exploded with a loud POP! he wished he’d closed them completely—the gust that blew out felt like a cutting knife.

The gusted tentacle exploding sent the beast disappearing back down into the clouds, reeling away with a soft sploof nearly as quickly as it had emerged. Zoro wheeled backward from the blast of the windy burst, toppling back onto the deck of the Merry and landing on his feet just beside Chopper and Nami, both of whom had dared to poke their heads around the mast to see the monster crack.

“Huh?” Chopper said, his eyes wide. “Was that a balloon?”

Zoro sighed and slid the Sandai Kitetsu back into his scabbard. His eyes were stinging from the air blast and nearly watering up. He couldn’t let the rest of the crew see them if they were red. Especially not the cook.

Thankfully, Nami was already rushing past him to look at where the huge octopus had vanished. “I think it was an animal though Chopper, it was moving.” She looked around at the white expanse. “I guess it’s better to think of this place like a sea than a cloud. It certainly seems to be closer to that.”

“What was that flat snake thing anyway?” Luffy asked.

Robin didn’t answer the captain. Instead, she had her own theory to pose. “So, there are animals up here in the clouds too. Very interesting.”

Zoro narrowed his eyes. The Baroque Works woman seemed all too calm. In fact, she could have seen that huge fish coming up through the clouds with Luffy’s arm. Her eyes would have seen it, dotted all up his rubber punch. They had caught his gaze so easily; a beast that size, strange balloon creature or not, was unmissable. He rounded on her with a snarl. “What just happened? What did you do?”

Robin’s eyes glinted in reply and she shaped the glowering swordsman up. Nami, still at the railing, turned at the sound of Zoro’s snap. “Zoro, what are you saying? What do you mean, what did she do?”

Sanji stepped up beside Robin. “What are you implying, mosshead?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Zoro shot back. He was snapping at the cook now, but his eyes were fixed on the strange assassin they had so blithely welcomed into their crew. He knew something had been strange about her. “No implications, assassin.” This time he was talking directly to Robin. “You knew the beast was there.”

She shrunk back. Not the accusation—that had already passed over her, Zoro thought—but earlier. Assassin. Zoro regretted it as soon as it hissed out from between his teeth, but it was too late. And besides, it wasn’t like he was really wrong about that.

“Well then, Luffy is just as much at fault as Robin,” Nami snapped. “He dragged the great thing up didn’t he?”

“How could he have seen that beast?” Zoro asked. “He’s not the one covered in spotted eyes, is he? He’s made of rubber. Luffy just thought he was pulling Usopp up and was just as surprised as the rest of us.”

“So was Robin,” Sanji said. He was still standing between Robin and Zoro. “If you’re implying she wanted to kill us, she could have done it half a dozen times before we arrived got to Jaya, let alone then on. She was the one who found us the clues for this Sky Island we’ve been looking for anyway.”

“Maybe it was so she could—” Zoro started.

“Could what, mosshead, kill us up here? She’s never been here. As far as we know, no one has, so how could she set up some great plot to do anything? You’re being way too cautious and frankly, it’s insulting to our crewmate.”

“Are you all going to keep fighting her battles for her?” Zoro shot back.

Robin’s eyes flashed again. “I can fight my own battles swordsman. I didn’t know the beast was there, and I certainly don’t have any plans. I have left Baroque Works behind in Arabasta just like the rest of you.” She looked into his eyes as she spoke and Zoro realised small tears were starting to well there. He doubted any of the rest of the Straw Hats could see them, they were standing in front of her.

Something burned across Zoro’s chest. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to draw his swords and keep her at arm’s length. She’s a master manipulator. Did he want his swords to keep her away, or to cut a path to her? Either way, a blade flashed into his hands would only incense the boiling situation further.

“I—” he mumbled. He didn’t know what to say.

His silence hung in the air. Sanji and Nami were watching him, but he was looking past them. The tears were barely there, but he could still see them growing in the corner of her blue eyes. She was holding herself up, throwing back his barbs, but he could see he had cut her somewhere inside with his words. He hadn’t meant to do that. He just didn’t want anyone to hurt his crew. “I can’t trust you,” he managed. It was almost a croak.

“Hey!” Chopper yelled from the starboard railing, cutting into the commotion before anyone could say anything else to Zoro. “A ship!”

Zoro winced, breaking his eyes away from Robin’s gaze, and turned to look at where the little reindeer was standing on the railing. Chopper had the looking glasses out, gazing across the horizon. His mouth was hanging slightly open as he watched something through the seeing glass. He took a breath to describe whatever it was that he was watching, but before he could something caught him off-guard and his eyes widened. Zoro strode to the doctor’s side, Robin forgotten for the time being.

“What is it?” he asked. “What did you see?”

Chopper was shaking, his fur lifting on his shoulders. “A person…” he mumbled. “A ship. I mean, there was a ship. Now it’s gone!”

“Calm down, you’re not making any sense Chopper.”

The little reindeer hefted the seeing glasses to his wide eyes again and gasped. “Zoro, there’s a bull running toward the Merry. It’s running over the clouds now and it’s heading right here, towards us!”

Whatever Chopper was worrying about, Zoro didn’t quite understand. They’d just seen a cloud balloon fish, yes, but to expect a bull to be up in the clouds was quite frankly a little ridiculous. And a ship? The Straw Hats had barely made it up here—and no one else had ridden the Knock-Up Stream with them.

But, Chopper was panicking. Whether it was ridiculous or not, Zoro had to trust the little doctor and his worries. He unsheathed the Sandai Kitetsu again.

Sanji appeared on the other side of the ship’s doctor, blowing a long puff of smoke off the side of the Merry. “What’s gotten into you two?” He had forgotten Zoro’s outburst against Robin already, or he was ignoring that it happened.

“Something coming!” Chopper said again, looking glass still raised. “Is it human?”

Zoro was about to say something to entertain him, or use it to take a stab at the silly cook and his silly wafting cigarette, but his naked eye caught what the reindeer had seen through the lens already: a figure charging across the bouncing white clouds.

“Cook.”

Sanji nodded. “I see it too.”

“Guys,” Chopper yelled, “he’s running on the clouds! What do we do?”

It should have been impossible, but the bull-like figure did seem to be running across the puffy clouds like it was the solid ground Zoro and the others had left behind on their water-soaked ride up the stream. They had just watched Usopp sink out of sight in these very same clouds; how was this figure managing to stay afloat, and so gracefully at that? It moved like a dancer in the final breaths of a coda.

Though, Zoro noticed as it charged closer, it looked more like a him. It—or rather, he—did have horns protruding out of a huge green and red mask, but there was definitely someone wearing the visage. Beneath it, the figure’s muscles moved and tensed as he ran, his legs pumping into the clouds.

The figure was armed too. On one arm, it carried a huge orange shield with brandings scrawled from the top to the bottom. In its other hand, it clasped what appeared to be a huge ship’s canon, though a little longer. Zoro gripped the Sandai Kitetsu and hoped Sanji, standing a little closer, had noticed the stranger’s weapons too.

“Stop!” the cook called. He must have seen the canon. “What do you want?”

The warrior leapt. The push puffed up clouds beneath him and for a moment they were spitting up alongside him in slow-motion. The warrior quickly cleared them though and tucked his knees in. His canon was jutted out in one hand while the shield was raised to swipe at the cook. “I’m going to get rid of you!” the masked stranger spat, rocketing towards the side of the Merry and into where Sanji was standing.

Sanji braced for the impact. “He means business.”

The two collided in a scrabble of arms and legs. The stranger’s shield caught Sanji on the side of the head and he reeled, then kicked out with a powerful drive and smashed the masked figure’s chest. It barely seemed to shake the warrior, who leaned into a straight kick of his own straight into the cook’s shoulder. The cook went tumbling, skidding across the deck of the Merry. He barely kept his cigarette steady.

Luffy barked a command: “Attack.” Zoro tensed his shoulders and swung. The Sandai Kitetsu hummed as it sailed at the warrior’s side, vibrating in his hand. It wanted to be free of him. He wouldn’t let it.

The warrior dodged back and cracked the flat of his cannon in the blade’s way. The sword rattled back with a clang! and it was all Zoro could do to stay on his feet. He felt woozy for some reason. The warrior’s next blow made sure he didn’t keep his footing, with the flat of the shield cracking into the side of Zoro’s face to bundle him onto the wooden deck alongside a heavy Sanji. He tried to get back to his feet but his knees were wobbling. He gasped. Why can’t I breathe? What has he done to me? He couldn’t find a hold on the wood. He couldn’t get that breath he needed. There was blood running out of his nose.

Suddenly, Luffy was running past him, arms stretching out behind him. “Gum Gum Bazooka!” the captain roared as he ran, snapping his hands back into a connected palm in front of him to smash into the stranger.

Just like Zoro’s well-aimed blade swipe, Luffy’s attack seemed to barely phase the bull warrior, who shrugged off the powerful rubber strike and raised his long canon above his head. Luffy, seemingly stunned by the fortitude of the mysterious stranger, managed a sharp “Eh?” before the weapon crashed down on his head, dislodging his straw hat and dropping him into the same battered state as Sanji and Zoro.

“There’s three of you!” yelled Nami from somewhere further down the Merry. Zoro couldn’t see her. She must be hiding. “There’s only one of him!”

Nami was right; no warrior, cloud-runner or otherwise, should be able to beat the captain, the cook, and him. Zoro pressed his hand to the deck and lifted back up, swiping the Sandai Kitetsu in an arc in front of his as he rose. To his right, Luffy was already standing, rubbing a lump on his head. On his left, Sanji staggered up, shaking off his own bone-crushing blow and fixing the embering cigarette hanging in his mouth.

Zoro’s eyes flicked across the deck. The stranger had leapt away and was back on the clouds, his canon donned on his shoulder. It looked like he was preparing to light some kind of fuse. A cannon shot was coming.

“Get down!” he roared. He would block it, if it shot his way. The rest of the Straw Hats had better be hiding somewhere under cover.

The shot never came though. Where there should have been a sharp, sooty detonation, that barking roar that meant a shot was coming, there was instead a mighty clang of metal on cold metal. Where the stranger had been standing, taking careful aim, he was now tumbling back, struck by a long riveted lance. Behind that lance was a knight, donned head to foot in dark burnished armour, with a fluttering yellow cape billowing behind him. He had just leapt off a strange-looking pink duck, Zoro could see.

“Who’s that guy?” Nami yelled, again from wherever she had been hiding.

The knight drove his lance into the masked warrior’s shield again with another ringing clang! The warrior stumbled back on the clouds, trying to find purchase. The knight struck again, stepping forward. It was all the warrior could do to bring his shield up in time for the flurry of blows.

“Piee!” the strange pink duck bellowed as it landed.

The weathered knight—Zoro could see he was old, or at least had a dark grey beard across most of his face—raised his lance to strike another time and the warrior turned. The knight had a chance to strike his back but no blow fell and the masked warrior bounded away, leaving puffs of white cloud as he sprang. Soon he had disappeared, just as quickly as he had appeared, leaving the Straw Hats alone with the knight.

He turned to them, hefty the shining lance, and locked eyes on Nami. Zoro grabbed for the Sandai Kitetsu but even as he wrapped his hand around the hilt again, the knight lowered his weapon and smiled.

“Someone asked who I was,” he said. “I am the Sky Knight!”

Nami was the first to speak. She must have decided this weathered knight was closer to a friend than the masked stranger. “Who was that guy? What the heck just happened?” Then, as if remembering what had just happened, rounded on Zoro, Luffy, and Sanji as the trio were clambering to their feet. “You guys are pathetic!” Maybe she was right again; all three of them struggled with that strange warrior.

“Thank you for saving us,” Chopper said, bowing to the knight. 

The knight smiled back at the little reindeer. “I had no choice. It was my duty.”

Nami wasn’t done yelling at three on the deck, postulating how the crew’s so-called “Monster Trio” had been felled by some mysterious bull. Funny, Zoro thought to himself, though he didn’t dare say it, because she didn’t try to help fight. The trio certainly hadn’t given themselves that nickname either.

“That’s probably,” Robin cut in, “because the air’s so thin.”

That hit the nail on the head. It answered why Zoro hadn’t been able to breathe, and why those shield hits were still shaking him. Luffy, still lying on the deck, didn’t say anything, but Sanji nodded at Robin’s theory. “Now you mention it…”

The knight interrupted Sanji, driving his thick lance point into the deck as he tugged at his long grey beard. “So are you people from the Blue Sea?”

“What’s that?” Nami asked. “And while we’re here asking questions, who are you again? What are you doing here?”

“For your second question, I am the Sky Knight, as I said,” the Sky Knight replied. “Then back to the beginning, for your first question, Blue Sea people live below the clouds on the great Blue Sea. And for that last question, this is my home, the White Sea. We’re floating twenty-three thousand feet above the Blue Sea.” He cast his eyes down. “Well, truthfully my home is even higher, in the White-White Sea. That’s in the upper stratum, thirty-three thousand feet above where we’re standing now. But here in the White Sea is where I have lived for some time now, and where I imagine I’ll go on living.”

“I get it,” Luffy said, sitting up. The captain whacked his chest and frowned, then took a huge gulp of air. “I think I’m getting used to this air too.”

“Yeah,” Zoro said, thumping his own chest. He slid the Sandai Kitetsu back into its sheaf. He could feel the hum of whatever lived inside the sword vanish as the blade disappeared. “I’m beginning to feel a lot better too.”

“That’s imposs—” the Sky Knight started, but he was interrupted from whatever he was about to say by Chopper tugging on his vambrace.

“Excuse me,” the little reindeer said, “but who attacked us?”

“No doubt you all have a great many questions,” the Sky Knight said, tugging his beard again, “and I’m happy to answer them all, but first let’s talk business.” The knight eyed Nami again. Perhaps he had assumed she was the captain. The thought gave Zoro a chuckle. “I am a soldier of fortune,” the old man continued. “This sea holds many dangers, just like the warrior you just saw. Those unfamiliar with sky fighting are targeted by guerrillas just like him and become food for the sky fish. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times and trust me when I tell you it doesn’t matter how strong you are.”

“But,” he said, sitting down on the Merry’s captain railing, “I can save you from them. One whistle for five million extols.” With that declaration, he looked around expectantly, first at Nami, then at Sanji and Zoro.

He was met by a heavy silence from the Straw Hats.

It was Luffy who broke the silence first. Maybe the captain had realised he was meant to speak. More likely he had just simply gotten bored the quickest. “What are you talking about old man? Five million?”

“Come on!” the Sky Knight said, rubbing the back of his armoured head. “Don’t be stingy now, that’s an incredible bargain. And I won’t go one extol lower either; I have to make a living here you know.”

“Huh? What the heck is an extol?” Luffy asked.

The knight’s eyes bulged. “Didn’t you people come by way of the peak of high west?” He paused, looking around at how the Merry had been altered. His eyes fell on the steel wings the little caravel had used to climb the stream. They were still in one piece, though how Zoro would never know. “Don’t tell me you rode that beastly sky current?” the knight continued. “So people with such courage still exist, huh?”

Nami gasped, though Zoro thought the gasp nearly sounded like a sob. “You mean there’s another way to get up here? We didn’t have to ride that current?”

“Did you lose any crew members?” the knight asked. He directed that at Luffy; perhaps he had clued on to the hierarchy of the ship.

“No,” Luffy replied. “We all made it here.”

“Hmm, I suppose that’s no surprise looking at you. The other routes to the White Sea are different, yes, but they all have their perils. The Knock-Up Stream is one of those gambles where either everyone makes it or no one does. There aren’t many who’d take that risk, especially these days. Well, colour me impressed. You have to have both courage and skill. I’d mark you worthy sea dogs, for sure.”

Usopp stepped forward. “Well, it was all thanks to me, actually! The others were all in tears and had given up, but I said, ‘Never fear!’ and I got us here.”

The Sky Knight ignored Usopp’s declaration completely and instead rifled through one of the pockets under his armour. After a moment he found what he was looking for and tugged it out for the Straw Hats to see. It was a small silver whistle tied to a chord. He threw it onto the deck and smiled. “Here’s a whistle, for your brave sailors. Blow it once and I will come down from the heavens to save you.” He blew out his grey moustache and laughed. “By rights, you should pay me five million extols for that, but you may have this one for free I think. For your courage.”

It seemed to Zoro that the Sky Knight and his stranger duck nearly struck a pose as the knight spoke. Then, with a flourish, the armoured man jumped atop his pink-winged steed and pulled down his helmet visor. “You can call me Ganfall,” he said. “Use the whistle to summon me if you have need. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

The strange duck spread its wide wings, gave another shrill cry and vaulted off the side of the Merry. The pair gained altitude quite quickly and soared away beyond where the Straw Hats could see before Zoro blinked. They soon became a small black speck on the horizon, then a tiny sliver against the white clouds, and then finally they vanished from sight in the same direction as the masked warrior.

“What a strange creature,” Sanji said.

Robin had watched him flying into the distance until he disappeared. “We didn’t actually learn very much of him, did we?”

“No, we didn’t really,” Usopp said, rubbing his head. “I don’t really get these cloud seas he was talking about. The Blue Sea and the White Sea and the White-White Sea. So do we just have to go up higher again?”

Luffy grabbed the whistle that was still lying on the deck. “Let’s call the old man back and we can ask him where to go.”

Nami dived at the captain, wrapping one hand around the fist he was clutching the whistle in and driving the other into his rubbery cheek to tug his face back. “Luffy, no! Save that for an emergency, when we really need his help!”

“What’ll we do if that masked weirdo attacks again?” Usopp yelled, rushing to help Nami restrain the stretching captain.

It took some wrangling, but the two of them eventually subdued Luffy and the whistle disappeared somewhere among the crew. Luffy watched it as long as he could, his mouth still forming a blowing shape, and once it had vanished from view he looked back out across the clouds and sighed.

“Let’s just set sail somewhere, see where it takes us,” Zoro suggested.

Chopper nodded. “I can already see something over there, right? Is it some kind of cloud or something?” The reindeer was pointing off the port side towards what looked like a huge white waterfall rising out of the cloud sea.

“We’ll go towards that,” Nami said, crossing her arms. “Everyone make ready the Merry to sail; we’ve wasted enough time here already.”

The Straw Hats sprang into action at Nami’s order. Luffy and Sanji rushed over to the foremast to shift the sail into position. Usopp dashed off to double-check the anchor winch and make sure no one had tethered the ropes once they had landed in the clouds. Chopper popped into his towering human form and strode to the tiller to point the Merry’s rudder in the direction they had spotted the waterfall.

Zoro went to follow the captain and the cook and help with the mizzenmast roping, but he noticed Nami hadn’t rushed off with the rest of them.

“Don’t think I haven’t forgotten your little outburst with Robin,” Nami said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Maybe she thought he couldn’t see her glare. “And Zoro, don’t think I didn’t see you earlier either.”

“I just—” Zoro started, ready to defend himself on both fronts, but the navigator was already sauntering away, heading towards the starboard stairs to take her place watching over the crew. Maybe it wasn’t worth it anyway.

She was quickly replaced by Chopper, who still had a wide-eyed look about him. The tiller must have been set quite quickly because now he had nothing to do as the Merry was getting underway. Somehow he’d ended up with the sky knight’s whistle after Luffy had tried to blow it immediately and he was turning it over and over in one little cloven hoof. He plonked down next to Zoro, still examining the object closely. Zoro looked over at Sanji and Luffy grappling with the sail rope, then joined him.

The pair sat in silence for a while, watching the rest of the Straw Hats work on the rope and riggings. The Merry was soon cutting through the clouds again, heading towards that strange rising waterfall in the distance.

“Are you okay?” Zoro said, breaking the silence.

The little reindeer nearly jumped; he must have actually been examining the whistle and hadn’t been expecting Zoro to speak. “I’m okay, maybe a little shaken up.” He looked up. “It’s been a big day. I didn’t expect anything that happened on Jaya, and riding Knock-Up Stream could have easily gone wrong.”

Zoro rested a hand on Chopper’s little shoulder, squeezing. “I don’t think any of us were expecting what we found up here either.” He eyed the doctor, who was rolling the whistle over and over in his hoof again. “You’ve been brave.”

Chopper stiffened at that, his little shoulder pressing against Zoro’s palm. For a split second, Zoro thought he’d said something wrong. Then Chopper looked up at his, his eyes glimmering with a bright smile. The whistle had been forgotten. “Calling me brave won't make me happy or anything like that!” he declared.

Zoro laughed, rubbing Chopper’s shoulder, then took the whistle from his hoofs. “You think this will really call that knight guy back again?”

“Yeah, I think so! Why would he lie to us about that?”

Zoro looked across the deck to where Robin was helping Luffy was the rigging. Her many hands had sprouted across the line of rope to tug it down, while several more were waiting at the bottom of the mast to catch the tumbling coil and fold it into a bundle. “People lie for a lot of different reasons Chopper,” Zoro said.

“You don’t like Robin very much, do you?” Chopper asked, looking in the same direction and catching sight of Luffy and the newest Straw Hat working together.

It was Zoro’s turn to stiffen. There was no bright smile though. Instead, he thumbed the hilt of the Wado Ichimonji, running down the white-bound handle to the edge of the steel. He didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t like her. Yes, he could feel her warm breath playing on his face, even now. Yes, when he closed his eyes he could see Robin’s hips swaying as she walked across the deck. And he didn’t let her fall when they were riding the Knock-Up Stream. Maybe he should have. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to, even if he’d really decided to let the Baroque Works woman fall away.

He sucked his breath in. “Like has nothing to do with it, Chopper. How can we trust her after Arabasta? She served that Crocodile bastard and the only reason she’s here now is because Luffy suddenly decided she was going to be okay.”

“That’s not enough for you” Chopper asked, peering up at him. “Luffy trusts him. Nami trusts him. I like her. She has been nice to us.” The reindeer looked from Zoro to where Robin was working. “I feel safe with her, I think.”

Zoro didn’t know what to say to that. I don’t. But was that a lie? What would have happened between them if there were no other Straw Hats? Zoro’s mind wandered. What would we have done while riding the Knock-Up Stream if no one else had been around? Did he even have the answers to that?

Chopper was speaking again: “She said she didn’t have anywhere to go and we haven’t seen her do anything bad to us since coming onboard.”

That Zoro knew how to rebuff. He didn’t pause. “How did she not see that great big monster that came up with Usopp? She has a thousand eyes, but apparently, not one of those thousand caught sight of the beast rising through the clouds. If she didn’t see that, could it have eaten Usopp? Could it have hurt someone on the Merry? As it was we were lucky that it was made of clouds. It could have hurt someone.”

Chopper smiled. “Well, that one’s easy. It wouldn’t have, because you’re here.”

There was no rebuff for that one, Zoro knew. He wanted to believe that, wanted Chopper to believe that. He hoped the other Straw Hats felt the same, truly. But for them to do that, he couldn’t happily embrace an assassin. They were allowed to hope Nico Robin was everything she said. He didn’t have the luxury.

“I won’t let anything happen to us Chopper, I promise.”

The little reindeer smiled at him again, then stood, wrapped his hoofed hand around the whistle again, and trundled off to help Luffy and Robin. I hope Chopper knows how much I mean that. He wouldn’t let anything happen.

He peered across at Robin. He had hoped she was here to help. That she was as lost as the rest of them, looking for a crew to sail the Grand Line with. To feel safe with. But was that really what she had in her heart?

Robin looked over and caught Zoro’s gaze. She must have known he had been watching her, contemplating her. He hadn’t held back in his accusations, despite the rest of the Straw Hats taking the Baroque Works assassin’s side over his. She could have wrenched that fish up from the sea, trying to pick off one of the crew. He had told them as much. Told her as much. Told her, to her face, that he didn’t trust her yet. He had tried to save her in the Knock-Up Stream, then accused her of sabotage.

She watched him. She was considering him.

If someone had made those accusations to him, he would have raged. He would have drawn the Wado Ichimonji and the Sandai Kitetsu and challenged them, then and there, without hesitation. He would have marked them enemy.

And yet, Nico Robin smiled at him now. There had been tears before. Only he had seen. Now there was a smile that felt like it was just for him, in some strange way. She held his gaze, studying his face from a distance. Her glimmering porcelain smile didn’t waver her blue eyes ran over his face.

Zoro was the first to look away. He could feel his chest burning again.

Chapter Text

The huge white waterfall Chopper had spotted some hours earlier had, upon closer inspection, turned out to be more of a fluffy ramp rising into the sky. There had been some discussion among the Straw Hat crew, with a small group led by Nami suggesting it was safer to keep exploring the clouded land they already knew and the rest—led, of course, by Luffy—suggesting it would be much more fun to see what was at the top of the swirling cloud-spout they had discovered.

While Nami, backed by Usopp, had put up a decent argument but once Luffy had got the plan in his head, there was no turning him around again. Zoro hadn’t even bothered; whatever Luffy ended up deciding was going to be good enough for him.

Once the Merry had got underway again, the caravel had quickly picked up speed and eventually began roaring up what turned from a spout into a rushing river into the sky. Just like that Sky Knight had suggested, it was some climb too: thirty-three thousand feet, he had claimed. Zoro never really thought he had a queasy stomach, but by the time the ship had been barrelling along for some minutes even he felt like he may have to crawl his way to the railing and hope for the best. He thought he spotted Usopp already crab-walking his way there at one stage, though he closed his eyes before he could confirm if the sniper was trying to hold on or if he had given in to the sickness of the rushing clouds.

There had only been one change in the brutally fast ascent; right near the top, just as the Merry was leveling out again and spilling out into the white cloud sea they were now drifting on, some of the Straw Hats had spotted a sign. Most of it was bronzed and gold, with a darker tanned edge around it. The construction had towered atop the rushing cloud spiral, with just two words emblazoned on it: Godland Skypeia.

“Godland?” Chopper had yelled. Robin had echoed his calls: “God’s land, Skypeia?”

That hadn’t been long to drink in the huge bronzed pillar though, even if Zoro had wanted to, and the Merry had left it behind just as quickly as it had risen. With the sign flashed behind them, the surface had appeared.

That was where the Merry now calmly floated. Mercifully, Zoro had held strong long enough to avoid needing the refuge of the railing’s edge—he never did see if Usopp had survived the trip just as unscathed—and could now drink in the strange sight that had loomed up off the Straw Hat ship’s bobbing bow.

At first glance, it looked just like any city the pirates had seen since they had entered the Grand Line some months ago. Close by were several beach villas, brown-topped with pillared white walls. Those were surrounded by bushy green trees, mostly palms, that stretched up the hills that edged the beach. There, on the higher rolls of the landscape, sat a collection of sizeable houses and buildings, most with jutting conical roofs that prodded the white-hazed skyline rising above them. One or two were built on even higher recesses, including one grand construction that boasted as many as five of those same pointed tower tops.

The buildings may have been quite normal, if a little foreign in their curved designs, but their bases were the most eye-catching. Each was nestled in the folded embrace of what appeared to be the same white clouds the Merry was cutting through right now, though this was bundled up to look more like hills and hummocks. Some even rose as high as cliffs, and one grey stone staircase further back appeared to be hanging in a space between two bundles of floating clouds. The second of those two floating piles had another huge curved house on it, wrapped in green vines and twice as high as any other building.

“It’s an island made of fluffy clouds!” Luffy bellowed. He was beaming.

The captain dove off the edge of the Merry into the shallows of the cloud sea and ran up onto the beach, his arms held aloft. Chopper and Sanji were close behind, their broad smiles matching Luffy’s perfectly.

“Hey!” Zoro called out, reaching down to grab the ship’s anchor. Someone had to act properly. “What about the anchor? There’s no bottom to this strange ocean, remember? The ship could drift away!”

“Never mind that!” Luffy called back. “You have to come check out this beach! It feels so fluffy!” Zoro scowled. Never mind the anchor?

Nami appeared at his shoulder. “Just drop it. I think there should be something at the bottom here at least. It should be enough to hold the Merry while we look down the beach and figure out something to do.”

Zoro nodded and hefted the weight over the railing. If Nami was sure it would be okay, he didn’t need to spend any more time fretting. The anchor disappeared into the clouds with a soft plop! and sunk before gripping onto something the Straw Hats still left onboard couldn’t have seen. Nami had been right though; something was there.

“So this is Skypeia,” Robin said, mostly to Nami just beyond Zoro.

“Yeah!” the navigator called back. “That’s the name Luffy’s map mentioned too, so we must have made it to the right place. This must really be where that strange galleon that fell from the sky came from 200 years ago.” She laughed and looked over the railing. “Frankly, when I first heard about an island in the sky, I didn’t believe it. But here we are after all, in Skypeia. It’s actually here and it’s totally real!”

She laughed again and followed Luffy’s lead, dropping off the ship's side into the bouncing white clouds that seemed to be the beach’s crashing waves.

“And what about you?” Robin asked quietly, turning her head to where Zoro was leaning on the railing.

Suddenly, Zoro realised he was alone with Robin. When had Usopp gone ashore? Zoro hadn’t noticed the sniper join the others, but he must have dove in at some point because he was nowhere to be seen. He could feel his shoulders tensing. “I think I’ll go ashore too,” he said eventually. He should have spoken sooner.

Robin smiled. Zoro wished she wouldn’t; the tightness in his shoulders had been replaced by a tenseness in his chest as soon as she had. If he had shown his feelings on his face, Robin hadn’t noticed. “So,” she said. “Sailing the seas, exploring new lands, finding these strange places, this is your idea of adventure?”

Zoro said nothing. Please, just go. He wasn’t sure he could stay quiet.

“I never thought about it that way,” Robin continued. She was still smiling. “I like it.” She paused, watching the rest of the crew splashing around in the cloudy shallows. Nami had reached them now, and Usopp was there after all. They were all laughing. Zoro could see Chopper lying spread in the white sand, his little face scrunched into a ball as he choked back a laugh at something Luffy had said. Robin spoke again as the two of them watched. “It’s meant so much to be with you and the Straw Hats.”

Zoro couldn’t think of anything to say back to that, so he just let Robin’s comment hang in the air, keeping his eyes on the crew and their laughter. It was silent on the deck. Quiet enough that Zoro could hear Robin’s slow breathing, even over the bellows and whoops of the others down on the beach.

“I know you don’t trust me,” she said. Zoro’s breath caught. It was only what he deserved, of course; his outburst before the rising river to Skypeia hadn’t been anything short of an accusation. She should be furious with him.

Zoro turned around. Robin was standing just in front of him, her arms held behind her back. She had been watching him as he watched the rest of the Straw Hats. Her blue eyes were flicking over his face, clearly trying to read what he was feeling. Looking for something. His eyes were looking back too. Again Zoro looked for something to say, something that would make up for his explosion. Something that told her why he was right to be guarded around her. Her tears didn’t change Arabasta.

And yet, he couldn’t forget those tears. He had drawn them out. She had saved Usopp and he had drawn out tears no one else had seen.

“Why did you come with us to Skypeia, Robin?” he asked.

This pushed Robin to silence. Zoro saw her shoulders stiffen, ever so slightly. There was a quiver at her lips when she finally spoke. “I have nowhere else to go.”

Zoro’s chest burned. Truth, or strategy? Whatever it was, if it was designed to break down his defences, Zoro could feel it working. She was soft, melting. Her shoulders were gently shaking like her lips, ever so slightly.

He wanted to go to her. Wrap her up. Fix whatever was broken.

Truth or strategy?

Zoro stood but didn’t go to the Baroque Works woman. “You were perfectly contented working for that Warlord and his merry band of tricksters, thieves, and murderers. You’re telling me you had no other option than that?”

The shaking nearly vanished. Robin stared at him, her blue eyes shimmering as the tears caught again. When she spoke though, she was defiant. “I did what I had to do to live, swordsman. I won’t apologise for that, not out here on the Grand Line. I regret many of the things I’ve done, but I won’t let you crucify me for them when I know you would have done just as many terrible things.” She stepped forward. They were barely a hand away from each other now. Her breath was playing on Zoro’s face. “What drove you out here to piracy in the first place? Why don’t I ask you why you’re here with the Straw Hats? All I knew about you before this crew was you were some renowned hunter. What drives a man out to the world to kill for money? You must be heartless.”

Zoro winced, a hand reflectively going to the hilts of his swords. To the white wrappings of the Wado Ichimonji. Kuina.  “Don’t speak on things you don’t know.”

Robin laughed. Her laugh cut even deeper than her words. Was she laughing at him? His reaction? He flexed his hand over the hilt of the Wado Ichimonji, just for a second, then instantly regretted it. He was never going to draw his blade against Nico Robin, even if she cut him deep with her words and her laugh.

Robin’s fingers wrapped over his flexing hand. Zoro’s breath caught in his throat. His thoughts dissolved, rushing as fast as his breath had been sucked away.

Silence was erupting around Zoro. Even the other Straw Hats laughing on the beach seemed to have vanished. All he could feel was Robin’s hand quivering atop his. He could feel every shift. She was barely moving, with just her ring finger brushing against his little finger, grazing the flesh just below his knuckle. The ship’s archaeologist was watching him as she held her fingers over his flexed hand. Robin hadn’t looked down once. She was staring into his eyes, hanging on the quiet moments between his breaths.

“I know you’re not heartless, Roronoa Zoro,” she whispered.

He shifted his tensed fingers, ever so slightly. They gently brushed against Robin’s outstretched hand, his ring finger grazing against hers as they both moved for a moment. “I’m sorry for calling you an assassin.”

She smiled. Her blue eyes, holding his, glittered.

Her black hair shifted on her shoulders in the cloudy Skypeia breeze. He could kiss her. No one else was here. Every single crewmate was on the beach below. He could take her hand, and wrap those fingers in his. Fold her into his arms the way her powers enveloped everything with their roaming fingers. Breathe her in as she nestled into his chest.

Zoro hesitated. I can’t let this get in the way. He stopped his fingers moving. Robin’s stopped too, in what Zoro could only imagine was surprise. “I can’t do this.” Not until I’m sure. He couldn’t know. One wrong decision from him and she could have her opening. One wrong decision for all the rest and I could lose Nico Robin forever because I needed to keep the Straw Hats safe. He should have said it all out loud.

Instead, he broke away from those glimmering eyes before he could see them turn. He didn’t want to see what he had done to those beautiful eyes with his shock. He pulled his hand away and stepped back to the Merry’s railing. He had to get away before Robin said something to make him stay. Say something to make me stay.

“I’m going ashore,” he mumbled and dove over the railing.

The cold cloudy waves caught Zoro by surprise as he hit the surface and was briefly submerged. He hadn’t expected it to be so chilly. He broke back up with a gasp and kicked out of the deeper clouds near the Merry. Soon he was striding with clouds only up to his calves, then his feet, and then he was on the white beach. He hadn’t looked back. He couldn’t have looked back; Robin wouldn’t have had to say a word to draw him back to the ship. Even without her look and words, he nearly did.

Chopper was wallowing in the shallows as he made it to the white sand. The little reindeer smiled up at him, eyes peering against the beam of the sun over Zoro’s shoulder. “What took you so long Zoro?”

“Had to check the anchor was going to be okay.”

That was enough for Chopper, who went back to splash the clouds over himself. If these shoreline billows were as chilly as the deeper parts Zoro had jumped into, the doctor would be cooling down very quickly.

Further up the beach, Zoro could see Luffy and Usopp clambering over a palm tree, swinging their arms at a bunching of strange bulbous fruits growing from the tops of the trunks. Luffy had already grabbed two down that Zoro could see, but that clearly wasn’t enough for the captain or his yelling sniper.

Close by the climbing pair, Sanji was bent over a patch of flowers. The cook had picked one closest to him, a great wide, pink beauty that almost seemed to bounce in his hand as he collected it, and was smelling its scent.

Zoro could only imagine it paled compared to Robin’s smell.

He nearly looked back then. You can’t. Not yet.

Even with his own chiding, he nearly broke; it was very lucky Nami had just noticed he’d reached the shore and bumped his arm. “Do you think those are chairs made of clouds up there?” Zoro looked where she was pointing and spotted what looked like two great deck chairs lined up on a wooden outpost. Nami had been completely right because they looked exactly like something from an island resort.

And strangely enough, just beside it, Zoro spotted a little fox. The creature was a soft pink and nearly blended into the cloud chairs Nami was already eagerly striding towards. When it spotted the Straw Hat navigator approaching it darted away.

Nami's leaving gave Zoro the liberty to look back at the Merry again, and again he had to command himself to stay focused. Looking back would only break a resolve he knew he had to keep for the rest of the crew members. Looking back would mean going back; there was no way he could hold that back.

“Look, a person!” Sanji yelled from a little further down the beach. He was silent for a moment before chiming in again. “It’s an angel!” He had already set off toward the figure at a jog, bouncing along the beach clouds.

Sanji’s angel murmured a laugh, then waved. “Heso!”

Luffy scratched his head, his mouth agape. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The girl was drawing closer, and Zoro could see she could well have been an angel; two short white wings sprouted from her back. She had a tall harp tucked under one arm which she carefully placed on the clouds at her feet when she got to Luffy. “Heso!” she repeated. “Did you come from the Blue Sea?”

The captain’s lingering silence was so long that Zoro thought Luffy wasn’t going to answer her at all. When he finally did, he had to balance the two great fruits under his arms. Maybe he had been thinking. Or trying to remember what the Blue Sea was . He did eventually speak though. “We flew up in our ship, the Going Merry.” Luffy eyed the winged girl up and down, even drawing in the harp at her feet in the glance. “Do you live here?”

“Yes, I live here.” She stepped forward, hefting one of the fruits out from under Luffy’s tucked arm. There was only a little resistance from the stone-faced captain. “This is Angel Beach in Skypeia.” She looked down at the hard fruit and tapped the top. Something rang as she rapped it. “Have you been enjoying the conash?”

“We haven’t been able to crack it open,” Usopp said. “It’s too hard.”

The girl chuckled. It was a gentle trill that seemed to waft off the tops of the cloud she was balancing so gracefully atop. “Well, it’s no use biting it like you were. The top of the shell is as hard as a rock!” With a flick, the girl drew a foldable knife from somewhere in her pink dress and slid it into the crown of the conash. Then she pried the top of the chunk she had cut away and handed the fruit back to Luffy. “Here you are.”

Zoro shifted on his feet, stepping out of the cloudy water completely. His hand found the hilt of the Sandai Kitetsu. The little Skypeia girl had a knife.

Luffy’s eyes lit up and without hesitating he stuck his hand down the now-cracked peak of the fruit and scooped out a juicy handful of its flesh. Just as quickly, the captain shovelled it into his mouth and swallowed.

The Straw Hats all watched Luffy as he swallowed. Usopp, standing closest, almost looked like he was going to grab the captain. Then Luffy smiled. “Yum!” The girl smiled back at the captain with a laugh that peeled across the white cloud beach like a rising melody, seeming to catch in the fluffy water and ground alike.

Zoro sighed. That could have been real trouble. He relaxed, ever so slightly, and suddenly remembered the first problem he had been struggling with: Robin. Did he dare to look over his shoulder at the Merry now? He could hold himself now that there was something else he had to watch with the Straw Hats.

And so, he looked. Robin was still standing where he’d left her, watching the Straw Hats meet the strange new woman on the beach. He could see her figure breaking the white skyline, her silhouetted hair blowing in the breeze. He couldn’t see her shaded face, but he could see the rest of her. She was breathtaking.

Trouble. More than any strange Skypeia fruit.

Even with the mysterious girl demanding his attention, he nearly waded back into the water again. There was more he needed to tell Robin. More he needed to apologise for.

Before he’d taken a step though, Robin stepped forward and leaped off the railing. It was a graceful swan dove that barely kicked up the clouds. Zoro’s throat caught. Their moment was gone. He had done everything he could to stop it and yet now that it was gone, all he had was a lump in his chest.

At least he could focus on this strange Skypeia girl then. He wheeled back around to see Usopp already scrabbling at the fruit as Luffy took another heaping out of the cracked top. “Let me try!” the sniper was bellowing, trying in vain to wrench the conash out of Luffy’s rubbery hands. “Luffy, hey, let me try it!”

Chopper came running up with a second fruit perched atop his head. “Hey, lady, can you help me open this one?”

The girl laughed again. “My name is Conis.”

Zoro heard a splash behind him and turned around, expecting to see Robin emerging from the cloudy water. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of an older man with strange antennae sticking out of his bald head. The old man was wearing a long yellow robe that was swishy in the cloud-waves breaking around his feet and dragging what appeared to be a shorter rowing boat with a pair of handles attached near the front. Zoro couldn’t see oars anywhere in sight, but the old man seemed to have just come from the water. The old man beamed when he saw that Zoro had spotted him and waved a hand, glancing around at the other Straw Hats littered around the beach as he did. “Heso! Conis, are these friends of yours?”

“Yes, Father,” Conis called back to the old man. “I just met them… and they’re from the Blue Sea! Can you believe they came all the way here?”

“I see, well then they must feel rather lost,” the old man said, dragging his handled rowboat past Zoro to stop at the rise of the beach. He looked around at the gathered Straw Hats again, his eyes lingering on Luffy and Usopp with their cracked open conash and smeared juice across their faces. “You’ve reached the White-White Sea.” He grumbled, bowing his head. “My, where are my manners? My name is Pagaya, and this is my daughter Conis. It’s very nice to meet you all here. We don’t get many visitors.”

“We’re not lost?” Luffy said, scratching his head.

Pagaya appeared not to have heard Luffy and began ruffling in a pouch on the back of the strange rowboat he had dragged up. Before long he stood again, bringing two red lobsters out of the basket. “This is perfect. I was just out fishing for the finest catch in the White-White Sea, a sky lobster! We can share it all together.”

“Really?” Luffy barked, his eyes growing to the size of dinner plates as the fresh lobsters emerged. “Of course we’ll come!”

Sanji stepped forward to look at the lobsters. “Skypein cuisine, eh? Let me cook it for you.”

As the pair handled the fresh catch, Zoro looked over at Nami. The navigator had walked over at the same time as Sanji, but instead of looking at the fresh-caught sky lobster, she was kneeling beside the strange rowboat.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said to Pagaya as he traded compliments with Sanji over the lobster, “how does this operate? There’s no sail to catch the wind and as far as I can see you haven’t got any oars either. Were you rowing with something?”

“Oh, do you not know what a dial is?” Conis said, tapping the boat’s handles.

Nami shook her head and Conis pointed into the contraption. Zoro leaned forward to see what she was pointing at and spied several small pedals at the base of the handle pillar. There was one on each side of the post and both seemed to be connected to the wooden structure via the underside. “These are the accelerator and brake for the dial, which blows air to let the waver drive. The whole thing is built very light because even the smallest waves can send them spinning out of control.”

Pagaya pushed his caught lobsters back into the basket at his feet after noticing the two talking about the waver. “They’re very tricky instruments. The operator must understand the sea and anticipate the waves at the same time.”

“I’ve been practising since I was a child and I only just learned how to drive them,” Conis added, slapping the handle again.

Nami nodded, listening closely, and slid onto the seat in the middle of the rowboat. Zoro chuckled. Even after all the Skypeian’s warnings about the strange little machine, she was going to try and ride it perfectly.

Pagaya noticed too. “Now, hang on there just a—”

The rowboat—or rather, waver—roared to life and skidded back down the beach to crash into the white cloud waves. As soon as the wooden hull of the little rowboat hit the white water it jumped away, wobbling left and right under Nami’s feet. For a second it looked like the navigator was going to tumble off the side and a white cloud kicked up from the tail as the wobbles came faster, but then after one last violet skid left it rumbled to a more controlled pattern under her. Zoro could see Nami was holding on as tightly as she could, but she looked to have got the waver under control nearly immediately.

“This is wonderful!” she called back to the beach as she blasted past.

“She’s amazing,” Pagaya said, his eyes wide. “I can’t believe it, she learned how to control it almost instantly! How impressive.”

“How come she can ride that thing?” Luffy said.

“There’s a trick!” Nami called back to the shore. “I’m pretty sure your touch wouldn’t be delicate enough Luffy.” She kicked up another puff of white cloud with a zig-zagging kick and began heading out to more open water, the waver bucking wildly under her as she careened away. “This is like a dream! I never imagined anything could glide so quickly over the water without the help of the wind.”

“Is it okay if she takes it that far out?” Zoro asked, looking over at where Pagaya and Conis were standing. They didn’t seem too worried, and Pagaya even chuckled.

“She seems pretty set on it, that’s all okay with me. I’d only be worried if someone was going to be falling off, but she looks like she’s been riding it her whole life. Heck, she makes me look like Conis just learning to control the thing.”

Zoro chuckled too. It was just like Nami to get her hands on something from the sea and understand it in minutes. Even if this sea was the wrong colour. He watched as she disappeared out of sight, hidden by the white glare that beamed down onto the beach and water clouds alike and created a shimmering haze somewhere out into the white lake.

“Now,” Pagaya said, “I said I’d share some of this sky lobster with you all, if you’d still like to take me up on that offer?”

“Yes!” Luffy said, but he didn’t move straight away. “Is Nami going to be okay if we leave her out there on the waver like that?” He sighed. “And what if she comes back to give me my turn and we’re not here waiting for her?”

Sanji leaned over and cracked Luffy on the back of the head, sending the captain tumbling with a yell. “At least pretend like you’re interested in more than your turn!” Luffy was up on his feet again in an instant, staring out at where Nami had disappeared. It looked like Sanji’s hit hadn’t even phased him.

“She’ll be okay,” Robin said. Zoro nearly jumped; he hadn’t heard her join them on the shoreline. “She can look after herself quite well.”

Zoro nodded. “Robin’s right, Nami will find us up the beach.”

He glanced at Robin as he agreed with her. She was already watching him. Maybe she had been the whole time and he hadn’t seen. He wanted to talk to her again, say the things he hadn’t as he left the ship, but he couldn’t speak about anything about what had happened on the Merry with so many of the crew here.

Or really, he didn’t want to talk. There were other things he wanted to do. His chest was constricting again. Surely someone was going to hear his heart thumping.

He hoped Robin could hear his heart beating.

“Let’s go then!” Conis declared. “Our house is just up here.”

The two Skypeians set off up the white cloud beach and Chopper and Usopp followed close behind. Sanji waited until Robin had started walking too to fall into step just behind her and begin proclaiming how many different delicious ways he was going to prepare the sky lobster for her to eat. Zoro narrowed his eyes. The cook meant well, he was sure, but he couldn’t help the pang in his stomach as Robin chuckled at his offers.

Luffy bumped into Zoro as he turned around to join the others, offering up a slightly stunned “ah!” as he did. Zoro didn’t expect him to apologise, least of all when his mind was so fixed on riding that waver just like Nami.

The two walked together for several steps before Luffy looked over at him. He was beaming. Clearly, the waver had been forgotten for the next adventure, which right near was a wonderful walk up a shimmering white cloud beach towards a Skypeian delicacy served up by two lovely locals greeting them with open arms.

“Can you believe it, Zoro?” the captain said. “Skypeia is so awesome!”

Robin’s words rang in his ears. Sailing the seas. Exploring new lands. Adventure. They had come because Luffy had put his trust in a strange treasure map from a falling ship and an old believer from Jaya. Luffy’s faith had been what drove them to look for the sky island and now here they were, standing on Skypeia’s shores about to have another adventure in a land barely any Grand Line-sailing pirate would have ever seen. Luffy had faith that everything would eventually work out okay. Luffy always did.

Zoro looked up towards where Sanji was talking at Robin. The archaeologist was swaying gently as she walked. She had been so eager to share in the Skypeia adventure with the Straw Hats. To share it with him.

Maybe Luffy’s blind trust wasn’t so bad all the time. Luffy trusted Robin. Maybe Zoro could follow his captain’s lead in this too.

Zoro smiled back at Luffy. “Let’s see what’s next.”

Chapter Text

Towering trees loomed up from the island in front of Nami like a dozen long, reaching fingers grasping at the puffs of white cloud above. It was the first non-cloudy thing she had seen since before the Knock Up Stream and as soon as she had spied it in the distance she had glided over.

Thankfully, that was as easy to do as it was to say, with the waver feeling like an extension of her thoughts as she burst across the cloudy waves. Whether any of the other Straw Hats would have had quite as much luck, Nami wasn’t too sure, though she suspected Luffy may have had a few struggles staying balanced—especially if the captain had immediately tried to hit the machine’s top speeds.

Nami kicked the waver pedals again and drifted closer to the reaching trees. It was definitely dirt they were buried in, which was considerably strange when the rest of Skypeia seemed to be drizzled with the expansive white clouds usually kept to the recesses of the sky.

“They’re huge,” she whispered. “I wonder how old they are?”

There was no way to answer her question. The stems were huge, stretching half as far around as they did up, and the leaves were a dusty brown colour across most of the higher eaves, but there was nothing to explain if they had been growing for fifty years or fifty thousand. Very strange indeed, she thought.

Before she could ruminate on the trees’ ages much longer, she had a crack, then a sharp thud! waft from somewhere beneath their stretched branches. Nami narrowed her eyes. “That’s so creepy.”

Then, the voices drifted into her hearing. At least one was yelling something she couldn’t hear, while more were barking what sounded like orders or something close to commanding cries. Whoever was speaking—or rather, yelling—was somewhere in the underbrush of the dirt-grown island, but even after drifting a little closer again, Nami couldn’t make out where the rising voices were coming from. Now that is creepy, she thought, and without waiting around to make out the conversation she kicked the other waver pedal.

She hadn’t left quickly enough, because as she backpedalled and tried to turn around, she saw a figure break through the tree line a little down the edge of the island. He was yelling, his head turned behind him.

“Don’t do it, please!” he yelled to someone further behind him. Nami couldn’t see who he was pleading with. “Please, I didn’t mean to stay here!”

The cowering man was covered in dirt and grime, and Nami could see even from out on the white waves that he was bleeding from a nasty gash along his right side. The blood was flowing freely into a torn white shirt and was even standing out against his equally destroyed purple pants. Whether the stranger had wrapped the headband he was wearing around his head to hold another wound or he had already been wearing it, Nami couldn’t tell, but it was just as dishevelled. Only a long dagger, brandished in his left hand, seemed to be free from visible damage.

Nami looked beyond where the whimpering man had fallen on the edge of the island’s rocky cliffs. She could see something moving in the shadows, at least one great figure, but couldn’t quite see what was hunting the man.

The stranger clearly could though, because he whimpered again and raised the long knife even higher, barking an order: “Stay back!”

Nami didn’t have to wait long before whoever had been given the order—and obviously ignored—emerged. This man looked far less dishevelled and far more suited for the jungle; he was wearing a sleeveless green shirt and pants made for travel in the bush. He hefted a great silver katana and sneered at the cowering stranger. “Why did you stop running, prey? You make it far too easy.”

His words were paired with a crashing thud as several branches behind him were snapped away to reveal a towering pale-furred dog. With a flick of his wrist, the sword-wielding pursuer acknowledged the beast’s arrival, and the beast, in turn, acknowledged the flick by coming to a halt and resting back on its haunches.

“Please, just let me leave,” the whimpering man managed. “My ship… they left me. I didn’t mean to stay here. I can go. You don’t need to do this.”

The sword-wielding man sneered again and walked toward the whimpering man. “Who said anything about need?”

There was another crack in the tree line, a little further above the two hunters, and another man exploded out from the branches and landed next to the whimpering man. This man was taller than the dog-hunter and towered over the stranger who Nami could only imagine had been their prey. Like the first pursuer, this one looked down at the cornered man and sneered.

“Hey,” the first hunter snapped, “he’s mine.”

The second warrior pointed a great long lance at the whimpering man and shrugged. “Then you should have been faster I think. I’m surprised Holy didn’t catch him first.”

Nami sunk back on the waver, trying to hide herself in the drifting white clouds billowing around her. If either of these armed strangers—or their towering beast—spotted her, she wasn’t too sure she could get the waver going again in time.

“We were savouring it,” the first snapped back, sheathing his sword. “It’s a bit spoiled now if we have to share.”

The whimpering man looked between the two and dropped his knife, clasping his hands together. “You don’t have to do anything at all! I can just leav—”

Before he could finish, the second hunter lashed his arm in a blinding flash, driving the pointed lance into the whimper man’s shoulder blades and driving some dozen inches into flesh. The man who had been running cried out and then slumped forward, still skewered on the second hunter’s blade.

“That solves that problem then, I suppose,” the first warrior sighed, turning to pat his great hound. “All that long hunting for nothing again, eh Holy?”

The second man drew his lance back out and kicked the fallen body over the edge of the cliff. Nami flinched, though she was mostly hoping neither had watched the whimpering man’s fall—they would have easily spotted her if either had bothered.

“Lord Eneru will want to hear about this,” the first said, still firmly patting the great dog. “Especially that you left your post to steal what should rightfully have been my kill.”

“He will be happy someone solved it quickly.”

A third voice rang out, surprising the two arguing warriors nearly as much as it shocked Nami. The sharp voice, unexpected even when she was already on edge and listening to everything intently, made her flinch again. “You’ll have plenty more time for your fun yet I think. Both of you.”

Nami shrank back again. This third man was staring out to the sea as he emerged from the tree line; if he looked down to his right, it would be hard to miss the Straw Hat navigator and her waver, even with how deep into the cloud waves she had hidden.

Instead of spotting her though, the well-dressed hunter—he appeared to be wearing a two-piece matching purple suit, even this deep in the island’s jungle—stepped up to the other two warriors.

“Lord Eneru has new orders does he Gedatsu?” the first man asked.

The third nodded. “More illegal trespassers have arrived. That old woman on the water spout said she spotted a caravel passing the signs quite recently. Seven people from the Blue Sea onboard, she said. Sounds legit this time.”

“Seven?” the second hunter cut in. “That’s no good.”

Nami couldn’t help but gasp. Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, and herself made seven, and the Merry was certainly a caravel. They could only be talking about the Straw Hats—but we aren’t trespassing!

“You can’t divide seven among four,” one of the warriors sighed. Nami looked back; it seemed like it had been the dog trainer that had spoken last because the other two were nodding. Nami cringed even further back into the cloudy waves as the dog trainer looked down to where he had kicked the whimpering man from earlier. “Ah well, it will be a better hunt than that whining runaway.”

The dog barked and the three men turned and disappeared back into the forest. Nami waited for a heartbeat, then two, before angling the waver’s handles back towards the way she’d come and kicking the gears into place. The vehicle spluttered to life again with a tmp, tmp, tmp and she set off at pace. I have to get out of here before those three come back, Nami thought, pressing the waver pedal as hard as she could. The speed lifted again, and the waver cut through the cloudy waves like a warm knife through Sanji’s butter.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes before Nami could see the shore again but it felt much longer; her heart was beating hard against her chest and she kept looking over her shoulder to see if the three mysterious warriors had spotted her and gave chase. Whether they had wavers on hand or not didn’t matter.

When she did eventually spot the cloudy white beach where she had left the others, her beating heart kicked up another gear. The Straw Hats were still there, but they were standing a little off from what looked like a group of white-clad soldiers.

“Rats!” Nami hissed, edging her foot against the pedal. “It’s probably those men from the island. Don’t do anything rash, guys.”

The first thing she heard once she got in earshot was a yell. “Nami!” Sanji bellowed, waving his hands. “You’re safe!” The Straw Hat cook had a huge wide smile plastered on his face. He was ignoring whoever the group of soldiers were.

Luffy, on the other hand, had one white-clad soldier ailed up and even from a little further out from the shoreline Nami could see one of his rubber hands was scrunched into a fist by his side. Zoro and Usopp were standing just off the captain’s shoulder, each resting hands on their sword and slingshot hilts respectively.

“Luffy!” Nami yelled, hoping he could hear her already. “Don’t argue with them!”

Usopp was the first to turn around. “Don’t argue with them? But Nami, they’re trying to make us pay seventy million berries for apparently trespassing here on Angel Beach. Are you sure we want to pay that?”

Nami skidded to a halt beside the two and jumped off the waver. It clattered to the sand with a thud. Seventy thousand? Untangling herself from the vehicle, Nami strode over to the white-clad soldier Luffy had bailed up and grabbed him by the collar. “Are you crazy?” she snapped, all thought of trying to avoid an argument washed from her thoughts. Seventy thousand?! These soldiers must truly be out of their minds!

Luffy grabbed at Nami’s shoulder, trying to pull her back from the tall soldier. “You just said don’t argue Nami!”

The soldier looked down at Nami’s fist gripping his collar and chuckled. “Now you’ve done it, pirate. First, your crew verbally abused us, and now you clearly attacked a government official and obstructed us from performing our duties. That’s a class-five criminal offence. You leave me no choice here: in the name of Lord Eneru, you must be exiled to the clouds!”

Nami let go of his collar and stepped back, brushing the rumpled fabric as she did. “Well, well, let’s not be hasty. The outrageous fine just made me lose it.”

“Exiled to the clouds doesn’t sound too bad,” Luffy said next to her.

Conis stepped up beside the two, looking from Luffy, who was still smiling, to the tall soldier. “Well, it is. You’re dropped, ship and all, onto a cloud with no way to escape. You have to stay there until you’re nothing but bones!”

Robin, standing a little further down the beach, nodded. “That explains it then. That must be what happened to the ship that fell from the sky.”

The archaeologist was right, Nami realised. That old galleon, the Saint Briss, must have been exiled from Skypeia sometime in the last two centuries and been forced to drift through the sky until finally it found an edge and plummeted down onto the Merry. While the rotting ship may have lasted long enough to turn into a falling danger though, her crew had not been quite so lucky in their exile.

“We have to leave Luffy, right now,” Nami said. This exile from the soldiers was bad enough without even factoring in the three hunters on the island; the Straw Hats were not welcome in Skypeia.

“You should surrender quietly,” the soldier said, trying to speak over her. “We’re the friendliest law officers you’ll find in God’s Land. Lord Eneru’s great vassals won’t be so gentle with you once they find you here.”

“Fine,” Luffy shot back. “We’re used to being hunted.”

Nami’s eyes bulged as Luffy spoke. Did the captain have to pick a fight everywhere the Straw Hats went? And with no navy here to bother them in Skypeia too.

The soldier chuckled again and slid his pistol back into a holster hanging on his hip. “I am okay letting you go. As I said, we White Berets try to be friendly down here, even to ignorant Blue Sea pirates. But when they find you, Lord Eneru’s vassals in the Upper Yard will deal with you. You’ll wish you chose exile in the clouds.”

He wheeled around, throwing up an order in hand signals as he did, and the small squadron of soldiers behind him began marching back up the white sand beach. Nami watched them leave, making sure they had vanished over the furthest of dunes before she turned back around to admonish Luffy.

Luffy, however, was already waiting to bark at her.

“Why did you have to come back Nami?” he said, scowling. “We were just about to go to that place Conis and her dad told us we’re absolutely never supposed to go. We were going to have an adventure there” His excitement trailed off for a moment and he scratched his head. “And look for you there too, of course.”

“What adventure?” Nami yelled back, smacking him on the head. “Didn’t you hear everything? Those vassals are out there, and I saw them on that Upper Yard island already—they’re really scary! If you’d seen them, you wouldn’t want to go there either. I don’t know if they’re gods or something, but they definitely have someone they serve, some lord, who would be even stronger than them. I’m never going back there again Luffy, and I definitely don’t think any of us should be going!”

“We can just go,” Luffy said, shrugging. “You don’t have to.”

Nami could feel her anger boiling up again. The captain could be hard-headed when he wanted to be, and it was always at the worst times. “No way! They’ll come after us. We just have to get out of here. We never should have come to Skypeia in the first place, but we don’t have to hang around either. Come on Luffy, think. What is more important here, your life, or going on an adventure?”

She flinched as soon as the words left her lips. She knew there was only one answer for Luffy, and it wasn’t what Nami wanted to hear. When he immediately bellowed “Adventure!” at the top of his lungs, she sighed.

“That’s my fault,” she said, rubbing her brow.

Before she had a chance to say anything else to convince Luffy—who had begun bounding around on the white sand yelling ‘adventure’ over and over—to change his mind, Usopp tapped her on the shoulder. “Nami, come to think of it, even if we did want to leave, do you know how we can? We gave so much thought to coming here to Sky Island that we never actually gave any thought on how we’d get back again.”

“There is a way down,” Conis cut in just as Usopp was ramping up into the next stage of his panic attack. “You have to go down one level and sail to the far east of the White Sea, to a place known as Cloud’s End.”

“Great!” Nami said, patting Usopp on the back. “We’ll be back in the Blue Sea by no time, don’t you worry.”

Conis shook her head. “I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a way to escape, yes, but you’d have to cross a vast sea in the sky. There’s no telling where to go there and you may just get lost and be as good as exiled anyway.”

Usopp gasped, eyes wide. “What do you mean, we can’t go home? Will we ever see the Blue Sea again?” He rounded on Luffy. “This is all your fault, you wanted to come to Skypeia so badly! Well, now we’re here and we’re going to be here forever until we become a bag of falling bones in the sky. We’re all going to die!” 

Nami put her hand over Luffy’s mouth before he could bark something at Usopp and shook her head. “It’s just as dangerous to stay here, and if we stay we’ll make trouble for Conis and Pagaya anyway. These vassals will know where we are if the soldiers are going to tell them, so I think we have to risk the journey to Cloud’s End anyway.”

Luffy considered this long enough for Nami to risk lifting her hand off his mouth. She expected him to start yelling again, but he just nodded. “Okay, well I’m going to get some more of the old man’s food before we set off. Do you want to get some of that too Usopp? We can carry heaps. It was really yummy!”

Zoro leaned in close to Nami as Luffy and Usopp set off. “You missed Pagaya cooking up a sky lobster for us. It was good, if I’m being honest.”

Nami bristled. “He’s going to get us killed, loitering like this.” She looked at Zoro, who seemed to be relatively calm about the whole situation. “You didn’t see those guys in Upper Yard before. They were scary dangerous.”

“You think Luffy cares?”

“I would hope he’d take what everyone else was thinking into account. At the very least, you could talk to him.”

Zoro chuckled and turned to wade back to the Merry. “I don’t care either Nami. I’ll get the ship ready for us but don’t expect me to talk him out of anything.” The swordsman looked around. “Chopper, come help.”

“I can as well, you’re going to need some hands,” Robin said.

Nami wasn’t sure if anyone else saw, but Zoro nearly froze when Robin spoke. Now that was interesting; in all the excitement from landing in Skypeia, then her ride on the waver to Upper Yard, she had all but forgotten what she had spotted during all the chaos of the Knock-Up Stream. Zoro holding Robin. Tightly.

“If you want,” Zoro said tersely, then set off again.

Nami raised an eyebrow and looked over at Robin. The dark-haired archaeologist looked unreadable. She had that same soft half-smile she seemed to constantly sport around the Straw Hats and she was watching Zoro walk away.

 Nami knew this was her chance. She stepped up to keep pace with Robin and whispered quietly to her. “Do you want me to take Chopper back with Luffy?”

Robin’s soft half-smile slipped off her face and Nami thought she saw the newest Straw Hat’s shoulders tense too. It had been the perfect thing to say; everything she needed to see came spilling right out on Robin’s body.

“No, that’s okay, thank you,” the archaeologist said after a pregnant pause. “We’ll need as many hands as we can to get the Merry ready.” She didn’t say anything else, but Nami could see a glowering red rush on the base of her neck. It was creeping up to her dark checks. The body cannot lie like the mind. So there was something more than just Zoro saving Nico Robin in the chaos. Something Nami suspected no one else had spotted.

“Say, maybe you and I could beat Luffy up?” Nami said, changing the subject for the archaeologist. “Then he’d have to come with us instead of trying to go out on his silly adventure.” She didn’t want to make Robin squirm any more than she needed. That she could save for when she got Zoro alone.

Robin laughed. Her blush was already starting to fade. “I think we may find that a little impossible. But I won’t tell if you won’t.”

The two reached the Merry’s railing ladder, which Chopper had already thrown down for them, and they clambered aboard. On deck, Zoro and the little reindeer were already hard at work preparing for the voyage. Chopper, blown up into his Heavy Point, was angling the sails and Zoro was hefty up the anchor.

“We aren’t leaving just yet,” Nami said, “so no rush.”

Chopper wiped a bead of sweat from his furred and hatted head. “All the same Nami, I’d like to be ready to go. You said those guys were scary!”

Robin went to help Chopper with the bound ropes and Nami spied her opportunity; Zoro was nearly done heaving up the anchor, but for the next few seconds at least he would be stuck hefting. He couldn’t run. She would get the answers she wanted, no matter how much he blushed. He could squirm, for all she cared.

She strode over, calling to the swordsman. “Hey, Zor—”

The Merry rocked, nearly sending Nami tumbling off her feet. Zoro, who had just managed to heave the heavy anchor up over the railing, slammed hard against the wet steel. “What was that?” he said, looking around.

“Did something just hit the ship?” Chopper said, rushing to the railing. Still in his taller form, he could see well over the starboard edge.

Wood creaked, groaning against the huge weight of something. There was a crack, Nami heard, and the ship rolled again. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cloudy white waves roiling around the edges of the ship. She looked over the port side, trying to spy anything that had attacked the ship. It must be those vassals, come to kill us! she thought in a panic and looked back around for Zoro. At least we have one of our monsters here.

The ship rocked again and started moving away from the shore. Robin yelled, but Nami couldn’t hear her over the rushing wind that was suddenly whipping around their heads. The Merry was moving on its own!

Then she spotted the great shape under the breaking white waves. The shadow shifted again and Nami realised what had really happened; below, something huge had grabbed onto the hull of the Merry with two mighty claws and was very rapidly dragging it towards the Upper Yard island. Nami gasped and grabbed the railing to keep from falling off, barely getting her fingers around the wood before the ship kicked again.

“Hold on!” Zoro bellowed. “Hold on to anything you can!”

Nami could hear that Robin and Chopper were yelling something too, though they were too far away. She looked back, keeping her tight grip on the railing, and could see the white beach they had landed on quickly receding. A little further up, Luffy, Usopp, and Sanji were bellowing and waving their arms, though whatever they were yelling didn’t have any half chance of actually reaching them on the fast-moving Merry.

“Something has its hooks in the ship!” Nami yelled, trying to clamber closer to Zoro further down the railing. “We have to jump!”

Zoro wrenched around the anchor to face her. “You’re right, you have to get away from here, as quickly as you can! Don’t worry about the Merry, I’ll stay with her. We can’t abandon the ship. It’s our only way out.”

“No!” Robin roared, her voice finally carrying over the wind. “We’re going too fast, diving off now would be suicide! We have to stay on the deck!” She grimaced. “It probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. I think it’s already begun!”

Nami swallowed. Robin was right. Instead of those vassals coming to the beach, they were taking the Straw Hats straight to them. They were going to Upper Yard.

Chapter Text

Zoro could hear Chopper yelling from somewhere close on the deck of the Going Merry as he managed to resurfaced, though the little reindeer’s voice had barely carried over the roar of the thick white water surging back down around him. He twisted sharply again, trying to wrestle his leg free. If only I could get to my swords.

“It’s a shark!” Chopper bellowed from somewhere above Zoro. “A huge sky shark! He can’t get out of the water! Nami, Robin, do something!”

That was all the swordsman heard from his ship’s doctor before the sharp wrench of the sky shark’s bite dragged him back under the whitewash again. Zoro barely caught a gasp of breath before he was plunged again, dragged several metres below the milky-white surface that folded over him.

My swords. I need to reach my swords…

Rushing down into the water didn’t seem quite the brightest idea now that it was rushing in around him. On first glance, the stairs down had simply seemed like the quickest way to get back onto land. Not so smart, I suppose.

Zoro kicked, landing a blow right on the shark’s nose and the great beast wheeled away. Enough time for Zoro to lash out with an arm and grab the hilt of what felt like the Wado Ichimonji. The wrapping was slick and wet underwater, but it slid from its scabbard just as easily as ever. Zoro swiped, pushing the blade through the water with all his might. It was barely enough to break the shark’s tough skin, but the sharp blow was enough to send it careening without another bite.

Zoro kicked, this time against the water, and began to rise slowly. He held his sword out as he rose; he could barely see through the milky water but he was damned if he was going to let the shark get a free bite in as he broke the water.

He emerged out of the thick white water with a crashing splash just in time to hear another of Chopper’s yells—“Zoro, are you alive?!”—and gulped in air. He kicked again, the Wado Ichimonji held out above the splashing foam at the top of the lake, and dragged his body through the water towards the steps.

Once he got his elbows over the edge of the bottom stone step he was able to drag himself up, panting as he did. Nami and Chopper made it down to him after he had managed two or three big gulps of fresh air. The pair grabbed him by the arms and helped him up several of the rises, away from the water’s edge.

“We could see if you’d been eaten!” Chopper said, smacking his arm.

Robin stepped down beside them. “The clouds would’ve turned red if he was.”

Nami scowled. “That’s a gruesome thing to say Robin.”

Zoro coughed, rolling onto his back. He could feel water spewing from his ears and nose and he managed to spit a thick lump of the white foam out of the back of his throat. “What a pain,” he grumbled as he did. He made sure the Wado Ichimonji was lying flat against the step he was lying on and let it clatter out of his hand. It teetered for a second then lay still, dripping the same white water as its owner.

Nami smacked him, nearly right on top of where Chopper’s little hoof had just left a tiny indent. “What a pain indeed Zoro! Why did you have to go diving in like that? We hadn’t even figured out where we are yet, let alone if it was safe… and it clearly wasn’t with those sharks swimming around!”

“Well, at least we know I can’t swim to the bank.”

Nami smacked him again. “I could have told you that! This looks like it’s Upper Yard, so it’s definitely dangerous.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Robin said, looking around. “This is a sacrificial altar.”

It very clearly was too, Zoro could see once he got the last of the white water out of his eyes; the stone steps he had barrelled down once they’d arrived ran from the basin at the top—where the Merry now floated—all the way to the shark-infested white water lapping at the stone structure. Though he couldn’t see the bottom, Zoro could imagine the altar went some way under the waves, especially considering the vines he could see crawling their way up the sides. They must have grown from the banks and spread across. The whole towering cobble growth in the middle of the white cloudy lake was illuminated by two equally huge columns flanking the Merry, with each boasting a matching shield-and-spear adornment just below their burning braziers.

What was more interesting to Zoro, however, was what surrounded the altar. While they were standing atop the huge stone pillar the white water was far below, but as he had just discovered a crossing could be fatal if those sharks decided they wanted to attack again and the shore seemed too far away to build any kind of bridge across; if there had even been enough things to build with on the tower.

Then, even if they were able to get off the altar, the jungle on the other side looked dark, gloomy, and completely uninhabitable, as far as what Zoro could see standing in the middle of the yawning clearing.

“What a place that lobster brought us to,” Zoro said.

Robin looked around again, pursing her lips and leaning her hands on her hips. “I wonder if heaven’s punishment means starving to death on this altar?” She must have noticed their surroundings just as quickly.

That was not exactly Zoro what had planned for his final moments. “Whatever the punishment is,” he said, tugging off his waterlogged shirt and giving it a wring, “I don’t plan on being here to find out.” White water drained out of his shirt and splashed onto the deck. He pulled tightly, squeezing out the last drops. “We at least have to get into that forest somehow, even if we can’t swim.”

“The best thing we could do would be to get the Merry back into the water and just sail away,” Nami said, before slapping the ballard railing nearest to her. “Only problem there is the hull’s too badly damaged.”

Zoro tugged his shirt back on and joined the navigator at the railing. From where the pair were standing he could see at least one large rent along the belly of the Merry. She was very right—the caravel wasn’t going anywhere. “We’ll have to make repairs,” he agreed. “Chopper, will you be able to do that?”

“Huh, me?” the reindeer said. “Yeah, of course Zoro. Do you have a plan?”

“Luffy and the others will come looking for us, I’m sure of it,” Zoro said. “That means we’ll have to have somebody here waiting for them—and we’ll need to have the Merry ready to sail when they get here.”

“And what are you going to do?” Nami said.

Zoro shrugged. “This guy Eneru should be around here somewhere, right? I think it’s time one of us had a little talk with him.” Where I’m going to find him is a little trickier, but we can get to that later.

“Don’t do that Zoro,” Nami shot back. “All you’re going to do is make him mad. The Sky Islanders thought Lord Eneru was a god. Plus there’s those hunters of his too, Gedatsu and the guy with the huge dog. He’ll bring them all down on us if we’re not careful. Don’t you know better than to anger the gods?”

“Sorry, but I don’t pray to god,” Zoro said, smiling back at her.

Nami rolled her eyes and turned her back on him with a hmph. Soon, he could hear her muttering to herself: “Dear god, I don’t know this guy.”

Zoro chose to ignore her whispered complaints; he was already looking for some way off the towering altar. A quick scan showed him almost everything he’d already seen before, especially the rolling white water and its finned and well-toothed inhabitants. As from his first glance, he could tell there was little they could do to make any kind of bridge either, at least if they wanted to keep the Merry whole.

“Can we break any of the ship—” he began, but before he even truly asked the question he knew what the answer would be. Nami snapped nearly immediately, her whispers turning to a yell again, while Chopper just gasped and ran over to the mast and rubbed it with one paw.

“We’re not taking anything off the Merry we don’t have to,” Nami said, half-eyeing him as she looked across at the bank. “Besides, we’ll need her to get away from her, once we figure out how to get her unstuck.”

“You’re right,” Zoro said, leaning on the railing. “We’ll need her.”

He scanned again, and this time he thought he found an even better answer: the low-hanging vines sagging out from the canopy above.

“You know,” he said, rubbing his chin, “I think we might be able to use the vines.”

Robin appeared at his shoulder suddenly, looking out to where he’d pointed. He could hear her soft breaths, each dragging across the back of his neck as she stood silently for a second. Then, “That’s a good idea.”

Zoro was taken aback. “Thank you.” He was more used to Nami and Usopp shooting down everything he suggested, so he didn’t know what else to say.

She inched closer, her side pressing into his. Zoro could feel her soft arm moving slowly with her long breaths. How could she be so cold and fragile and so warm and welcoming at the same time?

“Do you mind if I join you, Mr. Swordsman?”

Zoro shivered, his arm rubbing closer to Robin’s as he shifted. Her breath had played across the back of his neck again as she spoke; or was it the question that had sent the mini convulsions up his spine?

“Don’t slow me down,” he managed. “You… can’t slow me down.”

She leaned in closer. Zoro’s eyes fluttered closed as she did. Forget the jungle. Forget this God waiting out there . “I won’t,” she whispered.

“Hey, you’re going too Robin?” Nami said, cutting the moment like a knife. Robin flinched at the navigator’s question and her arm pulled away from where it had been touching Zoro’s. The tall woman looked like she’d almost jumped on the spot, though Zoro was glad she hadn’t. It seemed like Nami and Chopper had both crept up on them—though more likely they had just walked.

“I—” Robin spluttered quickly, eyeing Zoro from where the other two Straw Hats couldn’t see. “I… well, this altar must be more than a thousand years old.” The archaeologist waved her hand across the wide space that the Merry was stuck on. “I tingle all over when I come across historical relics like this one. Just imagine what else is out there in the jungle. Maybe more ruins.” She winked slyly at Zoro just before her last suggestion. “Maybe even artefacts, or rare and valuable jewels.”

On queue, Nami’s eyes lit up. “Okay,” she said instantly, “I’m coming too.”

It was all Zoro could do to stifle a laugh. Robin had read Nami like a book as soon as she’d joined the crew and already knew how to play her like a fiddle. Though, he thought with a grimace and his laughter died in his throat, with Nami it’s not exactly private out there in the jungle.

“What?” Chopper said, tugging on Nami’s pant leg. “Weren’t you just afraid? I thought you were going to stay here with me?”

Zoro crouched down beside the doctor and playfully punched his shoulder. “She’d be more trouble than she’s worth sticking around here, right? I might as well take her with me and keep an eye on her.”

Chopper chuckled. “I suppose so.” He stood a little straighter. “Besides, I need to get all these repairs done. I don’t need any distractions!”

Soon, Zoro had grappled down one of the closest vines and tested how firm it was—only a little give when he tugged on the coiling green length—before mounting the Merry’s railing and looking out over the water.

“I suppose wish me luck,” the swordsman said, almost half to himself, then counted down: “Three… two… one.” Then, with a push, he jumped out into free air. The wind rushed past his face as he swung. This feels incredible.   Free . Zoro let himself smile as he plummeted towards the tree line. The vine seemed to be holding, at least for now. His smile widened and he let out a bellow. “Aaah-aah-uh-aaah-uh-aaah!”

Zoro’s feet thumped into the dirt on the other side and he let the vine fall loose in his hands, tucked his knees, and rolled into a nearby root to stop his speed. The knock blew the wind out of his lungs, but he had made it.

He turned, standing and brushing off the dirt and leaves that had piled up onto his pants, and gave the other Straw Hats a thumbs up.

“What was that yell?” Nami called, shaking her head. “So silly.”

Zoro shrugged. “Hey, it’s for good luck.” Whatever it was, it had been fun.

Robin came next, pushing off and swinging over with a little less noise than Zoro, and more grace. The archaeologist landed without having to roll, letting go of the vine and stepping off onto the bank.

“Nicely done,” Zoro said, rubbing his head.

Robin beamed at him, her eyes glittering. “Thank you, swordsman.”

The pair turned back to look at Nami. Zoro had expected to see her already swinging across two, but now that he peered back at the Merry he could see the Straw Hat navigator starring over the side of the rigging. She had a vine in her hand, ready to swing, but she seemed to have stopped.

“Hey, this is really high up!” Nami yelled.

“It’s about fifty metres up,” Robin called back. “Mess up and you die.”

Zoro chuckled and Robin shot him a sideways glance that hinted she would have laughed too, if Nami hadn’t already been shaking a fist at her. “Could you not say that, please!” she bellowed, her eyes never breaking away from the white water far below her. “I don’t think that I can make that!”

Maybe that’s not the worst thing , Zoro thought to himself. He looked over to where Robin was standing, her eyes locked on the panicking navigator. Alone in the jungle with Nico Robin. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, even though he should be watching Nami to make sure she was safe. Together, alone in the jungle. Time to do what what he should have done on the Merry when they first landed on the beach. He should have stayed there on the boat. She should have made me stay.

“Okay!” Nami said, her voice wavering as she called over to them. “I’m coming, I’m swinging!” She swallowed—Zoro could see it even from the jungle’s edge—and Chopper said something to the navigator that he couldn’t hear, and then she pushed off with a wild shove and came barrelling on.

Nami kicked her legs as she swung, adding to her momentum. She couldn’t have been planning on that. She wasn’t thinking. A little too fast.

“T-too fast!” she bellowed, her eyes popping. “I can’t stop!”

Zoro nearly laughed, then realised she was being serious. She actually isn’t going to stop in time. He sprang forward without thinking, trying to get between her and the tree. Only, he wasn’t quick enough; he was beaten to the punch by what looked like the ship’s rigging popping out from nearby, covering the tree and hauling Nami in. Yet, it wasn’t rigging; it was several arms sprouting from Robin, wrapping Nami to make sure she slowed down without hitting the tree. Her Flower-Flower Fruit. Zoro hadn’t expected that. Robin, helping? He didn’t know what to think.

The archaeologist lowered the panting Nami to the ground gently, her extra arms retracting back and disappearing in a splash of small pink flowers as they vanished one by one. “See, you have guts.”

Nami was shaking on the ground. “I apologise for the inconvenience,” she said, overly formal as she tried in vain to gather her breath.

Zoro knelt beside her, offering a hand. He cracked a smile. “See Nami, that’s what you get for not yelling.” She looked up and smiled weakly before taking his outstretched offering. “You just needed a bit more luck.” He hefted her up, looking over his shoulder as he did. And help from Nico Robin.

The archaeologist was standing a little ways off already, looking into the forest. She couldn’t see him looking, though she did look over her shoulder at the two when Nami thanked her again. Robin smiled. “That’s okay.” Then she gestured back towards the treeline. “This forest is huge.”

Zoro checked Nami one last time then dusted himself off again and joined Robin at the treeline. “Then we better get going. We’re losing the light. We don’t want to get lost somewhere out there in the dark.”

The swordsman shuffled his hilts and looked back to the Merry. Chopper was still standing at the railing watching the trio gather themselves on the shore. Zoro smiled, waving to the little reindeer. “Okay Chopper, guard the boat!” Zoro called, hoping he could hear them. “You’re in charge!”

“We’re counting on you Chopper!” Robin added with a yell.

Chopper waved back from the side of the Merry. “Be careful! Come back safely!”

Zoro slashed another vine away as he trod through the undergrowth of the huge, root-filled jungle, making sure the twisted thing’s entire body was hewn from where it had been hanging before he stepped through. He knew if he left even some of the towering, wrapping growths to accidentally hit Robin and Nami as they walked through, the Straw Hat navigator would be unbearable.

And besides, he wanted to make sure the path was clear for Robin.

The swordsman risked a glance back over his shoulder as he took another diagonal swipe with the Yubashiri. The two were trailing some metres behind him, gingering stepping through the slashed vines he had already cleared. He could hear that Nami was doing most of the talking; Robin seemed content to listen. Neither caught sight of him peering over his shoulder, but he looked away just in case.

Why am I worried? he thought to himself, arcing the Yubashiri up this time as a particularly gnarled branch threatened to spring back at him and catch him in the face after he split it down the middle. Do I not want Nami to know I’m looking at Robin? Or do I not want Robin to see me looking?

It was the second one Zoro knew just as soon as he asked. He wanted to see Robin, to talk to Robin. He wanted to see that smile she only seemed to dole out when she thought something was truly amusing.

Or when she was looking at him, he hoped.

He gritted his teeth and slashed again. She had smiled exactly like that when just the two of them had been left on the Merry. Robin’s eyes had glittered shining blue after he apologised and her smile had drawn him in. What had he done when she did that? He had dove away like a coward. Ran to the beach where the rest of the Straw Hats had been exploring. Ran away.

Though , he thought, you ran because you weren’t sure . And how could he be? She had served Crocodile happily, and pursued them across the seas before they even threatened the Baroque Works operations in Arabasta. Even before then, when they were ambushed in Whiskey Peak, she had been waiting. Not just any Baroque Works assassin either. Mr. Zero’s right-hand woman.

Zoro remembered the first time Robin—no, Miss All Sunday—had infiltrated the Going Merry all too clearly. The second time she came with charm and wit and she had turned Luffy so quickly. The first time, Zoro could remember, she even admitted she only let them life because she hadn’t been ordered too specifically.

“Be careful not to run up on the rocks,” she had said when she emerged. Though, Miss All Sunday had followed that up with, “I’m so glad you managed to escape.” Then she had admitted she’d helped Vivi find out about Mr. Zero and let her follow her. Was that deliberate, or a carefully plotted lie?

She had called Vivi “pathetic” for declaring war on the Baroque Works, he could also remember. That had galled him at the time—and it galled him now.

And yet, she had also put them on the right course with the eternal pose that she didn’t have to share. Luffy and Nami had put their heads together to figure out the next step in the journey to Arabasta and Robin had tried to get them on the right path. Instead, and especially because Luffy broke that pose, they ended up on Little Garden with those mountainous duelling giants.

“Anyone can stand around and yell. But to sail knowingly into mortal danger is just silly,” Miss All Sunday had said, still calmly lounging on the captain’s railing in front of the cabin. Zoro remembered Sanji and Usopp had flanked her with pistols and she had disarmed them quite easily with her Flower-Flower Fruit. That was the first time he thought she was a truly deadly enemy.

“It’s an eternal pose?” Vivi had questioned.

“You’ll be able to bypass difficulty with that,” the Baroque Works officer had said. “It points to the island of nothing, which is one stop before Arabasta. It’s a route even our agents don’t know about yet, so no one will follow you.”

“Wait, she’s one of the good guys?” Nami had pipped in then.

“It has to be a trap.” Zoro had said.

Whether Nami or Zoro had been right didn’t matter though, because Luffy had immediately shattered the pose and told Robin she was most certainly enemy because she had stolen his straw hat with her powers. Zoro had been happy to be just as certain as Luffy then, and then when she appeared again after the war in Arabasta. No one changes their colours that quickly.

But, the Miss All Sunday that had ambushed them in Whiskey Peak and that Luffy had battled in Arabasta just didn’t seem like the same Nico Robin that had journeyed with the Straw Hats to Jaya and the Sky Islands. Something had happened between her and Luffy during his confrontation with Crocodile and whatever it was meant when Miss All Sunday appeared on the Going Merry again, Luffy was happy to welcome her into the crew without much more than a second thought on what it could mean. It is Luffy, Zoro argued to himself. But, he just as quickly argued back, this did seem like something more than the rubber captain’s energetic impatience.

“We’ll meet again, if you survive,” Robin had promised when she was wearing her Miss All Sunday persona. “It’s meant so much to be with you and the Straw Hats,” she had said on Angel Beach. And at the same time, “I have nowhere else to go.”

Zoro’s breath caught in his chest as he swiped again; just like when she had whispered it to him as they arrived in Skypeia, it tugged at his heart now. Nowhere else to go but onto the enemy ship in desperation.

“Hey!” Nami yelled, breaking straight through Zoro’s thoughts. His hand flew straight to where the Wado Ichimonji was hanging at his hip, until he realised the navigator was pointing at something peaking over the trees. He could barely make out what it was through the vines.

“What do you see Nami?”

“There’s something there,” she called back. “I’m going to take a look.”

Chapter Text

Nami had been right, even though she’d only been able to see it from a distance in the treeline. Once she, Zoro, and Robin had cut their way down the side of the mountain and got up close, she was certain: It was the missing half of Mont Blanc Cricket’s house, standing right here in Skypeia.

“What’s going on?” Zoro called. The swordsman was somewhere over her shoulder, still clambering down to catch up with her. Nami heard him pull up as he noticed what she was already surveying. “Hey… how is this possible?”

“Doesn’t it look familiar?” Nami asked, resting a hand on the house.

“Of course, it does,” Zoro said back, joining her in the shadow of the leaning half-house’s awning. “But we saw this all the way back down on the ground. What’s it doing all the way up here?”

“It’s the same thing, right?” Nami asked. “Cricket’s house?”

Robin, who had been bringing up the rear, stepped up on the other side of Nami and peered into the shattered windows. “Not exactly. This looks like a fragment of what we saw on the ground.” The archaeologist ran a finger along the windowsill and nodded. “I think this island must have once been on the ground.”

Nami’s mind set off, racing through the possibilities. Cricket had talked about Noland and his journeys through the sea looking for some kind of El Dorado. When he found it though, it disappeared. Sunk, he had claimed. Only, the Straw Hats were now standing right here on the other side of the cliffside house. Its walls and doors and windows were as real as the jungle around them, Nami knew, and she could reach out and touch it. So it wasn’t some apparition they were sharing.

It hit her. “This was a landmass that was torn away,” she said, gesturing around the jungle. “This whole thing, the dirt, the trees. It’s why we’ve not seen anything like it anywhere on Skypeia. Everywhere else is clouds but here there’s bugs and beetles and soil and loam. This floating island is Jaya!”

“So what are you saying?” Zoro asked. “The island of Jaya split apart and ended up here? How does that just happen?”

“That ‘El Dorado’ that Noland was looking for must have been Jaya all along, just like he said. Only, it didn’t sink to the bottom of the sea like Cricket thought…” Nami said, thinking back to their new friend on Jaya. “All this time the missing piece of Jaya was up here floating in the sky and he didn’t know.”

Robin nodded. “Which means the golden city is up here.”

“Yeah, you’re exactly right Robin, that gold Cricket was looking for can’t be at the bottom of the sea—it has to be here somewhere, in Skypeia!” Nami beamed, continuing to whip her head around as if the gold was going to materialise right in front of her in a neatly boxed chest. “We went through so much to get to Skypeia, so this El Dorado place here must be my reward for it all!”

Zoro chuckled, leaning on the half-broken side of the house. It groaned slightly as the swordsman lounged, though he didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t be ridiculous Nami, if there is any gold it’s long gone.”

“No,” Nami snapped back, “this is my treasure for doing what’s right.”

Zoro looked like he was about to keep arguing—a duel of words Nami was more than eager to take on—when Robin called them over. While Nami had been celebrating the archaeologist had been looking for anything else she could find in the clearing and she had nearly immediately been rewarded with a strange-looking pile of rocks; a pile that, when Nami looked closer, clearly looked like a water well.

“You find that strange?” Zoro said when Robin explained she was just as puzzled by her new finding as by the half-house. “I would have thought a building missing half of its wall and windows was the strangest thing here.”

“It’s what’s happened to the well,” Robin explained, pointing to where several roots and vines had wrapped themselves over and under the bricks. Then she pointed to the build-up of thick dark dirt in the well. “Don’t you see? It’s underneath this huge tree here. Nature and civilisation, including that half-building, all seem to be totally out of whack here. It doesn’t make any real sense.”

“So what, they didn’t plan their town very well?”

“No, it’s more like whoever built these things here were totally shocked by whatever happened. No one would have purposefully left all these things… and of course, no one was going to build a half-house.” Robin tugged off her wide-brimmed hat and spun it in her hands. “I’ve not seen anything like it.”

“Either way,” Zoro said, gesturing to the cliff the half-house was teetering on and then back up the slope they had climbed down, “I think we can put those thoughts of finding the lord god or whatever his name was away for now. We already know this is just going to stretch into more sky waves around the island if it’s actually a big chunk of Jaya, so we should regroup at the Merry for a new plan.”

Nami’s eyes flicked out to the tree line. Zoro’s mention of Lord Eneru, though halfhearted by him, had reminded her those hunters were still out in the Upper Yard somewhere trying to find the Straw Hats. The quicker they could get back to the Merry and figure out how to escape, the better. “Good idea.” She turned and quickly began striding back towards the jungle’s sloping rise. “Let’s get going.”

Zoro made sure he kept one eye on Nami as she barrelled through the undergrowth ahead of Robin and him. As soon as he’d mentioned regrouping at the Merry, the navigator had set off as quick as she could, eyes darting from side to side as she stalked back the way they had come trudging before.

“We better not lose her.” Zoro hadn’t noticed Robin standing so close to him as he watched Nami disappear into the undergrowth.

He nearly chuckled, before straightening. “That’s just what I was thinking too.”

But why can’t you laugh with her?

It was his own thought, but it still felt like it came from somewhere deep down within him. It scared him as it bubbled up. And it felt warm. That was right—why did he have to hide his feelings around her? She was one of the Straw Hats now, wasn’t she? She’d been given plenty of chances to show otherwise since they flew up to these cloudy sky islands and she was still here, helping them discover the mysteries of Jaya. She made sure Nami landed safely when she had been swinging too fast. She had beaten Zoro to that. Robin had saved their navigator. Not him.

Zoro chuckled, letting his next swipe at the vines drop his shoulders a little. He breathed out, back relaxing as he walked. Filled his chest with slow, drawn air. And he smiled. And looked back at Robin.

She was already smiling back at him.

“What?”

It looked like the archaeologist almost blushed when Zoro spoke. She looked down at her feet for a moment, then back to him as the two of them stepped over a fallen log. Nami’s stamped footprint marked that she very clearly had already charged through here just before the two of them. “I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh much up here.” Then Robin looked at him. “At least, not for me.”

It was Zoro’s turn to break his eyes away; at least he had the excuse of clearing vines as another crop of them rose up in front of the trudging duo. He slashed in silence, trying to catch sight of Nami ahead.

Robin didn’t accept his silence. “I wasn’t saying it was a bad thing.”

Zoro didn’t dare turn around after that. He could feel the archaeologist’s eyes on his back, unwavering as they watched him carve a path after Nami, but if he turned he would reveal everything to Robin. He was already burning up, his face glowering. Pull yourself together. You can’t be conquered so easily . But, despite all the walls he had built around himself, here were his defences coming crashing down. And all it had taken was one pleading truth.

“…nowhere else to go.”

Zoro couldn’t help himself. He kept marching forward, eyes fixed on the hanging vines and reaching undergrowth—small victories—but he had to say it before it eventually burned him up inside.

“Thank you for saving Nami.”

“Pardon?”

Swipe. “Back at the altar.” Swipe. “I wasn’t quick enough to help her.” He furrowed his brow. Swipe. “I didn’t realise she was being serious until it was too late. You did. You made sure she was okay.”

Silence. And then, “That’s not quite what I thought you were going to talk about swordsman. Not when we were finally alone.”

Swipe. Swi—

He had missed a hanging vine not two feet in front of him. He didn’t fail to cut it. He just clean missed with his sword swing. He nearly gasped, the Wado Ichimonji falling softly to his side. He didn’t miss. He never missed.

“I’m sorry,” Robin was whispering. “I shouldn’t have distracted you.”

“No, it’s not that.” It felt like a lie before Zoro even said it over his shoulder. He could feel his face really burning up now. His chest was so tight.

“So we just watched that crafty, totally motionless vine dodge your sword?”

Robin laughed as she said it, her deep, pealing giggle rolling across Zoro’s back and shoulders like a warm crashing wave. He could feel the hairs on his arms and neck standing to attention. I wish I wasn’t wearing this blasted top, he thought, desperately hoping Robin couldn’t see his bodily reaction across his bare shoulders. He was nearly shivering, even as the sun teetering above the Sky Island beat down through the canopy. I should have worn a shirt that covered up.

Then he felt her hand on his shoulder, cool and warm at all the same time. He had to physically stop himself shivering this time, squaring his shoulders. He hoped she didn’t take that as him tensing her away.

Whether it was one of her Flower Flower hands or the real thing, Zoro couldn’t tell, but it certainly felt like the real thing as it played along his firm shoulder.

“Are you going to turn around?”

He did, spinning on his heel as slowly as he could.

Robin was inches from him. Nothing moved in the forest around them. He could see her chest heaving. Her cheeks were flushed. She was bold and confident and small and quiet, all at once. “You can tell me to stop.”

“You know I can’t,” Zoro gasped softly. He could already feel her warm breath caressing his lips. She was so close now. “You know I want this too.”

He had held himself back on the Merry in Mock Town. And again when they went hunting for that damned South Bird. Pretended nothing had happened on the Knock-Up Stream when she had nearly fallen and frozen on the Sky Island beach. Nearly rushed to her when he had made her cry after the octopus attack. He had stopped himself again and again, then he’d been too paralysed to move.

This time, he wasn’t going to stop himself. He wasn’t going to freeze.

Zoro moved in, slicing through the last space between them in an instant, and slid his arms around Robin. Then, much slower, he wrapped an arm around Robin’s hips and drew her in, pressing her into his chest. Robin looked up at Zoro, her icy blue eyes glimmering at him. She was biting her lip, ever so slightly, the tiny movement on the right side of her mouth demanding all of Zoro’s attention.

“Then what are you waiting for swordsman?”

Zoro couldn’t hold himself back. He leaned in, just as Robin raised her chin to meet his gaze, and kissed her.

Time simply stopped moving for the Straw Hat swordsman. There was no Sky Island. No Jaya ruins. No Going Merry to return to. There was only Nico Robin.

Robin’s lips were as soft as the rest of her body pressed against his, a feeling Zoro could feel even more against his chest as she leaned into his embrace. She was warm, burning against his chest. On his lips.

Zoro could feel the soft tickle of her shallow breath under his nose, playing across his upper lip as he pressed them into hers.

Then they broke away and Zoro gasped in a shot of air. He could still taste her on his lips. And then, with the realisation sending a jolt up his heaving chest, it slowly started to fade away. He leaned back in to kiss her again. More urgent, this time; he wasn’t going to let that taste disappear as quickly as he’d found it.

His sword hand found the side of her cheek, then up into her hair. Trying to be gentle, and trying to hold himself back, he pushed his fingers through the dark locks, wrapping around the back of her neck. He just barely heard Robin moan, a soft and sweet sound escaping from under their kiss. He felt his chest flutter again and he clenched his hand, pressing his kiss harder. Whatever he’d done must have been right, because Robin moaned again. It too was barely audible. The ever-so-tiny sounds were drawing him in. Now, more than ever, he didn’t feel he could hold on anymore.

“Zoro? You didn’t get lost already did you?” A searing blade sliced through the warm Sky Island air, splitting Zoro and Robin apart. Nami called out again. “Robin? I thought you’d keep him on the right track.”

Zoro couldn’t quite see where Nami was coming from yet, but he knew she must be close from how loud she was. He risked peeking at Robin, knowing he may not be able to look away again, and saw her cheeks flushed crimson. She too was scanning the treeline for the Straw Hat navigator. And smiling.

“Maybe you did get lost swordsman,” she whispered.

Zoro didn’t have a chance to answer. Nami crashed through the last of the undergrowth that had been obscuring her from view and stumbled into the clearing. Her eyes were already narrowed.

“What are you two doing?”

Robin left no time between the question and her answer. “I saw another one of those ruins just off the way.” She pointed just off Zoro’s shoulder into a thicker clumping of the trees. “Did you not hear us calling you?”

Nami followed her gesture and raised an eyebrow. “I can’t see anything.”

Except, Zoro could. There was something jutting out from beneath one of the gargantuan roots snaking away from the towering trees. A small side of the house’s base, maybe, or something similar. Surely Robin hadn’t already seen that. But here she was, pointing out the ruins.

“Ah,” Nami said, seemingly finally spotting the bricks Zoro had just spied. “Well, we don’t have a lot of time, but if you do want to check, maybe there’s a clue to that El Dorado place. Anything is better than what we’ve got.”

Robin nodded and moved off without a word, gracefully climbing over the tree roots blocking her path. She didn’t say a word, but just as she crested the first great log she looked back and caught Zoro’s gaze.

Zoro’s heart skipped a beat when she smiled at him. It would have looked to Nami like she was simply checking they were staying there. Zoro knew better; she was making sure he wasn’t leaving her.

Then she dropped over the other side and momentarily disappeared from view.

It didn’t take long for Robin to crest again on the other side, but by then Nami had already rounded on Zoro. She hadn’t waited long. The navigator was smiling, but Zoro could see something quite close to fury glowering in her eyes.

“What are you playing at? There’s people out there somewhere in these woods trying to kill us and you’re too distracted by beauty?”

Zoro sucked in a breath. How could she possibly know?

She couldn’t, at least by his calculations, but here she was accusing him—in her usual roundabout way—of the exact thing she shouldn’t know. His mind raced as he weighed up all the slim options. Robin wouldn’t have told her yet. I certainly didn’t tell her. So she figured it out?

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play coy with me, swordsman,” Nami snapped back, still watching where Robin was cresting another of the great Sky Island tree roots. “The others may be totally oblivious to whatever happens under their noses and on the Merry, but I have eyes. Red flushes. Hushed whispers. Staying on the ship when we reached the Sky Island. And whatever that was in the Knock-Up Stream.” She paused. “Though, of course, saving Robin isn’t something I’m angry at you for.”

“But what, you’re angry at me for the rest of it?”

Nami squared a hand on her hip. “Not angry, exactly. But I don’t appreciate it when friends hide things from me Zoro. Anything. You know that just as well as anyone, and yet here we are anyway.”

“Nami, what are y—”

The Straw Hat navigator didn’t let him finish, cutting off his lame attempts at deflection with an arrow-sharp glare. “What did I just say Zoro? I know you far better than that, so tell me before she comes back.”

That was enough; Zoro couldn’t hold back everything he’d been keeping bound tight since before they arrived on Jaya. He told Nami everything—well, nearly everything—from when Robin first hinted at her feelings when the Straw Hats were just starting to look for Mont Blanc Cricket in Jaya, to the South Bird chase, to Angel Beach. Everything except the kiss in the clearing they were standing now. I get to keep something to myself, Zoro thought. Let it be that.

“Okay… and what are you going to do about it?”

Zoro shook his head. He hadn’t expected her to stay so calm about it all, though he supposed if she had already guessed then he hadn’t been doing anything other than connecting the dots for their wily navigator. “Nami, I have absolutely no idea. Nothing’s actually happened, so I don’t know what I can do.” He instantly felt his collar start to burn at that lie. He hoped Nami wouldn’t notice.

It didn’t seem like Nami had—there would have been so many more fireworks if she’d caught on to that. Instead, she rested a hand on his shoulder and offered up something close to a half smile. Just the touch was comforting. “Do you think maybe you’re just putting this burden on yourself?”

Zoro frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve said it yourself before, and I imagine you’ll say it over and over again—you want to protect our crew. You see Robin as a threat when no one else does and that creates this wall you want to break down. You clearly want to tell Robin your feelings. Only, that same tall wall you can’t seem to scale only exists because it’s built on a very strong foundation. Your own doubts.”

“Please, Nami, plainly. I don’t have time for silly games.”

“I’m not playing Zoro,” Nami said, squeezing his shoulder gently. “I’m saying the only thing standing between you and this happiness is you.”

Zoro knew she was right. No one on the crew had asked him to guard against Nico Robin—but he knew if she was a threat, none of them would have been watching for it either. Maybe Usopp would have been, but that would’ve been thanks to his worry rather than anything else.

“Do you trust her Nami?”

Nami shrugged, letting go of his shoulder. “I don’t really know Zoro. I like her. She’s helped us more than once. I think she was being genuine about having nowhere to go when she was on the Merry.”

Zoro grabbed her hand as it fell. “But can you trust her?”

“Luffy trusts her,” Nami shot back. “That’s good enough for me.”

It was like Nami had snatched one of Zoro’s swords from their hanging scabbards and driven it straight through his shoulder. He could already feel his chest aching, not like it had with Robin. This was something else, something burning deeper. Regret. He’d carefully watched Robin, guarding against some kind of Baroque Works attack or trick, when his captain had pledged his trust to the assassin that appeared on the Going Merry as easily as he’d polish off a cooking pot meant to feed the whole crew. Was that a good thing? Zoro couldn’t tell. And that’s the problem. Was he defending the captain and the crew with his mistrust, or going against Luffy’s wishes?

Zoro swallowed, letting Nami’s hand fall away. “You forget, Luffy can trust everyone he meets so easily because I don’t.”

“No, Zoro…” Nami began, then huffed and stalked to the other side of the forest clearing. “Fine, suit yourself then. You’re going to lose something good because you want to fight absolutely everything that comes close to the crew.” She stopped long enough to throw daggers at him.

“Not every one of us gets to be so lackadaisical.”

Nami looked away again. “Stubborn idiot.”

Zoro contemplated crossing the forest clearing to keep talking to her. Nami was quick to anger, but she wasn’t quite wrong either. He was being stubborn, even he could see that. Not for fun though. He had to be right. Regardless, he decided against continuing the conversation. She was always helpful, but once the Straw Hat navigator resorted to insulting barbs, that help drained away.

Instead, he sat down, crossed his legs, and took the chance to meditate. Only, the meditation quickly turned to thinking about Nico Robin again. Or rather, Robin’s lips. Her soft lips pressed into his.

Thankfully, the real archaeologist returned minutes later and stirred Zoro from his thoughts. She took a look at him cross-legged on the ground on the edge of the Sky Island thickets and Nami sat all the way on the other side of the clearing and raised one dark eyebrow. “Am I interrupting?”

“Only silence,” Nami said, leaping up. “Did you find anything?”

Robin smiled, her face beaming as she did. Zoro closed his eyes as his heart did cartwheels. “Yes, actually. Nature and civilisation are totally out of whack here. Those bricks we spotted were what looked like an old staircase that ran deeper into the island ground. Only, strangely, it was buried.”

Nami looked out towards where they’d spotted the ruin. “Buried?”

“Well, maybe grown over is more accurate,” Robin said. “It was totally underneath one of these huge trees. No one would have built it like that, especially not all the way out here. I’m not sure what it means.”

“Could it have been Mont Blanc Cricket’s and it’s been separated from the rest of his house or something?”

“I’m not sure,” Robin said. “Maybe. Whatever happened, I’ve never seen anything like the ruins we’ve seen here. These stairs, the half-house. That odd buried well from earlier too. They’re all very, very odd.”

Zoro stood. He’d been staring at Robin as she spoke, watching her smile as she talked about the ruins. If Nami had seen that he would be in for another hiding. If Robin had seen… well, he wasn’t so sure. He had to push those thoughts away though. “In any case,” he started, “we should find that cloud river we saw on the way in. That’s going to be the easiest way to get back to Chopper.”

“You’re right,” Nami said, though she didn’t look at him when she replied. “We’ve spent a lot of time here too.” Her eyes flicked across the treeline behind them, back towards the half-house and the coastline. “We really should find the Merry.”

“Agreed,” Robin said. “Thanks for giving me the time to look, at least.” Then she looked straight at Zoro. “I found a lot out here.”

Zoro swallowed. He didn’t know what else to do with Robin’s piercing blue eyes beaming straight into his soul. It didn’t help his aching chest, which was back to that tense pulling it had been before Nami’s advice. “Then let’s—”

“Let’s get going,” Nami broke in, speaking over him.

Zoro considered arguing, just to shoot barbs back at her, but he held himself back and nodded. “So much for finding god.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Chopper, where are you?!” Zoro yelled, scanning the empty deck of the Going Merry atop the altar. Something’s wrong . Even from across the milky-white lake, he could see the Merry ’s mast had been snapped down and was laying splintered across the starboard railing. There were several other cracks in the hull and railing too, Zoro could see. He hoped the little reindeer was okay. Then, trying to joke, he mustered, “This is no time to redecorate the ship.”

Nami rounded on him. “He wouldn’t do that! He must have been attacked!”

“If he was those, priests could have easily torn him limb from limb,” Robin muttered absentmindedly, though Zoro could see she was scanning the deck for the Straw Hat doctor just as closely as he still was.

Nami glowered at her too, then cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hey, Chopper! Sorry we’re late! You’re there, right? Answer me!”

Zoro stepped forward, his feet nearly breaking the surface of the milk-white lake—a disturbance that would surely bring the sharks if he wasn’t careful. His heart was in his throat; maybe the priests did get him.

“Hey, Chopper!” he bellowed, half drawing the first sword he wrapped his hand around as he did. “Hey, aren’t you there? Did something happen?”

A creak drifted out across the cloudy lake, signalling something was moving on the Merry ’s deck, and Chopper slowly came into view. He was limping slightly and clearly had two bandages wrapped around his shoulders and down his forearms. One of his eyes was bruised and even from the shoreline Zoro could see the battered little reindeer was spluttering with tears in his eyes.

“No, noth—” The Straw Hat doctor choked, biting off his words. “Nope, nothing scary happened! It was b-b-business as usual.”

Zoro’s hand went to the Wado Ichimonji’s hilt, but Robin laid a gentle hand on his forearm and strode forward. “It’s okay, Chopper,” she called. “If something happened, you can tell us everything.”

Before the weepy Chopper had a chance to shout back across the gap again, another bellow came from somewhere just out of sight. Zoro, hand still on his sword, nearly stepped in front of where Robin had planted herself, only to realise he recognised the inordinate bellowing—Luffy.

“Hey look!” The Straw Hat captain’s voice cracked through chirping buzz of the Sky Island jungle again. “It’s the Going Merry !” There was silence for a moment, and then, “Yes I’m sure. Look, we’ve even found that altar thingy!”

Zoro smiled and let his hand fall free. Luffy, sailing on a small barge with Sanji and Usopp, came into view moments later. Their little vessel seemed banged up, with at least one long pockmark just above the cloudy water, that Zoro could see. Luffy was standing at the prow waving and smiling proudly and Sanji was standing beside him. The cook’s eyes lit up when he spotted Zoro and the others watching on the bank.

“Hey, Nami, Robin!” he yelled, nearly shouldering the already unsteady Luffy out of the way to earn a single step closer to them on the boat. “Hey, I passed the love challenge to find you guys! Aren’t you happy?”

Usopp, nearly completely hidden by the other two waving at the front of the boat, was also smiling widely. He was looking from where Chopper was standing on the Merry to the trio on the banks and shaking his sling in the air. Zoro hadn’t seem him this triumphant since he breathlessly recounted his battle with Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas back in Alubarna. “Were you guys scared?” he yelled, trying to raise his voice over Luffy and Sanji’s cries. “Never fear, Captain Usopp is here!”

Nami chuckled, quietly enough that only Zoro and Robin would have heard. “They seem to be in good spirits at least. That’s a relief.”

There was much jostling by the time the trio on the bank and Luffy’s newly arrived reached the altar, with Luffy and Usopp in particular in a great rush to inspect the Merry for damage. Zoro and Robin both checked on Chopper and Nami did as much as she could to avoid Sanji picking her up and crying from joy—though Zoro thought he saw a tear rolling down the cook’s cheek anyway.

When the seven of them were safely aboard the ship and made sure everyone was in one piece—Chopper especially—the question quickly turned to the biggest absence: The Merry’s mast was completely destroyed.

“It’s gone!” Usopp declared when he came to the middle of the ship while doing his inspect rounds. “Totally gone… what happened Chopper?”

Chopper bit back tears again at this point and promised Usopp he’d done everything he could to save what he could. “There was a big fire,” the little reindeer spluttered, “and I tried to stop him. I—”

“What about your wounds?” Usopp interjected, carefully lifting Chopper’s right paw where he’d hastily wrapped a bandage. “Anything burning is serious business, so I’m just glad you didn’t get burned to a crisp.” He smiled for Chopper, though Zoro saw his eyes flick once to the missing mast again. Thankfully, the reindeer didn’t see Usopp’s split attention, especially when the sniper kept talking. “A mast can always be replaced Chopper, but we can’t replace you.”

Chopper lit up, a huge smile spread across his battered face. “Wow, thanks Usopp. I’m going to become a strong, reliable man so you don’t have to worry!” Then he leaped onto the Merry’s damaged railing. “Strong and reliable! Then I won’t have to get the sky knight to save me and the ship next time.”

Nami raised an eyebrow. “The sky knight?”

More spluttering had got the next part of the story out of Chopper and the Straw Hats rushed into the caravel’s cabin to find the sky knight lying unconscious in one of the beds where Chopper had left him.

“If he hadn’t come, the ship and I would be goners,” Chopper admitted.

Nami knelt down beside the injured warrior and rested the back of her hand on his forehead. “All because he gave us that whistle.”

“There’s lots of things I want to ask him,” Sanji said, “but I think it’s probably better if we let him rest here until he’s awake.” He looked back out onto the deck, catching the battered railings and busted mast in his gaze. “We’re not going to fix the ship tonight, so returning to Angel Island is going to have to wait. Let’s go into the forest and setup camp by the lakeside.”

Nami looked out over the same damaged chunks across the Merry . “Good idea. It should be easier for us to see if anyone is coming out there too, and easier to fight if those crazy guys come back looking for us.”

The camp didn’t take long to set up once Nami had wrangled Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper into proper chores, and soon the seven Straw Hats were sat around a crackling fire as the first reaches of dusk settled over the Sky Island jungle. The sky knight’s strange bird had joined them on the shoreline too, resting now after keeping a careful eye on Zoro and Sanji as the pair carried its master from the Merry ’s cramped cabin, over the cloudy lake, and into a settled resting place for Chopper to keep working on the old man’s wounds.

Once Sanji had started work on dinner and Nami had handed out a few of the last bottles of ales still stowed in the Merry ’s hold, Usopp had nearly-immediately began regaling Zoro, Nami, Chopper, and Robin with everything that had happened after they’d been taken by the huge crab on Angel Beach.

“As soon as you’d disappeared,” Usopp started, “Pagaya told us there was only one place you could be going—the Sky Island’s sacrificial altar. This freaked Sanji out a lot and he started panicking about Nami.”

Sanji had cut in, perfectly balancing flipping the buttered fish chunks he was frying with cutting over Usopp’s story. “Tell the story properly.”

“I am!” Usopp had shot back, narrowing his eyes and poking his tongue out. Then he scratched his head. “Okay, where was I… ah, right. Sanji was freaking out and Luffy seemed a bit confused and I, Captain Usopp, quickly realised we were going to have to go save you guys as quickly as possible. We started getting ready to set out when Pagaya decided to tell us more.”

“What he explained, after waiting for us to freak out for a bit for some reason, was that you guys weren’t being sacrificed just yet. Instead, you—and we—were being set up for challengers to test us. Pagaya said you’d be okay as long as we took a road of challenges to find you, where we’d have to fight all these scary guys that I thought sounded like total small-fries that I could beat up easily.”

“Luckily I’d brought that Skypeia map all the way from Jaya, so we made the old guy show us where to go on the map and then I ordered Sanji and Luffy to pack everything up while I made a plan for me to beat the vassals Pagaya had warned us about. I got a plan together pretty quickly.”

Luffy had swallowed loudly, forcing a huge chunk of meat any normal person would choke on down to get his words out. “What do you mean, Usopp? You said you couldn’t think up any plan at all.”

Usopp then coughed and dove back into his story, completely ignoring Luffy. “As I said, with my grand master incredible plan all put together I knew we were ready to beat these god’s vassals, so we set out with Conis guiding us through the town.” He leaned into a snarl as he spoke, hooking his fingers in what Zoro could only imagine looked very scary in Usopp’s mind. “The villagers in the town were all just starring at us in a really spooky way and Conis said they were normally like that, but I had a feeling something was really wrong and when we eventually got the docks I said as much. After not much time at all, I forced a confession out of Coni—”

“We were attacked on the docks,” Sanji had said loudly. “Conis told us she was the one who’d called the huge crab to take you guys to the altar because it was her ‘duty’ or something, but when she told us that, a huge lightning bolt came out of the sky and nearly killed her. Luffy managed to save her at the last minute and we made sure she got away before we set out on the ship.”

Usopp had glowered at him, tapping his foot as the cook spoke. “You’re ruining the story Sanji,” he’d snapped. “There’s no beauty.”

“You ah ‘aking a lo— ‘ime to telet,” Luffy said around another huge mouthful. That had earned the captain one of Usopp’s scorching glares and another clear decision to say nothing back to him.

“Anyway,” Usopp said, starting to look a little flustered. “We set out on this little ship up the river, knowing that anything standing in our way wasn’t going to be scary or dangerous at all, especially because I already had my master plan.”

It was then that Usopp had launched into his story proper. The narrative jumped around more than once, bouncing from the sniper’s gallant bravery to having to save Sanji and Luffy more than a few times, and even several strange mentions of a duck boat that apparently lost its head in the battles.

Though the journey did sound interesting, Zoro found himself only half listening. A massive swinging scythe trap had greeted them at the entrance to the grand river. Then a huge blood-sucking lamprey, rising out of the milky road. Then something Usopp called “The Challenge of the Ball” became the vocal point of his retelling, with the trial apparently taking them onto a floating white lake. There was another snake there, as well as booby-trapped orbs and one of the Kami’s vassals, Satori—a rotund man who chortled when he fought and could block every attack.

“I, of course,” Usopp said after taking a breath, “defeated him without a worry, and saved the boat he was trying to destroy at the same time.” The sniper flicked his nose when Sanji huffed. “I managed to pull off a very brilliant binding attack that kept that Satori pinned down. Then, while he was all wrapped up, I delivered a mighty kick to knock him out and grabbed the bo—”

While Usopp warbled, Zoro had instead sneaked a look at Robin as Usopp barrelled through his long-winded story, carefully craning his neck so as to look like a stretch and a groan more than a sideways glance.

His chest somersaulted; she was already looking at him. He had been so careful, so considered in his glance. And she had caught him immediately.

“Eyes front, swordsman,” she whispered, just loud enough for Zoro, but soft enough that the rest of the Straw Hats clamouring around Usopp and drinking in his boisterous story wouldn’t be able to hear.

He shivered. Her voice seemed to drip into his ears.

Then he shivered again, but this time it was from a warmth on the hand he had been resting on the Merry’s guardrail. There, flitting along the edge of his curled fist, were Robin’s slender fingers. The archaeologist was still standing just behind him, lightly chuckling at Usopp’s grand jokes, but her Devil Fruit was at work on the other side of Zoro, out of view of the rest of the crew. The hand, protruding from the rail just beside Zoro’s arm, moved nearly imperceptibly but for the brush of her fingers. Zoro could already feel goosebumps rolling up his arm.

Her order came as soft as before. “Eyes front, swordsman.”

Zoro obeyed, keeping his eyes fixed on Usopp and his gallivanting. Sanji was growling at the loud sniper again, clearly disagreeing with some silly detail in the story. Zoro couldn’t focus on what they were saying.

Robin’s fingers twitched against his fist again, her thumb slowly pulling open his last two fingers before moving further up. As the caress dragged towards his wrist, her ring and little fingers entwined into the opening she had made, wrapping onto his and holding there. His resting fist softened.

Warmth again, on his forearm. A second hand, further up than the last, hadn’t hooked to anything, but it caressed all the same. Her fingers weren’t cold, but Zoro had to hold back a shiver all the same.

Then more hands. Robin’s soft fingers were feeling across his shoulder, his back. His chest. He could feel her feeling, exploring. Searching. His chest was heaving and his breath was catching in his throat. If any of the Straw Hats turned around while Usopp was telling his story, they would see.

Another hand dragged down his side, under his shirt this time. It was still close to his heaving chest, but sliding lower. Across his ribs, down his sides. He felt Robin linger on his stomach, curling a mellow circle across his abs. They were already tightened, trying not to heave as he held in his breath. He could feel his eyelids closing. All he wanted to do was feel Robin’s hands, the dozens of fingers searching across his tensed body, taking whatever she wanted. His warmth. His breath. His—

“They might be a threat, Zoro,” Luffy said, turning to the swordsman. Zoro left out a huffed breath, his tensed body giving way to a flash of fear. The captain could have seen. The hands were already gone, but Zoro hadn’t seen how quickly Luffy had turned around as he spoke. Surely he would have said something.

“The vassals?” Zoro managed, desperately slowing his breath in an attempt to hide his heaving chest. He could still hear Robin shifting beside him.

Sanji was looking now too. “No, you oaf, the guerrilla warriors.”

“Ah, yes.” He hadn’t heard them say anything about any guerrillas. The one from the attack on the Merry when they arrived at Skypeia, perhaps.

“You don’t think they’ll be a problem?” Nami said, looking a little worried. “It sounds like they want us gone just as much as these priests Luffy and Sanji had to battle on the way here. It sounds like there’s already war.”

Already war. That Zoro could handle, if it came to it. He liked that a whole lot better than all the sneaking around anyway.

In the Straw Hat circle it was Nami’s turn to talk. Once Sanji had settled Usopp down and made sure he definitely wasn’t going to add anything else to the story of the Challenge of the Ball, the navigator filled Luffy and the others in on their side of the story. Zoro tuned out of this again—no need to live through everything twice, after all—but there were no searching hands to distract him this time.

He did shoot a glance at the archaeologist, but she was listening closely to Nami’s telling him. Whether it was to make sure they hadn’t been caught or the fact she really was interested, he couldn’t tell.

Soon, Nami was reaching the end of the tale with the story ending with their discovery of the ruins in the jungle. “—and that’s why,” Nami said, her voice growing louder as she built to a declaration. “I think whatever this holy place is the Skypeians have been talking about is the very golden city Noland originally discovered on his journey here. The one Mont Blanc Cricket was looking for!”

Luffy spat out a huge chunk of the meat he’d been voraciously chewing, his eyes bulging at Nami’s claim. “Wait, no kidding!?”

Usopp glowered at the captain. “Everyone could have guessed that.”

Luffy ignored him. “A city of god, huh? Well, this is the kind of adventure I’ve been waiting for up here.” He stood, meat momentarily forgotten, and looked around at the Straw Hat crew. “You know we have to go looking for it.”

“Hey Luffy,” Usopp cut in again, “don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the warning the guerrillas gave us? Or the vassals.”

“The kami might be very angry too!” Chopper called from where he was tending to the wounds of the sky knight.

Both were immediately overruled though, with Nami and Robin both agreeing with the idea. Luffy smiled as he looked from one to the other, and then his eyes fell on first Sanji, then Zoro. He seemed to be asking their thoughts, though he said nothing.

In answer, Sanji lit a fresh cigarette and smirked. “C’mon, we’re pirates! We can’t just ignore it when fate drops a treasure trove in our path.”

Zoro barely moved from where he’d been lounging, but he had exactly the same thought. Couldn’t have put it better myself, twirly eyebrows . To the crew, he said differently: “We’re in enemy territory, wading into what sounds like a full-blown war, and we’re vastly outnumbered… my kind of odds.”

Luffy’s smile turned to a huge, stretched cheer in an instant and he raised his arms above his head. “Aw-right, let’s do it!”

The quest for gold couldn’t start right away, of course, much to Luffy’s chagrin; the sun had already disappeared behind the Upper Yard canopy by the time the Straw Hat captain had made his declaration and the rest of the crew agreed the first order of business was setting up camp to see out the rest of the gloomy evening. Then, once they’d all rested and regathered themselves, they’d figure out how to free the Merry from her predicament on the platform in the morning.

The Straw Hats fell into a rhythm together once the order of the business was making up bedding and preparing food. Sanji started a small fire, ordering Usopp out into the woods to find kindling, then put the cloud fish Zoro speared on to cook. The wafting smell of the sizzling flesh soon drifted across the camp in wafts, drifting through the smaller tents Luffy and Usopp had then put up.

All the while, Nami and Robin kept their heads together, pouring over the old Skypeia map they’d found back on the outskirts of Jaya and trading theories. Zoro could barely hear them speaking, but whenever sneaked a glance over to see Robin, the pair looked deep in conversation, brows furrowed.

The last of the Straw Hats, Chopper, was exempt from the marching orders of the camp as he tended to the still-unconscious Sky Knight. Twice he had to brave going down to the edge of the water to refill a pot to boil, and twice he asked Zoro to watch over the resting warrior while he did. Twice he came back covered in enough sweat to fill the pot he’d taken, but neither time did he actually run into any sharks.

Once Sanji had the sizzling fish seared just to his liking—far too carefully, if you asked Zoro, and with too long of a wait—the Straw Hats gathered around and ate their dinners with a boisterous buzz. Here, sitting with the group, Zoro tried not to look at Robin, though once or twice he stole a glance. The second time, he caught her looking at him at the same time, a tiny little smile cracking when they locked eyes. He could only look for a moment before he returned to his seared fish.

Luffy broke the mellow silence with a sigh. “Man, this is so boring.”

Sanji glared at him. He’d set the Straw Hat captain to work keeping an eye on the distilling water pot that was draining the cloudy lake water into something they could drink from their packs—a task clearly a bit beyond Luffy’s patience. “You don’t have to watch the pot then, stupid. Why don’t you see what you can find for us tomorrow out there in the jungle. We’re going to need supplies.” He looked around at the rest of the resting crew. “In fact, everyone could help.”

This is all the rest of the crew needed to spring into action. Usopp and Nami were the first to pair up together, disappearing into the undergrowth almost before Sanji had finished explaining what he needed. Luffy had dashed off too, with his exit a little worrying; the captain had been so eager to get away from the boiling pot that he’d forgotten to take anyone with him. Zoro sighed. It was half as likely Luffy disappeared somewhere off the island as it was he came back with the husks of food he’d found and promptly eaten.

This is the perfect time to speak to Rob —

“We can go together, if you want,” Chopper said with a broad smile. The little reindeer had snuck up just behind Zoro and tapped him on the shoulder, completely interrupting the thought Zoro had just been having. It was bad timing—about as bad as the ship’s doctor could have managed, Zoro figured.

“Of course,” he said instead of telling Chopper he wanted to go with Robin.

It didn’t seem possible, but Chopper’s smile widened even further as he squinted up at Zoro. “Great! I really want to tell you about my battle.”

The two gathered up the rucksacks the others had left behind and made for the edge of the clearing. Chopper looked back one last time at where the old man was laying, resting, and shook his head. “I hope he wakes up soon.” Zoro told the little reindeer he needed his rest and he would soon. Chopper agreed. “You’re right, I know, I just don’t like to think that he’s injured because of me.”

That set Chopper into quiet thoughtfulness for the first chunk of their supply run, with the doctor clearly thinking about something other than the search. More than a few times he stumbled Once Zoro even had to warn him about a huge branch he was about to trip over and when Chopper didn’t reply, he had to scoop him up and lift him over so he wouldn’t go sprawling.

“Pay attention,” Zoro said a little more harshly than he’d meant to the next time Chopper went tumbling again, his hoofs catching on the brambles.

Chopper sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m just worried.”

To take his mind off the injured warrior, Zoro reminded him he’d been hoping to tell him about his battle. This lit the little reindeer up again, and soon Chopper was running Zoro through every detail after he’d been left alone.

For some time after the trio had disappeared in the forest, Chopper had simply worked on keeping his mind off how scary everything was, the doctor told Zoro. He hadn’t wanted to venture too far away from the ship, especially not when they knew the vassals were out there in the jungle somewhere, so he tried to work on the repairs the ship needed after the ride up the Knock Up Stream. Those had been going well, until the dark stranger had appeared—a soldier riding a huge roc.

“He told me that Luffy, Sanji, and Usopp were off somewhere being destroyed by one of his friends and he told me because I was weak and couldn’t defend the Merry that he was going to burn her down,” Chopper said. “He kept going on about the altar being a free area where he could hunt whoever he wanted and because you three had disappeared he had to make do with me. ‘There must be a sacrifice’ is what he kept saying, though it didn’t really make sense even after I asked him.”

“The worst thing was he had this great big spear that kept burning the Merry’s deck, so I couldn’t fight him even if I wanted to because I had to go keep running around putting that out whenever it flared up.” Chopper took a breath. “Luckily I’d blown that whistle that the Sky Knight gave us, because he turned up right when I was fighting the angry warrior and he helped me out.”

That certainly would have been an interesting fight, Zoro mused. He hadn’t seen this warrior Chopper was talking about, but if the two of them had clashed on their soldier birds together then it would have been a magnificent battle. Perhaps a little high for Zoro’s liking, but a magnificent battle nonetheless.

“I didn’t really know what was going on,” Chopper was still speaking, “but it was amazing! The Sky Knight kept dodging all the warrior’s attacks, even after he declared some kind of String Challenge, until something happened—I think the Sky Knight had been bound up by something hidden. Zoro, he stabbed the Sky Knight right through the chest when he got him!”

“I figured it must have been something like that. The old guy looked pretty beat up.”

“Yeah and we all would have been dead if not for someone pulling me out of the water, I went into the lake after the Sky Knight but I couldn’t swim and—”

“That was very brave,” Zoro interjected. Chopper spluttered at the compliment, mumbling something about how it “didn’t make him happy or anything,” even as his wide smile returned and he danced on the spot. Zoro chuckled, patted Chopper lightly on the shoulder, then returned to the search.

Chopper had a little more to tell after that, but mostly he just explained what the Sky Knight’s injuries had been—a spear through the chest obviously the worst of them—and then got back to helping Zoro hunt; by the time they’d done a loop of the forest clearings they’d nearly filled the rucksack. The hike back to the camp was short and soon Zoro and Chopper were pouring out what they’d found near the boiling pot.

“Sanji!” Chopper called as they unloaded everything they’d found. “Sanji, we found lots of yummy things for your dinner!” He counted out some of the ingredients. “Walnuts, aloe, bananas, garlic… you don’t mind if I take some of the aloe and garlic to spare though do you Sanji? I can make burn ointment and disinfectant with them to treat our friend.”

While Sanji seemed more than happy to put what Zoro had found—rats, berries, and a few frogs—into the boiling pot, Nami put up quite the argument despite the fact she and Usopp had just returned with nothing but scary stories. Luffy was, unsurprisingly, still missing on his hunt, while Robin had come back with a huge blue cube of what she declared was salt. Her treasure had won the highest praises from the cook, who fell over himself telling everyone how important salt was going to be not only for this meal but for the hiking they’d need to do tomorrow too.

Robin. It may not be time alone, but this was perfect timing for Zoro to speak to her. The taste of her lips were still lingering on his, even into the evening. He could still feel her reaching hands across his chest, his back, and his legs. He ached to have them exploring again. He had to speak to her.

Zoro hadn’t made it more than two steps before Sanji’s voice cracked through his thoughts though, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Hey Zoro,” the cook barked. “Don’t just stand there. Come give me a hand.”

Zoro winced. The cook was standing with a hand on his hip, the other hand curled around a smouldering cigarette. He was watching the Straw Hat swordsman with narrow expectation eyes.

“Surely a cook like you doesn’t need—

“Help, mosshead. Now.”

And that was that. Robin had found a place beside Nami at the fire and was already disappearing into a deep conversation. A little further on, Usopp had sat down with Chopper to keep him company while he applied the aloe to the Sky Knight’s wounds and reapplied his bandages.

And Zoro was stuck helping the cook. A fate worse than death.