The rest of the voyage was a journey undertaken in a strange, reverent silence. The crew, no longer just thugs but veterans of a hellish crusade, worked with a quiet, focused efficiency. They were bound by a shared trauma that had forged them into a single, cohesive unit, their loyalty no longer to a captain, but to the man who had stared into the abyss and ordered it to move.
They emerged from the Calm Belt into the chaotic, untamed beauty of the Grand Line, the shift from stillness to wild, energetic motion a welcome return to a world they could understand. The wind, a living, breathing entity, filled the sails, and the Sea Serpent surged forward, a dark predator eager to hunt.
Days later, the island of Jaya appeared on the horizon. It was a sickle-shaped landmass, a jagged scar on the face of the ocean. But it was the wrong half. This was the piece still tethered to the seabed, a collection of crude, makeshift ports and untamed jungle, a haven for smugglers and pirates who preyed on the desperate and the foolish.
"The other half is up there," Rizzo said, pointing a trembling finger towards the sky, where a faint, hazy shape was visible against the brilliant blue, a chunk of land suspended in the clouds, a physical impossibility that hung there like a challenge from God himself. "The Knock-Up Stream... it must have hit it here, shearing the island in two and launching the top half into the sky."
They docked at a squalid, chaotic port town called Mock Town. The name was a cruel irony. There was nothing mock about the depravity on display. It was a den of pure, uncut villainy. The streets were a mud-choked, open sewer, lined with ramshackle bars and brothels. The air was thick with the stench of stale beer, cheap rotgut, and the coppery tang of fresh blood. Pirates, a menagerie of bizarre and violent-looking individuals from every corner of the globe, roamed the streets in packs, their laughter a harsh, grating sound, their eyes constantly scanning for weakness, for an easy mark.
The Sea Serpent, a sleek, professional-looking vessel with a disciplined, silent crew, was an anomaly. It was a wolf in a kennel of rabid dogs, and the other dogs could smell the difference. Whispers followed them as they made their way through the mud-slicked streets, a ripple of tension that preceded their passage. They were not targets, not yet. They were an unknown quantity, a question mark in a world of exclamation points.
Arima, Takeshi, and a reluctant Rizzo moved with a direct, unshakeable purpose, a bubble of cold, quiet menace that cleared a path through the chaos. They weren't here for booze or brawls. They were here for information.
Their destination was a tavern, a three-story structure that was the most solid-looking building in the entire town, its sign a crude painting of a one-eyed man winking over a mug of ale. "The Winkin' Man." It was a neutral ground of sorts, a place where information was the currency of choice, more valuable than gold and more deadly than a blade.
The interior was a wall of noise and heat. The air was a thick, soupy miasma of sweat, cheap liquor, and the acrid tang of gunpowder. The floor was a sticky mess of spilt beer and sawdust, the patrons a writhing, chaotic mass of scarred, tattooed humanity. Fights were not breaking out; they were in a constant state of low-grade, simmering eruption, a background hum of casual violence.
They found an empty table in a relatively quiet corner, a small island of sanity in the sea of madness. Rizzo, a man who preferred the clean, logical world of charts and currents, looked like he was going to be sick.
"This is a mistake," he muttered, his eyes darting nervously from a hulking fishman with a hammerhead shark's head to a wiry man with a crossbow bolt sticking through his ear. "We should have stayed on the ship."
"We need a pilot," Takeshi stated, his calm, quiet tone a stark counterpoint to the tavern's din. He didn't look at the chaos. He was observing its patterns, its currents. "A man who understands the whims of the Knock-Up Stream. A man who has ridden it before and lived to tell the tale."
"And where are we supposed to find him?" Rizzo asked, a wave of sarcasm washing over his fear. "He's probably at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of the fools who tried to ride a water spout to the moon."
"He is here," Takeshi said, his gaze settling on the bar. "The man who tells the most stories is often the one with the most experience. Especially when those stories are so outrageous that no one would dare steal them."
He was pointing at a man sitting at the far end of the bar, a figure of such singular, unadulterated weirdness that he stood out even in this den of freaks. He was lanky and long-limbed, with a wild, unkempt shock of blond hair that defied gravity. He wore a pair of cracked, leather flight goggles perched on his forehead, and a long, dirty duster coat that was patched with what looked like sailcloth and pieces of map. He was gesturing wildly, his hands painting pictures in the air as he regaled a bored-looking group of pirates with a story.
"...and so I says to the Sky Shark, I says, 'Your mother was a flying fish!' and he gets so mad he forgets he's made of clouds and tries to bite me, right? But I was ready for him! I had my 'Cloud-Cutter' special, see..." He was making a swooshing noise with his mouth, a sound effect for a sword he clearly didn't have.
"The locals call him 'Crazy Monty'," Rizzo whispered, leaning in, the tavern's grime seeming to cling to him. "He washes up here every few years, babbling about the sky island. They buy him drinks because he's a better source of entertainment than a brawl. He's a lunatic."
"Or he is a survivor who has learned to hide the truth inside a mountain of nonsense," Takeshi countered. "A fool's mask is the best armour in a town of thieves."
Arima watched the man. He saw the performance, the manic energy, the desperate plea for attention. But he also saw the eyes. Behind the wild, gesticulating exterior, there was a deep, haunted stillness in the man's gaze. A look that had seen things that could not be unseen. He knew that look. He'd seen it in the mirror.
He stood up. The movement was slow, deliberate, and carried a weight that cut through the tavern's ambient noise. The small bubble of chaos around their table seemed to still, the nearest conversations dying down as the patrons' instincts, honed by years of sudden violence, registered a shift in the room's power dynamic.
Arima walked to the bar, his boots making no sound on the sticky floor. He didn't push or shove. He simply moved, and the crowd parted, a sea of scum and villainy making way for a shark.
He stopped beside the gesticulating lunatic. The group of pirates the man was entertaining fell silent, their half-hearted sneers replaced by a wary, calculating tension. They looked from Arima's scarred, tattooed face to the cold, dead calm in his eyes, and decided their drinks were suddenly very, very interesting.
"You the pilot?" Arima asked, his voice a low, flat monotone that didn't carry, but landed on the ear with the weight of a lead pipe.
The man, Crazy Monty, stopped mid-swoosh. He turned, his wild hair seeming to quiver with an excess of energy. His eyes, a startlingly clear blue, scanned Arima from head to toe, taking in the expensive-looking long coat, the twin swords at his hip, the aura of absolute, unshakeable violence that clung to him like a second skin. A strange, calculating intelligence flickered behind the mad facade.
"Pilot?" Monty asked, a wide, slightly unhinged grin spreading across his face. "Buddy, I'm a navigator of the celestial seas, a cartographer of cloud currents, a poet of the stratosphere! A 'pilot' is what you call the guy who ferries potatoes from one boring patch of dirt to another. I... I dance with the gods!"
Arima didn't react. He simply placed a heavy, leather-wrapped pouch on the bar between them. The clink of coins within was a sweet, seductive music that was more persuasive than any threat. "I need a ride to the sky island. The one with the big trees. I hear you know the way."
Monty's blue eyes widened, the manic energy in them momentarily replaced by a flicker of genuine, raw greed. He picked up the pouch, his long, nimble fingers undoing the drawstring. He didn't count the coins. He just hefted the bag, a connoisseur of wealth judging its quality by its weight. A lot of weight.
"The Winkin' Man" had gone silent. The entire tavern, a place that prided itself on its refusal to be impressed, was watching. The air was thick with the tension of a transaction about to turn violent.
"I know the way," Monty said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, the performance momentarily abandoned for the sake of business. "But the Knock-Up Stream... she's a fickle lady. A goddess with a temper. She doesn't run on a schedule. You can't just buy a ticket. You have to... court her. Woo her. And sometimes, she says no. In a very big, very wet way."
"I'm not a patient suitor," Arima said, his voice a flat, unarguable statement. "I need a window. A date. You give me a sign, a symptom, a little twitch of the water that tells me she's getting ready to sneeze. That's all I'm paying for. The ride itself is my risk."
Monty looked from the heavy pouch to the cold, dead eyes of the Yakuza. He saw a man who didn't believe in wooing goddesses. A man who preferred to break them. A slow, wide, genuinely unhinged grin spread across his face. "You've got guts, stranger. I'll give you that. Alright. A date. You're looking for two things. First, the water. Not just any water. The 'Tears of the Sea God'. That's what the old timers call it. A patch of water right here, off the south coast, that turns a weird, milky white. Like the sea itself is weeping. That's the gas build-up. The indigestion before the burp."
"Second," Monty continued, leaning in closer, his breath a foul mix of cheap rum and madness, "the sea life. The big boys, the Sea Kings, they get the jitters. They clear out. All of them. The area around the Tears becomes a ghost town. The locals think it's because they're scared of the Stream. They're wrong. They're leaving because they're the appetiser. The Stream doesn't just launch water. It launches a whole damn section of the seabed. Everything on it gets a free ride to the sky. The smart ones get out of the blast zone."
He stood up, tucking the heavy pouch into an inner pocket of his duster with a proprietary pat. "When you see the white water and the empty ocean, you've got a window. About six hours. Maybe less. That's your courting period. You find me. You give me the other half of this. And I'll guide you to the launchpad."
Arima gave a curt, dismissive nod. The deal was struck. He turned and walked back to the table, the tavern's silence a heavy cloak that settled back into its normal, simmering violence only after he had reseated himself.
"Did you get it?" Rizzo asked, his voice a nervous, hopeful whisper.
"We wait," Takeshi said, before Arima could answer. His gaze was fixed on the bar, on Crazy Monty, who had already launched into another wild, gesticulating story, the heavy pouch of coins a secret, heavy anchor to reality. "We watch the water. And we do not draw undue attention."