For the next week, the Sea Serpent became a permanent fixture in Mock Town's grimy harbour. It was a tense, unpleasant waiting game. The crew stayed on board, their discipline a silent, intimidating presence that discouraged the more adventurous pirates from attempting a boarding party. The ship was a fortress, a small, dark island of order in a sea of chaos.
Arima spent his days in the town, not in the bars, but in the markets, a grim-faced observer soaking in the local flavour. He learned the dialect of violence spoken in this place, the unspoken rules of the casual brutality. He watched brawls that ended in death and saw that no one cared. He saw that life here was cheaper than a bottle of rotgut and twice as easy to discard. He was a predator in a new hunting ground, and he was learning the territory.
On the eighth day, it happened. Rizzo, who had been obsessively taking readings of the water's temperature and salinity from the deck, came running to the captain's quarters, his face pale with a mixture of excitement and terror.
"Captain," he gasped, breathless, "the water! Two miles off the south coast, it's... it's changing. The chart shows a deep trench there. The readings are going crazy. The temperature is spiking, and the salinity is dropping. It's... milky."
Arima was on his feet in an instant. "The sea life?"
"Gone," Rizzo confirmed, a tremor in his voice. "The fishermen who were out there are streaming back to port, their nets empty, talking about a sudden, eerie silence. Not a single jump, not a single fin. The ocean's a ghost."
A chill that had nothing to do with the sea breeze ran down Arima's spine. The goddess was getting indigestion.
"Get Takeshi and Lefty," he commanded. "We're going to find our pilot."
They found Crazy Monty exactly where they'd left him, holding court at the bar of "The Winkin' Man." But today, he wasn't telling stories about Sky Sharks. He was silent, nursing a single mug of ale, his wild blue eyes fixed on the door, as if he had been waiting for them.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said as they approached, his voice no longer a manic performative shout, but a low, serious hum. "The whole island feels it. The air's too still. The gulls are hiding. It's the quiet before the big, wet boom."
Arima placed the second, identical pouch on the bar. The dull thud of the coins was the only answer needed. "We're ready."
Monty grabbed the pouch, his long fingers closing around it with possessive glee. He didn't bother to check the contents. "Alright, lover boy. The goddess is waiting. But she's a demanding date. You don't just sail into the Tears. You have to be... respectful. Follow me."
He led them out of the tavern and through the winding, mud-choked streets of Mock Town, past the usual leering crowds and sullen glares. But today, there was a new tension in the air, a shared, unspoken anxiety that transcended the usual casual violence. The pirates were nervous, their swagger replaced by a restless energy. They could all feel it. The coming storm.
Monty led them not to a sleek pilot boat or a sturdily-built skiff, but to what could only be described as a pile of driftwood that had achieved a rudimentary consciousness of 'boat'. It was a long, narrow skiff, maybe twenty feet long, cobbled together from mismatched planks of driftwood, patched canvas, and what looked suspiciously like the door of an outhouse. A single, makeshift mast was rigged with a sail that was a patchwork quilt of stolen fabrics, a chaotic tapestry of faded colours and stolen insignia. It was an insult to the very concept of seafaring.
"You're joking," Lefty said, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated disbelief. "You couldn't get that thing across a pond, let alone up a water spout to hell."
"This," Monty said, patting the hull with a fond, proprietorial air, "is the 'Cloud-Scooter'. She's ugly, I'll give you that. But she's light. And she's got a belly made of flexible cork. She bends, she doesn't break. The Knock-Up Stream doesn't launch things, see? It throws them. You don't want to be a rock when you get thrown. Rocks break. You want to be a feather. Feathers... they ride the wind."
"The Sea Serpent is waiting at the edge of the Tears," Takeshi stated, his calm, quiet tone a stark counterpoint to Monty's manic energy. "We will not be riding in your... feather."
"Of course not!" Monty laughed, a high, slightly unhinged cackle. "The Scooter is just the tour guide! I'll take you to the launchpad, point out the best spot, the sweet spot where the upward pressure is strongest but the turbulence is weakest. Then you get on your big, fancy, floating coffin and hold on tight. My job's done the second she starts to rise."
The 'Cloud-Scooter' was worse up close. The wood was slimy with sea growth, the patches on the sail were held on with what looked like tar and hope. As Arima, Takeshi, and Lefty cautiously boarded, the skiff let out a long, groaning sigh, as if it were resentful of the added weight. Rizzo opted to stay behind, to command the Sea Serpent, a decision he made with a profound and visible relief that bordered on reverence.
Monty, however, was in his element. With a series of wild, energetic leaps, he was at the tiller, a long, splintered oar that he handled with the finesse of a conductor's baton. "Alright, ya beautiful disaster, let's go make some bad decisions!" he yelled, and with a shove of the oar and a flap of the ludicrous sail, they were moving, slipping away from the grimy harbour of Mock Town and out into the open sea.
The change was immediate. As they sailed further from the shore, the sea grew stranger. The water, once a deep, healthy blue, began to shift, taking on a pale, milky opalescence. It was the 'Tears of the Sea God'. The water looked like a giant, watery opal, swirling with faint, ghostly tendrils of white. It was beautiful and deeply unsettling, a sickly, diseased beauty.
"See? She's getting ready!" Monty yelled over the rising wind, his wild hair whipping around his head. "The sea is burping! The gas is rising from the deep, turning the water to milk! That's the sign! And look!"
He pointed a long, skeletal finger. The ocean was empty. Utterly, profoundly empty. There were no flying fish, no dolphins, no seabirds. It was a sterile, silent void, a dead zone in the middle of the teeming Grand Line. The locals had been right to be afraid.
In the distance, the Sea Serpent was a dark, silent shape waiting at the edge of the milky water, a predator poised at the edge of a hunting ground it did not understand.
"The launchpad is ahead!" Monty shouted, steering the Scooter with a series of sharp, jerky movements that seemed on the verge of capsizing them but somehow kept them perfectly balanced. "A flat spot on the seabed! A geological plate, just waiting to be sent to heaven! We just need to get your big boat positioned right over the centre, and let the goddess do the rest!"
As they approached the designated spot, the world began to change. The milky water began to bubble, not with the gentle fizz of carbonation, but with a deep, violent churn. The seabed itself seemed to be groaning, a low, guttural sound that vibrated up through the hull of the Scooter, a physical tremor that shook the bones.
"She's waking up!" Monty screamed, a manic, ecstatic grin on his face. "Get to your ship! NOW!"
Lefty didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled to the edge of the skiff, looking pale and green.
"We pay him," Takeshi said, his calm, quiet tone an island of serenity in the rising chaos. He tossed another, smaller pouch of coins to Monty. "For the excellent directions."
Monty caught the pouch with a reflexive snare of the hand. He looked at them, at the coming apocalypse, and a strange, almost sane look of respect entered his blue eyes. "You're either the craziest sons of bitches I've ever met, or the smartest. Good luck up there. Don't get stepped on by a cloud rhino!"
And with that, he turned the tiller, and the little Cloud-Scooter, its job done, darted away with surprising speed, a rat fleeing a sinking ship that hadn't sunk yet.
Arima, Takeshi, and Lefty dove into the milky, churning water. The impact was a cold shock, but the salt, the gas, and the proximity of the Sea Serpent kept their heads above the roiling surface. They swam, a frantic, desperate race against the clock. Rizzo, a man who faced down abyssal eels with a grim resolve, was at the railing, a makeshift rope ladder already deployed, his face a mask of pure terror.
They scrambled aboard, dripping and gasping. The moment their feet hit the deck, the world ended.
It didn't start with a bang. It started with a sucking, deafening roar, as if the entire ocean were being drawn down a cosmic drain. The water level around the ship dropped, revealing the seabed, a dark, scarred plain of rock and ancient coral. And then, with a force that defied physics, a column of water, impossibly wide, erupted from the depths.
It wasn't a geyser. It was the birth of a new ocean. A mountain of liquid white fury that rose towards the sky, devouring the light, devouring the sound, devouring everything. The Sea Serpent, caught on the leading edge of the cataclysm, was lifted, not launched, as if picked up by a giant's hand. The deck tilted at a vertical, impossible angle, the timbers screaming, the rigging snapping with the sound of a thousand whips.
"HOLD ON!" Rizzo's scream was a raw, shredded thing, lost in the cataclysmic roar.
Arima didn't hold on. He became part of the ship. He drove the Sword of Triton deep into its deck housing, a mortal locking a divine mechanism into place. He didn't just pour his will into the blade; he hammered it in, a raw, desperate command forged in the fires of a Yakuza's stubborn refusal to die. Obey. Adapt. Survive.
The ship responded. Not with the elegant, sentient grace of the Calm Belt, but with a violent, shuddering convulsion of raw, untamed power. The ropes, no longer just ropes, became sinewy tentacles, lashing out and anchoring themselves to the churning walls of the water spout, pulling and steering. The sails, tattered and strained, didn't just catch the wind; they hardened, becoming solid, aerodynamic fins that cut through the vertical torrent. The Sea Serpent wasn't just being carried upwards; it was climbing. A dark, scaled insect crawling up a stalk of liquid death.
The world was a maelstrom of white and pressure. Gravity was a forgotten concept, a silly rule from a world that no longer existed. Lefty and Stumps were pinned to the deck, their faces distorted by the G-force, their screams silent pleas to a deaf god. Takeshi, however, was on his feet, a dark, immutable statue in the heart of the storm. His katana was drawn, not to fight, but as an anchor for his own will, a tool of focus that allowed him to separate the chaos of the storm from the core of his being. He was observing, learning the texture of the apocalypse.
Then, the world exploded.
They broke the surface of the ocean, not with a splash, but with a detonation. The deafening roar of the water spout was replaced by a screaming, howling gale that threatened to peel the skin from their bones. They were in the sky. The air was thin, impossibly thin, and cold, a freezing void that tasted of ice and electricity. Below them, the sea was a receding, blue-green carpet, and the island of Jaya was a shrinking, crescent-shaped scar.