The second cannonball hit the water close enough to soak all four of them.
Nami was already moving — tiller hard to starboard, reading the wind, calculating a gap between the three ships that wasn't really a gap but was the closest thing available. "If we get between the outer two they can't fire without hitting each other," she said, crisp and fast, the voice of someone who'd been in worse situations and had survived by thinking three seconds ahead of everyone else.
"Good," Goku said.
"It's not good, it's the least bad option —"
The third cannonball came in flat and fast from the lead ship, aimed not at the water but at the hull, the kind of shot meant to end mobility. Goku stepped off the boat into the air, met it with both hands, Armament dark on his palms, and redirected it — not back at the ship, just sideways, into the sea where it raised a column of white water ten meters high.
Silence on all three ships for exactly two seconds.
Then from the lead vessel, a voice — theatrical, aggrieved, with the specific quality of someone who believed drama was appropriate to all occasions — screamed:
"HE CAUGHT MY CANNONBALL!"
Here we go.
✦ ✦ ✦
Open Water — East Blue — Morning — Active battle
The plan, such as it was: Nami navigated. Zoro handled boarders. Goku dealt with the cannons. Luffy dealt with Buggy.
The plan lasted about forty seconds.
The first problem was that all three ships were firing simultaneously, and while Goku could redirect one cannonball at a time without difficulty, three ships firing on overlapping schedules produced a rhythm that required him to be in three places at once. He solved this by flying faster — by the fourth volley he had the pattern, and he was moving between intercepts with the kind of efficiency that made it look, to the pirates watching from the decks, like the cannonballs were simply bouncing off an invisible wall around the small boat.
The second problem was the boarders.
Buggy's crew was larger than it had looked from a distance — closer to forty than thirty, divided across the three ships, and they had grappling hooks and the specific fearlessness of people who believed their captain's Devil Fruit made them unkillable by association. Three hooks caught the railing of Luffy's boat simultaneously, and pirates started coming across the ropes before Zoro had finished drawing.
They stopped coming after Zoro finished drawing.
Not because he hurt anyone badly — three clean disarms, two ropes cut, one pirate set down so fast he hadn't realized he was on the deck instead of the rope until it was over. Efficient. No wasted motion. The three swords moved like they'd been part of the same thought.
Goku, intercepting a cannonball off his left forearm, watched this and filed it.
The Armament on Zoro's swords was still unconscious — still the raw, unformed version, the depth without the direction. But there were moments, in the fast exchanges, where the blade connected with something that should have deflected and didn't. Where the cut was cleaner than physics suggested it should be.
He's doing it without knowing he's doing it, Goku thought. Same as before.
Not the time. He deflected two more cannonballs and turned his attention to the lead ship.
✦ ✦ ✦
The lead ship's deck — same time
Buggy the Clown was, in person, exactly as advertised and somehow also more.
The nose was real. The paint was real. The massive hat, the striped outfit, the absolute theatrical commitment to every single action — all real. He stood at the prow of his lead ship with his arms separated at the elbows — hovering at his sides, detached, already weaponized — and pointed at Luffy's boat with a finger that wasn't technically connected to his hand.
"STRAW HAT," he bellowed, "YOU RUINED MY BEAUTIFUL BODY — "
"I put it back together," Luffy said, from approximately two meters away.
Buggy spun. Luffy had crossed between the ships at some point in the last thirty seconds — via a rope, or a stretch, or whatever method presented itself — and was now standing on Buggy's deck with his hands in his pockets and his hat tilted back, looking at the clown with the uncomplicated interest of someone who has found something they were specifically looking for.
"YOU," Buggy said.
"Me," Luffy agreed pleasantly.
What happened next was not something Goku saw directly — he was busy with the other two ships — but he felt it. The clash of two signatures, one elastic and bright and completely unbothered, the other exploding and reforming and exploding again with the frustrated energy of someone whose best trick kept not working.
He felt, specifically, the moment Buggy's Haki spiked in real anger.
And he felt Luffy's answer — not a technique, not anything trained. Just Luffy, being entirely Luffy, which turned out to be its own kind of immovable.
Goku smiled and went back to the cannons.
✦ ✦ ✦
The outer two ships — minutes into the battle
He boarded the port-side ship first because it had the better firing angle on Luffy's boat.
Landing on the deck of a ship mid-battle, Goku had learned, produced one of two reactions: either the crew attacked immediately, all at once, which was straightforward to deal with, or they stopped completely, which was harder in a different way because he had to wait for them to decide.
This crew did neither. They looked at the man who had been catching their cannonballs for the last three minutes standing on their deck, looked at each other, and then — with remarkable collective decision-making — looked at the cannons, looked at him, and stepped back from the cannons.
"Smart," Goku said.
"We're not paid enough for whatever you are," the gunner said, with great honesty.
"Who's the captain of this ship?"
A man in a blue coat raised his hand slightly. Middle-aged, the kind of face that had signed on to piracy for practical rather than ideological reasons and was currently reassessing the practical dimension of that decision.
"Turn around," Goku said. "Leave. Don't come back."
"Buggy'll —"
"Buggy is currently losing a fight with a seventeen-year-old on the other ship," Goku said. "I don't think he's going to have opinions about your navigation choices for a while."
The captain looked toward the lead ship. From across the water came a sound that was specifically Buggy's voice saying something at very high volume about noses and disrespect.
The captain turned his ship.
The third ship took slightly longer — its captain had either more courage or less information — but the result was the same. By the time Goku landed back on Luffy's boat, two of the three vessels were already pulling away.
Which left the lead ship.
And the sound of someone who was not Luffy screaming.
✦ ✦ ✦
The lead ship — same time
The scream was Nami's.
Not fear — he'd have recognized fear. This was anger, the specific kind that happened when something you'd spent years protecting was suddenly in danger. He found her in seconds: she'd boarded the lead ship at some point during the chaos — looking for the map she'd mentioned, he realized, for the gold, for the seven million she still needed — and someone had caught her.
A large pirate had her arm. Not the captain — a crew member, broad, the kind of person who used size as a substitute for thinking. He was saying something about thieves and consequences, and Nami was saying something back that was considerably more articulate and pointed, and none of it was going to matter in about three seconds if Goku didn't —
He was between them before the thought finished.
Not violently — he didn't hit the pirate, didn't need to. Just inserted himself between them, Nami's arm released by the simple physics of Goku being in the way, and looked at the large man with the patient expression of someone who had options and was choosing the one that didn't require anyone to get hurt.
"No," he said.
The large pirate looked at him.
"No," Goku said again, simpler.
The large pirate sat down.
Nami, behind him, was quiet for a moment. He could feel her recalibrating — the specific sensation of someone who had been operating alone for years suddenly having to account for a variable they didn't put there.
"I had it," she said.
"I know."
"I didn't need —"
"I know," he said. "But I was closer." He looked at her. "Did you find what you came for?"
A pause. Then she held up a leather satchel — heavy, map-roll-shaped.
"And the gold?"
A second pause. A second satchel, smaller, from inside her shirt. The expression on her face was the look of someone who had just been seen doing something competent and wasn't sure how to feel about the witness.
"Good," Goku said. "Let's go back."
✦ ✦ ✦
The lead ship's deck — minutes later
Luffy had Buggy pinned.
Not gracefully — nothing Luffy did was graceful in the technical sense — but effectively. The clown was in a knot of his own separated limbs, which Luffy had apparently gathered up and tied together with a rope at some point during their fight, leaving Buggy assembled but immobile. His hat was gone. His nose was not, which seemed to be a source of ongoing distress.
"RELEASE ME," Buggy was saying, with great dignity for a man tied up with his own arms.
"Where's my treasure?" Luffy said.
"WHAT TREASURE —"
"There's no treasure," Nami said, stepping onto the deck with the specific authority of someone who had catalogued exactly what was worth taking before the fight started. "There's a map, some gold, and an interesting compass. I have all three."
"THAT'S MY COMPASS —"
"Was," Nami said pleasantly.
Buggy made a sound that began as a word and ended as pure noise.
Goku looked at the tied-up clown and thought, briefly, about what he was seeing. Buggy was a Devil Fruit user — the first one he'd encountered in a real fight, not just as a concept explained over a dinner table. The Chop-Chop Fruit: separate the body, each part independent, nothing connected can be hurt by cutting.
Interesting. Genuinely interesting. The implications for someone like him — someone whose techniques were built around Ki output, energy waves, things that didn't cut so much as overwhelm — were worth thinking about. A Kamehameha wouldn't cut Buggy. It would just send all his pieces in different directions.
Which, admittedly, seemed like it would still solve most problems.
"What do we do with him?" Zoro asked. He'd appeared from somewhere — from Luffy's boat, via a grappling hook, apparently, while Goku was dealing with Nami's situation.
"Leave him," Luffy said. He was already looking at the horizon, the fight filed away, attention moving to whatever was next. "He can't do anything tied up."
"His crew —"
"Ran away," Goku said. "Two of the three ships. The third —" He checked. "Also running."
Zoro looked at the empty water where the other ships had been.
"You sent them away."
"Talked them into leaving."
"You talked three pirate ships into leaving."
"It wasn't complicated. They didn't want to be there." Goku shrugged. "Most people don't want to be in the situation they're in. If you give them an exit that doesn't cost them face, they take it."
Zoro stared at him with the expression he'd been developing over the past day — the one that meant: I don't know what to do with you, and I'm not sure I should find that as interesting as I do.
From the deck, Buggy had stopped screaming and was now watching Goku with different eyes. Not angry — assessing. The way people who had survived a long time in dangerous places looked at things they hadn't seen before.
"You caught my cannonballs," Buggy said. His voice had come down considerably in volume.
"Yes."
"No Devil Fruit."
"No."
"Then what —"
"Something different," Goku said. "From somewhere else."
Buggy processed this. Then, with the instincts of a man who had been a pirate since before most of the people on this boat were born:
"You're not from the Grand Line."
"No."
"But you fight like someone who's been past it."
Goku looked at the clown — at the eyes under the paint, which were sharper than the nose and the theatrics suggested they should be — and thought about what to say.
"I've fought things past the Grand Line," he said, which was true in the sense that everything he'd ever fought was past every line that existed here. "And things above it."
"Above."
"Literally. Above the sky."
Buggy stared at him for a long moment.
Then he looked at Luffy.
"Where did you find him?"
"He found us," Luffy said happily. "He fell from the sky."
"He —"
"Okay," Nami said, from behind them, voice carrying the brisk efficiency of someone who had treasure to count and no interest in further conversation with tied-up clowns. "Can we go now."
✦ ✦ ✦
Luffy's boat — open water — late morning
They were back on the water, the lead ship behind them getting smaller, when Nami spread the map on the deck.
It was large — larger than it looked rolled up — and detailed in a way that made Goku immediately understand why she'd wanted it. The whole East Blue, every island marked and named, currents and wind patterns annotated in a small, precise hand. And at the right edge, where the map ran out, a single word in large letters:
GRAND LINE
Luffy crouched over it with both hands on his knees, staring at the edge of the map the way he stared at everything — completely, without reservation.
"How far?" he asked.
Nami studied it. "At our current speed?" She traced a route with one finger — island to island, around a current, through a strait. "Three weeks, maybe less if the wind holds." She paused. "But before the Grand Line —" Her finger stopped on a cluster of islands, east and slightly south. "Conomi Islands."
Nobody spoke.
Luffy looked at the islands on the map. He looked at Nami. He looked back at the islands with the expression he had when he was thinking about something real — not the grin, not the cheerful surface, but the thing underneath it that had chosen to go to sea alone at seventeen with no crew and no ship and a declared intention to reach the end of the world.
"Is that where you're going?" he asked.
"That's where I'm from," Nami said. She said it carefully — not the voice of someone who'd rehearsed it, but the voice of someone who'd decided not to hide it. "And I have to go back."
"Then that's where we're going," Luffy said.
Nami opened her mouth. Closed it. "You don't know what's there."
"You do," Luffy said. "That's enough."
The simplicity of it hung in the air. Goku watched Nami absorb it — watched the calculation in her face run through every angle and find, for once, no counter-argument. Not because there wasn't one. Because the thing Luffy had said wasn't a strategic position. It was just true.
Zoro said nothing. His hand rested on Wado Ichimonji the way it always did when he'd already decided.
Goku looked at the map. At the Conomi Islands. At the name that hadn't been said out loud but was written in the shape of everything Nami had told him that morning.
He thought about what he'd decided on the beach: not yet. Don't interfere. Learn first.
He thought: Arlong has been there for ten years. A few more weeks won't change what he is.
He thought: but I want to see it for myself.
"How strong is he?" Goku asked. Quiet, direct. Not to Nami — to the air, to the question itself. "Arlong. Actually strong."
Nami looked at him. Something in his tone had changed — not harder, but more focused. The difference between someone asking out of curiosity and someone asking because the answer will determine something.
"He's the strongest creature in the East Blue," she said. "Everyone says so."
Goku nodded slowly.
"Okay," he said.
Just that. But the way he said it — the specific quality of a man who has received information and added it to a calculation that was already running — made Nami look at him differently for just a moment. Made Zoro open one eye.
Luffy, who processed things differently than everyone else, just grinned.
"You're gonna fight him," Luffy said.
"I don't know yet," Goku said.
"You're totally gonna fight him."
Goku didn't answer.
The boat moved east. The Grand Line waited at the edge of the map. And somewhere between here and there, on a set of islands everyone in this sea said couldn't be touched, something that called itself the strongest creature in the East Blue was about to find out what that phrase actually meant.
— End of Chapter 5 —