Robin waited until we were halfway back to the Vesper before asking the question I'd been hoping she wouldn't. We'd left the ruined sanctuary behind us, and she'd spent most of the walk examining her notes while I considered whether finding an ancient carving of myself justified getting it reproduced somewhere more convenient.
"Kai, may I ask you something?"
"Of course, my dear Robin. I'm an open book."
"Okay, then perhaps you can explain why you've suddenly become so certain there's a civilisation above the clouds."
Ah, well, fuck. We'd finally found a name for my Devil Fruit, a historical connection to Mahoraga and potentially an entire civilisation waiting to tell us more about it. I'd been having a fantastic afternoon, but my travelling companion had apparently decided that my happiness required investigation.
"It's possible, isn't it?" I said. "The inscription mentioned people coming down from the heavens, and you said yourself there are accounts of islands in the sky."
"Accounts, yes. Most are contradictory." She closed her notebook. "You immediately seemed to know where we should go."
"Natural intuition." Her gaze remained on me, so I tried an educated guess instead. That didn't survive long enough to become convincing either.
Knowing a fictional world was incredibly convenient until somebody started asking reasonable questions about how I knew things I absolutely shouldn't. Nami had been particularly annoying about that, and Robin was showing no improvement.
"Alright, fine. The sky islands are real; they're called Skypiea. It's somewhere above Jaya, and there's a way to reach it using something called a Knock Up Stream."
Robin stopped walking. I continued another few steps before noticing, then turned to find her standing in the road with her notebook hanging at her side.
"You've known an island exists in the sky, and you never mentioned it?"
"Several, actually. Well, I think several. Skypiea's the one I'm familiar with." That failed to improve things. I scratched my cheek while she waited for the part of my answer that might. "Look, before Lulusia, it had nothing to do with what we were investigating. I didn't know my devil fruit had something to do with people who supposedly descended from the heavens. For all I knew, it was just some weird island with people living on clouds."
"People living on clouds," she repeated. "And that didn't interest you?"
"Of course it did! It's a fucking island in the sky, Robin. That's awesome. But what was I supposed to do? Drag us halfway across Paradise because I happened to know an interesting tourist destination existed?"
"You changed our destination for inscriptions that might have been ordinary burial records."
"Because you wanted to read them. We had an actual lead." I gestured toward her notebook. "And now we've got one for Skypiea. That stone connects the legend to people who came down from the sky. Could be completely unrelated to the people living there now, sure, but I'd rather find out."
She resumed walking, leaving me to catch up. "I'd have liked the opportunity to decide whether it interested me."
That was fair, although admitting it felt like I was encouraging future complaints. "Alright. I should've mentioned it. I wasn't hiding a connection to my fruit, though. I didn't know there was one."
Robin considered that before opening her notebook again. "Tell me about this Knock Up Stream."
"Giant column of water. Shoots into the sky and takes whatever's above it along for the ride." I leaned over to watch her write. "Before you ask, no, I haven't seen one. I don't remember the exact spot or when the next one happens. Somewhere near Jaya is about as useful as I get."
Her pencil paused. "A destination we cannot see, and transportation that might destroy our ship."
"Why do you always make it sound worse than it is," I mumbled.
We paid the surveyor the rest of what we owed him before leaving Lulusia, bought an Eternal Pose for Jaya and kept the one that would bring us back. Then we set out with Robin's notes secured in the cabin and her newly acquired interest in my other little secrets making itself inconveniently apparent. Poor woman. She had absolutely no idea how long that list could get.
Jaya looked broadly as I remembered it, which was reassuring considering how little of my memory had proved useful during the journey. Green vegetation covered the coast, ships crowded the harbour, and most of the flags would've made respectable merchants reconsider their travel plans.
Mock Town was a wonderful place full of pirates, criminals, alcoholics and people who considered stabbing somebody an acceptable response to being asked for directions. My kinda place, although Robin seemed more interested in the ships than the welcoming committee.
She studied them through our telescope while I brought the Vesper around a fishing vessel stopped in the channel. Murdoch left her shoulder long enough to hop onto the railing and give an approving squawk.
"Don't you start," I told him. He ignored me, preserving his usual standard of professional conduct while Robin returned the telescope.
We secured the Vesper in a quieter section of the harbour and spent the afternoon exploring. I handled supplies, food and the occasional local who thought my bounty made me an interesting gambling opportunity. Robin went looking for information, and by the following morning she'd acquired three old harbour registers, two collections of sailors' journals and an unpleasant-looking map covered in crosses.
I found her sitting in the cabin with everything spread across the table. "Morning," I said, carrying breakfast in both hands. "I've brought gifts."
"Did you pay for them?"
"Eventually." I placed her portion beside the books and leaned over the map. "What's all this?"
"Shipwrecks." She moved her tea out of my way. "Several captains reported disturbances south of Jaya. Changes in current, violent bubbling, entire vessels disappearing. I thought it might be worth comparing them."
The crosses were scattered across a wide area, although several occupied roughly the same stretch of ocean. Robin showed me an account of the sea rising beneath a ship before an enormous column appeared on the horizon, then another describing a merchant vessel being thrown out of sight.
"Sounds about right," I said.
"Unfortunately, that captain also claimed the vessel was swallowed by a dragon. His next entry describes marrying a mermaid."
"Lucky bastard." Robin smiled and turned the page, apparently less willing than me to appreciate the man's achievements.
What followed was several days of actual research. Robin compared harbour records with trade manifests, worked through journals whose authors considered legible handwriting a personal insult, and asked the same questions of different people until their stories stopped agreeing.
We visited a salvage merchant whose warehouse smelled of rotten rope and old fish. He had decades of records, including maps showing where wreckage had been recovered, and Robin bought access while I bought lunch. We were a remarkably efficient partnership, particularly when she needed somebody to move the crates blocking his older shelves.
Local stories helped identify landmarks that had changed names over the years. Some described the sea climbing into heaven, others blamed monsters, and one family had preserved a journal explaining exactly where their ancestor had lost his ship and how much money he believed the ocean owed him. Robin copied his bearings and left out the invoice.
She also found geological surveys commissioned by merchants hoping to establish safer routes around Jaya. Most concerned depths, currents and underwater rock formations, but a few mentioned unusually warm water near a deep trench. Those stayed open beside the maps.
By the fourth evening, our cabin had become a crime scene involving paper. Books occupied both chairs, charts had migrated onto my bed, and Robin sat among them with her sleeves rolled up while Murdoch slept beside her elbow. I moved a stack to reclaim somewhere to sit.
"Please tell me you've found something."
"The major eruptions appear to occur in roughly the same region." She turned her notebook around. Dates filled the page, with references written beside them. "The intervals vary, and some accounts are incomplete, but the more reliable reports put the last large eruption approximately three weeks ago."
"Fucking excellent. When's the next one?"
"Perhaps four to seven months. Possibly longer." She took a sip of tea while I stared at the dates, checking whether I'd somehow mistaken months for something less offensive.
"Months, plural?"
"I'm afraid so. We could investigate the surrounding islands while we look for another route. There are old settlements mentioned—"
"We're not waiting half a year." I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. Robin had already returned to her notes, apparently prepared to let me complain until I ran out of material.
"We cannot command a natural phenomenon to occur simply because you're impatient, Kai"
I opened my mouth, then paused. My thoughts drifted back to Shibuya, Sukuna and Mahoraga, specifically the enormous quantity of water that bastard had taken in before blasting it back out. I'd never properly attempted anything like it; most of my manifestations involved muscles, limbs and the blade. But Robin had recently reminded me that the body belonged to my Zoan. There were parts of it I could use without waiting for somebody to hurt me first.
I leaned forward and pulled the geological survey closer. "Robin, I have an idea."
"Oh, dear." Her pencil stopped, which seemed unnecessarily judgemental considering she hadn't heard it yet.
"These rocks. The hot ones." I pointed beneath the marked eruption zone. "The whole idea is water gets down there, heats up and builds pressure until the whole thing explodes upward"
"That's one proposed explanation. The precise mechanism isn't established."
I continued, "So what happens if we put more water down there? Loads more."
Robin looked from me to the survey, then back again. "You're joking."
"Nope. Deep volcanic heat, underground spaces, seawater. If it hasn't built enough pressure for another eruption, we just…nudge it along."
She put down her pencil. "Assuming those spaces exist, and assuming we can reach them. Water forced into sufficiently hot, fractured rock might heat rapidly enough to produce steam. In a confined space, that could create considerable pressure. Whether it escapes upward, sideways or through a hundred smaller cracks is another matter."
"But it could work?"
"Under very particular circumstances." She noticed my grin widening and added, "Please don't interpret that as encouragement."
"Too late." I grinned.
The next several days were dedicated to what Robin called my unfortunate geological experiment. Personally, I preferred Operation Fuck Waiting, but she refused to write that on the charts, the coward.
She took the idea seriously once she'd finished explaining the different ways it might kill us. Her research concentrated on the trench near the eruption zone, where older surveys showed fractures running through the volcanic rock. Several accounts described warm currents rising there before major eruptions, although nobody could confirm how far the passages extended.
Robin marked a location southeast of Jaya where two charts agreed on a steep depression. "If these accounts are accurate, the trench may connect to the deeper volcanic region. The fractured rock could provide passages for the water."
"Perfect." I smiled.
"It could also let the water escape without building enough pressure to do anything useful." She tapped the chart before I could suggest finding the biggest opening. "You'll need to check what is actually there."
That was going to be my job, which brought us to the small matter of me, a Devil Fruit user, proposing a visit to the bottom of the fucking ocean.
Arlong had kindly given my body plenty of experience with seawater. That didn't mean I could casually jump in whenever I wanted, and the memory of being dragged under by a sixteen-ton sea cow wasn't something I wanted to recreate. The adaptation had been beautiful; the circumstances left room for improvement though.
On the first morning, I secured a heavy rope around my chest and climbed down the boarding ladder. Robin stood above me with the line running through a tackle, several hands ready to take up the slack.
"I'm doing some controlled testing," I told her. "See? I'm growing as a person."
She glanced at the rope. "I'll reserve judgment until you've finished."
Water around my knees was unpleasant, and waist-deep was worse. By the time it covered my chest, strength was draining from my shoulders and keeping my hands around the ladder had become difficult. Robin tightened the line before I slipped.
"Still with me?" she called.
"Y-Yeah. Give me a second." I held on as the familiar response began to catch up. No grand revelation; my body had confronted this weakness before, and it remembered how thoroughly it had hated the experience.
The draining sensation remained, but my hands steadied. I could pull against the ladder again, then hold myself without relying entirely on the rope. When I climbed back aboard, I was breathing harder than I should've been.
Robin offered a towel. "An encouraging beginning."
"Still horrible, but I'm working on it." I nodded with determination.
We repeated the process throughout the day, increasing the depth and duration as I regained control. Robin recorded how quickly I recovered and stopped me from trying anything particularly stupid while my strength was being sucked away. That was rude. I was a professional at doing stupid things.
By the second day, I could remain underwater for several minutes without losing control of my limbs. The sea kept draining me, but my body compensated faster, like what I'd experienced with seastone. Coming out left me briefly stronger than I needed to be, which cost us a ladder rung before I remembered to be careful.
Breathing remained an inconvenience. During a later test, I descended beneath the hull until my chest started complaining, then felt something pull along my neck, and a few clinks rang out. Tiny movements followed beneath my ribs, and when I reached up, my fingertips found narrow openings below my jaw.
They moved beneath my hand. Before I could decide how concerned to be, water passed through them, and the pressure in my chest eased. I stayed there for a few seconds, fascinated and mildly disgusted by fluid moving through tissue that absolutely had not existed yesterday, then shot toward the surface.
"ROBIN!" I hauled myself halfway up the ladder as she appeared at the rail. "LOOK!"
Thin slits opened and closed along my throat, with more beneath my upper ribs. Robin crouched for a better view while I tilted my head and tried to examine parts of myself that weren't conveniently placed for inspection.
"Those appear to be gills. Are they functioning?"
"YES!"
"Then why are you shouting?"
"BECAUSE I'VE GROWN FUCKING GILLS!" I yelled excitedly.
She covered her mouth, but her shoulders gave her away. I narrowed my eyes while she made an extremely unconvincing attempt to stop laughing.
"Your plan did involve becoming better at swimming," she said.
"I expected stronger legs!" I looked down at the water, then felt the openings again. They worked, which was difficult to resent properly. "Arlong would be fucking furious."
That finished her. Robin laughed while I examined my newest anatomical development with the enthusiasm of a man who'd ordered an extremely useful mutation from the wrong catalogue.
My limbs were adjusting too. Altered muscle along my shoulders and legs made each stroke more effective, although I still had to work through the sea's constant pull. By the final test, I could swim circles around the anchored Vesper and come back under my own strength.
"You look pleased," Robin said, passing another towel.
"I'm an extremely powerful fish." I grinned at her, which earned a squawk from Murdoch on his barrel. "Fuck off, bird."
I also practised changing my jaw, throat and torso, learning how to hold water without directing it through the passages that now let me breathe. The first useful discharge knocked me off my feet and stripped a patch of sand bare. After that, I braced myself and kept the tests away from the hull. Robin watched from a distance; she grew more excited whenever I said something sounded promising.
By the time we sailed for the trench, she had copied bearings from the charts and worked out a route from the surviving landmarks. We made several corrections before reaching the marked area, then lowered a weighted line to check the depth.
"The fissure should be along the eastern wall," she said, watching the line run out. "Assuming the seabed hasn't changed substantially."
"Love that confidence."
"You're welcome to find another archaeologist willing to help you manufacture an eruption."
Fair point.
We spent another hour checking depths and currents before she marked our best estimate. The suspected entrance lay beside the wider basin where the largest eruptions had been reported. Robin kept the Vesper beyond its edge, with an approach plotted toward the outlet if I returned with useful news.
We'd reinforced the mast fittings, fitted extra supports and tied down the heaviest cargo. Anything fragile went into padded storage, including Robin's notes, while my shirt, boots and Log Pose stayed in the cabin. She'd asked how much force the stream would exert on the hull, and my honest answer had done nothing for her confidence.
"If the first attempt doesn't work, come back," she said as I approached the rail. "We can examine the results before you try anything else."
I glanced at the ocean. That was a reasonable suggestion, responsible even. I was beginning to worry about how much Robin was improving my decision-making.
"I'll come back," I promised.
"Preferably with all your limbs."
"Greedy." She smiled, and I stepped onto the railing, then pointed at Murdoch. "While I'm gone, you're in charge of protecting Robin." He chirped with an enthusiasm I considered adequate, so I gave him a final nod and jumped.
Cold water rushed past my face as I descended, sunlight fading above me. The familiar weakness spread through my limbs, followed by the clinks and compensation I'd spent the previous days rebuilding. My gills opened, the discomfort in my chest settled, and I kicked downward.
Fish gathered in curious groups, then decided the enormous white thing approaching them wasn't worth investigating. Smart fish. I left them behind as the seabed dropped away and pressure built around my chest and ears, slowing briefly until my body caught up.
The trench appeared as a dark opening between jagged shelves. I followed the eastern wall, keeping a hand near the stone when visibility worsened. The water warmed as I descended, and small streams of bubbles escaped through cracks coated in dark deposits. Passing one opening sent heat across my arm hard enough to make me recoil.
My existing resistance helped, but whatever was happening down here was considerably more aggressive than anything I'd encountered in a kitchen or training yard. I continued until the wall opened into a fracture angled down beneath the surrounding rock, its deeper end disappearing beyond my sight.
Water carried dark particles out. Farther in, bubbles collected beneath an overhang and broke apart in violent bursts, while narrow cracks released surges hot enough to burn my fingers. I waited for the sting to ease, then checked the direction of the opening against Robin's drawing. This was as close a match as I was going to get.
I settled on a broad shelf beside the entrance. The gap could've swallowed a small ship, which seemed encouraging until I remembered how much bigger I wanted the resulting eruption to be.
Pale flesh spread across my shoulders and chest as I let the larger body gather around my ribs. My neck thickened, jaw widening while dense muscles formed around my throat. Turning my head became an interesting experience, but I found a grip against the rock and aimed into the fissure.
Then I started drawing in water. My chest expanded around it, the altered structures making room for quantities that should've ruptured an ordinary person. I kept pulling until my own torso crowded my arms out of position. Fantastic, deeply disgusting, and considerably less comfortable than watching Mahoraga do it on a screen.
I contracted everything and fired. The blast tore through the opening, shattered the smaller rocks along its edge and drove them into the dark. Recoil ripped my feet off the shelf and slammed me against the opposite wall, leaving me surrounded by drifting debris.
For a moment I stayed there with my back pressed into the stone, then grinned. Oh, that was fucking beautiful.
I returned to the opening and braced more carefully. The first blast had cleared obstructions, exposing deeper channels where hot water escaped against the colder current I'd forced inside. I filled myself again, held my head steady and drove another load down the fissure.
This time I felt the rock tremble. Several more blasts followed, my torso swelling with each intake and contracting as the water discharged through my reinforced throat. Currents dragged fresh seawater down from above while each load forced more of it beneath the heated rock.
At first, the result was mostly sediment and violent water. Then bubbles began pouring from cracks that had previously been still. A low vibration reached me through the shelf, and hot jets struck from either side of the entrance.
I paused to look. Something was moving down there, which seemed an excellent reason to resume pumping. Another load went in with more resistance, making the muscles around my neck strain until the stream forced its way through.
The shelf shifted beneath my feet. A crack opened along the wall, and a section of the fissure collapsed inward, revealing a larger passage below. Bubbles surged out as the vibration became a continuous rumble.
I stopped. The water kept churning, heated currents tearing through the new gaps and breaking smaller formations apart. Somewhere beneath me, enormous sections of rock were moving against each other. I looked upward, suddenly appreciating how far away the surface was.
Huh. I may have succeeded slightly too hard.
The shelf ruptured beneath my feet. Superheated water tore through it and threw me across the trench; I struck the wall, caught myself against the stone and felt that formation shudder too. Another rupture opened below, then another, and I pushed away before the wall could contribute anything more personal.
The current caught me as I turned. I kicked against the nearest rock face, shattered part of it and drove upward while clouds of bubbles carried broken stone past my legs. My altered arms pulled hard, the muscles along my back and thighs working while my gills supplied oxygen.
The sea still drained me, but my body kept finding enough strength to move. Behind me, the trench was coming apart, and I had absolutely no interest in staying to appreciate the results of our research.
I followed the escape route we'd marked, climbing toward sunlight while impacts travelled through the water. A surge caught me from below and nearly spun me into the wall; I corrected, pushed more muscle into my legs and aimed for the Vesper's shadow.
The surface rushed closer. I broke through like a fucking cannonball, launched clear of the railing and twisted toward the deck. Robin turned from the wheel as my shadow crossed her, and Murdoch abandoned his perch with a noise that suggested he considered my arrival excessively dramatic.
I landed in a spray of seawater, rattling the planks, then began forcing my body back toward something resembling a person.
"Welcome back," Robin said, already looking past me. "Did it work?"
I followed her gaze. For a moment the sea appeared ordinary, then a broad swell rose behind us and bubbles broke across it.
"Yep." Another swell passed beneath the Vesper, lifting the hull before letting it settle. My grin became slightly strained. "We should probably move."
Robin turned us toward the suspected outlet as arms bloomed across the deck. They caught loose ropes, tightened cargo lashings and hauled the lines into place while the sails brought us around. I ran forward, secured another rope around the barrels and began throwing anything remotely loose below.
A bucket, a coil of rope and a chair disappeared through the hatch. Murdoch squawked furiously as I scooped him off the railing and shoved him into Robin's waiting arms.
"Protect the bird!"
"Of course."
"And yourself!"
"How thoughtful." She reached the wheel with Murdoch held against her chest while I sprinted back to the mast. The sea was properly bubbling now, and a vibration travelled through the hull hard enough to make the fittings rattle.
"Set the sails?" she called.
"Yeah! Secure the lines and keep her straight!" I drove the last wedge into a brace, forcing extra muscle through my arms as the wooden support groaned. Another tremor rocked us, and I hurried to the rail to see a broad mound of water rising beneath the ship.
"Oh, it's going!" I yelled. "IT'S GOING!"
"Kai, the mast!" Robin braced against the wheel while more hands appeared along the rigging.
"GOT IT!" I wrapped my arms around the support and widened my stance. Murdoch made a noise that sounded like an animal reconsidering every decision it had ever made, then buried himself against Robin;s bust as the deck tilted beneath us.
The rumbling deepened. Water rose along the hull, a tremor passed through my feet, and I clenched my teeth while Robin's hands gripped the railing, the ropes, and the cargo.
Here we fucking go!
Then the rumbling faded. Bubbles dwindled and stopped, the Vesper settled back onto the water, and our rigging creaked in the sudden quiet. I stayed wrapped around the mast for several seconds before loosening my grip.
"…Huh."
Robin stared at me. The ocean had become almost perfectly calm, which felt slightly insulting after the effort I'd put into ruining its morning. I scratched the back of my head.
"Well, I guess that wasn't eno—"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire fucking sea beneath us erupted upward. The deck slammed into my feet, my knees buckled, and the Vesper launched inside an enormous column of water. Every loose object aboard tried to leave as the mast bent and the hull screamed.
"OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—!"
I caught the mast with both hands as the ship tilted. Robin's arms locked around the wheel and railing, another pair holding Murdoch against her chest while water thundered beneath us. The sails snapped full, and Jaya dropped away over the stern faster than I was comfortable witnessing.
Then I heard laughter. Robin tipped her head back, hair streaming across her face, and laughed so hard she had to tighten her grip to stay upright. This was considerably more than the little chuckle she occasionally gave when I said something stupid.
"ROBIN!?" I stared at her while she tried to answer and failed. "YOU'RE FUCKING LAUGHING!?"
"We're…" She struggled for breath, looked past the stern and started again. "We're flying!"
She doubled over against the wheel, laughing while her extra hands fought to keep the ship together. I watched her for another second, then something inside me gave up too.
Because, yeah, this was fucking ridiculous. We'd bullied a volcanic system into throwing our ship toward a civilisation most of the world didn't believe existed. Murdoch was having a religious crisis, the mast was making concerning noises, and Nico Robin was laughing her ass off.
"KAH-RA-RA-RA-RA!" My laughter joined hers, snatched away by the wind as we continued climbing.
"YOU'RE INSANE!" she shouted.
"YOU HELPED!" That sent her into another fit, and she was right. She absolutely had.
Jaya shrank beneath us, its forests becoming dark patches against the ocean. Ships shrank to specks, the coastline contracted, and the air grew colder as the Vesper began making noises I desperately wished it would stop making.
A long split opened along the mast. "Oh, you motherfucker." I enlarged my shoulders and reached around it, pulling the damaged timber together while Robin's hands tightened the ropes we'd fitted around the brace.
Part of the rigging snapped, leaving a red sail whipping loose. Several arms caught the line, but the strain dragged it through their grip until I shifted one hand from the mast and hauled it down. Robin secured it while I squeezed the split shut again, with my feet barely touching the deck.
Murdoch shrieked beneath her coat. "STOP COMPLAINING!" I yelled, which only encouraged him. Apparently even a bird could object to flying when somebody else chose the speed.
Robin was still laughing between instructions, though she'd recovered enough to make them useful. "Keep the mast steady!"
"I AM!" I adjusted my grip as the ship shifted beneath me, only for Robin to shout that I was pulling it sideways. "IT KEEPS MOVING!"
"Because we're flying, Kai!" She hauled the wheel around while hands along the rigging dragged a loose line out of my way.
"I NOTICED!" I hooked a leg around the mast's base and held on. The water roared upward beneath the hull, carrying us farther from an ocean I was beginning to miss despite our recent disagreement.
On the bright side, I'd used a Mythical Zoan to personally manufacture an elevator to heaven. Take that, science. If we survived, I was absolutely naming the method after myself, regardless of Robin's contribution.
The cloud layer rushed closer, its lower edges dark above us. Robin saw it too, and I tightened my hold before shouting for her to brace. More arms bloomed across the deck, gripping cargo and drawing loose rigging down as we hit the white.
Cold mist swallowed the Vesper. I couldn't see the bow or Robin, and the roar dulled while the shaking continued through the mast. I kept holding it together, trying to work out whether we were still climbing, until a hand closed around my wrist and squeezed.
Light appeared ahead. The ship drove through the last of the mist and broke into open sky, sunlight spilling across our battered red sails. Beneath us stretched a brilliant white sea, its surface rolling toward the horizon like an ocean suspended above the world.
Holy shit. The White Sea was real, and I nearly forgot about the splintering timber in my hands as I stared at it. Robin had turned toward the clouds too, laughter catching in her throat as Murdoch cautiously poked his head out.
"We actually…" I started, my grin widening. "WE FUCKING DID IT!"
Then the bow dropped, the white surface rushed toward us, and my grip tightened all over again.
"Oh, fuck."
The Vesper slammed into the White Sea.
CRASH!!!
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 5108
a/n -
…yeah so about that word limit, don't worry about it anymore.
I've been trying to keep chapters around 2,500 words for a while now, mainly because I thought it'd help me maintain a more consistent upload schedule. Unfortunately, I've started noticing that I've been rushing certain scenes just to meet that completely arbitrary limit I imposed on myself. Which is especially stupid when you remember that I'm the one writing the damn thing!
So, yeah. Fuck the word limit!
Chapters will be as long as I think they need to be, whether that's 2,500 words, 4,000, or apparently over 5,000 like this one. I still want to maintain some consistency, obviously, but I'd rather give you guys a chapter I'm actually satisfied with than cut out conversations, character moments and explanations just to meet a number.
Anyway, onto the actual chapter!
SKYPIEA, BABYYYY!!!
Or, well, technically the White Sea, BUT WE'RE GETTING THERE!
I've been looking forward to writing this part for quite some time, especially now that we're properly getting into the Grand Line portion of Kai's adventures. I think Skypiea is one of the more interesting locations in One Piece, both visually and from a worldbuilding perspective, and it offers a LOT of opportunities for what I'm planning.
More importantly, there's now an actual reason for Kai and Robin to go there beyond Kai knowing it exists.
That brings me to the first thing I wanted to discuss: Kai's Devil Fruit and its development.
As you guys saw in the previous chapter, we've finally learned the proper name of the fruit: the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Divine General Mahoraga. That revelation also changes how Kai understands his abilities.
For most of the story, he's approached his Devil Fruit almost exclusively through adaptation. Something hurts him, inconveniences him, or otherwise becomes a problem, and his body develops an answer. That remains the foundation of his abilities, obviously, but he's starting to understand that there's quite a bit more to being a Mythical Zoan than he's been taking advantage of.
He's spent years using what is essentially Mahoraga's body without really appreciating what that means.
Which is pretty fucking funny when you think about it.
The man has access to one of the most ridiculous abilities imaginable and has spent a considerable portion of his life using himself as a glorified punching bag.
And now he's growing gills.
Progress! (￣▽￣)
Jokes aside, I wanted this chapter to explore the more biological side of his fruit. His adaptation isn't necessarily restricted to simply becoming resistant to whatever he's experiencing. As we've seen before, it can produce entirely new physical responses, including changes to his anatomy, as long as those changes solve the problem he's facing.
The gills are a particularly good example.
I also want to clarify something before people start asking whether Kai has completely overcome the standard Devil Fruit weakness. He hasn't. The sea still drains his strength, and that hasn't magically changed. His body has simply developed ways to compensate for that loss, much like what happened with the seastone cuff back in Port Tragedy.
Being able to breathe underwater is another matter entirely, and his adaptation apparently solved it in the most physically disturbing way possible.
Arlong would be absolutely fucking SEETHING.
Kai still doesn't understand much about his abilities, and that's intentional. Discovering his fruit's name has opened up a lot of possibilities, some of which he hasn't even considered yet. I'm particularly excited to explore those as we get further into the Grand Line.
Now, onto Robin!
I've been enjoying writing her interactions with Kai quite a bit, and I hope that's coming across in the chapters themselves.
I wanted to establish in this chapter that Robin isn't simply following Kai around while he uses his knowledge of the series to conveniently solve every problem they encounter. She has her own interests, her own motivations, and, most importantly, she's an extremely intelligent woman.
When Kai tells her about Skypiea, she doesn't immediately accept everything he's saying. She asks questions, investigates the available evidence, and eventually works out where they should be looking.
I think that distinction matters, especially given the nature of this story.
Kai knows quite a lot about the One Piece world, but knowing something exists doesn't automatically mean he understands how to reach it or how it works. He's relying on memories of a series he watched in another lifetime, and those memories aren't exactly a substitute for proper navigation, archaeology or geological research.
Fortunately, Robin is there to provide all three, apparently.
Which brings us to what is probably my favourite part of this entire chapter: Operation Fuck Waiting.
I cannot express how much I enjoyed the idea of Kai discovering that the Knock Up Stream might not occur for several more months and immediately deciding that was unacceptable.
And the solution?
Manufacture one.
Because why the fuck not?
Now, before somebody pulls out a geology textbook and starts explaining why this would or wouldn't work, I KNOW the science is questionable. We're discussing a fictional ocean that can launch ships thousands of metres into the sky, in a world where people can eat fruit and turn into dinosaurs.
I think we've earned ourselves a little creative freedom.
That being said, I did want the process to have some reasoning behind it. Robin investigates the geological conditions, Kai develops a way to introduce enormous amounts of water into the system, and together they try to force an eruption.
It's incredibly dangerous, probably irresponsible, and absolutely something Kai would suggest.
The fact that Robin actually helps him do it might say more about her than either of them would like to admit.
And speaking of Robin, we've seen her smile, make jokes and occasionally laugh at Kai's stupidity, but I wanted something a little different here.
Robin is someone whose life has been defined by persecution, betrayal and the constant need to be careful about whom she trusts. She's spent years surviving, pursuing her research and dealing with people whose interests rarely align with her own.
Then along comes this absolute fucking idiot who offers to help her uncover the world's history, introduces her to a mysterious connection between an ancient civilisation and his Devil Fruit, and eventually convinces her to launch their ship into the heavens using an artificially induced underwater eruption.
And somehow, it works.
I wanted that moment of laughter to feel genuine. For a brief period, Robin isn't worrying about the World Government, her past, or what might happen tomorrow. She's aboard a ship with someone she's gradually becoming comfortable around, doing something so utterly ridiculous that she can't help herself.
She's flying.
And I thought that was a pretty lovely moment to give her.
I also wanted Kai to experience that with her. As much as I enjoy writing him as an arrogant, occasionally insufferable MC, I don't want every interaction to revolve around him showing off his strength or knowledge. He still genuinely loves this world and the opportunities it offers him.
Sometimes the adventure itself is enough.
Anyway, enough of me getting sentimental.
As for Skypiea itself, I'm particularly excited about what comes next. Without spoiling too much, the discovery on Lulusia wasn't just an excuse to send our favourite idiots into the sky. There's a reason I've started introducing more history about the Divine General, and this destination gives us a chance to explore some of it.
There are also the usual things you'd expect from visiting a completely new civilisation: people to meet, places to explore, mysteries to investigate and, knowing Kai, several entirely preventable international incidents.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
Probably.
One final thing I want to mention is the pacing of this arc. We're still covering a period of Kai's life before the events of the original series, and I know some of you are particularly interested in seeing how his actions will eventually affect canon.
Trust me, I've been thinking about that quite a bit.
However, I also want this period of his life to feel like an actual adventure, with its own developments and relationships, rather than a checklist of events we have to complete before Luffy finally sets sail.
Robin's journey, Kai's growing understanding of his abilities, and the mysteries we're beginning to uncover are all things I want to give proper attention to.
Which is another reason I'm getting rid of that bloody word limit.
ANYWAY!
Thank you guys, as always, for reading and supporting the story. The comments, discussions and theories have genuinely been one of my favourite parts of publishing this fic, especially when you guys start pointing out things I hadn't even considered.
I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter, particularly the longer format. Did it flow better? Were there sections that dragged or could've been condensed? I'm still trying to improve my writing, so I appreciate genuine criticism.
I'm also curious about your thoughts on Kai's recent power developments. Do you like the direction his Devil Fruit is taking, particularly the more biological aspects of adaptation? And what do you think of his relationship with Robin so far? I've been trying to develop their dynamic naturally, so I'd love to know whether their conversations and interactions are working for you.
And, of course, what are you expecting from Skypiea?
Any predictions about the Divine General's history? The people who supposedly descended from the heavens? Or what kind of absolute bullshit Kai's going to get himself involved in next?
Let me know. I read pretty much everything, and occasionally you lot come up with ideas so good that I feel morally obligated to steal them.
With proper credit, naturally.
Maybe.
Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!
KAH-RA-RA-RA-RA!
(づ￣ ³￣)づ
Bye bye.