Flying over the open ocean on the back of a mythical, metal-feathered bird was, without a doubt, the greatest feeling I had experienced since waking up in this world.
I sat comfortably between the jade shoulders of the Sky-Rift Roc, the wind howling past us as we soared high above the South Blue.
I had restricted the Roc’s size down to that of a small transit bus, large enough to carry us easily, but small enough that we wouldn’t immediately be mistaken for a descending apocalyptic meteor by whatever island we approached.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” Gammamon grumbled from behind me.
He was squirming uncomfortably, tugging at the collar of a heavy, tan travel cloak that completely enveloped his small frame, hiding his white scales, blue scarf, and three horns.
“Yes, it’s necessary,” I called back over the wind.
“You’re a bipedal, talking triceratops.
If you walk into a normal town without a disguise, someone is either going to try to capture you for a circus or call the Marines.
Keep the hood up.
And stop whining, the fabric breathes.”
The cloak, just like my entirely new wardrobe, was a masterpiece of survival engineering.
Before we left Zone 1, I had summoned the Silken Widow-Maker and spent a day having the giant spider weave us custom gear.
I was currently wearing a dark, high-collared shirt and flexible, cargo-style pants.
They looked like standard, stylish traveler’s clothes, but the Haki-infused spider silk made them lighter than cotton and tougher than Kevlar.
Gammamon’s cloak was similarly insulated, designed to protect his pale scales from the brutal, high-altitude sun while keeping him hidden.
“Land ho,” I muttered, peering over Roc’s metallic neck.
Rising from the azure expanse of the South Blue was a bustling, sprawling port island.
Ships dotted the harbor, and tightly packed stone buildings climbed up the rolling green hills.
I directed the Roc toward a secluded, rocky cove on the far side of the island, safely out of sight of the main port.
The jade bird touched down silently.
I unclipped the disk, wiping its signature, and the massive Roc dissolved into a cloud of emerald mist.
“Alright,” I said, rolling my shoulders.
“Let’s go rejoin society.”
We hiked out of the cove and joined a dirt road leading into the port city.
The moment we crossed the threshold from the quiet outskirts into the bustling market district, it hit us.
It wasn’t a physical wall, but it might as well have been.
After five months of absolute, terrifying silence in Zone 1, where every single heartbeat belonged to a monster trying to kill us, the sheer volume of humanity was a sledgehammer to the senses.
My Observation Haki, which I had kept dialed to eleven just to survive, was suddenly flooded with thousands of tiny, overlapping signatures.
The smell of roasted fish, cheap ale, horse manure, and sweat assaulted my nose.
The chaotic cacophony of merchants shouting, children laughing, and sailors cursing merged into a deafening roar.
I staggered mid-step, bringing a hand up to my temple with a sharp hiss.
Beside me, Gammamon stumbled, clutching the sides of his hooded head with a low groan.
“Too loud,” Gammamon whimpered.
“I know,” I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut.
I forced myself to breathe.
“Dial it back.
Pull it in.
We’re not prey anymore, Gammamon.
We don’t need to listen to the whole world.”
It took a few agonizing seconds, but I mentally tightened the leash on my Haki, shrinking my sensory radius from a mile down to just a few dozen feet.
The overwhelming static faded into manageable background noise.
Gammamon let out a long exhale, his posture relaxing beneath the cloak.
“Better?” I asked.
He nodded from beneath the hood.
“Yeah.
People are messy.”
“You have no idea,” I chuckled, adjusting my collar.
“Come on.
First order of business, we need cash.”
We navigated the crowded streets until I found a shop situated down a slightly shadowed alley.
The weathered sign above the door read Grog’s Antiquities and Exchange.
I pushed the door open, a small bell jingling overhead.
The shop smelled like dust and old brass.
Behind the counter stood a massive, heavily scarred man with a thick beard and a jeweler’s loupe wedged into his right eye.
He looked up, his gaze lingering suspiciously on Gammamon’s heavily cloaked form before shifting to me.
“What do you want?” the man grunted.
“I’m looking to sell,” I said smoothly, stepping up to the counter.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, jagged piece of petrified wood.
It was entirely white, radiating a faint, unnatural chill, harvested directly from the Glacial-Inferno Sovereign’s frozen biome.
I placed it on the wooden counter.
A thin layer of frost immediately bloomed across the tabletop.
The pawnbroker’s lone eye widened.
He leaned in, hesitating before picking it up.
He hissed as the cold bit into his fingers, quickly setting it back down.
“Absolute-zero petrified cedar,” I lied effortlessly, leaning against the counter.
“Sourced from an uncharted winter island in the Grand Line.
Doesn’t melt.
Doesn’t break.
Perfect for keeping a noble’s wine cellar permanently chilled, or forging a rather nasty weapon.”
The man recovered his scowl, tapping the wood with a pen.
“It’s a novelty.
A Devil Fruit by-product, maybe.
Best I can do is ten thousand Beri.”
I actually laughed.
I didn’t just chuckle, I let out a deep, amused laugh that made the man bristle.
“Ten thousand?
Buddy, I just spent half a year fighting monsters the size of buildings.
I didn’t come back to civilization to get robbed by a guy named Grog.
You know exactly what kind of markup you can get for perpetual ice in a warm climate.
Hundred thousand.”
“Twenty,” he countered, narrowing his eyes.
“And that’s a favor.”
I stopped smiling.
I let just a fraction, a microscopic sliver, of the apex predator aura I had developed in Zone 1 bleed into my posture.
I didn’t use Haki, but my eyes went dead, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop to match the wood on the counter.
“Ninety-five,” I said, my voice dropping to a flat, quiet register.
“And you say thank you.”
Grog stared at me, swallowing heavily.
The intimidation tactics he usually used on desperate sailors completely bounced off the sheer indifference of someone who had recently performed surgery on a dying god.
“Ninety-five,” Grog muttered, opening his cashbox.
“Crazy Grand Line bastards.”
Ten minutes later, we were sitting in a lively tavern near the docks.
I had a massive plate of roasted pork and a pint of cold ale in front of me, while Gammamon was tearing into a mountain of seared sea king meat, keeping his hood pulled low to hide his face.
The taste of properly seasoned, cooked food after months of unseasoned survival rations was so good I almost cried.
As we ate, I kept my Haki focused purely on the ambient conversations around us.
“Did you hear?” a gruff sailor two tables over muttered to his crewmate.
“Base command is shuffling again.
Rear Admiral Hototogisu finally got her transfer orders.
She’s heading back to Marine Headquarters in the Grand Line.”
“Bout time,” the other sailor grunted.
“She cleaned up the South Blue nicely.
Pirate activity is down forty percent.
Shame to see the ‘Bird of Prey’ leave, though.”
I took a slow sip of my ale.
Hototogisu is gone.
That was good news.
The one Marine who had seen my face and knew I was an anomaly was no longer patrolling this ocean.
“More trouble brewing up north, though,” the first sailor continued, lowering his voice.
“The Centaurea Kingdom.
Been six months since the uprising started, and the King’s army is losing ground.
Word is, the Revolutionary Army is backing the rebels.”
Centaurea Kingdom, I filed the name away in my mind.
I flagged down a passing waitress, handing her a coin.
“Excuse me.
Could I get today’s News Coo paper?”
She brought it over a moment later.
I unfolded the broadsheet, mostly to check if there were any major bounties or world events I needed to know about before I tried to find Baterilla.
I glanced at the top right corner of the front page.
I stopped chewing.
I blinked, rubbing my eyes, and looked at the date again.
I stared at the numbers for a solid ten seconds, my brain completely stalling out.
“Hey,” I called out to the bartender, my voice suddenly incredibly tight.
“Is this a misprint?
This date.”
The bartender wiped a glass, glancing at the paper.
“Nope.
That’s today’s date, buddy.”
I dropped the paper onto the table.
My heart began to hammer against my ribs.
“Victor?” Gammamon asked, pausing with a piece of meat halfway to his mouth.
“What’s wrong?
Did you swallow a bone?”
“Gammamon,” I whispered, the color draining from my face.
“We were on that island for five months.
We kept track of the sun.
We counted the days.”
“Yeah.
Five months.”
“Gammamon…
the date on this paper says it’s been a year and a half.”
The little dinosaur froze.
The reality of the island’s mythological nature crashed over me like a tidal wave.
The dense Haki, the petrified woods, the god-tier beasts, it wasn’t just geographically isolated.
It was temporarily warped.
Time moved differently in the Dragon’s sanctuary.
We hadn’t just been surviving, we had been ripped out of the world’s timeline entirely.
“A year and a half,” I gasped, my hands gripping the edge of the table as genuine panic set in.
“We lost a whole year!
What if the timeline is messed up?
What if we missed major events?
What if we’re too late?
I’m a year older!
Did we age faster?
Did we age slower?!”
“I lost a year of eating?!” Gammamon suddenly gasped, clutching the sides of his hood in horror.
“That’s like…
so many meals!”
We sat there, having a synchronized panic attack in the middle of a crowded tavern.
The meticulous plans I had been forming about navigating the canonical timeline were suddenly thrown into chaos.
I had no idea where we were relative to Luffy setting sail.
But then, Gammamon abruptly stopped panicking.
He grabbed his piece of meat and took a massive bite, chewing thoughtfully.
“Actually, wait,” Gammamon mumbled around the food.
“Wait what?” I demanded, hyperventilating slightly.
“We’re temporarily displaced!”
“Who cares?” Gammamon shrugged, swallowing loudly.
“What does it change?”
“What do you mean?
What does it change?!”
“I mean, if it’s been five months or five years, our plan is exactly the same, right?” Gammamon said, looking at me with hilariously blunt, absolute simplicity.
“We find strong people, we punch them, and we don’t let anyone put us in a cage.
Does the calendar change how hard the Gorilla hits?”
I stared at the cloaked dinosaur.
My mouth opened, then closed.
I let out a long, slow breath, slumping back into my chair.
The swirling vortex of anxiety in my chest evaporated, replaced by a begrudging, exhausted amusement.
“You know,” I sighed, picking up my mug of ale.
“For a creature with a brain the size of a walnut, you are occasionally a profound philosopher.”
“I don’t know what that word means, but yes, I am very smart,” Gammamon agreed proudly, going back to his meat.
I picked the paper back up.
He was right.
The timeline didn’t matter.
We were here now.
But to navigate this world, I needed a map, and I needed a steady stream of income that didn’t involve pawning magic wood.
“Eat up,” I told him.
“We’re going to the Marine Base.”
Thirty minutes later, we stood in the lobby of the local Marine Branch.
It was a bustling, clean building filled with uniformed officers and civilians filing complaints.
I walked up to the registration desk, leaning on the counter.
“I’d like to register for a Bounty Hunter license,” I told the bespectacled Marine clerk.
“Of course, sir,” the clerk said, pulling out a standard ledger.
“I just need a name to put on the disbursement accounts.
Any aliases or crew names?”
“No crew,” I said, leaning casually against the wood.
“Just Victor D.
Costa.”
The clerk nodded, writing the name down on his paperwork before turning to a bulky, dial-operated Den Den Mushi console to officially log the registration into the South Blue intelligence network.
“Just take a seat, Mr.
Costa,” the clerk said politely without looking up.
“It will take a few minutes to process the paperwork.
You can browse the wanted boards while you wait.”
I nodded, turning away.
I didn’t see the clerk’s fingers freeze on the dials.
I didn’t see the small, red indicator light on the side of the Den Den Mushi begin flashing in a rapid, silent rhythm.
Somewhere, deep in the secure communications room of the base, an automated alarm had just triggered.
It was hitting two specific parameters.
The first was a global flag for any surname matching a high-profile Revolutionary fugitive.
The second was a highly classified, regional flag placed nearly two years ago by Rear Admiral Hototogisu: Alert Command immediately upon the registration of any individual identifying as ‘Victor’.
Blissfully unaware that the World Government’s intelligence apparatus had just locked onto my exact coordinates, I walked over to the massive bounty boards covering the far wall of the lobby.
Gammamon waddled over beside me, his cloak dragging slightly on the floor.
“Look at all these bad guys,” Gammamon whispered, peeking out from his hood.
He pointed to a poster of a pirate with a massive axe.
“Thirty million.
Can we punch him?”
“Too cheap,” I said, scanning the wall.
“We have the strength now.
I’m not wasting my time chasing street thugs.
We need someone with a real payout to fund a ship.”
I walked past the local boards and stopped in front of the locked glass case labeled GLOBAL THREATS / EXTREME CAUTION.
These were the monsters.
The ones the local Marines prayed never washed up on their shores.
Gammamon tugged on my pant leg.
“Hey, Victor.”
“Yeah?”
“That name sounds like yours.”
I followed his stubby finger to the center of the board.
My heart completely stopped.
Staring back at me from a crisp, glossy wanted poster was a face I knew better than my own.
She looked older.
Her jaw was set in a fierce, unyielding scowl, and a jagged scar ran over the bridge of her nose.
She was mid-swing in the photograph, wielding a massive, terrifying pole-hammer that sparked with violent, crackling electricity.
The bounty read:DEAD OR ALIVE JASMINE D.
COSTA “THE THUNDER MAIDEN” OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY ฿ 300,000,000
I stood there, completely paralyzed.
My brain suffered its second major short-circuit of the day.
“What…” I choked out, my voice cracking an octave higher than normal.
“What the hell?!
Three hundred million?!
Is she a terrorist?!
Mom is going to kill her!
Wait, mom’s not here.
I’m going to kill her!”
“Victor, breathe,” Gammamon said, patting my leg as I had a full-blown, comedic meltdown in the middle of a Marine lobby.
“She has a higher bounty than Crocodile!” I hissed frantically, grabbing my hair.
“What did she do?!
Did she punch a king?!
How is she shooting lightning?!
She was an accounting major!”
“Victor,” Gammamon said again, his voice suddenly sounding very small and very strained.
“What?!” I snapped, looking down at him.
Gammamon wasn’t looking at my sister’s poster.
He was staring, wide-eyed and utterly horrified, at the poster directly next to it.
I looked.
It was a photograph of a colossal, green cactus.
It had hollow, terrifyingly happy holes for a face.
It was wearing oversized red boxing gloves, and the picture captured it mid-uppercut, sending three Marine captains flying into the stratosphere in a blur of needles and violence.
The bounty read:DEAD OR ALIVE TOGEMON THE LIVING CACTUS REVOLUTIONARY ARMY PET ฿ 250,000,000
Gammamon slowly looked up at me, his jaw trembling.
“Victor,” Gammamon whispered, absolute shock written across his face.
“Palmon has been busy.”
Word Count: 2677
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