The night was a thick, velvet shroud over the Calm Belt, illuminated only by the faint, ghostly glow of the Jade Wings.
I sat on the back of HoHo, my Phoenix-Peacock Hybrid clone.
Beneath me, the bird’s stone-green feathers were cold and hard as marble, yet they moved with a silent, terrifying grace through the stagnant air.
Behind us, the nameless island was a dark silhouette against the stars.
In our camp, Hototogisu lay in a state of profound unconsciousness.
I had drugged her with a cocktail of concentrated sedative herbs found in Zone 3, enough to keep a grown man down for a week, let alone a recovering Rear Admiral.
Gammamon remained there to guard her, but his real task was much more mundane, he was using his physical strength to lash together a raft of sun-bleached driftwood that could support a human body.
The plan was simple, clinical, and utterly cold.
As HoHo glided toward the coordinates from its memory, the shape of a Marine vessel finally emerged from the gloom.
I willed the bird to descend, hovering in the clouds.
I needed to confirm the target.
Using the cover of the night, I moved HoHo closer until I could hear the creak of the hull and the low murmur of voices from the deck.
Two Marines were standing watch near the stern, their silhouettes illuminated by a flickering oil lantern.
“I’m telling you, Sarge, there is no way she is still alive,” one of the privates whispered, his voice trembling.
“All we ever recovered from that ship was dead bodies and broken pieces of wood”
“Quiet,” the Sergeant snapped, though his own hand was shaking as he lit a pipe.
“We’ve got enough problems.
The Commodore says we’re lucky to be floating at all after that scuffle with the sea king.
We port in the South Blue, we fix the masts, and we forget the Calm Belt ever happened.”
I listened for an hour.
This wasn’t Hototogisu’s ship.
It was a separate vessel, battered in a fight against a sea king.
They were survivors, barely hanging on, searching for something or someone as they drifted toward the exit of the dead zone.
I had all the information I needed.
I patted HoHo’s neck, and the jade bird banked, turning back toward the island.
By the time I landed in the clearing, the pre-dawn mist was clinging to the trees.
Gammamon was finishing the raft, his blue scarf dusted with wood shavings.
He looked up, his yellow eyes sharp and questioning.
“It’s not her ship,” I said, sliding off the bird’s back.
“But it’s her people.
They’re searching for something or someone.
They’re heading to the South Blue for repairs.”
Gammamon nodded, his expression uncharacteristically grim for a Digimon.
“So we go ahead with the plan?”
“We have to,” I replied.
“If we take her there ourselves, she’ll demand we stay.
She’ll report us to the Commodore.
Then it’s us versus a warship.
Even if we win,and we would, we’d be branded as pirates before we’re ready.
I don’t want the World Government’s eyes on this island, and I don’t want a bounty on my head while I’m still mastering the Jade Wings.”
We worked in silence.
We moved the unconscious Hototogisu onto the raft, securing her with soft vines.
Then, I added the final, the cruelest ingredient of our plan, a concentrated dose of psychedelic nectar from Zone 2 that we call ‘Moon-Lilies.’
“When she wakes up,” Gammamon muttered, “she’s going to be out of her mind.”
“That’s the point,” I said.
“She’ll wake up on a Marine deck, high on hallucinogens and sunstroke.
She’ll tell them about a boy with jade chains and a talking white dinosaur on a monster island.
The Marine doctors will call it a psychosis episode.
Dehydration and grief do strange things to the brain.
When she looks for ‘Victor of Karate island’ in the records and finds nothing, she’ll eventually convince herself we were just a fever dream.”
It was a total erasure of our existence.
We were gaslighting a Rear Admiral into believing her only saviors never existed.
We executed the plan flawlessly.
As the first hint of gold touched the eastern horizon, HoHo carried the raft, with me and the drugged Marine aboard, to within a mile of the drifting vessel.
I lowered the raft into the water, ensuring it was positioned directly in the ship’s projected path.
I looked down at Hototogisu one last time.
Part of me felt a twinge of guilt.
She had been arrogant and fanatical, but she had also been a person.
But then I remembered her eyes when she looked at my weapon, the greed masked as ‘Justice.’
“Goodbye, Admiral,” I whispered.
“Enjoy the South Blue.”
I hopped onto HoHo’s back, and we ascended into the clouds.
We hovered there, two shadows against the sun, watching as the Marine lookouts spotted the raft.
We stayed until we saw the crane lower, until we saw her orange shirt disappear onto the deck.
Only then did we turn back toward the island.
The flight back was quiet.
When we landed in the center of our camp, the absence of her voice, her constant lecturing, her demands, her presence, felt like a physical weight being lifted.
Gammamon sat by the fire pit, which was now cold.
“We’re alone again.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking toward the interior of the island.
“And we’re staying that way until we’re ready.
Gammamon, look at what happened.
We had to drug a Rear Admiral and hide like rats just to avoid a fight we might lose.
That can’t happen again.”
I gripped the Jade Wings’ disk until the metal bit into my palm.
“We aren’t leaving this island until we can walk into Marine Headquarters and not give a damn who sees us.
We don’t leave until we can take down the titans in the central lake.”
Gammamon’s tail wagged, a fierce, determined spark returning to his eyes.
“The lake monster?
You mean the ones that look like mountains?”
“The ones that can eat Sea Kings for breakfast,” I confirmed.
“We train.
We hunt.
We master every inch of this crater.
When we finally step out into the Grand Line, I want the world to tremble, not because we’re villains, but because we’re free.
We find my family.
We change the stories that need changing.
And we do it on our terms.”
Gammamon stood up, his small claws sparking with digital energy.
“Let’s do it, Victor!
Let’s go to the lake!”
“Not today,” I laughed, though the laughter was hard.
“Today, we plan, tomorrow we start the real work.”
The chapter ended with the two of us standing at the edge of the clearing, looking toward the mist-shrouded center of the island.
The Rear Admiral was gone, the secrets were safe, and the long, brutal climb to the top of the food chain had truly begun.
Word Count: 1156
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