The sea glittered under open sky.
A two-masted sailing vessel cut through the waves, riding the wind at an easy pace.
This was Rocks’s ship.
Second day out from Cocoyasi Village.
On the deck.
Rocks was stretched out in a chair, face turned up to the sun with a glass of juice in hand, looking like a man without a single care in the world.
Kuina was running through her sword forms nearby — every movement fluid and precise, controlled beauty shot through with genuine killing intent.
Nami was tending to an orange tree she had brought on board.
A section of the deck had been claimed and converted into a small orange grove, neat rows of potted citrus arranged in the open air.
Each of them doing their own thing.
Nobody bored.
Soon enough, lunchtime arrived.
The ship had no cook.
Rocks stepped into the role without complaint and put together a full spread — a table loaded with food, mostly meat, portions generous enough that an ordinary person might stretch them across several days.
For Rocks, it was one meal.
“At the rate Rocks eats, our food supplies might not last a week,” Nami said, surveying the wreckage of the table.
“More to the point, at this rate the Berries on this ship are going to disappear very fast.”
A few days sailing together had given her a clear picture of his appetite.
She had never met anyone who ate like this in her life.
Just feeding Rocks alone was going to cost a significant amount of money.
“We still have close to twenty million Berries.
That’s not exactly easy to burn through.”
Rocks ate without rushing, though food did have a way of vanishing in front of him at speed.
“And money can always be made.
Run into any pirate out here and my food budget is covered for a good while.”
He looked out at the open water.
“The sea is short on a lot of things.
Pirates isn’t one of them.”
The money taken from the Buggy Pirates, over ten million Berries — was still mostly intact.
After trading the Arlong Pirates’ ship at the neighboring island’s shipyard, there had been a decent sum left over from that too.
Close to twenty million Berries total, sitting in the hold.
Enough to last for a while.
“I know that.
It still hurts to watch,” Nami muttered, pressing her lips together.
“This is ruinous.
What kind of household could keep up with feeding you?”
Rocks drank his juice.
“Eating enough is one of the reasons I set sail in the first place.
I’m not about to go hungry out here.” He waved it off.
“Don’t worry about the Berries.
We won’t run short.
My old man told me there’s a place somewhere on the Grand Line where enormous amounts of gold just sit there, completely unclaimed.”
“Once we reach the Grand Line, we go find it.
That’s my food budget handled for life.”
Even without raiding and pillaging, the sea had ways to make money.
And as a transmigrator, Rocks knew very well that Skypiea existed — and that the gold there was real.
Skypiea was on the list.
For the gold, and to see the place with his own eyes.
“Unclaimed gold?
A lot of it?”
Nami’s eyes went wide.
“Is that actually real?”
Then she thought about it and frowned.
“Wait.
If there’s that much gold just sitting somewhere with no one to claim it, how has no one already taken it?”
“The place is a bit out of the way,” Rocks said between bites.
“It’s in the sky.”
“The sky?”
Nami stared at him.
Then something surfaced in her memory and her eyes went wider.
“Are you talking about Sky Island?
The one from the legends?”
“Sky Island is actually real?”
“You’ve heard of Sky Island?”
Rocks was genuinely surprised.
The East Blue was an information backwater.
Devil Fruit users were rare enough that plenty of people went their whole lives without ever seeing one.
He hadn’t expected Nami to know about Sky Islands.
Nami’s voice took on a note of longing.
“My dream is to draw a complete world map.
For that I need sailing knowledge, knowledge of islands, all of it.” She paused.
“I read about Sky Island in a book once.
The book said it was a legend.”
“It’s not a legend.
It’s real.” Rocks looked up at the sky and smiled.
“There’s a Sky Island with a lot of gold on it.
When we reach the Grand Line, we’ll go take a look.”
Kuina had been listening with growing curiosity.
“Did Uncle Dick ever reach Sky Island?”
Rocks pulled the old man into service as a convenient alibi and nodded.
“He was never particularly strong, but his experience was wide.
He probably made it there at some point.
Otherwise why would he have told me about it?”
Internally: whether old Dick had actually set foot on a Sky Island was anyone’s guess.
But he made a useful cover story.
Rocks could hardly tell people he was a transmigrator.
With the old man available as a standing excuse, any piece of foreknowledge could always be attributed to him.
An elder in the house really was worth their weight in gold.
Truer words had never been spoken.
“So when are we going to Sky Island?”
Nami’s eyes were shining.
Curiosity and excitement both running at full capacity.
It was an island, which meant she wanted to chart it.
And she genuinely wanted to know how an island could float in the sky.
Her mind was already turning the question over.
“When the time comes.” Rocks looked at Nami’s expression and smiled.
“And when we get the gold, you both get a share.”
Nami raised a fist.
“I’m holding you to that.
No going back on it later!” New chapters come out on g.com first.
“Of course,” Rocks said.
“I keep my word.”
The three of them were still eating, the conversation drifting from one thing to the next, when a News Coo dropped out of the sky and landed on the deck railing.
It let out two short squawks that sounded very much like an inquiry about whether anyone wanted a paper.
Nami fished out a hundred Berries and made the transaction.
“Rocks.
The Buggy Pirates made the news.”
She glanced at the front page.
Something flashed in her eyes.
She held the paper out.
“You should read this yourself.”
“Should I.”
Rocks took it and read.
The front page headline was exactly what he had put in motion.
“Fifty million Berries.” He couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth pulling upward.
“That’s a serious number for the East Blue.
Fitting for someone who’s declared he wants to be King of the East Blue.”
The paper had a flair for grabbing attention.
The headline read:
A VICIOUS CRIMINAL WHO HID HIS TRUE NATURE — THE POWERFUL PIRATE WITH HIS SIGHTS SET ON RULING THE EAST BLUE!
BUGGY THE CLOWN!
The article laid out the Buggy Pirates’ crimes in full.
Wiped out the Arlong Pirates.
Slaughtered Marine soldiers.
Killed a Marine officer.
Publicly declared ambitions to crown themselves rulers of the East Blue.
At the bottom of the page, a brand new wanted poster.
Buggy Pirates Captain.
“Clown” Buggy.
Bounty: Fifty Million Berries.
“…”
Kuina had read it too.
She was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke, her voice was flat with exasperation.
“The Marines are really this easy to fool?
They didn’t even investigate.
They just declared it settled and moved on?”
The whole thing was somewhere between ridiculous and genuinely impressive.
The Marines had looked at this situation and called it done?
“It’s normal,” Rocks said, unbothered.
“The Marines are a massive institution.
They can’t be thorough about everything.”
“Sometimes a single report from a branch base is enough for Marine Headquarters to pass judgment.
And Buggy was already a pirate to begin with.
An ordinary person with no history could end up stuck with a false charge on somebody else’s word alone, with no way to fight it.”
He remembered how it had worked in the original story.
Luffy got his first bounty entirely on the strength of Colonel Nezumi’s one-sided account.
Did Marine Headquarters go and verify the details?
They did not.
Far too much trouble.