Mock Town smelled like cheap alcohol, fried food, and the sour, educated tinge of a place whose inhabitants had decided survival meant abandoning hope.
Kael had picked up the town before their ship approached the docks.
He’d scented the place from twenty miles out, and the reading had been easy: a population whose collective chakra reeked of corrosion, the kind of corrosion that occurs after the emotion of fear is made habitual.
He’d told the others what they should expect.
Luffy had snored something about boredom and headed below deck.
Zoro had agreed and headed off to sharpen something.
Nami had told them all not to pick fights, and had said that pointedly to Sanji, who had threatened, within ten minutes of landing, to knock the teeth out of the man who’d spilt rum on Robin’s dress.
That man had been named Bellamy.
Bellamy was the pirate whose existence was predicated on the idea that mocking is easier than achievement.
His crew hung around him in the bar, the body language of those who organize their whole lives around being seen with him.
When the Straw Hat crew walked into the establishment, the bar fell silent, not out of silence, necessarily, but of heightened awareness that hadn’t existed before.
Sanji had threatened to knock Bellamy’s teeth out.
Bellamy had laughed.
Bellamy had spoken—Kael couldn’t quite recall the words, because he’d stopped listening several minutes ago—an attempt to draw Luffy into a fight.
Luffy had stayed out of the bar, where he was happily devouring meat buns.
Bellamy switched his attention onto Kael.
That was, strictly speaking, not part of his script.
Bellamy had been looking for a fight from Luffy, and failing that, a reaction from Sanji.
Bellamy had a set script for this.
He rose, walked towards Kael and, after leaning against the table, propped himself on it.
“What are you?
Some kind of monk?”
Kael sipped some water.
“Monk in a pirate crew—that’s funny.
Tell me: what’s your dream, monk?”
Kael looked up, letting Sage Mode drop to a duller pitch and studying Bellamy carefully.
Bellamy’s chakra was, unsurprisingly, predictable.
Beneath the posturing, he was unhappy, someone who organized his life around avoiding disappointment.
The tactic had clearly failed.
Bellamy was somebody who felt most alive when he saw people shrink beneath his gaze.
“I don’t have a dream,” Kael replied smoothly.
“Of course you don’t.
None of you have a dream.
You all pretend you do.
You run after this grandiose thing or that just because you can’t stand still.
People with dreams aren’t like you—they haven’t figured out that the dream is the joke.
People who figure that out, stop.”
No response.
“You agree with me.” You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“No.
But I don’t really disagree either.”
Bellamy’s face performed that subtle inward shift that Kael had been waiting for for several moments—the moment when a person’s pre-written dialogue breaks because the other party refuses to respond in any way.
Bellamy had wanted Kael to snicker, or retort, or say that he indeed had a dream and wasn’t going to bow to the demands of this arrogant jackass of a man.
Bellamy hadn’t expected indifference.
Bellamy reached for Kael’s shoulder.
Bellamy’s hand hung in the air, hovering perhaps half an inch above Kael’s shoulder, when one of the orbs floated to Kael’s side, spinning lazily as if indifferent to everything else around it.
Bellamy glanced towards the orb.
“What’s that?”
“You should put your hand down.”
“What’s that?”
“Do not push me again.”
Bellamy dropped his hand immediately; the tone rather than volume conveyed sufficient threat.
Kael could feel Bellamy’s momentary shock as it rippled through his chakra like a stone in water.
Bellamy, whose entire existence had centered around mockery, was facing his first encounter with indifference, and he had nothing to say to it.
Back amongst his own crew, Bellamy laughed loudly, as if hoping to mask his embarrassment.
The laugh was empty, and so were the laughs of his companions.
The bar fell into disordered activity.
Robin sat down opposite Kael.
She’d been sitting at the back of the room, reading, and, like Kael, had sensed the moment Bellamy decided to start harassing Kael.
She hadn’t interfered in her turn, however.
“That was quick.”
“He wasn’t looking for a fight.
He wanted to be denied.”
“They all do.”
“Many do.”
Outside, Luffy had finished his meat bun and gazed up at the sky, wearing that patient, absorbed expression he wears whenever thinking whether to nap in the streets or find something to eat.
Bellamy couldn’t expect Luffy to respond to him in any fashion whatsoever.
The crew, which Luffy planned to abandon within twenty-four hours, was nobody’s concern but Luffy’s.
The bar, whose inhabitants ridiculed the concept of dreams, was nobody’s concern except theirs.
The sky was Luffy’s concern, the gold city floating in it, its location, and the path leading there.
Kael, sitting in the bar with Robin and Truth Seeking Orb hovering beside him, for the first time in months, felt an unmistakable momentum toward the future.
The country was behind them.
They faced the sky.
He sipped his water again.
Then, he stood.
Bellamy didn’t pursue them.
A man sitting in the corner of the bar watched them go.
Kael had sensed the presence of this particular patron’s attention the moment they’d walked in—the few instances of attention that hadn’t acquired that corrosive taint—and had marked it, though, as with Bellamy, hadn’t acted on it.
The man was an older fellow, with dark eyes and a strong tan, dressed in an old coat.
The man sat alone in the bar, neither eating nor drinking.
As Kael passed him, he tipped his head politely at the approaching man, as if acknowledging a professional colleague.
Kael returned the favor, though didn’t let the exchange disrupt his stride.
Once out of the bar, Kael asked Robin about him.
“The man’s name is Blackbeard—I believe his first name is Marshall D.
Teach.
He’s been making his reputation in these parts of the New World over the past two years.”
“He shouldn’t be here.
This isn’t the place where one makes a reputation.”
“He was watching us.”
“He was watching you.”
“What do you make of him?”
“Well…he’s quite patient.
He appears friendly to his friends but kills those he doesn’t care for.
He’s been waiting for an opportunity for a while now.”
Kael walked on in thoughtful silence.
Blackbeard’s chakra was, oddly, something else Kael hadn’t mentioned to Robin—his chakra felt…doubled.
Two chakras were operating in the same body, and Kael wasn’t sure he understood what it was about.
Nor did he have the chance.
“We’ll meet again.”
She averted her gaze.
They walked to the pier.
The Going Merry awaited them there.
The crew assembled.
The Knock Up Stream was going to take place tomorrow.
The sky still lingered ahead of them.
He didn’t look back at the bar.
Not necessary; he could feel, behind them, the man with doubled chakra rise, pay the bar owner for his unfinished drink and leave through a side entrance.
He wouldn’t chase after them yet.
Not yet.
For now.