"So, Tashigi—would you say that answers your question?"
With the back of his head resting in Ain's lap, Arton looked at Tashigi with a smile.
"Yeah, I understand now."
Tashigi nodded, then knelt down and lifted Arton's lower leg onto her thigh.
Her hands deliberately worked over the muscles in his calf, trying her best to ease his fatigue.
Of course, for Arton as he was now, what was really tired wasn't his calves.
It was his mind, his spirit, and the sword that had spent all that spirit.
"So if we really do pull Hina-senpai out of Enies Lobby later, Captain Art on will give her the chance to stay on the ship. You could even just treat her as an ordinary companion and not make a move on her. But if she decides to leave, you won't stop her. And if she runs into trouble again later, you might not go save her a second time."
As she kept kneading his calf, Tashigi slowly laid out her understanding.
"Yeah, that's more or less what I mean."
Arton nodded, then smirked.
"But that phrase, 'make a move on her'... Tashigi, I never exactly made a move on you on purpose, did I? Back then, you were the one making a move on me."
The instant she heard that, Tashigi's face turned bright red.
Because just like Arton said, he really hadn't forced anything on her back then.
At the end of the day, she had been the one who reached out to him for her own reasons.
From a certain point of view, she was the one who had taken advantage of him.
"All right, I'll stop teasing you."
Arton laughed, then patted Ain behind him and said, "Thanks for being my pillow, but I think I should get up and move around a little."
The moment she heard that, Ain said at once, "Being your pillow is my honor, Captain."
Truthfully, if she could, Ain wanted to ride this mood and do even more shameless things to Arton.
It was just that the current situation wasn't really the right time for it.
"By the way, Captain, are we really just going straight to Enies Lobby like this?"
Ain's brows drew together slightly as she spoke.
"The people at Enies Lobby will definitely recognize our pirate ship. If we head there that directly, they'll spot us right away. And the currents around that place are extremely complicated too. It'll be a huge test for our ship."
She had never personally gone to Enies Lobby in any real sense, but she had heard plenty about it from Zephyr and from former colleagues.
So naturally, she knew ordinary ships had a very hard time getting close to it.
Which made sense.
If just any ship could casually get near Enies Lobby, then it never would've become one of the World Government's symbols of power.
In fact, if reaching it were that easy, plenty of people who wanted revenge on the World Government would've already sailed there to cause trouble.
It was precisely because the currents there were so abnormal that they had stopped many people who might otherwise have tried to go.
"That is a problem."
Arton rubbed his chin and nodded.
"I trust Nami's skills. I'm sure she can guide us there safely. But if the people at Enies Lobby spot us right from the start, that'd be a real pain."
Chapter 650: In Ain's Heart, the Captain Is Her Partner
Since they were going to rescue Hina, the natural move was to slip into Enies Lobby quietly.
Charging straight in headfirst like the Straw Hat Pirates did in the original manga would be way too much trouble.
Arton had no interest in dragging a Buster Call over from Marine Headquarters the way the Straw Hats had.
As far as he was concerned, the only reason the Straw Hats managed to escape the Buster Call surrounding Enies Lobby in the manga was because they had absurdly insane luck.
At that point in the story, the Straw Hats weren't even strong enough to beat a single Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral.
And yet, somehow, not one Vice Admiral properly went after them.
Honestly, Arton sometimes suspected those Vice Admirals on the Buster Call fleet already knew Luffy was Garp's grandson, and that was why they never seriously moved against him.
Even then, the fact that the Straw Hats escaped all that cannon fire was still ridiculous.
If he had to explain it, Arton would say it was all thanks to the Going Merry.
At the very, very end, that ship had pulled off a miracle far beyond its limits, and that was what let the Straw Hats escape Enies Lobby alive.
Arton didn't think he had that kind of protagonist luck.
So he was much more inclined to sneak quietly into Enies Lobby, quietly find the prison where Hina was being held, and quietly take her back out.
In the best-case scenario, they wouldn't alert a single person.
Of course, if he just so happened to run into Spandam, the chief of Enies Lobby, Arton wouldn't mind taking the opportunity to beat the hell out of that bastard he'd hated for a long time.
And if he happened to run into Kalifa, Arton wouldn't mind secretly admiring her figure a little either, just to see how the real her compared to the version he'd imagined in his own works.
What Arton still didn't know was that Kalifa had already learned of his existence.
More than that, because of some of the future information Arton had let slip, she had already started thinking about leaving the World Government and boarding his ship.
She had even begun wondering just how far she would need to go to get a template from him that actually suited her.
"Captain, how about this? We go to Water 7 first, then take the train from there to Enies Lobby. I've heard the sea train from Water 7 has a route that leads there."
Tashigi offered the suggestion.
"Yeah, I've heard about the sea train from Teacher Zephyr too," Ain added with a nod.
"The sea train, huh..."
Arton thought it over for a moment.
But in the end, he still shook his head.
"Better not. Going to Water 7 first would mean taking a detour. And if we go in on the sea train, we'll definitely be subjected to serious inspections by the people at Enies Lobby. I think it's better if we make our own way there. If we really run into currents that make it too hard for the ship to get through, then I'll just fly over there quietly myself."
"Huh? Captain, are you planning to infiltrate Enies Lobby alone?"
Tashigi asked in surprise.
"Isn't that way too dangerous?"
Ain frowned, looking at Arton with obvious worry.
By now, she already regarded Arton as someone just as important to her as Zephyr.
More than that, she had already decided in her heart that Arton was her partner for life.
And because of that, the last thing she wanted was to see anything happen to him.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.