After welcoming the Vogue Merry back, we took advantage of its stop at Heartless Island to completely restock our supplies. The Heartless loaded fresh water, provisions, repair materials, and everything Sanji might need in the kitchen. Meanwhile, I finally reunited with the rest of the crew and listened to the story of their month-long exploration of East Blue.
Overall, their journey had been surprisingly peaceful. Luffy had deliberately explored several small islands that did not even have names on ordinary maps, some of which were completely uninhabited. They still had enough wildlife to provide the crew with a few good fights and, much to Luffy and Sanji's delight, a respectable amount of fresh meat.
Luffy also told me about their encounter with a strange man stuck inside a treasure chest who lived among a collection of particularly unusual animals. After quickly realizing that the man had been watching over them for a long time, the crew decided not to hunt any of the creatures on the island. Instead, they brought out some bottles and provisions and shared a drink with the chest-man, turning the stop into a simple friendly encounter.
However, the month hadn't been spent solely on exploration. Luffy had continued seriously working on his navigation skills alongside Nami and Merry, learning how to better read currents, anticipate changes in the weather, and maintain a course without constantly relying on Nami. He was still nowhere near her level, but he could now genuinely contribute to navigating the ship instead of simply asking which direction they were supposed to go.
Nami had used the quieter periods of the journey to begin studying something far more unexpected. With the medical books available aboard the ship and Kaya's help, she had learned some basic medical knowledge: how to recognize common symptoms, properly clean a wound, administer first aid, and, most importantly, recognize when a situation was beyond her abilities. She wasn't trying to become a doctor, only to avoid being completely helpless whenever someone got injured.
Usopp had chosen a completely different field, beginning to learn how to cook under Sanji and Kazuki. He was obviously nowhere near Sanji's level, but he was quickly learning simple recipes, food preservation techniques, and especially how to prepare something decent with limited ingredients. It gave the crew another person capable of handling the kitchen whenever Sanji was absent or otherwise occupied.
Heartless Island hadn't remained idle during our absence either. Charles had significantly expanded our communication network, particularly by making use of the former Marines who now belonged to the Dove faction. Their experience with military procedures, reports, and Den Den Mushi made them perfect candidates for maintaining communication relays throughout East Blue.
The Doves now patrolled several areas alongside the Heartless and regularly helped the local population. Their main duties involved assisting isolated villages and quickly transmitting warnings whenever natural disasters occurred, since pirates had practically disappeared from East Blue. The few who remained were mostly people who, like our captain, sought adventure and freedom without hurting innocent people.
Each successful intervention continued to improve the Doves' reputation among the population.
Through Charles, I had also given them permission to display the Heartless emblem on their uniforms. The symbol made their affiliation with Sora's organization immediately recognizable while also clearly representing their break from the old Marines they had once served.
Counting the Doves, the various recruits, and everyone assigned to communication relays or support duties, Sora's organization was now approaching a thousand members. The vast majority were still concentrated in East Blue, but that suited me perfectly. I preferred having a dense and genuinely functional network in one sea rather than pointlessly scattering our forces across the entire world.
One particularly useful advantage was that some members of the Doves had maintained contact with the more neutral elements of the Marines. Those connections allowed us to obtain information from much farther away, including updates on the situations of certain kingdoms or the movements and activities of various pirate crews.
Belmer had also taken advantage of the month to develop her own activities and had probably secured the most interesting contact of them all. Morgans had personally visited Heartless Island in his bird form to speak with her. His interest in her articles eventually led to a genuine agreement that allowed Belmer to send information directly into his newspaper network.
Morgans had even agreed to provide her with several News Coo that would regularly collect her articles and carry them directly to his organization. This meant she no longer had to rely on our own travels and could publish much more frequently. In exchange for this privileged access, Morgans promised never to mention either the existence or the location of Heartless Island in any of his publications.
That precaution almost seemed excessive to me by now. With the numerous Heartless patrols spread throughout East Blue, the Doves, and our constantly expanding communication network, the sea had become incomparably safer wherever our influence extended. It was becoming increasingly difficult for a hostile fleet to approach our territories without being reported long before it could pose any real threat.
More importantly, however, I was beginning to understand what all these developments truly represented. While I had been training with Dextremih to gather and exploit intelligence, Charles had started building exactly the kind of infrastructure I would need to obtain it. Patrols, relay stations, Den Den Mushi, former Marines who knew East Blue, and now even an indirect connection to Morgans' information network were gradually forming something far greater.
Kratos had finally completed his training under Hector. After several weeks spent working with wood, repairing hulls, and learning the fundamentals of ship carpentry, he was now skilled enough to work directly on the Vogue Merry. He obviously lacked the experience of a shipwright who had spent his entire life at sea, but he could now handle most routine repairs without assistance.
His new role had become somewhat less essential ever since Merry had been transformed into a Heartless. Since the ship was now directly connected to her, much of the damage suffered by its hull could simply be repaired by healing her. That was precisely why a Green Requiem remained aboard at all times, ready to intervene whenever the ship suffered any serious damage.
That didn't make Kratos useless, though. Anything involving the sails, ropes, furniture, or physical modifications to the ship still required genuine craftsmanship. Besides, it was better to have someone capable of repairing the Merry normally rather than relying entirely on a healing Heartless every time a piece of wood broke.
Once the last of the supplies had been loaded, the entire crew set sail again. Luffy naturally returned to the figurehead, Nami checked the charts with Merry while Sanji and Kazuki stored the provisions. Zoro and Kuina had already returned to their usual places in the crow's nest, while Koby, Kaya, Usopp, Charles, Kratos, and the others simply enjoyed being back at sea.
Our next destination, however, required a fairly significant shortcut.
We still had two islands left to explore in this part of our journey before I personally set out on an aerial trip toward the other two seas. My main objective was to record sufficiently precise coordinates there so that I could later open portals directly to those locations, avoiding the need for lengthy detours every time we wanted to travel from one sea to another.
So I opened a massive portal directly in front of the Vogue Merry.
The ship passed through the dark surface without difficulty before emerging into the waters we were looking for. From there, our first step was to return to the area around Minion so we could then make our way toward Swallow Island, the island we had deliberately avoided during our previous visit because of Doflamingo's presence.
This time, the surrounding waters seemed much quieter.
At least, they did until Usopp suddenly froze.
"Kaya..."
The young woman was already staring in the same direction.
Both of them had tensed almost simultaneously.
A small boat was approaching the Merry.
At first glance, there was absolutely nothing impressive about it. A simple rowboat moving across relatively calm waters might have gone completely unnoticed if something considerably larger hadn't been swimming right behind it.
A gigantic Sea King was calmly cutting through the waves.
Several members of the crew immediately went on guard. The two swordsmen leapt down from the crow's nest, Zoro placing a hand on one of his swords while Kuina slightly raised Masamune. Sanji abandoned whatever he had been doing, while Nami instinctively moved closer to me as her card soldiers readied themselves to intervene.
Luffy, meanwhile, leaned over the railing.
"Oh! A big fish!"
"That's probably not the important part!" Usopp protested.
I quickly recognized the creature.
More precisely, I recognized the Nobody that had taken the form of a Sea King.
Then I looked at the man sitting in the small boat.
"Ah."
Usopp abruptly turned toward me.
"Why did you say 'ah' like that?!"
Kaya had already recognized the face.
Even though the approaching man no longer gave off quite the same impression as he once had, some features were simply impossible to forget.
Kuro.
Or rather...
Xurok.
The small boat eventually pulled alongside the Merry, and its occupant agilely leapt aboard, landing on the deck. The Sea King-shaped Nobody made no attempt to climb aboard and simply continued swimming beside the ship, its massive head occasionally emerging above the waves.
Xurok quickly looked over everyone.
Then his face lit up when he saw me.
"Hey, Jordan! Long time no see!"
"Xurok!"
I naturally walked over to him.
He raised one hand.
I slapped my palm against his in a loud high five.
CLAP!
The silence that followed was magnificent.
I slowly turned my head.
Practically the entire crew was staring at me.
Luffy mostly looked curious, Nami had one eyebrow raised, and Sanji was staring at me as though waiting for an explanation. Zoro and Kuina still hadn't taken their hands away from their weapons, while Kaya and Usopp were probably the most bewildered of them all.
Usopp pointed at me.
Then at Xurok.
Then back at me.
"Why did you just high-five KURO?!"
I blinked.
"Ah."
Nami sighed.
"You forgot to tell us something again, didn't you?"
I thought about it for a few seconds.
"Yes."
Usopp nearly choked.
"HOW CAN YOU FORGET SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!"
I raised my hands to calm everyone down.
"Okay, quick explanation. He's with us."
Kaya cautiously looked at Xurok.
"With us?"
"He's an ally, like Dextremih. I simply forgot to tell you."
Dextremih, who was also aboard for this journey, immediately turned her attention toward the newcomer.
I continued before Usopp could explode a second time.
"When I discovered what Kuro was really doing and learned that he was a pirate, I dealt with him. Let's just say the result was fairly similar to what happened with Dextremih."
I placed a hand on Xurok's shoulder.
"The old Kuro isn't really the person standing in front of you anymore. His name is Xurok now, and he works for me. He's much friendlier... although he's also become considerably more hot-blooded."
Xurok smiled.
"I definitely prefer this version."
Usopp remained suspicious.
"He's not going to try to kill Kaya, is he?"
Xurok's smile immediately disappeared. He looked at Usopp, then at Kaya, showing no irritation whatsoever at the distrust they still felt toward him. After everything Kuro had put them through in the past, it would have been difficult to blame either of them for not welcoming him with open arms.
"No. And besides, I can sense the danger coming from every single one of you."
His gaze quickly swept across the deck before settling on Kaya.
"I think even Kaya could defeat me now."
A smile immediately appeared on the young woman's face.
Before Xurok could understand why, her body suddenly changed. Her legs lengthened, her muscles grew stronger, and rabbit ears appeared as she shifted into her hybrid form. With a single burst of speed, she literally vanished from his field of vision.
Xurok's eyes widened.
Kaya was already standing behind him.
She calmly placed a hand on his shoulder with a perfectly innocent smile.
"Good answer."
Xurok swallowed loudly.
"I take back the 'I think' part."
Kuina burst out laughing while Zoro gave an amused grin. Both of them finally removed their hands from their swords, clearly satisfied that if Xurok truly had any bad intentions, he had just realized how badly he had chosen the ship on which to act on them.
Kaya calmly returned to her human form and walked back over to Usopp.
Usopp himself seemed torn between the satisfaction of seeing Kaya capable of terrifying Kuro and the lingering difficulty of accepting that the man standing before him was no longer truly the same person he had once known.
Luffy, meanwhile, had already settled the matter in his mind a long time ago.
"So he's nice now?"
"More or less."
Luffy immediately nodded.
"Okay!"
And that was that.
As far as Luffy was concerned, the matter was officially closed.
Nami, on the other hand, gave me a far less forgiving look.
"You really need to work on how you introduce new allies."
"I admit I could've handled that better."
She crossed her arms.
"You think?"
I decided it was probably better not to answer.
Meanwhile, Dextremih had stepped forward.
She stopped directly in front of Xurok and began examining him without saying a single word. Her gaze moved over his posture, his clothes, his hands, the way he distributed his weight between his legs, and finally the almost imperceptible movements of his eyes.
At first, Xurok maintained his confidence.
Then a little less.
And a little less.
Dextremih simply kept staring at him.
For a long time.
A very long time.
"What?" Xurok finally asked.
"Your posture draws attention."
He instinctively straightened up.
"Excuse me?"
Dextremih raised an eyebrow slightly.
"And you immediately changed it because I pointed it out. That's another mistake."
Xurok opened his mouth slightly before apparently deciding that it would be wiser to let her continue.
"You look too directly at the people you're analyzing. When you came aboard, you checked the exits, identified the potentially dangerous fighters, and located the people you already knew before you even went to greet Jordan."
She then gestured toward his legs.
"Your movements are too confident. You walk like someone who knows exactly what he's capable of and expects to have to react to an attack at any moment. Very useful for an assassin. Much less useful for a spy who's supposed to become insignificant."
Xurok slowly turned his head toward me.
"Does she always do this?"
I smiled.
"Yes."
Dextremih didn't even look away.
"He's going to need training if you actually intend to use him as a spy."
Xurok's confidence dropped another notch.
"I already know how to infiltrate places."
"I didn't say you were incapable of getting inside somewhere."
She took a step toward him.
"I'm saying someone properly trained would notice you."
Xurok fell silent.
Dextremih crossed her arms.
"Getting inside a building without being stopped isn't the same thing as spending three months among fifty people without a single one of them wondering who you really are."
On that point, she spoke from experience.
She had successfully lived among the Rhum Runners for three years before my ability to perceive hearts revealed that something was wrong with her. Without that particularly unusual ability, I wasn't even sure I would have ever discovered her true identity.
I placed a friendly hand on Xurok's shoulder.
"Congratulations. You just met your teacher."
He looked at me.
"I thought I came here to meet up with a friend."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive."
Dextremih folded her arms even tighter.
"Your first lesson starts this afternoon."
Xurok immediately shot me an accusing look.
I answered him with my brightest smile.
"Good to see you again, buddy."
He remained silent for a few seconds before sighing.
"I should've stayed with my Sea King."
As if it had heard its name, the enormous Nobody swimming alongside the Merry let out a deep rumble from the ocean.
Luffy immediately rushed over to the railing.
"IT TALKED!"
"That's not really the point, Luffy!"
Xurok shook his head before his expression became serious again.
"By the way, jokes aside, I didn't come here just to see you. I have some information that should interest you."
The change in his tone immediately caught my attention.
Dextremih focused on him as well.
"I'm listening."
Xurok leaned slightly against the railing.
"The bounty hunters in West Blue have started searching for your crew much more aggressively. It's not just a few independent hunters attracted by your wanted posters anymore. Several groups are exchanging information and actively trying to figure out your route."
The deck grew noticeably quieter.
Zoro grinned.
"They want to give it a try?"
Nami immediately shot him a look.
"That wasn't an invitation."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your smile says enough."
Xurok continued.
"I haven't managed to find out whether there's an additional reward behind this mobilization or if your reputation has simply attracted enough ambitious hunters. But your name is circulating a lot more than before."
I slowly nodded.
This was exactly the kind of information I probably wouldn't have learned until the very last moment before my training with Dextremih.
"Source?"
A faint smile appeared on Dextremih's face.
Xurok blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"Jordan is asking how you learned about it," Dextremih explained. "Who gave you the information, how many different sources confirmed it, and how reliable those sources are."
I pointed at Dextremih.
"That's why she's your teacher."
Xurok sighed.
"Several taverns frequented by bounty hunters, two different intermediaries, and one group I followed for a few days. I don't have a specific name behind the order, so I'm not going to pretend I know who's actually organizing the search."
Dextremih gave a slight nod.
"Better."
Xurok almost looked proud to have earned even that tiny bit of approval.
Then he added,
"There's something else."
This time, he looked directly at me.
"The bounty on someone named Trafalgar Law has been revoked."
I froze.
Nami immediately turned her head toward me.
Several members of the crew knew Law well enough to understand why that information was strange.
"Revoked?" I repeated.
"Completely, from what I managed to learn."
Xurok gave a slight shrug.
"I don't know why. All I know is that bounty hunters who still had copies of his old wanted poster were informed that it was no longer valid."
I remained silent for a few seconds.
Law obviously hadn't suddenly become a model citizen during the month I'd spent training.
And the last time I had seen him, he had been with Corazon and Sengoku.
That coincidence was difficult to ignore.
Dextremih immediately stepped in.
"Don't draw any conclusions without confirmation."
I turned toward her.
She had already understood exactly where my thoughts were going.
"We know his bounty was revoked. We don't know why. Any connection to what happened on Minion is a hypothesis, not a fact."
I smiled slightly.
"I see the lessons continue even aboard the ship."
"They'll continue until you stop automatically turning a likely hypothesis into a certainty."
Xurok looked back and forth between us.
"Maybe I'm not the one who needs the most training after all."
I gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
"Enjoy that victory while you can. This afternoon, you're all hers."
His smile disappeared.
Behind us, Kaya let out a quiet laugh.
Xurok had barely set foot aboard the Merry, and he had already brought us two important pieces of information: someone was mobilizing the bounty hunters of West Blue against us, while Law had mysteriously disappeared from their lists.
However, before Swallow Island even appeared on the horizon, something unusual began to take shape ahead of us. What initially looked like a dark mass lost in the sea mist gradually revealed itself to be an enormous armada, vast enough to block a large portion of our route.
The ships weren't sailing independently of one another. They seemed to be connected, forming a gigantic floating structure whose different sections moved like parts of a single machine. Even from a considerable distance, the entire formation gave off an unmistakably military sense of organization that stood in stark contrast to ordinary pirate fleets.
Above that massive floating structure, an enormous black flag snapped in the wind.
I narrowed my eyes slightly to make out the emblem.
66.
I didn't even need to ask what it meant.
Beside me, Sanji had gone completely still.
All the color had drained from his face, and the cigarette between his lips remained motionless for several seconds. His eyes never left the fleet, as though the mere sight of that emblem had dragged memories back to the surface that he would have preferred to leave buried forever.
Then his expression changed.
The fear disappeared.
Anger took its place.
Flames suddenly erupted around one of his legs before spreading up his body. The wooden deck beneath his feet almost immediately began to heat up, forcing Merry to create a layer of stone between him and the ship's deck to protect it.
Kazuki reacted differently.
She had recognized the symbol the moment it appeared as well, but instead of bursting into flames, she took a slight step backward. Her shoulders tensed, and her gaze rapidly moved from one ship to another, as though she were instinctively trying to determine just how many enemies might be waiting ahead of us.
Sanji clenched his fists.
Kazuki almost unconsciously moved closer to him.
For once, Luffy didn't make a joke.
Nami immediately lowered her map, while Zoro and Kuina straightened and Usopp reached for his weapon. Xurok, Kratos, and Dextremih stared apprehensively at the enormous moving island blocking our path.
I looked back and forth between Sanji, Kazuki, and the gigantic flag.
I knew enough about their past to understand exactly what that number represented.
Seriously, just how cursed were we to run into them the moment we returned to West Blue?
Sanji slowly removed the cigarette from his mouth.
The flames surrounding him grew even more intense.
"Germa..."
(Author's Note: And there we go, a nice little cliffhanger for you ^^)