After the sea king incident
Both of them started for the next adventure..
As the were in the middle of the sea
A whirlpool came out of nowhere.
One moment the sea was flat and cooperative the way it had been for the past day and a half. The next there was a sound like the ocean clearing its throat and the water ahead of them began to move in a way that water wasn't supposed to move — rotating, pulling, the center of it dropping into a dark spiral that was already close enough to feel the edge of its pull on the boat.
Ronald had the sail down in three seconds.
It didn't matter. The pull was already stronger than the wind had been.
"Luffy," Ronald said sharply.
"I see it," Luffy said from the tiller, both hands on it, feet braced against the deck, pulling against the rotation with everything he had. His arms stretched slightly with the effort — rubber straining against water — and the boat slowed its spin but didn't stop it.
Ronald grabbed the oar from under the bow and got it in the water on the opposite side. He pulled. Hard. The new strength from the Sea King sitting in his muscles and making itself useful for the first time in a way that actually mattered.
The boat resisted the whirlpool for about four seconds.
Then the whirlpool decided it wasn't interested in being resisted.
"Barrel," Luffy said. Not a question. Not even really a statement. Just a word delivered with the calm of someone who had already made a decision.
There was a large barrel lashed to the side of the boat — supplies, sealed tight. Luffy had it unlashed in two seconds and the lid off in one more.
He looked at Ronald. "Get in."
"Absolutely not," Ronald said, still pulling the oar.
"Ronald."
"I'll hold on to the boat. I can—"
"The boat's going down," Luffy said simply. "Get in the barrel. I'll be fine. You can't swim."
That last part landed. Ronald couldn't swim. Devil Fruit immunity or not — he hadn't eaten a Devil Fruit, he just copied the abilities. Swimming was still swimming and he was not good at it and a whirlpool was not the place to find out how not good at it he was.
He let go of the oar.
He got in the barrel.
The last thing he saw before the lid went on was Luffy's grinning face looking down at him completely unbothered by the fact that they were being swallowed by a whirlpool.
Then darkness. The sound of water. The sensation of spinning. Then impact — hard, disorienting — and then a strange stillness that felt like floating.
Ronald sat in the barrel in the dark and waited.
---
He didn't know how long he was in there.
Long enough that the spinning stopped and the motion changed from violent to gentle. Long enough that the sounds outside shifted from open sea to something more contained — voices, wood creaking differently, the particular echo of a large enclosed space.
Then the barrel was moving. Being carried. Set down on something solid.
He waited.
More voices outside. Getting closer. Someone saying something about checking the cargo. Footsteps.
The lid came off.
Ronald blinked in the sudden light and looked up at three pirates staring down at him with expressions ranging from surprise to confusion to the beginning of something more hostile.
He looked back at them calmly.
"Hey," he said.
One of them opened his mouth.
From somewhere deeper in the ship there was a crash, a shout, and then the distinctive sound of someone being launched through a wall by a rubber fist.
The three pirates looked at each other. Then back at Ronald. Then toward the sound.
Ronald climbed out of the barrel.
"I'd go check that if I were you," he said. "Sounds serious."
They went. Ronald followed at his own pace.
---
The inside of the ship was large and chaotic.
Luffy was in the middle of a corridor fighting four pirates simultaneously with the cheerful energy of someone who'd found an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Two of them were already on the floor. The other two were discovering that hitting someone made of rubber with blunt objects was not producing the results they'd hoped for.
Beside Luffy — pressed against the wall trying to stay out of the way of the fighting — was a boy. Round faced, pink haired, wearing a uniform that said chore boy in the way that clothing sometimes communicates a person's entire situation. He was watching the fight with his mouth open and his eyes very wide.
Ronald came to stand against the opposite wall and watched Luffy finish things up.
It took about twenty more seconds.
Luffy stood in the middle of the corridor looking satisfied. He looked at Ronald. "You okay?"
"Fine," Ronald said. "You?"
"Wet," Luffy said. "But fine." He looked at the boy against the wall. "This is Koby. He was stuck on this ship."
Ronald looked at Koby. Koby looked at Ronald with the expression of someone who was trying to figure out if the situation had gotten better or just differently complicated.
"Ronald," Ronald said.
"Koby," the boy said faintly.
"How many pirates on this ship," Ronald asked him directly.
Koby blinked. Switched gears. "Uh — maybe forty? Alvida has about forty crew members usually. Plus Alvida herself."
"Alvida," Luffy said. "Who's that?"
Before Koby could answer there was a sound from the far end of the corridor like something very heavy was moving with purpose. The walls vibrated slightly with each footstep.
Koby went pale.
"That's Alvida," he said.
---
She filled the corridor the way certain people fill spaces — not just physically, though she was large, but with the weight of someone who expected everything around them to adjust to their presence rather than the other way around.
She had a massive iron club resting on her shoulder. Her eyes moved across the scene — the pirates on the floor, Luffy, Ronald, Koby pressed against the wall — with the flat assessment of someone adding up a situation.
Then they landed on Koby.
"Koby," she said. Her voice was even. That particular kind of even that meant the volume could change very quickly. "Who is the most beautiful woman on the sea?"
Koby's mouth opened. Closed. He looked at Luffy. Luffy looked back at him with an expression that was somehow both sympathetic and expectant at the same time.
"You are," Koby said. His voice came out smaller than he probably wanted it to.
Alvida's eyes moved to Luffy. Then to Ronald. "And who are you two."
"Luffy," Luffy said. "We ended up on your ship by accident. We're leaving now."
"Are you," Alvida said. Not as a question.
"Yeah," Luffy said. "Also you should let Koby go. He wants to be a Marine. You keeping him here is just — pointless."
Alvida looked at Luffy the way people look at things that have said something unexpected. Then something shifted in her expression and she swung the club off her shoulder.
"Nobody," she said, "tells me what is and isn't pointless on my ship."
Ronald watched the club coming and stepped to the side. It hit the wall where he'd been standing and took a chunk out of the wood.
She was fast for her size. He noted that without drama.
Luffy caught the return swing on his arm. The iron club bounced off rubber. Alvida stared at her own weapon like it had betrayed her.
"Devil Fruit," she said.
"Gomu Gomu no Mi," Luffy confirmed cheerfully. "My turn."
The Gomu Gomu no Pistol covered the corridor in a straight line and connected with Alvida center mass. She went backwards — through the wall at the end of the corridor, through whatever was on the other side of that wall, and from the sound that followed, through something else after that.
The corridor was quiet.
Ronald looked at the hole in the wall.
Luffy shook out his arm. "Okay. Now we're leaving."
He looked at Koby. Koby was still against the wall. His mouth was open again.
"Come on," Luffy said, already moving toward the exterior of the ship. "Before the rest of the crew figures out what happened."
Koby looked at Ronald.
Ronald gestured toward the direction Luffy had gone. "He means it. Let's go."
---
They got off the ship on a small dinghy that Koby pointed them toward — he knew where everything on the ship was after two years of being its general purpose errand person.
They pushed off and put distance between themselves and the ship quickly. Behind them they could hear the Alvida Pirates in various states of confusion and response, but nobody came after them. Ronald suspected the sight of their captain going through three walls had affected the crew's motivation somewhat.
The three of them sat in the small boat on the open water.
Koby was shaking slightly. Not from cold. From the release of something that had been held tightly for a very long time.
Luffy was looking at the horizon.
Ronald handed Koby the water canteen from his pack. "Drink something."
Koby took it with both hands and drank. He lowered it after a moment and looked at them both.
"You just — you just defeated Alvida," he said. Like he was still processing the sequence of events.
"Luffy did," Ronald said.
"You moved out of the way of the club," Koby said, looking at Ronald with a slightly different expression now. "She's fast. Most people don't move in time."
"I saw it coming," Ronald said simply.
Koby looked between them again. "Who are you people."
"Pirates," Luffy said from the bow without turning around.
"We're not officially pirates yet," Ronald said.
"I'm going to be the Pirate King," Luffy said, still looking at the horizon.
Koby stared at the back of Luffy's head. Then at Ronald. Ronald just looked back at him steadily.
"I want to be a Marine," Koby said carefully, like he was checking if this was going to be a problem.
"Good," Luffy said. "You should be. The sea needs more Marines who actually care about it."
Koby looked surprised by that. Like he'd expected pushback. Like he'd learned on Alvida's ship that what you wanted didn't get received without friction.
"There's a Marine base at Shell Town," Koby said after a moment. "It's the nearest one. I — I know these waters. I can navigate you there."
"We're already going there," Luffy said.
"You are?"
"Roronoa Zoro is there," Luffy said simply.
Koby went still. "You know about Zoro?"
"I want him in my crew," Luffy said.
Koby looked at Ronald again with that expression — the one asking for some kind of anchor.
"He means it," Ronald said. For what felt like the hundredth time since leaving Foosha. "He always means it."
Koby sat with that for a moment. Then something in him seemed to settle — not relaxed exactly, but decided. Like he'd run the calculation and come to a conclusion about what kind of people these were and what that meant for him.
"Shell Town is northeast," he said. "Half a day with this wind."
Ronald looked at the sail. Looked at the wind direction.
"Northeast," he said.
He adjusted course.
The boat moved.
Behind them Alvida's ship sat on the water getting smaller. Ahead of them the sea opened up toward Shell Town and whatever was waiting there.
Ronald looked at the horizon and felt the story properly beginning around him like weather moving in.
*Zoro next,* he thought quietly.
*Then it really starts.*
---
*End of Chapter 12*
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