The wind changed on the second morning.
Ronald had been watching it shift gradually since before sunrise — small things first, the way the surface of the water texted differently, the sail pulling at a slightly different angle than it had the night before. By mid morning it was consistent enough that fighting it would cost more than adjusting to it.
He moved the tiller and let the boat find the new direction.
Zoro was doing sword forms on the deck. He'd been at it since dawn. His body was still coming back from the cross — Ronald could see it in the slight shake of his left arm after extended holds — but he wasn't stopping for it. He just worked around it the way someone works around a room with furniture in the wrong place. Finding the path through rather than removing the obstacle.
Luffy was fishing.
He'd made a line from spare rope and a hook he'd dug out of the bottom of the supply box, tied it to the end of one stretched finger, and was dangling it over the side with the serene patience of someone who had nowhere to be.
"I almost had one," Luffy announced.
"You've been saying that for an hour," Ronald said.
"Because I keep almost having one," Luffy said. "It's a consistent situation."
Zoro finished his current sequence and lowered the sword. He looked at Luffy with the expression of someone observing a natural phenomenon they didn't fully understand. "You know you could just use a real fishing rod."
"I don't have one," Luffy said.
"We could make one."
"This works."
"Does it though," Zoro said.
"Almost," Luffy said seriously.
Zoro looked at Ronald. Ronald looked back at him with an expression that said this was just Tuesday. Zoro seemed to file this away and went back to his forms.
---
Luffy caught something an hour later.
It wasn't big. Barely the length of his forearm. But he held it up with both hands and the expression of someone who had personally done something remarkable and wanted witnesses.
"Look," he said.
"I see it," Ronald said.
"Zoro. Look."
Zoro looked. "It's small."
"I caught it with my finger," Luffy said, as if this was the relevant metric by which fish should be judged.
"Fair enough," Zoro said, and went back to his forms.
Luffy looked at the fish. The fish looked at Luffy. Then Luffy looked at Ronald.
"Are we eating it?" Luffy said.
"It's barely a meal for one," Ronald said. "Throw it back. We'll stop somewhere when we need to resupply."
Luffy considered this. Then he looked at the fish again with a more conflicted expression.
"Back in you go," he told it, and dropped it over the side.
He watched the water where it had disappeared for a moment.
"Gone," he said.
"Yes," Ronald said. "That's what happens when you throw things into the sea."
"I know how the sea works," Luffy said, mildly offended.
---
By late afternoon the shape of something appeared on the horizon.
Ronald noticed it first. A dark line above the water, the particular elevation of land rather than cloud. He watched it for a few minutes without saying anything, tracking whether it was growing or staying the same.
It grew.
"Land," he said.
Luffy was on his feet and at the bow within two seconds, hand above his eyes, squinting at the horizon with laser focus. "Yeah! Land!"
Zoro opened one eye. He'd been sitting against the mast with his arms crossed. "We heading there?"
"We need water," Ronald said. Their supply was running low. He'd been rationing quietly without making a thing of it. "And food."
"I could eat," Zoro said. He stood, stretched, settled his swords at his hip in the automatic way he always did after sitting still for any length of time.
"When couldn't you eat," Luffy said.
"Valid question," Zoro said without any defensiveness.
The island grew as they sailed toward it. A proper town became visible along the coastline as they got closer — buildings, a harbor, smoke rising from cooking fires. Not tiny. Big enough to have what they needed.
Ronald brought them in toward the harbor mouth.
As they passed the harbor entrance there was a sign on a post. Old, weathered, the paint faded but still readable. The island's name in large letters.
Below the name, in smaller writing that someone had scratched in rather than painted, were two words.
*Abandon hope.*
Ronald looked at it for a moment without reacting.
Luffy looked at it. "What does that mean?"
"Someone's warning," Ronald said.
"About what?"
"Don't know yet," Ronald said.
He kept the boat moving into the harbor.
---
The harbor itself told a story before anyone said a word.
Half the boats were damaged. Not storm damaged — the kind of damage that came from something deliberate. Broken masts, holes in hulls, one vessel sitting half-submerged with nobody doing anything about it. The dock was mostly empty of workers. The few people who were around moved with their heads down and their eyes tracking everything in the peripheral way of people who had learned to stay small.
Luffy was looking at everything with open curiosity. Zoro had his hands in his pockets but his eyes were moving the same way Ronald's were — taking stock.
They tied up at an empty berth. Ronald stepped onto the dock and a man nearby — a dock worker, rope in his hands, going somewhere — stopped when he saw them.
"You three just arrived?" the man said. He said it the way you'd say it to someone walking toward a fire.
"Just now," Ronald said.
The man looked at them. Looked at Luffy's straw hat. At Zoro's swords. At Ronald.
"You should leave," the man said quietly. "Come back in a couple months. After things settle."
"After what settles," Luffy said.
The man glanced around. Not paranoid — practiced. The glance of someone who'd learned to check before speaking.
"Buggy," he said. Just the name. Like it was self explanatory.
"Who's Buggy," Luffy said.
The man stared at him. "You really don't know?"
"We just got here," Ronald said.
The man exhaled. Looked around once more. Then lowered his voice. "Pirate. Calls himself Buggy the Clown. He took the town about three weeks ago. His crew is everywhere. They take what they want, they hurt people who complain." He looked at Zoro's swords meaningfully. "If you're fighters — don't. They'll make an example out of you."
He walked away quickly after that. Like he'd already said too much and the words were something he wanted distance from.
The three of them stood on the dock.
Luffy looked at the town ahead. At the closed shutters. At the empty streets beyond the harbor. At the general atmosphere of a place that was holding its breath.
"Buggy the Clown," Luffy said.
"That's what he said," Zoro said.
"Clown pirates," Luffy said, turning it over like he was trying to figure out the right reaction to this information.
"Something funny about that?" Zoro said.
"I don't know yet," Luffy said honestly.
Ronald was looking at the town. His mind was working — not from memory this time, not from anything he'd known before. Just reading what was in front of him. Closed shops. Damaged boats. The particular silence of a population that had been stepped on.
"We need supplies," he said.
"Market might be closed," Zoro said.
"Then we find another way," Ronald said.
He started walking toward the town.
Luffy fell into step beside him. Then Zoro, slightly behind, one hand resting near his swords without touching them. The posture of someone who wasn't looking for trouble and wasn't going to be surprised by it either.
The streets opened up ahead of them.
Quiet. A dog somewhere out of sight. A shutter creaking in the wind on the second floor of a building that otherwise showed no sign of life.
Then from somewhere deeper in the town there was a noise. Laughing. Loud, theatrical laughing — the kind that was made to be heard by people other than the person doing it. It bounced off the empty street walls and arrived without a clear direction.
Luffy stopped.
Looked toward the sound.
"That's someone laughing," he said.
"Yes," Ronald said.
"Doesn't sound like they're laughing at something funny," Luffy said.
"No," Ronald said. "It doesn't."
Zoro had stopped too. He was looking at the same general direction as Luffy. Something had shifted in his posture — subtle, but there. The difference between a person at rest and a person who has decided something without announcing it.
"The supplies can wait," Zoro said flatly.
Luffy was already moving toward the sound.
Ronald looked at the empty street behind them. At the sign by the harbor in his memory. At the careful way the dock worker had said the name.
Then he followed.
---
*End of Chapter 14*
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