Vane brought Baccarat back to the abandoned yard.
He went straight to the dock. Now the big ship was gradually starting to look like a real ship, no longer an empty skeleton. Under the command of several shipwrights, the loach Fish-Man and ordinary Rocket Team grunts kept assembling the hull.
Meowth, meanwhile, was at its own workbench making "high-tech equipment" that ordinary people couldn't understand.
"Meowth, in a few nights let's go out together to [take] some things."
Who knows how much stuff is in Madam Lara's treasury? If there's a lot I like, I won't be able to carry it all back with bare hands. With Meowth's Castle-Castle Fruit, even if it were a whole castle's worth of treasure, Meowth could swallow it into its belly.
...
A few more days passed, and a somewhat imposing pirate ship sailed into the big dock of Bliss Island.
"This is Bliss Island in the West Sea—the most fun place in the West Sea, with the best booze and the best food. We'll rest here for a while."
"We really do need to rest for a bit. The ship also needs a proper overhaul. It's all the captain's fault for insisting on going to say hello to that Marine warship."
"Wasn't I just trying to tell them someone had been in a shipwreck and to have the Marines go save them? Who knew they'd start chasing us right away?"
"Honestly. We're pirates, you know."
The atmosphere of this pirate crew was unusually harmonious—so much so that you could hardly see much of a pirate air about them.
The captain in a straw hat said, "Everyone, after we rest here on Bliss Island for a while, our next destination is the East Sea."
"I've heard there's a very powerful sharpshooter in the East Sea. We can invite him to join us. And the East Sea is relatively peaceful right now, not so many battles."
A crew member said, "Yeah, fewer fights is good. Lately little Uta has been crawling all over the deck, and whenever we fight we're always worried about her safety."
"Yeah, let's go to the East Sea."
"Alright. Once the ship's maintained and we've restocked supplies, we can set sail for the East Sea."
...
"Meow, aren't you supposed to steal things at night? Why are we going out in the daytime?"
Today Meowth put down its work and went out with Vane. Since they were going to loot someone's little treasury again, Meowth was especially excited.
But it didn't understand why they had to go out in the daytime instead of at night.
"Because the place we're going this time is livelier at night than in the day."
The flower district—plainly speaking, it's a red-light district. "Flower district" is just a nice-sounding name.
Of course, there are higher-end places that only sell performances and not bodies. People like Baccarat who get sent to underground casinos are in this category—not that they don't sell their bodies, but that the managers of the flower district think they can sell them for a higher price.
Also, Baccarat is still young. If in another two or three years no one pays ten million, then she'll just be destined to sell her body like the rest.
The time Vane chose was around five or six o'clock, when just a trace of morning light was rising. This was exactly when the flower district was at its quietest.
Vane had come here at night these past few days to scout things out. The flower district at night was far too lively, making it hard to get close to the secret room Madam Lara had mentioned.
At this time instead, the people who should be asleep were asleep, and there were very few people moving around in the flower district.
"Our first objective is to break into the secret room and find the Devil Fruit."
The Devil Fruit was the top priority. It would be best to find it without alerting anyone. Madam Lara, a Devil Fruit user, wasn't going anywhere.
Although it wasn't night, the man and the cat still wore night outfits. Inside the flower district's buildings it was fairly dim right now, so the night outfits still helped.
By a high window, Vane activated his Observation Haki and sensed through the rooms one by one, finally finding a room with no one inside.
Meowth flicked out its claws and fiddled with the window a few times, opening it and letting the man and the cat enter the building.
"This really feels familiar, meow. Back then Musashi and Kojirō and I also sneaked around like this to steal other people's Pokémon."
"This time we're stealing a Devil Fruit."
"This place is pretty big, meow. Do you know where the stuff is hidden?"
According to Baccarat's description, the rough location of Madam Lara's secret room was on the middle level of the central structure of this building.
The most famous brothel on Bliss Island was arranged around a four-sided courtyard. In the middle of that layout was another vertical four-sided structure. This structure had several corridors connecting the surrounding floors, forming a hub.
When he came here before to scout the route, Vane had already used Observation Haki to check that central building. Since it was a secret room, it definitely had no people—or at least very few people.
So he already had a rough location in mind.
It was on the third floor of the central building. There was hardly any sign of life there.
Vane took the lead, walking softly through the dimly lit building.
This little bit of movement wouldn't attract anyone's attention, but once he got close to the target area, Vane lightened his steps even more. It wouldn't stand out elsewhere, but here it might. Even on brightly lit nights, not many people came to this area—let alone now.
This was where some of Rokushiki's Kami-e techniques came in, making his body light, able to drift forward a short distance like a sheet of paper with the breeze.
Meowth didn't need to worry about itself. A cat's steps are light, and even if it were spotted, a single cat wouldn't draw much attention.
When they completely reached the area suspected to be the secret room, Vane activated Observation again to sense through the wall. Inside was first a relatively small space, then another separating wall and a door.
Obviously this was a suite, which made it much more likely to be a secret room.
However, in the first space there was a living presence.
Not very strong, but the other party was awake. If he went in, he would definitely alert them, so he could only strike quickly and take them out.
There were two ways to enter the first room. One was through the door, but the door was locked from the inside.
The other was a not-very-large ventilation duct—so tight that even for a cat it would be quite difficult to squeeze through. With such a setup, it really was hard to get in and launch an attack without alerting the awake person inside.
Unfortunately for them, this time Vane had brought Meowth.
Meowth activated its Castle-Castle Fruit ability and put Vane into its body, then in two or three steps came to the vent.
The reason Vane hadn't hidden inside Meowth's body to sneak in earlier was because his Observation Haki would be limited inside Meowth's body.
Meowth could move while forming a proportional image of itself inside its body to guide Vane.
"Hurry up, I've put my claw in."
Meowth extended its claw into the vent and reached the space inside. A door opened in the middle of the claw, and Vane, from inside Meowth's body, could enter the inner space through that door in the claw.
This process didn't require damaging any objects at all—it was truly silent.