Greetings, readers! I am avatarjk137, your host for this fic! First, an explanation - this fic is OC-driven, inspired by Kilnorc's Crew of the Axe saga and similar stories. That said, it's a bit of a deconstruction - it's even more OC-driven, with even most of the supporting cast such as the villains being absent. The islands visited are largely different - in fact, Roguetown is the only canon location in the One Piece world that I expect to visit before reaching the Grand Line's halfway point. The captain has neither a middle initial D nor a Devil's Fruit power - because not every pirate captain in the One Piece world needs those things. He wants to find One Piece, but for different reasons.
I'm telling you this because I don't want to mislead the readers - don't wait around for Monkey D. Luffy, because he'll be mentioned but not seen until the last few chapters of a fanfiction I doubt I'll ever complete. Instead, read if you want my best attempt to create a new story in the One Piece setting, with the best characters, setting, and plot I can provide. I'll give you a new take on the setting, while still attempting to remain faithful to Eichiiro Oda's philosophy. Also, don't expect Japanese suffixes and the like, because I don't know Japanese. Alright, now that I'm done scaring everybody away, let the fanfiction commence!
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or any canon characters. Eichiiro Oda does. I only own the contents of this story.
One Piece: The Shining Sabre Crew
Chapter 1
Red Sky in the Morning
It was a dark and stormy night.
Okay, it wasn't night. In fact, it was early morning. But it was certainly dark and stormy on this particular morning. A vicious thunderstorm loomed off the coast of Conceal Town, a modest town of four hundred or so on the less visited side of Mirage Island in the South Blue. If you asked any longtime resident why this side of the island was less visited, the answer would be quick and simple - the thunderstorms were a bitch.
There was just something about storms at sea that compelled the brave and the foolish to sail through them, and the Sea of Blades Pirates were more the first category (depending on who you were asking). The crew of perhaps two dozen competent but small-time crooks rushed about the deck wearing cheap ponchos, adjusting the sails this way and that, trying not to get swept overboard into the relentless sea. The fact that they had ponchos at all spoke of experience with this situation, as did their practiced movements along the rocking, swaying deck.
A large man wearing a scale mail shirt under his poncho was yelling down at the others as he worked the wheel, ensuring the crew kept working at absolute efficiency. "Easy! Easy on the sails, now! We have our orders, and we'll follow them until the captain returns!"
"The captain must be crazy, Lancel!" a young girl, seemingly out of place, called from the crow's nest. "Going out, alone, in this weather?"
"Who are you to ask if the Black Knight is crazy, Morgan?!" Lancel yelled up at the girl. "As long as the Captain continues to lead us well, I'll continue to follow!"
Meanwhile, as the storm began to spend itself, there was another ship caught in the maelstrom. A small ship built for one, it was making good time for nowhere in particular as the waves slapped and battered it back and forth, left and right. Single-handedly controlling the small catamaran was a young man, the wind whipping his dreadlocks across his face. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea…" he muttered aloud, but his voice was stolen by the wind and the spray.
He turned, and illuminated in the forked lightning, he saw a beautiful silhouette - a woman, seemingly balanced atop a fierce storm wave. He blinked, and scanned the area when the wave collapsed. There she was again! But it seemed impossible… who could stand in place on the fiercest waters?
"I must be seeing things," he sighed. "But at least the worst of the storm seems to be over." As if affronted by his comment, the storm seemed to gather everything it had left into one final moment of natural chaos. Razor winds tore at the dreadlocked man's sails, electricity danced around him, and the rising swell of a quick-forming wave flipped his sailboat high into the air like a coin at a random chance convention. As the man rediscovered which way was down, he noticed with a bit of dissatisfaction that he was going to plummet into a somewhat larger ship, his own boat and all. "Well, that's discouraging. LOOK OUT BELOW!"
"What?!" Lancel looked up, but what he saw seemed impossible - a smaller ship, manned by a crew of one, dropping from the sky like a very large and menacing raindrop. To his credit, he wasted no time, and managed to circumvent any nasty casualties. "TAKE COVER!" He himself jumped from the raised rear deck as the catamaran and its dual prows smashed into the larger frigate with a horrific splintering sound that drowned out the storm's last great thunderclap. Once he was sure there were no longer any shards of wood flying through the air to spear his face, Lancel advanced on the site of the impact.
It wasn't good. The smaller boat, traveling faster, had stayed mostly intact, although the sail had been completely shorn off. Said shorn sail had gouged pieces from the steering wheel on the way to becoming lodged in the cracked railing on the back of the ship. The boat's prows stuck through the floor of the aft deck; Lancel could very clearly see the galley underneath, which had taken extensive damage to the interior (smashed tables and chairs, etc.). And one of a few barrels which had been in the boat had rolled down the stairs to the main deck, breaking several of them and nearly injuring a few crew members.
As for the boat's occupant, he had been thrown clear and struck his head against the larger ship's mast, losing consciousness. "Search him!" Lancel ordered, bracing himself against the ship's railing as he made his way over to the younger man. He was dark-skinned and unshaven, with his bright purple hair done in dreadlocks. He wore a red longcoat, a black shirt, black fingerless gloves and blue jeans, all in tatters, along with black boots caked with salt residue from long sea travel. Slightly tall, and of unremarkable build. A black tattoo of a downward-pointing horseshoe dominated the top half of his face, and two sheathed blades were affixed to his belt on his right side.
"Nothing but the swords, Lancel," a small, wiry pirate reported. "That, and the makings of cigarettes."
His chubbier crewmate chuckled as he sniffed the contents of the small burlap drawstring pouch. "This isn't tobacco, mate…"
Lancel grabbed the swords to inspect himself. "Find out what's in the barrels," he grunted. The first blade he unsheathed wasn't a sword at all - it was a curved dagger, sturdily built and well-balanced but unremarkable, the hilt wrapped in green felt. The other, longer blade was a sabre - a thin longsword, one-sided, with a gentle curve backwards along the length of the blade. The blade was made of a curious, blue granite-like material. The sword was beautiful, with a masterfully wrought handguard, and marvelously sharp, but Lancel'd had enough experience with swords in his forty-one years to know that the balance was curiously off - the blade seemed to have been fused off-center with the handle. Also, he noticed the weapon was made for lefties, and the balance would be compromised further for right-handed folk like himself and the captain.
"Lancel!" It was Morgan. "None of the barrels broke! One had water, one had rum, and one had food - dried fruit, dried meat, and some stale bread."
"Well-prepared, but it's always foolish to go island-hopping solo," Lancel contemplated as he rubbed his beard. "Bring the barrels below deck - they're staying, whether he is or not."
"Ha… YEAH!" The crew's heads snapped to look at the port side of the deck as a silhouette launched itself up and over the railing. Too anybody else, it was a strange sight - a beautiful woman with cropped blonde hair and a black bodysuit, riding the last swells of the storm on a rectangular shield of polished black metal. She slammed the shield down on the main deck and skidded to a stop just in front of the unconscious man. "What have we here?" she asked with a smirk.
"Ah, Captain Clover!" Lancel grinned and bowed to her. "This lunatic accidentally smashed his boat down onto ours during the storm, damaging it and knocking himself out in the process. I was just deciding what to do with him, but now that you're back you can choose. Should we force him to pay off the damages with work, or simply take all he has of value and throw him overboard?"
"This is why I have to surf like that, you know. Being captain is such crushing responsibility," Clover sighed as she hopped off her shield and studied the shipwrecked swordsman. "Throw him overboard," she concluded at last. "I can see it in his face - he wouldn't submit to me as his captain. He'd make a horrible chore boy."
"Heave ho, then," Lancel agreed, grabbing him by his shirt collar and throwing him as hard as he could off the starboard side - where the rather poorly-named Conceal Town was becoming visible in the increasing sunlight. The man stayed unconscious for the entire arc of his flight, until he plunged unceremoniously into the cold and still-choppy waters. "By the way, Captain, here are the weapons he had on them."
Clover took them, and attached the saber to her own hip. "Morgan?" The younger girl turned and approached her captain, her expression curious. Clover flipped the blade in her hand and presented it to Morgan with a friendly smile. "It's about time my cabin girl learned how to defend herself. After all, you're turning ten next week." Morgan took the knife, her eyes sparkling with joy, and Clover was all business again as she turned around. "Alright, you dogs, break's over! I want the debris and this stupid boat cleared out by lunch, and the hole patched over by dinner, are we clear?!"
"YES, CAPTAIN!"
---
The be-dreadlocked man coughed as the bottom of a walking stick was slammed into his chest. He turned onto his side and spat out some seawater. "You have cookies?" he murmured, his breathing still as ragged as his blue jeans. "Then of course I'll join the rebellion." He received another strike from the walking stick, this time across the skull. "Ow." He leapt to his feet, and assessed his rescuer/attacker with heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes. "Can I help you?" he asked sharply.
A little old man with more hair in his white beard than could have ever possibly been on his scalp squinted up at the castaway under almost-as-bushy white eyebrows. "You part of the Sea of Blades crew?"
"The who of what now?"
The old man pointed with his gnarled stick at the retreating frigate. They flew a jolly roger consisting of the usual grinning skull fanned by a circle of outward-pointing swords that looked like a mane on the skull. "Sea of Blades - that pirate crew over there, led by that scoundrel the Black Knight. Since you don't know them, I have my answer. I just asked because they threw you overboard five minutes ago, and you happened to be lucky enough to wash up here on shore."
"They threw me overboard? Crap, those must be the guys whose ship I landed on. Am I on Mirage Island, mister?"
"Why, yes, you are…"
"Well, then, I don't need that ship anymore anyway, I guess…" the man patted his belt with increasing alarm. "Where's my stuff? Where are my blades?"
"Boy, I may have a bum leg, but my eyes are still sharp. You didn't have any swords on you when they threw you overboard. Also, that ship is sailing away, so I don't know how you're gonna get 'em back."
"Alright, thanks, mister." The dark-skinned traveler was stretching his legs and working out the kinks in his back.
"Son, if you don't mind me asking, I noticed the Omega symbol on your face… what discipline?"
"You're a master?" the traveler asked, taken aback.
"Just a former acolyte, once upon a time," the senior said with a smile.
"I use Archikos Tropos. Now if you'll excuse me…" the younger man ran back into the water, actually managing to run along the surface for several steps before he splashed down into the surf and began a desperate front stroke towards the retreating ship.
A bemused expression creased the withered man's face before he nearly burst out laughing. "I can't believe he's going to try and swim it…" Then the man became serious again. "Archikos, eh? Then again, the boy might actually catch up with the ship, at that rate."
---
"Repairs are on-schedule, Captain," Lancel reported. His captain was sitting on a deck chair under an umbrella, sipping daintily at an iced drink.
She peeked over her sunglasses at him. "Good. I want the ship fully repaired; we'll be attacking Heatshimmer before the week is out." There was a splashing noise. "What was that?
"Hmm?" Lancel turned to look at the stern of the ship. The young man who had crashed into their ship earlier had hauled himself back up and over the side of the ship, panting from the exertion. "You… but I threw you overboard!"
"It didn't take," the man replied with a grin. "Sorry to disappoint. Now, I'll be taking my swords back."
"We really should make sure somebody's dead first if we're going to throw them overboard in shallow water," Lancel muttered.
"Oh, nice going, First Mate Hindsight," Clover snapped. "Look, it's good for you that you're alive and… whatever, but we're keeping your stuff to pay off what your ship did to ours." She gave him a dismissive wave, as if to say 'you can go back in the water now.'
"Oh, really? My ship looks completely destroyed…" the man gestured to the catamaran, which was being used for spare materials by the repair crew. "Maybe I should take your swords and food as payment. Maybe this ship, too…"
"Don't you talk to the captain that way!" Morgan came charging out of the crowd of pirates, her new dagger raised at the ready. "I'll get you, you bastard!"
"Morgan, no! You can't just attack strangers!" Lancel yelled, but the girl ignored him.
"Lame…" the man sighed, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. Then his palm lashed out and struck Morgan in the forehead, sending her flying back to the lower deck. The dagger spun through the air, gleaming in the sunlight, until the shipwrecked man reached his arm out and grabbed the dagger from the air.
"You'd attack a little girl?!" Lancel snarled.
"I'd attack pretty much anything if it was coming at me with a knife, let alone my own knife. She'll probably be fine, anyway. Now where's your captain? I was left for dead, and I'd like to return the favor."
"I'm the captain," Clover announced as she got daintily to her feet. "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm Dyne Marco, and I thought the captain here was named the Black Knight."
Instantly, several large pirates rose up around him; it was clear that he had said the wrong thing. "What did you say?" "Captain Clover is beautiful, and a great leader!" "You're gonna regret that, boy!" "Long live Black Knight Clover!"
Unimpressed, Marco passed his dagger back and forth a few times between his hands before settling into a fighting stance with his right hand, holding the dagger, in front. "Okay, then. Make me regret it." The pirates leapt forward, attacking with swords, brass knuckles, and in one case, an axe. Seamlessly, Marco used his dagger to parry every attack he couldn't simply dodge, and countered every strike with a mean left straight, easily beating back five men.
Lancel threw back the poncho he was still wearing, causing it to flap in the wind around him. "I've had about enough of you, sir! DANCE!" Lancel threw first one curved sword, then another, and another, until he had thrown a flurry of no less than five scimitars at Marco. Scoffing, Marco deflected all the flying blades, causing them to fall around them. Then he noticed the sacks of gunpowder tied to the first two… and the fact that the sixth scimitar Lancel was throwing towards Marco had a burning blade. "Dancing Scimitars!"
The two gunpowder-laden blades detonated, forcing Marco to jump up and back to avoid the explosion. The blast sent three of the swords, including the flaming one, hurtling towards Marco again, and Marco was forced to grab the burning sword by the handle and twist desperately to dodge the other two (and they still managed to nick his cheek and coat). Not bad, Marco thought as he permitted himself a small smile. He's got this attack pattern down to a science… which means there's still a blade unaccounted for!
Marco looked down to see Lancel erupt from the smoke cloud, holding the sixth blade. "Master's Dance!" he roared, swinging the scimitar forward.
A scimitar struck home, and there was a yell of agony.
"Lancel!" Clover cried. The large man struck the floor heavily, groaning, the still-smoldering blade he had thrown buried in his right shoulder. His other sword hit the deck right next to his head.
Dyne Marco landed with a slight stumble, checking out the cuts left on him by Lancel's attack with interest. "Good form, but you rely too much on your opponent acting as planned. Now, I'll be taking my sabre back…" he turned to Captain Clover, and was very surprised to see that she was covered from head to toe in a suit of black plate armor, including a helm that left only her hair and sunglasses visible. "Well, that explains your title, but where'd you get the armor so quickly?"
"I'm a quick change artist," Clover sneered through her mouth guard as she picked up her shield and drew Dyne's sabre. "Now, have at you!" She leapt across the deck with uncanny speed and swung the sabre in a wide horizontal slash, forcing Dyne to duck and leaving him vulnerable to a kick to the face. Dyne rolled backwards to his feet, and jumped forward again, but his punch was blocked by her shield. "Not so tough against a captain, are you?" Clover taunted as she swung Dyne's sabre at him, but the attack was clumsy and easily parried.
"Give me what's mine, and we'll see how tough I am." Dyne spun the dagger in his hand before charging forward again. He sidestepped a slash, and feinted with a punch to bring up her shield, before spinning around and attacking backwards with his dagger. "Flash Edge!" Clover quickly dodged and brought the shield up to bash away Dyne's dagger arm, and prevented the dagger from going all the way around her - in the close quarters Dyne had achieved, the maneuver would've driven the knife into the base of her neck. Unfazed, Dyne spun in the other direction. "Flash Force!" this time he attacked in a traditional striking motion with the dagger, his momentum putting extra force into the attack. Clover literally shrugged the attack off by blocking with her shoulder pad, but the attack left a small network of cracks in the armor of her left shoulder.
Growling, she pushed him back into a more comfortable range with her shield and tried to stab him this time. This'll teach him to damage MY armor! What she wasn't expecting was for Marco to block the sabre… by letting it stab him through the hand. "You're in idiot," she chuckled. "You won't be able to defeat me with a bum hand."
Marco was sweating and breathing heavily from the pain of having his hand impaled. "That may be true, but you don't deserve the sword you're swinging." He drove his knee into her gut; in the close quarters, she was unable to block, and he was able to twist his hand and pull his sword free. "This sabre is one of a set of only two. They belong only to their respective wielders, and whoever can defeat them in a fair duel." Grunting, he pulled the blade from his bleeding left hand and held it properly, despite his wound. "You disrespected my sword and disrespected me; I simply don't have any choice but to win." His face was calm, but his words were stern.
"Fine!" Clover yelled. "I'll fight better with my own sword than with your poorly-balanced piece of shit!" She proceeded to draw a gleaming, straight-bladed longsword from a hidden sheath inside her shield. Then she leapt forward again; her attack wasn't faster, but it was more precise, and Marco found himself with a slash on the top of his shoulder as he dodged.
"I was wondering where your sword was," Marco muttered. Clover darted forward again, and he leapt clean over the attack, jumping towards her back as soon as he landed. "Power Drive!" he yelled as he thrusted the sabre forward, intent on skewering her.
"Hah!" Clover ducked under the powerful stab, leaving her an opening to slash horizontally at Marco's shins with her sword. "Round Table Cutter!"
"You're predictable." To Clover's dismay, her opponent was able to hop over her blade, positioning himself above her as he rolled forward. "Heavy Divide." Clover rolled out of the way, leaving Marco's attack to leave a deep gouge in the deck. The roll was a quick, sloppy tumble, and she left behind her sunglasses and the sheath to Marco's sabre. Instead of pressing his attack, he stopped to tuck it back into his belt, and Clover gained the opportunity to get some distance between herself and him, leaping back and up onto the main mast and balancing there. Jumping easily up like that in full plate armor, and balancing with the armor, sword, and shield… that's actually pretty impressive.
"You're pretty tough, Dyne Marco, but nobody screws with my crew and gets away with it!" At this point, the rest of Clover's crew, who had been standing back to watch the fight, burst into cheering. "Nobody screws with my first mate and gets away with it! And most of all, nobody, but nobody hurts my fucking cabin girl and lives to tell!"
The cheering reached a fever pitch. "Yeah! YEAH!" "Nobody fucks with the Sea of Blades crew!" "Black Knight, Black Knight!"
Marco sighed. "I hate it when the crowd turns against me…"
"Feel the power of my strongest attack! Fool's Crusade!" Clover pointed the bottom end of her shield at Marco, revealing a six-cylinder revolver hidden in the metalwork, and fired a full half-dozen rounds at his feet. Marco managed to jump back in time to keep the bullets from immobilizing him, but Clover had already taken a mighty leap off of her mast, bringing her sword down in a cleaving attack. He had to bring both blades up, crossed above his head, to block Clover's slash, and even then the shock of the blow had forced him to his knees and her sword had come within a hair's breadth of his forehead.
"That was sloppy," Marco finally said, after a moment of their blades being locked.
"How dare you?!" Clover yelled, pushing as hard as she could with her sword.
"No, sloppy of me. I can't let trash like you get so close to beating me if I'm to reach One Piece." The rising sun was shining down on them, and Clover was surprised to find that Marco's blue sabre was pouring out heat in waves; standing near him was downright uncomfortable. "Now, let me show you some of my strongest attacks." Marco suddenly pushed the Black Knight's sword back, leaving her guard open, and sprang up and forward before she could bring her shield in. "Rising Dragon!" Marco slashed up Clover's chest, and let the attack carry him into a series of backflips that carried Clover into the air with him, repeatedly attacking her all the way up.
On the fifth such upward slash, the ringing of Marco's sword on Clover's chest plate changed into a harsh, dissonant crash as the front of her armor was shattered, revealing her bodysuit underneath. The force of the blow ended Marco's roll and forced the two back several feet from each other, with Clover's back to the main mast and Marco's back to the stern of the ship. "So you broke a piece of my armor. You haven't won yet!" Clover snapped
"I'm not finished. Megiddo!" Marco held his sword in the air, and Clover and her crew were shocked speechless. Flames erupted upward from Marco's sabre, and in merely a second, a massive fireball had coalesced above the newcomer pirate. Ten feet in diameter, blazing a brilliant ruby red down on the ship, it nearly rivaled the sun in brilliance and heat, and Marco was a silhouette against it. "My sword, the Pacifica, has a unique ability that deals with channeling sunlight. Suffice it to say that yes, I have won yet. And now…" Marco pointed his sword at Clover as he began to fall, and the fireball roared towards her.
"NO!" Clover curled up behind her large, square shield and crossed her sword behind it, blocking the fireball with both arms. Yet, to her horror, it didn't explode on impact like she thought it would. No, the fireball simply kept pushing, carrying her on its front even as its heat baked her like a potato in tinfoil. When her back met the mast, it simply slammed her through, shattering the pole and burning the wood, sail, and rigging. The Megiddo simply kept roaring forward, with Clover unable to escape it, until finally, several seconds after it had cleared the ship's figurehead, it finally exploded in a dazzling flash.
"THE CAPTAIN!" Morgan called, having since woken up, but the crew had other problems. They had been reduced to sheer panic with no leadership, the mast was utterly destroyed, and the wooden ship was covered in burning rubble. Suddenly, Morgan got a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she turned around, only to see Dyne Marco standing behind her with a small scowl, wearing the captain's dropped sunglasses. "What are you going to do to me?" she whispered.
"Nothing, if you give me back the sheath to my dagger," he said, reaching out with his now empty hand. Shaking, she gave him the sheath, and he put away his dagger before sticking that in his belt as well. "That's better," he said flatly, sucking on the still-bleeding wound where Clover had pierced through his hand with his own blade. He then turned to the smoking remains of the crow's nest, which had landed more or less next to Lancel, and grabbed the Jolly Roger, snapping the flag loose and rolling it up. "I'm taking your flag, as payment for the trouble you put me through," he announced to the crew, putting the folded flag into his coat behind him. "You weak idiots are an insult to piracy, and piracy is already an insult. I'm leaving; I'll be taking your longboat as well."
While making his way over to the smaller boat, docked on the side of the ship and not yet touched by the flames, he turned to the chubby pirate who had helped to look him over earlier, and took a cigarette from his mouth. "I'm taking what's mine," Marco stated, putting the cigarette in his own mouth. "All of it." The pirate swallowed and handed over the drawstring bag and the rolling papers. "Thank you," Marco muttered sarcastically before hopping down into the longboat, leaving the burning ship and its disgraced, leaderless crew to their own devices.
End of Chapter
And that's the finished product! At least, the first chapter. Join me soon for the beginning of the first real story arc - the Glamer Village arc.
Fanonopedia: From here on out, I'm going to give explanations at the end of chapters about this particular piece of fanon. I'll explain attacks at the end of chapters, and people or places at the end of story arcs, or whenever necessary.
Attacks:
Dance/Dancing Scimitars/Master's Dance – A sequence of thrown scimitar attacks developed by Lancel, the first mate of the Sea of Blades pirates. Dodging the initial attacks herds the target into a location where the final strike is normally lethal. If the opponent is incapacitated by one of the first two stages of the attack, he won't complete it to save effort and resources.
Round Table Cutter – an attack for severing legs.
Fool's Crusade – Clover's signature attack. Fires the revolver hidden in her shield, and finishes with an all-or-nothing cleaving attack with her sword. Tough to avoid, but Clover lacks the upper body strength to bring out the attack's full killing power.
Power Drive- A quick, decisive strike at a target's back. Good power, range, and speed, but can be ducked or sidestepped.
Flash Edge - a backwards dagger attack in close quarters that involves the attacker placing his back to the foe and slashing around their defense, toward the base of their skull.
Flash Force - A frontwards dagger attack that follows up a failed Flash Edge, using momentum from a near 360 degree spin. Surprisingly powerful compared to other dagger attacks.
Heavy Divide - While above the foe, a vertical slash downward that splits the ground. Blocking the attack creates distance between user and foe.
Rising Dragon- Marco slashes multiple times as he backflips upwards, dragging his foe into the air with him. If the hits land, he ends the attack above his opponents. If they're blocked, the extra knock back causes them to be above him. Either way, they're generally out of counterattack range (unless they're ranged weapon users) and usually helpless to dodge a finishing blow.
Megiddo- Marco harnesses the power of the sun's reflection on his blade to create a deadly fireball. An attack unique to the Atlantica and Pacifica blades due to the unusual material they're made from (which will be explained in more detail later).
Black Knight Clover: A pirate captain from the South Blue. A beautiful blonde who uses her looks and skills equally in getting what she wants, most people don't realize the armored captain leading the Sea of Blades crew is the same person. Enjoys surfing, being in charge, and winning. Although she works her crew to the bone, she is very defensive of them, and they of her. Her fighting style uses a suit of full plate armor, a longsword, and a large shield; Clover has trained for years to move unencumbered by the suit. Bounty: 7 million Beli. Presumed dead.
Sea of Blades crew: A crew of relatively small-time South Blue pirates. Known to brave storm conditions for raids. Primarily prey on small or medium-sized towns with light Navy defenses. Captain: Black Knight Clover. First Mate: Lancel. Cabin Girl: Morgan.
Mirage Island: A tropical island on the South Blue, large enough to have one large city and several small towns. Heatshimmer is the capital and only major city. A province of a larger nation in the South Blue. Mirage Island is hot for most of the year, with arid inlands and humid coasts. Thunderstorms are the most common kind of precipitation.