Ch. 3 – Plans and Repairs
Monkey D. Luffy felt fairly certain of many things in his life. One was that he would one day become King of the Pirates, or at least die trying. The other certainties were more like simple convictions that revolved around his crew, and the faith he had in them to likewise accomplish their dreams. None of them were allowed to die. Not on his watch. Not without doing what they had set out to do.
When Zoro fell with the sword princess, Luffy had panicked a bit and forgotten those certainties. The rockslide came down at an alarming rate, faster than the swordsmen could cut their way through. And then they fell from view, no one knew how deep. Their shouts, barely audible above the collapsing cave, made the fall sound very deep indeed.
Luffy found himself calling out to Zoro at the top of his lungs, pounding his fists against the rock pile that had by now filled most of the cave. Someone, or a couple of someones, grabbed him and hauled him back. One was Nami, who started shouting in a shrill voice about not making the rockslide worse. The other was Usopp, shouting in an even shriller voice, which made him practically impossible to understand.
Luffy's own shouts and continued barrage of attacks at the piling rocks had of course aggravated the situation. He and his crew ended up just inside the mouth of the cave before he'd calmed down enough to cease struggling against them. The piling rocks finally slowed, with only a few pebbles here and there making plinking sounds against the cave floor as they rolled to a stop. For a moment there was silence, as all shouting and fighting and rumbling finally ceased. Everyone stared at the wall of stone, only able to see it in the darkness because of the intermittent flashes of lightning still cracking the sky outside.
Nami and Usopp made the mistake of letting him go. Without warning, Luffy gave the wall one final punch. He hadn't really had the chance to wind up properly, so the punch might not have been that bad, even though it sent a web of cracks through the rock barricade. But the wood man next to him had also punched the wall at that exact moment. The combined effect sent the rock wall tumbling on top of them. A few hard rocks smacked him on his rubber head, which wouldn't have really done much damage, but the rocks kept piling on top of him until he was buried.
His vision went black, which might have just been the rocks filling his view. Then again, he must have blacked out because the next thing Luffy knew he was blinking in pink morning sunlight to the familiar sound of his own stomach grumbling. The storm had passed, and it was clearly time for breakfast.
He sat up, holding his head, when someone conked him on his already tender skull. He recognized her as Nami, even before she started shouting at him (she had a particularly recognizable fist). She said something about them having to make make-shift shelters because his idiocy had blocked up the entire cave.
Someone had dragged him out onto the wet sand of the beach. Warm tendrils of steam rose into the air around him, swirling in the filtered light. The sun was hot in these parts, even in the morning. It might have reminded him of Alabasta, but the air was moist and tropical.
He surveyed his crew along the beach. Usopp and Chopper were gathering the wooden remains of the ship, while Robin and Sanji had a cooking fire going. Cheered by the fact that breakfast was almost ready, he grinned up at Nami despite her continued barrage of insults and complaints. Then he realized there was a crew member missing, and his grin disappeared.
"Oy, Nami," he said quietly. Very few things could distract him from an empty stomach. This was one of those things. "Did you dig Zoro out too?"
She pursed her lips at him and shook her head. "We could only get to you and that Hector guy," she said. "The cave kept collapsing. Why did you keep punching it like that? Did you honestly think it would do any good?"
Luffy forgot to answer as he caught sight of the wood man sitting cross-legged near the mouth of the cave. He had his helmet off as though in respect, and had stuck his spear point down in the sand beside him. It seemed like he was praying or something, head bowed reverentially, eyes closed. He looked about as sad as Luffy felt.
"He's been like that since Chopper woke him up," Nami said, following his gaze. "We haven't wanted to disturb him yet, but once we're done with breakfast we're going to get him to fix the ship. And then we need to ask him about the log pose…It's not charged yet."
Luffy placed his straw hat on his head and stood. He could tell that the ever logical Nami had already got it into her head that they would be sailing out. In her mind, the ship would be repaired and they would be on their merry way. She was mistaken, so long as she accepted Luffy as her captain. They hadn't breezed by any island yet, no matter how people tried to threaten them because of their pirate hood. Adventures were waiting, and they weren't about to leave Ilium unexplored, even if the log pose had charged unexpectedly overnight.
Besides, he wasn't going to leave his swordsman behind.
Realizing this had reminded him of his certainties. And as always, in thinking of those certainties he found the path clear before him as everything came into focus. He walked toward the wood man without hesitation, though Nami chided him. His sandals left squelching foot prints in the wet beach, and soon he found himself standing beside the praying man.
Letting the straw hat shield his eyes from the already hot morning sun, Luffy gazed down at him for a moment. The wood man turned to look up at him, expression stoic.
"I will repair your ship," the wood man said. "But you must take me back to Ilium," he said. "I must report this to the king. His daughter is…"
"She's not dead," Luffy said shortly.
The man's expression hardened. "Do not mock my intelligence, pirate. These caves run all through the island, and rock shelves cover holes that go down hundreds of feet. But even if she survived the fall, there are the creatures that live below. And now the darkness that…" he swallowed, and then changed his tack, "Men and women stronger than the princess have died in…"
"She's not dead," Luffy put in again tersely. Sometimes people were slow, he realized, and needed to hear things twice. The wood man stared. Now certain he had his attention, Luffy continued in a low voice. "She's fine. She's with Zoro."
The wood man guffawed. "I would say that's a step backward… Even if she survived the fall, she'd have a bloodthirsty vagrant to deal with."
Luffy wasn't sure what a vagrant was. But he knew that Zoro didn't drink blood. He informed the wood man of such and insisted again that Zoro and the princess were fine.
"What makes you so sure he survived?" the wood man asked.
"He's going to become the world's greatest swordsman," Luffy replied. No rockslide was going to deter Zoro from his dream. He'd survived far worse than that.
"You seem awfully confident for one so young. Who do you think you are, anyway?"
"I'm the man who's gonna be the King of the Pirates," Luffy replied with a grin.
General Hector stared up at the scrawny pirate captain, resisting the sudden urge to smile back. Something about the kid was reassuring. It was disconcerting, actually. He never thought he'd meet a likeable pirate. He also had yet to meet a pirate captain who was so young. A pirate captain looking for the One Piece was nothing new, but something about the way he said it…
Hector shook himself mentally. He'd almost let himself think that this Straw Hat Luffy was one of the first pirates he'd met who looked like he had a chance of actually finding the One Piece. But no, Straw Hat Luffy and his gang of pirates were not about to make it anywhere. He would be sure of that.
Ilium had strict laws about pirates coming ashore. And extremely effective means of dealing with them. As a General in the King's army, he wasn't about to let the laws slide. But even without the laws, he would make sure these pirates were dealt with properly. After all, it was their fault Princess Helena was dead.
Captain Luffy seemed inclined to be friendly, despite the fact that they had been trying to kill each other the night before. Hector wasn't above using it to his advantage. He was about to speak, when a calm, female voice interrupted him.
"You say these caves run all throughout the island?"
The woman had dark hair cropped to her shoulders, and sharp blue eyes. Hector recognized her as one of the crew members with devil fruit powers. Of the group, she seemed most level-headed, and she possessed an air of intelligence that naturally commanded respect. He nodded in response to her question.
"They say they even connect to the catacombs underneath the capital, though it's yet to be confirmed," he replied.
"Interesting," she said with a thoughtful expression on her tanned face. She turned to Luffy. "Captain, I came to inform you that breakfast is ready."
If Straw Hat Luffy had been speaking like someone much older than his apparent age a moment before, he suddenly became someone much younger. Throwing his arms in the air, he ran toward where the ship's cook was dishing out something delicious-looking that he'd apparently hunted down himself in the forest. When the captain got there, the cook stopped him with a foot to the face as he first gave a plate of food to the only other female in the crew, who took it from him with a gracious smile and a wink.
"Will you be joining us, General?" asked the dark haired woman beside Hector. He noticed that she already had a plate of food in her hands. The cook apparently had a chivalrous streak.
Just then the cook kicked Luffy's stretching hands away from the red-haired girl's plate as the captain made a second attempt to steal her food. "Your crew doesn't seem to respect its captain much," Hector pointed out.
The dark-haired woman smiled a small, enigmatic smile. "Respect comes in different forms, General."
Hector stood. "Does he really believe your…friend has survived?" Friend seemed to be the appropriate term, observing the way the pirate crew interacted, which again surprised him.
The woman nodded and started back toward the group. "I have only been travelling with Straw Hat Luffy for a short while," she said as he fell instep beside her. "But if I have learned anything it is that the Captain is rarely wrong when it comes to matters like this. He has faith in his friends. Do you have faith in your Princess?"
Nico Robin's question stuck with him as he went about repairing the pirate's ship later that morning, after breakfast and introductions had concluded. Faith in Princess Helena? Of course he'd had faith in her. He had practically raised her. Her fighting prowess had been a blend of good genes and his family's efforts to train her properly. Her good sense was something she had inherited from her father, her fighting spirit and optimism from her mother. She had been the hope of Ilium's future, and had helped keep her realm safe from outside threats since she was old enough to inherit her mother's sword.
But General Hector had lived long enough to realize that dreams and wishful thinking, even strength and preparation, only got one so far. Sometimes the fates had other things in mind. The late Queen had shown them that. – and now the late Princess. If anything, Robin's goading remark about having faith in Princess Helena only made him angry. He had had faith in her and in himself. It had gotten them both ship-wrecked and her immured.
Picking up a plank with one fibrous, wooden arm, he smacked it into the hull of the ship with more gusto than probably necessary. It cracked the wood around it, but he quickly repaired it before anyone noticed.
The Going Merry, as the pirates called her, was lying beached on her side. She looked something like a 3D jigsaw puzzle, with gaps and holes in the woodwork here and there. Hector had possessed enough ships to know what pieces went where. The main problem was gathering them all.
He had discovered soon into the process that some of the pieces of the ship had been lost in the ocean. However the straw hat pirates were quick to devise a means of retrieving what was left of his and Helena's would-be escape vessel from the reef. The captain's stretching ability came in handy, and he certainly didn't fear the water, Hector had to give him that.
While this allowed him to fill the holes in their ship, unfortunately for the Straw Hats, this also allowed him a chance to retrieve a snail communicator from on board. While they were busy sorting through pieces, Hector placed a call to his second in command. The straw hats would have a nasty surprise waiting for them when they pulled into port.
Hector forced his expression to remain stoic as he thought of this with bitter glee, and melded the figurehead of the Merry into place. Convincing them to take him back to Ilium had been all too easy. He didn't need their help returning to the palace – there were enough forests between here and the capital for him to travel faster cross-country than by ship. But beyond that, he had spoken with their navigator about the log-pose exchange program they had in town.
It took the Island of Ilium approximately ten years to charge a log pose. As people traveling on the grand line rarely wanted to wait that long, Ilium had long been storing and exchanging charged log poses for fresh ones. This was one of the easiest ways they caught pirates, of course, but Hector doubted that the Straw Hats would get even that far, thanks to Hector's little snail call.
What he really had a hard time understanding was the group's decision to sail to Ilium for the new log pose, considering they all seemed to think that Roronoa Zoro was still alive. Wouldn't they want to try and rescue him? –Robin told the others about the underground cave system, and then had asked Hector whether or not he thought Princess Helena had a good sense of direction. When he had responded that she had, the others suddenly seemed satisfied with the idea that they would all run into him again sooner or later.
He had other things to worry about than whether or not their swordsman would catch up to the rest of the crew. Things were, of course, not in the best state back home, as his second in command had quickly informed him. Now that Princess Helena was gone (a detail he thought it best not to relay over a snail line), he was certain that the King would be requiring his services shortly. With that in mind he picked up the pace on the pirates' ship. With any luck, he'd be done by the following morning.
"I don't trust him," Usopp said in a low voice to Nami, whom he was helping gather her tangerine trees. "He destroyed our ship. He could do it again just as easily while we're out at sea. I don't want someone like that on board."
Nami responded, "He'd end up drowning himself if he did. It's not like he has another ship to jump back to."
"You just like him because he said the palace would reward us 'appropriately' for his safe return," Usopp said, using his fingers to make quotation marks. "What's reward us 'appropriately' supposed to mean, anyway?"
"He's the guardian of a princess! That means gold!" Nami said. She was getting that look in her eyes; the look that said, berries!
"There's something I don't like about all this though," Usopp went on. "He and that Princess were running away from something when we first saw them. Yet he's awfully eager to get back."
"Running away?" asked Sanji. He had been listening in to their conversation as he brought Nami an iced drink he'd made from some recently acquired fruit. He didn't have any for Usopp of course. Normally Usopp would have made a fuss, but his mind was on other matters.
"All their lights were out! They were in stealth mode." Usopp, who was generally pretty theatrical when he spoke, started acting shifty eyed and stealthy at the mention of stealth mode. Not stealthy enough, because Hector appeared suddenly beside them, making Usopp jump into a pretty pathetic martial arts position. The General had returned to transport Nami's trees onto the now mostly completed deck.
"It is a darkness you will not have to worry about," he said quietly. "Not if we arrive before nightfall."
"It's already midday," Sanji observed, looking through his hair at the still woebegone hull of the ship.
"It's alright, no one expects you before tomorrow," Hector said, then stiffened noticeably.
"Expects us?" Sanji asked, one curly eyebrow raised. The other might have been raised too, but it was hidden beneath his mop of blond hair.
"For our reward, of course!" Nami cried, eyes going berry again.
"You're so beautiful when you're obsessed with money, Nami-chan!" Sanji exclaimed, getting hearts in his own eyes.
Hector didn't say anything. He'd already disappeared with the trees. It was fascinating to watch as he moved through a line of boards that they had placed between the ship and the trees to make transport easier. He melded with the wood, and moved through it like a smooth wave without a crest. With the trees on top of him, he looked like a wooden turtle with an island on his back.
Usopp watched the General's retreat through suspicious eyes. "This Hector character is definitely up to something," he muttered to himself. "It looks like it's up to Detective Usopp to figure it out!" He liked the sound of that. "Detectiiiive Usopp-a is on the case!" Pulling down one of his goggle lenses, he started to search the beach for clues, completely forgetting what it was he was searching for.
Hector watched him from the deck of the ship and breathed a sigh. It appeared the pirates were about as dumb as they all looked. His secret was safe for now.
