Posting a day early because I'm gonna be a bit busy tomorrow driving!

Chapter 150 (or 10) – Words and Actions

Maria's POV

Trying to find and talk to Sharley turned out to be a fruitless endeavor.

When I got to her home, I saw the destructive results of a fight, and her door was locked quite securely from entry.

"Sharley, it's me!" I called. "The World Jumper? Come on – I've gotta talk to you about something!"

Absolutely no answer.

I sighed irritably, then turned around and looked at the carnage that had been left behind in the street. "Well, guess I'll have to find my answers elsewhere." I sighed again, then looked around at the few fishmen and merfolk who were standing around in the street, staring at the carnage. "Would any of you be willing to tell me what happened here?"

They exchanged nervous looks at my question; none of them stepped forward.

At least, none of the adults did.

"Madam Sharley said that Straw Hat Luffy was gonna cause the destruction of the island!" a little fishman boy with green scales and fins for ears toddled forward.

"Tom, get back!" his mother cried.

I frowned at that. "Is that exactly what she said?"

"Uh huh!" Tom nodded. "She said that we had to get the Straw Hats off the island as soon as possible!"

"I see. Well, that's a pretty big problem." I looked up at the sky – and the ceiling of the bubble beyond it. "Sounds like we're going to be having some trouble again." I sighed, then chuckled. "Must be our luck, huh?"

"Our?" Tom repeated.

I nodded, then looked down at Tom and tilted my head to one side in thought. "Say, kiddo, what do you think is making humans not come through here very often?"

"I dunno." Tom shrugged. "Mom and Dad say it's a good thing because then I won't be taken away by one."

"But then how are pirates getting to the New World? I mean, they have to pass through here in order to get to that part of the Grand Line; it'd make sense that they'd stop in the one place that they've heard so much about."

Tom frowned at that. "Mom and Dad say that they're too scared to come to the New World, because they've heard about how hard it is to come down here."

"But then what's the fun in adventuring?" I argued cheerily. "If you don't get stronger because of every obstacle you face, rather than turn and hide or find them too easy, then what are you going to do with your life?"

Tom actually looked like he was about to answer that, but then his mother – a fishwoman with dark blue scale-like skin – ran up and grabbed her son's hand.

"We do not speak with humans," she hissed. "What if she had grabbed you and run off with you?"

"There is always that danger when talking to someone of your species or another one entirely, ma'am," I replied, causing her to look over at me defensively. "Besides, I'm not human. I'm something else. Sharley knows what I am, and welcomed me into her home with open arms before. I assume that she shut her house up because of the prophecy that she foresaw?"

"Yes." The fishwoman nodded curtly. "She said that she didn't want to be disturbed until the Straw Hats left the country."

"I see." I frowned. "Is she certain that the Straw Hats are the source of the problem?"

"She said they would cause the destruction of Fishman Island! That means they're the source of the problem."

I shook my head. Clearly, these people didn't know the first-hand accounts of events that had happened surrounding us. "Not according to their track record. From what I've heard of first-hand accounts—"

-Barring my own, of course, but I didn't want to give these people reason to fear me—

"—they've arrived at islands looking for a moment of peace to restock and then move on, only to get caught up in events that were going to take place, but hadn't had a chance to. It's like those events were destined to take place at the same time that the Straw Hats were in the area. Take Drum Kingdom for example – the island in the Grand Line where the best human doctors and surgeons are known to come from. They'd thrown their king out recently, but then he came back and demanded they return his castle to him. At the same time, the Straw Hats' navigator fell ill, and they had to go to that island in order to find a cure. The people of the island could have blamed the Straw Hats for bringing that trouble in with them, but they didn't." I raised an eyebrow at her. "Do you know why?"

"Because the evil king was bad guy!" Tom piped up. His mother, who had been pulling him away from me, paused.

"Humans are always the bad guys," she muttered.

Okay, time to pull out the big guns.

"Straw Hat Luffy punched a Celestial Dragon two years ago to save Hachi and Camie," I pointed out in a flat tone.

That got some whispers from the others nearby. I could distinctly hear Hachi's name among them quite a few times.

"Luffy considers them friends, and the Dragons can go kiss his feet when they hit their faces if they like," I said with a bit of a smirk. "Same goes for me. Anyone who thinks that trafficking of lives is a good thing can take a fireball to the face for all I care; I'm not about to help them just because they think they can kiss up to me and go right back to their old ways." My smirk dropped. "I've heard of too many people who've done that to be willing to trust people in that situation quite so easily."

That got me a few stares.

"Are you a former slave then?" someone asked.

I blinked at the question, then frowned, closing my eyes and considering the thought.

One of the things that I'd remembered over the course of my two years' training was that, because of what my title was – the title Sharley had called me, the title my crewmates didn't know me by yet – I was sought after by people who wanted to use me for sinister purposes.

My brow furrowed, and I opened my eyes again. "There have been attempts – twice, by one man, once by a creature, and one…one event that I might say would have been a success at fully breaking me if my brother hadn't intervened in time."

Thinking of that event in particular – the destroyed skyscrapers, the creatures that towered over everyone and nearly everything, black and menacing and long-clawed and—

The shudder that hit me from head to foot as the memories hit me made me feel like I'd been suddenly dropped in an ice bath and pulled out into the freezing air, ready to be dunked all over again.

"…let's just say there was no love lost when we defeated them and sent them back to the darkness they came from," I said when I managed to pull myself back to the present. "They won't be taking anyone's free will ever again. Not while I stand free."

The fishmen were staring at me with looks of sympathy, confusion, and surprise. I don't think they were expecting me to say anything like that, much less confirm that humans could be just as cruel to each other as they were to their kind.

Tom slipped his hand out of his mother's and ran up and hugged me around the waist. I looked down at him in surprise as his mother looked at him in concern.

"I guess you're not a bad human then, huh?" Tom asked.

"There are good humans and bad humans, just like there are good fishmen and bad fishmen," I replied. "I'll leave it up to you to judge for yourself which category I fall under."

"Well, I think you're good. Not like those people down in the Fishmen District."

"Tom!" His mother ran over and grabbed him before pulling him away again. "We don't talk about the people in the Fishmen District."

"But they're bad people, Mom! You said so! Everybody says that the Fishman District is dangerous because of the bad people that live there!"

Bad people, huh? Probably bad people like those New Fishman Pirates that met us at the gate and tried to get us to join up with them.

Still….

"What makes them bad people?" I asked. "Out of curiosity – this trip through here to the New World is letting me learn all sorts of things, and since humans don't see fishmen civilization unless they come under the sea for a reason, I'm pretty curious."

Tom's mom shot me a dark look; she clearly didn't want me to come anywhere near the two of them. "The people down there can't afford to live in this part of the kingdom; they're violent and dangerous people."

"A hotbed for a bunch of people who don't like how things are run and want to do something violent about it, I think you mean," I corrected.

"You – what do you know?!"

"I've seen what happens when a civilization falls into civil war," I replied, my voice becoming grim. "Both sides had their faults to deal with – the government was corrupt with power; the people who were being suppressed were dealing with it in harsh ways that they really shouldn't have. And not to mention the fact that their war ended up becoming so violent they completely destroyed their homes in the process and had to move the war elsewhere." I shook my head.

"Humans do that—"

"They weren't human. And they weren't fishman, either. They were something else entirely."

I could tell that she didn't believe me, but I didn't give her time to argue that point.

"The point is that bad people can come from anywhere, and whether or not they have the ability to act on those bad thoughts can cause some pretty disastrous consequences. I'm guessing the Fishman District is left pretty well alone, because otherwise there wouldn't be fishmen wandering about freely threatening pirate crews coming in with death if they didn't join under their banner for some plan they were concocting. Like they did with my crew. We're lucky we managed to get up here and away from them, even if most of us did end up popping through illegally."

"What?!" Tom's jaw dropped. "There are fishmen doing that? You gotta tell somebody!"

I shrugged. "Who would believe me? I'm a human—" Well, not really "—speaking out against your people. Some might consider it a possibility, but then look at me and think that I'm lying for my own personal gain. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not to mention the fact that I'm a pirate – we don't exactly get good raps with the local authorities, if you know what I mean."

The fishmen's gazes hardened at that while Tom's eyes widened and a halo of sparkles appeared around his head.

"I knew it!" Tom exclaimed. "You're the pirate who was with Straw Hat Luffy at the War of the Best, weren't you? You look just like your wanted poster!"

Uh oh. That got a look of alarm to cross his mother's face, and I knew that my time as a friendly conversationalist was up.

But I wasn't about to dash this kid's hopes to dust just because I wanted to keep face and tell them lies.

"Uhh…yup. Yup, that's me." I rubbed the back of my head, looking sheepish.

"You're Fire Storm Maria!" Tom crowed excitedly. "So cool!"

"We're going now," his mother said, sending me a panicked look. She grabbed her son and quickly started pulling him away.

Tom waved at me. "I hope I can ask you stuff later!"

Meanwhile, the other fishmen standing nearby started looking like they were ready to rush me. I heard shouting coming from one of the neighboring streets.

"Get them! We can't let them escape! They're going to cause us trouble!"

I turned my head to listen to the sound, then heard the sound of one of the weapons from the nearby knocked-out fishmen getting lifted off the street.

I turned my head sharply, only to find myself nose-to-nose – so to speak – with one of the tridents that had littered the street.

"You're going to surrender peacefully," said a dark orange fishman with a hooked nose. "Or I'm going to skewer you through. What's your choice?"

The people here hadn't seen me in in my armor. They didn't know that I wasn't human, nor did they know what exactly was going to happen if I got a trident through the head.

To be honest, I didn't think that I would be able to survive one.

I raised my hands slowly and put them behind my head as the trident bumped against my nose in a threatening manner. "Take me where you will."

The fishman actually looked surprised at my response; he lowered the trident from my face and trained it on my chest instead. "I didn't think you would surrender that easily. After what we heard about you in Marineford—"

"Marineford was a battle to get my captain's brother back," I replied. "Here, the battle is something else, and I doubt it's one I am going to win if I knock you all in the head and leave you unconscious with concussions in the street."

"What sort of battle is it, then?"

"One that involves more words than actions, if I find people who are willing to listen." I shrugged. "I don't doubt that I'll be using my actions soon, but not against you. There are others who probably deserve such things far more than anyone else that I've run into in this kingdom so far."

The fishman didn't quite look like he trusted me, but I'd managed to show enough that I wasn't going to fight that he relaxed the trident from pointing at my chest. He motioned with it for me to follow him, and I did.

Hopefully, wherever I ended up would let me figure out how my actions would make this situation turn around for the better.