Here's chapter 28! Without further ado...
Chapter 28: Celebratory sushi
It wasn't until dusk that the Moby had reached close enough to the island for it to be viewed clearly with the naked eye. The ship bobbed steadily towards it's destination after having battled its way through a storm earlier in the day.
Jenn had accounted for the reduced numbers of crewmates sailing with them since the size of the crew hardly ever entailed that they were together as one. With the many territories that the Whitebeard crew had under their flags, difficulities always arose so it was difficult to get the whole crew together for a single cause. Although the tactician had originally planned for the only about three quarters of the crew to be present, her plans had been shot to hell when two divisions were dispatched to deal with an arising problem at Fishman Island and another was sent to help their allies.
Not everybody on the Moby Dick could fight. Jenn considers herself one of them. Each member would be able to hold their own in a fight considering their enemies were at a level of enemy pirates from the four Blue Seas. But for Grandline standards and, more extremely, New World standards, a small percentage of them couldn't be accountable in a fight. That would include (but not limited to) doctors, nurses, some of the navigators and information brokers.
So all in all, the tactician considered she had about half the crew for the upcoming fight on Silver Cay. Add in Jack's crew of nine and that was her entire force. She had already relayed the battle formation to the commanders and how they chose to position their forces after that was up to them, with a few special exceptions that Jenn had made.
Since the Whitebeards were the strongest pirate crew in the world, Jenn had originally had no worries about the outcome of this war. As the Moby Dick drew closer to the island though, the two admiral ships had the tension rise.
A fog had graced them with its presence and kept the pirates hidden from the view of the marines.
"Thatch, I'm feeling like we should have celebratory sushi tonight." Jenn smirked as she helped the commander dose out all the lights on their ship. The marines would have to have superpowers to see them through this fog when their ship was completely extinguished of light.
The chef stuck his tongue out at her. "Sure, if you survive long enough to make it back." He joke lightheartedly.
"This is my most extensively planned out strategy ever. It better work." Jenn tucked the unlit lamp into a cupboard to secure it.
"Haha, tasers! It's genius!" Thatch grabbed the box of tasers they had set out for this plan. He shook the box a bit before grinning at her. "Who would have thought to use them like this!"
The younger blushed a bit at the elder's compliment but then countered with, "Who would have thought we had a box of them laying around!"
"Ahh, they were for...a prank..."
"I'm sure they were."
The two finished locking up all the cupboards and then left the room, shutting the door behind them, leaving the ship in utter darkness.
"Gah, I hate the dark." Thatch mumbled.
"Me too."
The remaining crew members emerged with their weapons, geared up for battle. The tactician made an effort to do a quick head count but lose track of who she had counted and who she hadn't with people moving in the dark. It was too hard to make out faces as her eyes continued to take time to adjust to the dark setting.
"Ja - I mean, Fooly. Start disabling their defenses." It was deadly silent on the ship when she gave out the order as the crew dropped into stealth mode. A small square of light illuminated on deck from Jack's laptop as the pirate captain began hacking the marine base systems.
The sound of electricity cackling was on and off as Thatch tested the tasers one last time before he passed them out to the leaders of each group. A small splosh notified Jenn that the twelth division was setting out in the rowboats to the island. They would meet them there where the twelth division would have snuck into the base and set up tasers against the seastone prism doors.
Two divisions would have to stay behind and guard the ship along with Whitebeard. The remaining eight divisions were to engage the enemies on the island via stealth. Jenn didn't want to directly attack them with the knowledge of chemical warfare in their possesion. She doubts that they would ever release a chemical on the island to defend themselves because it would do the same amount of harm to them that it would to the pirates. But Jenn wasn't below preparing for that.
"Ship team, go." There was a rustling of sound as the division made its way off the ship and Jenn felt Thatch lurk past her. They made their way to immobilize the marine ships that surrounded the island. The eighth division followed.
"Marco, the rest is in your hands." Jenn slung her backpack over her shoulder and grabbed Ace's hand as they made their way to the side of the ship. The second division was split into much smaller groups, each with their own team captain equipped with a taser. Jack's crew accounted for a portion of the second division that was away on missions.
Her long time friend also swung his backpack over his shoulder, taking special care to adjust it securely so his laptop wouldn't get damaged. He quietly called for his crew to follow and they slunk away into the night.
The near silent plop of the rowboats signaled their departure.
Ace was never one for stealth. He was good at it in minimal amounts but not for extended periods of time. And for the life of him, he couldn't keep a good poker face. Especially after eating his Devil Fruit, it was alot harder for him to hide his emotions. For enemies, it wasn't too hard considering he usually scowled at them and gave them his infamous death glare. Or he was laughing his ass off at how weak his enemies were.
For this instance though, he was simply too excited. The slight cackle of flames that would randomly ignite on his shoulders was testimony of that, as well as the widespread grin across his face.
Jenn's plan was simply genius!
The commander tugged open the door to the kitchen and motioned to his division that the coast was clear. They slunk in like the ninjas they were and left moments later with any flour or dust-like substance they could find. The marine base wouldn't know what hit it.
They positioned the bags of flour in front of the doors to the barracks and taped matches onto the doors so they would ignite if the door was opened.
Just as Ace finished up the touches of his part of the mission, a loud explosion shook the floor.
Haruta felt like she was pulling a perfect master prank. Her division had consisted mostly of information gatherers and since they were the intel division, they didn't have many fighters that she would feel safe having out of sight in the New World. If they were good at anything, it was sneaking around.
Whatever Ace's division was doing on the other side of the wall...well they sounded like a herd of elephants compared to hers. In fact, she could have sworn she heard Ace snicker. From across the wall. ACROSS. A. SEASTONE. WALL.
It was a general belief that seastone was stone and wasn't such a great conductor of electricty. Jenn had cleared that up really quick with a handy dandy taser when she shocked the hell out of Ace through a pair of seastone cuffs. The walls of the marine base was seastone. If Haruta put two and two together, it was pretty easy to see what they were going to do with the tasers.
Did she mention that water was also a really good conductor of electricity? No? Well she sure hopes the marines sleeping on their ships were having a good time.
A loud explosion shook the room.
Jack got right to work as soon as they infiltrated the marine base. The lookout was weak and a blast of well concentrated Conqueror's Haki put them in a coma before anyone could say Haki. The system of unlocking the gates itself was also nothing compared to the firewalls that he hacked on Earth.
Jenn followed him and diligently set to work as the rest of Jack's crew kept watch. The two of them disassembled the lights and rearranged the wires as quickly as they could. Just as Jack finished screwing the last lightbulb in, they heard a loud explosion from outside.
The Whitebeard pirate grabbed her friend by the collar of his shirt and dragged him down the hall as quickly as her muscles allowed when he protested that he wanted to do one more thing. The explosion was their signal to get going and whether they had finished or not, everyone was to ditch their posts.
The group of ten made their way to the room they agreed to meet Atom in. The gate room. Jack's crew decided to guard the hallway while the two deactivated the gate the served as a portal back to Earth.
"Jack, time?"
"It's Fooly! How many times do I have to tell you? And it's been five minutes twenty seven seconds."
"Ten minutes to ruin this machine and then fight through a mob of marines and escape." The tactician ran up to the door at the end of hallway and gave it a hard kick. It didn't budge.
"Just - " Jack punched the door with a haki infused fist. "- ow."
"Move." She shoved him over and pulled a bobby pin from her hair. It was silent for a few seconds before they heard a click and Jenn successfully picklocked the door. "Erm, blame Haruta." Jenn grinned sheepishly at Jack when he gave her an incredulous look.
They both pushed the door open and stumbled in at the same time. A quick scan of the room left Jenn a bit awestruck even though she had a rough image of what the room would have been like from Haruta's map and intel.
A giant steel gate towered over them on the far side of the room with the middle gone. The large metal arc was well defined and sturdily bolted to the ground but the center of the portal was almost indescribable. If Jenn could put it into words, it would be that someone took a picture and then photoshopped out the center to replace it with black.
The nothingness in the center was so unsettling that Jenn got the impression if she stuck her hand into it, her hand would simply cease to exist.
It looked so two-dimensional and wrong.
The uneasy feeling that Jenn had felt all day only amplified itself the long she looked at the unnatural phenomenon. Jack nudged her out of her trance and the two padded over to the array of electronical systems that lined the walls.
Surprisingly, for a society that was less advanced than Earth, they managed to develop several things that ended up beening more advanced than Earth's.
The One Piece world seriously did defy logic.
"The ship is sinking!"
"It's rigged! No one can fix the hole!"
The sound of marines panicking at the steady flow of water onto their ship was a comical scene for the pirates. Thatch was clutching his stomach in laughter on a rowboat and Namur floated next to him in the water.
"I feel like we're low cost pirates or something! I almost feel bad for any poor bastard that has to go below deck to fix the hole." Thatch managed to get out between breaths of laughter.
Namur gave a sharkish grin. "How long until they realize we threw a taser into the water?"
"Never! I bet all their shipwrights have been fried by now!"
"I sure hope they're not that dumb."
"Here comes Admiral Sparky maybe he's realized something's up."
The night sky instantly lit up the sky like it was morning again from Admiral Kizaru's devil fruit. Everyone had to shield their eyes from the bright light and were momentariily blinded.
"Oi, who's disturbing my sleep, heh?"
"That'd be me,yoi."
The Admiral and Commander met halfway in the sky above the ocean, the former blocking a fierce kick from the latter that left shockwaves in their wake. The flames of the phoenix flickered dangerously, challenging the admiral to a duel.
The rowboats from the eighth and fourth division rocked quietly as they began their retreat. The first division would take over from here.
"Hey Ace, where's the rest of your division?" Haruta found a wandering commander in the hallways somewhere's away from where the battle cries of marines were sounding. After the loud explosion of the ships outside woke the rest of the marines in the base up, they found that their walls had a shocking surprise and the doors were a tad...explosive.
"I lost them?" Said commander almost had a question mark literally appear over his head in his confusion.
"Did you make a wrong turn again?"
"Uhhhh..." Ace steps backwards into the intersection in the hallways and holds his hands out in front of him, sticking the pointer finger and thumb out to make an L and a backwards L. "Whoops. Left is that way."
The second division commander excused himself and began to stroll down the correct hallway where the sounds of his division locked in battle echoed, whistling a cheerful tune.
Haruta facepalmed but led the rest of her division after him.
Jack instantly busied himself with the array of computers off the side, stacked against the wall. If there was one thing that Jenn would ever admit complete and utter defeat to, it would be that Jack dominated her in computer works. It was the sole subject in school that she could never top him in.
"Atom said he'd meet us here but he's not here." Jenn wandered around eyeing many objects with suspicion, mostly the gate like she was expecting a demon to come out of the void in the middle.
"I'm here! Don't count me out yet." Atom came flying through the doorway, slamming it closed on his way in. He dropped into a heap on the ground, sprawled out and heaving heavy breaths of air.
"We're at ten minutes and forty - eight seconds." Jack informed from his spot at the computers.
A loud whirling sound deafened the ears of the members in the room. The gate seemed to creak and come to life but the void in the center remained the same. The large arc of metal sparked electricty and glowed a tinge of blue.
"The gate's on and will take you back to Earth. Here's your chance, Atom." Jack informed, making his way over where the marine stood facing the Whitebeard pirate.
Atom made a gesture to shake hands with Jenn. "Good luck here. It was great meeting an incredible tactician like you."
"You too. Go live a peaceful life and make sure to tell your grandchildren about your adventures in a different world. Oh yeah, and have some celebratory sushi." Jenn grinned.
The marine smiled and then turned to face Jack. "Thanks for everything. You're a strange captain but I don't doubt you'll be a force to be reckoned with in the future."
"Of course, I'm the best!" Jack smirked widely. "Now get going." He gives Atom a hard shove towards the gaping black void. The marine takes a few stumbling steps before stopping right in front of it. He turned around and gave one last wave of goodbye before stepping into the nothingness and letting it engulf him.
The steady march of marine footsteps echoed in the hallways. The few marines that didn't get themselves electrocuted in the water or blown up or burned by the dust explosions found themselves faced with the new challenge of working their way through the darkness of the halls.
One of the marine captains was trailing his hand against the wall in search of the light switch. They had been woken up so suddenly that most of them were still in their pajamas wielding their respective weapons. Unfortunately for them, their eyes had yet to adjust to the dark and the echoing of the pirates' voices through the halls made it impossible for them to pinpoint where it was coming from.
The marine captain's hand brushed against the outline of the light switch and he smirked, preparing his unit for the counterattack. Once he turned on the lights, the tides would turn and the pirates would be the ones unable to see, blinded by the lights.
Of course, the Whitebeard's head tactician always seemed to have a way to screw with them.
The marine captain flicked the switch but rather than the room being flooded with light, the lightbulbs burst sending sharp pieces of glass along with nails and screws hurling towards the marines.
Well shit.
Jenn and Jack spent the few minutes after Atom disappeared busying themselves with setting up the explosives to destroy the gate. Jack was rapidly typing on the computer to create an irreversible program for the machine to self destruct and basically implode on itself. Jenn had dug through all of the drawers and plucking anything and everything that could have related to Earth and stuffing it into her backpack or destroying as much of it as possible.
"Jack, we only have a minute left before we have to leave. Are you done yet?" Jenn snatched a couple of papers from underneath Jack's keyboard.
Fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds was what the crews had agreed on. With the grace time of twelve seconds, but after that, everyone was to clear the building and get away from the island.
The walls of the base were built out of seastone and therefore making it near impossible to get a signal through with the den den mushi. Their cellphones had an even harder time getting any signal at all.
So the fourteen minutes was agreed upon due to the lack of communication that they'd be able to do during the timeframe they were in there. The Whitebeard crew was never one to leave any of their own behind but Jenn had stressed that after their time limit was up, everybody had to hightail it out of there due to her fear that they would release the nerve gas.
It seemed unlikely that the marines would be dumb enough to release a deadly nerve agent inside their own base but a cornered cat will become a fierce lion.
"12 minutes Jack. We still have to get out of here."
He just grunted in response, too emersed in his work to be interuppted. The tactician had calculated the speed at which the gas would spread, the amount of time needed to prepare the gas, distance to and from the entrance points, everything that could be calculated with some math and physics was calculated. The tactician didn't miss anything but one.
With a final resolved tap of the keyboard, the pirate captain shut down the computer to an unusuable state and unplugged his own laptop, shoving into his bag. The two friends made a dash for the closed door with the awareness that they'd been pushing their time limit.
The sounds of Jack's crew calling for him was muffled by the seastone door but still audiable. Jenn pulled on the handle but the door wouldn't budge. She gave it a harder tug only for the knob to completely disconnect from the door and send the tactician tumbling backwards from her own force.
"You guys get going!" Jack called to his crew who were now very aware that their captain was stuck in the room well past the time limit now.
The two Earth inhabitants could feel the effects of the gas release seeping into their skin. A burning sensation and their eyes began to water.
His orders were met with much protest but he silenced them. Despite the sound barrier of the door, his voice rang clear and demanded the authority of a captain of the New World. "Everyone get back to the ship and report to the Whitebeard pirates what happened here. ROZO! I leave the crew in your hands! Don't think this will be the last time you hear of me! I never lose and I'll be back to raise hell with you guys before you know it! So get going...CAPTAIN'S ORDERS!"
The captain's orders were absolute and so the crew did as they were told although there were several sniffles and protests in between. The first mate's presence was still lingering though. There was a short silence before Jenn spoke up. "Rozo, if I could ask you a favor. Let Whitebeard know that I'll make contact with them when I can. Like your captain said, we never lose. So don't let them come after us and put themselves in danger. This isn't goodbye."
The first mate grunted in agreement and Jenn could hear him dart off reluctantly to escape the nerve agent.
Jenn dragged her friend towards the gate with great difficulty, finding it harder and harder to catch her breath. Everything in her vision was blurred to the point that she could hardly distiguish anything but the gaping hole of the gate couldn't be missed. Jack didn't move a muscle in protest nor support, instead he stood there in an almost shocked defeat.
"Are you just gonna stand there and mope?"
"What do you want me to do? We're done for!" He turned to face her, eyes full of furious fire. His brave words to his crew had died the second they left his mouth and he was no more than an empty shell that had lost all meaning to life.
"We can't get out of this room through conventional means but there's still one solution if you haven't forgotten."
Time was ticking.
"I didn't want to go back but looks like there's no other choice. After all.." Jack stepped up the platform of the gate.
Jenn followed, the two of them stood in front of the gaping nothingness with a new flame of determination in their eyes. "We never..."
"Ever.."
"Lose."
They flashed each other a cheeky grin before both hopping into the void with the strange sensation of falling and floating at the same time.
Jenn's last thoughts as the darkness enveloped her was, "After all, I still need to eat my celebratory sushi."
A/N: The plot thickens...
