Not Pirates, Treasure Hunters
Part 4 of 4 in a saga
A One Piece Fanfiction by Aoikami Sarah
Chapter Twenty Nine - This Might Come In Handy
When the course had been set, the crew of the Ferris retired to the Galley and sat in an awkward silence together. The ship rolled on fairly choppy seas and wind howled through the cracks in the doorway. Finally, Iisopp broke the ice by slamming his fist onto the table.
"Damn it!" he cried. "I couldn't do anything to stop that monster!"
Chanson calmly lit a cigarette. "Don't beat up the table, it didn't do anything to you."
"The shots just bounced off him…" Iisopp moaned, pulled out his favorite 9mm's and disassembled one of them on the table.
Zoro raised a brow at the sight of such firepower. "You said he was Logia, right? There isn't much anyone could have done against that. You're lucky you're alive." His words did no good for the morose marksman who methodically cleaned his guns and muttered to himself.
His daughter folded her arms. "Do you think he could be cut, Otou-sama?"
Zoro grinned. "We'll find out, won't we?"
The ship's captain didn't seem as despondent as his best friend was about the situation. He approached Chanson and asked her to make them some good food to raise their spirits and she set to work. "And can I get a bowl of hot water?" he asked. She looked at him funny but gave him what he wanted. Jones took the bowl and sat down at the table.
"So this guy was a pirate?" Zoro asked, but Iisopp was too engrossed in his cleaning ritual and self-loathing to answer. Instead, the other witness piped up.
"Ah, yes." Diego raised his hand slightly to indicate he would answer. "He declared himself to be The Strong Man Ed Divine of the Buggy Pirates."
Zoro groaned. "Buggy… That imbecile's still around?"
"Apparently," Diego concurred. "But this young man was alone."
As they discussed the situation, only Sakura, plagued again with motion sickness, paid any attention to what Jones was doing. He pulled something from a brown paper bag and placed it in the bowl of hot water. It didn't look like anything edible, rather like a clump of tar or a squashed felt hat of some kind. The doctor watched, but his stomach forced him to keep his mouth closed.
"You got any Akuma no Mi users on board?" Zoro asked.
"Only Sakura," Taka answered.
Diego jumped as Chanson dropped a plate she had meant to put on the table and it shattered. "What?!" she cried.
Sakura rested his head on his arms. "Yeah. I do. Sorry. Meant to tell you. Waiting for the right moment..." The color of his face seemed locked in battle between the green of sickness and the red of embarrassment.
"Well, what kind?!" Chanson demanded.
"Zoan. Caribou. Rumble ball…" he muttered, only able to get a few words out without vomiting.
"That's nostalgic," Zoro said. "You've got a chef, a swordsman, a thief, a gunner, a doctor who's also a deer… sounds like Straw Hat Pirates: Part Two!"
Some of them smiled at the compliment. Jones, however muttered, "we're not pirates…" again, his attention distracted by the tar-lump-hat thing in the bowl which was increasing in size and turning the hot water a rather unappetizing shade of brown.
Sakura's head shot up and he sniffed strongly. He glared at the thing. "Is that…?!" he began, but he clamped his hands over his mouth and dashed for the door. In his wake, the smell the lump was giving off reached everyone else.
"Oh, what the hell is that?!" Chanson cried, pinching her nose and stepping away from the table.
"Is it a dead animal?" Taka wondered, doing the same.
"Nope," Jones answered, not taking his eyes off it as it expanded. To everyone's horror he picked the dripping lump up, made a determined face, nodded once to himself and took a huge bite out of it. The thing squelched and some of its juices squirted out onto the table, sending Diego and Iisopp scrambling, knocking over their chairs as they went.
"Jojo, what are you doing?!" Iisopp shouted.
Jones looked as if he was going to join Sakura for a moment, but he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed painfully. "Oh, gross!!" he bellowed.
Iisopp boggled at him. "Well, duh! Your nose broken or something?! That thing smells like road kill!"
"Vomited Udon," Taka added.
"Compost pile." Zoro grimaced.
"Rotten seaweed," Diego muttered through the hand over his nose and mouth.
"Not something edible!!" Chanson agreed. "What is wrong with you?!"
Jones stood. "Dunno yet." Before anyone could berate him further, he hiccupped once and fell through the floor.
There was a brief pause before everyone panicked.
Zoro tried to handle the situation. "Just calm down!" He shouted. "I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this…"
As if in answer, Sakura returned, wiping his mouth from his trip to the side of the ship. "Is that an Akuma no Mi?!"
.x.
In the hold Jones took a deep breath and tried not to panic. His arms rested on the floor and his lower half trailed along in the water underneath the ship. "Ok," he reasoned. "That wasn't good." He tried to relax but slipped another inch through the wood. "Nope. That doesn't work." His next step was to scream for help but it was unnecessary. The sound of pounding footsteps made his heart soar. The rest of the crew was astounded to find him in such a predicament but Zoro was easily able to pull him free. The young man stood and panted with his arms spread, waiting to see what happened next.
Iisopp introduced him to the Fist of Love. Hard. "Dumbass! What were you thinking?!" he shouted at his best friend.
"I found it. I ate it. You jealous?"
Iisopp's jaw dropped. "No! You were just…" he pointed to the bottom of the hull.
"Yeah. I didn't know what the power was when it activated. I almost drowned!" Jones laughed and was smacked again. "I wonder which fruit it is?" he wondered, ignoring Iisopp's violence.
"It's the Pass-pass no Mi," Diego informed them. "It was thought to be one of the last devil fruits still unconsumed. I suppose we can check that one off the list, now."
Jones grinned. "What does it do?"
"Well, I think that's obvious," Diego replied in a slightly snooty tone. "You can pass through things."
Jones ignored his tone of voice and reached out to the nearest object: Iisopp. First he put his hand on his shoulder. Then, he brought it down as if to karate-chop him and the arm passed right through. "Hot!!" Jones cried.
"Weird!!" Iisopp shivered. "Man, don't do that!"
This sent Jones into peels of laughter again and he lead the others back up to the decks. "This is awesome. I was kinda hoping for a Logia or a Zoan or something I could kick some ass with, but I guess this might come in handy."
Zoro shook his head. "That's really weird. You really are really a mix between Luffy and Nami…"
The compliment made Jones grin to split his face. "Wait till you meet my sister."
.x.
The Emerald, a small single-mast ship, sailed along at a good clip, propelled by strong winds filling a single, oversized sail. Its captain, the young pirate Ed Divine stood at the bow and watched the still darkened horizon through a telescope. Dawn was just turning the sky behind them pale purple. "Well. I dunno where these things are taking us," he said, patting one of two large, wooden boxes sitting behind him. "But I can't wait to see where we end up."
He grinned slyly and looked to his hostage. Chisa sat on her folded legs at the stern and looked up at him with a severe pout. Her ankles were cased in stone and bonded to the deck.
"What's the matter with you? You're alive, aren't you?" The girl with the pig tails stuck her tongue out at him but said nothing. Divine laughed and approached her. "How old are you? Thirteen?"
"Fourteen!" she corrected him.
"Fourteen!" Divine laughed again. "I'm Sixteen."
"Oh yeah? My brother's seventeen, and when he gets his hands on you…" she threatened.
Divine pouted slightly and leaned down toward her, turning his right arm to stone. "He can get his hands on this all he wants. He won't like it."
Chisa scoffed. "My brother could run circles around you and outwit you any day! He doesn't need any stupid Akuma no Mi!"
"Stupid!" Divine cried. "This is a Logia ability, girly-girl. Lo-gi-a!" He flexed again, the stone mimicking muscle movement with a sort of crunching sound. It changed shape from a fist to a large mallet and back again.
Chisa put her nose in the air and turned her head to watch the water swirl in the ship's wake. "Whatever. My brother could still…"
"Would you shut up about your stupid brother?!" A vein pulsed over Divine's left eye. When she made to speak again he growled and grabbed her by the shirt. "If you don't shut up I'll toss you into the drink!"
Chisa grinned. 'This is it,' she thought. 'Once I'm away from him I can catch up with Nii-chan and the Ferris easy!' "Go for it!" she chimed.
"No. I tell you what. Why don't we even the score?" he said evilly and pushed her back against the bow. To Chisa's surprise, he didn't attempt to molest her. He went to retrieve something from the little cabin, instead. She craned her neck to see what he was up to but didn't have long to wait. Divine returned with a small treasure chest which he placed before her and handed her the key. "Go ahead. Open it."
She looked at him as if he had just sprouted another head but did as she was told. The chest opened easily and Chisa blinked at the contents in disbelief.
Divine did not expect her to laugh. "What's so funny?!" he barked and grabbed the box from her. Inside was a piece of paper that read 'Thanks!' and had what looked like an orange with a tongue-wagging face drawn on it.
"Whatever was in there must have been really cool!" She laughed and waved the note in Divine's steadily reddening face. "'Cause my brother stole it!"
Divine was obviously not amused. He stood very still and shook slightly with anger. Chisa was ready for him to free her from the deck and toss her into the ocean but when that didn't happen she stopped laughing and stared at him. He was looking not at her, but off into the horizon behind them. Chisa turned to see if the Ferris was catching up but there was nothing there. "Hey, Divvy?" she asked, taunting him. "Hello?"
At first, Divine figured he must be succumbing to lack of sleep or heatstroke or something, but the images that echoed in his mind were too cohesive to be a waking dream.
.x.x.
The ship in his vision was huge, the size of which he'd never seen. It was black and had four masts from which the tallest flew a Jolly Roger that he didn't recognize. On its deck stood the Old Man himself, Edward Newgate, clean-shaven and much younger than he remembered. Newgate laughed heartily at something one of his comparatively diminutive nakama said. "Don't that beat all!" he bellowed.
"And to think that the gold we took was only a fraction of what was up there!" a man with a black pompadour hairstyle pointed out.
"Aye, James. To think," a pink-haired man in a traditional white sailor suit agreed. "I can hardly wait to reach the next port so we can spend it. I need new strings for just about ever instrument I own."
"You bet you do, Richard!" A tall (but still short compared to the gigantic Newgate) green haired man with a bushy green beard agreed. "You nearly played a hole through that violin of yours that last night up there!"
"I guess I did, Albert," Richard Sairen agreed and smiled sheepishly.
"What are you gonna buy, Eddy?" The man with the pompadour called James asked the giant.
He looked left and looked right then bowed toward the other three and motioned for them to come in close. "I thought I'd get somethin' nice for Vincent," he tried to whisper. The other men grew solemn but nodded their heads in agreement.
James Aide scratched his head. "But what kinda present do you get for the son of the Pirate King?"
They grumbled about this for a moment before a voice called from the ether. "Please, guys. I don't need anything…" Just above them on the roof of the highest deck a small whirlwind developed and a young man materialized and seated himself on the ledge.
"Aw, Vinnie, Eddy was just thinkin' of ya, that's all," James tried to explain.
"I know, and I thank you all for being so kind," he said softly and coughed a few times. "But what good are material possessions to me at this point? What I truly cherish is your friendship."
Edward Newgate, the giant, who would be later known as White Beard and feared in his prime as the strongest pirate on the Grand Line, wept. "Oh! Vincent!" he wailed. "Damnit, I wish there was something we could do!!"
Vincent looked left and looked right. "Father is trying to think of something…" he said quietly.
This soothed Newgate. "Then there's hope for you?" he asked brightly.
"Could be, Edward. Could be." Vincent smiled and let his ability swirl his being back into the air.
.x.x.
Chisa was leaning as far forward as she could, poking at Divine with the note Jones had left in his treasure chest. "Hello? Divvy?" she chanted.
He shook his head as the vision cleared and her voice calling 'Divvy' finally registered. "My name is…!" he began then blinked down at her. "…Ed Divine."
Before he could remember that he had been infuriated with the little girl with the pigtails she blinked up at him with a soft, casual expression and asked, "did the box just show you something?" she asked plainly.
The pirate sat down in front of her and his brows came together, but he was calm. He nodded. "I dunno what this Vincent person had to do with my old captain, but I think somehow it's something really important."
Chisa nodded. "Nii-chan and Chanson had them too. Vincent was in their visions and so were people they knew."
The look on his face was familiar; the look of confusion her brother had when he first told her about his own vision. "Who is Vincent? What does it mean?"
She wondered if she should tell him anything more. He seemed nice now that he was calmed down, but he was still her captor. She pursed her lips and shrugged. Divine sighed and looked at the western horizon. "Well, whatever it is, it wants me to take it west and if I do, it'll give me the greatest treasure in the whole world." He stood and the stony look he usually wore returned. "And now that I got two of them, nothing'll stop me from getting it."
More to come…
