XXI

Child of the Sky; Enter the Eight Illegal Travelers Into Skypiea!

Can't breathe... Dalzeel struggled under the water as he clung onto Merry for dear life with what little strength he had slipping away in the sea water. He felt as though he was being crushed on the ship, the pressure from the tension of the water was almost unbearable.

As he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, his mind somehow wandered back to Teach. At the time, when Zoro had stopped him, he hadn't had the time to think about why he hated the man so much. In the excitement of the knock-up stream and the Sky Island, he hadn't fully registered to him that the man in front of him was the reason why he had left the Whitebeard Pirates in the first place. His body had moved to grab Zoro by the shirt collar, but he hadn't realized where that anger had come from.

Yet now, he had to be careful not to crush Merry's railing under his fingers with the sudden surge of rage that coursed through him. That man's betrayal against his crew and his brothers was unforgivable. Dalzeel didn't even know how Teach could've killed someone that he had known so well for so long. Even he hadn't been on the crew as long as Teach had, and hurting someone on Oyaji's crew, especially when they had treated him with such kindness was unthinkable. The water pressed over him harder as he grew angrier, making it harder to breathe, but the pain was more like a mere thought to him.

There was a splash and then a breath of fresh air, as the Merry Go resurfaced. The coughing and gasping of the crew was the first thing Dalzeel heard, but it was drowned out by the keening in his ears from the pure hatred that stemmed from him of Teach. While the others were walking around, inspecting their surroundings, he was still sitting on the deck, drowned in his feelings from the past.

"Astrologist-san?" a question was asked to him by a familiar voice, and then he remembered where he was. Not on Oyaji's ship the night that Thatch had died, but on the Merry Go, on his way to a Sky Island with a crew that he loved.

He looked up suddenly, breaking out of his trance, flashing a grin quickly at the woman. "Just a little shaken up is all." He ran a hand through his wet hair and grimaced as he walked to where everyone was standing. It was going to be a frizzled mess in just a few hours.

"Is this," he breathed, all thoughts of Teach forgotten as he marveled at the spectacle in front of him. "A sea of clouds?"

He almost had to shield his eyes with how bright the clouds were. They were in an ocean where it was utterly white, with almost no end in sight. Was this heaven? he thought to himself in a haze, as he grew more and more hypnotized with the clouds. Did I suffocate to death back there?

"In other words, this is the sea of the sky!" Nami exclaimed, finishing his thought, confirming that he was indeed, not dead.

"But look," Dalzeel grabbed Nami's wrist to get a closer look at the Log Pose. "It's still pointing up. Does that mean we need to go higher?" He looked at the cloudy sea around them. "But how?"

Chopper was standing on the edge of Merry, looking over the sea through binoculars, enjoying the view while Zoro and Sanji struggled to keep Luffy on the ship as he struggled to leap off.

"Where's the sky island?" the little reindeer wondered aloud to himself gleefully as he anticipated a new adventure. "Oh! Hey everyone! There is a ship! ...and a person?" He suddenly made a surprised squeaking noise.

Dalzeel walked over from the commotion to stand by him, squinting in the distance as he strained to see what the doctor was seeing. "What it is Chopper?"

"EHHHHH!?" Chopper screeched as the binoculars clattered to the deck. "EHHH?!"

"Chopper, a ship?" Nami asked, concerned at his reaction. "A ship is over there?"

"No, um, there was a ship," he stuttered. "But the ship isn't there anymore!"

"What do you mean?" Robin said.

"There's a bull running on a rectangular cloud. It's charging from over there! THIS IS BAD!"

"I don't get it," Zoro said. "Calm down!"

"What's he trying to say?"

The back of Dalzeel's neck tingled, and he turned sharply, spotting what Chopper was screaming about. It indeed looked to be a bull, but to more trained eyes, it was a human being, riding on some sort of skis on the clouds, directly at the Straw Hat's ship.

"It's a human!" he shouted. "Someone's coming! He's running on the cloud!"

"Hey, stop!" Sanji said, outstretching a hand. "What's your problem?"

"Elimate..." the masked man said quietly, cocking the bazooka in his arm.

"He wants to fight," Sanji said.

"He's got guts," Zoro growled.

"Huh?" Luffy said, clueless, but preparing his arms in a fighting stance. "What?"

But even with the four men ready, the masked man eliminated Sanji, Zoro, Luffy and Dalzeel with four sharp kicks.

"Eh?" Nami cried. "Wait, what's wrong with you four?!"

"The hell?" Dalzeel muttered, wiping blood from his mouth. He had been sure that he was prepared for the attack. The way the man had moved his leg to kick was slower than the resulting blow that hit his mouth with such force. He glanced up at the man's legs as he shot himself up into the air, preparing his bazooka for a final blow. Whatever contraption was on his feet had allowed him to kick with that force and to launch himself that high into the air. Reaching out an arm to cover Chopper from the final launch from the bazooka, he braced himself for impact.

"That's enough!" a shout came from the sky as a black shadow launched itself at the masked man, scoring a hit on his wooden shield. He landed gracefully on the deck, cloak billowing in the wind.

"What!" Nami exclaimed. "Who is it this time?!"

"I am the Knight of the Sky!" the man turned, revealing an aged, bearded face as he held a lance, fully outfitted in medieval armor. "Did he leave?"

"What's going on? Who was that guy?!" Nami gasped, and then turned to growl at the four men. "Also, you four are so useless! Four on one and you still lost!"

"Thank you for saving us," Chopper sighed, ashamedly.

"Don't mention it. It couldn't be helped," the Sky Knight replied. "This is a service."

"Tsk, that was embarrassing," Sanji grunted, picking himself up.

Zoro's voice mirrored exactly what Dalzeel had been thinking. "For some reason, my body can't move very well."

"That's because the oxygen is scarce here," Robin commented, ever the knowledgeable one.

"Ahh, if you say that, are you all perhaps citizens of the Blue Sea?" the Sky Knight asked.

"What's that?" Nami asked. "And by the way, who are you?"

"I would be the Knight of the Sky," the old man replied. "All living things under the clouds are citizens of the Blue Sea -so I suppose, in other words, did you come up from where the sea is blue?"

"Yeah, that's right," Luffy said, still lying on the deck.

"It can't be helped then, your breathlessness that is," the Knight commented. "This place, called the White Sea, is 7000 meters above the Blue Seas. And 10,000 meters above your sea is the White-White Sea. The bodies of average citizens from the Blue Seas cannot handle it."

"Okay!" Luffy pounded his chest. "I'm kind of already getting used to it."

"Yeah," Dalzeel grunted, standing up. "It's become fairly easy to breathe now."

"No, no, no, no, that's impossible," the Knight shook his hand frantically, as his gaze fell upon Dalzeel. "Wait, you."

"Huh?" Dalzeel asked as he face was smashed in between the gloved hands of the Sky Knight.

"You...!" the Sky Knight said with wide eyes. "Grandson!?"

"EHHHHHH?!" everyone on board screamed. "GRANDSON!?"

"Eh...?" Dalzeel asked, not recognizing the old man.

"Your mother," he said. "Her name was Teresa, was it not?"

"Erm, yes," Dalzeel replied, puzzled. Like he had told Robin, his memory was not what it used to be before the attack on his island, but there was no way he would have forgotten his mother.

"And your father, Colin? And sister, Maynard?"

"How do you know so much about my family, Jii-san?" Dalzeel said, taking a step back from the old man.

The Sky Knight seemed to have realized how close he was standing to Dalzeel and stepped back. "Pardon me. I seem to have gotten a bit ahead of myself. Your mother, Teresa, was my daughter, a citizen of this White Sea."

"Dalzeel, your mother was from the Sky Island?" Nami asked with amazement. "Why didn't you say so to begin with?"

"I don't know anything about that," Dalzeel said, scratching the back of his head. "My mom never said anything about a Sky Island."

"That is because she shed her wings, once giving up the life up here, for a life down on the Blue Sea," the Sky Knight replied. "I never really thought that I'd ever be seeing my grandson up here on the White Sea..."

"Huh..." Dalzeel said, still wary about the old man and his musings.

"Those tattoos," the old man said, motioning to Dalzeel's tattoos which had been glowing dully ever since they had arrived on the Sky Island. "You must have an idea of what they are by now, do you? Or did Teresa never tell you?"

"What are you talking about?" Dalzeel asked, more urgently now. "What do these markings mean?"

"They are the markings telling a story, of a savior and of the second Darkest Day," the Sky Knight began, but then looked up as though he had heard a sharp sound. "I must be off." He grabbed a small, shiny object from his chest and threw it at the crew. "One whistle. Blow this whistle once, and I will come down from heaven to save you! Using the currency of the sky, each whistle would cost 5 million Extol, but your first whistle will be free as my gift to you. Use the whistle to call me at any time!"

"Wait!" Nami cried. "We don't even know your name!"

"I would be Gan Fall, the Knight of the Sky!" the old man shouted. "And this is my partner, Pierre!"

"And before I forget," Gan Fall added. "Even though he's a bird, he has the power of the Uma Uma Fruit, which means he can become a winged horse! In other words-"

"No way!" Nami sparkled. "So beautiful! It's a Pegasus?!"

"That's right! A Pegasus!"

What appeared in front of them was a pink, speckled bird-like thing, that looked every bit as much of a horse, but still appeared to be the funny looking bird that had been there before.

"It's a little bit off," Dalzeel, Zoro, Nami and Sanji sighed.

"In the end, he didn't really tell us anything useful..." Dalzeel said.

"Yeah, really nothing at all," Usopp scrunched his face. "So now we're back to square one."

"Well, not necessarily," Robin said, sitting next to Dalzeel. "You found out where your mother is really from."

"But was he telling the truth though? That's the thing," Dalzeel scratched the back of his head.

"What would be his motives for lying?" she asked him. "He has none. He just only met us and saved us from that Sky Island warrior."

"How do we even get higher though...?" he mused, as Nami nodded in agreement.

"Okay, let's call your Jii-chan and ask him!" Luffy said, placing his lips on the whistle.

"WA-WA-WA-WAIT! WAIT A MINUTE LUFFY! THAT WHISTLE IS ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES!" Nami cried, choking the captain's neck.

"IF THAT WEIRD MASK GUY COMES AGAIN, WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT THE WHISTLE?!" Usopp screamed.

"Anyways, let's just get the ship moving," Zoro said, moving towards the steering pole.

Dalzeel rubbed his tattoos absentmindedly as the ship moved forward, thinking about what Gan Fall had told him. His mother hadn't been with him long, but there wasn't anything that could make him forget her. Everyone on Hoshino Island had loved her, and she loved them. He had never remembered once when she had raised her voice, only when she had a harsh disagreement with Maynard, his older sister, who had always been the more rebellious one out of the two of them.

His lips parted slightly as he thought of his sister, a strand of the same hair they shared falling into his eyes. She was known for being particularly violent when she was angry, and as they had grown older, the two had grown further and further apart. The last time he saw his sister was in the doorway of his old home, three years prior to the attack on his home after a particularly aggressive argument between her and his father.

"I'm leaving."

"You can't just leave, Maynard! You're just a child! Your home is here, with us!"

Maynard swept her long hair over her shoulders, regarding her father with a blazing look in her eyes. "I'm not a child anymore. All your focus has been on Dalzeel and you haven't even given me the time of day to notice how much I've grown. I've practically raised myself without mom around." She paused momentarily, regarding her family. "I didn't say anything for a while, but I've decided to join the marines."

"The marines?!" Robert Colin exclaimed. "But you can't! Not after what you know about how their feelings of Hoshino Island!"

"I don't care for crap like that," she spat as she looked at the 17-year-old Dalzeel. "Anyways, I'm not some chosen one like this kid here."

He shook his head quickly, fearful of his sister's anger and spoke quietly. "I'm not anything special, Maynard."

"That's 'cuz our sorry excuse for a father thinks you're too stupid to understand anything." She flicked his forehead as she stepped out the doorway, her back towards him. "No one will care that I'm gone. Might as well do something useful with my life. Don't do anything stupid."

She stepped out the doorway, ignoring Colin's shouts to come back to the house.

He never saw her again after that, no letters, no news of her, or anything. She had never been fond of him, even though through all his years that he'd lived with her, he had vied for her approval. He knew she hated him, after one night of her breakdowns, their father had to hold back a screaming, sobbing Maynard off of him to keep her from beating Dalzeel. Her words still echoed in his ear as if he were six years old again, hiding in the corner as she screamed hysterically, "You killed Mom! He's a killer! Get off me, Dad! I don't want to ever see your stupid face again you parent killer!"

Dalzeel snorted softly to himself as a macabre joke popped into his head. There was no way his mother was an angel if she'd had a kid like Maynard. It was almost like Sanji had read his mind, as the cook sidled up next to the astrologer.

"Your grandpa is that weird old geezer huh," he said, resting himself on the edge of the railing.

"I guess," Dalzeel grunted, not having much of an opinion on the matter.

"So.. that means..." Sanji muttered, putting two and two together. "He's a citizen of the White sea, basically an angel... If he was your mother's father... that would mean that..." Sanji gaped at him. "YOUR MOTHER WAS AN ANGEL?"

"Er, I guess yeah," Dalzeel replied. "I was just thinking about that too."

Sanji smacked his head so hard that it dug into the railing of Merry.

"Oi, Sanji!" Usopp exclaimed, with no regard for Dalzeel. "Be careful with Merry!"

"THERE'S NO WAY THIS STINKY WOLF BOY IS THE CHILD OF A BEAUTIFUL ANGEL!" Sanji shouted.

"Who're calling Wolf Boy?!" Dalzeel snarled back. "And why'd you have to slam my head so hard!"

"Stop it you two!" Nami shoved her way in-between the two. "We're at Heaven's Gate!"

A large, golden sign reading exactly that loomed over the small ship, directly below a waterfall that was flowing with clouds.

"Gotta be a bad omen," Usopp groaned. "It's like we're going to die..."

"Yeah, but maybe that means we're actually dead already?" Zoro smirked.

"WE'RE ALREADY DEAD?!" Chopper shrieked.

"Heaven? Looks fun!" Luffy smiled. "We're finally gonna get there!"

The Merry-go floated slowly under the larger-than-life tunnel with absolutely no end in sight. Dalzeel felt a sudden cold come over him, as though someone had changed the temperature suddenly.

"Are you here for sightseeing?" an old woman's voice sounded with the click of a camera. "Or... for fighting?" She lowered it, peering at the crew with shriveled eyes.

"Look," Robin touched Dalzeel's arm slightly, pointing at the camera in her hands. "Is she keeping track of us?"

"Actually, it doesn't matter why you're here," the old woman said, tucking away the camera quickly. "If you want to go up, each person must pay a 1 billion Extol entrance fee. That's the law."

"An angel!" Luffy gaped. "So that's how angels look like! She looks like an umeboshi!"

"Well in that case, I guess it's fine your mother is an umeboshi," Sanji sneered at Dalzeel.

"I, er, we don't have any money..." Nami stuttered.

"You can still go up," the old woman replied.

"REALLY?!" Usopp exclaimed.

"Also, if you don't want to go up, it's okay too," she said. "I'm not a guard, not am I a soldier. I just want to know your... intentions."

Dalzeel narrowed his eyes. This woman... he had a bad feeling about her. Instinctively, he grabbed Robin's elbow, the older woman looking at him in surprise.

"I don't like how she looks," he said. "We may be running into trouble."

"Then we're going!" Luffy cried, replying to the old sky woman. "We want to go to the Sky Island! Even though we don't have money, we're going, Baa-chan!"

"Really?" she asked. "Eight people, right?"

"Right!" Luffy said. "But how do we get up?"

The cloud sea floor below them began to gurgle as cloud spewed from the floor of the ocean, and Merry began to shake and tremble. Robin grabbed ahold of the railing as the Merry-Go began to shake more violently and two claws looking like lobster hands appeared on the side of the ship, grabbing hold tightly.

"It appears you may be right, Astrologist-san," she said, trying to keep a steady of the rumbling onslaught.

"That's the White Sea's special 'Speedy Shrimp'," the old woman said with a leer as the Straw Hat crew was whisked away screaming on the Speedy Shrimp up the waterfall, all the way to the top.

"Heaven's Gate, Watcher; Amazon reporting. Oh mighty God and his priests. To those wanting to visit God's country, Skypiea, to these seven, illegally entering travelers, bestow upon them, Heaven's Judgement."

Replies to Reviews

blasterdog:

Heheh, the plot save returns! But yeah if Dal had gone for him, the plan to go to Skypiea would be completely ruined and he would've gotten his own ass beat, as none of the Straw Hats are strong enough to go against Blackbeard as of right now.

KP360:

Thanks for the kind words again! It's hard to try and make their relationship go by bit by bit as I know how Robin is now, but going back and seeing how she was in the past with the Straw Hat crew is kinda hard to bring into the now so I'm glad that I was able to capture that part of her for you!

D: What is Gian trying to say? "Oh great, they know each other"?

He's saying you might be a little too friendly with Robin buddy...

D: ...oh

ShadowUzumaki:

Yeah Maynard's a bit of a problem isn't she... I'm hoping to show you guys a little bit more of how she is and what kind of a person she really is! I'm hoping to put more of her in there, as I really like her as a villain.

Seika41:

D: Hey another newcomer! Thanks for joining the crew!

Hey there! Like Dalzeel said, we appreciate the kind words! I hope Dal can live up to your standards and you will definitely see more of him and Robin together!

Guest:

Hey there! I'm glad you are enjoying the story and I can't promise no romance as I right now, but I hope you can overlook that and still enjoy it... :)

D: Romance...? Who's romancing who? And go get a Fanfic account so I can talk to you and know who you are!

Superman90:

Hi! Thanks for the kind words! Hopefully I can start pumping out more chapters soon to show you more!

Ordinn Beaucephalis:

D: My new friend! I hope my heroic antics have impressed you in this chapter *shines*

*smacks head* What heroic antics?! Anyways I pretty much responded to your reviews in the PM I sent you, but thank you, thank you, thank you for the nice and long review! You're the few along with EmotionalRealist, KP360, and Vergil Leonidas who give me nice and meaty reviews to which I look forward to reading every time I release a chapter. Until next time, and I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint!

D: Feel free to bring your OCs if you wanna too! Lord knows I need more friends...

Vergil Leonidas:

You're right about the reaction scene, I hope I covered it enough here in the beginning of the chapter but even then, it's a bit weak -I think I need to start thinking slow down again and really reviewing my chapters.

D: Hey Vergil... we're slow as hell, but this race is a battle you're losing and that I'm winning.

Don't speak too soon... we're probably going to go back to our slow ass schedule.

I am glad that you like Maynard though. We should be seeing a lot more of her as the story goes on, and I hope I can do the potential of her character justice.