Chapter 1
Skyfall
Maxwell opened his eyes to see a wood lined ceiling. He was in the storage haul of the Going Merry, Maxwell's impromptu quarters, and magic lab.
The girls had the captain's quarters, while the rest of the guys had the barracks. Max would have joined the guys there, but the multiple beds and hammocks made Max think of his apprentice days. He preferred his own personal quarters. Plus, Maxwell wasn't to keen on listening to Luffy snore through the night.
In one corner, the mage had bundle of barrels, for a desk. Stacks of paper and ink wells were on them. One had his spare ink and paper, one had his journal containing notes on all his conjectures, and the last one had the manuscript he had been putting together. He had some spare leather, so he could create a proper binding later. It was to be his very own grimoire! …And a potential focus.
He needed three foci. Salem would inhabit the grimoire. The knowledge he shared was a new branch of magic, one born from the studying of rifts in the Veil back in Thedas. The second focus would be the skull he had picked up in Alabasta. Max had near forgotten he still had it, but was thankful, as Mordred would be using this one. Mordred's lessons would be more... eccentric, considering he had learned knowledge related to the Nevaran Death Mages. Lastly, he would learn the practices of the Knight Enchanters, battle magic. Mineive was more than happy to share, but he had one problem.
He needed a sword hilt.
Maxwell reasoned he could find something on the next island. Perhaps he could follow Usopp around and pilfer the local scrapyard? Usopp often was the inventor and handyman of the crew, creating all sorts of stuff. Maxwell was just hoping for a broken sword.
The mage then looked around, at the rest of the stuff in his compartment. Max managed to save one of the giant harpoons from their escape of Alabasta. Luffy had thrown the rest at the marine ships that were perusing them at the time. There were also a boxes of cannon balls, gunpowder, timbers, life preservers, nails, hammers, paint buckets, lacquer, and a spare cannon. Maxwell always made sure to step carefully around this room.
Anyways, Maxwell stretched as he felt his bones pop. The problem with entering the Fade meant a lot of naps. Some were more restful than others, but he could at least control when he entered. His bed was a line of crates with coiled rope as a mattress.
He exited the storage room and went up the stairs. It brought Max to the bow of the ship with Merry's forward cannon pointing outward. He felt a slight breeze, and a giggling sound in the back of his head. Maxwell looked up with his eyes inspecting the walls, "Morning Merry~."
Their ship was haunted. Technically. The klabautermann of the Going Merry had never shown itself physically, but it was the literal heart and soul of their ship. Born of the relations between ship and crew... However, the little sea fairy was a mischievous brat who seemed determined to play a game of Forever-Hide-&-Seek with him. Not one trip into the Fade had allowed him a glimpse of her. But she still listened, and she knew Maxwell was eternally grateful to her.
She saved his life after all.
Maxwell opened the door and came on deck, only to get a wall of fur in his face. He was knocked down to the ground, as a Guard-Point Tony Tony Chopper yelled in terror flying through the air like a wooly beachball. Max could hear the medical reindeer crash into the kitchens, with the clanking of plates, and Sanji's startled retorts. It didn't sound like anything broke though.
"You okay there, Max?" Maxwell moved his eyes to where he saw Usopp crouching over him. The long nosed sniper of the crew looked vaguely concerned.
The mage gave the sniper a deadpan stare, "...I'm okay."
The door opens to the cabin and Sanji steps out, "Hey bastards! Breakfast is on! Get your asses in here before I start serving scraps!"
Monkey D. Luffy jumps for joy, "Yahoo! Breakfast!" and quickly runs up the stairs.
Maxwell gets to his feet, "…Dare I ask why Chopper was flying?"
"Er..." Usopp scratches the back of his head as they both walk across the ship, "Luffy had this crazy idea of playing tether ball, we had no balls. So I, geniusly~, made one out of blankets, some rope, and we started playing tether ball. Of course, Luffy got carried away and hit the ball too hard—"
"—And Chopper got in the way, so he had to go Rumble-Ball," the mage sighed, "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."
"Well, it was all in good fun," said Usopp.
Both crew members entered the cabin where their kitchen and dining table were at. Luffy was banging the table with a knife and fork "Come on, come on, Sanji! Give me some meat! I'm starving!"
"Tch, shitty captain. Wait a damn second!" Sanji sprinkles some salt over the eggs and bacon, with a side of hashbrowns, "I have to serve Nami and Robin first, before the rest of you riffraff." Sanji's uncovered eye suddenly turned into a heart, placing the dishes in front of the girls, "Only the best, for the two most beautiful women in the world~!"
"Thank you, Mr. Cook," said Nico Robin. She was the newest member of the crew. Despite being a wanted criminal, she was now the crew's archaeologist. One who ate the Hana-Hana Fruit, and has been on the run for decades. She was actually the same age as Max, truth be told.
"Tch, just hurry up, crap-cook," uttered Roronoa Zoro as he crossed crossed his arms in disdain.
Sanji glared at the swordsman, "You say something, moss-head!?"
"I said for you to hurry up, crap-cook! You and your shitty food."
"Oi, oi, oi oi!" Sanji got up into Zoro's face, "You want to say that to my face!?"
"Enough! Zoro! Sanji!" Maxwell barked. Both men turn towards the mage, "You can wail on each other later. Let's get through breakfast first."
Both men grimace before turning away from each other, "...Whatever, old man."
"I'M NOT THAT OLD, DAMN IT!"
Nami pouted, "Jeez, can't we have one normal morning on this crew?"
Luffy just laughs, "Shsishishsishishi! Hey Sanji, hurry up!"
"Yeah, yeah, I gotcha," Sanji picks up the other platters off the counter and places them in front of the rest of the crew.
Maxwell smiled as he tasted this morning's bacon. Such delicious, crisp, succulent pork...! Sanji knew everyone's preferences, and does actually do his best to cook everything to everyone's satisfaction. His mentor wouldn't allow otherwise, despite Sanji's perverted fantasies.
Maxwell goes too pick up another strip, but it's already gone.
"LUFFY!"
Luffy pauses with his fork in his mouth stuffed in his mouth. Some of the bacon was sticking out of his mouth. The captain looked at his first-mate blankly.
"How many times do I have to tell you, no picking off of another's plate!"
"But it's so good!"
"NO EXCUSES!" Maxwell punched down on Luffy's head.
"Hey Chopper! Laaagrahlah!" Usopp had some chopsticks sticking between his lips and his mouth.
"Hahahahah!" Chopper leaned back on his stool as the little reindeer man began to laugh.
"It's quite lively here, isn't it?" Robin didn't seem fazed, and Nami only groaned at her question.
"Oi! No wasting food, damn it!"
*PLUNK*
Everyone went silent when they heard the noise from their roof. Maxwell had Luffy by the shirt collar, Usopp and Chopper both had chopsticks up their noses, and Zoro just raised an eyebrow as they all looked up.
Maxwell cleared his throat as he lets go of Luffy, and dusts himself off, "I'll go check it out. You guys keep eating." Maxwell excused himself, but not before taking one untouched strip of bacon off of Luffy's plate.
"Hey! That's my bacon—!" "It's mine now, Luffy!"
Maxwell rushed outside, before Luffy could retaliate, and went around to see what fell. He licked his fingers as he climbed up to the mini tangerine grove they had on the ship. It was directly over their kitchen, and allowed them a source of citrus to prevent scurvy.
He looked at the soil between the trees, as it would be in the branches, and raised an eyebrow. There in the dirt was a broken plank of wood, sticking out of the soil. Maxwell picked it up. The plank was was a lacquered brown, but looked and felt more akin to drift wood.
The mage looked up. It didn't look like it came off the rear sail. And Maxwell didn't see any ships around them, so it couldn't be a piece of the railing, blown off.
Max looked back at the wooden piece, "Hey Merry, any idea where this came from?" Another broken plank suddenly fell beside him. "What the..." He looked up.
"BY THE MAKER!"
A ship was falling from the sky.
No joke, a ship was falling from the sky!
It was a galleon sized barge with broken masts and a serpent like figure head. And it was about to fall on top of them!
"MERRY!" Maxwell brought the ship to life, energizing the caravel with a blue glow, so that all the pulleys and levers did their jobs. The sails caught the wind.
He then stomped on the roof, "BRACE YOURSELVES!" as the galleon fell into the ocean.
The crash sent waves across the water, churning as the water rose in reaction. Max could hear the others inside yelling as the Merry jostled in the waves.
A door burst open, "Max, what's going—HOLY CRAP!" Usopp's eyes bulged at the hill sized ship, and the bunch of debris still falling from the sky.
"Arcane Bolt!" Max summoned a circle shaped glyph and aimed it at a rogue piece of railing. A missile of pure magic shot from the circle and collided with the falling wood, breaking it in two and fell away from them.
Sanji looked up at the sky, everyone was outside, "Luffy protect the ship! Max can't fend this off on his own!"
"Shut up and help!" Maxwell shot another magical blast into the air. He was shooting left and right, moving his body with the motions. This would be a lot easier if he had a staff!
"Alright!" Luffy then paused as he looked down, "Hm? Usopp?"
The sniper was in lotus position with his eyes closed, "There is nothing to worry about. Just close your eyes like so. Slowy open them again. And look... It's a calm beautiful morni—" A skeleton dropped out of the sky before his very eyes, "—GAAAHHH! IT'S A SKELETON!"
Maxwell heard a clatter of bones, "DON'T THROW IT AT ME, YOU IDIOT!"
"There's more falling down!" someone yelled. And Maxwell kept himself braced between the skyward corpses and sea water splashing against the ship.
O O O
The sea calmed down once everything stopped falling. Now the fallen galleon was a shipwreck, slowly sinking into the ocean.
Luffy looks up, making sure his hat didn't fall off, "Why did a ship fall from the sky?" He looks over at his first crewmate, "Hey Max, you have anything to do with this?"
Maxwell felt his eyebrow twitch involuntarily, "Luffy. Just because I fell out of the sky, doesn't mean everything that does is involved with the Fade." It was how he met Luffy, actually. There was this brief rift in the sky, and Maxwell had accidentally sunk a pirate ship Luffy was fighting. Luffy didn't even have a crew then.
"I'm with Max on this one," Zoro agreed with the sorcerer, "There doesn't seem to be anything else up in the sky."
Sanji was also looking up, "Talk about bizarre..."
Usopp and Chopper hold onto each other from dear life, "Oh man the Grand Line sure is a crazy place...!"
"AHH!"
Sanji turns around, "What's wrong, Nami!?"
"What do we do!? The log pose is... broken! It's stuck pointing up!" The Grand Line compass was indeed pointing up, ticking against it's glass container.
Robin looked at Nami, somewhat alarmed, "...No, you're mistaken. There must be another island nearby, one whose stronger magnetic field must have caused the log pose to switch to a new location!" It was how most sailors navigated around the Grand Line. Tracking one island to another. Something in this part of the world just messed with traditional compasses.
"If the needle is pointing upwards, that means the log pose has locked on... to a Sky Island...!" Robin looked up, nervous at the prospect.
"A Sky Island?" Maxwell looks up, imagining such an idea.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" Nami yells. She was the navigator of the crew.
Though if her reaction was one of frustration, Luffy's was ecstatic, "SO THERE'S AN ISLAND FLOATING IN THE SKY!?"
"So the ship and the skeletons fell down from an island all the way up there!?" Usopp exclaims.
Zoro double checks the skies, "I don't see anything resembling an island though..."
"Your a little mistaken," Robin corrected, "It'd be more accurate to say that there's a sea floating up in the sky.
"A SEA!?" Nami looked at here even more incredulous.
"That makes even less sense..." Sanji frowned.
Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper didn't care. They just yelled, "AWESOME!"
"So there's an island on a floating sea up in the sky right!? MAX, SET FULL SAIL AHEAD!" "ALRIGHT MATEYS! TURN THE RUDDER UPWARDS!" "Up, UP, UP INTO THE SKY!"
Human arms sprout of Luffy and clamp down on his mouth, briefly causing him to panic. Maxwell didn't mind Robin using her powers this time, "...Yeah, that ain't happening captain."
"To be honest, I've never seen a Sky Island, nor have I heard of one," Robin let go of Luffy.
"EXACTLY!" Nami tried to reason this through, "This is absurd! An island or sea or whatever floating in the sky!? The log pose must be broken, that's all!"
Robin looked at her seriously, "No, Ms. Navigator... What you should be worrying now is not how to fix the log pose, but how to get up into the sky. No mater how bizarre the situation this ship finds itself in... No mater how great the panic that befalls this ship... One must never doubt the log pose. That is an ironclad rule. When sailing these seas, doubt the common sense in your minds, but never the log pose. Because wherever that needle points, There will always be an island."
Maxwell crossed his arms, he had to concede to Robin on this point. When they entered the Grand Line, they were told normal compasses wouldn't work here. Each island in this mysterious ocean had a magnetic marker overriding the world's natural polls. The log pose was developed to navigate these islands and not be set adrift. If you were adrift, you were vulnerable to whatever this sea would through at you, and the weather of the Grand Line was constantly changing. It could be rain, hail, blazing heat, freezing cold, and the wind was off and on at the best of times. They've even seen stray lightning bolts and little black clouds here and there. The only safe spots were when they were near and island, and if the crew couldn't trust the compass to get them there, then they were doomed.
And Maxwell was often the one steering their ship.
Short of enchantment, no amount of magic was going to get the Merry flying through the skies. Max likely couldn't even handle the strain anyways. Definitely not for long.
Maxwell hears a tool case opening, and then the jerking of nails on wood. Robin had fished out a coffin and opened it, "WHAT IN ANDRASTE'S NAME ARE YOU DOING?"
"Archeology," she said simply, reconstructing a skull. While Maxwell had been adjusting to this world's customs and practices, he still had an aversion from messing with the indentured dead.
"Can you figure something out from that?" Zoro wasn't even fazed.
"We'll see..." Robin uses a brush with glue to make the pieces stick together, and handles them with a pair of iron tweezers.
Nami and Chopper watch what she's doing, "You've got some macabre tastes, sister."
"Ah, corpses and beautiful women oddly go well together!"
Maxwell facepalms at Sanji's remark. There was more than one kind of stupidity on this crew.
Robin was able to put the sailor's skull back together. The skull still looked cracked, but it was a well done restoration. Although there were some oddities, "The holes hear are artificial. Man-made, clearly." The marks reminded Maxwell of spider bites.
Sanji took a closer look, "Oh... So he kicked the bucket after getting his skull pierced..."
"No, these holes are from surgery... trepanation. Right, Mr. Doctor?" Robin looked at the failed hiding reindeer.
"...That's right," confirmed Chopper, "Long ago, people used to drill holes in skulls to treat intracranial diseases. But that's a medical practice from a really, really long time ago...!"
Maxwell frowned thinking about his own homeland. Medicine back home was either really good or really bad. Those who couldn't afford a magical solution often went with local knowledge, or the Four Element approach. The later focused on trying to balance out the maladies such as bile and sweat. Chopper had been horrified at Maxwell's backward knowledge and so sought to enlighten him about modern medicine. He still took lessons every now and again.
Robin continued with her observations of the skull, "Yes, over 200 years have passed since this man's death. He was in his early 30's when he fell sick during a voyage and succumbed to death. Seeing how the skull's teeth are still attached to the skull, they must have been coated with tar. This was a noted custom in some regions of the South Blue, which means this ship must have been sent all the way out to the Grand Line on some exploration."
Robin took out a journal of clippings she had on the South Blue, "...Ah, here it is. 208 years ago, St. Briss set sail from the Briss Kingdom of South Blue."
Both Nami and Sanji see the picture, "Ah! It's the same ship as the one that just fell!" "Now that I think about it, the sail did have a mark like that..." The mark was a circle, inside a ring, surrounded by four triangles, like a sun.
Robin closes the book, "It must have been drifting in the sky for at least 200 years..."
Nami looked at her amazed, "You can find out this much from a single skeleton...!?"
"Corpses may not speak, but they still carry a wealth of information," Robin then looks at Maxwell, "Unless you can make them speak, Mr. Magician?"
"Erk...!" Maxwell clears his throat, "No, not specifically... The practice of Necromancy does reanimate the dead. However, it does not truly resurrect the individual. The soul is long gone, and thus another spirit is used to inhabit it. Though the possessing spirit may gain impressions of their host's last moments, it is in the end, just a walking corpse."
The crew just looks at him weirdly. Zoro and Sanji squint, while Chopper and Nami look at him in terror, "Hey, don't look at me like that! I'm no Mortalitasi, and I've never raised the dead once in my life!"
"Be that as it may," Robin interrupted, "If the ship is an exploration vessel, then it should have many logs, documents, and samples onboard."
Nami sighs, "Right... But the ship is already sink—" She sees Luffy stuck in the water of the shipwreck, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO DOING!?"
"Luffy, hang in there!" Usopp was stuck on one of the last floating remains of the ship.
"*Sigh...* I got it," Zoro sounds off. He jumps into the sea, rescuing his drowning captain. Meanwhile, Maxwell grabs one of the life preservers for Usopp.
Luffy was a Devil Fruit user. One who ate an unusually disgusting fruit and then gain special abilities. Luffy's was the Rubber-Rubber Fruit, making him a rubber-man. Chopper was another user, having the Human-Human Fruit, but at least he was smart enough not to explore a sinking shipwreck! Devil Fruit Users can't swim, as the sea weakens them to the point of drowning.
Still, Luffy smiles despite his near death experience, "Hey guys! I did it! I found something amazing! Check this out!" He hold out a map.
"A map of a... SKY ISLAND!?" Everyone looks at the map, amazed. It was a thick crescent island, over a sea of clouds, and with a bunch of little illustrations, showing forests and an obscured pyramid like building. There was also another island made of clouds, with buildings on top.
"Skypia..."
Both Luffy and Usopp hover over Nami's shoulder as she read's the map, "WELL!? WEL!?" "Does this actually mean there's really an island up in the sky...!?"
"...Urgh," Nami groans. That was all the confirmation they needed.
"WOOHOO! USOPP! CHOPPER! THERE'S REALLY A SKY ISLAND!" "An Island of Dream! We can go to the Island of Dreams!" "AN ISLAND OF DREAMS!"
Nami tries to use logic, "...You're all making such a fuss for over what's barely a sliver of possibility. There's plenty of fake maps in the world, you know!" The Kiddy Trio all look at Nami like they were just told Santa Claus wasn't real, "...Ah... S-Sorry—It exists, it exists! ...Like absolutely... Yeah. But, um, the thing is... I HAVE NO FREAKING CLUE HOW TO GET THERE!"
"WELL YOUR THE NAVIGATOR! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!" "There are some things in this world that you just can't DO SOMETHING ABOUT!" "IT DOESN'T MATTER! WE'RE GOING TO THE SKY AND THAT'S IT!
*WHACK!*
"Angry Nami is so cute too~!" "Sanji, is this really the time?"
Nami had punched Luffy into the deck, "Ugh, this is getting us nowhere!"
She looks at the log pose again, "In any case, with the log pose pointing upwards like this we can't exactly continue sailing! Like Robin said, what we need is information! If that huge ship really went to the sky, then it must be possible for our ship to go too! We've got to get any remaining logs or journals on that ship somehow!"
Usopp leaned against the mast, "But it's already sunk below the surface."
"If it sank, then we've gotta salvage it!"
"RIGHT ON!" Luffy and Usopp both hold a net and a fishing rod.
"AS IF WE COULD!" Zoro protested.
Maxwell pursed his lips and stroked his beard, "…This could be interesting."