A new day dawned on the Sabaody Archipelago. Schwarz and Lulupo had gathered fifty of the least-dead collective survivors (including Freddie, Delilah, and Delilah's husband, Deacon). They gathered on the deck, along with the rest of Worldwide Smoke (except Ren, who was nowhere to be found). Shaska sat on her favorite deck chair, this time turned around to face her new employees.
"Alright, maggots, listen up! Today you're all members of Worldwide Smoke! And, should all go according to plan in the next few months, future Kemurchants!" Shaska declared, leaning forward with her fingers tented.
Freddie held up his hand. "Dear Leader Shaska? What's a Kemurchant?"
"I'm not your 'Dear Leader', I'm your boss. There's a difference. And Kemurchant Enterprises is the company I used to run. You're gonna be ass kicking, chain smoking business people like me by the time I'm done with you!"
Freddie continued to hold his hand up. "What's a business?"
"No more questions," Shaska replied, blowing smoke. "Consider yourselves lucky! You're on the ground floor of something big! You guys are gonna help me save the world from the guy who set you up with your old 'Dear Leader'!"
Murmurs began to start among the crowd.
"Dear Leader's leader?"
"'Save the world'? She's crazy."
"I need to pee…"
Shaska pinched the top of her nose and shut her eyes in frustration, then said "listen, if you want the rest of the world to be more like Sabaody and less like your old collective, you'll follow me to Fishman Island. And there's pay involved!"
The survivors of the Mercury Collective nodded as a unit.
"It's going to be a fun adventure, darlings! You'll bring smiles to everyone we save!" Lulupo exclaimed with a flourish.
"Though… you all could very easily die," Schwarz said.
"Horribly, at that," Johnson added.
"I can… I can attest to that," said a dejected Roxanne.
The new recruits collectively gulped nervously and began to sweat.
"I'd smack you idiots with my tentacles if I could shift right now…" Shaska thought, face in her hand.
"Shaska!" called Rayleigh. He and Shakky stood on the nearest Hustle Muscle Mangrove. "We came to see you off!"
"Be safe on your journey to Fishman Island!" Shakky called.
"One of you pretty boys mind helping me out for a sec?" Shaska whispered to Schwarz and Lulupo. Lulupo obliged, picking her up and bringing her to the edge of the Robinson, where she propped herself up on the railing.
"Thanks, guys!" Shaska called back. "You wanna tell our new recruits how great I am to work for?"
"I don't like lying!" Rayleigh responded with a sly smile as he sipped from his hip flask.
"You're lucky you two can both kick my ass!" Shaska said. She puffed on her cigar, and then followed with "wanna do the honors and send us off, Rayleigh?"
"I would, but you still seem to be missing someone!" Rayleigh called back.
Shaska looked around the deck, then a question mark appeared next to her head.
"Miss Shaska, my friend, Miss Ren, still has not arrived," said Zinnia, curiously reaching out to grab the question mark.
As Zinnia played with the question mark, a voice came yelling over the Hustle Muscle Mangrove.
"DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT ME, DAMMIT!"
It was Ren, running at top speed from grove 43, carrying with her several massive bags.
"Oh, right, we kinda need her," Shaska said, flicking ash off her cigar.
Schwarz opened a portal right in front of Ren's path, causing her to come barreling through it and onto the deck of the Robinson with an "oof!"
"Thanks, Schwarz," she said, picking herself up.
Ren dropped her bags and stormed over to Shaska.
"Where do you get off?! I left for only half hour to go buy new comic books and guns and ammo and come back to find you all gone and already about to leave?! I just fixed Robinson, too!"
"Whoa, what happened to your accent, kid?" Shaska asked nonchalantly. Rayleigh couldn't help but smile.
"Ah. I. Ah. Don't worry about that! I… DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!" Ren shouted, stomping her foot.
"Y'know I'm the one who pays your salary, right?" Shaska asked, blowing smoke and flicking ash off her cigar as she leaned over the edge of the Robinson.
Ren stared daggers at Shaska, but then thought "ugh. Is pointless to try and reason with her," then turned on her heel and went back to join the rest of the Worldwide Smoke fighters (and Puerco).
"Now that that's settled," Rayleigh began, "yeah, I'll send you off!"
He pulled off his shirt (revealing his incredibly muscular frame) and dove into the water. He released a valve on the keel of the Robinson, causing the soap that covered the ship to begin inflating.
"Whoa, what's going on?" Puerco asked as the soap overtook him.
Eventually, the Humo Robinson was surrounded by a big bubble. Then, Rayleigh removed the buoyancy pouch that kept the ship afloat. Ships covered in the resin of the Sabaody Archipelago will begin to sink immediately, as they are mostly immune to various different kinds of pressure.
"Alright! Now we're cooking!" Shaska declared. "Snake-Zinnia! Go raise the sails! We're gonna ride the sea currents down to Fishman Island!"
"Yes, ma'am!" Zinnia said, heading off to raise the sails.
As the ship began to sink, Rayleigh surfaced again.
"Good luck, Shaska! I hope to see you again in one piece!" he called to her.
"We both know it doesn't exist!" Shaska responded with a sly smile as she blew smoke.
—-
Light trickled down from above. The Humo Robinson was soon a thousand feet down below the surface. Everyone except Shaska and Lulupo gawked at the sights of the countless fish going by and the roots of the Hustle Muscle Mangroves that kept stretching downward for miles.
"Shaska, darling, is it really wise to be smoking when we have a limited air supply?" Lulupo asked, crossing his arms.
Shaska sighed and said "yeah, you're probably right." She took one last puff of her cigar, then snuffed it on the edge of the Robinson.
A giant fish swam up next to the Robinson, much to the curiosity of Puerco and Freddie.
"I've never seen a fish that big!" Freddie exclaimed.
"I have," said Johnson, recalling his encounter with the Sea King nest the previous week.
It was then that a five thousand foot long Sea King swam up to the giant fish and ate it in one bite, much to the shock and horror of everyone on board. Except Shaska and Lulupo, both of whom had been on an undersea voyage before.
"You're awfully calm, pretty b-Lulupo," Shaska said.
"I've been to Fishman Island once in my travels. I've seen how crazy the ocean can get under the surface, darling," he replied.
"Should we shoot it with the cannons?" Schwarz asked, having calmed down from his initial panic.
"Are you nuts?! This bubble will pop!" shouted Freddie.
"Hm? I don't recall asking you," Schwarz responded coldly.
"The bubble won't pop if you shoot the cannons one at a time," said Shaska. "However, a Sea King that size won't go down to just one cannonball. Hold on."
She stuck her hand out of the bubble. Water began swirling around her hand, and she pulled out a swirling water ball about twice the size of her head. She extended her index and middle fingers and held the swirling water ball out in the direction of the Sea King.
"This should do it. CERULEAN CANNON!"
The swirling water ball turned into a spinning drill blast of death and shot out of the bubble and pierced the Sea King's skull, killing it instantly. The new recruits from the Mercury Collective stood in awe of Shaska's power; the rest of Worldwide Smoke weren't as impressed, considering they had seen Shaska fight before.
—-
As the ship sank, the temperature on board began to drop. Zinnia left the helm and headed back to the deck, whereupon Ruth started to fall asleep due to the cold. The rest of the crew felt themselves begin to shiver.
"Alright, darlings! We're heading into the deep sea!" Lulupo exclaimed, growing his body hair out for warmth. "There's a clothing department inside where you can get coats."
"I don't feel like explaining the science behind it, but there's a special current we're gonna ride to get down to Fishman Island," said Shaska.
It was then that the Humo Robinson came to the current. It was a massive current, and it led into a pitch black abyss. In other words, it was a gigantic undersea waterfall. The crew (besides Shaska and Lulupo) stood at the edge of the bow of the Robinson. Their eyes popped out of their heads and they screamed as the ship went over the edge.
"I CAN'T SEE BOTTOM. AT RATE WE ARE GOING, ROBINSON WILL CRASH!" Ren shouted.
"This current has to be thousands of feet wide…!" Johnson exclaimed.
"I'm gonna puke again…" Puerco muttered.
And he did.
—-
The Humo Robinson reached the sea floor, thankfully without smashing against it. Unfortunately, it was nearly pitch black, and near freezing to boot.
"Geez, it's cold!" exclaimed Puerco as one of the survivors of the collective wiped up his puke.
"And it is incredibly dark down here, too," Zinnia added, keeping Ruth warm under the coat she had retrieved from the clothing department. "We must be so far down that the light from the sun does not reach."
"You used to live down here, Shaska?" Schwarz asked, shivering as he hadn't gotten a coat.
"Hell no," Shaska replied. "The entrance to Fishman Island is still a ways away. It's always bright and sunny there due to the Sunlight Tree Eve. I can't overstate how much of an undersea paradise it is. As long as you stay out of the Fishman District, that is."
A gigantic jellyfish lit up next to the ship. The new recruits were awestruck by its beauty… until an even more colossal fish swam up next to it and ate it.
"Nature's pretty brutal," said Roxanne, who was somewhat disappointed that the jellyfish's light show ended so soon.
The colossal fish then spat out the jellyfish and seemingly died, bringing back the light show that had the new recruits "ooh"ing and "aah"ing. The jellyfish stuck one of its tentacles through the bubble, but Schwarz swiftly cut it off with his sword.
"Hey! What did you do that for?!" shouted Deacon. "It was trying to be friendly."
"You don't know what a jellyfish is, do you?" said Schwarz. "I dare you to touch that tentacle. The fish that ate it suddenly died for a reason."
"Hm," was all Deacon had to say as he stared at the severed tentacle.
The temperature started to increase as the Robinson drifted along the ocean floor, becoming almost unbearably hot.
"Wait, why is it so hot now?" Ren asked, taking off the coat she had put on. "It was freezing moments ago."
"Probably because we're right over an undersea volcano," Shaska said nonchalantly as smoke billowed up from below the Robinson. This caused the other members of Worldwide Smoke besides Lulupo to exchange worried looks.
"It's alright, darlings. These undersea volcanoes don't erupt very often," Lulupo said with a smile and a wink. Not that anyone could see him smile and wink due to the darkness, but he did it nonetheless.
A bright light slowly came bobbing up to the bow of the Robinson.
"What's… What's that?" Puerco asked.
"The light at the end of the tunnel?" Johnson suggested.
"Don't be so morbid!" Schwarz shouted at him.
Johnson was more right than he would have liked to be; the light was attached to a titanic anglerfish, who slowly began to open its jaws to swallow the Robinson whole. Shaska was unperturbed by this, and hobbled her way up to the frontmost part of the bow and cracked her knuckles. She held up her hand and let out a noise audible to only the giant fish.
"Hey, big guy! If you know what's good for you, you'll turn around and guide us to Fishman Island!" Shaska told the fish.
"Why should I listen to you?" the fish said back in its fish language.
"What's she doing?" Roxanne asked.
"Mermaids have the ability to talk to fish," Lulupo explained. "We should let her work, darling."
"You should listen to me because I can do this," Shaska told the fish. She stuck her hand out of the bubble again, then yanked on the water like an invisible rope.
"PERIWINKLE PULL!"
Shaska swung the anglerfish around like a ragdoll, slamming it into the rock walls that surrounded the Robinson without even having to touch it. The fish's light flickered a bit, but it eventually came back on, full strength.
"Alright, alright, you win. Jerk. I'll carry you there," said the giant anglerfish. It swam around to the back of the Robinson, gingerly grasping the stern with its massive jaws. Light rained down on the deck of the Robinson.
"We… We really shouldn't cross her," said Freddie, awestruck by Shaska effortlessly handling the gargantuan fish (while already injured).
"Like it was ever a question?" said Delilah.
The anglerfish dove down an even deeper trench, and it started to become freezing cold again, causing the crew to put their coats back on.
"We're almost there, everyone!" Shaska declared. "Just on the other side of this trench."
"Only a few more miles until I get to see all the beautiful mermaids…" Puerco thought, getting a nosebleed.
"Let me guess, you're thinking about mermaids?" asked an unimpressed Ren. "Is boss not enough for you?"
Puerco wiped away his nosebleed and said "oh sure, Shaska's hot and all, and there is a certain appeal to older women, but I wanna see the real beauties!"
"Don't think I didn't hear that, doctor kid!"
—-
Sure enough, they reached the absolute bottom of the sea, five and a half miles down, and through a cave, light could be seen.
"This is as far as I go," said the anglerfish in its fish language as it let go of the ship. "Please don't come down here again."
"No promises," Shaska told the fish. "I got it from here anyway."
"It is… beautiful…" said an awestruck Zinnia. And she was right. In the distance was a massive bubble capable of holding an entire civilization, and the bubble that contained Ryugu Palace on top of it. In the back was the colossal Sunlight Tree Eve, which provided light to the sea floor. In the bubble were all sorts of structures made of coral, capable of housing all sorts of fishmen and merfolk. Fish of all shapes and sizes swam around the bubble; thankfully, they didn't seem to be aggressive.
"Alright, doctor kid, time to get these casts off me," said Shaska. "I need to be able to swim to push the Robinson through the barrier."
"But, you still need another few days to heal!" Puerco said.
"And I'm the one who pays you," Shaska said, wishing she had a cigar for effect. "I'll be fine. Just get these casts off."
"As ship doctor, I really REALLY advise against th-"
Shaska interrupted Puerco by throwing a wad of cash at him. "Shut up and get these casts off."
Puerco sighed, then went to the infirmary. He came back with a medical saw and began to cut through the casts. The casts hit the deck with a loud thunk sound, and Shaska's long, muscular legs with tentacles on the end were finally free.
"Ah… bout time," she said, standing up. "Ow…" she added with a wince.
Shaska dove out the bubble, and her legs deformed back into tentacles. She swam around to the back of the Robinson and began to push it. As the ship entered the massive bubble, the soap bubble coating it popped.
"Hold on, everyone!" Shaska shouted. "I mean that! Head inside!" The members of Worldwide Smoke obliged.
She then pushed the ship with all her might, causing it to go flying into the bubble's second layer, which was full of sea water. The current was strong, but Shaska's immense strength enabled the Robinson to soar to the surface of the bubble without much difficulty.
Within minutes, the Robinson stabilized on the surface in the Mermaid Cove. Schwarz and Puerco were first to step on deck. Puerco got hearts in his eyes and nearly passed out from a nosebleed; they were surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful scenery, and mermaids, they could imagine. Water currents carrying fish stretched out overhead.
"This is…" Schwarz began.
"PAAAAARAAAADIIIIIIIIIIISE!" cried Puerco.
TO BE CONTINUED