Disclaimer: One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Many of the characters in this story are property of me. Do not use this story or its characters without my permission. Thank you.


Upon first impression, it seemed impossible. A ship made of metal, carrying such strange and heavy looking machines, could not possibly be as amazingly simple as it was made out to be. However, Araly found that it indeed was, and somehow she managed to stand upright in awe, amazed merely by her own upright standing. Somehow she could stand and walk on the boat, which was on the ocean just the same, and her seasickness didn't debilitate her.

"This is incredible!" Araly said. She moved from foot to foot in place and spun around.

"Uh, yes" Alan said. "Are we ready to start the actual tour now?" Araly turned back to the group with a start and held her hands fast together.

"Oh! Uh, yeah! Right!" She hopped over to the others, between Bard and Gretta, behind Rez and Zan, still so enthused and deeply happy at her ability to move that she couldn't help but twirl around and let her dress billow up stylishly. Alan led the group onto the crane platform and let them get an up-close look at the thing.

"This is our loading arm" Alan explained. "It can pick up and easily move a huge amount of weight. Each of these metal boxes, once completely empties, weighs around 1000lbs."

"And there's a ton of them onboard!" Araly observed. "It's amazing how this ship manages to stay afloat with all that weight!"

"It's still all imperfect technology" Alan modestly said "so I can't exactly explain it outright. It's all based on propulsion and steam-power, mainly."

"Steam?" Bard said. "I can make steam! If it's humid out and I sweat a bunch my body heats up and the cool air hits it, making steam!"

"Not really that kind of steam" Alan said.

"This ship" Zan began "runs on water."

"Oh, that makes sense" Bard said.

"Should I assume that this arm also runs on steam-power?" Zan asked as he palmed the mechanics of the great, huge thing.

"Somewhat" Alan said. "In fact, I can show you exactly what powers the appliances of this ship. Keep a sturdy foothold, everyone!" Alan nodded over to the man at the console deck. The platform was slowly lowered and the crane folded back down and slowly lowered onto the metal floor. A row of lights came on below deck and brightened the heavily mechanical setting that they were in. Shades and hues and tints of metallic iron gray and silver and polished, brassy brown were everywhere. Such things like pipes and solid steel beams that Bard and his company had only ever seen used in the most sturdy buildings or jail cells, that is what made the ship.

"AWESOME!" Bard shouted. "It's so awesome I might throw up!"

"Hurk!" Araly groaned. She was buckled over her stomach with a hand over her mouth. "Why...why now?"

"Seems your seasickness returned" Gretta said. "It must have missed you."

"Hatred!" Araly exclaimed. "Why do I feel so sick all of a sudden? I was fine up on deck! What's different?"

"Direct sunlight?" Rez said. "Maybe that's it."

"I don't think that affects seasickness" Alan said. "It might have been the movement of the platform that upset your stomach. Does your ship tend to rock and move a lot when you're out at sea?" Araly nodded.

"Well, it's got a lot to it" Bard said, half-bragging. "A ship that huge would get hit by any wave, large or small, and because of its top-heavy design it would have to move to the sway of nearly any current."

"Then there's your problem" Alan said. "This ship is the opposite: It never moves, regardless of the waves that hit it, because of its mass and weight. Most of the ship is, in fact, under the surface of the water and cannot dock in shallow water because of that fact. It's designed exclusively as a cargo transport ship, therefore every end and panel of it contributes to its design of being virtually unshakable in stormy weather or on unsettling seas." Araly's safe sense of balance and wellness returned soon and she pushed herself away from the cold metal rail she had been leaning against.

"I wish our ship was like that" Araly said.

"Let's continue to the engine room" Alan said. He led the group through the many walkway halls without walls where they could see men going about and working on pipes and valves and various measuring instruments which kept track of the pressure as the heated water raced through the pipes all throughout the ship. Araly couldn't help but be amazed by the inherent mechanical complexities that seemed to be going straight over Bard's head.

"You know what this place needs?" Bard said. "It needs a gym. A huge gym with a whole quarter-mile track! And a rock-climbing wall!"

What a one-track mind Araly thought. But, it's nice to be included with him for once. I'm usually in that room reading. Now I feel like a bookworm, being out for the first time in so long. I missed this. Alan brought the group to a dead-end wall with a single bolted doorway closed before them. 'WARNING: FIRE' it read quite plainly. Alan approached it and shied away a little as it was hot.

"We're not in any danger are we?" Rez asked.

"Oh, no" Alan said. "Not so long as you stay away from the furnaces, that is." Alan put on a pair of insulated gloves and turned open the valve that sealed the room shut. As the door opened a wave of heat hit the pirates face-on. Araly felt so overwhelmed that she nearly fell over and Gretta's hair had exploded into a dense, fuzzy afro, much to her chagrin.

"This doesn't bode well" Gretta said as she felt her hair. Rez took one look and turned back around with his lips folded and pressed hard between his teeth. Zan ignored it for her sake. Bard, however, was himself.

"Nice hair!" he shouted powerfully. "You look like you could fight someone with hair like that!"

Quit kicking the dog Rez thought. They entered together onto a broad walkway overlooking a row of open, enormous fire pits. Five men, huddled together, endured the blasting heat of each furnace far below and shoveled fuel from a mountainous pile behind with the rhythmic hissing of a loud pump above their furnace. These teams were dressed in black suits with gas-masks connected to emergency air-supplies on their backs. Those tanks of air were enclosed inside heavy insulated packs to keep from being overheated, else they could explode.

"Those men down there" Alan began "are prisoners from the infamous Impel Down, all recruited on leave from the warden and granted authority by the upper-brass of the Marines to work on this ship as a substitute for their sentence. They are surprisingly loyal and tough, as they had long endured the torturous heat of the 'Inferno Hell' in the legendary prison."

"That's quite a scary crew you've got" Zan said. "What keeps them in line?"

"Their life is in my hands" Alan said. "With those suits, anyone with adequate strength could do their job. The fact that they know how replaceable they are is what seems to keep them going. Plus, I'm at least a fine enough leader not to threaten them constantly. They're people, just like us, but who have committed such acts that others would disagree..."

"What an admirable cause" Zan said. "And this powers the ship?"

"The heat of each furnace leads to an engine on the floor above" Alan said. "Those engines take the water directly from the sea and boil it, spreading the steam-pressure through the pipes of the whole ship. The salt that remains is taken out of the engines three times a day and stored for later use. It can be very effective in the manufacturing of Sea Stone weaponry, highly durable and effective against Devil Fruit users such as yourself."

"You've got quite the operation on this ship" Zan said. "It's more like a floating factory, the more I get to look at it."

"Hooooooooot" Bard moaned. He slouched down so far that he became shorter than everyone else. "I'm sweating all of my skin off."

"It's pretty damn hot" Rez said, enduring it casually. "Can we wrap this up yet?"

"Of course" Alan said. "There's just one last thing I'd like to show you all. It's a revolutionary devise that powers all of the major equipment, above and below the deck." He led them on again, back into the comparably cooler halls of the ship. When they finally arrived some time later, Gretta's hair had fallen back down but was a dense and tangled thickness knotted around her head.

"I don't like this place" she said outright. Alan opened another door, one with a warning of 'SHOCK' on it, and led the group inside. Within was a spacious room with a cool, aqua-blue hue and rows of metal boxes below the elevated walkway. Alan walked the group into the middle of the room and held out his arms.

"Though rudimentary in design" Alan began "this is perhaps the most advanced technology currently sailing on the seas!" The group looked around at the walls. They were clear and blue and hazy with a whiteish mist. Water thick with salt was held behind the walls, and within that water swam lithe and long beasts with glowing eyes and sharp rows of teeth. "This is the electric engine, harnessing the natural discharge of hundreds of Lightning Eels to power the lights, loading arm and ballast anchors of the ship! The extra salt boiled from the main engines is dumped into the water to add to the conductivity of their currents as they feed their power to the Naughtilus! This entire ship is centered around the harnessing of nature's own power! Even if I am no genius by my island's high standards, this machine alone is truly something brilliant to behold!"

"Yes" Zan said, finally embracing the wild awe of the sight. "Yes, it is..." Hundreds of ribbon-like shadows swam through the water, crackling with pure energy which flashed from the salty clouds like bolts of lightning. Their shrieking roars were calls of thunder and the ocean-blue an endless sky. The group couldn't help but feel completely moved by the sight, and seeing its features working already simply added to its amazing power.

"Now, about that gym..." Bard went on, already over the sight.

"Shut up about that crap!" Rez growled, giving Bard a stern chop to his gut.


Once the tour was over and the sky began to take on a deeper, twilight color, the crews of both ships worked hard together to get the promised supplies from the Naughtilus onto the towering deck of the Imperial Dragon. Under self-supervision, the Buster Pirates had managed to rig up a pulley system from the uppermost cannon-deck out of steel-bound ropes they had found. The strongest men, as were chosen by the earlier tournament, combined their strength to pull the ropes and rise the heavy metal crates one at a time. Once they reached the highest possible distance from deck to deck, the lower cannon-deck opened itself with gang-planks out and the hull completely folded down like winch-drawn doors. The crates were lowered onto that extended deck, emptied and then carefully lowered back down to the Naughtilus.

The entire process was executed flawlessly, and while both ships were still moving ahead. Rez scoped out the ocean and sky from the vantage of the observation deck of the Naughtilus's bridge and saw a thick gathering of clouds some distance off that passed behind the mountain of a ship and out of sight. Behind them seemed to be a storm slowly crawling their way. He ran to the hatch and climbed down into the interior of the bridge to report it. Inside he saw Gretta talking to the sailors she had nearly slaughtered as the nurses gathered up their instruments and gathered around her.

"Hey, Gretta" Rez called. "Looks like we've got some rough seas coming in. Pack up and head for the ship, alright?"

"I'll be along in a moment" she said. Rez nodded and continued to descend. "Again, please accept my apologies" she said to the sailors.

"Um, we do" the front-most standing man said. "After all, you were just, uh...confused. And that's fine."

"We were surprised to have been beaten, honestly" another man said. "You don't see women skilled with swords all too often." Gretta picked herself up and stared their way, her red eyes beaming distrust and discomfort straight into their heads.

"Well please keep training" she said in a humble and dignified tone. "We girls do exist who take pleasure in swinging our swords. Don't be so off-guard the next time one of us comes around." The men all nodded nervously and Gretta left with her group of face-hidden nurses. The men all sighed with relief when she had gone, like an impossible burden was suddenly lifted.

Out on the deck, Bard and Zan aided in getting the heavy metal boxes strapped up and ready for lifting. Zan did so by melding his way along the surface of the boxes while Bard tried to lift them up to get the ropes secure underneath. The loading arm, operated by its regular crew, helped as well even though the boxes were positioned at its highest reaching limits.

"Is this the last one?" Bard asked.

"Seems like it" Zan said. "We're not getting too much, keep in mind. Just enough to keep ourselves up and going."

"I still wish we could have kept haggling" Bard said with a strain as he lifted a corner up with the aid of the crane. "I feel like we could have gotten more!"

"These are officially Marine supplies" Zan said. "We're stealing more than any other group of pirates would if they encountered this ship."

"Well, it's not stealing if we're permitted to do it" Bard argued. All of the boxes could only be opened by the specifically engineered crowbars that Alan had designed in conjunction with the boxes. The pirates receiving each crate up above had received those crowbars so they could easily open them, extract the supplies and then close them back up.

"We could have used a box or two, though!" Bard grunted as the box was lifted slowly up by his strength.

"What for?" Zan asked. As the last box was slowly pulled up, Zan and Bard watched on in pride. Their efforts allowed the crew just enough extra equipment to satisfy whatever wanting they could have had in their days of sailing to come.

"Hey!" Rez shouted from the deck. Zan and Bard turned around to see him with a few of the on-hand men of Nepals' crew. "We've got weather coming! Get back to the ship!"

"What kind of weather?" Bard shouted.

"If you have to ask" Zan said "then it can't be good. By default, reporting 'weather' on the Grand Line is meant to be something bad."

"Oh, I understand" Bard said. "Well, we can leave Araly here, if she wants, since she seems to enjoy it."

"Are you positive about that?" Zan asked.

"Well, I already asked her" Bard said. "She said she wants to walk around a little bit longer before she has to come back. I can't blame her, exactly, so I agreed. Alan's okay with it too!"

Hmm Zan thought, I haven't felt that same indistinguishable presence for quite a while. Whatever it was must have vanished already, or perhaps it was just the dread of amazement that I felt when I saw all that technology for the first time up close...no, that wasn't it. But whatever it was, it's completely gone now. I'm sure of it...

Up on the deck the men worked away, keeping the ship's lean in check as the boxes were hauled up and down. The ship's course stayed perfectly constant and stayed side-by-side with the Naughtilus. Everything went smoothly for about as long as it possibly could. Then, from the Under Deck, a mysterious pair of hands moved in the darkness and opened a door. Positioned directly under the helm and attached to the same rigging as the wheel above was the Whip Staff, which stayed static in its position just as the wheel up above. The hands grabbed the staff and suddenly yanked it to the side. Up above, Jacques saw the wheel start to move and grabbed it with all his strength.

"Did I just imagine that?" he wondered. Then, quite suddenly, the port-side Support Sails unfolded and caught the wind. The ship started turning to the right with the Naughtilus still close along its starboard side! A collision seemed eminent until Jacques Barbell, strongest of the crew, took the wheel out of its lock and forced it full to port, straightening the ship out with little more than a quick shaking. The metal box suspended by tightly-held ropes was swung by the sudden jerking and hit against the hull with a loud thud.

"Something's up" Zan said. "Captain, get on deck ASAP."

"Oh, yeah" Bard lowed. He crouched down low and jumped up as high as he could. Once he reached the peak of his jump he tucked his legs up and tensed his kicking muscles to their maximum. "GEPPOU!" He jumped on the air, following puffy, bursting clouds from his feet as he jumped his way back onto the deck.

"What the hell just happened?" Rez shouted.

I wasn't wrong Zan thought. It seems we're under attack already! Zan jumped from the Naughtilus to the now faster-moving hull of the Dragon. He just barely caught it, mere feet from the water, and started climbing up with his hands and feet half-melded with the wood as he went.

"Their ship is going faster now" a crewman simply observed.

"Are they stealing that crate?" another exclaimed.

"They aren't doing this on purpose" Rez said. "Something's up. The ship turned to suddenly for this to just be a wave or a current surge. The crew isn't so incompetent as to screw with the ship in such a delicate procedure. Something's wrong! AND DAMMIT, I'M STUCK HERE WHILE IT'S HAPPENING!"

"You don't have to shout" the crewmen said. Up on the Dragon, the effects already began. The waves became audible again and the wind started to pick up slowly.

"Get that sail down!" Jacques shouted over the deck. The pirates raced to the Under Deck to get to the mechanism which controlled the wing sails. On arrival, it had been visibly tampered with and corrected on the fly. Jacques straightened the wheel back out as the ship slowed down again. Bard rushed to the helm immediately when he had arrived.

"Status, helmsman" he said.

"Seems like someone's screwing around down below" Jacques said. His hands suddenly slipped as the wheel started to turn on its own. He took hold of it and corrected it before the course they were on was too far flawed. "And they're still at it!" he lowed. Bard rushed for the door to the Under Deck and dashed down to the Whip Staff room. It was empty, but it was obvious that someone had been inside. He turned around and was quickly consumed by a dark, menacing grip...

Zan, meanwhile, made his way to the cannon-deck that had been opened up to get the last crate.

"What's going on?" Zan asked. "Why is the ship moving?"

"The ship moved?" a pirate asked.

"I felt that too" another remarked "but didn't think much of it."

"Get this last crate unloaded on the double" Zan said "and get everything into storage. Triple-check the bindings to keep them in place, we're storm-bound." Zan ran off and jumped through the floor and up a level. He continued running, unimpeded by the walls and beams, all the way to the Under Deck where he found Bard face-down and cloak removed. "Captain! What happened?" Bard groaned and pushed himself up.

"It's gone up top" he said. "It took my coat, too."

"What was it?" Zan asked. Bard smirked and glared up. He picked himself up and rolled his shoulders, combat ready and furious. His face was marked with five straight scratch-marks reaching from temple to jaw.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you..." he lowed. Zan looked confused but eager to follow. He and Bard rushed for the deck after their unknown threat.


The panic soon reached down to the Naughtilus. The crew moved quickly to secure the last of the boxes as it was dropped down from far off of its original position. They undid the ropes and let it crash down onto the deck, uneven and unrestrained but just within reach of the crane. Inside the bridge Rez and Alan stood with Araly and Gretta close by.

"We're going to have to move away from the Dragon" Alan said. "Whatever is happening, it's simply too risky to stay side-by-side any longer."

"Right" Rez said. Alan pointed to a man sitting behind a console. The man faced three levers. He pulled down the larger middle one and then rose the other two up by two clicks.

"We're reducing speed" Alan said "and pulling off to the side to let them pass us. We can keep up at a safe distance with them and hail them to slow down later."

"Sounds like a plan" Rez said. "Araly, Gretta, are you two okay with this?"

"Well, we're alright, aren't we?" Araly said.

"I'm not" Gretta said. "I'd much rather be with the captain right now."

"Well, don't worry about Bard" Araly said. "He may be an idiot, but he tends to come through in the end."

"That's not it" Gretta said. "I'm fully aware that Bard has the fullest possible credential to act as our captain..." Rez growled a little at her remark. "...however, by not being there, I can't help but feel useless. Not being able to help, being so far left out of the action, if there is any. It makes me feel abandoned, honestly." Gretta hushed herself as more men arrived to take command of the ship.

"Lower the crane" Alan commanded. "We can't let the rain get to it."

"What can we do?" Rez asked.

"Nothing, presently" Alan said. "I appreciate the thought, for what it counts."

"No, I understand" Rez said. "Our ship is much more different than your ship. In fact, before seeing your ship, we were sure ours was the most intricate and advanced thing on the ocean. Heh, you taught us something."

"Did I?" Alan asked excitedly.

"We should never be too proud" Rez said. "Someone better than us will always be out there. In terms of our ship, there's not much to be done about that. We can add more cannons, configure a few things or rearange rooms here and there, but none of us are professional engineers. None of us could rebuild the ship from ground-up with all of its insane parts and contrived mechanics. The best we could do is patch it together and hope someone better comes along who has the mercy to help us out."

"You're sailing without a proper shipwright?" Alan said in shock. "That's just...ludicrous!"

"We have shipwrights on board" Rez said "but that ship is a one-of-a-kind thing. It's got hidden rooms, pulleys and levers below deck to control the sails, and beyond that it's immense. Even if we were all shipwrights, do you think we could manage that ship like a genius could?" Araly snapped to attention. She saw what Rez was attempting to do, speaking directly to Alan in that way. His suggestions weren't passing through as idle chatter. She could see, by the strain and confusion befalling the young captain, he was seriously considering joining the crew! Even if she wanted to, Araly knew she couldn't do that. Rez walked off and sat with Araly and Gretta at their table. He turned his chair around and watched the crew work from their consoles as they manipulated far-distant parts of the ship while sitting down.

"Orders, captain?" a man asked. Alan took his hand to his chin and slowed his mind from its aching, racing thoughts.

"Maintain sight of the Imperial Dragon" he ordered. "Keep it within the sonar screen. Monitor engine levels and keep the pipes all warm. Stand by for emergency maneuvering. We have an unsecured crate on deck right now so move a crew down to push it into place for the emergency locking system to grab it."

"How can that crate be moved across the deck?" a man asked.

"The rain's going to help us with that" Alan said. He turned to the pirates seated behind him and gave them a very confident nod. "Worry not. This ship has easily been through worse than a simple storm. I'll see you all off on your own ship in no time at all."

"Take you time" Araly said as she stretched out. "I'm all for staying here a while longer."

"We trust you" Rez said. "You're the Captain, after all. Who else are we going to trust?" Alan grinned and nodded. What chance Rez had made seemed to slip away, had that been his intention.

Be confident, Alan Nepals Rez thought. You're too modest of a man. Genius designs don't come to average men. Only a genius like you could have made this ship real. Accept that and live with it, pal. The ships finally entered the storm, moving in from who-knows-where with ship-shaking strength. Waves crashed into the wooden hull of the Dragon, and those same waves were already broken once they rolled their way to the Naughtilus. Such was the role of a protector, that even under attack they could manage to defend with their lives those who trusted in them...

And the Buster Pirates were certainly under attack...