Title: On the Ocean Blue

Written By: NikoArtagnan

Genre: Fantasy/Friendship/Adventure

Rating: T, will eventually go to M

Summary: An outcast from Earth is flung headfirst into a hostile, unforgiving world, and finds themselves tagging along with a very particular crew of misfit pirates, and the boy who wants to be the King of them all. But this isn't the world of One Piece you thought you knew, and there are terrible things lurking in the shadows...

Chapter-Specific Warnings: Minor character death, blood, gore, body issues, internalized racism/misogyny, implied incest.

Author's Notes: So the main villains will be shown in this chapter...along with lots of cute, because Chopper is adorable.

Chapter Thirteen:

Friendship is a Beautiful Thing

She swam slowly back into consciousness, exhaustion dragging at her limbs and mind. The world was a murky black soup of tar, and she fought for each step back towards the dim light waiting beyond.

Her eyes opened slowly and she shuddered in a gasp of cold air flavored at the edges with the scent of snow-covered stone. She could feel Shere and Gin clamoring at the edges of her thoughts, but she shushed them with hurried reassurances, and they quieted.

Her senses told her she was in a large room, with a fire blazing in a hearth at the opposite end, a desk with many chemicals bubbling away atop it nearby, and a window bolted shut against the raging storm outside on the far wall.

Another breath brought to her knowledge the pump of warm blood through veins, the steady beat of a heart, soft breathing, someone was there, defend, bite, kill-

Instinctively her head shot out, her mouth open wider than it had ever been, something bitter surging behind her jaw, and made to close her fangs around the creature near her. But two strong, heavily callused hands closed around her jaw, freezing her in place.

Magic roared down from the touch, warm and soft and safe, and the bitter tasting liquid behind her jaw receded.

"Now, enough of that," came a woman's voice, brash and somewhat hoarse. "You're safe here, and among friends."

The Magic seeped into her body, calming her. The red bled away from her eyes, leaving the world in color once more. Sitting on a chair beside her was a very, very familiar older woman, with blonde-white hair pulled back into ponytail. Her face was heavily creased in the way of the very old (though her body had curves women decades younger would have killed for), and black eyes glittered over a hooked beak of a nose. Then her mouth opened just a bit, and a hint of a forked tongue poked out.

The draconic Magus smirked at her.

'Doctorine is a fucking Dragon Magus!' a tiny voice in her head screamed, thoroughly losing its shit as it flailed about in her mind. 'Holy fuck, this is fucking awesome…SO THAT'S HOW SHE HAS HER GIRLISH FIGURE MY GOD THAT MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE."

Kelly had met several Magi in her travels (even though they'd all been low-powered ones, with barely any traces of the animalistic nature that gave them a closer connection to Magic, like Nami and Sara, but they'd mostly chased her away for fear of the Daemons coming after them too), and expected to meet several more, hiding in the midst of humanity. She just hadn't expected Chopper's Doctorine to be a fucking Dragon, one who could trace her lineage back to the Gods themselves, and the only type of Magi rarer than a Snake.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, idiot. You nearly killed yourself with that little stunt, carrying those other three imbeciles up during one of this island's worse storms. I managed to wake up the bits of your Magic that were sealed away, though my power only goes so far. What the hell were you thinking, sealing so much of yourself away? If I hadn't gotten to you in time, you'd have killed yourself through exhaustion," Kureha said, and whacked the younger woman across the head.

Kelly just blinked at her, the words slowly filtering through her brain.

"Wh-what do you mean?" she finally managed to get out. "My power is bound? What?"

Kureha stared at her. "You're joking."

"…No?"

Silence reigned for several moments as the two women just stared each other.

Then Kureha sighed. "I should've known it wouldn't be this simple. Ishma damn it all, of course the most powerful Magus to walk the world in centuries has no training and bound powers, and gets dumped on my lap, of course they does."

Kelly blinked, not sure if she should take umbrage for the implied insult or be flattered that the other Magus was the first person she'd ever met who used the more accurate, gender-neutral pronoun 'they' when referring to the younger Magus.

She knew she was relatively untrained, even with Gin's help (he'd made that much clear when they'd first started training that his help wouldn't get her nearly as far as actual training with a proper Magus would) but the thing about her powers being bound?

What the hell did that mean?

Gin had made noises about her getting her powers bound after Aratu…after that had happened, but he'd stopped soon enough.

Kelly felt her eyes widen as she remembered what had happened on that tiny island a week after waking up on the cruise ship, the memory a flash of light in her mind.

-…"You will have a great less level of control over your Magic now," he says quietly, rubbing her back as she curls into a ball in his lap and wails her grief. "Not until She is sure you will not lose your temper again. I'm so sorry Mistress, I knew She would do this to further control you…" And there was a feeling like a bear trap closing over her mind, a sigh of exasperation emanating across and through the very fabric of the universe itself, and Kelly went unconscious, a voice whispering in her ears "All this over one idiot human girl."…-

Had he bound her magic? No, she would have known it, and Gin would never have taken such liberties with her, even if she asked it of him.

Who was that 'She' Gin had spoken of? Had someone else bound her magic? Why had she only just now

She knew Kureha wasn't lying about having broken bindings or whatnot – she felt freer than she'd been in years.

"I can teach you how to break some of the bindings," Kureha said, startling the younger Magus out of her trance. "Your friends will still be out for a while yet, a couple days by my reckoning, plenty of time for me to teach you some of what you need to know."

Kelly nodded slowly. "I'd appreciate that. I haven't exactly had the opportunity to learn from a strong Magus, and whatever you could teach me would be great."

Kureha leaned back, watching her carefully. "You've had quite a trip, haven't you." It wasn't a question.

The younger Magus shrugged. "I suppose."

The door creaked as it opened, and Kelly turned her head to look as a tiny form entered, carrying a tray laden with something that smelled delicious.

"Doctorine, the girl is asleep and her fever has gone down since I last checked," the humanoid creature said, before catching sight of the two of them and jerking in shock. It was a tiny thing, about the size of a toddler, covered all over in light brown fur, and stood easily on two legs, though instead of hands and feet it had hooves, and its nose, strangely enough, was blue. It wore dark purple-ish shorts and a pink top hat emblazoned with a white X. Two curved antlers stuck out from holes in the sides of the hat.

Kelly stared.

"Chopper, bring that tray over here so our guest can eat. And by the way, I'm Ageha Kureha, daughter of Tiamat Farseeing, Priestess of the Avnae clan. This is Tony Tony Chopper, my apprentice," Doctorine said, beckoning to the tiny reindeer.

Chopper inched over, watching her curiously, and gently handed his teacher the tray. On it was a bowl of thick brown soup with a wooden spoon, a plate of fresh bread, a small cup of very strong-smelling mead, and a fair-sized saucer of some clear liquid that sang with magic.

"Thank you," Kelly said softly, nodding to Chopper, who smiled shyly, and semi-hid behind Doctorine.

"After you eat, we will begin breaking what barriers that we can for the moment, and getting you used to the influx of Magic," Kureha said, taking the cup of clear liquid and placing on a nightstand beside the bed. "That liquid is imbued with the essence of some runes I crafted a while ago. It will begin to assist in the breaking. You're strong enough, Gods all be thanked, that you'll only need some guiding and a strong magical shock to get through."

"Who bound me?" Kelly asked quietly. "Because I don't remember doing it myself."

The older Magus paused, and something wary entered her eyes. "…Someone very strong. Someone who would like you under control. Someone who's playing a very dangerous game with the Gods… It would not be wise for me to speak more about it. I think you will discover their identity soon enough, if you continue on your trip," Kureha eventually said, then rose from her chair.

"Chopper, keep our guest company and make sure she finishes all of her meal. When she does, come fetch me."

"Ah, ma'am?" Kelly said, gently touching the older woman's hand before she moved away.

"Hm?"

"I'm Kel-Ciel. Ciel Russo. Call me Ciel."

Kureha raised an eyebrow, but then nodded. "Call me Doctorine. And make sure to eat your food, brat." The woman left, and the two of them were left alone.

There was a fairly comfortable and curious silence, before Chopper worked up the courage to pull himself onto Doctorine's chair by the bed.

"You should eat," he said, pointing one hoof towards the tray, watching her curiously. "It'll help you feel better."

Kelly grinned. "No need to tell me twice, boyo. It smells wonderful." She picked up the spoon – the gnawing hunger in her stomach finally making itself known – and dug in.

The soup was wonderful, thick and beefy, stuffed with rehydrated dried vegetables and a pleasant mix of spices that settled well in her stomach. The bread was light and soft, made from sort of grain she didn't recognize, but lightly sweet and went perfectly with the soup. The mead left a trail of fire racing down her throat, and chased away the remaining chill from the climb up the mountain. She sighed with relief after she had eaten her fill, and turned her gaze on the reindeer.

"What are you then, little one?" Kelly asked, careful to keep everything but curiosity from her voice. "I've not seen the like of you in all my years-" Technically that was true. She'd never seen anything like him in this world, and it wasn't as though she could say she knew all about him because he was from a TV show back home, now could she? "-and I can tell you are not a Magus like Doctorine and myself."

Chopper sighed, and Kelly resisted the frankly startling urge to giggle as the reindeer straightened his hat.

"Um, well, I ate the Hito Hito no Mi. I was just a reindeer before," and he shrugged, looking tired and vaguely ashamed. But then he brightened and looked back at her.

"But, but you're like me and Doctorine, aren't you? I saw your scales! Are you a pirate? Were your friends pirates? …Do, do you think we could be friends?" He chirped, and despite the instinctive clutch of shock and unease in her belly at the knowledge that he knew, something inside her softened.

He sounded so lonely, so desperate for a friend that it hurt the thing deep inside of her that curled up tight behind the walls she had been forced to construct after arriving in this world. The thing that had urged her to care for Nami, to help Usopp in Little Garden. It ached now, as she looked into Chopper's big, dark eyes shining with desperate hope.

Should she return the greeting? She was unused to trusting anyone beyond her cats and even Sara had set off some internal alarms when she'd met her again, alarms that had been muffled under the guilt. (Because if she thought now, she remembered the look of utter disgust on the other Magus's face when they'd talked that had been so quickly hidden, and the thread of insincerity as Sara had 'forgiven' her, but she'd expected that, given what she'd done to the other Magus) But it wasn't happening now, no alarms were going off, she wanted this.

And that seemed wrong.

She sighed.

It was Chopper, she reasoned. He was tiny, cute, and it wasn't as though he was truly human. And he was so desperate, for someone who would look at him and not see a freak, nor a monster. (And so was she.)

Well, he had Kureha, and she had Gin and Shere, but a friend was different. Kureha was Chopper's teacher, and the cats were her Familiars.

But someone outside of their own respective circles, a stranger they'd never met before? Someone not predisposed to fondness and mutual affection? That was temptation beyond endurance.

Kelly grinned, and folded her arms on her blanket covered legs, only now realizing she was wearing only her underclothes and underarmor, and her hair had been removed from its braid. It was a strange feeling, to be so exposed.

"I'd like to be your friend, little man, but I require something first," she said as solemnly as she could. Chopper blinked, and seemed to deflate.

"W-what?" He asked, wary.

She propped her chin on her hand.

"Friendships require hugs, Chopper-chan," she said, and looked him directly in the eyes. "If you want to start being my friend, I require a hug first."

It was heartbreaking the way his eyes lit up and he practically launched himself out of his chair and into her arms. He nearly poked her in the eyes with his antlers as his tiny arms curled around her neck, but he was soft and warm against her skin.

And the thing in her mind, the thing starved for lack of touch and affection, purred happily as Kelly returned the hug.

She'd always had a secret fondness for cute, fluffy things.

Kelly sighed as she studied the person in the mirror. It was odd to see herself naked. She hadn't seen her body in years. For years, even back as just a human, she'd preferred to wear clothes that covered every inch of her body. Even with Mina she'd rarely gone naked, knowing both of them preferred it that way. With all of her partners it'd been that way.

And these days she couldn't bear the sight of her flesh, as marred by scales and scars as it was.

But if she set aside the instinctual disgust and revulsion at the sight of the body in the mirror, and the horrifying knowledge that yes, this was indeed her body, it was interesting to look at it, to dissect it with her fingers and mind, to run her fingers across the silvery blue chips of metal or hardened skin (who knew what those things were made of), to watch the toned, muscular body in the mirror, so different from the generous curves and chubby bulges of her previous body.

It was this detached mindset that allowed her to look at the body in the full-length mirror of the bathroom (which connected to the room she'd awoken in) still wet and glistening from the shower Kureha had forced her into (telling her that magical cleaning was all well and good, but it was nothing compared to the cleansing of a hot, thundering shower for the body and mind) without flinching.

The dense tumble of black-brown hair that fell to the small of her back was still soaked from the shower (and Kureha had been right, a shower really did do wonders for the mind and body both). Her skin was a pale, pale ivory but for the skin on her face and hands, which were colored a few shades darker from exposure to the sun. Her eyes were a dark, stormy green, like the color of the sea in the midst of writhing storm, ringed with fans of long, thick black eyelashes (dreamer's eyes, her Nee-chan had always said). Her face was angular, hardened, and a scar from a blade she'd been too slow to block at that bitch Usana's house tugged her still full and thick mouth down into a semi-permanent sneer.

Her body was muscular, the front of it nicked and scarred by the marks that over a decade's worth of hard, desperate living gave one. Despite the muscle and years of training, stubborn curvature remained, baby fat still clinging to her hips and behind, and her breasts were still full and round, the nipples dark pink and hard from the cold. She tsked at her breasts, weighing the heavy rounds of fat in her hands, vaguely annoyed by the imposition the features her biological gender routinely gave her, and continued her inspection. The silvery blue scales covered most of the front and sides of her arms, extending to a point on each hand between the middle and ring fingers. Her legs were long and well formed, as muscular as the rest of her. The scales continued down her sides, curving over her hips and down to the tops of her feet.

She wondered what her back looked like. It had healed as best it could, though the Magic had been unable to wipe any of the scars away, as the nature of the whips had prevented that. But she couldn't force herself to turn around, to see the scars for herself. Her legs simply refused to move.

Apparently she wasn't quite ready to see those scars. Her hand inched over her shoulder, feeling slowly, while her other hand pressed against the small of her back. The skin there was hard and tough. She could feel the raised, scarred skin. It felt like strips of raised leather across her flesh, tough and strange beneath her questing fingers.

-…there is pain, and terror and most devastatingly, the sting of bitter betrayal. Every crack of the whip against her back ignites pain that goes beyond the physical, because these are her friends, the people she lived with, the people she saw every day, the people she worked so hard to protect and help.

And they laugh as she cries…-

She sighed and began the tedious process of getting dressed.

"Um, Ciel?"

She turned her gaze from the window outside, still leaning against the cold stone wall. Chopper stood at the door, watching her.

"Mm?" she asked, feeling sleepy and stupid. It had been two days since they'd arrived at the castle, and Kureha certainly had wasted no time in helping her slowly peel away the layers of barriers that remained between her and her true power, slowly removing the fog that had dulled her thoughts and mind ever since Aratuck. The older Magus had also taken to teaching Kelly things about Magi, things she'd had no clue about, things she hadn't learned but should have. The general history of their people, how to greet other Magi and the Elders of the different races Magi belonged to, and spells that every Magi learned early on.

I hadn't even realized there were barriers keeping me away from my magic, much less anything else, like how some Daemons can fucking hypnotize humans and make them their slaves, she thought, rubbing a hand over her face. Christ, will I always be so weak? So fucking worthless? So ignorant? The things Kureha's teaching me, they're for Magi children. I should know these things. But I don't. Gin told me I wouldn't learn everything, that books and his teaching could only take me so far…But this fucking sucks.

A hoof touched her knee. She looked down at Chopper, who smiled up at her.

"Your friends will be awake in about a day or two, Doctorine says. The orange haired girl will be just fine," He said, gently hugging her leg.

Kelly blinked.

She… she hadn't even been thinking about them. About the three humans who could have very well have died while she whined and angsted about how little she knew as a Magi.

A tiny voice in her head said timidly 'But, they wouldn't have died, they're the main characters-'

But in the manga, Nami wasn't a fucking Magus, there weren't Daemons running amuck, and where the hell did this thing with the Magi come from? … she thought, and then sighed.

"…Sorry, Chopper, that's great news," she said, instinctively reaching down to haul the little reindeer into her arms. She carefully cradled him against her chest and sat on the windowsill, watching the snow fall to the ground in drunken spirals.

"Will you tell me a story, Ciel?" He asked after a time, squirming so she would sit him in her lap. He watched her with big, curious eyes, and something in her belly ached, but distantly.

-…"'Ey, tell us a story, beautiful," he says, purple eyes flashing merrily. The doctors had upped his medicine intake again, from the look of his slack mouth and bruised circles ringing his eyes. Lien curls up next her and giggled, gently poking her exposed knee. She would be leaving soon, to be with her family, and Kelly didn't want to think about having to let her go. "Yeah, Kel! A story, a story! You always tell us stories when you come and visit, and you and Amber haven't visited us in a long time." And the two of them turn puppy-dog looks up at her, and Kelly feels a little easier, a little less broken…-

Kelly swallowed painfully, and stroked Chopper's head, preening a little on the inside when he leaned into the touch.

"In a land far, far away, there was a race of people called the Celts, ruled over by a goddess so beautiful she struck men dumb to see her ride by. She was called Rhiannon, which means great queen," Kelly began, reciting the tale she'd learned as a child, the tale Amber had told her of as a child.

She hadn't been able to play the part of storyteller in a long while, and it had surprised her to realize she had missed it, when Chopper had first come to her asking for a story.

"On a fine summer day, Lord Pwyll, a man of great standing among the Celtic peoples, took his men to a hill said to be magickal. It was claimed by one and all that if a man were to spend the night there, he would see a beautiful thing in the morning when he woke. Lord Pwyll knew, from the rumors of hedgewitches and the tales of the smallfolk, that the hill was said to be a favorite place of the great goddess herself..."

As she wove the story, Chopper hanging onto every word, she could almost pretend she was home again, with the fire roaring the hearth, holding her sister in her arms as she told her stories of the world's folklore, her parents just down the hall.

She could almost pretend everything was normal.

DATE: November 17th (It's been three days since we arrived at Kureha's

MY LOCATION: Nami's room

PLACE: Drum…or is it called Sakura Island now? When the hell do they actually change the name?

Chopper's freaking ridiculous. I mean seriously, I knew the kiddo was smart – anyone who read the manga or saw the anime could tell you that – but in real life he's something else. He's moving about his chemicals and filled beakers like a pro, muttering to himself and making all sorts of notations in his books, and I can't make heads or tails of it.

And I know I'm really not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to book work (I still have trouble multiplying and doing some other basic maths, so yeah) but hell, even if I was this stuff would be flying over my head. Chopper's a fucking genius, and better yet, he enjoys his work. The look on his face as he goes over his work is something else, and reminds me of how I get when I'm in the ocean. When I'm using my magic.

Speaking of which, I feel fucking awesome. There are plenty of barriers between me and the core of my magic, as Kureha explained, but I have a ton more than I did now. I feel alive, awake, as though I'd been walking in a fog all of my life. Like I'd cut off a vital part of myself and it only now has been returned to me. I feel even better now than I did before Aratuck, before I came to this world.

Who bound my magic? Why would they bind it?

It's been an odd couple of days. Luffy, Nami, and Sanji slept longer than I expected they would. Their injuries were pretty bad, and apparently Luffy also caught something from that damned Little Garden, though he was able to fight it off better than Nami could.

I can feel the magic in Nami, now. She's sleeping to my right, as I sit in front of the roaring fire. Finally, the stench of death has left her. I know I should tell her something about it, or let Kureha tell her about it…no, I can't take that chance. I'll tell Kureha that I plan to train Nami later. She isn't too strong, so her powers shouldn't cause her too much grief. And she deserves better than to be taught by a clumsy, half-trained Magus like myself.

Kureha's taught me so much about Magi, things I couldn't learn from books, or just didn't know. Higher leveled Magi are generally genderfluid, which was strange – and freaking awesome. It has something to do with how Magic itself has no gender, or it has many (I didn't quite understand). But that's only with higher leveled Magi, those who have mastery over three to four elements. Myself, I have only two and with vague control over earth and none at all over fire, so I will never be all that powerful. (But didn't Kureha say something about that? Hm.)

I went into Sanji's room earlier because my magic led me there. He breathed. He lived, and that was more comforting than it should have been. My magic wanted him. It wants him still.

(Shit.)

Nami's waking up!

I'll write later.

~KL

She ran.

Ran and ran and ran, cursing her decision to wear heels and a short dress, even though they made her look really cute and made people underestimate her – which was the best, especially when one was in her line of work. But right now it wasn't exactly working out for her, now was it?

She stumbled, swearing as her shoe got caught in the exposed root of a dying tree. She yanked her leg hurriedly, only to stop, every nerve in her body freezing with rabbit-like terror as a dark, screeching laugh emanates from behind her.

"LOok, siSter! The liTtle pigGy iS stUck!" The voice was strange, inhuman, flavored at the edges with a sliver of bloody amusement, vaguely, distantly male.

She shook with fear.

Another voice echoed the first, with only the vaguest hints of a feminine tone, but mirroring the first in the strangely toned words. "YOu're riGht bRother! ThAt's noT gOod for iT, Is It?"

The two voices laughed like nails on chalkboard, and she staggered to her feet, abandoning her shoes as she ran and ran and ran, not caring that her feet were bloody and scraped, not caring that she was stumbling her way through a fucking jungle (even though all the animals had scattered long ago), not caring that her partner was dead and those, those things, had eaten him (he'd screamed and screamed and there'd been this awful, tearing sound and then he'd just stopped), and those crazy monsters had made her Devil Fruit powers somehow stop working, and she didn't want to die.

"MiSs ValentIne! WhEre arE yoUUUUUUU?"

She'd known exactly what they were ever since the Baroque Works Frontier agents had met. Hadn't she heard the stories after all, of the monsters who could become human, who hid in the shadows and dragged off little children who got too close? She'd known what the light-haired, almost painfully ordinary (but for those eyes, bored and crazed and hungry) man and woman were from the moment she'd seen them.

They could have easily been the Mr. 1 and Doublefinger pair, easily, but that really hadn't mattered to them. Only blood and death and destruction, and the Boss had given them both plenty of that. They'd all seen the ruin those two left in their wake, or heard of it, whispered by the Billions and Millions in uneasy whispers, passed among themselves, trying to reassure each other that the Boss wouldn't bring two monsters on board unless he could control them.

But no one could control monsters like them, and she wondered vaguely how the Boss had gotten these goddamn freaks to enter into a contract with him, and she knew the Boss had sent these monsters after them because they'd failed, failed to kill a bunch of stupid pirates and their pet Magus. And that knowledge burned deep inside, even as she staggered into a clearing surrounded by trees and realized there was no way off the island.

Oh fuck, she was going to die.

For one crazy moment, as something slammed into her back, knocking her to the ground, as that same, awful laugh rang in her ears, she thought hysterically Mummy certainly wouldn't be pleased by her language, Mummy had raised her to be a proper lady, and she'd always been a proper lady, even though she could crush skulls with her legs and killed pirates for a living-

Then there was pain and an awful tearing and she screamed and she could feel claws digging greedily into her back and blood spilling-

And then, blessedly, there was darkness.

They made a rather ordinary couple, sitting together in their room in the bowels of the ship. The man curled in the woman's arms, purring sleepily, as content as a cat who'd just gotten a metric tonne of cream. And a couple canaries too, for good measure.

She smiled, running her fingers through his soft hair, wishing she could shuck her skin and convince her brother to shuck his, so she could fuck him properly, but no. It would disturb their little minions (and her brother couldn't exactly control himself), and their employer certainly wouldn't like that. He'd gotten angry last time they'd revealed their true selves before humans who didn't need to know (even though they'd left no witnesses, of course), and it was just more convenient if they didn't irritate their employer.

Her brother's eyes opened, and he made a low noise in the back of his throat that he knew did things to her, and she felt lust strain through her skin.

"Why didn't you eat anything?" he asked. "I know you prefer dark meat, but you barely ate any of it, and you let me have all the light meat."

She shrugged. "Was too sea-salty," she said with a shrug, "And I ate earlier, with the minions. One of them made some delightful blood beef soup."

He wrinkled his nose. "You always were odd."

"I don't much like salty food, and regular meat's never been my favorite, and that sort of meat has too damn much sea-salt in it," she said.

He smiled at her after a brief silence, low and slow and amused. "Did you smell it?"

She grinned, and kissed him, biting his lip and savoring the pained gasp, the taste of his ink-black blood in her mouth, before pulling away. His eyes were no longer the pale, human imitations he wore before others, but a deep, bloody, mad red, the mirror of hers.

"The Magus?" she said with a laugh. "Oh yes, my love, I smelled them. With the pirates taking the princess back to Arabasta, the little color-worker told us. We'll feast well, if they were right."

It was, after all, why Crocodile had employed them in the first place.