"SHE WHAT?!" Igaram shouted, making Cobra flinch in his throne.

It had been a few days since his daughter had left with the Straw Hats, and Igaram had finally returned. He'd been saved by Nico Robin when everyone thought he was dead, but he'd missed Vivi before she'd left.

"Igaram please, no shouting," Cobra insisted.

"With all due respect, your Highness, I disagree with your reasoning!" Igaram replied, looking very flustered. "Vivi is Princess! She should not have been allowed to go!"

"That didn't seem to concern you when you went with her into Baroque Works," he replied coolly, making Igaram flinch. "That was for our home, now she has left to protect others. I could not stop her."

"But she is with Pirates!" Igaram replied, "she'll make enemies of the Government and the Warlords!"

"Which is her aim,"Cobra replied, making Igaram's eyes widen. "She has witnessed firsthand the Government covering up their own incompetence in this matter. She will use her own voice and actions to quell further cover ups."

"I doubt this will be the last conspiracy the Straw Hats find themselves embroiled in," Pell added from beside him. "They seem the type to find trouble rather easily."

"Her experiences have made her a determined woman," Cobra added. "I could not tell her she had to stay. Even though she was almost looking for a reason to stay, I could see that me ordering her to do so would crush her." Igaram looked incredibly annoyed, pulling at his shirt collar in exasperation.

"It's been how many days?" He demanded.

"A few," Cobra responded. This seemed to annoy him further.

"Won't catch up to them, then," he muttered. "Great. She's stuck with them."

"You seem to have a rather harsh depiction of the Straw Hats," Chaka noted with a smirk on his face.

"Of course I do! The redhead asked for one billion Berries! She demanded payment for their help!"

"Who, Nami?" Cobra asked, "no, no way she did."

"I swear on my life she did!"

"Well she certainly made no such demands to me," Cobra replied. "So I do find it hard to believe. Regardless, Igaram, I think my daughter is in good hands. Do not be alarmed by the money demand. We didn't pay them."

"You know," Nami said as she and Vivi bobbed up and down slowly. "I forgot to ask your Dad for my money."

"Money?" Vivi asked, legs crossed on the back of the swordsman she was sitting on.

"Did I ever tell you about that? I asked for a billion Berries for our help but never got it."

"Huh," Vivi said with a snicker, "well, thank God you didn't bankrupt my home for your help."

"We earned it, though!" Nami argued.

"You did, you did!" She replied with a laugh.

The two of them were currently on the deck of the Merry, but only kind of. They were actually sitting on Johnny and Yosaku's backs as they did push-ups, helping the two train. Both of them had been at it since morning, having finished their duties as ordered by Nojiko earlier.

"Are you keeping count, Big Sis Vivi?" Johnny asked from below her. Vivi spared a thought to wonder how his glasses stayed on at all times.

"You're both nearly three hundred," she said. This was only a half life. She'd stopped counting past one-fifty

"First to five hundred wins!" Yosaku called. Both redoubled their efforts, making both girls move a little quicker.

It had been three days since their departure from Alabasta, having long since lost the Marines tailing them. In that time, Vivi quickly grew accustomed to helping out on the ship in any way she could, which seemed mostly to be sitting on Johnny or Yosaku while they trained. Sanji was horrified he wasn't the one being sat one, which made no sense to her, but the ghastly look on his face made it apparent he was no fan. He'd even been held back by Luffy and Zoro the first time she'd been asked to help.

The repairs that the Merry needed had slowed them down some, as sailing with a damaged hull was asking to sink. Usopp had been down below from quite some time because of this, patching her up as best she could. Captain Hina had done a lot of damage, it seemed.

"We should look into hiring a shipwright," Vivi said absentmindedly, making Nami look back at her a she sipped her tropical looking drink. "The Merry needs real repairs."

"Hm, probably," Nami agreed. "We'll work on that when we find someplace."

"Water Seven has legendary shipwrights," Marianne's voice said. Looking behind her, Vivi saw the painter coming out of the cabin.

"That's where you wanted to go right?" She asked, Marianne nodding. "Two birds with one stone."

"Yeah," Marianne agreed, "The guy who built Roger's ship lived there." This caught Vivi's attention.

"As in the King of the Pirates?" She asked, Marianne nodding, "is he not there anymore?"

"He's dead," Marianne replied. "Government hunted down everyone associated with Roger after he died." Vivi frowned at this. She knew why the World Government hated Roger, but hunting down anyone related to him seemed downright excessive. "Still, the city is known for it's shipwrights, so I'm sure we'll find someone."

"Then we'd better get some money," Vivi noted, "so we can pay for it."

"Pay?" Nami whined, "we're pirates, can't we just not do that?"

"Don't be cheap," Vivi looked over just in time to see Nojiko slap the back of her sisters head, making her whine dramatically. "We can pay after we rob some other pirates."

"Or we just keep that loot and repair and dash..." Nami muttered. Nojiko raised her hand again, making Nami dramatically flinch away like she was traumatised. It made Vivi giggle as the sisters scrapped.

"What's going on over here?!" Luffy's voice came all dramatically from behind them. Turning, Vivi looked towards the Captain.

Who had hands sticking out of his head.

"Gah!" She cried in surprise as Johnny collapsed underneath her, sending them both sprawling over the deck.

"Big Bro, you've got hands on your head!" The man cried in surprise.

"Do I?" Luffy asked. Raising his hand, Luffy high-fived himself. "Seems I do! Hahaha!"

"I win!" Yosaku declared from beneath Nami. "I won the competition!"

"That wasn't fair, Big Bro Luffy spooked me!" Johnny demanded. "We need a redo!"

"No we don't!"

"Yes we do!"

As the swordsmen argued, Nojiko turned and slammed herself down on Yosaku's back, sending all three of them to the deck in a heap. Nojiko, conveniently, had the most graceful landing.

"There, you both lose," she said. This sent everyone into a fit of laughter, Vivi included. Most days were like this. Sailing the ocean, laughing their heads off at benign things. She knew this adventure was going to be fun, but she hadn't expected this.

Sparing a glance to the side, Vivi looked at Robin leaning on the rail of the ship, watching with an innocent smile. The former agent had been distant with them since joining, referring to them all by their titles and not their names. Maybe she was uncomfortable, or maybe she was annoyed by them. It was extremely hard to tell.

"Lunch is ready," Sanji announced as he came out of the cabin, "and Luffy, if I have to tell you one more time to let the women take theirs first, I swear to God I'll-!"

Sanji was interrupted as a galleon fell from the sky directly beside them.

Vivi was launched into the air when the Merry was hit by the resulting wave, landing back hard on the deck and moaning in pain. Seeing a flash of the galleon had scrambled her understanding of reality. Where was she? What had just happened?

"What the hell just happened?!" She heard Zoro shout from somewhere nearby.

"A god damn ship fell from the sky!" Luffy shouted back, "is everyone okay?! Vivi, you alright?!" Her Captain's face appeared in her vision, looking alarmed by her sprawling on the deck.

"I-I'm alright," she replied weakly, "I got thrown into the air."

"Here, let me help you up." Vivi took his hand when he offered it, getting to her feet shakily. Looking around, she saw that everyone else had experienced the same launch. Marianne was beneath Johnny, who had jumped to shield her from any falling debris. Yosaku had grabbed Nami and Nojiko and shoved them to the ground, guarding them with his own body as well. Zoro and Sanji were alert for enemies, looking around quickly. Chopper and Usopp were still below deck, so she couldn't account for them.

"Guys," Sanji said from the edge, "you may want to look at this." Vivi moved to look, but her feet bumped into something. Looking down, she nearly jumped directly out of her skin and into the afterlife when a skull was staring back at her.

A skeleton had fallen from the sky with the ship, landing with them on the deck. She assumed it must have been in some sort of coffin, seeing as it was surrounded by debris. Grossed out, she stepped around it to the edge and looking into the water. Sure enough, floating in the water next to them was the remnants of a ship as it sunk. The wood looked old and rotten, while anything else was in a million pieces from the impact of hitting the water.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Zoro asked.

"It's not even stormy," Johnny said as he stared up at the sky, "Is raining ships a thing on the Grand Line?"

"If it is, it's not super reported on," Nami noted. A groan nearby alerted everyone to Usopp and Chopper's arrival up top.

"What the hell was that?" Usopp asked as he rubbed his head, a bump forming.

"Look for yourself," Robin told him. Both walked to join them all, Usopp making a confused sound.

"Where did that come from?"

"The sky," Yosaku told him flatly.

"Haha," Usopp replied. "Seriously, what happened?"

No one corrected Yosaku's assessment.

"Wha-really? The sky?"

"Really," Marianne agreed. "We all saw it."

"How does that happen?" Chopper asked as he craned his neck back to look at the sky.

"If I had to guess," Robin said as she did the same, "I'd imagine it came from a Sky Island."

The entire crew turned to look at her at once.

"A what now?" Nojiko asked.

"An island in the sky," Robin replied as if they were all fools for not understanding. Vivi, however, raised a hand to her chin and hummed.

"I remember hearing rumours about those," she said, everyone turning to her now. "Islands in the sky, with people living there. Pell used to tell me that angels lived in the sky islands."

"That's got to be a bunch of bull," Zoro said. "I've never heard of these things once."

"W-Well," Nami said shakily, "it would explain our Log Pose." It was the Navigator's turn to ear their attention, and Vivi soon saw the problem. The Log Pose that directed them was pointing upwards.

"It seems the sky island has made our Log Pose deviate," Robin said. "That's unfortunate."

"But we need to follow this thing!" Nami said in exasperation. "We can't go up!"

"I suggest we find a way," Robin replied, "or else we'll be sailing blind."

"No no no," Nami said as she waved her arms, "going up isn't possible. Not without a Devil Fruit, and I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have a spare Bird-Bird Fruit to feed the Merry!"

"Well she does have a mouth," Yosaku pondered, staring at the figurehead of the ship. "Could we?"

"No that's ridiculous," Johnny told him, "Merry can't actually eat the fruit, Yosaku. We'd need to nail the fruit into the ships hull."

"Ah, I see."

"No one else does, you morons," Marianne remarked from between them.

"Well, this massive ship had too of come from somewhere," Robin remarked. "Where else but a sky island?"

No one had an answer for that as the ships archaeologist walked away from the edge towards the skeleton that had fallen onto the deck. "Let's ask our friend, shall we?"

"He's dead," Usopp told her with a flippant wave of his hand.

"We can still learn from him," Robin said. "Doctor, come and join me for a moment." Chopper looked towards Luffy for approval, who shrugged with a blank expression and beckoned him forward. Joining Robin, the two examined the skeleton quietly. "Doctor, what do you make of these holes in his head?" The woman pointed to the holes, and Chopper examined them closely.

"They don't look like high-impact fractures," he said, "More like deliberate holes. Seems like trepanation to me."

"Trap hole?" Luffy asked.

"Trepanation," Chopper corrected, "it's an old surgery humans used to do before we had decent medical knowledge. They drilled holes in peoples heads to get demons out."

"Need to use that one a fair amount of the men on this ship," Nojiko noted.

"Like who?" Johnny asked. Nojiko didn't answer him, making Marianne snicker.

"Given how old trepanation is," Robin said, "this body has to be about two hundred years old, at the least."

"Agreed," Chopper said. "He must have been young as well, because the bones look to be in otherwise good shape with a lack of wear and tear."

"His teeth are in very good condition," Robin noted, running her finger across them. "They have a film on them, reminiscent of a oil coating. Some cultures in the South Blue used to do this. Navigator, could you fetch me my South Blue History textbook from our room? It should be on the middle shelf.

The crew waited around patiently as Nami went and fetched the book, returning with it rather quickly. Robin began to expertly flick through it.

"Found it," she said, "The ship was named the Saint Breeze, sailed from Breeze Kingdom 208 years ago."

"That's the same sail that's in the water," Yosaku noted, pointing to the Saint Breeze's sails.

"It seems it was an explorer vessel," Robin noted. "if we could find the ships log, we could see where it's been."

"It's currently sinking to the bottom of the Grand Line," Zoro told her.

"Well," she replied, "we'd better get someone down there to check it out."

After stopping Luffy was jumping overboard to go check the ship out, the crew went about making pathetic looking scuba suits, made from a a trio of empty barrels with glass windows for the people to see out of. From there, Usopp made rubber suits for the limbs. After a few hours of powering through it, they ended up with three suits.

"I'm going!" Luffy demanded. "I want to explore the ship!"

"That's a disaster in the making," Nami said, rattling her head against Luffy's skull. "With how empty this thing is, you'll rupture your suit and drown."

"You think so?" He asked, turning to look at her as she continued bonking him, making her giggle. Vivi had to admit, he did look rather dumb just staring blankly at her like he didn't understand.

"I'll go with him," Zoro said, walking up to their suits. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

"Well now I have to go," Sanji said, "and make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"What was that, Shit Cook?"

"You heard me, Marimo."

"Can we send someone with more than one active braincell down there?" Nojiko demanded.

"I'll go," Yosaku offered.

Everyone just stared blankly at him.

"What?" He asked. Silence.

"Let's get going!" Luffy called. As the three got into their suits, Vivi helped them jump overboard, watching them descend slowly with the tube giving them all air slowly following.

"It's helpful we had this stuff lying around," she noted as she turned to the air system they'd made. It was basically a hose of air for each of them, but it did it's job.

"I was planning on making underwater suits anyway," Usopp noted. "Helpful for situations exactly like this, when we sink an enemy ship but want to loot it."

"I like the sound of that," Nami said as she walked over to their makeshift microphone, which was really just a tube to shout down. "Luffy! Bring up any gold you see down there too!"

"Will do!" The Captain's voice came back.

"There's a ton of monsters down here," Sanji said out of his own tube.

"That one kinda looks like Chopper!" Luffy laughed.

"What does that mean, you prick?!" Chopper demanded down to Luffy, making him laugh again.

"Pull the brake, Chopper, that should be far enough," Nami said. The reindeer, in his bigger form, did as he was told and stopped the trio's descent. As They did so, Vivi heard something in the distance. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw a figure in the distance.

"Guys?" She asked, "something's coming towards us." She pointed out the figure, garnering everyone's attention. They all watched as it got closer, revealing itself as another ship.

"Think they want anything from us?" Nojiko asked.

"Who knows, but they're still coming right at us," Marianne replied. Vivi felt unnerved as the ship came closer, getting a bad feeling.

"Let me do the talking," she said. Everyone turned to look at her, so she said: "My Dad trained me in diplomacy. I know how to get what I want from someone."

"We'll follow your lead, Princess," Nojiko replied. Nodding, they all waited as the other ship got close enough for them to see what and how it was.

And Vivi was quite confused.

The ship looked like a jungle-themed playground, complete with a massive monkey figurehead. It was a massive ship compared, to theirs, so she needed to avoid conflict. Palm tress on the deck swayed in the breeze, and she could hear cheering from the deck.

"Oi!" A male voice shouted, "you lot down there! What're you doing in my territory?!" Looking over to the side of the ship, Vivi saw the man confronting them. If it even was a man, because he looked like a monkey in overalls. He had the word "Masira' written on his chest, which she could only assume was his name. She caught glances of his crew, who were also ape-adjacent, which just confused her further. These were odd ones, alright.

"Your territory?" She called back, "I apologise, we didn't know. Who are you?"

"Who am I?! Can't you read, girl?! I'm Masira!"

"Masira!" His crew chanted. This was unlike anything she'd seen so far in her life, but she had to focus.

"That ship that sank is mine, got that?! I'm the only one who gets to salvage around here!"

"Of course someone like him shows up..." Nami muttered under her breath. Vivi became aware of the fact that Johnny had his hand resting on his blade. Yosaku also looked primed to fight.

"We apologise for intruding on your turf, Captain Masira," she said, throwing in 'Captain' to make him feel important. One of the most important rules of diplomacy was making your 'adversary' know you consider them important and worth respect. Even if he did look like an ape. Vivi quickly made up an idea as to why they were salvaging. "You see, our ship was damaged in a recent fight with the Navy, and we've been limping across the Grand Line since. We saw this ship sinking, but no one nearby, so we assumed we could salvage some supplies for repairs. Would that be okay with you?"

It wasn't an entire lie. The Merry was still damaged from the fight with the Navy off the coast of Alabasta, and those damages were still showing. Masira rubbed his chin as he stared at their ship.

"Hm, your caravel does seem damaged," he noted. "Very well! We will allow you to use some salvage for repairs! Men, raise the ship!" The crew cheered, but their joy was undercut by someone running up to Masira.

"Boss, big trouble! Our guys that went down already, they're in trouble!"

"What is it?" Masira demanded. "Sea monsters? Ghosts? Apes?"

"They said it looked like three guys down there!"

The crew paled collectively.

"He ruins everything," Marianne noted.

"It's a talent of his," Nami agreed.