"Poneglyph?"
Robin, who had been quietly sitting in the corner with a book in her hands, suddenly raised her head at those words.
"Yeah," Shanks met her gaze and slowly nodded, saying word by word, "A Poneglyph that has existed since very long ago and was kept in the Land of Gold."
Hearing this, Robin frowned, "How many people know about this Poneglyph?"
She had already gone over what happened before in her mind.
She could be one hundred percent certain that the Poneglyph in Arabasta was deliberately shown to them by the World Government.
And this time, Robin likewise felt that this Poneglyph was something the World Government wanted them to see.
There was Vivi in Arabasta, and if she remembered correctly, there was also one of that person's daughters on the Sky Island.
And she was the most mysterious one, too.
At least in Robin's memory, she had never had any contact with her. Even Hiyori and the others rarely mentioned that girl.
"A Poneglyph? Let's go take a look!"
Crocodile suddenly snuffed out his cigar, a burning eagerness lighting up in his eyes.
Last time in Arabasta, although the process had been somewhat complicated, the final result had still been pretty good.
There had been nothing of any real practical use, but it had at least pointed him in a certain direction.
Even if relying solely on the Poneglyphs didn't work, he could follow Luffy and the others to Laugh Tale.
There had to be somewhere he could get what he wanted.
"Hey, hey, then we're going too!", Luffy had long since been unable to hold himself back. He jumped up excitedly, "An island in the sky! A city of gold! And a Poneglyph! I can't wait!"
For a moment, the Straw Hats were all fired up, rubbing their fists and palms as if they were about to set sail and charge straight into the clouds the very next second.
Of the entire group, only Nami, Zoro, and the others remained speechless and silent.
They'd fallen into the trap again, hadn't they?
Just as the whole table was boiling over with excitement, Shanks's Den Den Mushi suddenly started going Ka-chak! Ka-chak!
The smile on his face faded slightly. He stood up, walked over to the side, and picked up the receiver.
"Hello."
The tavern was still noisy, but Robin, who was sitting closest, keenly noticed that Shanks's back was slowly, little by little, stiffening.
He said nothing, merely listening quietly.
The black-bearded face of the Den Den Mushi gradually twisted into a grave and sorrowful expression as the voice on the other end continued.
After a long while...
"I understand," Shanks only quietly uttered those two words. His expression was terrible, and then he slowly hung up the phone.
With his back to everyone, he stood there for a long time, his broad shoulders seeming to have something heavy pressing down on them.
When he finally turned around, those eyes that always carried a smile were now filled with an inseparable complexity and grief.
He silently looked at Luffy, looking at all the young people around the table who were still immersed in their anticipation of adventure.
The noise gradually died down.
"What happened?"
Robin was the first to come back to herself. Looking at the expression on Shanks's face, she felt a tightness in her chest and asked softly, "Looks like bad news."
Shanks was silent for a moment before finally speaking with great difficulty, slowly, "Juste's sentence has been handed down."
His voice was very low, yet it was like a block of ice crashing into everyone's hearts.
"Thirty days from now," Shanks closed his eyes for a moment and said each word carefully, "The Marines will publicly execute him at Marineford."
BOOM!
The moment those words were spoken, the entire table, and even half the tavern, fell into dead silence.
Everyone fell silent.
Juste had been captured alive only recently. Some of the people sitting here had witnessed it with their own eyes.
They had heard at the time that the World Government intended to publicly execute Juste.
But they had not expected it to happen so soon.
And in the suffocating silence...
Whoosh!
Luffy suddenly stood up, the bench behind him crashing over.
Under the shadow of his straw hat, there was no trace of the excitement from before. Only anger and determination remained in his eyes.
"Marineford, right?"
Gritting his teeth, he said each word, almost roaring it from his chest, "I'm going! I'm going to save him!"
Luffy practically charged straight toward the tavern door the moment his words left his mouth.
To him, that island cast in gold high above the sky, that Poneglyph bearing the secrets of the world, was certainly tempting.
But compared with rescuing Juste, all of that suddenly became insignificant.
A companion was in trouble, his life hanging by a thread.
In this world, what could possibly be more important than that?
However, his straw sandals had only just left the ground.
Thud!
Two hands, one on each side, pressed heavily onto his shoulders, forcefully pinning his lunging body back in place.
On the left was Crocodile's rough, calloused hand.
On the right was Kuro's cat paw, poised to strike.
"Let go! Let me go!"
Luffy struggled violently, his rubber-like body stretching under the two men's restraint, his straw hat already pushed crookedly to the back of his head.
"I'm going to save Juste! Don't stop me! Let go!"
"You brat, are you tired of living? In such a hurry to go throw your life away?"
Crocodile, with his freshly relit cigar between his teeth, looked down at him from above. His tone was full of helplessness at being angered by such recklessness.
He increased the strength in his hand, firmly pinning down the struggling Luffy.
"Do you even know what kind of place Marineford is? It's the strongest Marine branch in the first half of the Grand Line. What? You think it's your own backyard, where you can just walk in whenever you want and rescue whoever you want?"
"I don't know!"
Luffy held his neck stiff, his eyes red, stubborn as a bull that would keep charging even after hitting a wall.
"And I don't care what kind of damn place it is! Juste is my brother, so I'm going to save him!"
Luffy had already thought about rescuing Juste when Juste was defeated, but Crocodile had forcibly taken him away.
This time, he was unwilling to wait any longer.
Luffy stopped his pointless struggling and suddenly raised his head. His black eyes burned with fierce fighting spirit as he stared seriously at Crocodile.
"Crocodile," He said each word with force, "If you dare stop me again, I'll beat you flat!"
The moment he said this.
"Puhahahaha!"
The heavy atmosphere around them was actually broken by this declaration of war.
Sanji and Usopp could not help laughing, and even Zoro helplessly raised the corners of his mouth.
And the words of persuasion that had already reached Shanks's lips were swallowed back down.
Shanks looked at the overconfident Luffy with amusement, folded his one arm across his chest, and suddenly laughed loudly.
"Fine! How about this, Luffy."
He bent down and moved closer to Luffy.
"If you can beat Crocodile, then we'll all go with you and immediately head to Marineford to save Juste."
"But if you can't beat him...", Shanks changed his tone, "Then behave yourself and come with us to the Sky Island first. There are still a full thirty days. We've got plenty of time."
"Deal!"
Luffy agreed almost without thinking, straightforwardly and decisively, with even a hint of impatience.
He shook his shoulders after they were released, clenched his fists, and grinned at Crocodile.
"Then come on! As long as I beat you, I can go save him!"
Crocodile snorted, slowly exhaled a mouthful of purple smoke, and his figure flickered in midair, his entire body turning into swirling yellow sand.
"Kid who doesn't know his own limits."
The next moment...
"Woooah?"
Luffy suddenly felt an irresistible force surge in from all directions.
Scorching sand wrapped around his limbs and waist like a living thing. In the blink of an eye, it hardened, firmly sealing his entire body and embedding him into the tavern floor.
From the moment he grinned and provoked Crocodile to the moment he was completely unable to move. It took less than three seconds.
Crocodile's head re-formed from the sandstorm. He looked down at the boy trapped on the floor, his hooked prosthetic hand raised, his mocking tone utterly merciless.
"You've still got a long way to go, Straw Hat."
He couldn't beat Shanks.
And he certainly couldn't beat those monsters under the World Government.
But dealing with the still-wet-behind-the-ears Luffy in front of him was as easy as anything.
"Mm! Let me go! I'm not convinced!"
Luffy was firmly embedded in the floor, with only his head and one arm still able to flail uselessly. He continued shouting indignantly, "I still have to save Juste! I have to go save him!"
At this point, Shanks walked leisurely over to Luffy.
He reached out, pressed down on the top of the boy's crooked straw hat, straightened it, then his expression became serious and his voice dropped.
"Luffy," He said each word solemnly, "A bet's a bet! When you give your word, you have to keep it. That's the responsibility a real man should have."
He crouched down and looked Luffy in the eye.
"Besides, we never said we wouldn't save Juste. But when it comes to saving someone, you have to do it carefully, slowly, and with a plan. You have to think it through and move step by step. Not rush straight into danger like you do when you get hotheaded."
"How is that you going to save someone? You're clearly throwing yourself in there too, along with your own life!"
Those words were like a basin of cold water, quietly cooling the boiling blood in Luffy's veins and bringing him back to his senses.
The boy fell silent.
He stopped struggling. He merely pressed his lips tightly together, lowered his eyes, and breathed heavily.
That unwillingness, that anxiety, and the reason gradually seeping into his mind wrestled and churned repeatedly inside his heart.
After a long while, he finally spoke in a low voice, word by word, sullenly, "I understand. I'll go to the Sky Island."
He suddenly raised his head, but the flame in his eyes burned even more fiercely than before.
"But! After that! I absolutely, absolutely have to go save Juste! Nobody better try to stop me!"
Hearing the boy's stubborn yet resolute declaration, the people watching exchanged glances, and knowing smiles spread across their faces.
It wasn't that they were unwilling to go save him.
It was just that in this world, some battles required careful planning before making a move.
With the tiny amount of strength they had right now, charging straight into the World Government's territory was no different from throwing their lives away for nothing.
By now, every rebel had the situation as clear as a mirror.
Facing a World Government so powerful that it could make people despair, they absolutely could not afford to act in haste.
One wrong step, and there would be no way back.
The yellow sand slowly receded, and Luffy finally regained his freedom.
He patted the sand off himself. Though he was still pouting and clearly unwilling, he ultimately managed to suppress that reckless urge to charge headfirst into things for the time being.
After discussing it among themselves, everyone reached a consensus.
They would first board that legendary Sky Island and see with their own eyes what kind of secret was actually engraved upon that Poneglyph.
Perhaps the truth sealed away on that stone tablet just happened to contain some key that could weaken the World Government or make them stronger themselves.
"Come to think of it, how are we actually supposed to get up there?"
Luffy scratched his head and looked up at the sky outside the window, which was soaked in twilight.
"It's so high up. We can't exactly fly up there on wings, right?"
"Well..."
Everyone looked at one another for a moment and fell into thought.
Just then, Mont Blanc, who had been quietly huddled in the corner of the tavern, spoke.
"I know."
Everyone's eyes immediately turned toward him.
Mont Blanc shrank his neck under so many gazes, but he still raised his head and shouted, "In the waters around Jaya Island, an upward-moving ocean current appears every so often."
"The force of the current is terrifyingly strong. It can carry the entire body of seawater, along with ships, up into the sky to a height of ten thousand meters. As long as you can ride that current, you can get up there."
"So if you know so much, why don't you go up yourself?"
Kuro, Nami, and the others were speechless inside, but they did not expose him.
After all, they were people in the know, aware that there was something wrong with Mont Blanc.
But the others were caught up in the situation themselves. Whether they could figure it out was hard to say.
Besides, what did it matter to them whether they figured it out or not?
They weren't opponents of the World Government.
"An upward ocean current..."
At those words, a trace of remembrance appeared in Shanks's eyes. He slowly nodded.
"That's right. Back then, we went up by riding the current too."
He swirled the wine in his bowl, resting his chin on his one arm, his voice carrying a hint of distant nostalgia.
"But it was much easier back then. During the final part of our voyage, everyone on the ship was pretty strong. Just Captain Roger's Observation Haki was enough to sense when and where that current would appear."
He paused and smiled self-deprecatingly.
"Unfortunately, my half-baked Observation Haki is still far from reaching the captain's level. Forget predicting when the current will appear. Even if I somehow managed to calculate where it would emerge..."
He spread his hands, "By myself, I wouldn't be able to pull the entire ship over in that split second."
At those words, everyone's eyes unconsciously turned toward the two people sitting at the table.
Nami and Snake.
When it came to observing ocean currents and reading the weather, they still had to leave it to the professionals.
"Don't look at me."
Snake was the first to shake his head, saying frankly, "I can't handle something like that."
He raised his chin and pointed toward Nami beside him.
"If we're talking about that, she's much better than me. When it comes to reading ocean currents and telling which way the wind is blowing, I admit defeat."
The Red-Haired Pirates and the Straw Hat Pirates had traveled together for some time, so naturally, there had been some interaction between the two sides.
Aside from Yasopp and Usopp, who still had not appeared in the same place even now, everyone else had interacted to some extent.
Even from just that little interaction, Snake could tell clearly that Nami was far stronger than him.
After all, the Nami of today was not someone without connections or knowledge.
With the support of her best friends, adoptive mother, and adoptive sister, she had never lacked a theoretical foundation. What she lacked was only practical experience.