Author's Note:
This humble work of mine has now reached 200 chapters... I believe I've made it this far entirely thanks to you, the readers.
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"...Never would've guessed things would turn out like this..."
I was, to put it mildly, at a loss.
Spread out before me were countless ships.
Not a single one was in any kind of seaworthy condition. Wrecks, sunken hulks, vessels that clearly weren't going anywhere ever again. The whole scene, the whole place, could only be described as a Ship Graveyard.
Well, that's actually what it's called. By some people, anyway.
And into this place, I had wandered. Along with my three daughters.
"So this is the famous... Ape's Concert. We've really stumbled into something, haven't we."
"Ape's Concert... Mother, what is that?"
"Concert? Sounds like a fun place... Doesn't really look like one, though."
"..."
Suzu was glancing around with an uneasy look on her face.
Leona didn't seem to fully grasp the situation. Carefree as always.
And Alice, for some reason, was quiet. Just spacing out in silence.
Three daughters, three different reactions. None of them knew anything about this place, though. Well, it only shows up in a handful of old stories and books of folklore, so no surprise there. None of the three were exactly avid readers of that sort of thing.
...Honestly, I wasn't all that knowledgeable about it myself. I just vaguely remembered reading about it in some book once.
Ape's Concert is one of those Legends passed down among sailors, also known as the Ship Graveyard. A mysterious maritime labyrinth said to exist somewhere in the world, from which no one who enters ever escapes. Kind of like the Bermuda Triangle, maybe?
Ships that wander in can never leave, left only to rot away. Over the long course of history, countless vessels have drifted in and left their remains here.
That was exactly the scene stretching out before me right now. Ships, ships, ships, ships, as far as the eye could see, and not one of them in decent shape. Nearly all of them were decayed beyond recognition. Remains, indeed.
Whatever the reason, the claim that this wasn't a place you could easily leave seemed to be true.
So... what to do now.
***
Let me back up and explain how we ended up in a place like this.
The catalyst was my deciding to take my daughters on a little outing.
I had no Shichibukai duties, no Admiral duties, and my work as a writer had reached a stopping point, so I was conveniently free. The idea just came to me on a whim.
I decided to visit the island where I'd lived long ago. The Island of Beginnings, where I'd lived with my two adoptive parents. My homeland.
Unfortunately, the town that had been there was destroyed in a pirate raid and no longer existed. Even the rubble had weathered away, leaving it almost entirely bare land. Or rather, overgrown with weeds and all manner of vegetation, reclaimed by nature.
I'd actually been there before, and it had already looked like that then. Since it had been a coastal town, I'd had to use distinctive rock formations nearby and the island's terrain as landmarks to estimate where the town had been. Otherwise, you couldn't even tell anymore.
Within that area, I'd marked out the approximate spot where my original house had been and built a simple grave the last time I visited. Over the long years, everything had weathered away. The remains of the building, my parents' bones, none of it was there anymore. But the view of the sea from where the window used to be was exactly the same, so I knew: this was the place.
I'd hauled over a large rock from nearby, carved it with Paper Flakes, and set it up as a grave marker.
I couldn't come maintain it regularly, so naturally it had gotten covered in moss. Well, nothing to be done about that. I gave it a quick wash, set out some offerings, and pressed my palms together in prayer.
The three girls who'd come with me did the same. They'd never met my father or mother, of course, but they went through the motions all the same.
'Can you see us from heaven? Dad, Mom, I have daughters now. They're not related by blood, but all three of them are daughters I'm proud of.'
'...Two of them have become Bounty Targets, though. And come to think of it, I'm a Bounty Target and a pirate myself.'
...When I really thought about it, there were quite a lot of things in my life I couldn't exactly report with my chest puffed out. Well, nothing new there.
After that, we walked around the area for a while, and then decided it was time to head back. The four of us boarded my ship, the latest one I'd built. We were planning to fly home using my powers, same as when we'd come, but right then we spotted something strange: a mysterious Rainbow Mist hanging over the middle of the sea.
And I remembered the Legend of the Rainbow Mist that I'd read about in a book long ago.
Beyond the Rainbow Mist lies a paradise heaped with mountains of gold and silver treasure, where one can find eternal happiness, free from aging and death. Or so the story went.
I'd figured it was just another Legend, another fairy tale. But with it right there in front of me, my bad habit kicked in: I got curious about the unknown Experience to be gained from it.
All three of my daughters were game, too, so I thought, well, if things go south we can just retreat or turn back. With that dangerously casual attitude, we plunged into the Rainbow Mist.
And what we found on the other side was no paradise. It was this Ship Graveyard.
After doing a bit of investigating around this space, I discovered that quite a lot of the old Legends were actually grounded in fact.
Among the wrecked ships were Merchant Ships, Pirate Ships, and even some lavishly built vessels that looked like they belonged to Nobles. So there really was treasure everywhere.
Some of it included gemstones that had been stolen from a certain Kingdom decades ago and listed as missing national treasures. I only recognized them because I'd looked at lists of such Hidden Treasures as a hobby.
Sold through proper channels, this haul would fetch a considerable sum. And the stolen national treasures could be returned via the Marines or the World Government, which might earn us some goodwill with those countries. Plenty of uses for all of it.
The treasure had presumably belonged to the Black Market Merchants and pirates whose ships had ended up here, but their owners were long gone. So I decided to gratefully help myself. I collected everything I could find and absorbed it into my body.
And there was one more thing. The treasure corresponded to the Rainbow Mist Legend, but the Ship Graveyard Legend also turned out to contain some truth.
Something was definitely off about this sea. The space itself was warped, or something.
No matter which direction we sailed, we couldn't get out. I'd used my powers to accelerate, covering what should have been considerable distance in a straight line, yet we never left this area. It actually felt like we kept looping back to the same place. Like an actual maze.
I tried using Paper Wings to fly the ship out. That didn't work either. Flying horizontally got us nowhere. Flying upward, the altitude simply wouldn't increase. There was no ceiling to hit, and yet, like bumping into the top edge of a video game screen, we just couldn't go any higher.
On top of all that, both the Log Pose and even the Eternal Pose had gone haywire. We had no way to determine direction. The Log Pose could be overwritten by stronger magnetic fields, so that was one thing, but an Eternal Pose permanently records a single island's magnetic signature and always points there. For that to malfunction? Anything but normal.
The Den Den Mushi wouldn't connect either. No matter who we called or where, the signal wouldn't reach.
And to top it all off, even the Vivre Cards were behaving strangely. They didn't disintegrate, but they wouldn't move. They wouldn't point toward anyone's location or direction.
The ones for Suzu, Leona, and Alice, who were right beside me, still worked fine.
But Papa, who should have been on Merveille. Rayleigh and Shakky, who should have been on Sabaody Archipelago. Hancock on Amazon Lily. Tesoro and Stella on Gran Tesoro. The Vivre Cards for everyone who should have been outside this Rainbow Mist had stopped responding entirely.
Just to be sure, I took them out of my body and laid them on a table. Still nothing.
...This was seriously starting to feel like we'd been transported to another world or another dimension.
This was bad. I had no idea how to get back.
A first-time Experience, different from any ordinary shipwreck. Which was, in its own way... no, no, this was no time to be thinking like that. If it were just me that would be one thing, but my daughters were caught up in this too.
"Now is not the time to be thinking such things, Mother. The Eternal Pose and Vivre Cards not responding? 'Tis clearly an abnormal situation. Even the New World hath nothing like this."
"Yeah, I know... wait, was I saying that out loud?"
"It was written all over your face. You're real easy to read when you get interested in a new Experience, Mama."
...Sorry for being a mother whose own daughters say things like that about her.
Just as I was about to sink into a little funk, it happened.
BWOOOOOOOOOOOH!!
"!?!?"
The Den Den Mushi sitting on the ship suddenly burst into full-blown wailing. Huh? What? What's happening?!
"...Isn't this a Distress Signal? The kind that sends an SOS indiscriminately to every Den Den Mushi in the area..."
"But we tried the Den Den Mushi over and over earlier and it wouldst not work. Why now, all of a sudden...?"
"Maybe... the person on the other end is somewhere nearby?"
...Right. Not outside the Mist, but inside it.
That made sense. The Vivre Cards for Leona and the others worked perfectly fine, pointing toward their locations. In the same way, if another Den Den Mushi was close enough, communication might be possible.
Meaning somewhere not too far from here, someone with a Den Den Mushi was calling for help.
Unfortunately, whether because the signal was still unstable, the transmission cut out before I could pick up the receiver. But this Den Den Mushi was a special model, modified or selectively bred by Dr. Indigo. It could do short-range signal traces. If I used that function...
***
Following the trace data, we arrived at one of the large ships sitting in the Ship Graveyard.
Compared to everything else around it, this one was in relatively decent shape. A bit old, sure, but it didn't look like it was about to fall apart, and it wasn't dusty either.
...Though the lack of dust was probably because someone had been properly cleaning and maintaining it. This ship clearly showed signs of habitation.
My guess was that someone who'd gotten lost here, just like us, was using this vessel as a temporary base. It was solidly built, so that wasn't a bad call. There seemed to be fish in the waters here, so food could be obtained through fishing.
And they'd been using a Den Den Mushi to send out a Distress Signal.
When I checked with Observation Haki, I could sense a presence. Just one person. Didn't seem particularly strong, but given that this person was living in such an unfathomable place, I couldn't afford to let my guard down entirely.
We braced ourselves for whatever might appear. I took my Japanese umbrella in hand. Leona clenched her fists. Suzu rested a hand on her sword. Alice positioned herself to draw the gun at her hip at a moment's notice.
Then I knocked on the ship's door. Knock, knock.
"Hellooo, is anyone there?"
Well, I already knew someone was there, but that's how you do these things. After a brief pause, I heard what sounded like the light patter of a child's footsteps, and the door opened with a click.
The instant it did, what hit us was a shockwave.
...No, that wasn't right. It was a voice, so powerful that my brain mistook it for a shockwave.
"YEEEEEES!! WHO MIGHT YOU BEEEEE!?"
"!?!?!?!?"
Ears ringing from the sudden, shockwave-grade scream, we stood there completely dumbstruck.
And there before us was... a petite woman? A girl? Hard to tell.
...Wait, hold on. Had I seen this person somewhere before?
Let's see... a build so small you'd think she was a child...
But judging from her voice and her presence, she wasn't that young. Like Blume, an adult who looked like a kid?
Fluffy white hair. A face that was, honestly, quite cute and well-proportioned.
And her outfit was... a white lab coat? Like a doctor or a researcher...
'...Wait. White hair, small build, lab coat, loud voice... and that face...'
I glanced to the side. My daughters were looking back and forth between my face and hers with bewildered expressions.
Ah, so they noticed too? Well, of course they did.
Our faces. Mine and hers. We looked alike. Practically mirror images, really.
...
...Wait, seriously?
"...Ma... Mama?"
"...Excuuuuse me??"
Venerdi Sou.
A genius scientist formerly of the Golden Lion Pirates, and my biological mother.
She was supposed to have died over thirty years ago. And yet there she was, looking exactly as she must have back then, tilting her head curiously as she stared back at us.
To be continued...