Chapter 98: Whiskey Peak – The Deal
The street had gone quiet again, the only sounds the soft lapping of water against the dock and the distant murmur of a town that had learned to sleep through its own violence. Luffy stood in the center of it all, his hands in his pockets, his hat casting a shadow across his face that made it impossible to read what was going on behind his eyes. The two Baroque Works agents lay crumpled against the wall behind him, and the rest of the crew had gathered in a loose semicircle, watching, waiting, trying to figure out what their captain was going to do next.
Vivi was on her feet now, leaning on Karoo for support, her face pale but her jaw set. Igaram stood beside her, his hands clasped in front of him, his expression a mixture of desperation and hope that he was trying very hard to keep under control. They had seen what this crew could do. They had seen what their captain could do. And now they were waiting.
Luffy looked at Vivi. "One more time."
His voice was quiet, the way it got when he had already decided something and was simply waiting for the world to catch up. "Join my crew. Become part of my harem. I'll take you home. I'll fight whoever this Mr. Zero character is. That's the deal."
Igaram's face went through several stages of outrage before settling on something that might have been desperate negotiation. "There must be something else," he said, his voice strained. "You are pirates. Pirates want gold. We have gold. We can give you gold. Ships. Weapons. Anything."
Nami's ears perked up at the word gold, but before she could say anything, Luffy shook his head. "Nope."
"Then what?" Igaram's voice cracked. "What do you want?"
Luffy's answer was immediate, blunt, and delivered with the same tone a man might use to order a beer. "Pussy."
The word hung in the air like a slap.
Nami's hand shot out and caught him in the back of the head before she even realized she was moving. "Have some decorum!" she hissed, her face red. "She is a princess!"
Luffy rubbed his head, looking genuinely confused. "What? I'm being honest. That's what I want. She asked what I wanted."
Sanji emerged from the shadows at that moment, his shirt half-buttoned, his hair still rumpled from wherever he had been. Beside him, Usopp was pulling on his pants with the frantic energy of someone who had heard something explode and was trying to look like he had been somewhere else entirely. Both of them were grinning. Both of them were laughing.
"Captain!" Sanji called out, his voice carrying across the square with the particular brightness of a man who was having a very good night. "Congratulations! You got the island's assassins to agree to being fucked just for some berries!"
Usopp was nodding vigorously, his grin threatening to split his face. "That's our captain! Always negotiating from a position of strength!"
Nami stared at them. Her face cycled through several shades of disbelief before settling somewhere near murderous. "You did not," she said. "You did not actually have sex with those women."
Sanji shrugged, the motion doing nothing to close his shirt. "They were very enthusiastic. Something about respecting a man who could survive their assassination attempts."
Usopp nodded again, still pulling at his pants. "They said it was refreshing to meet men who weren't afraid of them."
Nami's eye twitched. "You almost got killed."
"Exactly," Sanji said. "Very romantic."
Johnny and Yosaku were staring at the two of them with expressions of profound betrayal. Johnny's mouth was open. Yosaku's hands were fists at his sides.
"We had to fight," Johnny said, his voice flat. "We had to fight the actual dangerous agents. The ones with bombs and weird weight powers. We got blood on our shirts."
Yosaku pointed at Sanji. "And you got laid."
Sanji's grin widened. "You snooze, you lose."
"WE DIDN'T SNOOZE," Yosaku shouted. "WE WERE FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES."
Usopp had finally gotten his pants buttoned and was now leaning against a lamppost with the air of a man who had absolutely no regrets about any of his recent decisions. "Maybe if you had been faster, you would have had time for both."
Johnny's hand went to the hilt of his sword. Yosaku's did the same. Sanji and Usopp, sensing that they had perhaps pushed their luck as far as it would go, moved to put Nami between themselves and the two swordsmen.
"Children," Nami said, her voice dangerously calm. "We have company."
The reminder landed like a bucket of cold water. Everyone turned back to Vivi and Igaram, who had been watching the entire exchange with expressions that ranged from bewildered to horrified to something that might have been, against all odds, a flicker of amusement.
Luffy stepped forward again, the laughter draining from his face, the familiar focus settling into his features. He looked at Vivi. "Last time," he said. "Yes or no."
Vivi looked around. She looked at Johnny and Yosaku, their shirts still stained with blood, their swords still drawn, their anger at their crewmates already fading into something that looked more like weary affection. She looked at Sanji and Usopp, still half-dressed, still grinning, still very much alive despite everything the night had thrown at them. She looked at Nami, who was watching her with the sharp, assessing eyes of someone who had been betrayed by the world and had learned to measure people carefully before letting them close.
She looked at Zoro, who had not moved from his spot against the wall, his swords sheathed, his eyes half-closed, his presence as steady and immovable as a mountain.
She looked at Luffy.
"Gold," Igaram said again, desperate now. "We can give you gold. Ships. Land. Anything. Please. She is the princess of Alabasta. She cannot simply become a pirate's..."
He stopped. The word would not come out.
Vivi's voice cut through the silence. "I will do it."
Igaram's head snapped toward her. "Vivi, no."
"I will join your crew," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "I will join your harem. If you help me save my kingdom."
Igaram grabbed her arm, his face stricken. "You cannot. You are a princess. Your father would never allow this. The kingdom would never accept a pirate as..."
"Then what would you have me do?" Vivi's voice cracked, and for a moment she was not a princess or a spy or an agent of Baroque Works. She was just a young woman who had been carrying something too heavy for too long, and the weight of it was finally breaking through. "My kingdom is dying. My people are suffering. And I have been playing spy for years, and I have nothing to show for it but dead friends and lost time."
Igaram opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I trust him," Vivi said. She was not looking at Igaram when she said it. She was looking at Luffy. "I do not know why. I do not know how. But I trust him."
Luffy met her gaze. His expression did not change. His voice was quiet. "I will get you to Alabasta. Not because of a bargain." He paused. "Because I am curious about this Mr. Zero character."
Something shifted in Igaram's face. The desperation faded. The calculation faded. What was left was the expression of a man who had spent his life protecting someone he loved and had finally run out of options.
"Please," he said, and the word cost him something visible. "Protect her."
He reached into his coat and produced a small, intricate device, a sphere of glass and metal that caught the lamplight and held it. "An Eternal Pose. It points directly to Alabasta. I will take the direct route. I will draw their attention. You will follow the Log Pose, island by island, and you will keep her safe."
Luffy took the device, turning it over in his hands. "What is it?"
"It points to one island. Always. Forever. It cannot be changed. It cannot be altered. It will always lead you home."
"Convenient," Luffy said.
Igaram nodded. And then, with the air of a man who had already made peace with his own absurdity, he produced a wig, a dress, and a set of cosmetics from somewhere on his person. The crew watched in fascinated horror as he transformed himself into a passable replica of Princess Vivi of Alabasta.
His expression remained utterly serious. "I will draw their attention," he said. "Princess Vivi. Please. Stay safe."
Vivi hugged him. Her arms wrapped around him tight, and for a moment she was not a princess and he was not a spy and they were just two people who had spent years running and were finally, impossibly, standing still.
"Be careful," she whispered.
He kissed her forehead. And then he was gone, his small boat cutting through the dark water toward the open sea, his disguise holding against the moonlight, his silhouette shrinking against the horizon.
The crew watched him go. Nami's hand found Vivi's shoulder. Vivi did not pull away.
The explosion came from nowhere.
One moment the boat was there. The next it was a flower of fire and smoke, blooming against the night sky, its petals scattering across the water in burning fragments. The sound arrived a moment later, a thunder that shook the stones beneath their feet, that sent birds screaming from the rooftops, that flattened the breath in their lungs.
Vivi screamed. Her voice was the sound of something breaking, something that had been held together too long by nothing but will, and she collapsed into Nami's arms with the weight of someone who had finally, completely, run out of strength.
Nami held her. Her own face was wet, her own breath unsteady, but her arms were steady and her voice was steady and she held Vivi against the dark water and the burning wreckage and the silence that followed.
Luffy watched the flames. His face was still, the way it got when something had happened that could not be undone, and he was measuring the weight of it before he decided what to do next.
"Just who is this guy," he said, his voice quiet, "that he can reach this far?"
Vivi lifted her head. Her face was ravaged, her eyes red, her voice a thing of ash and broken glass. "Mr. Zero." She swallowed. "His real name is Sir Crocodile. He is one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea."
The name landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Before anyone could speak, something moved in the sky above them. Two shapes, small and quick, descending through the smoke and the moonlight with the easy confidence of creatures who had never learned to be afraid. The otter and the vulture circled once, twice, and then landed on the roof of the nearest building, their faces split by identical grins that had nothing to do with joy.
The otter carried a folder. The vulture carried the same grin. Together, they presented the folder with a flourish, opening it to reveal pages of sketches, faces rendered in ink with the careful precision of someone who had been watching for a very long time.
Luffy. Zoro. Sanji. Nami. Usopp. Johnny. Yosaku. Every face was there. Every face was captured.
Vivi's voice was barely a whisper. "The Unluckies. They work directly for Crocodile."
The otter and the vulture looked at the crew for a long, silent moment. Their grins did not waver. Their eyes did not blink. And then, with the same abruptness with which they had arrived, they were gone, disappearing into the smoke and the dark and the night that was already starting to fade toward dawn.
Luffy turned to Johnny and Yosaku. "Everyone. We are leaving."
Johnny and Yosaku moved without hesitation, their argument with Sanji and Usopp forgotten, their exhaustion forgotten, their confusion forgotten. They ran toward the inn where they had left their supplies, their footsteps echoing against the empty street, their shadows stretching long and thin in the light of the dying fires.
Sanji grumbled, still buttoning his shirt. "What is the rush? We could have stayed the night."
"Yeah," Usopp added, yawning with the particular drama of a man who had recently expended a great deal of energy and was hoping everyone had noticed. "What is the big deal?"
Before anyone could answer, a voice cut through the night, soft and feminine and carrying the particular warmth of a cat who has just discovered a mouse that has wandered too far from its hole.
"You were doomed from the start."
The crew spun. On the dock, where the water lapped against the stone and the smoke from Igaram's boat still drifted across the surface, a woman stood.
She was tall. She was beautiful. Her dark hair fell in waves past her shoulders, and her wide-brimmed hat cast a shadow that did nothing to hide the amusement in her eyes. Her black outfit was simple and severe, cut to emphasize the sharp lines of her body, and she carried herself with the easy confidence of someone who had long since stopped worrying about whether she belonged in a room.
Vivi's face drained of color. "Miss All Sunday."