If these words had come from anyone else, Ornn would have concluded they were being lured into a death trap. His response would have been simple: wring the man's head off and kick it like a ball.
But the person speaking was Crocus. A man who had sailed the final stretch of the Grand Line with the Pirate King and spent the better part of his life as the custodian of the Twin Capes. He knew the plumbing of the world better than any man breathing.
Without a second of hesitation, Ornn grabbed Yamato's arm and leaped onto their small sailboat.
"Take them!" Ornn barked.
Yamato, faced with the reality of a massive whirlpool and a vertical mountain, didn't argue. She tossed two of Marco's seasickness pills into her mouth and washed them down with half a bottle of raw rum. Ornn followed suit, dry-swallowing a pill of his own. He didn't know what the next few minutes would demand of him, but he couldn't afford to have his equilibrium shattered by the mountain's currents.
"Lower the sails!"
The moment the canvas dropped, the ship groaned, tilting at a violent, sickening angle. Ornn slammed his weight against the rudder, fighting the wood as it tried to snap his wrists. He forcibly swung the helm in the opposite direction, a maneuver that barely kept the hull from flipping into the churning white water.
On the shore, Crocus was a shrinking silhouette, waving them forward into the maw of the storm. Ornn gritted his teeth, his knuckles white against the wood, and steered the boat directly into the heart of the sea's central vortex.
...
The power of the phenomenon was terrifying. With the flow of Reverse Mountain cut off by the shifting tides, the waterway was a dry, hollowed-out channel of round, smooth red rocks—stone that had been polished for centuries by the weight of falling oceans.
Behind them, the seawater from the Paradise side was still rushing inward, filling the vacuum left by the mountain's retreat. The imbalance was too much for the sea to contain. The massive vortex began to distort, its shape warping and stretching as the sheer volume of the Grand Line pushed it upward.
The vortex was being shoved toward the mountain. And Ornn was at the center of it.
The moment they crossed the threshold of the whirlpool, Ornn released his grip. It was a calculated surrender; even with his enhanced constitution, he couldn't compete with the raw torque of a planetary tide. To fight the rudder now would only result in the ship's destruction.
"Hold on to something!"
Everything in front of them turned into a blurred, spinning kaleidoscope. They were like rag dolls trapped in the drum of a washing machine. The ship groaned, the wood screaming under the centrifugal force as they spun toward the Red Line.
Spinning. Rising. The mountain was close enough to touch, but a new crisis had emerged.
They were trapped on the outermost edge of the vortex. The capacity of the Reverse Mountain waterway was limited—it was a narrow throat designed for currents, not for an entire, bloated sea-whirlpool. If they didn't find a way to shift their momentum deeper toward the center, they wouldn't enter the channel. They would simply spin out and be pulverized against the immovable red stone of the continent.
Ornn's mind raced, his analytical gears grinding through the physics of their death. How? How could he and Yamato break the shackles of a whirlpool that defied the strength of even a Mythical Zoan?
Just as the shadow of the Red Line loomed over them, the violent shaking of the hull smoothed out. The ship suddenly felt anchored, as if a massive hand had reached up from the depths to steady the keel.
"Laboon?!" Yamato's exclamation was nearly lost in the roar of the water.
Ornn leaned over the railing. Laboon—the island whale whose head he had healed only days prior—was surging through the vortex. He was supporting the ship with his massive, scarred forehead, his eyes fixed on the two tiny figures above.
"Booooooooo!!!"
Laboon let out a melodious, thunderous cry. With a surge of prehistoric muscle, the whale shook his head vigorously.
The ship didn't just move; it flew.
The sailboat was catapulted from the outer rim of the vortex, soaring through the mist and landing with a bone-jarring splash in the deeper, central current. They had successfully penetrated the heart of the mountain's throat. They were in the waterway.
The ocean current caught them, dragging them upward toward the clouds at a speed that stole the air from their lungs. But Ornn and Yamato didn't look at the summit. They stared back at the foot of the mountain, where a small dark spot in the water watched them.
"Thank you, Laboon!" Yamato cupped her hands around her mouth, her voice echoing off the stone.
Ornn, casting aside his usual composure, joined her. He shouted his gratitude at the top of his lungs, his voice a raw note of appreciation for the creature that had just saved their lives.
In the distance, the island whale let out one last cry. As the boat vanished into the thick clouds of the mountainside, Ornn saw the whale's massive eyes narrow into crescent shapes—a silent, ancient smile.
...
The power of nature was a different kind of forge. Under the influence of the reverse current, they bypassed the mountain's midsection in the blink of an eye.
Once they punched through the cloud layer, the peak of Reverse Mountain was suddenly, breathtakingly visible. The torrent slapped against the corners of the stone channel, and the spray caught the light, refracting into a thousand rainbows that danced over the deck.
It was a fairyland of white water and red stone.
As they reached the absolute summit, the torrent peaked. The boat was kicked high into the air by the force of the rising water. For a few seconds, gravity was a distant memory. Ornn and Yamato looked down, and the world opened up beneath them.
The waterway divided into four distinct channels, each leading to a different horizon.
"Ornn!" Yamato shouted, her hair whipping around her face as they hung in the air. "Which part of the world are we going to?"
"To be honest," Ornn replied with a rare, genuine smile, "I haven't figured that out yet."
It was the truth. He hadn't decided which of the four seas would be their destination.
In Wano, every move had been planned to the millimeter. Here, the logic was different. He had entered the four seas to vanish—to deny the Beasts Pirates a trail while he developed his strength and sought out a crew. In an environment where Haki was a myth and Fruit users were rare, his magma was almost invincible. To be overly cautious in the Blue Seas wouldn't be 'prudent'; it would be cowardly.
"Oh?!" Yamato stared at him, her eyes wide.
In her mind, Ornn was the man who made lists for everything. He was the one who reminded her to pack toothpaste before they left the lighthouse. Hearing that he hadn't planned for their arrival in the greater world made him feel... different. Human.
"We'll leave this to fate," Ornn said lightly, his eyes on the plunging waterways below. "We'll enter whichever channel the ship is closest to when we land."
"Fate?" Yamato murmured. A slow, wide grin spread across her face. "Then do as you say!"
This was the voyage she had dreamed of—sailing with nothing but curiosity and a longing to face the unknown. Ornn's answer finally convinced her: the journey was no longer just about escape. It was about discovery.
They clung to the mast as the ship began its descent, gravity reclaiming the hull with a vengeance. The ship plummeted at a dizzying speed, the roar of the wind drownng out the world.
Only when a single course filled his vision did Ornn reclaim the rudder.
"Full left rudder! Fifteen degrees right!"
His hands were steady. After a month of sailing, his skills had progressed from desperate to proficient. Under his operation, the sailboat entered the narrow waterway with a stable, biting rhythm.
They began to dive, rushing down the mountain's slope toward an uncertain sea, ready to carve their names into whichever Blue awaited them.