The next day dawned, unhurried and calm.
This was its own quiet gift: a day at sea, suspended between destinations. The crew drifted into their rhythms, crisis absent as their compass. Liam woke before the others and lingered on deck. He watched dawn spill across the water—a ritual worth savoring whenever claimed.
Luffy materialized at the stern at some point, holding a fishing rod, his complicated but persistent relationship with fishing evident in his determined grip. Usopp appeared shortly after, drawn by Luffy's activities as he often was, glancing from Luffy to the water as if assessing the situation before joining him.
"The fish here are different," Luffy was saying when Liam passed within earshot. "East Blue fish are too easy."
"No fish is easy when none of them are biting," Usopp told him.
"That's because we need the right bait." Luffy examined the end of his line with the serious expression he reserved for problems that seemed solvable with the right approach. "What do fish like?"
"Other fish, mostly. Worms. Things that look like smaller fish."
"So we need to find something that looks like a fish."
"That is what I just — yes, that is correct."
"What looks like a fish that isn't a fish?"
Usopp weighed the question sincerely. His mind always chased puzzles from odd angles. "A lure. It's shaped like a fish, made from metal or wood."
"Do we have one?"
"We have whatever I can turn into one." Usopp was already searching for materials. He wore his look for practical puzzles he meant to solve.
Luffy watched him with transparent interest. "Usopp."
"What?"
"Do you think fish dream?"
Usopp paused, glancing from Luffy to the water and back, searching for the heart of Luffy's question. As usual with Luffy, he felt tugged between amusement and the quiet urge to take the moment seriously—knowing it was somehow both at once.
"Probably not the way we do," he said finally. "They don't have the same kind thoughts for it, I think."
"But some kind of dreaming?"
"Maybe. Something like it."
Luffy seemed content with that answer, turning back to his fishing line, which remained as stubbornly unproductive as ever.
---
Sanji in the galley was Sanji distilled—the truest version of himself, and the place where his heart found its quiet. He existed before and after the show, needing no audience. Lost in a recipe he'd been dreaming up since the Baratie, he was finally free to try it: a new way to honor East Blue sea bass. Each movement was infused with anticipation and hope; the work absorbed him, and everything else faded away.
Nami wandered into the galley, poured herself a cup of coffee, and leaned casually against the counter, quietly observing Sanji as he worked—though she would never admit she was there to watch.
"How does it look?" she asked.
"It's unfinished." He did not glance up. "If it works, it'll be one of the finest meals you've had. If not, it'll be merely acceptable."
"Promising."
"Cooking always comes with a failure rate. Being honest helps you improve." He tweaked the dish with precision, making 'good' and 'good enough' feel razor-sharp. "Sit down. I'll make you something while the main course comes together."
"I was just getting coffee."
"Sit down."
Nami took a seat. Coffee arrived, unceremoniously and perfectly. Soon after, a small, warm, expertly seasoned dish joined it. She ate in silence, which for Nami was the highest praise.
Sanji saw this and went back to the sea bass.
---
The underwater adaptation lingered at the edge of Liam's mind, nudged by his last attempt. Each session stretched longer—fifteen minutes, then twenty, with the barrier receding. That morning, he slipped over the Merry's side, suspended below the waterline, and began to count.
The first twenty minutes felt routine. His body cataloged oxygen, pressure, and sensation. After that, something shifted. He was no longer just managing—he was transforming. The difference was tangible. It was as vivid as with Mihawk: switching from defense to reinvention.
At 30 minutes, he came up to assess his condition.
He felt no urge to breathe.
He went back under and stayed there. The trees were visible from below the waterline — their roots in their containers, the hull of the Merry above them, the sunlight coming through both. He stayed under for another 30 minutes and surfaced without urgency, his body having reached the point where submersion was no longer a threat worth responding to.
He climbed back aboard, logged the change with genuine curiosity, and let it go—feeling quietly proud, even comforted, by just another step forward.
Usopp leaned over the stern, rod in hand, scanning the water. The fish stayed elusive. He watched his expertly crafted lure—a design triumph—in the water, but it remained a total failure in practice.
"Any luck?" Liam settled nearby.
"Nope." Usopp stared at the water, resigned. "I think the fish here are deliberately avoiding us."
"They might be."
"I feel like that should bother me more than it does." He inspected his line. "How long were you under?"
"About an hour, total."
Usopp turned, wearing the look he reserved for things that defied logic but demanded to be accepted as fact. "So you just don't need to breathe anymore?"
"I don't need to breathe underwater, specifically. Air is still fine," Liam said. "It's like everything else—enough exposure and the threat stops mattering."
Usopp was quiet for a moment that had the texture of thought rather than of being at a loss. This was one of the things about Usopp that people underestimated — when something genuinely interested him, he brought real thought to it.
"What counts as a threat to you?" he asked. "Like — we know physical things. Cutting, fire, bullets. Environmental things like water and cold. But where does it stop?"
Liam looked at him. The question was better than it probably appeared from the outside. "I don't know, exactly."
"Because what if someone had a Devil Fruit that shrank you? Or transformed you? Is that a physical threat or something else?"
"That's what I haven't worked out." He considered the problem calmly, not anxiously. "My body resists anything that tries to change it into something it doesn't want to be. Physical damage is easiest to track. But a fruit affecting my physical state in other ways—like density or size—I don't know if my body treats those the same."
"But hypothetically."
"Hypothetically, if my physiology treats any adverse change as something to resist and adapt to, then eventually even those things would stop working on me. But I don't have the data to say that with confidence. Some effects might be outside what the adaptation recognizes as a threat." He looked at the water. "I'd need to be exposed to them to find out, and I haven't encountered those vectors yet."
"So some things might stick just because your body doesn't register them as threats?"
"That's the live question."
"Honestly, kind of unsettling."
"I think it's more interesting than unsettling." He watched the water move. "The other question is whether Devil Fruit abilities stop working on me after enough exposure. Physical attacks do — a blade that couldn't cut me now would have cut through easily months ago. What about a fire fruit? After I've been exposed to fire enough times, fire stops mattering. Would a fire fruit user keep finding that their ability has less effect each time?"
Usopp's expression underwent several changes. "So you could potentially become immune to other people's Devil Fruit powers."
"Given enough exposure and time. Maybe." He was careful about the maybe. "I genuinely don't know. It's an open question."
"That's either the most overpowered thing I've ever heard, or it's got a catch I'm not seeing."
"The catch is that the first exposure always works," Liam said. "Whatever it is — the first time, it lands. The adaptation happens after. So something genuinely novel is always going to be a real threat the first time I encounter it. But at least it won't be able to kill me as we saw with Mihawk's first attack, splitting me open."
Usopp took this in and returned to his fishing, now quiet in the way of someone turning over a new and fascinating idea.
---
Usopp spotted it from the crow's nest the following morning.
He'd climbed up simply because he felt like it—the height called to him, the view was unbeatable, and being the first to spot something was a pleasure he never passed up. With his goggles on and the morning clear, the horizon promised something worth seeing.
"Island!" He called it down to the deck. "West northwest, I can see a port!"
The crew turned their focus toward the sight—not in perfect unison, but with a subtle shift charged with anticipation. Nami left her charts for the rail, heart beating faster with hope. Luffy drifted from the bow, a wide, excited grin spreading across his face. Sanji stepped out of the galley, curiosity lighting his eyes.
There on the horizon, sharp against the morning sky, stood Loguetown. It was the town of beginnings and endings. Birthplace and execution ground of Gol D. Roger. Here, the age of pirates was sparked by a dying man's final words, and the world shifted because the one who found everything chose to share it before he left.
Liam stood at the rail and looked at it.
He knew what the day would bring: the execution platform, the storm, the swordsman in the red coat with the cross-shaped blade. He knew about the lurking danger for Luffy, the rescue that always arrived just in time, and the crushing weight of arriving here, on this day, with this chosen family. The sheer gravity of it all tugged at him, caught between dread and hope—the cost and meaning of sharing fate with this crew.
He also knew decisions would come fast once they docked—when to step in, when to step back, what the crew needed to face alone, and what was his to alter. The responsibility felt heavy; some moments belonged to them, some to the world, and some to him. The art, he realized with aching clarity, was knowing which was which—and trusting himself to choose right.
The island grew slowly larger on the horizon.
Liam watched as it approached.