…
Click.
The cuff opened.
For half a second, nothing happened, then it was like strength rushed through my arm. It was so quick that my fingers clenched; my bones felt so much lighter. My shoulders straightened. The broken cuff slipped from my wrist and "clanked" to the floor.
Nami stared at it.
Then she looked up at me.
We were both still on the ground from the deeply avoidable misunderstanding that had ended with me crushing her beneath most of my body weight. Her orange hair was still everywhere. One side of her face had a streak of roof dust across it; it looked cute, hehe.
"You were doing all of that while wearing this?"
I flexed my wrist. The wheel mark turned once beneath my skin, settling into place.
"Apparently."
Her gaze moved over me again, slower this time.
"That cuff was holding back that much?"
I pushed myself upright and rolled my shoulders. Several joints cracked in a row. Somewhere beneath us, Marines shouted as another alarm bell joined the twenty already ringing across Port Tragedy.
Nami stayed sitting for another second.
"That is terrifying."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"I'll still take it as one."
A heavy impact shook the building behind us.
Roof tiles jumped.
Nami and I both turned.
Three streets away, the top half of a warehouse burst outward in a cloud of stone and timber.
Garp looked around from the ruined wall, one hand shielding his eyes.
"There he is!"
His voice carried across half the district; this time, though, it was more…passionate?
Every Marine below us looked up.
I looked at Nami.
She looked at me.
"We should go," she said.
"My plan exactly."
"No, your plan is probably more violent"
"That has worked extremely well so far," pointing at the litter of bodies around us.
"You got arrested three separate times in one chase."
"And I escaped all three."
"You are currently being hunted by a Vice Admiral, a Logia Marine, Crest's private army, and every criminal in the city who thinks turning you in will earn them money."
I climb to the top of one of the roofs. Marines were filling the wider roads. Crest's men had blocked the streets leading toward the now destroyed public docks, and men without uniforms were climbing onto nearby buildings with pistols.
"Four groups," I said. "That's flattering."
Nami grabbed the single treasure bag we still had and shoved it against my chest.
"Follow me."
She ran across the roof.
I followed.
Nami did not head toward the sea.
That worried me immediately.
"The docks are the other way."
"The public docks are the other way," she said, jumping onto a lower awning. "They'll be sealed by now."
"So where are we going?"
"To find Crest's private dock."
I landed beside her, and the awning frame bent under our combined weight.
"Crest has a private dock?"
"He controls half the illegal shipping in this city. You think he unloads stolen rifles beside fishermen and asks them not to look?"
"That would be easier; also can't he just…pay them off?"
"Perhaps, but I also know crime becomes more complicated when people want to stay out of prison"
I thought about my own career.
"Couldn't be me." I shrugged
"I know." She rolled her eyes.
The awning tore loose.
We dropped through it into a spice shop.
The owner screamed. Nami rolled across the counter, landed on her feet and kept moving. I came down directly into three open sacks and disappeared waist-deep into pepper.
My entire face caught fire.
I sneezed hard enough to knock jars from a shelf.
The owner pointed at me with both hands shaking. "My stock!"
"Put it on Crest's account!" Nami shouted from the back door.
"He owes me already!"
"Then add interest!" I exclaimed, moving us along.
I climbed out, sneezed again and chased her into an alley.
Nami moved through Port Tragedy really smoothly. She took stairways hidden behind market stalls, crossed storage yards before guards could turn their heads, and slipped through gaps between buildings that I would have dismissed as decorative cracks. Twice, she changed direction before Marines appeared. At one point she stopped so suddenly that I nearly ran over her again, and listened to boots on the other side of a wall, then pulled open a drainage grate beneath a pile of broken baskets.
"You found this during reconnaissance?" I asked.
"I find exits before I enter places, unlike you", she teased.
We dropped into the drain.
The tunnel was low, wet and built for people considerably less magnificent than me. I had to crouch while Nami moved ahead with one hand against the wall. Dirty water ran around our boots, carrying scraps of paper, orange peels and something that moved when I looked at it.
I decided not to look again.
Above us, bells rang through the stone.
"Left," Nami said.
"There are three tunnels."
"Yes."
"How do you know left?"
"The slope. Warehouses need runoff channels toward the southern waterline."
I glanced at the water around my boots. "This is runoff?"
"Do not think about it."
"I was happier before you named it."
The left tunnel narrowed, then opened beneath a warehouse cellar. Nami climbed the ladder and pressed her ear to the hatch.
Voices moved above us.
"Six," she whispered.
"Guards?"
"Workers."
"Good."
"That means we do not punch them."
"I understood." I sighed
"Was that a sigh of disappointment?" She scoffed.
"I can understand and be disappointed at the same time."
We emerged behind stacked cargo. Workers rushed between carts while an overseer shouted about locking the eastern doors. Nobody noticed us until Nami stole his coat from a hook and threw it over her shoulders.
I grabbed a wide canvas sheet and draped it over myself.
Nami looked at me.
"What?"
"You are six feet tall."
"I'm cargo."
"You have legs."
We crossed half the warehouse like that.
It worked longer than it should have.
A worker carrying rope looked directly at my boots beneath the canvas, looked up at the shape of my shoulders, then decided his wages did not cover curiosity. He stepped aside.
Respectable man.
At the far end, Nami pushed through a service door into a loading yard. The southern districts spread ahead of us, packed with warehouses and private counting houses. Beyond them, I could see narrow strips of water between the buildings.
Nami climbed onto a crate and scanned the rooftops.
"There," she said.
I followed her finger.
A line of black cranes stood behind Crest's bonded warehouses. They were smaller than the public dock cranes and positioned so the surrounding buildings blocked them from most of the city. A service road ran toward them through two guarded gates.
"How did you spot that?"
"The cranes face inward. They're unloading cargo where the street can't see."
I smiled.
Nami glanced at me. "What?"
"Nothing. You're useful."
"I know." She smiled"
A low boom rolled across the district, and the sound came from behind us.
I stopped smiling.
Nami noticed. "What?"
Another impact followed, closer this time, a landing.
Garp.
I could hear stone grinding beneath his feet two streets away. Marines shouted his name, then shouted for everyone to clear the road. His steps were unhurried.
That made them worse.
I grabbed Nami around the waist.
Her eyes widened. "What are you doing?"
I hooked the treasure bag under my other arm.
"Kai."
"Hold on."
"To what?"
I jumped.
The loading yard vanished beneath us.
Nami's scream started near my ear and continued for the entire street.
We cleared the first warehouse, the service road, both guarded gates and every Marine between them. Men looked up as my shadow crossed over them. One dropped his rifle. Another pointed with his mouth hanging open. We passed above a wagon, a patrol line and a group of Crest's guards who had arranged themselves very professionally in the exact place we were no longer going to be.
I landed on the roof of the bonded warehouse.
The tiles collapsed.
We dropped through the ceiling, smashed through a hanging sign and landed on a table in the middle of a clerk's office.
Paper exploded around us.
Nami stayed in my arm for one second after we stopped moving.
Then she hit me in the face.
"You could warn me!"
"I said hold on."
"There was nothing to hold!"
"You had me."
"That was the problem!"
A clerk slowly raised his hand from beneath the table.
"Are you here for the shipping records?"
Nami looked down at him. "Where's Crest's private dock?"
He pointed through the western wall without hesitation.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
We ran through the western wall.
I made the opening.
Outside, the service road curved down toward the water. We had almost reached the first pier when white smoke poured across the ground ahead of us.
It spread between the warehouses, thick enough to hide the dock beyond it.
Nami slowed.
I did not.
Smoker stepped out of the cloud with blood dried along his jaw and his jitte held across his body. His coat was torn from our earlier fight. One sleeve had been burned. His expression suggested he had spent the last ten minutes thinking of new ways to arrest me.
"You again," I said.
Smoker's cigar shifted between his teeth. "You lost the cuff."
"I found the key."
Nami lifted one hand. "Technically, I had the key."
Smoker's eyes moved to her. "You're under arrest too."
Nami immediately stepped behind me.
"Handle your friend."
"He is not my friend."
Smoke surged from Smoker's shoulders.
His body disappeared into it, and a white arm formed beside my face with the jitte driving toward my ribs.
I turned and punched.
My fist connected.
There was no resistance from the smoke this time. My knuckles found a jaw beneath it with a clean, solid impact.
Smoker's eyes widened.
Then he disappeared from the street.
The smoke collapsed behind him as his body flew through the wall of the nearest warehouse, crossed the building and burst out the other side in a cloud of bricks, timber and several sacks of flour. He hit the next warehouse hard enough to leave a man-shaped hole and vanished inside.
The entire road went quiet.
I stared at my fist.
Nami stared at the two buildings.
A loose plank fell somewhere in the distance.
"Oh," I said.
Nami looked at me. "Oh?"
"I thought he'd take that better."
"You punched him through two warehouses."
"I was still accounting for the cuff," I said absentmindedly, looking at my fist.
Smoke drifted weakly from the second hole, then stopped.
I looked at the wheel mark on my hand.
"Bless adaptation."
Nami grabbed my arm. "Celebrate your terrifying body later."
We ran.
High above the road, Garp landed on the roof we had crossed. The building sank several inches under him.
He looked toward the hole Smoker had made, then toward us.
For a moment, his grin disappeared.
His eyes settled on my fist.
He could have caught us.
I knew it. Nami probably knew it. Every Marine watching from the street definitely knew it. Garp bent his knees slightly, and the entire district seemed to tense with him.
Then he reached into his coat.
He pulled out another bag of rice crackers.
"Vice Admiral!" one Marine shouted. "They're escaping!"
Garp opened the bag. "I can see that."
"Aren't you going after them?"
Garp watched me disappear between the warehouses.
His grin returned slowly.
"In a minute."
The Marine stared at him. "Why?"
Garp bit into a cracker and looked toward the trail of destruction behind us.
"Thinking…"
That was all I heard before the buildings blocked him from view.
The private dock sat behind Crest's largest warehouse, hidden inside a narrow inlet cut into the southern edge of the city. Four ships were tied along the piers. Two were cargo cutters built for speed. One was a plain transport with false Marine markings painted over the hull.
The last ship was ridiculous.
Long black hull. Red sails. Polished rails. Gold trim around the captain's cabin. Two masts angled for speed, a reinforced bow, and enough deck space to make my old boat look like a floating shoe.
I pointed at it.
"That one."
Nami did not argue.
Men were already loading crates onto the smaller ships. Ledgers burned in iron barrels along the pier. Workers carried sealed boxes from the warehouse while armed guards watched the road.
At the centre of it all stood Marlo Crest.
His perfect coat was gone. His sleeves were rolled up, his hair had come loose, and he was shouting at everyone within reach.
"Burn every account with a Marine name in it! Move the bullion onto the Vesper! Anything linking me to Vale goes into the water!"
One guard pointed toward the city. "Sir, the Branchbreaker is still loose."
Crest turned on him. "I know that! The giant pain in my ass has destroyed three warehouses, exposed my vault and brought Garp into my city!"
I stopped directly behind him.
Nami covered her mouth.
The guard facing Crest went pale.
Crest noticed.
"What?"
The guard pointed over his shoulder.
Crest slowly turned his head.
I smiled down at him.
"Giant pain in your ass?"
His face emptied.
"You."
"Me."
Crest reached for the pistol inside his vest.
I grabbed his head with one hand.
His entire face disappeared inside my palm.
"Wait," he said, voice muffled between my fingers.
I lifted him.
His legs kicked twice.
Nami stepped aside.
I threw him.
"YEEET!"
Crest crossed the inlet in a perfect, screaming arc. He passed over two ships, clipped the top of a mast, changed direction slightly and vanished beyond the warehouse roofs.
Everyone on the dock watched him go.
A faint scream continued somewhere above the city.
I shaded my eyes. "Good distance."
Nami grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward the black ship. "Steal first. Admire yourself later."
The guards recovered.
Weapons came up.
I kicked the first man into the water, threw the second into the third and ripped the mooring post out of the pier when four more tried to block us. Nami vaulted onto the deck of the Vesper and ran straight for the helm.
"Cast off!" she shouted.
I jumped aboard with the treasure bag.
"Which rope?"
"Bowline first, then release the stern!"
I looked at the lines around me.
A month on the Blue Gull came back immediately. My hands moved before I finished thinking. I tore the bowline loose, crossed the deck and freed the stern line. Nami spun the wheel while shouting for the forward sail. I grabbed the correct line.
She noticed.
"You know what you're doing?"
"Mostly."
"That is not reassuring."
"I spent a month on a merchant ship."
"As crew?"
"Eeh..Eventually."
I hauled the line. The red sail dropped and caught the wind with a violent snap.
The Vesper surged away from the pier.
Crest's men fired from the dock. Bullets struck the hull and rails. One punched through the sail above us. Nami ducked behind the wheel, waited for the first cargo cutter to drift into our path, then turned hard enough that the deck tilted beneath my feet.
The Vesper cut between the cutter and a stone piling with barely enough room for its hull.
The cutter's crew shouted as our wake slammed them sideways.
Nami adjusted the wheel by inches, reading the water, the wind and the narrow channel ahead as if each one were speaking directly to her. She avoided submerged posts I had not even seen, used the wake from a Marine patrol boat to push us through the last turn, then released the rear sail at exactly the moment the inlet opened toward the sea.
I moved with her commands.
Not perfectly. I tied one line wrong, corrected it before she could insult me, then leaned my weight into the next turn to keep the boom from swinging across the deck. The Vesper responded quickly, much quicker than the Blue Gull. Every adjustment mattered.
Nami grinned at the helm.
It was not a nice grin.
It was the expression of someone who had just found a ship fast enough to misbehave properly.
Behind us, Marines reached the private dock. Crest's guards pointed toward the inlet. Someone fired a cannon from the shore, but the shot struck the water far behind our stern.
The open sea spread ahead.
Port Tragedy began shrinking behind us.
I climbed onto the bow and sat with one leg hanging over the side. Wind pulled my hair back. The last of the city alarms faded beneath the rush of water against the hull.
Nami remained at the helm, eyes on the current.
I looked back at her.
"So," I said. "Arlong."
Her hands tightened around the wheel.
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she nodded once.
"Arlong."
We sailed in silence for several minutes.
It was almost peaceful.
Then Nami looked down at the single treasure bag beside the mast and sighed.
"All that work for one bag."
"Better than nothing, I guess.", I tried to reassure her.
She opened it, filtering through it.
"We were inside Crest's main vault."
"We also escaped Garp," I added.
"We had gems, jewellery and enough berries to make Arlong's payment actually possible."
"You betrayed me and dropped most of it." I sideeyed.
"We-"
"You cuffed me to a chest." I interrupted.
"An-"
"After stealing three bags."
Nami looked offended. "Two and a half."
I stared at her.
"One was mostly documents."
"That is not better."
She sighed again and turned her attention back to the sea.
"At least the ship should sell for something," I said.
I stood and wandered toward the captain's cabin.
"The Vesper" was its name. Polished doors. Velvet seating. Gold fixtures. A dining table large enough for twelve people. Crest had stocked wine, food, spare clothes and enough navigation equipment to make Nami stop complaining for almost ten seconds.
Almost.
I stepped into the cabin and looked around.
Something glimmered beneath the floorboards.
I crouched.
A thin line of gold showed through the gap beside the captain's desk.
"Nami."
She did not look back. "What?"
"You should not be so sure."
"About what?"
I hooked my fingers beneath the loose board and pulled.
The entire section of flooring lifted.
Gold light filled the cabin.
Beneath the boards sat a hidden hold packed from wall to wall with treasure. Chests of berries. Gold bars. Jewellery boxes. Bags of gemstones. Rolled paintings. Silver plates. A crown that definitely belonged to someone else. There was enough wealth buried under Crest's floor to buy several villages and still have money left to make irresponsible decisions.
Nami steadied their course, looped a line around the wheel and slowly turned from the helm.
Her eyes widened.
I looked at the treasure.
Then at her.
Nami walked into the cabin and crouched beside the opening. She reached down and lifted a fistful of gold coins. They ran between her fingers with a soft metallic rush.
Her mouth curved.
My mouth curved
Two gold-hungry devils had just stolen the richest ship in Port Tragedy.
And judging by the dirty grins we shared over that hidden hold, we were going to get along just fine.
…
End of Chapter!
Words Count - 3234