Chapter 82: Preparations
Chapter 82: Preparations
Given they were still days from the East Blue, at the slow rate Merville was moving, Luffy was determined to treat the threat of Shiki with the seriousness the legend deserved. Without an immediate reason to rush, Luffy had encouraged taking the time to sort out all the information about Merville they could find. To that end, the first step had, of course, been their bribe for the locals. Xiao had been too ecstatically happy, since Dis had been able to easily grow her an entire basketful of IQ plant quite easily, to care about a bit of delay in returning to the village. That delay, meanwhile, had allowed the girls to perform at least a basic skim over the other islands. Including, in a bit of extra cleverness that had impressed Luffy, combining a spyglass with one of their drones to get a decent look at the main island of the floating archipelago without much risk of being detected.
The results were…disquieting.
Aside from the local’s village, there wasn’t a lot more than the various crazed monsters on most of the islands. The main island, however, had possessed three major points of concern. The first was a large body of water where the girls’ scouting efforts had spotted the ships of the pirates Xiao had mentioned. There were 33 ships of varying sizes docked in that body of water, all of them baring different Jolly Rogers. Hina had joined them temporarily to help with identification, and between her and Robin they’d managed to name twenty of the crews.
The good news was that none of those crews were anything too special, only a couple of them being New World crews. On the flip side, none of them were pushovers either. Mostly, it looked like Shiki had gone recruiting among the up-and-comers for the last three years. None of the current ‘Supernovas’ were present, much to Luffy’s relief, as he was aware the current crop of standouts was considerably more dangerous than average. Yet Shiki had managed to snag the loyalty of similar standouts from previous years. Though only a smattering of the most violent from each year.
The number of reasonably strong pirates was going to be a serious nuisance, though Luffy had a few ideas about how to mitigate that nuisance a little.
The second standout location they had far less information about, the girls having been rightfully leery of sending their drone construct too close. It was very clearly Shiki’s base, and it was impressively large and well put together. It wasn’t far from the lagoon holding all the pirate ships, with both being surrounded by more of the Daft Green plants that protected Xiao’s village. The base, unfortunately, showed every sign of being quite high-tech, a fair bit above the usual norms even for the Marines. They also, of course, hadn’t been able to get too close a look at it. They didn’t want to get even the drones too close, let alone risking having Robin try to spread her network of eyes and ears inside, as she’d done with the other two locations. Without more of an idea how good Shiki might be with Haki, doing that sort of thing was simply too much of a risk.
The only other major point of interest that had been uncovered, good to know but less directly useful, was that Shiki had a number of mines and factories spread around the island. Those factories explained a discrepancy in the village, where Robin had noticed there were really only very old or very young men and women populating said village. Xiao had, tearfully, confirmed that Shiki had essentially enslaved the original island dwellers when he’d first arrived, and the ‘young and fit’ groups were all serving him in some capacity or other. The men in the mines and factories, the women acting as servants in his base and the meeting hall near the ships for the pirate crews. The only potentially good news about that bit of horribleness was that Shiki kept the vast majority of such locals all in one place, a near-prison-like compound on the main island, after dark. Mostly, Luffy supposed, as a way to protect his workforce from the monsters, as that compound also had a circle of Daft Green trees around it.
According to Xaio, Shiki had promised to let all of the ‘workers’ go once he got what he wanted.
Not a single member of the Strawhats thought he’d actually do it.
“Well, I supposed there’s nothing left to do now but see what the villagers know. Robin, Kaya, you two and I will return Xiao to her mother and grandmother. Kaya, I want you to learn what you can about Daft Green and IQ from them, Robin will cast her network out to keep an eye on the surveillance snails and anyone that might report us. I doubt they’ll actually know much more than Xiao about Shiki, but we’ll find out anything they might know or be able to guess. After that…we’ll have to work out a plan of attack.”
The entire group nodded, there was no way they could leave this alone. Even for those not originally from the East Blue, leaving a pirate to attack or wipe out islands wasn’t okay with them, nor was the fact that Shiki was enslaving the locals. They’d already pissed off the World Government over slavery, a pirate wasn’t going to get any more consideration than the WG had, no matter how powerful.
A few minutes of organization and waiting for an opening where Xiao’s home wasn’t being observed later, and the trio set off to find out what they could...
… … …
“…so Shiki promised to let us all go, once he’d reached his ‘Sea of Schemes.’”
Xiao’s mother had been both panicked over her daughter’s action and absence…and utterly blown away by her arriving with a basket almost as big as she was, stuffed full of IQ plants. As Luffy had hoped, the gift of the IQ plants had opened the floodgates. As soon as Xiao had convinced her mother that the plants hadn’t come from Shiki, but from a ‘pretty plant lady who grew them using one Xiao found,’ both her mother and grandmother had been so relieved that they’d spilled everything they knew.
There wasn’t a lot more than what they’d already known, but several important things had come of the discussion. One was that it had been the locals who’d originally known how to work with the IQ plant. It had been explained to them that the IQ plant had been critical to the way the island functioned for as long as anyone could remember. Apparently, Dr. Indigo, the mad scientist behind MIQ and SIQ, had worked off of notes and formulas that they’d threatened out of the locals. Shockingly, this meant that the few elders who had once worked with IQ actually had a very good idea how both MIQ and SIQ worked. In fact, entirely without letting Shiki realize it, it had been those elders who had stabilized MIQ enough for it to not kill the villagers. Dr. Indigo hadn’t been able to reproduce those results in any of the animals or his non-local test subjects, and had thus discarded the formula.
Kaya, of course, had been immediately interested. She’d also, notably, been able to use their notes on Daft Green and IQ to create a ‘Sickness’ that made the body immune to Daft Green. Since the ‘poison’ was apparently actually an extreme type of allergy response, she could convince her Devil Fruit that ‘disabling the body’s natural reaction’ to it qualified as a ‘Sickness.’ Seriously, the knots Kaya could twist the Sick Sick Fruit into in order to get helpful results legitimately made Luffy feel a bit inadequate with this own Devil Fruit experiment. Sure, he was far more creative than most, but he was rapidly realizing that Kaya was a whole different level in that respect. Though, the mental gymnastics involved were also probably why Kaya had been developing her own Mad Scientist vibes. So maybe he was better off not being quite that good at it…
Aside from some deep background on Shiki, the two other things of import which had come to light from the locals were Mereville’s weakness to Storms, and an idea of the timeline they were working against. The first provided a last-ditch option, should they discover they weren’t able to deal with Shiki personally. Even without the Discovery’s Storm Cannon, if they failed to stop Shiki before he reached the East Blue, they could always repeat the cruder Storm Summoning trick they’d once used against Don Krieg. The storm they’d produced back then had been Grand Line levels of ferocious, and they’d only gained a better understanding of how to make even nastier ones from their time dealing with crazy weather on the Grand Line itself.
Of course, doing that would very possibly destroy the islands outright.
Honestly, though, that part might actually be inevitable. While the main island apparently had been a Sky Island originally, it no longer had it’s Island Cloud. Meaning that if they killed Shiki, the islands would fall out of the sky. The storm angle still wasn’t necessarily the best choice, however, as Shiki himself was entirely too likely to survive a mere storm. It was a solid Plan B, if they couldn’t come up with a better option, but not something they should go with if there was a better path. After all, it would also be harder to evacuate anyone but the young and old still in the village if they went with that method. Whereas, if they could find a way to defeat the majority of Shiki’s forces first, and then fight Shiki while an evacuation was ongoing? Then they could probably save more of the island’s enslaved inhabitants. A goal they all agreed was the one to shoot for.
Thankfully, the second piece of important information, the bit about the timeline, meant they had a chance to attempt something better. Apparently, the very next day, Shiki was intending to finalize his alliance with the various pirate Captains, and the day after that they would hit the East Blue and start their reign of terror. According to the locals, Merville could move faster than it was, but Shiki was drawing their arrival out due to needing to finalize the alliances with the pirate crews now under him.
“Thank you for this, Madam Long. With the information you and the village elders have provided, I believe my crew and I have a very good chance of stopping Shiki. He may be strong, but so are we, and the fact he is targeting some of our homes mean we have every reason to stop him.”
Xiao’s mother, Vera Long, looked pale and worn. She was clearly frightened by the idea of them taking on Shiki…but she also clearly didn’t believe Shiki’s promises. Xiao and she might escape, would escape since Luffy was fully intending to empty the village to a safe island before they attacked, but her daughter Ever and husband Dickson were among those conscripted by Shiki. She’d clearly decided to pin her hopes that they could at least save some of those Shiki had taken, even if he wasn’t sure the woman believed they could actually win.
Luffy didn’t blame her. Though he fully intended to prove her wrong if she didn’t believe it.
“Robin, you’ve confirmed the paths for the Surveillance Snails have settled?”
Nodding and opening her eyes, having been concentrating on a large number of other eyes around the village, Robin replied.
“Yes. It is as Madam Long said, once the sun went down half of the snails went into hibernation and the rest started a set patrol pattern. We can easily work around them.”
It was the one flaw in Shiki’s precautions that the locals had discovered. At night, the surveillance on the village dropped off. Mushi, being biological creatures, still needed to sleep sooner or later, even if only for a few hours each day. When the locals had realized that the surveillance Mushi slept in shifts over the night, with the remainder of the Mushi taking up a less heavily monitored patrol, they’d taken to using the cover of night to enact what limited plans they could. In particular, they’d dug out an admittedly impressive series of hidden shelters. Enough of them to hide the entire population, in fact. They’d even managed to stock those shelters with enough food, mostly via some rather harsh rationing, that they could vanish for a few weeks and hope Shiki left or stopped paying attention, if it ever came to him destroying the village outright.
Such would only be helpful under very specific circumstances they hadn’t been likely to get, but it was still an incredible achievement for what they’d been working with. Thankfully, it would also serve their current purposes, as it meant there was a pre-existing plan and signal for an evacuation. After managing to speak with enough of those in charge, and prove to them that Vivi’s Air Doors could move them to another island, they’d all agreed it was the best choice. Now that night had fallen, the relatively tiny village population was going to be evacuated to Alabasta, who could easily absorb so few refugees. Given that there was very little chance the islands would survive Shiki dying and his Fruit ceasing to work as a result, it was the best they were going to get and they knew it.
“Alright. Time to get everyone moving. Vivi, Robin, Kuina, you know what to do. Kaya, Nami and I will get started on our own parts in the meantime.”
There were quick acknowledgements from his crew, as everyone shifted to start executing the loose plans they’d come up with…