Chapter 89: Return to the Grand Line
Chapter 89: Return to the Grand Line
“Captain! The log pose has caught an island!”
Luffy blinked, then blocked a strike from Kuina as she tried to take advantage of his momentary distraction. As she recovered from his parry, he gestured a pause to the sparring he’d been doing with her. She nodded, backing off without any real irritation at the interruption. They’d only been filling time, waiting for exactly that report from Nami since they’d landed the Discovery back on the Grand Line the day before. Log poses, when caught between islands by some means, would eventually reset to lock onto the nearest strong magnetic signature. It was considered a dicey, dubious proposition, not to be relied on, and for good reason. After all, with the wildly varying strengths of magnetic fields inherent to Grand Line islands, you could get lucky and lock onto one in hours…or go weeks without managing the same.
They, of course, had cheated. Like any good, sane, and intelligent person would. The fact that so few people deliberately used an Eternal Pose to go somewhere other than where it was locked onto was, Luffy thought, honestly a sign that general intelligence and understanding of navigation were both objectively shit in this reality. So long as you knew generally where an Eternal Pose was pointing, you could sail at a calculated angle away from where it was pointing, in order to stay roughly on a straight sailing line. Yes, it involved a bit of math and understanding of general concepts, but it really should have been basic barebones common sense. More, if you happened to have two or more such poses? All the better, as the multiple reference points, with a navigator of Nami’s skill working them, would easily keep you pointed in the same general direction. Nami, specifically, could even use the method to create reasonably accurate charts of the seas they were passing through.
Being able to sail a ‘straight line,’ had an obvious advantage of course. Namely, that it drastically increased the odds that you’d eventually hit a magnetic signature along that path, rather than getting stuck sailing endlessly in circles. Which, given that Luffy and the few who knew of his larger collection of Eternal Poses didn’t want to give their existence away by using one straight off, was exactly what they’d done upon reentering the Grand Line after their month of laying low on Sixis. It had been a total of six weeks since the Whitebeard War, enough time to fall off the proverbial radar, while not being nearly enough time for the Marines to have recovered far enough to actively hunt them. As a result, their initial plan was to simply latch onto one of the routes through Paradise they hadn’t traveled down yet, then follow it until they could ‘discover’ an interesting Eternal Pose.
Now, Luffy made his way to the pilot house, with Kuina following in his wake and several others on the deck perking up with interest. The windows of the house were open, since it had been calm by Grand Line standards for the last few hours, and Nami smiled at him as he approached. Wordlessly, she held out a log pose for him to see that the needle was no longer spinning without focus.
“Any clue where it’s pointing?”
Nami shrugged and shook her head, not that he’d really expected otherwise.
“You know how shit most charts of the Grand Line are Captain. I’ve got a vague idea of two possible islands it might be, based on where we reentered the Line from. It could be either or neither though. For that matter, it could be an otherwise uncharted island since we weren’t hopping a route properly and could have locked onto an off-route orphan.”
Luffy could only nod at that. There were seven known ‘routes’ through the Paradise half of the Grand Line. Two of them didn’t actually make it all the way to the Red Line, but still had useful enough islands along them to be considered ‘routes.’ Two more crossed each other at Alabasta, one of which was the one they’d followed most of the way. Though Drum was actually part of the other route that crossed at the desert kingdom, rather than the one that they started on via Cactus Island.
Aside from those seven routes, though, were two other types of islands. Well, three really, since there were a few outliers like the Sabaody Archipelago that weren’t really islands and had no magnetic signature at all. Ignoring those and sticking to the two relevant types, the first set were places like Asuka Island and Skypiea. They could be locked onto along one of the routes, but they weren’t always, with many ships never hitting them as the conditions to be locked onto weren’t perfect when they passed by.
The second set were random ‘orphan’ islands that weren’t locked onto normally from the main seven routes at all. They still had magnetic signatures, but not strong enough ones to pull sailors away from the main routes if you were already traveling down one. Most had only ever been discovered by sheer chance, and charts of the Grand Line were generally dubious, at best. Indeed, quite a few Marine bases were situated on such orphan islands, granting security by virtue of only reliably being reachable via an Eternal pose created after such an island was stumbled upon. Luffy doubted even the WG and Marines actually knew where all such islands were, even in Paradise. Though they undoubtedly had a more complete idea than anyone else.
“I suppose we’ll just have to see. Have the spares locked onto the same signature?”
Nami looked down and to her right, where a small rail held an additional set of two log poses. They weren’t the only ones on the ship, of course. Any idiot who didn’t collect several of the things when they had a chance, keeping some of them secured away from the rest? They were just that. An idiot. Log poses might be hard to find on the Blues, but they were easy to acquire on the Grand Line, and spares were a must for sane sailors. Yet, despite the conventional wisdom of keeping them separated, there was a reason they had a pair of spares readily at hand in the pilot house as well. Even if it was a recent addition.
“One of them has, the other one looks like it’s trying to. You’re planning to scout ahead?”
That. That was the reason. For most ships in Paradise, it would be a stupid ass idea. In the New World, Vivre Cards made it a bit more feasible, as your scout element could use a card of someone on the crew to return back to the ship. Even for the Straw Hats, they had typically only risked it rarely on the Grand Line previously, counting on Luffy’s eyesight in falcon or owl form to be able to find the Discovery again. Yet, Kaya had recently come up with something new, while trying to study a small piece of the Vivre Card that Ace had left with Luffy.
While she hadn’t figured out how to make those yet, despite easily being able to ascertain that such cards had some spiritual shenanigans going on with them, she’d come up with something else useful. Specifically, a set of seals that, when applied to a compass, could make the compass point specifically back toward a ‘beacon seal’ positioned on the Discovery. The development was new, and Luffy figured this was a good chance to test it out. It was also, of course, why they’d set up spare log poses on a rail in the pilot house, with Kaya’s Seal Compasses resting in a nearby drawer.
“Yeah. It’s time to give Kaya’s new Seal Compass a test, I think. It’s calm enough at the moment to minimize the risk, so long as I don’t hit anything too crazy. Unless you’re sensing a weather shift I can’t?”
Luffy’s weather sense was just good enough to work on the Grand Line…somewhat. Nami’s, after a few months to adjust? It blew his out of the water, as it were. She could instinctively and reliably predict most weather shifts by up to an hour. Something that should have been the next best thing to completely impossible on the Grand Line. He was honestly curious to see just how much better it could get when they eventually made their way to Weatheria. He watched as she cocked her head, clearly paying extra attention to that sense for a moment, before humming.
“Nothing for the next hour, then…a weather zone, I think. A summer island? Pretty sure, at least.”
Blinking, since she’d never predicted that before, he couldn’t help but ask about it.
“You can feel a weather zone?”
Nami shook her head, then nodded, sending a bit of a mixed signal before explaining.
“Not the zone, but the way it’s effecting the weather as a whole? Or something like that. Honestly, I’ve been getting increasingly better weather senses as I’ve worked with my Devil Fruit. I think you might have been right to think its awakened form would be able to influence weather?”
Huh. Luffy had been mostly taking a stab in the dark, based on vaguely remembered stories, when he’d suggested that possibility. In truth, he’d mostly just wanted Nami to have the major boost to her safety that a Mythical Zoan offered. Well, all the better if it turned out to actually be true. Though he supposed she also might merely be getting used to the generally improved senses of a Zoan, rather than it being something specific to the Pegasus Fruit. Either way, it was certainly a useful boon.
“Makes as much sense as anything, I guess. Hand me the spare that’s already latched onto the island? I’ll go take a look and at least see if there is a major Marine presence we need to steer clear of or not.”
Nami nodded firmly at that, detaching one of the log poses from the rail and handing it over. Doing the same with a Seal Compass from the locked drawer a minute later. Time to go do a little bit of scouting…
… … …
Luffy frowned as he looped over the island in his gryphon form. Just as Nami had guessed, he’d hit a Summer weather zone, proceeding onto the island itself once he’d crossed into it. What he saw when he reached it, however, was both bizarre and worrying. Though the reasons for those two reactions were entirely different. The bizarreness lay in the fact that he…sort of recognized parts of the island?
Whoever had settled here must be extremely familiar with the East Blue, as there were numerous pieces of architecture that he recognized from the various islands of his home ocean. What looked like a mini Baratie, a mansion resembling Kaya’s family home, a dojo that looked eerily like Kuina’s father’s, and even a giant windmill extremely close in appearance to the one at Foosha Village he was personally so familiar with. It was like someone had crunched down all the most notable bits of the East Blue into a single largish island, most of it crammed into a single town on that island.
All of which was weird, but likely had a simple explanation if the settlers here were from the East Blue originally. Unfortunately, the worrying thing also likely had a simple explanation. After all, there were pirate ships in the island’s only bay. All of them bearing the same mark, that of a Jolly Roger whose skull featured a snout and bull horns, a pair of battleaxes crossed in place of the usual bones. Despite being more divergent than most, it was very obviously still a pirate’s mark, though not one that Luffy immediately recognized.
Its presence, regrettably, probably explained why the entire town looked to be in rough shape. There weren’t many locals present, and those that were in sight were clearly serving the pirates. Something it was equally clear they weren’t exactly doing willingly. Concerningly, there was also the corpse of a Giant Hercules Beetle that looked suspiciously like it had undergone transformation by SIQ. Was this pirate group somehow associated with Shiki, then? It was close to the East Blue/Grand Line Calm Belt, if not particularly close to the route Shiki had been following to cross it. So it was certainly a possibility.
Well, either way, they were going to need to do some scouting. Both to find out how to remove these pirates without screwing over the locals, and to make sure there wasn’t some grander plot at work. Thankfully, the Discovery had plenty of options for coming in unseen. Winging away from the island and checking the Seal Compass strapped to one foreleg, Luffy headed back to the Discovery to let everyone else know what he’d found…
… … …
Hina sighed, blowing smoke from her cigarette as she did. Luffy had just sketched out the pirate mark he’d seen, showing it to the crew, and most of them looked puzzled. She, however, was not. She’d recognized the mark almost instantly and wasn’t pleased to see it here.
“Hina knows who it belongs to, but not why they are here. The Minotaur Pirates are from the West Blue like Hina is. They are the oldest and strongest pirate crew from the West Blue, suspected to have originated in the New World and come across the Calm Belt somehow. They’ve been a constant thorn for the West Blue, as they are too strong for the local Marines to truly handle.”
Her Captain frowned for a moment, before that frown shifted to a look of understanding that made Hina wonder what he’d realized. Thankfully, she didn’t have to wonder long, as he quickly enlightened everyone else to his realization.
“Unintended side effects. If the information we’ve gotten from various sources is at all accurate, the West Blue is basically a war zone between the Revolutionary Army and the Marines right now, right? That means both groups have fielded a lot of powerful fighters, too many for a pirate crew to want to be caught between. They must have come to Paradise because it was less dangerous than the West Blue is right now. At least for them.”
That…fuck. That made a lot of sense, didn’t it? The Minotaur Pirates were considered genuinely dangerous in the West Blue, and would be considered so even here in Paradise from what Hina remembered. But no one short of a Yonko would want to be caught between the Marines and the Revolutionary Army. Heck, even a Yonko would likely try to avoid such a position. Possibly for the first time in centuries or longer, the Grand Line was the lesser danger for a pirate crew.
No, not just one crew. Fuck.
“Hina thinks we will see more of this. With the West and North Blue both in turmoil, and the Marines weakened, a lot of pirates who played it safe before will likely take to the Grand Line. Many will perish, unprepared for the realities of the Line, but at least some will likely begin to spread havoc in Paradise.”
She could see realization spread across the faces of the rest of the crew as they caught up with her and their captain’s chain of logic. Grimaces and grim determination filled most faces. At least she could count on this odd bunch not to ignore the problem if they came face-to-face with it, even if she was no longer being sent against it directly by the Marines. Captain Luffy shook his head a moment later and shifted his attention to her.
“That is something beyond our ability to affect for the time being. For now, Hina, please tell us everything you can remember about these Minotaur Pirates. From there, we’ll see what the best way to deal with the current situation is.”
Nodding her head, Hina did her best to draw the details out of memory. They were hazy, something she’d only loosely kept track of since leaving the West Blue herself, and only because they were the most dangerous crew in her own home ocean.
“The first thing you should know is that their name is literal. The reason they are suspected of coming from the New World is that all of them are bull or cow people. Possibly some derivative of the Mink Tribe, though little enough is known of either the Minotaurs or the Mink themselves to more than speculate on that possibility…”
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: As far as I'm concerned, every navigator in One Piece that isn't Nami should be taken out back and shot for daring to call themselves a navigator. The issue of not having a working compass is LAUGHABLY easy to overcome by various means. I go with it, reluctantly, because Oda made the issue such an important part of how the story works. It is, however, nonsense that I can't help but poke holes in here and there. Such as the fact that even a single Eternal Pose could take the place of a regular north-pointing compass if you just redid your calculations based on that point instead of one of the poles. Two would make it even easier. Three reaches the point that you could damn near replicate a GPS system with them.
A/N 2: The Minotaur Pirates are my own creation, a more-or-less throw away crew with 'background' reasons to be just strong enough to provide decent punching bags and not much else. There will be (currently already is in Early Access) more serious fighting on the next island.