One Piece – Halfway Broken

Chapter 136: Cross Over

“Hina believes we are ready. Vivi, Nojiko, you have command.”

Vivi nodded at Hina handing over ‘command.’ The older woman, thankfully, hadn’t quite reverted to Marine discipline once put in charge of the Germa Rescue Squad. She had, however, run the Expedition and the people on it more firmly than Luffy ever bothered to. In truth, that wasn’t really a bad thing, as it had kept them moving fast and efficient, leading them to reach the Red Line just three and a half days after they’d stepped through the Air Door to the Conami Islands. She’d had them in the water and sailing within less than two hours after first arrival, efficiently organizing the half dozen of them and not hesitating to step in and work hard herself.

Still, it was a bit of a different command style, even if Vivi could tell Hina had done her best to keep it relaxed. The difference was starkly evidenced by her ‘officially passing command’ to Vivi for the passage over the Red Line, rather than just informally telling them to get on with it. Vivi and Nojiko were the stars of the show for this part of things, so it made sense, but it was just a little weird to her to be all official about it when Luffy rarely bothered. Everyone knew to listen to him, Nami, and Kuina, unless it was regarding something specific like food, with no need to verbalize command changes.

Shaking her observation off, Vivi put all of her focus into the Air Doors she needed. Two, chained off each other, got her a clear view of the airspace over the Red Line. She might have needed more in the past, given how tall the Red Line was, but Vivi had quietly asked Kaya to enhance her eyesight months ago. Line-of-sight Air Doors were the easiest and most efficient to create and the enhancement had been a major boon to her range and accuracy with those. The fact that the changes had also improved her visual tracking had also had useful knock-on effects for her fighting style she’d been happily enjoying. At the moment, however, she still had a job to do and focused down on it. Even with the view she needed for this gained, the next door would be the real challenge. She’d worked from the very start with her training to expand how large she could make Air Doors, and by this point could take the entire Expedition through. First though…

“Alright, bring up the platform first, Nojiko, like we talked about.”

The East Blue was amazingly calm, by Vivi’s standards, and that fact had easily allowed them time to brainstorm exactly how to pull this series of maneuvers off. Nojiko could telekinetically control her crystals, but quick tests had shown that the fully-loaded Expedition didn’t quite have enough Crystal-to-everything-else ratio for her to just lift the ship. Not safely, at least. Which meant, since the Red Line was thick and they needed to support the ship to cross it, that they needed to pre-create a massive platform for the ship to be carried by. Something which wasn’t exactly an easy task while the ship was actively at sea. If they didn’t do this whole maneuver in fairly rapid sequence, the new platform would risk causing the ship to destabilize in the water, despite the superior stability of its twin-hull design.

Thankfully, they’d had the days between the Conami Islands and the Red Line to work out the best way to handle it. Now, Nojiko took a deep breath and, instead of building a full-blown platform under the Expedition, instead extended backswept ribs from the hulls and connected them with a web of crossbars that let water through. What she really needed was more crystal, not a true platform, and while the ship did immediately start handling worse, it didn’t suffer much from the trick. Not at the near stand-still they’d had the ship barely-more-than-drifting at. As soon as she had enough crystal, she lifted the ship until it was just barely above the water, removing the problem of drag entirely, and nodded sharply to Vivi.

Vivi had been concentrating the entire time Nojiko worked, focusing as much energy as possible into an Air Door…and the moment Nojiko nodded, she opened one of the largest doors she’d ever managed. If anything, it was too large, since she’d originally been working on this ability in hopes of someday moving the Discovery. Thankfully, that didn’t really matter, and Nojiko didn’t hesitate to use her control over the crystal to move the ship forward through the Air Door. They all shivered and took sharp breaths as they were abruptly moved to high altitude. Thankfully, all of them had done the same thing moving between the Discovery and various Sky Islands, be that Wind’s Home, Skypiea, or Weatheria, many times by now. That experience served them well now, as the ship barely wobbled due to Nojiko adjusting, and Vivi was already making the next in a series of Air Doors that would allow them to cross the Red Line swiftly…

… … …

Luffy carefully pounded out the metal of the blade he was making, using not his own workshop, but the specialized equipment of the Starforge. It had been on his second visit to Sinner’s Refuge that Blumarine had introduced him to the place. The former shipwright had apparently become more of a blacksmith than a shipbuilder after the Roger Pirates dispersed, settling in to experiment with the Starstone that could be found in Shinedown. He had, apparently, encountered something at least similar, called Sunstone, on the island of Elbaph. The materials weren’t quite the same and had intrigued him enough to become a pet project in his ‘retirement.’

To say that Luffy was delighted to work with the man, exchanging some of his own discoveries about things like Lunar Steel for knowledge of working with Starstone, was an understatement.

As it happened, one of the major differences between Starstone and Sunstone was, apparently, that Sunstone only worked in the presence of sunlight. Starstone, on the other hand, could and would store the energy of starlight for later use. As Pagaya and Nojiko had learned from the residents of Shinedown, it didn’t recharge properly outside the waters around Starfall, but Luffy had already determined the reason for that. Starstone needed spiritual energy to act as a medium between it and starlight. Energy that was present in abundance on Starfall but absent in most other places. At least in the concentrations needed for it to happen naturally.

Which wouldn’t be a problem, as Kaya had figured out, by studying the effects of the hidden baths on Amazon Lily, how to carve JotunFrost in such a way that it ambiently absorbed spiritual energy from the world. Doing so turned it into a sort of battery for use in things like the barrier that had kept women out of those baths without an escort, though neither of them could figure out just yet how that barrier had been managed without something obviously similar. Better yet, the local wood from the Night Forest, called Ebony Night (the people of the island really liked sticking to their theme), had proven to be a perfect bridge between all of it. With an Ebony Night handle, a JotunFrost pommel gem, and Blumarine’s study of Starstone…Luffy was working on something special.

Luffy was confident the mixture would allow a Starstone infused object to recharge from regular starlight…and had determined that he wanted to make Vivi’s final Urumi using the stone. The reason for that was blatantly obvious, once one saw what Blumarine had managed with the material. By using Starstone in the process of creating steel, the weapons created could extend in various ways. Most of retired shipwright’s experiments consisted of things like swords that could change length, staffs that could grow a silvery spearhead on command, or a club that could grow spikes. Luffy had been instantly tempted to make a lightsaber, which he thought he could make work, but had resisted the temptation.

So far, at least.

He was still a little jealous of the ligthsaber-lance thing Pagaya had made, so he wasn’t ruling it out.

Regardless of future attempts to make lightsabers that might or might not work, based on Blumarine’s experiments, Luffy had instantly realized the potential for Vivi. He had, of course, forged her both a set of training urumi and her current live version of the flexible blades. Yet, for all that they had been a good change for her, they hadn’t quite fulfilled an identical role to her old Peacock slashers or Boa’s serpent that worked mostly like a urumi when hardened with Haki. They were better, but not quite perfect. The one thing that the Peacock Slashers had over them was their compatibility with Vivi’s Air Doors. The Slashers had actually been a very good fit in that respect, as they could dart out through an Air Door opened behind an opponent, then be called back before she snapped the door shut.

Urumi couldn’t quite duplicate the same feat.

Luffy had been mulling over how to fix that deficiency, having had some ideas based on the Eisen Whip that had been wielded by the priest Ohm back on Skypiea. Unfortunately, like most cloud constructs, Iron Cloud didn’t work as well as sea level as it did on a Sky Island, and Luffy hadn’t quite cracked a way to fix the issue. At least, not until he’d seen how Blumarine used Starstone, and instantly realized that he could use the special properties to create a set of urumi for Vivi. Ones that would allow her to, at will, extend the weapons in a fashion much like her Peacock Slashers worked. The fact that combination of JotonFrost, Starstone, and the Lunar Steel he was making the rest of the weapon out of should make it conduct Haki insanely well was a nice bonus as well. Likewise, the Ebony Night used in the handle would make it much easier to control the extension, even for someone who didn’t have a lot of experience with spiritual energy.

Now, he just needed to get the combination of everything right. Which was likely going to take a significant number of failed attempts and exhaustive tests over the next few days…

… … …

“So, one of the Road Poneglyphs is on Wano, then. Does Kadiou even know it’s there?”

Robin might not have been focused on information gathering when they’d first met the local group of ex-Roger pirates, but that hadn’t kept her from going back to ask careful questions later. She’d guessed, correctly, from Rayleigh’s behavior, that they would be tightlipped about some specific things. Yet, she’d also guessed, again correctly, that they weren’t unwilling to pass on key pieces of information. Particularly so now that they’d been fully convinced that Luffy more or less had the blessing of both Shanks and Rayleigh.

They apparently knew the location of each Road Poneglpyh at the time they’d been found by their own crew and hadn’t been against sharing. Well, they hadn’t been shy about at least hinting, regarding the locations. Even if they refused to say what was on them. They’d been somewhat cagey about one of the four, saying only to ‘seek out the Mink,’ which was at least a solid clue. The one on Wano, however, they’d been more explicate about. In part because of who currently controlled that island.

“We don’t know for sure, but it’s entirely possible he has no idea. The location was fairly well hidden and underwater. On the other hand, he has at least one Fishman officer, so he might well have found it by now, even if he wasn’t looking for it. Either way, you’ll need to either sneak in or defeat him to get at it. Preferably the latter.”

Robin nodded at Rowing’s explanation, her fellow scholar having been the one that truly had answers for her on a number of questions. Not just about the Poneglyphs, but about some of the older crews that had been active during the time of the Roger Pirates as well. There was a fair bit of overlap between those old crew and the current big names like Kaidou, Big Mom, the Whitebeard Remnant, and so on. Some of the top officers for those crews were still the same, and a number of other old blood pirates were still in positions where knowledge of their basic nature and abilities was still useful.

Ochoku of the former Rocks Pirates, for example, was the current ruler of the ‘Pirate Paradise’ Island, Hachinosu. Given he was considered to be a legitimate threat, similar to Shiki, by the Marines, it was worth knowing a bit about the man. Which, apparently, was basically that he was a self-serving scumbag who was suspected of having sold out Shakky and started the ‘God Valley clusterfuck,’ of which the Roger Pirates would tell Robin very little.

Others, such as King Harald of Elbaph, were now dead. Yet the information on them was useful background to understand the New World. Likewise, some figures they had at least known of, like Don Chinjao, were retired but still semi-active in shaping the overall picture of the second half of the Grand Line. The Roger Pirates even knew a little bit about a few of the more long-lasting rulers who’d held together their islands in the New World, such as King Elizabello II of the Prodence Kingdom. It was, all in all, a windfall of information. Dated, certainly, but still useful in many ways.

“So then, you mentioned an island that ‘my Captain would fit in perfectly on.’ I have to admit, with a name like Raijin Island, you have me curious…”

Jacksonbanner, the musician of the Roger Pirates, turned away from Brook with a grin. He was by far and away the most ready to share tales, even if his accounts were often obviously dramatized.

“Why, that was an island of death! The first one we ever came across in the New World, and we nearly lost Oden right off the bat! You see…”

Robin listened intently, doing her best to pick the truth from the tall tales. A lot of this information could be quite valuable once they headed into the New World, and she was intent on filing it all away, just in case.

… … …

Boa Hancock was already looking at the door to the Ryugu Kingdom Palace dining room with a frown when one of her own crew burst in. Given she was dining with the Royal Family, this had better be important…but from the panic she could feel in the normally-calm mind of Rindo, it almost certainly was. Thankfully, King Neptune was an easy-going sort and seemed more concerned for Rindo’s clear worry than the fact she’d just barged in. Boa met her crewwoman’s eyes and spoke with an even voice, trying to transmit some of her calm to her subordinate.

“What is it, Rindo?”

Rindo gulped as she looked between her Empress and the King, hesitated for a moment, then seemed to decide not to ask for Hancock to speak alone to take the message. Something Boa understood the reason for a moment later as the woman spoke.

“Empress! We’ve had word from Lady Shakuyaku! A Marine Paddlewheel Fleet has been gathering at Red Port, passing through the Archipelago as they go, and her sources finally learned their target! They will set sail for the Calm Belt today, and intend to target Amazon Lily! Rumors have it that Admiral Sakazuki is back and will be leading the attack. Kuma and some of those Pacifista things have been sighted too!”

Hancock stiffened, even as she mentally calculated. She’d thought Sakazuki had either died or been unrecoverably injured when he failed to reappear after Whitebeard’s War, but him being back and in charge of an attack on her home? That was bad. Not as bad as if it had been Borsalino, but worse than Kuzan. Any of the three of them could fight at her level, but Sakazuki was both a zealot…and had a Devil Fruit that caused massive collateral damage. There would be no choice but to attempt to fight him before he reached the island, as fighting on it would both favor him and risk the island being turned to so much lava and ash.

Her quick calculations, mentally adding Kuma and what little she knew of the Pacifista to the tally, came up with…questionable results. Superficially, it was a force that they might legitimately be able to handle on their own. The upgrades to the island’s defenses, which the Marines should have no knowledge of, meant that regular and mid-level Marines would be unlikely to survive to reach land. If it were only Sakazuki, Kuma, and Pacifista, that likely wouldn’t be enough firepower to threaten them. Something about that didn’t feel right, and she puzzled over it for a long moment before it hit her.

Red Port. That was why her instincts were screaming.

Not even Lady Shakuyaku would have much information about a fleet gathering there, as only World Government approved ships passed through that port. It wasn’t normally used as a staging port for the Marines, either, more typically serving the Celestial Dragons or rulers arriving for events like the Levely. That fact made security tight at Red Port. Enough so that even an information broker like Lady Shakuyaku wouldn’t be able to find out much, particularly if the Marines were actively concealing a buildup in order to stage a raid against Amazon Lily.

Which meant the former Empress’s information was virtually certain to be incomplete.

She would know only what rumors had leaked to the rebuilt Sabaody Marine Base, or what forces had stopped at the Archipelago to resupply or reorient before making their way to Red Port. Any ship arriving from another direction, or any additional high-level officers coming from the New World by crossing the Red Line? Lady Shakuyaku would be blind to those additions, and if someone as cagey as Garp was willing to launch an attack on Amazon Lily…there would be more.

All of that passed through Hancock’s thoughts in mere seconds, and she turned to face King Neptune, his sons, and Jinbei. Her voice was formal as she spoke.

“There is no way they will bring so little against Amazon Lily. It appears that I will be the first to test the steel of which our alliance is forged. I trust I can count on your support?”

Hancock’s nails bit into her palms as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. This was not a comfortable position to be in as Empress, and she hated it. Yet, she would not let her people down. The question remained…

“The Sun Pirates will mobilize immediately. It is good we have been training with you this last month!”

Hancock relaxed fractionally. She should have known that the Knight of the Sea of all people wouldn’t hesitate to back up his word. A moment later, Neptune’s own voice boomed out and she relaxed farther.

“Indeed! Fukaboshi will rally the Elite Guard you have been helping train, jamon! This will be a fine way for them to prove themselves to our allies, jamon!”

Good. That was good. Prince Fukaboshi himself had been a pleasant surprise. He’d unlocked Armament Haki on his own, despite Neptune not passing on the knowledge due to his dead wife’s idiotic beliefs. With even basic instruction, Fukaboshi had unlocked Observation as well, and proven quite gifted with both it and Armament. Aside from his aging father, he was now likely the best the Neptune Army had to offer, and had turned the Elite Guard into a respectable force. At least a few of them would have qualified for the Kuja Pirates…barely and at the lowest rank, but it was progress. Besides, Jinbe and the Sun Pirates had been able to more openly ally with the Royal Family and they were certainly solid back up.

Nor, of course, would that be the end of their reinforcements.

“You have my thanks, King Neptune. Please excuse me, however. I believe I have certain calls to make to gather other allies as well, and to get us all in place in time.”

Hancock had no doubt at all that the majority of the Strawhats would come, nor that King Nefertari would send a few of his Royal Guard at minimum. Likely including one or two of his more powerful Devil Fruit users. If the World Government and their dogs in the Marines thought they were going to capture Amazon Lily without more power on hand than they’d needed for the Whitebeard War, they were about to discover they were very sorely mistaken…

… … …

Hina walked confidently, making use of the fact she’d worn a Marine Officer’s uniform for most of her life, as she strolled back out of the small port town she’d already extracted the information she required from. Notice wasn’t normally a busy island, but it was playing host to a Marine flotilla at the moment. Not a large enough one that they hadn’t been able to dodge through its sea patrol with judicious use of Air Doors, but enough of one that Hina had been confident that they would know something about overall operations in the North Blue.

Given the need to sneak onto a Marine vessel, Hina had opted to go alone, after knocking out a rare female officer roughly her size and stealing her uniform. It hadn’t been a perfect fit, with Hina having a more generous bust than the lieutenant had possessed, but officers were allowed to modify uniforms to a degree and she’d made it work. Well enough that, with the right confidence and timing, she’d gone completely unchallenged after slipping onto the largest Marine vessel present.

The fact that it had been one of the Marines rare cruiser-class had helped, though it had been rather telling as well. For the most part, the Four Blues used larger schooner rigs and a few frigates as the bulk of their vessels. The Grand Line used larger ships to handle both the rougher seas and greater endurance needs, with the smaller ships generally being two-decker frigates that had roughly a par of 144 ft (44.1 m) gundecks. The Marines then tended to skip straight to battleships, which were three-deck 205 ft (62 m) monsters, with only a few irregular vessels in between. Oddly enough, despite its lower profile, Hina had worked out that the twin-hull design of the Discovery was actually a fair bit broader abeam than a Marine Battleship. It’s growth after eating three Devil Fruits also meant it was 195 ft (60.4 m) and its internal decks had grown enough in height that it honestly probably came quite close to massing the same as a Marine Battleship.

Which made it a special sort of ridiculous that their ship could operate on such a small crew, assuming it wasn’t operating itself.

Still, Hina had let her thoughts wander a bit far afield. The cruiser she’d found as the largest Marine ship in dock was an odd duck, a 180 ft (54.9 m) design that the Marines didn’t have many of. Or, at least, they hadn’t. The fact the cruiser was new construction had told Hina that Garp had been changing the makeup of the fleet in ways that, frankly, made a lot of sense. Battleships were overkill in the Blues, even with two of them in partial rebellion, but those same rebellions meant the more typical schooners and handful of proper frigates weren’t enough. The fact that the new cruisers would be able to handle the entirety of paradise, rather than just the first section, after the rebellions were put down just made the choice make more sense.

If she had to guess, he intended to replace the bulk of the Paradise fleet with cruisers, or at least that’s what he’d set in motion. It would free up Battleships and their large crews to fight it out in the New World, from which the Marines had needed to pull back heavily after their losses to Whitebeard. Of course, the entire program likely wouldn’t complete until the next Fleet Admiral sat in his place, but Garp would have set whoever that was up with a good hand. At least if they knew how to play it.

Regardless, the largish ship had made a good target for her infiltration, as such ships had crews of a few hundred at minimum. All running on multiple shifts. A single lieutenant you didn’t recognize wouldn’t draw notice, so long as she’d looked the part. Which, of course, was rather easy for her. The watchman at the dock might have been more alert…if she hadn’t bypassed them with Geppo across the water. While slightly nerve racking, the whole thing had gone even more smoothly than she’d hoped. Including, as it happened, getting the information they needed.

The Germa Kingdom was only two days sail away, at most, and currently being encircled by a Marine fleet that included no less than three full Admirals. They were going to need to be very careful to pull this off, without the benefit the Discovery gave to sneaking around by being able to fly and submerge…

... ... ... ... ... ...

A/N 1: Much like subtly showing Robin's advancement through the lemon, I used the crossing of the Red Line to show one aspect of Vivi's powers that I haven't spent much time on. Specifically, that she's been training hard to expand the SIZE of the Air Doors she can create, with the hope of eventually being able to instantly move even the Discovery around. Though, as shown later when Hina is thinking over Ship Sizes, the Discovery is BIG. The various additional powers it has gained has caused the Discovery of Storms to expand, and I wanted to highlight just how MUCH by giving some size comparisons to ships actually seen within the series.

A/N 2: I figured, if anyone is aware where the Road Poneglyphs are currently at, it would be some of the remaining the Roger Pirates. As events have drifted from canon, this provided a way to clue the Strawhats in to places they need to look for them. Not really important NOW, but something I wanted to put in place. Luffy blind-lucked his way into finding most of them, in canon, and that doesn't really track with this version of him or the crew.

A/N 3: Luffy's upgrade for Vivi's weapon is based on Soul Calibur's Ivy, along with similar characters. The one downside switching weapons had for her was it taking some synergy away from using her Air Doors with her Peacock Slashers, which could dart in and out of open portals. The ability to EXTEND the weapons fixed that.

A/N 4: Uh-oh! Amazon Lily is under threat...which some of you totally called as being a thing that would happen at more-or-less the same time as the Germa Rescue :-p. Still, I wonder if any of you connected the dots between Hancock's idle observation that cross-training with Fishman Island might also be worth looking into? Meaning they are going to have some hands on deck from all members of their Alliance. Those poor Marines don't know just what they are running face-first into...

A/N 5: Most of you should know that I have Early Access chapters over on P-atreon (find the link for it in my profile, or just search 'Novus's Fanfiction Works' in your browser of choice). I'm currently updating four stories a month, with 20,000 words each, plus at least one 10,000 word extra. One Piece: Halfway Broken is updated twice every month, so there are always 20,000 words of content in Early Access (currently chapters 137-142). That said, none of my fanfiction work is permanently paywalled. Support is appreciated, but it will make its way here and elsewhere eventually, if you're patient!