Smooth Sailing Chapter 9: Clatter Town 2 (Patreon)

Smooth Sailing Chapter 9: Clatter Town 2

Chapter 9: Clatter Town 2

A dozen pirates spilled out of the factory, like ants swarming from a kicked ant hill, upon hearing the clamor I’d raised by ‘knocking’ on the doors. They were confused and mad, and when they saw the gate had been forced open, they naturally made their way towards it, and us, with weapons drawn.

Gunshots rang out, but I stepped in front of Buggy and Medaka, using my Devil Fruit enhanced body to deflect the bullets. This naturally caused the Ganzack Pirates to stare and gasp in disbelief, but I didn’t give them a chance to recover.

Kicking off my sandals I proceeded to Slide across the ground on the soles of my feet, slamming into them like I was a bowling ball, and they were a bunch of ugly pins. My mace sent them flying, each blow scattering pirates this way and that.

Behind me, Buggy was using his Devil Fruit to detach his hands from his body while they carried knives. These blades flashed through the air, stabbing into limbs and necks. Not one to be outdone, Medaka let out a battle cry and charged into the fray, stabbing at downed pirates with a vicious fury.

The dozen or so goons sent to stop us were dispatched with ease, and we were soon standing amidst their fallen bodies.

“Where do we go next?” I asked Medaka, and she pointed to one of the doors the pirates had emerged from.

“In there!” she informed us. “We gotta go through that one!”

I nodded and put my sandals back on. Didn’t want to try and walk down stairs with Slippery and Smooth feet. Once that was done, the three of us approached the doorway. The stairwell beyond was lit by a few electric lights, and it rumbled and hummed with the sound of construction and industry echoing up from below.

Descending the stairs, we did not encounter anyone else trying to figure out what had happened to their companions who’d gone to inspect the gate. Upon reaching the bottom, we emerged into a large underground cavern that had been converted into a sprawling industrial complex.

It was a hive of activity with dozens of men in dusty, dirty clothes walking around with boxes of ore, coal, and dynamite. Others were toiling away on assembly lines or crucibles full of hot, molten metal, crafting the parts and pieces needed by Ganzack and his crew.

Overseeing it all were pirates armed with whips and swords who used these tools to ‘motivate’ the workers. They weren’t as dirty as the prisoners, but hygiene clearly wasn’t something Ganzack particularly cared about.

“This place is huge,” Buggy said quietly as we snuck over to a stack of boxes. “What are we going to do down here?”

“The pirates keep the prisoners in cages when they aren’t working,” Medaka said, pointing to a corner of the facility. “They’re forced to work eighteen hour shifts a day, and barely get any food or rest!”

“Hm, that’ll be a problem,” I muttered. “Weak, starving, tired… they won’t be much use in a fight.”

“Ganzack will probably try to use them as hostages,” Buggy guessed. A valid concern. There was also the issue of what we’d do with the people currently staggering around under the lashes of Ganzack’s crew.

“We need to get them out of the way,” I decided. “Medaka, can we do something to stop work early, maybe get the overseers to return the prisoners to their cells for a bit?”

“The only time that happens is when Ganzack throws a feast for his men,” Medaka replied. “Even when I broke vital components or set fire to their supplies, they just forced the townsfolk to fix and replace everything in addition to their normal workloads.”

She then tilted her head thoughtfully. “Although… they do stop working for a bit whenever Ganzack performs a test firing.”

“Ah, of course. Don’t want to have anyone around that could throw a wrench into things. Literally and figuratively,” I said, nodding in understanding. “How often does he do so?”

“A couple of times a day. Next one is at four p.m.,” Medaka told me.

“Almost four right now,” Buggy commented. 

“Then we wait to strike at that moment,” I said.

We all remained crouched behind the boxes, lurking in the shadows. It soon paid off, as the pirates began to herd the townsfolk back to their cages, before clearing the area. They didn’t want to be close when the Devil’s Tower fired, lest they lose their hearing.

As the pirates left, some of them came close to our hiding spot, and so we struck before they could find us. We jumped out, Medaka’s spear catching one in the chest, while Buggy’s knives slid into necks. I hit one pirate so hard that when he slammed into a metal pipe he broke it, steam gushing out.

Naturally this caught the other pirate’s attention, and they rushed towards us with battle cries on their lips, but a deafening “BOOM!” roared through the underground chamber, shaking the machinery and causing a few pirates to lose their footing. The Devil’s Tower had fired a test launch, and the recoil was both loud and violent this close to it.

A couple seconds later we all felt as much as heard the explosion of the mortar shell that had been shot moments earlier.

“Shit!” I grunted, my head ringing, and Medaka groaned, clutching her helmet and staggering about drunkenly. It must have been even worse for her.

Buggy was fine, though, and for a moment I wondered out, but then I saw that he’d Chopped off his ears and stuffed them under his hat so the sound of the explosion was muffled.

Somewhat envious of the fact his hearing was still intact, I decided to vent my anger on the various pirates still standing around.

Most were just like myself and Medaka, groaning a little in pain at the deafening roar of the Devil’s Tower, and they were crushed in short order, my mace smashing them around like dolls.

“Is that all?!” I demanded, raising my voice a bit to be heard over the ringing in my ears.

‘No, wait, there actually is something ringing,’ I realized, blinking a little as several alarms were blaring out, warning the rest of the compound that something was wrong.

“Drat, seems like the element of surprise is gone,” I said with a hint of disappointment before glancing around. Bloody and bruised bodies filled the area, all of the pirate guards down for the count.

Just as I was wondering when reinforcements would arrive, the sounds of stomping boots rang out and several more pirates rushed in. These ones were not on the ground level, though. They appeared on the catwalks and were armed with guns so they could shoot down onto whatever was causing problems.

Smart idea, and a good way to deal with revolting prisoners, however, they weren’t dealing with starved and untrained laborers, but mostly competent fighters.

As I was pondering who to smack with my club first, and whether or not I could actually jump that high or if I’d need to throw my weapon to reach them, a furious shout rang out.

“What the Hell is going on out here?!” an angry voice called out, demanding answers.

We all looked over to the source of the cry, and found the very man we’d been looking for standing on one of the catwalks overlooking the factory floor, two musket-wielding pirates beside him.

Ganzack had a purple goatee and hair done up in a ponytail, with a black pirate tricorn bearing his Jolly Roger. He wore a black suit of armor with red pauldrons and a black cape. Of course, the most eye-catching part of his ensemble was without a doubt the red mechanical crab claws rising menacingly from the red pauldrons.

Looking at Ganzack’s robotic crab limbs emerging from his shoulders and back and moving flawlessly in response to his commands like they were other limbs was very impressive, but also caused me a bit of a headache.

‘Yet another example of the bizarre tech levels this world has,’ I thought with a grimace. They had cybernetic enhancements like that and yet still used sails?! Insanity!

“Answer me!” Ganzack shouted, glaring at the intruders.

“Yo,” I said calmly, resting my iron club on my shoulder. “Name’s Alvida. Your pet tried to eat my ship. And when I came to give you a sternly worded complaint about letting wild animals off their leash, your henchmen tried to assault me and my companion.”

Ganzack frowned at that, hands gripping the catwalk’s rails tightly. “You attacked my men because of that?!”

“I’ve done worse for less,” I retorted, and Buggy nodded in agreement.

The purple-haired pirate’s face turned red with fury. “KILL THEM!” He spat out.

Bullets rained down onto the three of us, but they Slipped off of me, and bounced off of Medaka’s armor. Buggy wisely dove behind cover, but was soon providing back up by chucking sticks of dynamite onto the catwalks via his hovering hands.

The pirates screamed as the explosions went off, tearing down the metal gantries and walkways and causing them to tumble to the ground. I wince as some of them landed wrong, their limbs twisting badly and in the wrong directions. One was even unlucky enough to fall into a crucible filled with molten metal, and another landed on the assembly line and was dragged into the gears!

Ganzack also fell, but he fired a grappling hook out of one of the legs in his robo-armor that wrapped around a support beam. He swung to safety, avoiding a painful impact with the ground or worse, and glared at us furiously.

“I’m going to kill you!” he vowed, and charged forward, bladed crab claws snapping at me.

I parried the first crab claw, striking it aside, before having to twist aside to avoid the second claw trying to clamp onto my left arm. I was not sure if I could Slip out of being caught by one of those scissor-like limbs, and didn’t want to find out.

In retaliation, I kicked at his face, my straw sandal covered foot slamming into Ganzack’s chin and knocking him back.

When that happened, something small and metal fell out of his coat, and I quickly snatched it up when I saw that it was a key ring!

‘These probably go to something important,’ I mused, and my eyes drifted towards the cages where I could see several prisoners banging on the bars.

“Medaka, go and free the townsfolk,” I ordered her, tossing the keys her way. She looked at me suspiciously but nodded with determination and rushed off to get a good old fashion prison riot going.

‘Or would it be a slave revolt?’ I wondered to myself as I stalked towards Ganzack as he recovered from my kick.

He glared at Medaka’s back as she ran off and raised the guns built into his robotic crab legs towards her, but I jumped in the way, protecting her from the hail of bullets that shot out after her.

“Trying to shoot a little girl?” I demanded angrily. “How despicable!”

“Shut up!” Ganzack roared. “You don’t get to judge me!”

“I think I do! I’ve never taken over an island to make a giant, useless weapon!” I retorted.

“USELESS?!” he shrieked. “The Devil’s Tower will let me conquer the world!”

“No it won’t,” I told him bluntly. I didn’t bother to explain, either, and just charged in to lay the smackdown on him.

The dismissive way I’d spoken to him and shot down his dream caused Ganzack to erupt with anger, and he took a step towards me. Yet before he could take another, Buggy jumped up and laughed maniacally.

“HA!” Buggy shouted. “Eat knives!”

Buggy leapt out of hiding and hurled several throwing knives at Ganzack, but the pirate captain reacted quickly, his robo-limbs shooting several projectiles out of the air, before shattering the rest with his larger claws.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Ganzack sneered.

“Shit,” he muttered, and immediately began to dodge roll away as Ganzack whipped out two pistols and starting blasting away at the miniature clown.

“Why are you running?!” the crab-themed pirate mocked.

“Technically, he’s not! He’s rolling!” I shouted back as I rushed in, iron mace swinging like an oversized baseball bat.

It smashed apart one of his flintlocks, and he dropped the second in order to get away from my berserker-like smashing. He still had firepower, though, and as he quickly darted backwards, Ganzack started shooting at me again.

“If it didn’t work the first two times, why would the third attempt possibly be the one that did?” I asked mockingly as lead pellets Slipped off of my exposed skin.

“How are you doing that?!” he demanded, frustration leaking from his voice.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a Devil Fruit?” I retorted, and I could hear his teeth grinding.

“If bullets won’t work, then how about this?!” Ganzack shouted, and one of his robo-limbs fired off a length of chain.

Not having expected him to switch up his attacks, I was too slow to dodge completely, so the metal links wrapped around my right arm, the same one I was holding my mace with.

I gave it an experimental tug. It was good quality steel: shiny, and from a cursory examination, quite strong, too. It was also anchored firmly to the barrel it had emerged from, and the way it had bound me meant I couldn’t just Slip my arm through to get free that way.

‘However, he’s seriously underestimating me,’ I thought with a sinister grin. Too bad, so sad!

“Get over here!” I laughed, yanking on the chain that was still connecting me to Ganzack, and the purple-haired pirate was yanked off of his feet towards me thanks to my superhuman strength.

I started to swing him around like a flail, cackling as I smashed him into ground and machinery. Ganzack obviously didn’t like that, and after a couple seconds had to use one of his own crab claws to snip through the chain keeping up together.

“You little bitch!” he growled.

“Little? Have you seen the size of these puppies?” I asked with a laugh, emphasizing my bust.

“I’m going to cut them off then force you to eat them while I fuck you to death,” he declared, his voice low and sinister, and I shuddered.

Ganzack’s quiet fury was much worse compared to when he was shouting. I also didn’t care much for his tone or claim, and I bared my teeth at him in a vicious grin.

I then ran at him, but instead of attacking the pirate captain I swerved and began to run up a pile of boxes, before leaping off of them like a springboard.

“TAKE THIS!” I roared, slamming my mace down on Ganzack’s head.

The self-proclaimed ‘Pirate Shogun’ blocked the attack by raising both claws above his head, but I was significantly stronger than him, so my attack drove him to his knees.

However, the explosions from the dynamite Buggy had been throwing around earlier had weakened the foundations, and the ground began to crack before collapsing beneath Ganzack’s feet.

The two of us plunged down into the darkness below, but my fall was arrested by a pair of hands grabbing onto the back of my shirt.

“Shit, you’re heavy!” Buggy grunted as his tiny body hauled me back over to solid ground.

“Oi! Don’t you know better than to say that to a woman?!” I demanded angrily, shaking a fist at him.

He just huffed and dropped me down next to the hole. I rubbed my butt before standing up and shouldering my mace.

“Wonder what’s down there?” I mused aloud.

Hadn’t Ganzack’s warship been buried underground or something? No, wait, it had been built inside the cove underneath the island, and when it tried to leave, the exit was too small, so it tore a hole through the wall of the cove.

“We’ll find out soon if we’re not careful,” Buggy replied grimly, before poking me in the thigh. “Come on, we need to leave before the ground becomes more unstable!”

“Yeah, probably best to see if Medaka managed to free the townsfolk, too,” I said with a nod.

Since I didn’t see anybody inside the cages, Buggy and I made our way back topside so we could see what was going on.

Walking through the underground facility towards the stairs, I noted there were fewer pirates in Ganzack’s crew than I thought there would be. Probably only fifty or so in total. A decently sized crew for the East Blue, but for somebody who’d built a giant warship and wanted to take over the world, it seemed rather low.

‘Let’s see… we took down about twelve when we broke down the gates. Then there were those guards and the handful of pirate overseers in the factory… I think we’ve taken out half of ‘em so far,’ I mused.

Upon exiting the subterranean foundry, I heard the sounds of a scuffle. The townsfolk, led by Medaka, had been trying to escape, but it seemed like the last of Ganzack’s crew had blocked the way out, preventing them from escaping.

‘The townsfolks are obviously fighting back, if the clamor is any indicator,’ I thought, raising my club to charge into the fray.

Rushing at the two dozen or so pirates, I slammed into them from the side, since the townsfolk had their backs to me. The pirates fell like dominos with every swing, and I grinned.

“Gah!” a pirate cried out. He had just tried to stab me, but somebody got to him first.

‘Hey, wait, that guy got slashed from behind!’ I realized, noticing the wound that felled the man who’d tried to stab me just now.

But how was that possible? The pirates were blocking the open gate, that meant their backs were to the town. Had the people seen the fighting and risen up alongside the escapees?

Curiously, I turned my head to see who’d come to help, all while ignoring the other swords and axes that were Slipping off of my body.

“Hep? Pep? Pop?” I uttered, surprised to see the brothers attacking Ganzack’s pirates from behind.

“Captain!” Hep said, breathing out a sigh of relief when he saw me. “You’re alright!”

“What happened?” I asked, glancing at the three of them.

“What happened?! That huge explosion happened!” Pep exclaimed, even as he shot another pirate in the back. “The wave it caused nearly capsized the boat!”

“Ah. Oops,” I said with a wince. “Sorry about that.”

“Please don’t run off like that again!” Hep pleaded with a frantic expression.

“I’ll try,” I chuckled. “Are Eliza and Jodie okay?”

“Yeah, they’re back with the Lovey Dovey,” Hep assured me.

“We came ashore to find out what was going on and if you needed help, and then we heard there was fighting up here!” Pop added, continuing the tale. “And when we saw it was Ganzack’s men fighting a bunch of starving townsfolk, we figured talks between you and him had broken down.”

“Good work!” I said, giving them a thumbs up. I then spun around and punched an ugly bastard in the face who’d been trying to grope me in the middle of battle.

Getting back to the fight, I was able to finish off the last of them with my crew beside me. Starving and exhausted, the townsfolk had desperately needed our help to fend off the pirates.

“Thanks,” Medaka muttered gratefully as the fighting died down.

“No problem,” I replied, before patting her on her helmeted head.

She grumbled and swiped it away, but I could see that there was a cute little blush on her face.

“Who are these people?” one of the former prisoners asked, looking at the five of us.

“Just people with grudges against Ganzack,” I replied, not wanting to reveal our pirate nature.

“Well, an enemy of that bastard is a friend of ours,” another townsfolk said, before coughing.

“Speaking of that crab-obsessed weirdo, where is he? Is he dead?” Medaka asked me hopefully.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I hit him so hard the ground broke, and he fell even deeper underground.

“Even deeper?” Medaka exclaimed.

“That means he fell into the cove,” a prisoner spoke up. “He had us building something down. A ship, I believe.”

“That means he’s going to escape!” somebody else shouted angrily.

“We can’t let him do that!” Medaka shouted angrily. “He has to pay! For my father! For everyone else!”

“Calm down,” I urged them. “We’ll catch up to Ganzack soon! We just need to find a way down there, and then…”

Before I could finish, the ground suddenly began to creak and groan, and cracks ran through it, widening with terrible rending sounds.

Large chunks of rock and rubbles began to fall as part of the factory’s wall fell away into the ocean, revealing a large battleship decked out in armored plates and sporting the crab-like Jolly Roger all over it.

Through the dust, I could vaguely make out Ganzack standing at the helm, carelessly guiding the vessel out from the cove in which it had been hidden. There were no other people on deck with him, meaning his crew hadn’t escaped their rightful retribution at the hands of the townsfolk.

“BEHOLD! THE KING CRAB!” Ganzack laughed maniacally as his warship emerged, chunks of the cliff falling off of it as it plowed its way through the stone and reefs.

As it pulled away from the island, I noticed that the Devil’s Tower was still standing upright in the center of the factory, although if any more

‘Ganzack didn’t have time to install it!’ I realized. ‘He must have been planning to do so after the testing firing!’

Luckily for us, without the Devil’s Tower, the damage done to the island and factory was minimal, much less compared to what I remembered from the OVA.

‘Though without his plesiosaur to pull it, the whole ship is a lot slower than it could be,’ I mused.

“It’s getting away!” Medaka exclaimed furiously.

“Come on, men! Let’s sink that bastard’s piece of crap!” one of the former prisoners shouted, and the others let out cheers.

Running around, the freed townsfolk grabbed the boxes of dynamite still lying around, lighting them and chucking them off the cliff towards the King Crab. The explosions rocked the water and the warship, and Ganzack’s furious screams rent the air.

Just when it seemed like he’d escape, though, I rushed over and grabbed several giant pieces of rubble and broke them off and crashed into the front of the vessel, causing it to get stuck and stop moving.  

“Hah! Got him trapped like a fish in a barrel!” I laughed. Then reached over and grabbed Medaka, picking her up by the waist.

“Hey! What are you doing?! Put me down!” she shouted, wiggling a bit.

“Stop squirming!” I told her. “Or do you not want to go beat up Ganzack yourself?”

Medaka looked up at me, eyes wide in awe, and then began to cackle madly. “Yeah! Yeah! Let’s do it! We gotta get him!”

“Hold on!” I declared with a laugh.

I then took a running leap, jumping clear off the cliff down onto the deck of the King Crab, all while Buggy, Hep, Pep, and Pop shouted at me for doing something so reckless.

“You again?!” the Pirate Shogun uttered in disbelief, gnashing his teeth.

“Round Two, Ganzack!” I declared as I set Medaka down.

It was time to finish things, once and for all!