Smooth Sailing Chapter 22: Ocean's Navel 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 22: Ocean’s Navel 2

“This is stupid.”

“Your face is stupid!”

“Why you-!”

“Medaka, stop playing with the sadsack,” I told the red-head, not bothering to look over at where she was bothering Hamu. I was busy adjusting the cannons and making sure they were ready to be fired.

“Ugh, fine,” Medaka grumbled as she went over to my side, leaving the teenager spluttering indignantly.

“Sadsack?!” he shouted angrily. He took a step towards me, but was stopped by his caretaker.

“Hamu!” Meroie shouted, smacking him in the back of his head. “Play nice!”

“Seriously, I don’t get why you’re here if you’re just gonna complain and be a pessimist,” I told the teenager.

Hamu glared but grumbled, before looking away, leaving his blue-haired caretaker to roll her eyes.

“Because despite what he says and how he acts, Hamu wants to see this happen as badly as the rest of us,” Meroie replied.

“And he’s the only one who knows the way into the Sacred Treasure’s inner sanctum,” Buggy added, and the young woman winced but nodded.

“Yeah. That too.”

Yesterday, our crews had gone around asking for information on the Beasts of God and the mountain. Learning Hamu was basically a prince had been a surprise, and kind of a funny one. It was also the most important intel we got.

Apparently, his mother had been the island’s chief, which apparently meant only she knew what the Sacred Treasure was, and how to reach it. Unfortunately, she died trying to stop the Funny Pirates.

Due to being very young when Joke had attacked, Hamu only knew how to navigate the labyrinth within the Mountain of God and knew little else about the treasure or the monsters, but that was good enough for me and Buggy, and so we recruited him to help us. Mostly by promising to kill the monsters and free the island if he helped us. Hamu agreed pretty readily at that.

We ended up getting Meroie joining in as well because she refused to leave Hamu alone, and so that was how we got ourselves a guide to the city and the rest of the island.

“Are we ready?” I asked, glancing at the rows of cannons.

“Almost,” Pep said as he checked a rangefinder. Several of Buggy’s crew were doing the same and then making minute adjustments to the cannons and their elevation.

“Will this work?” Meroie asked nervously.

“Unless it can endure a barrage from a dozen cannons using high explosive ammunition, then yes, absolutely,” I replied.

“Damn straight! My flashy Buggy Balls will blow that dumb octopus out of the water!” the clown laughed uproariously.

“Okay, we’re done!” Pep announced, giving us a thumbs up.

“Excellent!” I said with a nod, before turning to Buggy. “Care to do the honors?”

“Why thank you,” he said with grin before grabbing a linstock. “Hey, bluey, how much longer before it shows up?!”

“Your hair is bluer than mine,” Meroie muttered, then, aloud, “Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two. It always appears in four-hour intervals.”

Everyone waited with baited breath, and then, just as she’d promised, there was a rumbling down below as the monstrous cephalopod began to stir.

“Here we go,” Hamu muttered as the tentacled Beast of God burst out of the Ship Graveyard, flailing around and smashing things up.

“Hahaha! Bombs away!” Buggy cackled as he pressed the linstock against the first cannon’s firing hole, and it fired with a roar.

That was just the start. Buggy went down the row, laughing maniacally as he triggered the rest of the cannons, raining destruction upon the Ship Graveyard.

The first shell landed near the guardian beast, sending shrapnel flying, and the octopus looked around in bewilderment. But then the second cannonball landed even closer, tearing off a tentacle and causing a strange blue ichor to spurt from the wound.

Writhing in pain, the monster began to roar and grab junk to fling up at the edges of the pit. Most fell flat, but I did have to leap forward to protect us from the mast of a ship that was thrown too close to us.

“YAH!” I shouted, smashing apart the pole of wood into splinters with my mace.

“Whoa!” Hamu gasped, staring at me in shock.

“Oh, damn!” Meroie whistled. “How’d you get so strong?”

“All natural, babe,” I said, winking at her.

She flushed a little and looked away, and I chuckled, calling that a victory.

Back with the Beast of God, more and more explosions rocked it, tearing chunks out of its rubbery hide. The octopus was no fool, and it managed to deflect some of the bombs by throwing rubble at them, causing them to explode prematurely.

But it wasn’t enough, and several more cannonballs were loaded up, and we just kept firing. For ten minute we did nothing but rain bombs and solid iron spheres onto its head, and soon, the target was obscured completely by smoke.

We had to wait a bit for the wind to blow it away, and when it did, we were greeted with a sight that caused waves of cheering to ring out from the people watching nearby.

The giant octopus had been thoroughly blown to pieces and scattered across the Ships’ Graveyard. Blue blood stained the shipwrecks and the water, and for the first time in a decade, the monster’s rampage had been stopped.

“Y-you did it!” Hamu gasped in awe, and Meroie’s jaw was on the floor.

“I can’t believe it! We shot the Beasts of God with all sorts of firearms and tried using other weapons as well yet they all did nothing!” she exclaimed. “How… what sort of bombs were you using?!”

“Yeah, no idea how Buggy does it, but he makes some crazy fireworks,” I chuckled, resting my club on my shoulder, before turning to the others. “Alright, everyone, you know your orders. Those of you coming with us to the mountain, get onto the platforms! The rest of you are on ship-watch duty!”

Choruses of ‘Aye-ayes!’” rang out as the two crews broke up into the assigned groups. For Team Monster Slayer, there weren’t many of us. Besides me, Buggy, Hamu, and Meroie, Cabaji was coming along, as was Medaka and Jango.

For the acrobatic swordsman, it was because he beat Mohji in Rock-Paper-Scissors. For Medaka and Jango… well, it was kinda awkward to admit, but they were strongest people on my crew. After myself, of course.

‘I need to start upping the training for my crew more,’ I thought with a mental frown.

Cabaji and Mohji could transition to the Grand Line’s insanity well enough. Just give them decent weapons and maybe a Devil Fruit or two, and their own strengths and training would let them up reach a decent level of strength. Perhaps as strong as a Marine Captain or Commodore if they played their cards well and didn’t slack off.

For my crew, it’d be a bit trickier. Jango was firmly a Marine Lieutenant in terms of combat potential, but in canon never got any stronger, even post timeskip serving under Hina, who made it to Rear Admiral.

‘His hypnosis could easily make him a major threat, beyond what his raw combat potential is. But he has to be strong enough to even survive a fight in the first place. As he is now, Jango’ll get bodied if he’s not careful,’ I thought. ‘Some Six Powers training will help.’

 And then there was Medaka. A ten-year-old. A physical strong one, true, but it was clear she needed a lot more training with her naginata. Some other gimmicks wouldn’t hurt.

‘Maybe I’ll give her Ganzacks’ notes and let her build some sort of power armor of her own,’ I mused.

Ideas for another day, though. Right now, we had a second Guardian Beast to take down!

“Remember the plan!” Buggy announced as we lined up on the platform that would take us down to the bottom of the pit. “Stay together, and let me and Alvida take the lead!”

“Roger!” the Monster Slayer team replied loudly, and he gave a nod before turning to Leery.

“Send us down, old man!” he commanded, and the shipwright snorted by complied, pulling a lever.

There was a creak, and then the wooden platform began to lower as the crane’s winch turned. We began our descend into the Ocean’s Navel, and readied ourselves for battle!

111 &&& 111

“How did Joke and his crew get down here in the first place?” Medaka wondered as we slowly descended on the cargo elevator. “Seems like it’d be pretty easy to stop them from using the lifts. Or if they did get on, just cut the ropes when they get there and have ‘em drop!”

That was honestly a good question. The pit was deep, disturbingly so, and it had taken us five minutes just to descend half way down into it. If any pirates tried to break through and reach the island at bottom, it should have been easy to stop them.

“Don’t know how he did it,” Meroie replied with a huff. “One moment his ship was up on the Dock Ring, the next it had suddenly appeared down in the Ship’s Graveyard. Didn’t need to use the cranes or any of the other stuff at all, just bypassed it completely in the blink of an eye.”

Buggy and I shared a look before saying “Devil Fruit” in unison with sagely nods.

“Wonder which one? If it was instantaneous, it might have been the Ring-Ring Fruit,” Buggy mused. “I recall that one from my time on the Grand Line. It let the user create portals wherever he wanted, and objects that passed through one ring appeared out from another.”

“I’m putting money on some sort of Fruit that let him switch targets around,” I said. “One of the barricades looked like it had gotten smashed apart, so that might have been caused by a large amount of rubble and some other shipwreck suddenly appearing where he’d been docked.”

“Switching places, huh? Yeah, I can see that,” the Grand Line veteran said with a nod. “Although the Warp-Warp Fruit could work. It allows for teleportation. Probably not that one, though. That Devil Fruit hasn’t changed users yet. I’d have heard if the old monster who owned it had kicked the bucket.”

“Warp-Warp Fruit?” I uttered. ‘That sounds familiar… wasn’t that the Devil Fruit Van Augur had?’

The sniper of the Blackbeard Pirates had gotten himself a rather dangerous power after Teach went and offed Whitebeard, and when combined with his insane shooting skills made him a major threat.

Though from what Buggy said, it currently belonged to somebody rather dangerous. Possibly one of the Monsters of the Roger Era, or even before that?

“You know, the more I hear about your past adventures, the more I wonder why and how you ended up in the East Blue,” I admitted, and Jango and Medaka both nodded their heads. Even Cabaji looked interested in his captain’s past, though he was polite enough not to say anything.

“I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet after all of the insanity, alright?!” the red-nosed pirate snapped.

“Fine, fine, just curious,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender.

When Buggy huffed and looked away, I turned my attention towards to our destination.

‘I know that the world was flooded centuries ago,’ I thought, eyeing the perfectly circular sinkhole and the water rushing into it. ‘I can’t help but wonder if somehow, the Ocean’s Navel was once considered to be at ground level when the waters suddenly rose.’

The idea of an entire world drowning beneath the waves was frightening. How had the Ocean’s Navel survived something like that?

Curious, I reached out and touched the wall of water that was nearby. My hand passed through and I felt a bit of my strength leave me, but it wasn’t that bad. Not like the Seastone had been.

‘Well, it’s a not forcefield, at least as far as I can tell,’ I mused, drawing my hand back and wiping it on my pants. ‘Something else must be keeping the water from swallowing this place, though.’

I looked up towards the are we’d just come from, and was momentarily dazzled by the dozens of rainbows that glistened above our heads. The spray from the ring of waterfalls was catching the sunlight just right, creating a kaleidoscopic dome of colors that you didn’t see anywhere else in the East Blue.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Meroie asked, having noticed my gaze, and I nodded.

“Mysterious as well,” I murmured, before shooting her flirtaceous look. “Kinda like you.”

Meroie blushed and looked away, while Hamu glared at me for hitting on her.

“Keep it in your pants, Alvida,” Buggy snorted.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I replied, before leaning towards the bluenette. “We can take our pants off after we’ve saved the island.”

That caused Meroie to turn a very interesting shade of crimson while she let out an adorable squeak. Clearly, she wasn’t used to somebody being so forward with her.

“Ugh, adults are gross,” Medaka groaned, sticking her tongue out at me.

For everyone’s sake, the freight ride came to an end soon enough, dropping us off at the bottom of the sinkhole.

Once, there had been a second set of docks down here, which had connected the island to the Dock Ring above and cut through the densely packed debris of the Ships’ Graveyard. Now, though, the Kraken-like monster’s rampage had reduced it to ruins, adding another layer of wooden splinters to the place. 

We had to gingerly pick our way across the rubble, carefully avoiding any unstable parts that might send up plunging into the depths, as well as rusted pieces of metal and rotting wood that might give us tetanus just for looking at it funny. All while carrying some barrels and a cannon that would be used to take down our next target. It left us tense and wary for even the slightest shift in the structures we were using as a makeshift bridge.

‘Though at least somebody is treating this like a vacation,’ I thought as I sent my co-captain a side-eye.

“Oh, hey, I recognize that one!” Buggy called out cheerfully as he pointed at a half-sunk galleon. “That belonged to ‘Crazy’ Carl of the Insane Pirates! And over there, that sloop is a merchant vessel from Belforst! I wonder if it still has any of its famous cheese onboard?”

“Keep the looting and plundering till afterwards, Buggy,” I suggested, and he shrugged, his wide smile still on his face.

“Fine, fine! Ooo! That’s a carrack from Tobogan! They haven’t made any of those for decades, so that ship must be over a hundred years old!”

“You certainly seem to be in a good mood,” I commented.

“I can’t help it! All of these old ships have got to have a bunch of long-lost treasure in them! It sends my treasure hunting senses into overdrive! Ah! I haven’t felt this way in-! in…”

Buggy suddenly trailed off as he realized just how long it had been since he’d had any sort of excitement or drive in his life, and he mood became subdued.

‘Has it finally hit him that he’s wasted his life playing it safe all these years?’ I wondered, feeling a smidgeon of hope.

If Buggy began to regain is old fire and love of adventure, then it wouldn’t be that hard for me to convince him to do some training to become more than a comedy character – and maybe impart some wisdom from his time on the Roger Pirates on the rest of us.

Yes. This diversion could turn out to be a net positive after all, even if I didn’t get a new ship out of it.

“Yar-har-har! You sure know your ships, eh?!”

“Huh?!” I exclaimed, looking around. Who said that? It certainly wasn’t one of us!

I wasn’t the only person who was confused, as everyone else was looking for the source. The expressions on Hamu and Meroie’s faces had darkened, though, and they clearly recognized it.

“That damned voice,” Hamu growled.

“Where is it coming from?” Medaka wondered.

“Over there!” Jango called out, everyone turned to follow his finger. He was pointing at… a completely ordinary bat?

“Yar-har-har!” The black flying fox let out another human laugh before flying into the air and circling us.

“That voice… What the hell?” Buggy exclaimed. “That bat is too small to be a Zoan!”

“It’s just a bat that mimics voices,” Meroie said, glaring at it. “It used to belong to Joke, but didn’t end up getting killed with the rest. Nowadays it just flies around the island, laughing at us and repeating that bastards words.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Buggy said, watching the bat flutter about.

“Yeah, there’s a kind of Devil Fruit called a ‘Zoan’ that turns people into animals,” I said, also observing the bat. “Has three stages. A fully human base form, a fully animalistic form, and a hybrid mode. Though usually Zoans tend to be… bigger.”

“I’ve never heard of a Zoan’s animal form being smaller than the person who ate it… then again, I suppose it could be possible, especially for an animal that is supposed to be small,” Buggy mused, scratching his chin.

‘Still, I don’t think this is the result of a Zoan Devil Fruit,’ I thought slowly. ‘Isn’t the Bat-Bat Fruit supposed to be eaten by Clone-Stussy? Clussy, if you will?’

That didn’t mean it was impossible. She could have eaten it in the two-year time skip for the canon timeline, but something told me there was some other explanation.

“Yar-har-har! Smart ones, aren’t ya?” the bat cackled mockingly. “Strong, too!”

It landed on broken mast, hanging upside down before pointing towards the mountain with its wing.

“If you want the treasure, you have to defeat all three Beasts of God to pass through!”

“That’s not true!” Hamu shouted when we all turned towards him for confirmation. “There’s nothing about having to slay them in order to reach the inner sanctum! The guardians only appear when it has been breached!”

“See? It’s just repeating things Joke said when he was alive,” Meroie scoffed. “Idiot must have thought the guardians would be awakened when he invaded the island and have to be defeated for the treasure, or maybe they’d wake up when he entered the temple at the top of the mountain. Who cares, though?”

“I do. Because that bat sounds way to coherent to merely be mimicking previously heard phrases, and is trying to get us to fight those monsters for some reason,” I pointed out.

“Sounds to me like a typical case of one fellow trying to trick idiots into doing his dirty work for him, all so he can swoop in at the least minute to steal the treasure. Classic treasure hunting tactic used by people who like the shiny stuff, but hate the actual ‘adventure’ part of treasure hunting,” Buggy declared, nodding with all the authority of a man who’d probably done that exact same trick at some point in the past.

“Wait, so this whole time, you had no idea that Joke was alive? And turned into a bat?” Medaka asked the natives incredulously.

“It’s not him!” Hamu shouted. “He’s dead, alright?!”

I watched the bat fly off and found myself unable to believe the teenager. Joke was definitely still amongst the living… somehow.

Him being alive or not didn’t really matter right now, though. We had a job to do, and a monster to slay.

We finished picking our way across the grave of countless sunken ships a little bit later, and made it to the island’s shore. We were greeted with silence, though plenty of people could be seen peeking out of their homes, hope shining desperately in their eyes.

“Seen better days,” Jango commented, perhaps a bit insensitively as we walked through the streets towards God’s Mountain.

“You try keeping a city spotless during ten years of occupation by giant monsters,” Hamu shot back.

“Alright, alright, just saying,” the hypnotist said apologetically.

 “When will the second beast appear?” Cabaji wondered, eyes darting about.

“It tends to appear an hour after the octopus, or whenever it is raining,” Meroie replied.

“Sunny out right now, so we’ve got half an hour before it pops up,” Medaka noted. “Guess that means we can prepare to face it!”

“The best place to do that would be the foothills,” Meroie suggested, pointing towards the mountain.

Half of the island was full of buildings, equal to any other metropolis in this world. The other half was farmland, though right now it was overgrown with weeds and poorly tended to because of the monsters.

There was a small area around the mountain though that was left untouched. These steep, rugged hills weren’t really suitable for cultivation or building onto, and were left as a sort of divide between civilization and the islander’s holy mountain peak.

They’d make for a perfect place to lay an ambush on the other Beast of God that had been terrorizing the Ocean’s Navel.

With half an hour left, the group picked a hilltop and began to set up their traps. Mostly simply things, like a boulder that they’d roll down the hill, as well as some barrels of tar and oil that would make for excellent firebombs.

“Here it comes!” Meroie suddenly shouted, and everyone tensed up and looked out towards the water where a giant shape could be seen rising out of the deep.

The second so-called Beast of God was a massive red lobster-like creature. It loomed above the houses of the city, taller than even the church spires. Its giant claws looked as if they could shear through the hull of a warship – and based on the way some of the vessels in the graveyard looked to have been cut apart, it had done just that in the past.

And yet despite its size, it moved with surprising care through the streets, avoiding crushing anything as it went. It kept to the shore and did not venture far from the water, but from what Hamu and Meroie had told them, it would happily go further onto the island in order to chase down anyone who tried to attack it. Out of all of the monsters, this one had taken the most lives due to its amphibious nature.

“Hey, ugly!” Medaka shouted. “Suck on this!”

A small cannon had been lugged up onto the hilltop and loaded with a special cannonball, and as soon as the crustacean had appeared, it was fired at the Beast of God. It screamed through the air before exploding brightly, becoming a flare that caused the eyestalks to swivel towards it, and then towards the direction it had come from.

Seeing our group on the hill standing next to the cannon, the evil lobster let out a shriek and began to charge forward, scuttling towards us.

“Wait… wait… oil it up, now!” Buggy shouted, and the barrels of oil were kicked over.

The contents spilled forth, drenching the side of the hill, and the lobster monster stumbled and became unable to keep on going as it began to slip, its legs unable to gain any traction.

“Tar!” he ordered next, and I hefted the two barrels and chucked them down at the monster.

The barrels shattered and coated it in sticky tar which clung to the carapace, and the blow also caused it to finally tip over and collapse completely, falling into the puddle of oil at its feet.

“Ready to boil a lobster?” I asked with a grin, turning to Cabaji, who nodded and stepped up to the edge.

The acrobat exhaled and unleashed a jet of fire from his mouth. It was a neat trick, honestly. He had special dentures that could be clicked together to make a spark, and when he combined this with a mouthful of oil that he could spit out, Cabaji could pull off a reverse fire-eater.

Cabaji’s flaming spit struck the giant crustacean, and with it completely covered in flammable substances, it instantly ignited and turned into a roaring bonfire.

Screaming shrilly in pain, the lobster started to thrash around, claws digging into the dirt and tearing chunks out of the ground. Some of these clods and clumps were hurled about, but were no danger to us as we were too far from its flailing.

“Am I the only one who thinks it kinda smells… good?” I asked. As the lobster was being baked in its own shell by the fire, a delectable scent was rising up and it made me feel hungry.

“Well, I guess we know what we’re having for lunch,” Buggy joked.

“Mmm… I could go for some seafood right about now,” I commented. I then glanced over my shoulder towards the Ships’ Graveyard where the octopus’s remains were. “Hey, think we could cook up and eat what’s left of these monsters for lunch?”

“You… you want to eat our sacred guardians?” Hamu asked incredulously.

“Hey, it’s only fair, don’t ya think?” I replied, and after a moment he nodded.

“Yeah… that sounds about right,” he declared, folding his arms.

Meroie looked like she wanted to scold him, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. She also wanted to have a literal taste of revenge.

Talking about eating it and its kin didn’t sit well with the Beast of God, and with a shriek it forced itself up onto its legs, even as its shell cracked and blackened from the heat. One of its eyes popped, but that didn’t stop it.

Once it had found a way to stand up, it began to charge up at us, claws reaching out to snip our bodies into pieces, but I intercepted it by jumping down from the hill towards the crustacean with my club raised high.

“HAH! TAKE THIS!” I roared, slammed my mace into the top of its head.

With a loud crack, the armored carapace was sundered, bits of charred red shell flying everywhere. More importantly, the spikes on my weapon dug deep, tearing into its brain and pulping its last eye, and a second later, it collapsed with a gurgle and spurt of bluish ichor.

“Ugh,” I grunted, feeling disgusting due to be covered in splatters of blue goo. I shook my club, getting most of the lobster-gunk off, before looking back up at my companions.

“That’s two down! One to go!” I declared, flashing them a thumbs up. The shocked look on Hamu and Meroie’s faces was priceless, and I grinned.

Above, the bat that had been circling our heads yet out a maniacal “Yar-har-har!” And did it just glow a little?