Chapter Text
“Luffy.” Nami’s voice crackles to life over the intercom. She sounds annoyed. “Do you want to tell me why, as I sit here peacefully in navigation, there is a big blinking red light on the gravity controls for the lounge?”
“I dunno,” Luffy replies. It’s probably a good thing Nami can’t see him. He’s upside down right now, and he doesn’t think that would make for a terribly believable argument.
“One: you are a horrible liar. You know this. I know this. So, I don’t believe you. Two: you’re the only one unaccounted for. What did you do?”
“You can’t know where everyone else is,” Luffy protests. “It’s a big ship!”
“It’s really not.” A sigh. “Usopp and Franky are doing their weekly inspection of the bulkhead. Robin and Brook have been taking inventory since this morning. Chopper is down in hydroponics checking on his medicinal plants. Zoro and Sanji are fighting about stars-know-what in the kitchen. I can hear them from here. That leaves you. You know, the person who declared he was bored and wandered off immediately after finishing lunch.”
“But I am bored,” Luffy protests. No point in denying it now. “We haven’t had anything to do for almost a week!”
“So, you turned off the gravity? Who even taught you where that button was?”
“No one,” Luffy says, completely honestly this time. He’d discovered it by accident.
Another sigh. “Well, having a single room with variable gravity on the ship risks upsetting the equilibrium of the pressure locks, so I’m turning it back on. You’ve had your fun.”
“Wait, Nami—” Luffy protests as he hears the system in question re-engage, and seconds later he’s hit with a sudden wall of weight as gravity reasserts itself. He had been close to the ceiling. Now, he was in an unceremonious tangle of limbs on the floor.
“Oh, come off it, Luffy. You bounce. You’re fine.” A pause. “But if you’ve broken anything in there with your rubber head, it’s coming out of your cut of the next job.”
The intercom clicks off abruptly and Luffy is left to sort himself out on the floor.
It doesn’t take him very long—growing up with brothers who liked to take advantage of Luffy’s malleability had taught him how to put himself to rights pretty quickly—but that still didn’t solve the initial problem of why he’d messed with the gravity in the first place.
He was still bored.
They’d decided to swing far out of their normal range for a change, on the off chance the conflict out this way might yield some interesting treasures in the form of jettisoned cargo or wrecked ships. With the war going on, regular lanes of trade and travel were drying up, and Nami had insisted they needed to try something drastic to ensure they didn’t run low on beri. They didn’t have any of the necessary licenses to pretend they worked for a shipping concern, so scrounging it was. Luffy had thought it a good idea at the time; after all, coming out to an active war zone should have ensured they ran into something exciting, right?
Except it had been the opposite. They hadn’t run into anything since finding a field of small debris from an old battle a week ago. No fights, no interesting wrecks to explore, nothing.
He’d considered seeing if they could make contact with Ace’s ship for a meetup, but the little gossip they’d managed to turn up during their last stop at the Sabaody outpost made it sound like Whitebeard’s flagship was clear on the other side of the quadrant. Trying to find them would be like trying to find a needle in a smokestack, or however that old saying went.
Luffy was glad his brother was living his best life, even if it did seem like it had taken a different path than the one Ace had always talked about. Sabo had been no surprise; he’d gone off and joined the Revolutionaries as soon as he was old enough to book passage on a starliner leaving Goa by himself. He’d always known what he wanted to do with his life. But Luffy wouldn’t have pegged Ace to end up as an Emperor’s commander, even if his older brother had plenty of reason to hate the government.
Luffy didn’t particularly care about any of that. He had no cause to like the government himself, but he also didn’t want to be taking orders from someone else, even if Ace insisted Old Man Whitebeard was a stand-up guy. He’d much rather see what the universe had to offer on his own terms, with his own people. And if that meant someday they got into a proper fight with the empire, so be it. Nami was always saying she was astonished they weren’t on their hit list already, anyway. After all, they’d had some run ins with their soldiers before, and they already didn’t like Robin.
But the empire that claimed they ruled the entire galaxy was laser focused on their war with the Emperors, and that meant smaller ships like Luffy’s, with no stated allegiance, tended to be beneath their notice. The government considered any ship that skirted its laws to be guilty of piracy, but Robin had explained once that the entirety of inhabited space was too vast for them to be able to micromanage all of it. Hence people like Luffy and his crew, living between the cracks, filling the spaces between the government’s iron fist control over the inner empire and the Emperors chewing away at the edges.
It was a good life. Luffy had always dreamed of living as a pirate, because it was obvious to him that pirates had the most freedom out of anyone. They had the adventures, the excitement, the chance to go wherever they wanted and do whatever they wanted. Gramps and the people he worked with were so uptight and had to listen to what others told them to do even if they didn’t like it. And the Emperors might be pirates, but most of them were still trying to control something. Luffy could never do that. The very idea made his skin crawl.
Shanks would approve, he thinks. Even if he was out there with the rest of the Emperors fighting, too. At least, Luffy was pretty sure he was. Shanks was the Emperor that people never had news about. But that made sense; as long as Luffy had known him, he’d never been too worried about having his name plastered everywhere.
Of course, he hadn’t been called an Emperor yet when Luffy and his brothers had met him. He’d just been another pirate who hung around Makino’s bar back in Foosha. The only difference was he’d been perfectly happy to sit around telling stories to any wide-eyed kids who would listen, instead of cursing them for being underfoot. He didn’t get weird about Luffy’s brothers not being related to him like other adults did, and he’d given Luffy his hat before he’d left. He was the first person aside from his brothers that didn’t laugh when he heard all the things Luffy wanted to do with his life, and that had stuck with him.
Now if only all those exciting things could, you know—happen.
Untangled at last, Luffy lies flat on the floor, staring up at where one of the ceiling lights had taken on a suspicious flicker. He should probably tell Franky or Usopp about that. The last time he hadn’t mentioned something he’d noticed like this a fuse had blown and all the ship’s recycled water had had to be re-decontaminated. Sanji had chased him all over the ship for ignoring it.
Then again, trying to get Usopp or Franky’s attention while they were working on something together was impossible, so they probably wouldn’t even notice if he ran down there. Which meant he’d have to think of something else.
Hopping to his feet, he gives his back and shoulders and good stretch and then turns his attention to the great expanse of nothingness visible through the lounge windows. Some days he was left awestruck by what he could see out there, stars and planets twinkling like pinpricks in the distance, as if beckoning him to come and figure out their secrets, but this expanse of the universe was depressingly empty. Probably why it made a good border zone for the war. There was nothing out here to—
Huh.
He scrambles over to the intercom, slamming a fist down on the call button repeatedly until he hears the line connect.
“What now, Luffy?” Nami’s irritated voice says mere moments later. “Some of us have jobs to do, you know.”
“It’s a ship!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“That’s a ship all right,” Usopp confirms a few minutes later from the bridge, after he’d run the scanners through their paces. “Not sure we want to go after it, though.”
“Why not?” Luffy protests.
“See this?” Usopp points to a screen, upon which a small, blurry picture of the ship in question is displayed. “The blue blotch near the bow there? That’s the Holy Cross. That’s a government ship, Luffy.”
“That’s unusual,” Robin muses from over Luffy’s shoulder. He cranes his head backwards to look at her. She’s got that look on her face, the one that means there’s some mystery here. “We’re right on the edge of Disputed Space. A government ship out here is courting disaster, and that doesn’t look like one of their cruisers.”
“No,” Franky agrees, leaning over the rest of them to get a closer look. “Small craft. Way too small for engaging in operations against the Emperors, but not so small and maneuverable that it makes sense as a scouting vessel.” He runs one metal hand thoughtfully across his chin. “Huh. At that size, I’d almost think it was made for small cargo.”
“Cargo, you say?” Nami’s eyes light up with a familiar glow. “What do you think they might have? People pay a lot for imperial supplies because the quality is always high. Depending on what they’re carrying, there could be a lot of profit in it for us.”
“Yeah, maybe if it were a straightforward salvage mission,” Usopp protests. “But this isn’t a dead ship, Nami. The instruments are picking up a whole crew’s worth of life signs on that thing. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like fighting an entire ship of trained imperial marines for a few crates of their tech.”
“That’s odd,” Brook muses. “The ship is not moving, correct? That would imply something’s wrong, but they haven’t broadcast any distress signals.”
“Might be too close to the border to want to risk it,” Zoro says from where he was sitting in the corner. “If you’re an imperial ship, you’re not getting rescued if the closest person available to help is someone who wants you dead.”
“I’d almost agree with the mosshead,” Sanji chimes in. “Almost. But we’re well within the range of their instruments. We don’t carry an Emperor’s mark. We should come across as a neutral vessel, or at least neutral enough that it’s not too much of a gamble to assume we won’t sic an Emperor on them. There’d be no reason to not hail us and ask for assistance.” He pauses, foot tapping agitatedly against the ground. “Unless dear Nami is correct, of course. Unless they have something special on that ship they don’t want us to know about.”
“I suppose their sensors could be broken,” Usopp muses. “Maybe they don’t know we’re here. Or maybe they’re trying to fix whatever the problem is themselves before asking for help.” He crosses his arms, leaning back in the chair. “Either way, no reason to get all up in their business…right?” He sounds hopeful.
“So? What’s the call, captain?” Robin asks Luffy. There’s a smile in her voice, though, and Luffy knows she already knows the answer. Robin always knew the answer.
“Ask them what they’re up to!” Luffy confirms. “Maybe they need help, maybe they don’t. If they do, maybe they’ll give us something if we do them a solid. Like food.”
“Please,” Sanji says dismissively. “As if standard imperial rations can stand up to what you get six times a day on the Sunny.”
“No, but goods are goods and money is money,” Nami points out. “If a couple hours of Franky slapping their ship into shape gets us even a modest reward, that’s still a profit.” She slaps Usopp heavily on the shoulder. “Hail the ship. We can pretend to act the good citizenry of the empire for a short bit if it means we come out on top.”
“This is a mistake,” Usopp mutters, but he turns back towards the instrument panel. “This is the unaligned brigantine-class ship, callsign TH0U-SUN,” he calls over the comms. He still sounds nervous. “Requesting status from unknown imperial ship. Our instruments are showing engine damage. Do you require aid?”
The open line crackles with static, but after several seconds it becomes clear that if there’s anyone on the ship near their comms station, they’re not planning on answering.
“Well,” Usopp says after a moment. “Guess they’re fine. That’s that, then. Maybe we head to the nearest port and tell someone there’s a ship in distress? We’re going to need a resupply soon anyway.”
“Maybe their comms are down?” Franky muses, moving to the ship’s wheel. Usopp makes a sad squawking sound at being ignored. “Depending on the damage on their end, it could be connecting but not allowing for a response. I could take us in a little closer, just to be sure. Flash the broadside lights to see if we can get their attention visually, stuff like that. Try and get a better read on the issue.”
“Hey,” Chopper says hesitantly from his spot near the front window. “Do you see that light?”
“What light?” Sanji asks, stepping closer. Chopper points out the window, and Luffy follows the line of his little arm. It takes a second, but after a moment he does notice what Chopper’s talking about: a bright light that’s getting brighter emanating from the lower hull of the ship.
“Huh,” Sanji mutters. “That almost looks like…Franky! Hard to port!”
Without hesitation, Franky yanks the wheel to the side, sending the Sunny spinning out of the way of a heavy blast of electrical energy. Luffy can feel the aftermath dancing across his skin as they all slip to the side with the sudden shift. It must have been a close thing, if he could feel it at all. Or particularly strong; usually he was numb to electric fields.
“What the hell is a battleship-class railgun doing on that little thing?” Nami screeches, clinging to the edge of the comms station for dear life.
“I don’t care,” Luffy says immediately, bouncing back to his feet. This was exactly the kind of excitement he’d been waiting for. “Do you think they’ll try again? Ooh, or what if we went over there? We could get a good fight out of it.”
“I will stay here. With the ship,” Usopp says immediately. “To help Franky. You know, in case of any more…giant lasers. And because I have a crippling allergy to imperial bullets.”
“If they’ve got ordinance like what fired on us just now, I doubt they’re using regular bullets,” Brook observes calmly. “Never mind that they’re too dangerous to use aboard ship, but weren’t there reports of the imperial forces talking about upgrading their foot soldiers to all carry new blaster rifles? I do have such a hard time keeping up with all the new technology these days.”
“Oh. Great. Well, I arguably have an even worse allergy to those. So.”
“Relax,” Franky says, reorienting the wheel to bring the ship back to level. “Gun like that, they need at least five minutes to warm up for another shot. That gives us options. If we get closer, they won’t be able to use it without risking blowback damage to their own ship, and if they are protecting something worth cranking that monster up for, they won’t want to take that chance.” He pauses. “Of course, if we do get closer we’ll be in range of their other weapons, most likely. But it’s your call, captain.”
Without another word, Zoro stands up and begins to walk out of the room, adjusting the three swords at his waist in a manner that Luffy knew meant he was ready for a fight.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sanji’s voice cuts across the bridge.
“To the launch bay,” Zoro calls back. “You know as well as I do what comes next, curly. No point in beating around the bush.”
Luffy cackles and ignores the frowns Nami and Usopp give him. Trust Zoro to be on the same wavelength. Of course they were going to go over there! Why would they not? This was the most interesting thing that had happened in a long time.
“I think I’ll tag along,” Robin interjects smoothly. “I must admit to being curious as to what they could be carrying that warrants such a reaction. And I could use the chance to stretch my legs.”
Sanji’s change in demeanor was as dramatic as it was predictable. “Well,” he says, as if trying to justify the change in opinion to himself. “They did fire on us first. And someone should have your back if you’re going, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I hate you guys sometimes,” Usopp mutters, then lets out a long, dragged-out sigh. “I’ll hop on to the weapons station just in case. I guess.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Luffy excitedly shakes off the last piece of his exposure suit and waits impatiently for Robin to carefully collect all the pieces and compress them back into their transport modules. He understood how useful they were—it was hard to board a spaceship that didn’t want you there, and they couldn’t very well linger outside the exterior docks while Robin and Sanji figured out the best way to jack the locks without them—but they were clunky and awkward outside of zero-gravity, and in the narrow corridors of a ship where they would hopefully be getting into a fight, they needed to be able to move freely.
Besides, they wouldn’t stretch along with his body, and while Luffy was confident he’d win regardless, it kind of took all the fun out of it.
“Hold up, you menace,” Sanji scolds, and Luffy reluctantly turns back so his chef can cram a video feed visor over his eyes. He hated the stupid thing, but according to Franky and Usopp he was “shit at explaining what was going on” for those of them back on the Sunny, and this way they could monitor the situation remotely and react or provide support as needed.
When he’d asked why it had to be him instead of one of the others, the only response he’d gotten was “because you always find the trouble.” And while Luffy might replace the word ‘trouble’ in that sentence with ‘fun,’ he couldn’t deny that he was indeed good at finding it. Whatever ‘it’ was.
Also, Nami had threatened to take away his snack fund for when they were in port.
“I was expecting more of a welcome party,” Zoro comments as he fixes his swords back on his belt. “We weren’t exactly quiet about breaking in here. Even if their instruments are broken, they have to know that we’re here. Especially after Franky pulled the Sunny so close.”
“It’s curious indeed,” Robin agrees. “But if there is something valuable on this ship, it’s possible the bulk of their force is closer to it. Still, it’s usually common practice for at least one negotiator to show up if they might be in danger.”
“Perhaps our good commander is someone rather new,” Brook chuckles from where he’s leaning on the wall, waiting for them. He didn’t need an exposure suit. “I’ve noticed the younger set tends to be much looser about following established etiquette.”
“They already fired a railgun at us,” Sanji points out. He pulls one of the smoke sticks he always has out of his pocket, cracks it and sticks it in his mouth. “I think etiquette has already gone well out the airlock, Brook.”
“Ah, perhaps so,” their oldest crewmember admits. “In any case, shall I see if I can poke about and see what’s what? Won’t take but a moment.”
Luffy was more than happy to go exploring the strange government ship blind, but everyone else murmurs their agreement, so he resigns himself to having to wait. Besides; watching Brook be spooky was always a lot of fun.
With a chuckle, Brook goes quiet, and soon he slumps over in the corner, and a slightly greenish cloud coalesces over his body, an expression very much like Brook’s eternally smiling face visible among the vaporous substance.
Brook, like Luffy—and Chopper and Robin—had eaten a devil fruit, and as such had a bunch of fun abilities at his disposal. There were all sorts of silly superstitions about devil fruits and where they came from floating around the galaxy, but Luffy had never paid much attention to that. He could stretch, Robin could grow limbs everywhere, Chopper got to be…well, Chopper, and Brook got to be dead and alive at the same time.
And that meant he could do the super-cool-and-spooky thing of separating his soul from his body, like he was doing now.
With another chuckle, the manically grinning cloud that was Brook drifted through the wall, presumably in search of wherever the ship’s crew was hiding. Even if it wasn’t the way Luffy would approach things, he had to admit Brook’s ability made him the perfect super spy, and he never got tired of seeing him do that.
He was also apparently quite successful, as almost immediately the sound of weaponry being discharged echoed through the hallways.
“Do I hear gunfire already?” Usopp’s voice echoes disbelievingly over the comms. “Is that a new record? You’ve been there for less than five minutes.”
“Hold up,” Sanji says, grabbing Luffy’s collar as he makes a move to run towards the sounds. “Regular laser fire won’t do anything to Brook as he is now. We should hear what he has to say when he gets back before we go running in there.”
“But that could take forever!”
“It really won’t. This is a small ship, and getting separated is just a bad idea. Besides, if you run off now, you’ll miss Brook coming back and telling you where everyone is. You could run around and miss the entire fight.”
Luffy sighs. “Fine.” Sanji did have a point. It’d happened before. More to Zoro than to him, but still.
His patience is rewarded when, after another minute or so, Brook’s ghostly form drifts back through the wall, looking none the worse for wear.
“Well then,” he says, as his soul resettles in his body. “I think it is safe to say that we aren’t welcome. They fired upon me immediately. I didn’t even have a chance to speak.” He adjusts the cuffs of his jacket. “Which says a lot about what we’re dealing with, unfortunately.”
“They didn’t panic, you mean,” Robin says, filling in the blanks. “Which implies that they are used to seeing strange phenomena, or they’re very well trained and disciplined. Possibly both. Which means we should proceed with caution.”
“All I’m hearing is that they might put up a half-decent fight,” Zoro says. “I’m game.” Luffy nods his agreement. They hadn’t had a good fight in a while, and as far as he was concerned, these imperial soldiers had earned it. They’d fired first, after all, and then they’d tried to shoot Brook! Sure, Brook had been fine, but it seemed to Luffy like they were just begging for a fight.
He was happy to oblige.
“This is definitely not your standard supply or transport mission, then,” Sanji observes. “Usually, they post rookies and washed-up career soldiers on those. This sounds more like an assault squad.”
“Oh, you are quite correct about that,” Brook agrees. “While they were so enthusiastically trying to turn my soul into confetti, I took the opportunity to observe the room they’re guarding, which appears to be the main bridge. This vessel might look like a small transport craft, as Franky observed, but the technology in their command center suggests the only thing differentiating this ship from your standard imperial strike cruiser is the exterior shell. This ship is not meant for long hauls. It’s meant for combat.”
“There is also,” Brook continues, “A very obvious crate being guarded on all sides in the center of the room. It seems those suppositions that they might be transporting something valuable were correct.”
“An armed guard and a whole ship specifically kitted out to transport it?” Nami’s voice sounds intrigued in their ears. “Even better. And if they’re going to shoot at you, I don’t even feel guilty taking it from them. Go on, then, boys: bring it home.”
“I’ll keep the Sunny close,” Franky’s voice adds. “There’s been no other shots at us despite our proximity, so either the rest of their weaponry is offline, or their banking on their ability to take you down hand to hand.”
“You wouldn’t feel guilty about it anyway,” Zoro mutters, but he still starts marching down the hall, two of his swords at the ready.
“I know I didn’t hear your cretinous mosshead insult our dear Nami like that,” Sanji says belligerently, and follows closely afterwards.
“It’s not an insult if it’s a fact.”
“So reliable those two,” Robin says fondly. She smiles at Luffy. “Shall we follow? We wouldn’t want them to have all the fun.”
They’d entered the ship through a side hatch on the aft side, and most ships were built with their bridges near the front, so they continue down the passage they’d found themselves in until they reach what looks like the ship’s primary hallway and then follow it towards the front. It takes a couple of tries to keep Zoro going in the same direction, but shortly they arrive outside what is clearly the bridge door.
The door has been left slightly cracked, presumably so the people inside could see them coming after getting jumpscared by Brook, and Luffy can make out a cluster of armed soldiers through the narrow space. Brook hadn’t been kidding about the guns. There were a lot of them.
“Allow me,” says Robin, and crosses her arms.
The effect is almost immediate, as multiple limbs bloom from every available surface inside the room, and the regimented silence that had dominated the room before devolves immediately into a scramble.
Luffy slams the door open to a mess of soldiers being grappled and beaten with their own weaponry.
“Hi!” he says cheerfully, immediately dodging a loose chair thrown in his direction by one of the few people not currently fighting their own gun. “You shot at us. That wasn’t very nice.”
And then he drives a fist into chair-thrower’s face.
With Robin holding most of their guns hostage, the fight immediately becomes up close and personal. The bridge is small, which means there’s not a lot of space to maneuver, but that’s okay. Luffy prefers his fights like this. No tricks, just fists.
He can immediately tell Brook was right about these guys knowing their stuff; Robin’s little trick didn’t make them panic as much as other people she’d used it on in the past, and they immediately fall back on hand-to-hand combat or pull blades. Luffy dimly remembered Zoro saying once that if someone was carrying a sword, it either meant they really knew what they were doing, or they were about to do something stupid. Luffy didn’t know enough about how swords worked to be able to tell which one these guys were, but he had a sneaking suspicion they were probably the former.
But not as good as Zoro, who carves a path through the men surrounding the crate in the center of the room without much effort, Sanji at his heels still yelling about Zoro’s lack of manners and lashing out with his feet to encourage anyone still standing to consider just staying down. Brook hung back with Robin, alternately showing off that Zoro wasn’t the only skilled swordsman on Luffy’s crew and making sure no one thought of disabling Robin.
In the end, it’s a pretty short fight. Half of them had been incapacitated by Robin’s preemptive strike, and the rest of them are more than enough to take care of the remaining soldiers. Not five minutes later, Luffy punches someone who might be the commander—he could never remember what bars meant what on imperial uniforms—and the last man is laid out on the floor, leaving them standing in a room full of unconscious bodies.
“Hmm,” Robin says, shaking her arms in displeasure. “They’ve definitely seen a devil fruit before. They were smart enough to go after my limbs, and I felt some special forces tactics mixed in there. I lost count of how many fingers they broke.” She flexes her hands. “Unpleasant, but thankfully not permanent.”
“I was hoping for a better fight,” Zoro grumbles. Luffy agrees; this had been fun, but he’d barely had time to work up a sweat. There was still the question of what was in the crate, though, and that still had the potential to be really interesting.
Clearly, he wasn’t the only person thinking that way. “Crack that thing open, already,” Sanji says, stepping over an unconscious body near the doorway. “I’ll keep an eye out for reinforcements.”
“Doesn’t look too tricky,” Zoro mutters, inspecting the container. “Hold her steady for me, would you Robin?”
Several pairs of arms obligingly bloom out of the floor to anchor the box in place as Zoro begins wrestling with the top section.
“So, what is it?” Nami’s voice demands impatiently in his ears as Zoro finally wrenches the lid off the crate. “Is it valuable?”
Luffy looks at the contents of the box and can’t help but let out a confused noise. “It’s a rock.”
“A rock?” Nami exclaims. “They’re protecting a rock?”
“Yeah, like a big fancy stone,” Luffy confirms. He looks closer. The rock was resting on a soft bed of packing material and had a strange blueish sheen to it and was covered all over in strange markings. “I don’t think it’s an ordinary rock.”
“Oh,” Nami stops huffing, and Luffy can hear her thinking hard over the comms. “You don’t happen to mean a gemstone by chance, do you?” She sounds hopeful. “Like…a big, massive jewel?”
“No,” Robin cuts in, sounding amused. Nami scoffs. “But rest assured, Nami. I have reason to believe this is very valuable indeed.” She bends over almost reverently to closer examine the tablet in the box, gently picking up the stone to reveal another one underneath. “My, but this is quite old. And there’s more than one.”
“Like…poneglyphs old?” Sanji calls back over his shoulder from the doorway. “That would make a lot of sense. We’ve seen how much effort they’ve put in to keeping people away from anything that might suggest the empire-mandated history curriculum might be a load of shit.”
That makes Luffy perk up. Robin had a whole history with these poneglyph things. All Luffy knew was that they were important, and that the government was hellbent on making sure no one was able to read them. Supposedly, they showed the way to a star somewhere in the galaxy where all your dreams would be made reality, and it was a rumor the government had never been able to quash entirely.
Luffy was going to find that star someday, he just knew it. And it would be the adventure of a lifetime getting there. It already had; when Robin had first joined the crew, there had been a whole mess on the planet of Alabasta involving one of those poneglyphs, not to mention Vivi and her dad and that big asshole Crocodile trying to muck it up for everyone. The details of what exactly had happened were a bit fuzzy by this point, but it had been one of the best adventures Luffy had ever had.
He missed Vivi.
“They’re not poneglyphs,” Robin confirms, and for a moment Luffy feels a stab of disappointment. But then: “I think they’re older. The material of the stone is similar, and the pictographical language is reminiscent of the poneglyph texts, but it’s structured much more like an everyday language instead of a coded one. Almost as if the poneglyph script was built using this as a reference.” She rests a hand on her chin. “I’m going to need my notes, and a decent amount of time to make sense of this.” She sounds calm, but Luffy’s known her long enough to know that she’s absolutely thrilled. “The implications of something like this existing…no wonder they fought so hard to keep it from us.”
“Well,” Nami’s voice cuts in. “If that’s what we’re going to get, better to examine it back here in the comfort of our own ship than over there. Sanji, Zoro; go poke around and see if there’s anything else valuable we can snatch. We’ve already knocked out the crew, might as well make the best of it. Luffy, use that ridiculous strength of yours to haul that crate back over here.”
“Aw,” Luffy protests. “Why can’t I go exploring, too?”
“Because I trust you to stay on task about as much as I trust you around unattended food. Sanji’ll keep Zoro on course but he can’t babysit the both of you.”
“Oi,” comes Zoro’s irritated response from the hallway. “Just for that, I’m not telling you if I find shit.”
“But Sanji will,” Nami points out triumphantly. “Hurry up, boys. I want to be out of here before the hour’s up.”
“I have some cable in my pocket,” Robin says to Luffy. “As long as you can get the crate back to our exit point, Brook and I can get it hitched up to transport back to the Sunny. And if you’re quick, maybe you’ll have enough time to go exploring.” She winks.
Luffy brightens immediately. Robin always understood what he needed. If he had to drag a box down a hallway first, then so be it. He could do that.
Robin and Brook exit the room, leaving Luffy to examine the crate. It’s big, but not too big that he’s going to have much difficulty with it. The extra stretch to his arms will make it a piece of cake, and he’d carried heaver things around as a kid. A pity this wasn’t one of those boxes with a built-in levitation feature for easy movement, though. Punting those down hallways and watching them spin through the air was always fun.
As he gets his arms around the box, he hears a soft clicking noise behind him. Bending his neck back to look, he sees the maybe-commander he punched out earlier kneeling woozily on the floor, the door to the bridge shut behind him, and the light indicating it was locked engaged.
“I should have known someone would come for this,” the man wheezes. He’s bleeding from his temple, and Luffy can see the bruises from where he’d punched him already blooming on his face. “Who sent you? Newgate? Kaido? You have to be working for someone.”
“Uh, no one,” Luffy responds, confused. “We’re just kind of…here. Didn’t you hear us calling you? You know, before you shot at us?”
“A person can say anything over comms. Only a fool believes everything he hears. For all I know, you’re responsible for our engine troubles in the first place.” He slumps against the wall, regarding Luffy with an expression he can’t identify. “Tell me, pirate: is it your intention to take the contents of that container with you?”
Luffy looks back at the crate, with his arms still coiled tightly around it, and then back at the soldier. “Yes?” Was this a question? It seemed pretty obvious to him.
“It is the will of the gods that no lower beings are privy to those contents,” the officer intones seriously. He’s smiling now, but it’s not a good smile. The kind that makes a shiver run down Luffy’s back. Dishonest smiles were never a good sign. “And who am I to defy the will of the gods?”
He raises his sidearm, and Luffy goes still. Blaster pistols were annoying, but you could dodge a shot if you watched the finger on the trigger closely. He’d done it before, and even if he was hit, Chopper could patch him up just fine. He’d had worse. He’d just have to make sure the man was knocked out good and proper afterwards before he tried to move the box again.
Too late, Luffy realizes the gun isn’t aimed at him.
The shattering noise as the shot tears through the window behind him is almost immediately swallowed up by the vacuum of space as Luffy, the box and the officer are dragged through the hole.
The splintered material of the window drags deep grooves into his skin as he’s flung outside the ship, but it’s not enough to stop him from careening into the abyss, the force of the explosion propelling him far from the open hole in its side.
“Luffy? Anyone? What the hell’s going on over there? We just saw a burst of debris off one side of the ship and your video feed has gone offline.”
Frantically, Luffy flings an arm back towards the ship. He has a bit of time, he knows it. And his crew on the ship itself will surely have figured out what happened. If he can just get back to the door, they can figure out a way to drag him back through.
His hand finds purchase somewhere inside the blown-out room, and he feels a momentary thrill of triumph. Hastily, he retracts his stretched-out arm, yanking himself swiftly back towards the ship.
So hastily, in fact, that he does not notice the piece of debris in his path until his head meets it at speed, and things go black.