The Spade Pirates’ ship wove its way between gigantic roots breaching the surface of the sea. We headed for a place away from prying eyes where we could moor and disembark.
The Sabaody Archipelago had a proper port, of course, but we were staying away. For one thing, we needed to be in the area for at least three days while our ship got coated. What would be the point of starting the coating process if we were spotted by the Navy, bounty hunters, or unscrupulous pirates in the meantime?
There were several lawless areas within the spacious archipelago where the government couldn’t enforce its will, and we chose one of them as our destination. If anything, a lawless district would be more comfortable and familiar than staying somewhere the Navy might attempt to seize our ship while it was incapacitated.
We found a spot nestled deep between the giant roots and quietly maneuvered our ship inside. Once we started preparing to moor it to the roots, Skull warned the crew, “It’s not just the Navy and bounty hunters to watch for. There are world nobles and slavers, too… Lots of danger around. Stay out of trouble until our coating is done.”
Especially you, he seemed to say, looking at Ace. “I’m talking to you, Master Ace.”
“Huh? How come?” Ace asked. He had been staring at the island with sparkling eyes.
“I said, we don’t want to get into any trouble while we’re here…”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Hey, you think those Graman things are any good?”
“I don’t think you do get it.”
Graman were steamed buns filled with sweet bean paste that were a specialty of the islands. Clearly, all Ace could think about was what he would eat once he got off the ship.
Skull sighed and shot me a look. I knew what he was trying to say, so I grimaced and reassured him, “I’ll keep watch over him. If nobody keeps tabs on Ace, he’s likely to go and light some world nobles on fire or something.”
“Whoa, don’t even say that! I might be an intel guy, but even I wasn’t anticipating something like that! Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare do it! And that’s not a reverse dare!” Skull shouted, suddenly panicked. I laughed, and after a moment, so did he. In the meantime, the ship came to a complete stop. We had arrived.
With the delicate job of maneuvering the ship to the shore completed, the crew was suddenly more relaxed.
“Yeah, running into the world nobles would be kind of a mess, but as long as I don’t catch the eye of the Navy, I’m not worried about any—”
“There you are, Fire Fist! We meet again!” said a familiar voice, right as Skull was saying, “—one…else…”
Skull’s head creaked and turned like a rusty gear toward the sound of the new voice. I glanced over the side of the ship, fearing what I would see there.
“Come out peacefully! This time you’re under arrest!” said the bold voice. I didn’t need to see her to know it was Isuka. She stood there on the shore, arms crossed, looking up at the ship.
“There she is again…”
“How many times has it been now?”
Her appearance got the crew murmuring amongst themselves. Not out of fear, though—it was more annoyance than anything else.
Ever since we’d entered the Grand Line, the ensign had been constantly badgering our ship. Isuka was obsessed with arresting Ace; each time we shook her off and got away, she’d appear at our next destination to harass us again. Given that we were still sailing safely along, it was obvious that she had not succeeded at her goal. Ace was still a perfectly free man.
“Hey, it’s Isuka. Whatcha doin’ here? On vacation?” Ace called out from the deck of the ship. He sounded quite unconcerned.
“Of course I’m not on vacation! I’ve come here to arrest you, you fool!”
“Oh yeah? Hey, what kind of local specialties do they have here, aside from Graman?”
“You want souvenir recommendations? I bought Grasen rice crackers for my subordinates. They do keep well… Hey, I just said I wasn’t on vacation!” Isuka shouted, but I, and probably everyone else present, had the same thought:
She’s on vacation…
Definitely on vacation…
She’s clearly on a vacation…
For one thing, she wasn’t wearing her usual Navy uniform. She was in rather conspicuous casual tourist clothes. She must have spotted the ship while enjoying some free time. How could we have managed to run into this particular individual in the entire vast stretch of the archipelago? It seemed like fate working its magic…
Simply put, Isuka was a “good guy.”
She had a strong sense of justice, and she was dedicated and honest to a fault.
In a fight she was tremendously powerful, but she always lacked a finishing move when push came to shove. This was how Ace consistently slipped away from her—he could always get away when he needed to.
It had become a pattern, the punchline of our every encounter.
Isuka was a familiar figure to all of us in the Spade Pirates, not just Ace. She would probably protest this description, but she seemed like less of a Navy officer and more of an oddball who showed up wherever we did just to liven up the mood.
“Sheesh… At least she didn’t bring her men along this time,” Skull said with relief. Isuka was all alone, most likely because she was enjoying some shore leave. “I’m sure we can manage her like usual if she’s on her own.”
That was how little respect Isuka had earned from the Spade Pirates.
“Yeah, we can hide the ship again later,” I agreed, noticing the vast difference in enthusiasm between Ace and Isuka.
“Come down here, Fire Fist! Surrender yourself, if you know what’s good for you!”
“Don’t think we’ll be able to get off the ship for a while,” I sighed, grudgingly impressed by the determination of the woman down below, who continued to shout up at us.
“She’s stubborn. I’m jealous, in a way. Wish there was a stubborn woman chasing after me like that.”
Skull had always admired Isuka for her tenacity and refusal to give up on chasing us.
“But she’s Navy.” I reminded him softly.
“Yeah, I know, I know…” Skull sighed.
“You’re going to get your ship coated, aren’t you? There won’t be any escape!” Isuka promised, and laughed. I wondered when she was going to lose her voice from all the shouting.
Eventually I began to tune her out. After a moment, my stomach growled. I wanted to disembark and get something to eat on the island, but that wasn’t possible now. I’d have to eat leftovers on the ship and wait until Isuka got tired and gave me a chance to slip away.
“Hey, Ace, I guess I’ll just eat—” I started to say, before I realized that Ace was not on the deck. Belatedly, I realized that he had stopped responding to Isuka’s taunts a while ago.
“Dammit!” I swore.
Down on the shore, Isuka was still in the exact spot where she had first appeared, looking up at the ship with her arms crossed. She hadn’t even moved her face from one side to the other.
“I mean, really, how blinkered can you be?!”
Unbelievably enough, Isuka kept her eyes trained directly up at that side of the ship the entire time. Knowing she’d be that way, Ace simply hopped off in a different direction where she wasn’t looking.
“Hah! Have you gone silent because you’re terrified, knowing there is no escape, Fire Fist?! At long last, your reckoning has come! Fire Fist! Are you listening to me? Answer me! What’s wrong with you? Have you fallen asleep?! Fire Fist!”
He’s obviously made a getaway already.
I stared down at Isuka with pity in my eyes as she continued shouting and wailing. Ace was probably strolling along the market stands in town by now, picking out whatever looked tasty.
But suddenly…
“Where’s Ace?”
The door to the ship’s interior opened a crack with a creaking sound that seemed unnecessarily slow and creepy. Peering out through the crack was the man who hardly ever showed his face: Mihal.
“Teach! What a rare surprise,” I exclaimed when I spotted his glasses and whiskers through the doorframe.
Though he called himself a teacher, Mihal never showed his face in public unless giving an official lesson. He generally stayed shut inside his library even when we reached a new island. If he dared to venture within a step of the outside world, then something bad must be happening.
Mihal reached an arm out toward the deck, treating the door almost like a shield. There was something clutched in his hand.
“Ace’s wallet fell on the floor outside my cabin…”
I went pale. Something bad had happened.
“H-he doesn’t…h-have…any money? And he went…into town…for f-food?”
“This is bad news, Master Deu,” bellowed Skull, grabbing my shirt. “We’re gonna be here for three whole days!”
“Y-you said you’d watch over him!”
“I didn’t think he was going to disappear that fast!”
“W-what do we do now?! He’s going to torch a world noble at this rate!”
“Is he?! Would he really do something like that?!”
Skull and I quaked with fear imagining the worst possible scenario. It would take three days to coat our ship. We couldn’t leave this place until then—we were stuck. So we had to avoid any unnecessary trouble during this time. It was bad enough that Isuka had spotted us the moment we dropped anchor here…
“Dammit, I gotta go after him! You take care of the ship!”
I snatched the wallet out of Mihal’s hand and jumped overboard to go after Ace.