The Muggy Kingdom had once been a flourishing nation, but now it lay in ruins. Darkened homes lay ransacked and collapsed, as though trampled by giants, and even what remained of the castle seemed ready to crumble and sink into oblivion at a moment’s notice. The cracked cobblestones were covered over with moss.
It was a silent kingdom, broken walls holding back its words. Not even rustling leaves or the cries of wild animals interrupted its long silence. Yes, the ruins of Muggy Kingdom were shrouded in silence almost every single night—except for this one, when a pair of noisy travelers made their way through the rubble, bringing the din of their quarreling with them.
“You were on grocery duty last week. Why didn’t you buy me cocoa?!” one sniped at the other.
“I can’t buy something that’s not there,” her companion shot back irritably. “I asked at every store in town, so you should be thanking me! If you want it so bad, go search for it yourself.”
“You know it’s not that simple! It takes ages just to get to the closest village, and that place is tiny!”
Perona and Zolo continued bickering as they walked on from Muggy Castle, where they were staying as unauthorized guests for the time being. A pair of humandrills loped a few paces ahead of them. About fifteen minutes prior, Perona had been relaxing in her room when a humandrill had come knocking on the window. The creature gestured for her to follow and tugged on her sleeve until she was outside the castle. There she happened across Zolo, being escorted the same way; the humandrills had something to show them, apparently.
They crossed through the ruins of the kingdom and exited the forest at the seaside.
“Okay, so what are we supposed to be looking at?” Perona demanded. The humandrills pointed insistently out beyond the water, where a large barrel was bobbing in the waves. It was wound in rope, and something that looked like a flag was tied to it.
“Someone’s barrel drifting?” Zolo asked, squinting.
“Maybe there’s cocoa inside of it!” Perona exclaimed.
Cocoa was Perona’s favorite drink, but it was very hard to find on Gloom Island, and she was getting quite cranky about it.
“People fill those barrels with offerings to the god of the sea. You think you’re gonna find cocoa powder in there?”
“Hey, it could happen. If I were the god of the sea, I’d bestow my favor on whoever offered me some fine cocoa!” she said.
In fact, alcoholic beverages and preserved foods were far more common cargo for these barrels. But Perona considered the possibility that the person who had set this barrel adrift had a more refined palate, and had placed something tastier inside.
“Anyway, we gotta get out there and see what’s in that barrel!” Perona said excitedly. Then, almost immediately, a certain realization put a damper on her excitement: I don’t want to go out into the open water!
The sea did not take kindly to those with Devil Fruit powers like Perona. Being submerged in water made her vulnerable and weak. Perona’s Devil Fruit powers allowed her to float in the air, so potentially she could fly out to the barrel without getting wet, but the thought of even floating above the surface of the water made her feel terrified.
On the other hand… Perona glanced over at Zolo. He had been training hard, and had a collection of cuts and slices to show for it. It would be cruel to insist that he dive into the salty seawater to get the barrel.
Fine. I guess I’ll go, she thought, steeling herself for the experience. She was about to float up into the air when he grabbed her arm and yanked her back down.
“I’ll go,” he said, and immediately set off, sloshing through the waves. It looked so natural that she found herself just watching him go.
Then she came back to her senses and called out, “What are you doing? It’ll get in your wounds!”
“No, it won’t,” he called, without looking back.
“Liar!”
“Just wait there,” Zolo snapped, his back still turned to her. He dove into the water and began to swim out from the shore.
Perona made a disgusted face. “He wants to get seawater in his cuts, doesn’t he?”
Zolo’s sword fighting mentor Mihawk didn’t hold back from thrashing Zolo mercilessly during their training sessions. In addition to his usual collection of cuts and slashes, Zolo had obtained more wounds when he and Perona had crash-landed at the castle recently. But Zolo never seemed to pay much attention to the condition of his body.
He’s driven by an overriding desire to be stronger for them, Perona decided, thinking of Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Crew, the rest of whom were in hiding. She gazed at Zolo, swimming back to shore with the barrel in tow.
All for his crewmates, eh?
Perona didn’t have a heart of stone; there were some people she did care for. For instance, Gecko Moria, Warlord of the Sea. Sure, she’d tried to flee and leave him behind during the attack on Thriller Bark—but at the very least, she respected him, and had hoped she could be useful to his cause. She’d bawled when reading the newspaper article about his death, and felt devastated. If she found out that he was somehow still alive, she’d pack up her things and fly to him at once.
Perona had been with Moria from the moment he first recruited her at the tender age of eleven. But Moria wasn’t really her “crewmate.” At least, not in the way that Zolo and his crewmates were. What did it really mean to be crewmates, anyway?
“Hey, snap out of it! You’re totally spacing out,” Zolo called from somewhere overhead, startling Perona from her momentary daze. He went on, “It’s not as heavy as it looks. Might actually be empty.”
He hauled the barrel out of the water and thumped it down on the shore. Up close, it looked ancient; it had probably been adrift for a very long time. The flag attached to it was entirely faded, and the metal fixtures were all rusted over.
Perona immediately started working on unfastening the lid. The humandrills looked on with great curiosity and excitement.
“Horo horo horo!” Perona laughed expectantly. Silently, she prayed: Let there be cocoa powder inside! But despite her buoyant hopes, after seeing the barrel’s contents she made a face and let out a disappointed groan. Despite the size of the barrel, the only objects within were three bottles of red wine.
“Who would put something so boring in there?!” she said, trembling with rage. “Wine isn’t the slightest bit charming! If someone was going to the trouble of putting a beverage in this barrel, it should have been cocoa.”
For his part, Zolo wrinkled his nose and said, “Oh, it’s booze?” Normally he loved to drink, but Mihawk had forbidden him from having any alcohol until he gained the skill to infuse his sword with Haki power.
“Our navigator says wine that’s been rocked in the waves is particularly good,” he observed dispassionately. Still, he scooped up all three bottles. “I bet Hawk-Eye would like this wine. Back to the castle.”
He turned on his heels and started to hike away with big, confident strides. Perona reached out and grabbed him by the back of the shirt.
“That’s not the way to the castle!” she admonished him.