"I haven't had the fruit for very long," Alvida said with a shrug and a smile.
Marcus decided to offer some advice. "Think about this, if you reduce the friction on your entire body to almost nothing, maybe even zero, but keep the friction on your feet normal, wouldn't that make you move way faster?"
Alvida looked puzzled.
Clearly, she had no understanding of concepts like air resistance or the physics behind friction and motion.
Seeing her blank expression, Marcus made a mental note that he'd need to give her a proper crash course on basic physics sometime soon.
Kira, meanwhile, didn't really understand the explanation but was still thoroughly impressed. After all, Alvida had just made her weapon burst into flames, that was amazing no matter how you looked at it.
The Straw Hat Pirates, however, picked up on something important from Marcus' words: Alvida was clearly a Devil Fruit user herself.
Without any hesitation, Luffy asked directly, "Alvida, did you become a Devil Fruit user too?"
Alvida didn't bother hiding it. "Yeah, I ate the Slip-Slip Fruit."
As she spoke, she walked over to where Nami was standing.
Before Nami could react or protest, she reached out and gently brushed her hand across the navigator's cheek.
Nami barely felt like her cheek had been touched at all, just a slight sensation of pressure.
It was an incredibly strange and unique feeling.
She reached up and touched Alvida's hand in return.
"Wow... so smooth and soft."
Alvida didn't mind at all.
Luffy marveled for a moment, then quickly lost interest.
"Hey Usopp, where was that really delicious restaurant you mentioned earlier? I'm getting hungry again."
Obviously, for him, food took priority over pretty much everything else.
Before long, all seven of them had made their way to the restaurant and settled around a large table.
"By the way, why are you guys sitting down so naturally like you belong here?" Nami asked speechlessly, looking at these overly familiar newcomers who'd just inserted themselves into their group.
"Guess you could say we became friends through fighting," Marcus said with an easy smile.
Luffy grinned and said he didn't mind at all, meals were always better with more people anyway.
Since the captain had no objections, Zoro didn't oppose the arrangement either.
They all started eating together.
Soon, Nami, Zoro, and Usopp noticed that Luffy, Alvida, and Marcus were eating faster and faster, until it turned into a full-blown competitive eating contest.
This drew the attention of everyone else in the restaurant, who stopped their own meals to watch the display.
Naturally, the first to drop out was Alvida. While she had a big appetite, she was no match for the other two competitors.
Luffy could eat endlessly and digest everything with his rubber stomach.
Marcus could eat endlessly too, his Minecraft-based physiology meant his hunger bar could max out and he'd still keep going without any discomfort.
Zoro watched from the sidelines, cheering Luffy.
In the end, the contest only stopped because the restaurant owner ran out of ingredients to serve them.
"Hahaha, I didn't expect you to eat this much!" Luffy, now stuffed like a balloon, laughed as he looked at Marcus, whose body hadn't changed in the slightest despite consuming a great amount of food.
Finding a kindred spirit at the dinner table made him happy. It reminded him of two years ago when he and Ace would eat together and end up competing to see who could eat more. Those had been good times.
"You're not bad yourself."
Both of them were in excellent spirits.
The only one who looked worried was the restaurant owner.
The man was clearly conflicted. Usopp had grown up in this village, and treating his friends to a meal was normally fine. But having his entire day's worth of food inventory consumed in one sitting was definitely painful for business.
Marcus, however, didn't want to cause the owner any trouble. He pulled out about 100,000 berries and handed them over without hesitation.
The owner's face lit up as he accepted the payment and went to get change.
Having been treated to a meal, Luffy looked at Marcus with even more approval. After all, how could someone who fed him possibly be a bad person?
"I'm Luffy. What was your name again?"
"Marcus. This is Kira, she's our current navigator. Speaking of which, she probably has something she wants to ask you about."
As soon as he said that, everyone looked at Luffy with strange expressions. The whole situation with Alvida hadn't even been fully clarified yet, and now there was another girl with some connection to him?
Kira, suddenly thrust into the spotlight, shrank back a little. Her social anxiety made it difficult to adapt to being the center of attention, but she still managed to speak up.
"Um... do you happen to know someone named Koby?"
Luffy nodded without even thinking about it, and Zoro glanced over.
Seeing him nod, Kira's eyes lit up. "Where is he now?"
"Right now? He should have become a Marine. I'm not sure how he's doing at that Marine base, though." Luffy couldn't help but picture the pink-haired kid with no muscle definition who'd been so nervous and scared.
"You're looking for him?"
"Yeah. Could you tell me... which Marine base he's stationed at?"
Luffy scratched his head, trying to remember the specific details.
"Marine Base 153," Zoro supplied, providing the exact location.
Kira immediately opened her sea chart and checked the coordinates. The distance wasn't too far, only about two days of sailing time.
Her heart leaped with joy at how close Koby was, but then she seemed to think of something else and scratched her head shyly.
She didn't say anything more, but Marcus and Alvida both knew exactly what was on her mind.
Alvida was the first to voice it. "Already wanting to rush off and find your little sweetheart?"
"N-no, it's not like that!" Kira waved her hands frantically, her face turning bright red.
Zoro and Luffy both looked at her, after all, they were both familiar with Koby and found this development interesting.
"Who is she?" Zoro asked.
"Koby's childhood friend. She went to sea specifically to find him," Alvida explained.
Both Zoro and Luffy expressed genuine surprise. Even someone like Koby had a childhood friend willing to go to such lengths for him?
Luffy couldn't help but recall memories from his own childhood, wondering how Uta was doing these days.
Zoro, too, found himself thinking of Kuina.
Marcus found the whole situation quite amusing.
Nami and Usopp, who had never met Koby, couldn't really join the conversation directly, but they were definitely curious about what kind of person could make a young girl risk her life to go to sea in search of him.
Soon, they learned from Luffy's explanation exactly who Koby was and how they'd met.
Both were surprised by the story, a guy who went fishing, got on the wrong ship by mistake, and ended up forced to be a pirate's errand boy for three years?
It sounded absurd no matter how you looked at it.
Yet somehow, this same guy had a girl willing to go to sea for him. And the real kicker, after gaining his freedom, he hadn't even gone back home to let her know he was safe.
Nami came to a blunt conclusion: "This Koby sounds way too clueless."
Before anyone else could comment, Kira hurried to defend him. "You can't really blame him for that. I'm... kind of really shy. Even when he tried to talk to me, I rarely responded. So... maybe even now, he doesn't think of me as anything more than an acquaintance."
Her voice grew quieter toward the end.
"Oh..." Luffy and the others were taken aback by that.
Marcus and Alvida, however, were completely familiar with this side of her personality. When Kira had first come aboard their ship, she'd been so painfully quiet she could barely get a word out in half a day. The solution had been simple, just talk to her more and give her time to warm up. Compared to how she'd been before, this was already huge progress.
"Want us to take you to the 153rd Branch? If nothing's gone wrong, he should still be there," Luffy offered without much thought.
Kira glanced at Marcus and Alvida, then said, "I promised Marcus and Alvida that I'd get them to Loguetown first."
Such a small, shy girl, yet so determined to keep her word.
Marcus waved dismissively. "You don't need to take that so seriously. We were only heading to Loguetown because Koby would most likely be there. Now that we know exactly where he is, you can choose freely what you want to do."
Alvida nodded her agreement.