Bullet's departure was a stone plunked into a lake. Ripples spread across the Oro Jackson, then the ship's vastness and the crew's high spirits swallowed them whole.
This vessel did not stop for anyone. It carried too many dreams, and they weighed too much.
A few days later the Grand Line lay glassy and tame. Daytime chatter mellowed under the amber rake of sunset. Gulls chased the wake. Peaceful, almost too peaceful.
For a deckful of overcharged pirates, peace meant boredom.
"Hey, you lot. If we are idle, we sing," Roger bellowed.
He planted one boot on the rail, a rum bottle in hand and that sun-bright grin on his face. No trace of the quiet he had worn when they saw a comrade off.
"Sing," the two brats echoed. Shanks and Buggy slid down from the crow's nest like a pair of otters.
Work was dropped. Men drifted in twos and threes, ready to spectate and heckle.
"What are we singing, Captain," Gaban asked, leaning on the mainmast and polishing his twin axes.
"What else." Roger took a heroic pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Binks' Sake."
"Yo ho ho, yo ho ho."
Roger took the lead. How to put it. There was barbaric power in that voice, but the pitch control was artillery-versus-mosquito. Sheer momentum kept the tune afloat.
The crew piled on, a funeral of tunefulness.
"Bring that fine sake to your side, we are pirates, ride the tide."
Kozuki Oden's voice was the loudest, a kabuki-flavored tenor from Wano that bent every note like a stage flourish. Exotic, yes. In tune, not really.
Buggy tried to drown everyone with falsetto and produced a gull being strangled.
Shanks fought to keep time, but noise pollution won and soon he was laughing too hard to sing.
Rayleigh sipped his drink, mouth twitching as he fought to preserve a vice captain's dignity. The knit of his brows betrayed the spiritual torment.
This was not a chorus. It was a sonic calamity.
A gang of tone-deaf bruisers, honoring music the only way they knew how, by shouting it to death.
Sea Kings would belly up at the sound. Clouds would detour.
At the stern rail, Kael Grylls rolled an Island Cloud tone dial from Skypiea in his fingers, face carved in complicated suffering.
His Ripple-Ripple fruit made him a hundred times more sensitive to sound. Right now the crew's singing felt like a fistful of needles jabbed straight into his eardrums.
Master, the tonic, read it again. Aaaaagh.
"Kael-kun," Supensa sidled up, long-suffering. "Your fruit manipulates waves, right. Sound is a wave. Could you… do something."
A noble by birth, Supensa had grown up on court ensembles. Pirate music had its wild charm, but this was skull-boring.
He pointed at Roger, who was hitting his stride. "If the Captain keeps this up, the Sea Kings will think we are torturing animals and come tear the ship apart."
Kael blinked. Then a wickedly elegant idea lit.
Right. Sound is a wave.
Fine, it is overkill. Gomen, I simply cannot listen to this.
He looked over the league of trainees with less than two months of practice and world-champion confidence, and a playful curve touched his mouth.
"That is… doable."
He cleared his throat, straightened, and closed his eyes. Curiosity prickled across the deck.
An inaudible pulse bloomed from him, spread soft and seamless, and wrapped the ship.
The crew kept on bellowing.
"Leaving the harbor, never look back, skull on the flag, fill up the slack."
Then a miracle happened.
The chaos snapped into order like a line of soldiers taking step at once.
Roger's ragged tenor thickened into a rich, ringing lead. Oden's kabuki twang reshaped into a story-soaked Wano lilt. Buggy's knife-screech turned into a bright, crystalline treble.
Every voice was caught, corrected, and blended.
And from the air rose accompaniment.
Dum. Ta. Dum-dum ta.
A confident drum, born of compressed and released air, syncing to each heartbeat.
Ooo… ooo…
A keening pipe, spun from whirling breeze, salted with sea wind.
Then bass, crisp guitar, glittering piano. A full band out of emptiness, braided into a sea-wide symphony.
Kael stood without moving a finger, yet he was the maestro of an invisible orchestra.
The Oro Jackson became a golden hall adrift.
Mid-song, men began to notice.
"Huh," Buggy stopped, staring at his own throat in disbelief. "My voice."
He tested a line. "Bring that fine sake to your side."
Round, warm, a tasteful vibrato. It sent gooseflesh skittering up his arms.
"I am a prodigy. A musical prodigy," he declared, drunk on himself in a heartbeat. "I am not just a battle genius. I am a singer."
Shanks caught Kael's eye, stars in his own. "Kael-nii. That was you. Sugoi."
"Kuhahaha," Roger boomed, louder than the song. "Now this is something. Kael, you genius."
He did not slow. He sang harder, freed by the knowledge that the Million-Tuner had his back.
"Spray on the bow, our shanty loud, onward we go, chasing the cloud."
Framed by perfect accompaniment and harmonies, Binks' Sake swelled into an anthem.
In it was homesickness, trust in one's crew, a clear-eyed nod to death, and a limitless hunger for the unknown sea.
Sunset shattered into coins on the water. Wind bellied the great canvas. The freest men in the world sang on the most storied ship alive.
The song climbed the sky and ran until the world could hear it.
When the last note fell, the echo hung.
For a breath the deck was hushed. They floated in what they had just made, half unable to return.
"Ahem," Buggy posed like a poster of his better self, ready to gift the world a solo and unveil his crushed-underfoot brilliance.
"Yo ho ho."
He had barely begun when the familiar gull-choked tenor screeched across the boards.
Kael had already let the field fall. Arms folded, he watched, grinning like a villain.
Pfft.
Then the ship exploded in laughter.
"Buggy, you counterfeit canary," Shanks wheezed, rolling.
"Shut it. You ruined my performance," Buggy flushed purple, red nose blazing as he tore after Shanks from bow to stern.
Roger, still chuckling, clapped a hand on Kael's back hard enough to knock him into the drink.
"Kuhahaha. Brilliant, Kael. From today, you are the Roger Pirates' chief musician."
Kael rubbed his spine and laughed helplessly.
Beneath moonlight and seabreeze, with their laughter warming the planks, the Oro Jackson drove on.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to add this story to your Library, drop a review, and leave a Power Stone if you enjoyed it!
If you're itching to see what happens next, check out the advanced chapters on my Patron!
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"