💖 If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon. I'm offering advanced chapters there as a thank-you to readers.
--------------------
Check out advanced chapters on : patreon.com/DragonOP
--------------------
The atmosphere on the Dream Chaser turned heavy with anxiety the moment the crew realized Sun Wukong had vanished.
"Damn it! How could he just be gone?!" Nami paced the deck frantically, her eyes scanning every crest of the waves. When she found no trace of his black, spiky hair, she gripped her head in frustration. "It's all my fault. I'm the navigator—I should have been watching the sea more closely!"
Vivi was equally filled with self-reproach. "I shouldn't have been playing cards. If I had kept my eyes on him, I would have seen the moment the current took him."
"Gah?!" Carue (the duck) contorted its face into a fierce, worried expression. It mimicked a biting motion at the air and then pointed a wing toward the dark depths of the ocean.
"He wasn't eaten, Carue!" Nami snapped, though her voice shook. "Goku wouldn't let himself be eaten. He's stronger than any sea beast we've faced." She remembered him slaying a sea monster with a single blow months ago. Unless it was a Sea King the size of an island, Goku was the predator, not the prey.
Sanji stood at the bow, slowly hauling the remainder of the rope out of the water. He inspected the end with a focused, clinical gaze. "It wasn't bitten off. Look—the knot was untied. He did this himself."
"He untied it?" Nami paused, her mind racing to find a logical explanation. "Maybe when the storm hit, he tried to get back to the ship and untied the rope to move faster, but the current was too strong?"
"It's a possibility," Sanji agreed, "but it doesn't explain why he didn't use Moonwalk to fly back up. He's more than capable of it."
Nami bit her lip, looking out at the vast, uncaring ocean. The Grand Line was a labyrinth; finding a single person adrift was a task that bordered on the impossible. "I'm going down," she declared, grabbing the rope from Sanji and tying it around her own waist. "I need to feel the direction of the current. If I can find the primary flow, we might have a lead!"
The Allure of the Scythe-Tail
The truth, however, was far more "Goku-like" than Nami's theories.
Minutes before the storm broke, Goku had indeed felt a pang of hunger. His tail-conditioning training had drained his stamina, and he was ready to head back for one of Sanji's feasts. But then, he saw it: a massive fish with a unique, scythe-shaped tail leaping through the waves to his front left.
"Hehe! Found lunch!" his eyes sparkled. He untied the rope, planning to snatch the fish and hop back onto the deck in ten seconds.
But the Grand Line is not so forgiving. The moment he dove, the storm arrived. The peaceful water transformed into a stampede of wild currents. Goku was caught in a "river within the sea," a torrent that swept him kilometers away from the ship in the blink of an eye. He thrashed his limbs, finally breaking free of the current, but when he surfaced to take a deep breath, the Dream Chaser was nowhere to be seen.
"Huh? Where'd they go?" He looked around blankly at the empty horizon.
"Little guy, did you encounter a shipwreck?"
Goku turned. Drifting a few meters away was a small, sleek boat. On it sat a man wearing a cowboy hat, bare-chested, with distinctive freckles across his cheeks. He was watching Goku with a gentle, curious smile.
However, Goku's stomach did the talking. His gaze was locked onto the large, golden-brown fish being grilled over a small fire on the boat. He recognized that tail—it was the very scythe-tail he had been chasing!
The man laughed, noticing the string of drool escaping Goku's mouth. "You're hungry, aren't you? Come up and help me with this. It's too much for one person."
"Really?!" Goku didn't wait for a second invitation. He leaped from the water, landing lightly on the wooden planks. "Thank you! I'm Sun Wukong!"
"I'm Ace," the man replied. "Eat up."
A Disappearing Meal
The two sat down and began to tear into the succulent fish. The meat was tender and rich, exactly what a hungry Saiyan needed. However, in the middle of a sentence, Ace's head suddenly dropped. His chin hit his chest, and he began to snore loudly.
Goku paused, holding a handful of fish meat. "Ace? You okay?"
Receiving no response but a steady snore, Goku shrugged. Maybe he's just really tired, he thought. He went back to the task at hand. By the time the pile of meat had dwindled to nothing but a pristine white skeleton, Goku let out a satisfied sigh and rubbed his belly.
"Ha~ Much better!"
At that moment, Ace's head snapped back up. He blinked his hazy eyes, his hand instinctively reaching out for another piece of the fish he had just been eating. His fingers gripped only air and cold bone.
"Huh?" Ace looked at the skeletal remains of the massive fish. A giant question mark practically hovered over his cowboy hat. "Where's the fish? Where'd my big fish go?!"
He looked at the small boy sitting across from him, who was currently picking a bone out of his teeth with a look of pure innocence.