Gran Tesoro, the most extravagant central entertainment district.
After Ace's "friendly exchange" in the penthouse office, a top-priority directive had rippled through Tesoro's internal comms to every security officer and manager in the golden city.
"All Eclipse Pirates expenses are comped. Every single one. They win at the tables, it's theirs. They lose, it's mine. Anyone dumb enough to cross them gets dumped off the hull."
And so the world's largest entertainment city welcomed a pack of VIP guests who had absolutely no intention of behaving.
"Ha ha ha! I win again! All in! Clean sweep!"
Buggy planted one foot on the velvet-lined million-beli gambling table, both arms scooping the mountain of chips into his chest like a man claiming a prize. He'd used his Chop-Chop powers to stick an eyeball in the chandelier for a clean view of the dealer's cards, and the merchants across the table had lost so badly they'd pawned their suits. The pit boss didn't dare call him out for cheating. He just stood there with a strained smile, offering a glass of red wine and praying the red-nosed lunatic stayed happy.
"Move it, move it! Kuma, cash all these out! We're hitting the next one!" Buggy shouted, vibrating with energy. Kuma stood silently beside him, a human cargo cart, his massive frame blocking the jostling crowd as Buggy kept stuffing chips into his arms.
Over on Gran Tesoro's luxury food strip, things were no less chaotic.
"Boss! Twenty more of these deep-sea king lobsters! And the gold-leaf ice cream, all of it, wrap it up!"
Chopper had shifted into his muscle form and was parked at the center of the restaurant with Bonnie. The tower of empty plates between them had reached critical mass. Bonnie was still sealed inside her light-proof spider mech, but the mechanical limbs were nimble as fingers, snatching giant lobsters and desserts and shoving them into the machine's interior.
"Mmph, so good! Chopper, Uncle Jeno's spider arms are the best!" Bonnie's voice came out muffled through the mech.
"Please, take your time, honored guests! The kitchen is preparing more right away!" The restaurant owner was personally delivering plates, sweat streaming down his face. He didn't dare mention the word "bill."
In the kitchen behind that same food strip, Leonora stood at a gold-trimmed cutting board, an apron tied over her clothes.
"So that's how New World chefs handle seafood. The searing technique is similar to what they do in the South Blue, but the sauce composition leans toward the richer West Blue profile." She watched the trembling head chef of Gran Tesoro work his station, jotting notes with thoughtful precision.
As the Eclipse's part-time head chef, she wasn't only interested in cutting people down. She had an equally serious passion for making whatever she cut down taste incredible.
Inside Gran Tesoro's arcade hall, Jeno was in his element.
"I see. The force sensor module on this boxing machine uses that design. And the steering wheel force feedback on this racing cabinet runs on hydraulic transmission."
He crouched beside an arcade machine he'd gutted down to its skeleton, goggles down, wrench in hand, scribbling data like a man possessed. A few repair technicians stood nearby, too terrified to breathe, convinced this cyborg was one impulse away from dismantling the entire arcade for research.
"Tch. Boring."
Enel, meanwhile, had vanished.
He'd drifted into a casino first. With his Mantra, reading the dealer's thoughts, the dice under the cup, the opponent's hand was child's play. After winning a dozen rounds in a row, he yawned, shoved the mountain of chips toward some slack-jawed gambler nearby, and floated off.
"The will of a god is not wasted on winning pocket change from mortals."
Then the sound of distant music reached his ears, and he drifted into Gran Tesoro's largest concert hall. A singer was giving her all on stage to thunderous applause. Enel listened for less than three minutes, his frown deepening with every passing second.
"That's it? You call this music?"
Under the horrified stares of the entire audience, he flew straight onto the stage, shoved the bewildered singer aside, and let the drums on his back crackle to life.
"Move. Let me show you what a real performance sounds like."
The next instant, a thunderclap of electric music detonated. Lightning percussion, blinding light shows, bass vibrations that the entire city could feel in their bones. The concert hall became his personal stage, every face in the crowd frozen in disbelief as the floating DJ god held court. When the final note faded, Enel drifted off through the roaring applause, expressionless, tossing one line over his shoulder.
"Mortals. You were blessed to witness a god's performance."
At Gran Tesoro's premier temperature-controlled infinity pool, another officer was having his own kind of paradise.
"Yohohoho... this is magnificent!"
Brook stretched out on a lounge chair in floral swim trunks and sunglasses, living his best afterlife. A cluster of stunning women in bikinis fanned him and poured juice, their laughter bubbling around him.
"My dear lady, the sun is so lovely today. Might I admire the color of your undergarments? Yohohoho..."
"Oh, stop it, Mr. Bones, you're terrible!" The girls didn't take offense. They giggled at the perverted skeleton's antics. They'd been told to keep these guests happy, and honestly, the violin-playing skeleton was pretty entertaining.
Across the high-end shopping district, Sabo had skipped the casino and the pool entirely.
He was behind the wheel of a turtle car, a pure grin on his face.
"This thing's pretty fast!"
The car screamed along the magnetic levitation track, wind whipping through his blond hair. He was chasing the rush of pure speed, the same feeling he got as a kid tearing through the Grey Terminal junk hills with Ace and Luffy. The kind of feeling that didn't need thinking. Just forward motion. After three laps, he finally hopped out, still buzzing, and wandered into the shopping street.
In a dusty used bookstore, he dug up several volumes on regional customs and a yellowed nautical chart. The owner was winding up to price-gouge, took one look at the face under Sabo's hat, and immediately course-corrected. "Take whatever you want, please, no charge!"
Sabo smiled, dropped a small pouch of beli on the counter anyway, and walked out with his books.
In the antique shop on that same strip, Carina was closing a deal of her own.
"Sir, this ruby-studded snuffbox for this pearl necklace. No objections, right?" She smiled and held up a perfectly ordinary-looking string of pearls.
"None at all! None at all! Take whatever catches your eye!" The antique dealer nodded frantically.
Carina handed over the necklace with satisfaction. The moment her fingers left the pearls, a faint ripple of contract energy had already seeped silently into the jewelry.
"And just like that, when this old man sells that necklace to some New World pirate or black-market broker, my listening network rides straight into the pockets of the Four Emperors' territories." Carina dusted off her hands, a glint of cunning flashing through her violet eyes.
The atmosphere in Gran Tesoro's fighting arena was red-hot.
Shark and Urouge were taking turns running through every fighter who stepped up.
Shark used pure martial technique. No Haki, no weapon, just raw power and polished combat fundamentals. His opponent was a boxer with some minor New World reputation. Against Shark, he was a punching bag that sometimes hit back.
"Ha! Not bad, not bad! Again!"
Urouge stood at ringside, his colossal pencil propped on his shoulder, watching with deep interest. When someone was brave enough to challenge him, he'd plant the pencil in the ground, step up bare-handed, absorb every strike with that wall of muscle, and then launch the challenger across the ring with one punch.
"This kind of pure brawling. Been too long since I got to enjoy it." Urouge wiped sweat from his forehead and grinned.
The crowd was loving it, bets flying fast. The arena boss was sweating for a different reason. These guys couldn't be charged admission, but their matches were pulling in so many spectators that he might still come out ahead.
And on the streets of Gran Tesoro, Ace was just walking.
He'd dropped the cases holding ten billion beli back at the Eclipse first, leaving them with the ship's spirit for safekeeping. Then he'd wandered back into the commercial district at an easy pace.
No fixed destination. He browsed. He ate. He watched.
A street stall selling grilled skewers caught his eye. He bought a handful and kept walking, eating as he went. A carnival game booth. He stepped up and threw a few darts. A ring-toss stall. He casually flicked a few rings just to see.
He even stopped at a magic act, watched for a long moment, then tried a trick himself. A ball of flame in his palm reshaped into a tiny bird, fluttering its wings. The magician nearly fell off his stool.
"That's pretty fun."
Ace grinned, tossed the flame bird into the air where it dissolved into embers, and kept walking.
The entire Eclipse Pirates crew, in this city of gilded excess, had completely cut loose.
Evening fell.
The last amber light of sunset washed over the colossal golden city.
"Ding."
A faint transmission signal rang in the minds of every officer.
"Alright, you animals. Done playing? Grab your loot and get back to the ship."
Ace's voice echoed through the channel. It carried the satisfied ease of a man who'd eaten well and had his fun, but beneath it, the anticipation for what lay ahead.
"Roger that, Captain!"
"We're rich! We're rich! Big bro Kuma, get the cart!"
"Yohohoho, farewell, my lovely ladies. Until we meet again."
"Tch. The mortal world. It's whatever."
Within half an hour, the Eclipse Pirates crew, laden with spoils, swaggered up the gangplank.
Jeno had several arcade cabinet motherboards slung over his shoulders, still muttering. "Soon as we're underway, I'm overhauling the ship's rec room. Get these installed. No more boring voyages."
Enel floated in last, munching an apple with a deadpan expression. But the faint, upward twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him. He could trash-talk all he wanted. Today had been genuinely fun.
Ace stood at the bow. He glanced down at the Gran Tesoro guards, whose faces were slack with relief, and a grin tugged at his lips.
"Eclipse. Get us underway."
"Destination: Punk Hazard."
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