A young swordsman's adventure 21

Just as a heads up, this was the last paid-for chapter. 

If anyone was waiting for the backlog to complete before ordering more chapters (some people were talking about it), now's the time. $100 per chapter at my current rates. On a related note, Fae Chronicles also has no more backlog, so same thing there. Only things that still have chapters are scientific chronicles (paid for up to chapter 9) and Path to Living (which has regrettably fallen by the wayside, but at least the commissioner is only paying for 1 chapter at a time). PM me if you want to contribute. 

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    “Checkup?” Ace asked as Tanya guided the ship onto the shore. “Already?”

    “At the start of our journey is the best spot to have a checkup.” Tanya said defensively. “More importantly, Crocus is a customer. I bought a bunch of medicine back in the East Blue expressly to sell to him.”

    Kuina hummed, looking over the lighthouse and the nearby whale. “Why is there a whale next to the lighthouse?”

    “That’s Laboon.” Tanya said flippantly. “Think of him as Crocus’ pet.” It was close enough to the truth. 

    Once near the shore, she instructed the Humandrills to get the medical supplies out from the hold, and once that was done they tied down everything that wasn’t already, lifted the ship out of the water, and put it on its side on land. “Okay Ace, Kuina, while I’m selling the goods, you two clear off those barnacles.” She gestured to the shellfish assaulting their hull. There were only about a hundred of them, not too bad. “There’s not that many because I’ve been keeping on top of things, but it’s a good time for it.” She snapped her fingers. “So get to work. Burn the barnacles but not the wood, just as we’ve discussed.” As she predicted, the East Blue parasites didn’t touch the Adam wood keel, but only the Taolf wood that the rest of the outside was. 

    As usual when ordered to do carpentry-related duties, Ace grumbled but understood that this was what he signed up for so his hand burst into flame, ready to test his control. Kuina took the washtub and filled it from the sea, in case Ace lost that control. 

    With that handled, she used a small burst of Conqueror’s in Laboon’s direction to catch Crocus’ attention. He was currently inside the whale, presumably attending to the beast’s injuries. Crocus couldn’t use it back, of course, but he did know that it was her, and that her own Observation could sense him deciding to ignore her to continue his work. “Take a break!” She said to the Humandrills, slapping the top of her forearm, clicking her tongue, and giving an irritated exhale to effectively communicate that they had to wait, and that she didn’t like that fact. 

    Responding to her mood, Swabbie handed her Saifu, and the dog immediately started licking her face. Any annoyance at Crocus vanished under the affections of the backpack-corgi. Instead, she opened up the dog’s back and withdrew a small ball, and then threw it towards the Red Line, making sure to not send it there hard enough to cause it to bounce and potentially get lost in the sea. 

    Saifu ran off after the ball, barking wildly. Calmed down, Tanya hummed and decided that it was a good time for some exercise for her, as well. “I’m going to train.” She announced, flexing her arm and slapping her bicep to communicate that with her nonverbal crew. 

    Once her dog returned, Tanya tossed the ball to Deuce. “Keep playing fetch until Crocus comes out. If he sees Saifu, he’ll know you’re with me.” Whether or not he’ll try and mess with their heads, as was an old man’s prerogative, on the other hand… up in the air. 

    “Where are you going, though?” Deuce asked confused as Tanya ran towards the Red Line. 

    “Up!” She declared as she didn’t even slow down, running up the side of the Red Line. As a training exercise, this one was pretty good for honing her aerial maneuvering and endurance. She didn’t have some magic ninja technique to walk on walls, as cool as that would be to see and potentially learn, so instead she only had the same muscular flicks and armament tricks she used to direct her aerial jumps to stay on the vertical surface without resorting to ordinary climbing techniques. 

    The Red Line was only about ten kilometers tall from sea level, so she fully expected to reach the top, but it wasn’t going to be easy when she was fighting gravity the whole way. Still, to add to the challenge she drew Shodai Kitetsu from its sheath, using her will to keep it from disrupting her running pace in favor of bloodrage, and started picturing enemies with which to defend against and counterattack as she went. Grandpa had suggested this particular facet to her exercise, because it also helped her attunement with Shodai Kitetsu. The bloodthirsty blade was a huge help in this, communicating enemies and attacks in a way that she could, by using her Obsevation, see clearly enough to use in her training. 

    Some would call training this many things at once: swordsmanship, her movement techniques, and all three kinds of haki, a foolhardy method. To her? This was how one gained and kept strength in a lifestyle without serious enemies. By the time she reached the top, she had cut down two hundred imaginary enemies, and decided to take a break, sitting at the top of the world and looking down on her crew. 

    Hm, Looks like Crocus is done. That was fast. Looks like he was examining the goods while ignoring Deuce’s irritated yelling. Good news is, Ace seemed to be half done, and there wasn’t a bunch of woodsmoke coming off the ship. Excellent. 

    Tanya waited patiently for the old man to look up, and she waved at him. He waved back. Well, that’s enough of a rest. She hopped off the cliff, and kicked off the air to get some distance from the stone surface. 

    The wind roaring in her ears, Tanya laughed silently in free fall as the speed she was going robbed her voice of all sound. She started going through a sword kata, one of the foundational ones of the Vermillion Wing style, traditionally practiced just like this, while falling off a cliff. It was why there weren’t that many adherents of the style anymore, according to Grandma. Granted, taking an old woman’s words about ‘kids these days’ should always be done with a grain of salt, but it made sense that when the Kuja have less powerful warriors who deigned to teach, their more dangerous to train styles would fall by the wayside. 

    This cliff was much taller than Amazon Lily, though, so she went through the admittedly short kata eight times before she had to sheath her sword while the terminal velocity drop made her approach the ground. “Strong Pillar: Foundation!” She shouted in Japanese, stiffening her body with both martial prowess, Armament, and also her Conquerors. 

    The crashing sound when she hit the ground was probably the loudest thing she had ever heard. Ow. Owowowowow. She screwed up the Conqueror’s again. How do Kaido and Linlin do it? 

    As expected, her crew exclaimed surprise as she lifted herself out of the crater she made, stretching to check if she broke any bones this time. It had been a while since she pulled this particular exercise off… Hm. This wasn’t that bad. Either her Armament’s gotten stronger, or she managed a little bit of the Conqueror’s this time. She’ll take that as proof that her supposition that Kaido’s ‘suicide’ hobby was, in fact, him training his defensive Armament was true. 

    “I swear, you get more reckless every year.” Crocus grumbled, grabbing Tanya’s arm and dragging her into his lighthouse/clinic. “Last time you at least had the decency to fall halfway up instead of the full distance.” He added. 

    Ah, she missed the old guy. Few could make insulting your intelligence sound that affectionate. 

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    Deuce had followed them in, of course. Tanya started disrobing, and he startled, looking away. “I’m right here!” He objected. 

    “You’re a doctor.” Tanya deadpanned, “Incidentally, Crocus, could you perhaps give him a crash course on the challenges a medical practitioner has on the Grand Line? Deuce wasn’t exactly top of his class.”

    “I was at the bottom, actually.” Deuce clarified. 

    Crocus looked at the younger man and snorted. “You know what they call medical students who graduate at the bottom of their class?” He asked. 

    “W-what?” The thoroughly intimidated boy asked. 

    “They call them Doctor. Step up and maybe you’ll learn something.” Crocus said, folding Tanya’s clothes and putting them on the counter. “Okay, let’s see what you just did to yourself.”

    What followed was a pretty normal checkup, interspersed with them checking out just how many bruises she just gave herself, and rubbing in a skin cream that Crocus had onto each of the areas with damaged blood vessels. 

    “Okay, that cannot be healthy.” Deuce said when Crocus instructed her to undo her bindings. 

    “It isn’t.” Crocus said, “But one thing you gotta learn when dealing with knuckleheads like this is to pick your battles.”

    Tanya huffed. “I do not take kindly to my fashion choices being compared to Father’s alcoholism.” He said the same thing about that. 

    “Then stop practically strangling yourself with your own breasts.” Crocus snapped back. “On that note, I did get something for your dysmennorrhea.”

    Deuce perked up at that word, swinging his fist into his palm in realization as something suddenly made sense to him. “Oh! So that’s why-”

    “Shut up, Deuce.” Tanya ordered, blushing severely. Being a man, even one in a girl’s body, this was not a topic she enjoyed discussing. “So there is some medicine?” She asked Crocus politely. 

    “Yep.” Crocus said, “Not sure if it’ll work, it’s not the primary use case, but I asked around and it sometimes works.” He set down a medicine case, with a label that clearly outlined the drug name, dosage, and use directions. “Take that to any pharmacist and they should be able to refill it. You’re lucky I had this ready, I wasn’t expecting you for another few days.”

    Tanya shrugged, which led to an annoyed twitch as the motion reminded her of certain inconveniences. “You know how it is, the Marines come by, you have to leave sooner than you expected. Captain Smoker was quite insistent that I should leave, and I figured that I had all of your supplies, so I might as well just deliver them early.” 

    “Fair enough.” Crocus said, “So even if it doesn’t help, you should still take them for their primary use anyway, I’m sure it’ll be really helpful for your journey.”

    “...What is it?” Tanya asked, confused at his assertion. 

    “Oh, it’s birth control.” Crocus said idly. Tanya’s thoughts took a screeching halt. 

    …

    …

    “ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Tanya shouted. “I do not need that!” She insisted. 

    “Look kid, I get it.” Crocus said, patting her shoulder. “Sea journeys take a long time, and you have two young men with you. Things happen, and you should be prepared.” His eyes flicked towards Deuce. “On my old ship, there was one woman, and she gave birth twice on the journey. I know, trust me.”

    Ugh, the very idea… so embarrassing that she was starting to feel a headache from the excessive blood in her head. “I will not be doing anything that will make that necessary.” Tanya said emphatically. 

    Crocus snorted. “Well, you’ll need to take them for at least two cycles in order to be sure whether or not it helps your problem, so take them anyway. I can’t force you to refill them, and I added enough to make a six month supply. Split it with your crewmate, because that’s why I gave you so much, and refill it for her sake, if nothing else.”

    The painful thing was that the old man had a point. Truly, this was a doctor with the disposition to tend to the Pirate King. “We didn’t bring Kuina’s fiance along, but… thank you.” She said through gritted teeth. Wait a minute… “WHAT’S THAT DISAPPOINTED LOOK ON YOUR FACE?” She shouted at Deuce, her frayed temper near boiling. 

    “Neither of you?” He asked, practically in tears as he realized that he would not be getting any sex, no matter how patient he was. 

    WHAM

    Deuce was on the ground nursing a brand new goose egg while Tanya exhaled a cleansing breath, her fist steaming. She felt much better now, with violence letting her focus on what was important. “Is there anything else we should cover for this checkup?” She asked. 

    “No, I made sure that was the last bit, it doesn’t look like your chest is bruised at all. The constant compression has made those blood vessels tough as leather.” Crocus said, screwing the cap back on his jar of bruise cream. “Let’s handle those supplies you got me, then I’ll check the rest of your crew.” 

    They left Deuce to recover on his own. 

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    Some may wonder how Crocus makes money to pay for enough medicine to regularly knock out a literal whale. The answer is simple: People know about Crocus’ clinic, and the merchant shipping that crosses the Twin Capes route from the East and South Blues know about it. They pay him for his services all the time. 

    Further, when anyone fails to navigate the Reverse Mountain route, Crocus gets first dibs on salvage, particularly when he has an Island Whale that can pick up the debris and swallow it, allowing the doctor to use the base he keeps inside the whale to store anything valuable. Log poses alone would be reasonably profitable, given that he can sell them to those merchants who bring them right back to Loguetown and the South Blue’s equivalent; a city on the Compass Islands known as Northland. 

    Combine these facts with how many pirates in the Blues travel up Reverse Mountain with a hold full of loot due to the Marines nipping on their heels? Crocus had plenty of material to pay with. 

    “Looks good!” Tanya complimented, seeing Argent’s spotless hull next to a pile of scorched barnacles. “I see you singed a few spots, but the boards are still usable and you cleaned and tended to the spots anyway. Your carpentry skills were no empty boast.”

    Ace beamed at the praise, minor as it was. She didn’t lie, though: The only reason she could see the damaged portions is because of the Eyes of Suzaku letting her tell the difference between a scrape and burn after it’s cleaned and polished. More to the point, there were far fewer of such spots than there were barnacles, meaning he had managed to avoid burning the wood at all for about… two thirds of them. Excellent progress on his mastery of the Flame-Flame fruit. 

    Kuina’s eyes sparkled at the extra pieces of jewelry Tanya was wearing, and the half-open chest of more treasure she had in her arms. “Ooh! Nice haul, Tanya!” She gushed, already 

    Medicine, as a general rule, had amazing markups. Marine bases protecting trade lanes taxed merchant ships going through based on the value of their goods, frequently taken as a tithe of supplies that are useful to the military organization, so given that most ships that reach Crocus had just gotten taxed by Vice-Admiral Bluegrass’ or Rear Admiral Sicily’s checkpoints into the Grand Line, they had quite a bit of cost to make up for. 

    So, even with the ‘family discount’ that Tanya offered the former Roger Pirate, the bulk medical supplies she paid two million beri for by going straight to the manufacturers were paid for by twelve million beri worth of lucre, and Crocus was glad for the savings, as if Tanya were anyone else he would have had to pay twenty for the same quantities. 

    Granted, it was a larger shipment than he usually bought at once, he would be set for months, but it was an excellent deal all around nonetheless. “Well, it’s my first real smuggling, so I’m glad it went so well.” Tanya said, smiling proudly at herself. Sure, she totally could have just gone through the trade route and used Warlord privileges to ignore the tax, but where was the fun in that? Reverse Mountain was great! World’s best roller coaster slash whitewater rafting course, as far as she was concerned. The first time she went through, when she was seven, she begged Father to go again, and they did. He said no after the fourth trip, though. They did have a deadline, even if it was generous enough that spending two days going up and down a mountain on a boat didn’t make them late. “It does look more impressive like this than it does in beri bills, though.” Hopefully she can convert this treasure into cash without having to go through too much trouble. There wasn’t really anything in Corcus’ collection that drew her attention as something to add to her jewelry collection. Just a few things she set aside for Kuina, once she accrued enough pay from sword sales to earn them. 

    “What’s my share of that, by the way?” Ace asked, still grinning wildly. Crocus had apparently paused in walking her back to the ship, and looking back, he looked like he was seeing a ghost. Was the resemblance that uncanny? “I’m thinking of getting a tattoo.”

    Tanya scoffed. “This money is from my trading ventures.” Tanya said, “As in your contract, you get base pay as a carpenter, plus combat pay if applicable. You only get a pirate’s share from loot and plunder, which this isn’t.” 

    “Lame.” Ace declared, before grinning again. “Ah well, I do love a good fight. Are we going to get in any of those soon?”

    Crocus choked at the words. “...Who are you, boy?” He asked. 

    “Ah, that reminds me.” Tanya said, slyly smiling. “Crocus, I should introduce my crew: This is-” Tanya turned back to Ace, and paused. “...my narcoleptic carpenter, Portgas D. Ace.”

    As was his habit, Ace had fallen asleep in the middle of the conversation, still standing and with his arms stiff in the casual stance he was in. “Ace, huh? Ace for a boy, Anne for a girl…” Crocus muttered under his breath. “Could it be? He’s even a D…”

    Ah, he figured it out. Drat. “Also the son of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger.” Tanya finished. 

    “Ack!” Ace shouted as he woke up getting hugged by an old man. “Choking… ribs… breaking… why do you abandon me, flames? Is this… the Fist of Love?” Fun fact about haki: it’s actually really easy to use accidentally in states of heightened emotion. These emotions did not have to be negative. 

    Tanya laughed at her carpenter’s pain. “Ace, allow me to introduce Crocus, doctor of the Roger Pirates. I did say he was on the way, ne?” She just implied that he wasn’t right around the metaphorical bend for her own amusement. 

    “I knew that stubborn bastard was giving me a hint!” Crocus shouted, giving Ace one last squeeze before setting him down. “He didn’t ever talk about something like baby names before, why would he so soon before our last meeting? Ah, let me get a look at you.”

    As Crocus proceeded to emulate grandparents everywhere, Tanya chuckled and moved on to put the new treasure back in the ship. “Get the ship back in the water!” She commanded the humandrills, although in HSL it was more literally just ‘haul’ ‘boat’ and ‘water’, in that order. They were smart enough that the language didn’t need precise tenses, which were incredibly difficult in a somatic language that was meant to be usable from one side of the ship to the other. In twenty seconds, four of the humandrills went to their proper positions, lifted the entire ship as one after a three-count, and tossed it back into the sea. They then started going through the process of anchoring the ship, as Tanya hopped on board and moved down to her room, where most of the treasure was stored. “Hm, I stink after that training…” She could do some more training later… or she could just relax and take a shower now.

    Once she finished taking a shower and changing her clothes, Crocus had gone to the actual purpose of their stop here, and was checking everyone over. “Take one of these every day with breakfast, as in with food after you sleep for multiple hours, not in the morning, and you shouldn’t konk out like that as much. If you know you’re about to get into a fight or something similarly dangerous, take one of these and that’ll make sleeping impossible for an hour. Don’t take one of these more than twice a day, or your heart’s going to strangle you.” Crocus pointed at Deuce. “It’s your job to make sure everyone takes their medication. Incidentally, I have some vaccines that you should give everyone, Tanya’s already got hers but if this is your first time in the Grand Line, there are some entirely preventable diseases you’ll have a chance of getting if you don’t get them.” Crocus went through the supplies Tanya had brought and took out a few vials and some needles. 

    Ace stiffened. “Hey, no one said anything about needles!” He protested. 

    “Don’t be a baby.” Crocus said back, scowling. “We didn’t have half of these back in the day, and pirates usually weren’t able to get them at all. Any time anyone got sick from one of these, I had the whole ship taking a turn in my beds over the next month, quarantining at sea is damn near impossible. Do you want to spend three days shitting yourself after getting a little bug bite?” Properly cowed, Ace shook his head rapidly. “Then man up and get the damn shots.”

    This’ll take a while… she better start cooking dinner. With a serving for Crocus, of course. 

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    They stayed at the Twin Capes for about four days. In that time, the minor illnesses caused by the vaccines were defeated, Kuina’s leg got a proper prosthetic mount, Deuce got some high-intensity medical mentoring, and Ace got hours of stories about Roger and the Roger pirates. Some of them were tales that even Tanya hadn’t heard before. 

    Of course, they also did a little bit of training. “I’m starting to feel bad about this.” Ace said as Deuce once more rubbed burn cream on his hands. Nearby, Kuina had her own exercise, trying to cut a bamboo pole while not cutting a strand of grass that was in the way. The poles were from pots of living bamboo that they picked up after one last stop in Shimotsuki, as they grew fast enough that it was practical to use them as a renewable source of training poles. She was going through a lot of both. 

    “All the best haki exercises are painful.” Tanya replied, idly rubbing Saifu’s belly, “Either literally, as in this case, or metaphorically, as in Kuina’s case. It’s a slower method, but doing it that way will make it easier on her in the long run.” If you really wanted to learn Armament coating on one’s weapons, the best way to do that was to do it that way from square one; learning to coat your fist first is exactly the wrong thing to do. The habits Tanya brought from her time in the Imperial Army was proof enough of the effectiveness. It took her three years of training before she could coat her own fist, but forming a mage blade on a knife was second nature. Coating a bullet took another two years. 

    “Yeah, but-” Ace’s words were interrupted by Deuce’s fist passing through his face, for the thirtieth time. “-my guy’s just getting burned for nothing.”

    “It is helping your reflexive discorporation.” Tanya pointed out. It was why Ace was deliberately distracting himself and not paying attention to when Deuce was punching him. “But painful failures improve his will to succeed, and haki is all about will.” Her own similar training involved punching a steel plate with full strength, splitting her knuckles over and over again as she failed to apply armament to her hands. She probably could have done it faster if she did it more often, but as one can imagine, getting better at punching was not a particularly high priority in her training under Father. “This method is just as painful but less damaging than how I’d do this without access to a friendly Logia.”

    One of the humadrills, Boenkyo, started hooting that she saw something while banging on the lookout drum. Her and the other humandrills looked up at the crow’s nest, and she started signaling. “Ship Approach from Mountain.”

    Glancing in the direction of Reverse Mountain, Tanya saw a ship coming down the waterway. It was a fairly wide pirate ship painted pink, with a jolly roger of two crossed bones over a set of lipstick-coated lips with a tongue sticking out. The bottom sail had Doflamingo’s symbol, and the figurehead was, after a bit of stylization, also Doflamingo’s symbol. 

    Hm. She knew that Doflamingo had some influence in the North and West Blues, a few subordinate crews and such, but she didn’t expect to meet anything under his aegis in Paradise. Not that Doflamingo’s protection is worth anything: He’d only do anything about their deaths if those deaths actively inconvenienced him, such as if they were carrying something for him. No, Doflamingo’s mark was not a shield; it was a brand. The Celestial Hoof in another guise. 

    Still, she whistled to get Boenkyo’s attention and signaled for her to put up the Jolly Roger, there weren’t any merchants currently docked so there wasn’t any loss in doing so. 

    After thinking long and hard on what to use, Tanya decided to keep her symbol simple: It was a skull with Shodai Kitetsu’s gaudy sheath behind it, as well as her rifle, which she had long made resemble her old Mondragon. The skull was decorated with her favorite hat. Unfortunately, Father didn’t have a symbol to use as protection that was recognizable to anyone, except for the symbol of the Grimm Kingdom itself, which was on the sail. It was enough that anyone who saw her knew immediately that she was the Captain of that flag. 

    “What’s going on?” Ace asked, as Deuce failed to punch him again. Tanya suspects that it’ll take a few months for Deuce to actually succeed. 

    “Incoming pirate ship.” Tanya replied, “Not a big deal, but they belong to Doflamingo, so they’ll probably cause trouble.” Few people were more arrogant than those who thought they had a bigger fish on call. And that was one of the few situations where she felt not at all bad about bringing her own backing into things. 

    Ace took a moment, but eventually he spotted the ship going down the mountain. After using his hand to measure, he grunted. “Probably have ten to twenty minutes before they get here.” Ace, appropriately for someone who can navigate in the Blues by himself, had a keen sense for distances. “I guess we… load the cannons?” He said, more asking himself than telling her. 

    “I suppose it would be the polite thing to do, to treat them as a threat.” Tanya agreed, whistling to grab some of the humandrill’s attention and ordering them to ready the cannons with a pair of gestures. Kayaku, as usual, took charge of that effort. 

    Lazily slinging Saifu over her shoulder by a leg, an act that would be animal abuse on any other dog, Saifu instead shifted into a backpack, slipping the straps around her arms as she did so. “Pistol.” She called, and Saifu’s head popped back out, giving her the weapon in question. She stowed it in her coat’s holster. 

    After ten minutes of getting ready at a leisurely pace, everyone was in position at their battlestations: The ship was turned so as to point a set of six fake broadside cannons at the incoming vessel, both chase turrets and the broadside turret were pointed in that direction, and each of the three turrets were manned by one gunner and one powder monkey: Kayaku and Tate on the bow chaser, Kiyou and Yari on the stern chaser, and Tanya plus Cookie on the broadside turret. 

    As for the rest, Kaiten was being the helmsmonkey, as usual, Swabbie and Boenkyo were hanging from the rigging, standing by for instructions from Kaiten, Deuce had gone up to the Crow’s nest to keep a weather eye out for any other threats, while Ace and Kuina just stood at either side of Tanya, glaring menacingly at the incoming pirates. Kuina was ready in an iai stance, while Ace gave finger guns while lighting his fingertips on fire. 

    Their threat display seemed to cow the incoming pirates, as when they finally hit sea level they immediately veered to the far end of the valley, stopping at the cape that didn’t have Crocus’ lighthouse. It would be out of range of any normal cannons, and Tanya didn’t see any reason to reveal her superior artillery’s range for these jokers. “At ease!” Tanya announced, following up with instructions to maintain basic readiness. The ship was re-anchored, but the guns were not unloaded, and were re-directed to point at the pink pirate ship’s new location. “Deuce, take command while we go say hello.” She signalled the temporary change in command structure to the humandrills and called her most battle-loving monkeys, Tate and Yari, to come with them. 

    They deployed the row boat, and let Kuina do all the rowing, at her insistence. As this was no slower than the usual ‘make the monkeys do it’, Tanya allowed it. Fortunately, the pirate captain, a blonde muscular man in his early twenties wearing an officer’s coat, didn’t spoil the peaceful interactions and instead waited for them while his crew patched up the damage his ship took from the trip over Reverse Mountain. “Ahoy there!” Tanya shouted, waving. Once they got within a hundred meters, she leapt the remaining distance, landing on the railing in front of the pirate captain. “I am the Captain of the Grimm pirates.” It was a suitable name, so she decided to take it. “I am a merchant and smuggler by trade, would you fine gentlemen be in need of some supplies in exchange for your inedible, fragile lucre? The Grand Line is not a sea for the faint of heart, you know.”

    The captain snorted, unimpressed at her small stature, despite the hundred-meter leap. They were at eye level only after she stood on his ship’s railing, as the man was about two and a half meters tall. “Captain Bellamy, of the Bellamy pirates. Bounty of fifteen million.” He said, introducing himself in kind. “That was mighty stupid of you, getting out of range of your guns like that.”

    “I prefer the term ‘optimistic’.” Tanya rebuffed, “After all, a merchant’s favorite thing is new customers, and you seem like a reasonable fellow. After all, you need at least a little bit of brain matter to be allowed to fly that mark.” Specifically, enough to understand that refusing to do so will end in fates much worse than mere death. 

    Bellamy grinned wider at Tanya’s words, specifically at the implication that she was intimidated from violence by Doflamingo’s mark. “And a pirate’s favorite thing is a rich hostage.” He replied, before he paused. Tanya’s pistol was now jabbed in his neck, and he had apparently completely missed her drawing it. 

    “I’m sorry, I got distracted for a second there.” Tanya said, grinning wolfishly. “What was that?”

    Against all odds, the pirate seemed to be a quick thinker. “I challenge you to a Davy Black Fight!” He said quickly. 

    Oh? Now that sounds like fun! “I accept.”