I Sell Gacha Jars in One Piece

Out on the Grand Line, the ship pushed forward toward its next destination.

Sengoku had called again not long after they left Water Seven. The investigation had confirmed everything Amon said. Spandam's conduct had been indefensible. That said, Sengoku made clear that killing a World Government official without authorization was not something he could simply overlook, and delivered a thorough reprimand before declaring the matter closed. Amon accepted it with the patience of someone who had already calculated this outcome and factored it in. Then they moved on.

The next destination was Thriller Bark.

Thriller Bark sat within the Florian Triangle, a stretch of ocean permanently wrapped in dense fog where ships disappeared at a rate of over a hundred per year. The place was in truth an enormous vessel from the West Blue, its entrance shaped like a gaping mouth, its flag bearing the image of a skull with wild spring-onion hair and flaming bat wings. It hunted passing ships. The fog made sure that anything caught inside rarely found its way out. In Amon's previous life, something similar had existed in lore, a triangle where vessels vanished without explanation. Here, the explanation was Gecko Moria.

The ship was populated entirely by zombies, a term that meant something specific in this context. They were called Hollows, corpses stolen from graveyards across the world by the genius surgeon Hogback, preserved and modified, then animated by injecting shadows into them. A zombie carried the personality and fighting ability of whoever the shadow belonged to. The longer a shadow remained fused with a corpse, the more completely the zombie became its own entity, shifting from initial resistance into full obedience. Their weakness was salt carrying the energy of the sea, which purified them on contact. If the shadow's original owner died, the shadow dissolved and the zombie with it. The stronger the original host, the more dangerous the zombie.

Beyond Moria and his crew, there was one other reason the destination mattered to Amon. Brook was there. The last surviving member of the Rumbar Pirates, the future musician of the Straw Hats, had been adrift in the Florian Triangle for decades. Amon had crossed paths with him briefly, long ago at the start of the Grand Line, exchanging a few words over a long-distance visual connection and arranging for Brook to meet Laboon. That debt was still sitting in the back of his mind.

It was time to see it through properly.

And then there was Perona.

If he remembered correctly, Perona would be around thirteen at this point. Her particular aesthetic, the gothic lolita wardrobe, the beloved stuffed animals, all of it was exactly as he remembered thinking about it, and he found himself looking forward to the meeting more than was perhaps entirely dignified.

Once the destination was locked in, the ship accelerated.

...

Seven days out, they were intercepted.

An ordinary pirate crew had spotted the ship passing through their waters, and upon confirming there were only three people aboard, had decided this represented an acceptable opportunity. They moved to intercept.

They discovered their mistake quickly.

Lily stepped out onto the deck, took one look at the approaching ship, and dismantled it entirely. The hull came apart in sections, the mast folded, and the whole structure separated at the joints. The pirates scrambled for anything still floating, pale and silent.

Lily returned to the deck without particular ceremony.

"Well done," Amon said, watching the debris scatter across the water. "Your psychic strength has grown considerably."

A few months of consistent training had done exactly what consistent training was supposed to do. He estimated her combat capability had crossed the hundred-million bounty threshold somewhere in the past few weeks. She also had the advantage of a trainer who took her development seriously and made time for it every day.

"I had no idea Lily had gotten this strong," Robin said, genuinely surprised.

She'd first encountered Lily in Alabasta, back when Lily had struggled somewhat against a pair of Crocodile's subordinates. That felt like a different era now. The most remarkable part, Robin reflected, was that she'd never actually seen Lily doing anything that looked like training. A little meditation here, a massage session there. And yet the results were undeniable.

It made her quietly more impressed with Amon each time she thought about it.

With the interruption handled, they continued. Another fifteen days passed. The distance to Thriller Bark was substantial, and Amon kept the ship moving at high speed throughout, which solved the problem of travel time and created a different problem entirely.

Robin and Lily were bored out of their minds.

The first stretch was manageable. Fishing helped. Reading helped. But sustained high-speed sailing stripped away most of the small diversions that made long ocean crossings tolerable, and by the final days both of them had the restless, hollow-eyed look of people who had run out of things to do.

Then the system chimed.

"Ding! Congratulations, Host. You have arrived at Thriller Bark. New task issued: sell three jars within Thriller Bark."

Amon sat up from the beach chair.

"Finally."

The dark mass of the island had appeared ahead, rising out of the fog like something that had grown there. Even from a distance it carried a particular atmosphere, heavy and still in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

He exhaled. High-speed sailing for that long was taxing even for him. Slower was better. Life was meant to be taken at a reasonable pace.

"We're here," Robin said, relief evident. "I was starting to feel seasick from the speed alone."

The crossing from Water Seven had taken nearly a month and a half. Both women were deeply done with being on a moving ship and not going anywhere interesting.

Robin, to Lily's visible bewilderment, perked up immediately upon hearing there were unusual creatures aboard.

Lily had not forgotten Brook. The last time she'd encountered the skeleton had been formative in ways she hadn't fully recovered from, and the news that they were returning to the same vicinity made her press herself firmly behind Amon's back and refuse to emerge.

He reached back and patted her head until the shaking subsided.

"Forward," he said, and steered them toward Thriller Bark.

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