Built by someone who wanted no neighbors, the house stood alone. Wood was sun-bleached, windows crusted with salt, the roof patched by driftwood and grit. Jungle pressed up from behind, vines searching for cracks, but the front door faced the sea with stubborn solitude.
Liam wiped sweat from his brow as he stood at the jungle's edge, his shirt clinging to his back in the thick humidity. Beside him, Luffy sniffed the damp air with sudden intensity, like a dog picking up a trail. "Meat," he declared, dashing eagerly up the winding path toward the distant house before anyone else moved.
Cricket emerged from the water like a sea-worn ghost, shoulders glistening. A net full of gold scraps hung from his back. His skin was old leather left in the sun, his beard more salt than pepper. He blinked, water dripping from his nose.
Masira and Shoujou leaped from the trees in a screeching burst of enthusiasm. 'Cricket! Visitors! Pirates! Monkey D. Luffy!' The brothers tumbled forward, sending a startled hermit crab pinwheeling.
Cricket sighed. "They always do that."
Nami stepped forward, gold already gleaming in her eyes. "You're pulling real gold from the seabed?"
Cricket gripped the net tighter. 'Not just gold. Proof.' He led them inside, past salvaged rigging and pinned tide charts, to a table scattered with carved wood, tarnished coins, and a half-clappered bell. 'Montblanc Noland didn't lie.' His voice caught. 'The city of gold was real. It's still up there.' He pointed straight up through the ceiling and sky.
Liam let out a slow breath, anxiety and hope battling in his chest. He could picture it now: the bell ringing above white clouds, its echoes reaching Jaya four hundred years too late. Cricket's hands shook as he set out another piece, and Liam clenched his own fists to stop himself from reaching out. *You'll hear it. Soon.*
Robin traced the edge of a warped metal plate. "A sunken ship?"
'From the voyage that condemned him,' Cricket said. 'Every piece is another page in his defense.' His eyes stayed down, voice rough with years of carrying these words.
Luffy plopped onto the floor, legs crossed. "So we're going up."
Cricket froze.
"To Sky Island," Luffy clarified, as though it were obvious. "If your ancestor found it, we can too."
The silence stretched. Somewhere outside, a wave broke against the rocks.
Cricket looked at him—really looked—with the expression of someone who did not expect to be understood.
He exhaled, slow and ragged, like a man surfacing from deep water. "You're serious."
Luffy grinned, wide and uncomplicated. "Yeah."
The tension in Cricket's shoulders eased—loosened, not vanished, like stubborn hinges finally moving. He started to speak.
Then the sound found them. Not violence, but its aftermath: a hollow silence left by something broken.
Liam moved first, boots crunching broken shells and splintered wood around the house. The door hung crooked, hinges torn. Inside, wreckage—the shards of glass, overturned furniture, and maps ripped like stripped skin.
Masira howled, crashing past him. "Cricket's treasures!"
Shoujou scrabbled at the empty spot where Cricket's gold had been. 'Gone! All gone!' Their distress overflowed in frantic motion.
Nami hissed through her teeth. 'Bastards.' Not quite anger—it's sharp and focused beginning. She knew what it meant to have years stolen.
Robin knelt, fingers brushing where heavy ingots had rested. 'Recent. The dust hasn't settled.' Her eyes moved to deep, careless boot treads.
Cricket stood amid the wreckage, shoulders hunched. He wasn't trembling or speaking, just empty—like the space where the gold had been.
Luffy's sandals scraped the floorboards. He didn't look at Cricket—he didn't need to. His eyes stayed fixed on the empty space where the proof had been, his face set in quiet, determined fury.
"Mock Town," he said.
Liam nodded. He saw it in the damage. He pictured Bellamy's crew's route—the swaggering path of men who thought theft made them strong.
Nami's fists tightened. "They took *years* of his life."
Robin stood, brushing splinters from her skirt. "The South Bird hunt can wait."
Cricket still hadn't moved.
Luffy turned decisively toward the door. He stepped onto the ruined floorboards, his sandals leaving no visible mark as he crossed the room. Behind him, his shadow stretched long and dark across the wreckage.
Masira and Shoujou flanked Cricket, clamor muted to a protective growl. 'We go too,' Masira muttered.
Shoujou bared his teeth. "Break their faces."
Cricket exhaled—a shuddering breath—then looked at the space where his gold had been. His calloused hands clenched once.
Luffy watched him. Waited.
Cricket met his eyes. Nodded.
Luffy grinned, sharp and ready. "Let's go."
Luffy didn't run. He walked, sandals scuffing the dirt with the calm pace of someone going to market. Only the jungle sounds faded. Birds went silent, insects quieted, as if something unstoppable approached.
Liam lingered at the tree line, arms crossed, watching the crooked town through the foliage. He didn't follow. Behind him, the crew fanned out—Nami's fingers near her clima-tact, Robin relaxed but alert, Zoro's eye on rooftops. Only Masira and Shoujou vibrated, knuckles cracking in unison.
Mock Town smelled of stale rum and bad choices. Luffy's sandals echoed on warped boards, too loud in the quiet. Faces turned: bar patrons froze mid-swig, dealers mid-hand, as the straw hat sliced through the crowd.
Bellamy's laughter broke the silence, jagged from the gambling den porch. 'Back for another lesson, kid?' He lounged across a barrel, dangling a stolen gold ingot. His crew flanked him, grins wide, eyes too bright with cheap thrill.
Luffy stopped. Didn't glance at the gold. Didn't acknowledge the jeers. Just looked at Bellamy with the calm of a man who'd already decided how this ended.
Bellamy's smirk twitched. He pushed off the barrel, Spring-Spring Fruit already coiling in his legs. 'You don't learn, do you?' His voice, a whetstone on steel. 'This is the new age. Men like you—'
Luffy's fist met his face before the word "weak" could leave his mouth.
The impact was clean. No shockwave, no prolonged fight—just one brutal blow: Bellamy folded around Luffy's punch like paper around a stone. The gold ingot hit the boards as Bellamy crashed through the gambling den's wall in splinters.
Silence.
Sarquiss dropped his drink. The glass shattered against the floor, the sound absurdly loud in the stunned quiet.
Luffy exhaled, rolled his shoulder, and turned. The crowd parted in silence.
Outside, Liam heard the punch—a single, crisp thud—and knew it was over. He watched Luffy emerge and fall into step beside him, silent.
Behind them, the gold ingot gleamed on the porch, waiting to be returned.
Cricket waited in the wreckage, gripping the recovered gold, eyes dry but red. The ingot's weight seemed to settle something in him—not peace, but quiet resolve. He nodded to Luffy, who grinned like they shared a private joke.
'South Bird,' Cricket announced abruptly, tapping the ingot. 'Navigating the Knock Up Stream without one's suicide.'
Luffy's eyes lit up. "Bird hunting!"
By the time Cricket explained the South Bird's true-south beak and water-shedding feathers, Luffy was already waist-deep in the jungle, head turning like a weather vane.
Zoro vanished seven minutes in, drawn off-trail by a glint—bird or shiny leaf, nobody commented.
'It's technically a medical emergency if we don't catch it,' Chopper fretted, chasing after Usopp, who'd rigged a net from vines and hope. 'That beak could puncture an artery!'
'Or my patience,' Nami muttered, squinting up at the canopy.
Robin's hands bloomed along a high branch, brushing blue iridescence. The South Bird shrieked, launching straight into Sanji's face—who, despite combat reflexes, instinctively caught it like an unruly ingredient.
The bird pecked his thumb. Sanji yelped.
Luffy, upside down in a tree, cackled.
Three more minutes, two failed nets, one accidental tackle (Usopp, Chopper, and a surprised frog) later, the South Bird—bundled in Nami's shirt—stopped screeching.
The jungle exhaled, leaves rustling—relief, maybe.
Robin smoothed her skirt. "Efficient."
Sanji nursed his thumb. "*Rude*."
Luffy swung down, landing beside Liam with the grace of a dropped anvil. "Easy!"
Liam snorted, watching the shirt-bundle twitch. "Define easy."
Cricket's laughter was rough but real, like sun-warmed wood finally creaking open. He hefted the ingot once more, gold catching the late light, and nodded toward the Merry. "Time to fly."
The ship waited, her figurehead grinning at the horizon like it knew a secret.
Preparing a ship to ride a column of water into the sky turned out to require more rope than they had brought. Cricket produced coils of salt-stiffened line from his shed—the kind of thick, knotted cord that spoke of years spent tying down storms—and tossed them to Zoro without comment. The swordsman caught them one-handed, his other arm already braced against the mast as Nami directed adjustments with the precision of someone who'd calculated the exact angle a ship might survive being shot into the stratosphere.
The South Bird, still mummified in Nami's shirt, let out a muffled screech from where Sanji had wedged it under a bench. "Quiet, you," he muttered, then immediately ruined the effect by tossing it a scrap of fish. The bird swallowed it whole and resumed glowering.
Liam knelt next to Cricket, helping tie the last barrels to the deck. The old diver's hands moved quickly and surely, like someone who had spent a lifetime making do—knots tight enough to hold, but loose enough to cut in an emergency. His eyes kept drifting to the horizon, where the sea had started to shiver in a way that had nothing to do with waves.
"You feel that?" Cricket paused, palm flat against the deck. The wood hummed under his fingers, a vibration too deep for sound. "Water's remembering it's supposed to go up."
Liam nodded. He knew it was coming—he really did—but the reality still made his skin prickle. The air felt charged, like the moment before lightning.
Robin appeared beside them, her shadow stretching in the late light. "The ship's log mentions a whirlpool before the stream rises." She didn't look at Cricket, but her voice softened. "Your ancestor called it a 'breath drawn before the plunge.'"
Cricket's fingers stuttered on the rope. Just once. Just enough.
Luffy vaulted onto the railing, straw hat tipped back to watch the sky. "Perfect day for flying."
Nami smacked his ankle with her clima-tact. "Get down before you—*why* are you grinning like that?"
The sea buckled.
It wasn't a wave, not anything that small, but a sudden, sickening drop, as if the ocean had stepped off a ledge. The Merry groaned, its timbers creaking, and for one long second, they hung above a swirling blue vortex.
Cricket grabbed the rail, knuckles white. "Hold on—*now*—"
The water *remembered*.
The Knock Up Stream hit like a cannon blast, a roaring vertical geyser of seawater that launched the Merry skyward with enough force to snap Liam's head back and steal his breath. The deck tilted wildly, barrels slammed against their ropes, and somewhere behind him, Usopp screamed something that could have been a prayer or a very creative curse.
Liam turned, catching one last look at Cricket standing stiff on the dock, his face lifted as the ship shot away from him. He didn't wave or call out—he just watched, holding onto the quiet, fierce hope of someone who had waited years to believe.
Then the clouds swallowed them whole.
White.
That was the first thing Liam noticed—not the roar of the stream or the dizzying climb, but the sudden, overwhelming whiteness pressing in from all sides as the Merry broke through the clouds. The air seemed to thicken around them, damp and heavy, clinging to skin and wood as if it were alive.
Beside him, Luffy let out a whoop that was half-laugh, half-war cry, arms flung wide as if trying to embrace the entire sky. The wind tore at his straw hat, but the grin beneath it was brighter than the sun cutting through the mist.
Robin gripped the rail tighter, her usually calm face lit up with something close to wonder. "It's real." The words were barely heard over the wind, but they carried the weight of a scholar's doubt finally put to rest.
Nami's clima-tact clattered to the deck, forgotten. Her hands rose to cover her mouth—not in fear, but in the stunned silence of a navigator seeing her maps rewritten before her eyes.
The South Bird chose that moment to wriggle free from its fabric prison, flapping indignantly onto the mast. Its beak swung unerringly south, as if the concept of vertical travel was beneath its notice.
Sanji, still gripping a rope with one hand and his cigarette with the other, exhaled a slow stream of smoke. "Well," he muttered, watching the bird preen, "that's *rude*."
Chopper clung to Usopp's shoulder, tiny hooves digging in. "We're *flying*!" His voice cracked midway through the word, equal parts terror and exhilaration.
Zoro, who had somehow ended up wedged between two barrels, grunted. "Faster than walking."
The deck shook as the stream's force faded, and the Merry's climb slowed to a gentle drift. The clouds thinned, showing patches of blue so bright it almost hurt to look at—not the usual sky from below, but something sharper and clearer, as if they had entered a place where even the air was different.
Luffy turned, his straw hat tipping back as he looked at the endless white stretching below them, so still that the sea felt like a distant memory. His grin softened for a moment, becoming quieter and more thoughtful. "Told you it was up here."
Above them, through the clouds, through the impossible vertical distance they had just crossed, the sky opened—white and vast and impossibly still after everything that had brought them here—and the Going Merry sailed into it.