Ships of various sizes lined the waterfront, their masts reaching toward the clear sky. Aria studied each vessel, weighing her chances.
'Someone out there is hiring. Even a deckhand position beats sitting on a hard step feeling sorry for myself.'
Her attention caught on a worn building near the water's edge. A sign above the door read "Brigg's Shipwright Services."
The bell chimed as she pushed inside. Fresh-cut wood and varnish hit her immediately.
Behind a counter, an older man worked through calculations in a ledger, his hands moving across the page without looking up.
"Looking to buy?"
"Yes. Something small but sturdy enough for the Grand Line."
His pencil stopped. He looked up properly for the first time, studying her face. "The Grand Line. Who's your navigator?"
"Still working on that part."
"You mean you can't sail." It wasn't a question. He laughed, short and humorless.
"I'll learn."
"From who? Gale?" His expression shifted. "You already tried him, didn't you."
"He wasn't very receptive."
The shipwright leaned back. "Everyone in this village knows that story." He reached under the counter and pulled out an old, yellowed newspaper. "Gale wasn't just any captain. Charted passages no one else tried. Trained dozens of navigators, best in the East Blue." He tapped the headline. "Including his son, Rowan."
The photograph showed two men standing beside a nautical chart. The younger one's smile was bright and easy, and Gale's hand rested on his shoulder with the particular weight of someone very proud of something.
"They mapped a safer trade route through the Calm Belt together. A month later, Rowan took his own crew to establish it." The shipwright folded the paper carefully. "Never came back. Gale went mad searching. Spent a fortune on rescue ships. When he finally stopped, something in him had broken. Hasn't set foot on a boat in ten years."
Aria looked at the photograph a moment longer. 'So that's what I was pushing against.'
"About that boat—"
"No."
"I'm a quick learner. And I've sailed before."
"Where?"
"Islands in the North Blue."
"Navigation certificate?"
"Lost in a storm."
Briggs snorted. "Of course it was."
Aria dropped her coin pouch on the counter with a heavy thud. "I have money."
He pushed it back without hesitation. "Policy. No sale without certification. Marine regulations."
"Since when do shipwrights care about—"
The door burst open. A dock worker stumbled in, sweat covering his face. "Pirates! At Gale's house! Four of them, broke down his door."
Briggs was already on his feet, chair scraping back. "Get the Marines!"
"Station's empty. All out on patrol."
"Of course they are," Aria muttered, moving toward the door.
Briggs grabbed her arm. "Where do you think you're going?"
"To help."
"You think you can handle four pirates?"
She pulled free. "Watch me."
She hit the dock at a run and let the energy surge through her legs. The harbor blurred, wind cutting at her face as she accelerated, her feet barely touching the boards. The residential streets came up fast and she turned into them without slowing, the blue roof already visible against the hillside.
She pulled up short when she reached it. The front door hung from a single hinge, splintered near the lock. Shouting inside, and the sound of breaking wood.
She pressed against the outer wall and focused her senses. Four energy signatures pulsed through the walls, all pale blue.'
A chair came through the window in a spray of glass and splinters.
"The maps, old man! Where are they?"
"Everything's gone. I burned them all."
"Liar!"
Aria moved to the doorway and looked in. Bookcases overturned, papers scattered, navigational instruments broken across the floor. Gale stood in the center of it, watching his life's work get destroyed with an expression that had gone somewhere past anger into something quieter and worse. The largest pirate had him by the collar, lifting him off the ground.
"Last chance."
"The maps are worthless. Every crew that followed them died."
"That's because they weren't good enough. Our captain's different. He's got a Devil Fruit that—"
"Hey." Aria stepped through the doorway. "Let him go."
All four turned. The leader was the largest, a scar running from temple to jaw. To his left, a bald man with thick arms. An eyepatch, a curved blade already in hand. The smallest one's hand moved to his pocket.
"Get lost, girl. This doesn't concern you."
"You know, I've heard that twice today."
The smallest one pulled his knife and rushed her. Aria caught his wrist mid-strike with her left hand and pressed her right palm flat against his chest.
The connection opened immediately. Energy drained out of him like water through a crack, and his face went from angry to confused to pale in the span of a breath. His fingers lost their grip. The knife hit the floor and he followed it, face-first.
Eye-patch and Baldy stepped back from their fallen comrade, exchanging a look.
"Devil Fruit user," Eye-patch hissed.
The leader shoved Gale aside. The old man caught himself against a table and stayed there, watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"Kill her."
'They always say that.'
Aria shifted into a balanced stance as Eye-patch and Baldy charged together. She ducked under Baldy's swing and stepped between them, pressing her palm to his chest. The transfer happened in a second, warmth flooding into her as his legs buckled. He went down slowly, more confused than hurt, staring at his hands like they'd stopped belonging to him.
She redirected the energy into her legs and spun. Her foot caught Eye-patch at the ankles and he flew backward into a shelf of navigational instruments, sextants and compasses raining down around him.
"Stay down."
He grabbed a compass off the floor and hurled it at her face. She caught it.
"Thanks." She pocketed it. "I needed one of these."
He came at her again with the blade, wild and desperate, every swing telegraphed a full second early. She let him tire himself out before stepping inside his guard and closing her hand around his wrist. He slid down the wall and stayed there.
A creak behind her. She turned in time to see the leader swinging a chair at her head. She focused on its structure and pushed.
The chair split along its grain lines mid-swing, pieces scattering across the floor. The leader stumbled forward off-balance and she hit him once in the jaw. He crashed back into the pile of instruments where Eye-patch was still trying to get upright and they went down together.
He found his feet faster than she expected and bolted for the door. She crossed the room in two steps and was already in the doorway when he reached it.
He pulled up short, looking at her, then at the gap between her and the door frame.
She hit him in the solar plexus. When he folded, she caught him by the collar before he hit the floor and lowered him down.
The room went quiet except for groaning.
Aria straightened and looked at Gale. "Are you alright?"
His face contorted. "Get out."
"I'm sorry?"
"GET OUT." He pointed at the broken door, hand shaking. "NOW."
Aria looked at him for a moment. 'Really.'
"Saved your life. But sure, I'm the problem."
"I didn't ask for your help!"
"No, you were doing brilliantly on your own." She gestured at the man still dangling from her hand. "I'll just leave this here then, shall I?"
"First you demand my charts, now this." Gale moved through the wreckage, gathering torn papers with shaking hands. "Why else would pirates come here now, after all these years?"
"You think I led them here."
He clutched a damaged map to his chest and said nothing.
Aria looked at the four men on the floor, then back at the old navigator hunched over his scattered life's work. She sighed and grabbed two pirates by their collars.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking out your trash."
She dragged them through the doorway, their heads finding every wooden stair on the way down. Briggs was already coming up the path at a run, pistol drawn, his face going through several expressions when he saw her.
"How did you—"
"They weren't very good pirates." She dropped them at his feet. "There are two more inside. Someone should probably get the Marines."
Briggs holstered his weapon slowly, looking from the unconscious men to Aria to the wrecked house behind her. Gale stood in the doorway, watching her with those narrowed gray eyes, still saying nothing.
Aria picked up her bag from where she'd dropped it on the path and kept walking toward the Marine station, the pirates' boots dragging twin lines through the dirt behind her.
One of the pirates stirred slightly, mumbling something that sounded like a threat. Aria glanced down at him.
"Shush. You lost speaking privileges when you decided to redecorate Gale's house."