The trip toward the Red Line was... oddly peaceful.
Which was odd for the Straw Hats. Usually, they would be throwing hands with the World Government or something like that.
They always found a way to throw hands with the World Government. Maybe Shiki would sneak them, he would have good reason to.
The Thousand Sunny, or Merry 2.0, was moving through the ocean at insane speeds, at least twice as fast as a Navy warship.
They were zooming toward the Red Line. Next step was Fish-Man Island. They actually could skip Sabaody, you know, since their ship was already coated and all.
Though, they kinda still needed to go for Bonney. Apart from being a part of Kairo's plan to say fuck the World Government.
There was also his promise to Kuma.
As for what the crew was doing.
Well, Luffy was currently in the training room, switching between gears, anything except Gear 5.
He wanted to have full control over his power first.
It did not help that Kairo told him that Gear 5 was only his hybrid transformation.
The full Nika form was a bit different.
Luffy was only accessing the light side of the Nika power, the full power included both light and darkness.
And his ass could not even use the light side properly. He really needed to train those powers, and while Kairo wanted to have some Elbaf giants train Luffy, have him train with Loki and all that shit, there was not enough time really, and also Elbaf had some kind of time distortion happening in it, so not a good bet.
So, Kairo would personally have to train Luffy for a full fucking year, maybe two, in order for him to have full fucking control of his power.
So two fucking years of Kairo personally teaching Luffy. Mind you, Kairo had only been teaching current Luffy for three months... max, and he already had Gear 4, all forms of Haki, Conqueror's Haki, even some slight form of Conqueror's coating.
A brand new Gear 4, and his base strength had skyrocketed, basically giving Luffy his post-timeskip strength before the timeskip. Currently, with his strength, he should be above himself in Zou, but like a bit below his Whole Cake self.
Since that version of him had Future Sight and Luffy did not, and also his time limit for Gear 4 was like a couple of seconds, forty-five to be exact, compared to his other self.
The only reason he was even in talks for that shit was because he had Ryo and very basic Conqueror's coating, by virtue of Kairo's existence.
While Luffy was doing that.
Zoro was napping, Usopp was tinkering with some gadgets.
And Perona was with Robin, still very jumpy around Kairo. She had just watched him slime out an entire island.
And she knew she was only alive because Luffy found her power funny and said she was a good person.
She knew it, deep in her bones.
"Join my crew," he had said with a shit-eating grin on his face.
She could have said no, but the bloody sword had her thinking otherwise. Noticing her fear, Luffy had said.
"He won't kill you, right Kairo?"
And smiled at Kairo, who had just looked bored, simply saying.
"I won't."
To which Luffy would smile back at her, as if to show Kairo would not slime her out.
Like for fuck's sake, this fucker was the embodiment of King Von in this world.
Sliming out anyone who proved to be a threat. If Luffy had not taken him in, Kairo seemed like the kind of guy to slime out Celestial Dragons and target or attack the Marines.
Basically making the seas a bloodbath for the World Government.
His hatred for them would have been left to grow instead of now, where he was learning to care for some people, even love someone.
While also not trying to disappoint someone else.
Basically, they were keeping him grounded. If that leash were to disappear... well, he had the Reincarnation Jutsu, and nothing was stopping him from pulling the Tobirama special and nuking a village with paper bombs.
Speaking of the man, he was currently looking at the sky.
His biggest hater did not have it.
"You seem quiet."
Kairo lazily glanced at Sanji.
"I am always quiet."
He was right. He had always been like this around them, for the most part.
"No, this is the same quiet you get when you're planning something."
Robin looked in their direction.
"I am wondering whether to use the secret entrance, considering the World Government probably has access to the main gate."
Sanji nodded before saying.
"I have been meaning to ask, if your clan was as secret as you said, how the hell did it get discovered?"
That was a valid question really, a really good one.
"I fucked up... really badly."
Ah, so it was related to him specifically.
Though, Sanji had the emotional intelligence not to ask for more info from Kairo.
Something told him this was about as much as he could get from this boy, and frankly, he was not wrong.
A/N I can roughly still remember the major plot point before google doc decided to be a bitch and delete my progress.
So i can probably pump out some chapters pretty fast.