OPSR: Chapter 23

Weeks up on the sky islands quickly became months. I had gone from fifteen to sixteen as I consolidated the forces above. The Birkans were easy enough, since I ate the fruit, they’d follow me regardless of what I believed. As long as I suffixed what I was doing as ‘helping me defeat the great evil,’ I could get away with practically anything.

The Shandians were another easy solve. Shandians followed strength, and after I proved myself by beating all their warriors, and promising they could move back onto their old homeland, the part of Jaya that got shot up into the sky because of the knock-up stream. With two of the three alien races on my side, beating Gan Fall and bringing the Skypeans into the fold was trivially easy.

The Skypeans were the weakest out of the three, and I could now see how the three functioned from the process. They were the thinkers; they were most likely the ones who came up with the automata on the moon, while the Birkans made the best guards because of their good hearing, and the Shandians were the enforcers, or protection.

After absorbing their lineage factor, I knew two things. One, the Birkans didn’t interbreed with any of the other races; they were so pure I hadn’t noticed until I tried absorbing the lineage factor of the other two. The second thing was that there were two other races as part of their group that I could see the barest whispers of now, after hundreds of years.

I couldn’t get enough of their lineage factor to get any sort of benefit, but I could at least glean what their races were good at. Both had similar abilities to the Birkans, where one of their senses was elevated to an extreme. One could smell better than others, while the other had an extremely strong taste. So… Out of the three that came to Earth, two might have gone back into space.

Or they could have betrayed the original three. What were the five races doing on the moon anyway? Why were they making an army of the atomata just to stop and leave them up there once they headed to Earth? Couldn’t they bring any of them? Things just didn’t add up, but it was a mystery for another time. After consolidating the forces, the Skypeans finally allowed the Shandians to live in the Upper Yard as its protectors from outsiders, while they still viewed it as holy ground.

I found the bell and let them ring it. The first day of every month, they could ring it again to fulfil their promise to Noland, and it was proof that Skypea really did exist. I thought the World Government and Navy might have known about it, but at the same time, why were they wearing astronaut suits? Were they preparing to leave the Earth once it flooded? Did they know the history of Skypea and that there were other planets and space pirates outside of Earth?

I couldn’t answer right now. Sure, the nobles said it was to not breathe the same air as commoners… But why make them bubble suits clearly designed for space travel? Either way, I knew it most likely had something to do with the Earth’s water level rising, but it might also have something to do with space. If Oda ever got around to finishing One Piece, we might get a sequel where they started to explore space.

Months had passed, and I needed to get back to my own people now that I had built up a force I could use while gathering some of the gold and dials the sky islands were known for. The big thing was… They didn’t want me to go alone. That would have been a problem if I hadn’t seen who they wanted to send. I was coming of age soon, and it appeared they wanted to tie me to their country through the women they were sending. There were Kasumi and Ashe from the Birkans, but also two other females from the other races.

They were sending Conis and Raki as well. Now, it would be impossible for me to take them with me if I took my current ship, but in the months since I was up here, I began making a new, much larger ship to travel with. All of them could serve a purpose on my ship, except one, and because of that, I decided to give her the cloud fruit, just so she’d become more capable in the future.

I viewed myself as an adult, but  I was still considered a child, and most people looked down on having relations before being considered an adult. In less than one year, I’d get my money's worth out of her body from giving her the fruit. She was also the most unquestioningly loyal out of the group. And, because it wasn’t a cannon fruit, I wanted to see it in action before we fought any truly strong enemies; that way, I knew what to expect from its abilities and could build strategies around it.

The fruit wasn’t a logia, which was shocking, but made some sense. It was a creation paramecia, like the candle fruit Mr. 3 had. I had assumed these clouds were from an awakened version of the cloud logia, but it now seemed to be from multiple users of the cloud fruit, most likely. This fruit seems lacklustre until you consider the clouds that existed in this universe, and that she could control them, possibly even those of previous cloud users of the fruit.

After testing it… Yes, she could. If she wanted to, she could open up the clouds right under someone's feet and drop them all the way down to the sea. She could make and control clouds that could hold the weight of islands, as hard as iron, clouds that looked like balls, or as thin as string, or you’d sink through like a swamp… Even clouds that produced sugar or could store items inside.

The fruit didn’t have much in terms of offence, but the support it brought made it a top-notch one in my eyes, and that wasn’t including the combination of the two other fruits. Just for thinking about it for a moment, I could empower her clouds to produce lightning, which would immediately increase her firepower dramatically. Once they were filled with lightning, I could control her clouds.

I originally planned to fly back, but now I am thinking of taking a more leisurely route, perhaps travelling over the calm belt and checking out another sea before heading back to the East Blue. With Kasumi and me for transportation, there wasn’t anywhere we couldn’t go… Except perhaps raftel… No, I don’t even think of risking heading to the New World while flying.

Still, I tried to think of where hidden devil fruits might be, but I didn’t know where many were. Besides the devil fruit Vegapunk made, and going to auction houses, I didn’t know where I could go for devil fruits. I’d have to pay attention to the news after we made it back to the sea. For now, I needed to get back and check on things at home.

If Krieg had thought to challenge the Baratie, who knows what kind of other butterfly effects I could have had on the seas? I didn’t want one of my potential crewmates to die because I wasn’t there to protect them. So, the first thing we were going to do was go back to the East Blue.

…

Meanwhile…

Kuro looked at a map of the East Blue that was covered with many different colored lines. Red was for Marine routes, black was for rival pirate locations. Each line showed many things, but the ones he was most focused on were the green ones. Green showed the trading routes of merchant ships.

He had his eyes set on taking control of the biggest merchant trading company, but he wasn’t going to do it through normal means, obviously. He was a pirate after all. He pushed his glasses up with the palm of his hands as he thought of the best location to ambush their leader. From there, it would only be picking up the pieces after killing him.