"Captain, look at the paper! That bastard Moria escaped!"
Mina rushed over, panting slightly, holding a newspaper in one hand. She had changed into a sultry strap dress, her urgency stark against the casual glamor of her outfit.
Everyone's eyes widened.
Aeridar stood up sharply, face dark. He took the newspaper from Mina and scanned the front page.
As expected, aside from reporting that he had officially become one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the headline beneath it was equally explosive: former Warlord Gecko Moria had mysteriously vanished aboard a Marine battleship.
"Vanished under mysterious circumstances? Other than a few guards being found unconscious, no one else on the ship saw a thing. Suspected to have been rescued by an outside party."
Reading this line, Aeridar furrowed his brows deeply. There was a critical piece he'd overlooked.
"Shit! What the hell was that Vice Admiral doing, sleeping on the job?" Oliver cursed angrily.
"Moria was half-dead after the captain thrashed him. And even then, someone still managed to break him out? No one on a damn Marine warship noticed? What a bunch of useless dead weight," even Dimitri, normally the most level-headed, couldn't contain his fury.
And who could blame them? If not for the Marines insisting on taking custody, they would've finished Moria off already. Now he'd escaped. That meant they'd just earned themselves a powerful enemy, one they had no intention of letting live, and vice versa.
"Wait... that lion-faced guy..." Aeridar suddenly remembered. "His name was Absalom. One of Moria's crew. He's a Clear-Clear Fruit user."
"The Clear-Clear Fruit?!"
"That's right. He can turn invisible," Aeridar confirmed grimly.
No wonder something had been nagging at him. That lion-faced freak, Absalom, had arrived with Moria. But when Aeridar started fighting Moria, the guy had vanished. He must've cloaked himself and stayed hidden the whole time. And after Moria got beaten, he didn't dare reveal himself. Then, when the Marines came to take custody, Absalom must've snuck aboard the battleship using his powers and broke Moria out during transit.
Clear-Clear Fruit users, when their powers are active, don't reflect or absorb light, they're effectively invisible to the naked eye. Without Observation Haki, it's nearly impossible to detect them unless they make themselves known. That Vice Admiral probably didn't have Observation Haki, which let Absalom exploit the perfect gap to pull off the jailbreak.
"Clear-Clear Fruit, huh? Hah...~"
Suddenly, Arlan tilted his head back and started bleeding from the nose. His face wore a dopey grin as he mumbled dreamily, "That's a man's ultimate fantasy..."
Everyone's faces darkened.
"We all know what you're thinking, pervert," Oliver muttered, eyes twitching.
"Disgusting," Mina and Millie said in perfect stereo, glaring at Arlan like he was a piece of filth.
"I do not like him," Backan stated flatly.
Dimitri and Gorbo exchanged a silent glance, then said in unison:
"Absolutely hopeless."
"Damn it... and I was planning to seize Moria's massive ghost ship, the Thriller Bark, as a base." Aeridar groaned now that everything had clicked into place.
Odds were, Moria was already long gone. Even if he'd returned to Thriller Bark, that was his home turf. Fighting him there could get ugly fast.
In the original storyline, Moria had absorbed a thousand shadows, becoming strong enough to crack an island with a single punch. But because of that overwhelming power, when Nightmare Luffy, created using Moria's own ability, beat him to a pulp, Moria couldn't contain the shadows anymore and collapsed.
Now consider this: Moria could toy with Luffy before using that technique. Once Luffy gained a hundred shadows, his strength skyrocketed. So what level would a Moria with a hundred shadows be at? And if he were healthy, what about a thousand? He could steamroll the Straw Hats without breaking a sweat.
Worse still, by the time Aeridar finished attending the Warlords' summit at Marineford and went looking for him, Moria would've recovered. Even absorbing five hundred shadows might make him a nightmare to deal with. It just wasn't worth the risk, especially for the sake of capturing the Thriller Bark.
"Thriller Bark?! You mean the legendary ghost ship from the West Blue, said to be the size of an island?"
Dimitri, who had journeyed far and wide with his former captain, Gurley Jaron, had heard the tales.
"An island-sized ship? Oh, come on~" Oliver's jaw dropped. "Who the hell could even build something that massive? There's no way that's real!"
"No," Aeridar replied, shaking his head. "Dimitri's right. But Moria's already gone back, and we've got to head for Marineford. We don't have time to go chasing him."
He waved it off, clearly frustrated. Frustrated at the Marines.
They'd practically handed Moria back to the enemy after Aeridar had left him half-dead. That Vice Admiral really was a disgrace.
"...Um, Captain," Arlan interrupted, pointing to several mounds piled high on the deck. "Shouldn't we maybe sell some of this gold first? At least lighten the ship a bit?"
"...Good point." Aeridar scratched his head, then turned to Dimitri. "How far to the next island?"
"About a day," Dimitri answered, pulling a chart from inside his coat. "But according to the map Crocodile gave us, the next stop is Long Ring Long Land. Not much of a town there. However, after that is Water 7, which is a growing hub of commerce. We've also got a Log Pose set to Water 7."
"And it's not too far from Marineford," Dimitri added. "The Marines gave us a permanent Log Pose for that too. So we can sell the gold, then head to the summit. We'll make it in time."
"Back on Jaya, I heard the seven shipyards in Water 7 are constantly competing with each other," Arlan added. "They've got shipwrights who don't fear pirates, and quite a few bounty hunters too."
The Chris Pirates had crushed quite a few crews on their way here, some were rookies fresh from the Blues, others seasoned veterans from Paradise. They even took down a slaver outfit called the Crimson Man-Eating Flower, which was where they'd acquired the permanent Log Pose to Water 7. The one to Marineford had been handed to Aeridar directly by the Vice Admiral when he came to take custody of Moria.
Aeridar's eyes gleamed. He slapped his hand down with decision.
"That's our next stop."
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