The sea was flat as a mirror, calm and deceptively peaceful—just the way Garp liked it. Not because it made for good sailing (it didn't), but because any sea where you could punch the threats out of your way was his kind of ocean.
The Calm Belt had its reputation, sure—full of sea kings, no wind, a sailor's nightmare—but Garp stood at the bow of his Marine warship like a man on vacation, arms crossed, jaw set, and a wide, wolfish grin plastered across his face like he'd just heard the world's dumbest joke and was dying to tell it again.
"That little brat..." he muttered, more fond than furious, his eyes scanning the horizon as if it might spit Ace back out. "Going around calling himself a pirate now, is he?"
He chuckled, but it came with a heavy sigh. Of course Ace had slipped away from Foosha Village. Of course he was playing pirate. The signs had been there for years—hell, the kid might as well have come out of the womb swinging his fists and declaring himself "Captain Ace."
Garp had tried—tried—to steer him right, get him into the Marines, put some discipline in his bones. But Roger's blood ran hot in that boy, and hot blood never cooled easy.
"Stupid Roger," Garp grumbled. "You die, dump your kid on me, and now I'm the one losing sleep over him."
He looked down at the waves lapping against the hull, the Calm Belt eerie in its stillness.
Somewhere out there, his idiot of a grandson was carving a name for himself—Portgas D. Ace.
Garp could already feel Sengoku's blood pressure rising across the ocean. The old man would probably pop a vein if he found out Ace was out there lighting up pirate crews like birthday candles.
And speaking of headaches… Garp's eye twitched.
"Luffy's probably still runnin' around yellin' about becoming Pirate King," he muttered, gritting his teeth. "All 'cause of that damn red-haired clown."
A breeze stirred Garp's cape—though where it came from in the windless Calm Belt, no one knew—and he turned, glancing back at the oversized floating cage lashed to the side of the ship.
Inside, a long, thrashing figure slapped the water with its serpentine tail, the metal bars groaning under the strain. The eel-like sea king snarled at him, though it sounded more like a soggy sneeze.
"Keep tryin', ya sea sausage," Garp barked. "Ain't no one escaping this time."
He slapped a hand on the rail, proud as a man unveiling a statue of himself. "Hah! Catch a sea king, tie it up in front of Foosha Village—and bam! Instant pirate repellent! Not bad for an old man, eh?"
Behind him, a few brave Marine deckhands quietly exchanged looks. One of them mouthed, He's really doing this again, huh?
Another shrugged. It's Garp.
"Maybe the brass should do this everywhere," Garp mused aloud, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "One sea king per island. Put the fear of Neptune back into kids' hearts. Betcha the pirate numbers'll drop like a rock."
He gave the cage another approving nod. "Yup. No way anyone's gettin' past this thing."
Just then, the sea king gave the bars a particularly violent shake. One of the hinges squealed. A bolt popped off with an innocent little plink.
Garp squinted at it.
"…I'll fix that later," he said, brushing it off with the same confidence a man uses to ignore a crack in a dam.
Just as Garp was settling into a lovely daydream about a world blissfully free of pirate brats and their oversized egos—thanks entirely to his own brilliance, naturally—he heard the familiar, measured footsteps of his right-hand man.
Bogard appeared beside him like a ghost in a perfectly pressed coat, his hat tilted low to hide most of his face, as usual. If there was a Marine award for "Most Mysteriously Intimidating Guy on Deck," Bogard had been winning it on repeat since the day he enlisted.
"Vice Admiral," Bogard said, his voice as dry and unbothered as ever, "Headquarters is contacting us."
Garp didn't even look at him. He just groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose like someone had just asked him to attend a meeting that wasn't about punching pirates. "Don't they know I'm on my time off?"
"They do," Bogard replied smoothly, producing a Den Den Mushi from inside his coat. The snail was already awake and fidgeting, its tiny Marine hat perched crookedly on its shell. "But they want us to make a detour. You should probably hear it directly from the communication officer."
Garp let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl as he snatched the Den Den Mushi out of Bogard's hand. "What now?" he barked into the receiver. "This better be important or someone's gettin' a cannonball in the teeth."
A voice crackled to life from the snail, polite but nervous—probably some poor soul from the comms division who had pulled the short straw today.
"Ah! Vice Admiral Garp, sir! Sorry for the intrusion during your scheduled leave, but we've received orders from HQ. You're being asked to cross over to South Blue and head to the Roshwan Kingdom to pick up two promising recruits and escort them back to Marine HQ."
Garp blinked. "Pick up what?"
"Two talent prospects, sir. They've caught our eye—er, intelligence reports, I mean—and the higher-ups want them brought in personally. Due to current staff shortages and your, uh, proximity… it was deemed most efficient for you to handle it."
Garp glared at the snail like it had just told him to babysit. "Let me get this straight. HQ is short-staffed, so instead of I dunno, anyone else, they send me—on my day off—to go pick up some rookies I've never heard of?"
"Yes, sir," the snail replied, with the kind of terrified politeness that only comes from years of surviving under Admiral-level grumpiness. "The Fleet Admiral said it wasn't urgent, so you can return to East Blue first if you'd like—just, uh, get them there eventually."
"Hmph." Garp grumbled something that might've been a swear word from the previous century and ended the call with a dramatic click. He turned to Bogard, who hadn't moved an inch.
"We closer to East Blue or South Blue?" Garp asked, rubbing the back of his neck like the stress physically itched.
Bogard, never one to make things better, replied, "South Blue. Roshwan Kingdom is about a day's sail from here."
Garp stared at him.
"...Of course it is."
He turned back toward the bow, hands on hips, cape fluttering behind him like it was trying to flee the awkward silence. "Fine. We'll go get the brats. But if these so-called 'talents' turn out to be a pair of crybabies or bootlickers or some weird duo with matching haircuts, someone's gettin' a taste of my Fist of Love."
He raised a fist into the air for emphasis. "Them, and whoever thought wasting my time was a good idea."
...
The sun hung low over the Roshwan Kingdom Marine branch, barely peeking through the heavy, ever-present clouds like even it didn't want to be in this frozen bureaucratic nightmare of an outpost. The training yard was half-covered in snow and half-covered in footprints from Marines doing their morning drills.
Gale stood at the far end of the field, near a row of cracked, frostbitten training dummies lined up against a battered wooden wall that looked like it had survived at least three wars and one particularly aggressive seagull infestation.
He raised the revolver slowly, one eye shut, the other squinting with a kind of exaggerated focus that made him look like a pirate trying to read a legal document.
The revolver—sleek, black, and very much stolen from a bounty target named Bruno Malko (who definitely didn't need it anymore, thank you very much)—gleamed slightly despite the chill. The grip was too big, the recoil unforgiving, and the aim? Well…
BANG!
The bullet ricocheted off the dummy's stand, hit a nearby barrel, and sent a puff of snow into the air like a depressed confetti cannon.
Gale lowered the gun and let out a long, theatrical sigh. "Alright. So maybe sharpshooting isn't my natural calling," he muttered, spinning the revolver on his finger before fumbling it and nearly dropping it.
He caught it mid-fall and gave a look around to make sure no one saw. "Still cooler than a flintlock," he said to no one in particular.
Truth was, his fight with that ridiculous mantis shrimp sea king back in the salt lake on Karate Island had left him feeling like an idiot. The thing had been the size of a galleon and twice as pissed off.
Trying to get close enough to stab it had been... well, let's just say he still had bruises in places he didn't know could bruise. That oversized seafood platter had taught him a very valuable lesson: some enemies need to be shot before they punch you into next Tuesday.
So here he was, humbling himself, trying to learn how to shoot something that didn't involve a one-liner and a dramatic leap off a rooftop. He took aim again, muttering under his breath. "Let's at least hit the wall this time…"
BANG!
The bullet embedded itself in the neck of a snowman someone had built next to the target dummies. Gale blinked.
"…Nailed it."
He blew on the revolver's barrel like they did in the movies, then immediately regretted it when the freezing metal nearly glued his lips to the barrel. "Ow—okay. Not doing that again."
He holstered the gun and flexed his fingers. He'd been lucky to scavenge enough bullets for practice—the revolver didn't run on powder, spit, and pirate dreams like the Marine-standard flintlocks.
These were cartridges, proper ones. Industrial. Serious business.
At first, he figured he'd have to give up and go old-school, maybe borrow a pistol or two from the quartermaster and pretend to be someone important.
But then came the revelation—and honestly, he should've guessed. Turns out revolvers were invented in Roshwan.
Not on some wild-west themed island with cowboys and outlaws (though he still hoped such an island existed), but right here. In the middle of what was essentially the One Piece version of Russia, with all the cold, vodka-like discipline, and an attitude that said "we invented six shots because five wasn't enough to tell the enemy how much we hate them."
"So that tracks," Gale had said when the armory officer, a stoic woman with a beard thicker than his future, handed him a crate of practice rounds and said, "Don't shoot your foot. We don't have spares."
Still, there was something strangely satisfying about the weight of the revolver.
Something that felt right about having a backup plan for enemies you didn't want to politely duel. He looked at the pistol in his hand again and muttered, "I may not have a sniper's touch, but I can sure as hell put holes in a sea king if it gets uppity again."
He took aim one more time.
BANG!
The bullet hit the actual target dummy.
Gale stood there, shocked for a second, before a grin slowly spread across his face.
"I meant to do that."
He holstered the gun, cracked his neck, and strutted off like a man who'd just performed brain surgery blindfolded, never mind the fact that he was 1 for 12 today. He had range now. He had options. He had… a revolver made in icy Russia One Piece land.
Now all he needed was a good excuse to use it while asking some punk if they feel lucky.
...
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