The Curtain Draws Aside
At dawn the Veil breathed inward like a theater taking its first audience. The rain-bells stopped ringing; the air stopped pretending it was something else. The Heaven's Embrace slid through the seam as if she had always known the gap would be there when she arrived.
What lay beyond was not dramatic at first glance. It was… right. An island that shouldn't fit on any map lounging in a calm as soft as a hand. A crescent of warm-sanded beaches. Hills scattered with wind-bent trees. A ribbon of freshwater arcing down stone into a lagoon so clear the ship seemed to hover over its own reflection.
Nami's quill hovered, useless and thrilled. "It's… ordinary."
Robin's eyes were shining. "Things this important don't shout. They wait for you to notice."
Vegito rested his palm on the figurehead's crown. "Let's go notice."
Bell-mère guided them into the lagoon and cut way. The Embrace folded her wings and settled like a dragon-cat finding the one square of sun it wanted. Anchors kissed sand.
The crew gathered at the gangway. No speeches. No drumroll. Just the shared inhale before a door you've chased your whole life.
"Feet on ground," Vegito said, "or the joke doesn't land."
They went.
The Beach That Remembers
The sand sighed underfoot; it wasn't just sound. It felt like welcome. Like about time. A line of footprints ran faint along the high-tide mark—older than they should be, immune to weather for reasons no scholar would accept on paper. Some were small, some huge. Some human. Some not.
"Roger," Robin murmured, crouching to lay her hand almost, not quite, on a print. "And others. He wasn't the last."
"Joy Boy," Shyarly whispered, eyes glassy with currents no surface knew.
A gull laughed in that way gulls do when they're only remembering what laughter once was. Carrot laughed back because of course she did. The island liked it.
A path revealed itself without drama—no tricks, no shifting vines. Just a clear line through trees leading upward.
"Are we supposed to follow the—" Nojiko began.
"Yes," Vegito said, already walking, tail tracing a lazy question mark that someone in an older time would have called an exclamation point.
Four Tests That Aren't
Halfway up the hill, a stone arch waited, carved with glyphs even dust hadn't dared cover. Robin translated aloud as they passed beneath:
"If you got here by force alone, you'll find nothing.If you got here by luck, enjoy the view.If you got here by laughing at the sea's worst jokes—You're our kind of people."
The first "test" was a crossroads where both paths curled back to where you stood if you chose either seriously. Carrot solved it by skipping through the ferns between them, humming.
The second was a mirror-pool that reflected not faces but moods. They crossed it in the order they'd met on the Embrace—Nami laughed at herself and the reflection laughed with her; Robin smiled at the weight on her shoulders and the pool set it down; Bell-mère tilted her head and the water winked as if to say, "I know."
The third was nothing. "Yep," Nami said. "Figures."
The fourth was a gate made of two living trees twined. Vegito ducked through with his tail high and smacked it with a playful tap as he went. It rustled, amused. Everyone else copied without talking about why.
The Hill and the Stone
The hilltop was a bowl. In its center stood an enormous stone, red as heartblood: one last poneglyph, not Road, but something older—the Punchline, Robin said without irony as she read the heading glyph.
There was a second thing: a plinth of pale stone with a carved recess like a smile. And on it, carefully preserved by time's best efforts, a sealed tube of glistening shell—an echo of Ohara's cylinders, larger, older.
Robin's hands shook just once as she broke the seal. A scroll slid out so smoothly it could have been waiting for her fingers. She unrolled it with a reverence that stopped everyone else breathing.
Lines. Notes. Diagrams that pretended to be jokes until you looked harder and saw engineering hiding inside mirth. Words, in the old tongue, written not with a scholar's nervous exactness but with a sailor's big hand and heart.
She read.
"To whoever is stubborn enough to get here next—We laughed. You will, too, if you've earned it.The treasure is not a chest. It's a door.The key is not one person. It's a chorus."
She looked up, eyes wet and bright. "It's… Joy Boy's handwriting," she said softly. "And others. It looks like different hands added lines—and then Roger wrote in the margins, terrible penmanship and all."
"Figures," Bell-mère snorted, but she turned away to pretend the wind had put grit in her eyes.
Robin kept reading.
"We built a ship to carry a world, and then a government built a world to bury a ship.If you want to lift it, don't try to be a king. The sea ate kings. Be a joke so good the whole world has to stop fighting to laugh. Then move them while they're breathing again."
A long pause. Even the island seemed to wait.
"If you came alone to be king, turn around.If you brought your family, step forward.If you came with an army, don't point it at the sea. Point it at your pride."
"Joy Boy," Robin said, throat thick, "was a troll."
"An excellent one," Vegito said, and his grin tipped over into something like gratitude. "My kind of ghost."
She turned to the red stone—this one was a record. Not coordinates. Not a warning. A promise.
She read aloud in the old words and then in the ones they lived by:
"We leave what we gathered here: laughter you can spend, oaths you can borrow, maps for skies you haven't seen, and a prank to pull on tyrants that requires no blood.We leave our apology, too. We failed, once. We won't ask you to repeat our mistake. Just do the one thing we couldn't: trust the world to carry itself if you give it a reason."
She let the words hang. Even Boa's breath came slow, not for show, not for anyone but herself.
Vegito stepped up to the plinth. There was a recess shaped like a palm. He set his hand in it.
The stone warmed. The island exhaled. And a smile rose on the plinth—not a face, not a trick, just a line that felt like a room full of friends leaning in with you toward the same stupid, perfect joke.
The hill shook.
Not like an earthquake. Like a giant standing up after a nap.
The Door Not a Chest
Below, the lagoon opened.
Not water parting, not dramatic gates. The sand slipped aside and stairs rose through the tide, carved from the same pale stone as the plinth. They descended into a cavern lit by moss that remembered stars. The crew followed Vegito down into the world's cellar.
What waited there was not a pile of gold. It was a ship—or rather, the bones of one—half-real, half-idea. A ribcage the size of a district. A keel engraved with equations that made Lilith laugh like a blasphemer. Sails woven of preserved fiber that shimmered between fabric and math.
"The world-ship," Robin whispered. "Not the plan only. The prototype. Joy Boy's unfinished apology."
Lilith ran a palm over the keel. The ship responded with a low hum like a big cat purring. "She's waiting for a power source that won't poison the world," she said. "Something like… the Mother Flame, without the wrongness."
"We have a Mother Flame," Nami said carefully.
"We have a realm where it can't hurt anyone," Lilith countered. "We also have a captain who can listen to things that aren't supposed to be alive."
They looked at Vegito. He was already listening. Tail still. Breath even. Palm on the ribs that had once been a dream.
"This isn't a weapon," he said at last. "It's a stage. A way to make everyone hear the same song at once."
"Broadcast," Robin translated. "History. Truth. Laughter. An invasion of… reality."
Vegito grinned. "A prank so good tyrants choke on it."
Carrot bounced. "Can we ride it?"
"Eventually," Lilith said, giddy and engineer and apostate all at once. "But not today. We don't ruin the punchline by stepping on it too hard."
They found more: cylinders of records. A library of rubbings sealed in resin. A vault of simple tools—simple by ancient standards—that would make the Embrace's machine shop sing for months.
And in a small side niche, a plain wooden box with a note from Roger, scrawled and smug.
"For the ones who get the joke."
Bell-mère opened it with two fingers and nothing fancy. Inside lay a bottle. Inside the bottle, a paper boat with a badly drawn skull. Inside the paper, a list of taverns across the world and a short line:
"Buy a round at each. Leave the bottle on the last bar. Smile."
Vegito laughed out loud, helpless and delighted. It echoed. The cavern laughed with him.
The Last Message
When they climbed back to the bowl, the island was different in a way you can't point at. Colors had shrugged into their truer shades. The air carried the scent of rain that hadn't fallen yet. The plinth's carved smile had settled into the stone like it would stay there until the sea forgot how to be water.
One last glyph had appeared on the red stone while they were below—Robin traced it delicately.
"The One Piece," she read, "is not what you think. It's what you are, together, when you laugh in the same key."
"That's cheating," Nojiko said, grinning through tears.
"That's perfect," Robin said.
Vegito looked at his crew. The whole stupid, brilliant, ridiculous family of them. Minks vibrating with withheld zoomies. Assassins pretending they didn't cry. Scholars who had dragged their hearts across half the world to read something that was going to wreck them in the best way. Mothers and mothers-to-be. Fighters who'd traded pride for jokes when it mattered.
He felt something in his chest that wasn't power and wasn't strategy and wasn't any of the easy words. He felt home in motion.
"Alright," he said. "We've seen the end of the map. Let's go draw the next page."
"Before that," Bell-mère said, sounding suspiciously gentle, "we take a picture in our heads."
They stood in a line on the hill's lip, looking down at the lagoon. Nobody spoke. You don't speak when you're making the memory that you're going to brag about for the rest of your life.
Vegito broke the silence with a small, dumb sound that turned into a laugh that turned into a chorus because of course it did. The island laughed back. The sea rolled its eyes and smiled anyway.
The World Hears the Echo
They didn't broadcast coordinates. They didn't drag the world here. Joy Boy's note had asked them not to. But rumors and laughter are the same thing with different hats.
Marineford. Sengoku stared at a blank spot on a map and finally put a pin in nothing. "We can't stop him," he said. He didn't sound defeated. He sounded a little free.
Pangaea. The Elders received a report that contained no data and far too many smiles. Saturn's glasses cracked under his grip. Warcury sat down for once. Imu's shadow moved and all the candles in the room went a hair shorter.
Elbaf. The drums started without anyone deciding to hit them.
Shanks. He closed one eye and faced the wind. "Good show," he said, and meant it.
Whole Cake. Pudding drew a cartoon of Roger and Vegito laughing with Joy Boy and then didn't show it to anyone.
Gildveil. The underworld stopped pretending for a whole hour that it wasn't a little in love with a pirate who kept not killing them.
And in villages that would never see a map, kids told each other that the sky had giggled and chased each other with sticks until they tripped on their own joy.
Bounties & Bulletin
The News Coo found them before they left the Veil, because of course it did. Morgans printed nothing he could prove and everything he could sell. The headline wasn't a headline:
HE LAUGHED
The subhead tried harder:
Sky Pirate and Family Vanish Beyond the Line—Navies Humiliated, Tyrants Nervous, Bakers Overworked
Inside, the bounty updates slotted under a woodcut that had to be a lie because no artist could have been up there with them:
Vegito — 10,500,000,000 Beli"Reality hazard. Do not engage. Seriously this time."
Nico Robin — 1,500,000,000 ("Librarian of Doom" was crossed out; someone wrote "Mom of History" in pen.)
Kuina — 950,000,000 ("Sword Saint (annoying)"—someone scribbled that in, too.)
Reiju — 720,000,000
Nami — 620,000,000 ("Weather Witch Accountant")
Nojiko — 440,000,000
Carrot — 380,000,000 (added paw print)
Wanda — 340,000,000
Lilith — ?? (Wanted for science, not dead or alive; bounty fluctuates with market conditions.)
Chopper — 1,000 Beli (Little drawing of a monster face with sparkles around it.)
"Over a billion," Robin said, mild as tea and just as dangerous. "They're learning."
Nami fanned herself with her own poster. "The number's finally catching up with my mood."
Chopper stood on a coil of rope, chest out, poster clutched. "They still underestimate me and I love it!"
Bell-mère tapped Vegito's with her cigarette. "First one with five figures before the commas. You want a sash?"
Vegito stuck the poster to a bulkhead with a thumb and a grin. "I want cake."
"Already in the oven," Cosette called, somehow everywhere at once.
System | Status Check
They gathered in the lounge under the posted sheets for the ritual they claimed not to have.
"Captain?" Robin asked, smiling. "Status?"
Vegito rolled his shoulders and winked at the ceiling.
[System | Status – Vegito]Species: Saiyan (Full-blooded) — Tail present.Condition: Peak (well-fed, well-loved, slightly insufferable).Ki Reservoir: Ridiculous (regenerating like a rumor).Haki: Observation/Armament/Conqueror – Mastered (custom training unlocked).Techniques: Kame-style, Instant Transmission, Final Flash (throttled for maritime safety), Wood Release (crafting mode), Marine Six Styles (teaching modules active).Realm: Expanded (Nursery Sectors online; time dilation adjustable; Mother Flame isolated & muzzled).Inventory Highlights: Laughing Needle (1), Joy Boy Archive (in progress), Roger's Bottle (1), Giant Mead (plenty).Quest Log:– "Buy the World a Round" (0/12 taverns visited).– "Build the Stage, Not the Guillotine" (world-ship integration planning).– "Punch the Joke Up" (World Government—humiliate, then restructure).Mood: Hungry for cake. And the next dumb miracle.
"Accurate," Reiju said, smirking. "Especially the insufferable."
"Language," Bell-mère said, tossing a peanut at Vegito, who caught it with his tail and ate it with injured dignity.
What We Take, What We Leave
They didn't strip the island. They didn't move stones. They scanned what they needed; Robin made rubbings until her fingers were black and satisfied; Lilith recorded hums. They tucked the scroll back into its shell after copying it in five redundancies. The wooden box went into the galley where Cosette taped a note: DO NOT DRINK UNTIL THE LAST BAR.
Before they boarded, Vegito walked back to the plinth and put his hand in the recess again.
"Your joke landed," he told the air and the stone and the memories of people who would have liked him and whom he would have liked back. "We'll tell it properly."
The smile in the stone didn't change. It didn't have to.
Robin lingered a step behind him, palm flat to red. "Ohara heard you," she whispered. "We're going to answer."
The island made room in their pockets they hadn't known were there and put something intangible in—weightless, warm, heavier than gold.
"Time," Nami said when someone asked her later what it felt like. "We took time with us."
Casting Off From the Edge
Back aboard, the Embrace rose on her skids. The Veil rippled once like a curtain after a bow. Vegito looked at it and gave a tiny nod people would write ballads around for no good reason except that it looked cool in their heads.
"Home?" Nojiko suggested.
"Route of twelve taverns first," Vegito said, lifting Roger's bottle like a dumb relic from a holy idiot. "Then home. Then… we go see a throne about a power outage."
Bell-mère took the wheel. "Course to the first bar on the list."
"Aye," Nami said. "Wind begging to show off."
"Carrot," Wanda warned, "do not drink from the bottle."
"I wasn't going to!" Carrot lied, her tail writing a confession in the air.
The ship leapt. The Veil let them through without fuss, like it had always been easier to open from the inside.
Behind them, Laugh Tale sat where it always sits: on the far side of a good joke told right.
Ahead, the world waited, messy and wrong and capable of being better if someone gave it something worth clapping for.
Vegito looked at his crew and the line on the map nobody else could see and the bottle that was only a punchline if you brought friends, and he laughed—not loud, not long. Just enough.
"Let's go buy the world a round," he said.
The Heaven's Embrace purred. The sea smiled. And somewhere in the oldest part of the world, a stone decided it had been understood.