Water 7 Ahead
Water 7 rose out of the afternoon haze like a city teaching the ocean manners. Terraced canals climbed the island in stone steps; cranes turned like patient birds above the dry docks; the sea train sang its brass-and-steam song as it shouldered past the breakwater, foam flaring.
Nami leaned over the chart table, satisfied. "Tide's with us. Aqua Laguna's months off. Mayor Iceburg's current pet project is resurfacing the west piers." She tapped the margin where she'd copied Roger's scrawl. "Tavern six: The Dry Dock."
Robin closed her book with the contented exhale she reserved for places where history and craft shared a kitchen. "Shipwrights drink like philosophers," she said. "Carefully. Then not at all."
Bell-mère lit a cigarette, watching Dock One's enormous doors roll shut against the spray. "They also gossip like ex-Marines. We'll hear everything worth hearing by the end of the round."
At the bow, Vegito set his palm to the figurehead's crown. The Heaven's Embrace gave a satisfied purr, angling herself toward a pier where a bright blue wrecking ball had painted a heart on a piling years ago, the paint stubborn even now.
Carrot sniffed. "Smells like fresh sawdust and cola."
"That would be Franky," Nojiko deadpanned.
Wanda's ears twitched. "Also money."
"That would be Franky," Nami deadpanned harder.
The Dry Dock
It was wedged between a chandler's and a ropewalk: a long, low room with beams as thick as oaths and a bar fronted by a planed ship's keel. The sign over the door was just a hand-painted plank: THE DRY DOCK. Inside, the clientele was eighty percent shipwright and twenty percent admiring trouble—calloused hands, pencil stubs behind ears, boot soles gritted with sawdust and pride.
A woman with a barrel for a laugh and a tattoo of a caliper on her forearm looked up from a ledger. "You lot look like money and stories," she said, friendly and fatalistic. "Welcome. No fighting over adhesives."
"Round's on us," Vegito announced, setting a padded case on the back-shelf counter. "And a story to go with."
The room's posture changed: suspicion unknotted, spines leaned. The barkeep tilted a tap and set glasses under the amber fall like she was feeding a forge.
Two heads popped up from a booth near the back—Kiwi and Mozu, hair as pink as the memory of an explosion, goggles perched. "Boss!" they squealed, sliding out, then remembered they were shipwrights now and tried very hard to stride instead of sprint. They failed adorably and crashed into Vegito, arms out, giggling.
"We brought our toolkits!" Kiwi announced.
"And our tab from last time is paid," Mozu added quickly, glancing at Nami.
Nami smiled like a cat that had already counted the mice. "It is."
Kalifa, legs crossed, watched the door with a cool gaze and a twist of fondness on her mouth she only let show for the twins. Water 7 had forgiven her enough to let her walk in daylight. That was progress.
The house drank. Laughter rose. A fiddler tuned. The city breathed with them.
Blueprints and Cola
"VEGITOOOO!" The bellow shook glasses. Franky arrived like a marching band arguing with a homecoming parade: sunglasses, speedo, forearms the size of barrels, a backpack of clattering tools, and the chemical heartbeat of cola sloshing in his chest.
He slid on the sawdust, caught himself, and threw both arms wide. "Heard the Sky Ship was back to flash its fins! You here to buy steel, stories, or my new patent: non-squeaking hinges?"
"Stage," Lilith said before Vegito could bite the bait. She spread a thin schematic across the bar in one swoop: Joy Boy's chorus key harmonics braided with the Embrace's dimensional manifold; a silhouette of the world-ship's rib cage curled over it like a fossil waiting for a verb. "We're building a broadcast that doesn't act like a weapon."
Franky shoved his shades up, squinted, and whistled a note so appreciative the ashtray vibrated. "A stage that sings at scale. SUPER." He slapped a palm to the plan. "We'll tune the keel to resonate at the chorus frequency—no feedback, no blowouts. I'll need coralsteel from Elbaf, sky-copper from the annex, and twenty barrels of cola."
"We can supply nineteen," Cosette said sternly.
"Seventeen," Reiju corrected, patting her belly. "We have cravings."
Iceburg appeared at their elbows like civic responsibility personified, hair tidy, shirt somehow not wet. He looked at the plan, then at Vegito. "You'll make enemies by telling the truth where people can't pretend not to hear it."
"Make?" Bell-mère murmured. "We're on a first-name basis."
Iceburg's mouth quirked. "Galley-La will help. Under the table. On top of it for extra fee." He shook Vegito's hand and then Robin's because he knew where the bones were buried. Kiwi and Mozu clapped until their palms stung.
Roger's Bottle, Water 7
Vegito set the padded case on the back shelf, unlatched it, and took out Roger's bottle. The room went quiet the way rooms do when a story walks in wearing a different century.
Kokoro pushed through the crowd from the station with Chimney in tow, hair more algae than memory, grin near criminal. "That old idiot," she said fondly, leaning on the bar. "He promised me I'd laugh about it later. I hate when fools are right."
Vegito put the bottle on the shelf where the light could find it and not brag. "House rule," he said to the shipwrights, the admiring trouble, and the ghosts that always drink free. "We buy the round. You buy the next for someone who wouldn't. You tell us what needs fixing, we tell you what won't stay broken."
A murmur of assent moved like a current. The barkeep—Raya, the caliper-tattooed—rang a bell with a mallet's soft kiss. "Round one's free by pirate law," she declared. "Round two's free by shipwright law if you can recite the tolerances on a keel scarf."
Half the room started chanting numbers in harmony; the others laughed and stole sips.
Test #2 – Spoken Truth
Lilith's voice ticked in the intercom on the Embrace's column. "Broadcast array warmed. Chorus key threaded. We do this like we planned: short truths—sixty seconds each, no nouns they can kill, all verbs."
Robin nodded, rolling her shoulders. "Ready."
Bell-mère took a long drag and flicked ash into a tin tray. "I'll watch the roofs." Kalifa's bubble-gloss drifted over the doorway like the least subtle security measure in history.
Vegito stood at the bar with a hand on the bottle, grounding the room to the ship like a closed circuit. "On your mark."
Lilith's hands flew. "Three, two—"
Robin spoke into the open air, and the open air remembered it had a job.
"There was an island of books. People who made their living asking better questions than the last generation. The Government burned it. The ash made a cloud that wouldn't leave. Years later, a little girl held a page the ash missed and decided to keep every future page safe. She grew up. The library grew with her."
Radios in a dozen cities clicked to their own power and hummed with her cadence. In a classroom in Shimotsuki Village, a teacher paused mid-sentence as the chalk on the blackboard skittered itself into a single word: READ. In a naval office, a pen rolled off a desk and wrote it upside down on a boot; the boot's owner pretended not to notice and noticed anyway, forever.
Lilith chopped in the next feed, modulation sliding like gears.
"There was an island of warrior women. A queen with a scar asked the jungle to make room for girls who would never apologize for their size. The world called them legends so it wouldn't have to call them neighbors. They are your neighbors."
In a kitchen in Briss Kingdom, three girls paused with spoons in their hands and looked at each other and then began explaining sword stances to the soup. A man in the next room said nothing and set down his newspaper and thought his first useful thought in years.
Switch.
"There was a fish-man queen who told the sea to stop being shy. She asked for hands to stay open longer than prejudice can hold its breath. She died. The water kept her shape anyway."
On a pier in Conomi, a fisherman wiped his eyes and kept wiping. In a lab in Punk Hazard that should have stayed burned, a scientist who had no business still being there wrote I'M SORRY on a wall and then didn't erase it.
Switch.
"There was a city that learned to build so well it forgot it was allowed to stop building long enough to dance. Tonight, it remembered."
The Dry Dock clapped like a hull ringing when you hit the right beam.
The feed snagged—Lilith's brows pinched. She hissed into her teeth. "CP jammers two blocks over, trying to squelch by flooding the band with expedite forms." She smiled, wicked and joyous. "Let's make bureaucracy sing."
She inverted the carrier. The jam became a chorus of stamps hitting paper in perfect swing-time. Across Water 7, radios and transponder snails surrendered and danced in place for a minute while their owners pretended they didn't enjoy it.
Kalifa leaned in the doorway and smiled like a cat who had just watched a flock of pigeons reenact a ballet.
"Last clip," Robin said, voice steady. "Nolan." She kept it bare:
"There was a liar who told the truth. The world decided he was wrong until it needed him to be right. Don't wait that long next time."
Silence took a breath when she finished. Then the room let it out like it had been holding it for twenty years.
Water 7 Stories
It didn't stay solemn. It never should. A young apprentice with sawdust freckles climbed on a stool and told a story about the first time she bent a plank by steaming it and the way the wood had sighed into shape like a person taking the seat with their name on it. An old crane operator explained how he'd learned his machine's moods and coaxed it through a gale with lullabies and oil.
Kokoro told a raunchy joke that made the beam bolts blush. Chimney swore Laboon had winked at her once; Brook immediately swore back that whales absolutely wink and anyone who says otherwise is a prude.
Franky slapped the bar. "To stages!" he boomed. "Not gallows!" He raised his mug. "To skylines that sing!"
"To shipwrights who know the difference between holding and hugging," Iceburg added dryly, and the room laughed because it had been waiting to be told it was allowed to be tender.
Vegito told a short thing that didn't sound like him but was all the way him. "We went to the end of the map," he said, "and the joke was that there isn't one. There's just the next room with better light."
Raya the barkeep rang the bell. The second round went out on the Bottomless Tab marker's soft glow: PAID FORWARD printed on every receipt like a signature no one could forge wrong.
CP0 Learn a New Noise
On a slate roof two alleys over, three CP0 agents crouched around a relay box. "Tighten the null field," hissed one. "Rotate the key. Clamp the—"
The relay box honked at them. Not a little honk. A celebratory parade honk. One agent flinched, lost his grip, and the clamp bit his glove. Bubble film swelled around all three like a soap opera.
Kalifa's voice drifted up from the tavern doorway, bored and pleased: "You boys really do enjoy detention." The bubble drifted them along the alley like extremely guilty balloons. A gull—real, insulted—rode on one bubble and judged them.
On the quay, a Marine lieutenant looked at the spectacle, then at his ledger, and decided with sudden integrity to not see what would take him a week of paperwork to describe. He went to The Dry Dock for a ginger ale and a truth instead.
Galley-La Signs On
After the third round, Iceburg spread a blueprint next to Lilith's and Robin's hybrid. "We can brace your stage into the world-ship's ribs without cracking it," he said, pencil doing geometry that sang. "Dock One will 'repair' your ship for three days, during which time a lot of parts will arrive in crates labeled bananas."
Franky, hands on hips, flexed purely out of punctuation. "I'm adding shock absorbers, anti-feedback outriggers, and a SUPER chorus coupler. It uses cola."
Cosette sighed without looking up. "We will stock the cola."
"Seventeen barrels," Reiju repeated.
"Fifteen," Cosette corrected herself, catching Carrot's ears pricking in cola-interest. "Some of you drink sugar like it owes you rent."
Kiwi and Mozu bounced. "We'll run lines!"
"We'll label things correctly!" Kiwi added.
"We'll label things creatively!" Mozu corrected.
Kalifa scribbled a procurement schedule on the back of a receipt with elegant menace. "We'll need signatures from five people who aren't allowed to sign. I know their lunch orders."
Bell-mère clinked her glass against Iceburg's. "Welcome to the conspiracy," she said cheerfully. "Dues are paid in jokes and properly tied knots."
A Knock at the Door That Doesn't Break It
Toward evening, as the Dry Dock's warmth settled into that perfect hum bars get when nobody is watching the clock, the door opened on a wedge of late light. A woman in a Vice Admiral's coat stood framed there, red hair coiled into a severe braid, a rifle cased on her back she didn't reach for.
Seraphine.
The room tensed; the floorboards remembered how to flex. She lifted one palm, empty. "I heard a song," she said. "I came for a drink."
Bell-mère eyed her, measured the angle, and nodded at Raya. "Ginger, no ice."
Seraphine took the glass and didn't flinch at being assigned a non-alcoholic peace. She looked at Vegito. "You could have made it a threat," she said. "You didn't."
Vegito shrugged. "I know what threats sound like. Boring."
Seraphine's mouth twitched. She sipped. "This city," she said, looking at the blueprints, the chorus of hands, the stupidly placed bottle like a dare. "It makes terrible enemies." She set a coin on the bar. "Tonight, it can keep a friend."
She didn't stay long. That wasn't who she was. But she left without calling in a squad, and that was who she might be.
Raya slid her coin back toward her with a fingertip. "Your round's paid forward," she said. Seraphine nodded once and vanished into the Water 7 twilight like a rumor looking for a better ending.
Bounties & Bulletin—Local Edition
The News Coo dropped a Water 7 supplement that wasn't a bounty update so much as a brag: GALLEY-LA TO "REPAIR" SKY SHIP; subhead: Mayor Says: Please Ignore Crates Marked Bananas. Under it, a woodcut of Laboon's broadcast had been lovingly rendered by someone who liked whales the way bakers like dough—tenderly, hungrily, with respect.
Chopper taped his 1,000 Beli wanted poster beside it and wrote CREW DOCTOR: EXTREMELY DANGEROUS (HUGS) in pink chalk beneath. The shipwrights applauded. Chopper glowed, terrifying.
Nami drew a little hammer icon on the Twelve Taverns ring map and stuck a shining dot on The Dry Dock. "Six down," she announced. "Halfway."
"Halfway," Robin murmured, half to herself. "Halfway to a punchline that moves a world."
Evening on the Embrace
They walked the piers back by moonlight. The cranes moved like old dancers stretching; the smell of tar and brine made the Embrace hum to herself as if ships speak a dialect only other ships hear.
Cosette issued night rations like blessings. Boa sat on the rail and pretended she hadn't waited until Vegito sat beside her to fetch her own bowl. Reiju stole a spoonful without asking and got her fingers nipped; she smirked anyway.
Robin and Lilith spread schematics on the saloon table and moved tokens—chorus generators here, dampers there, feedlines that stretched like veins.
"First full broadcast after the twelfth tavern," Robin said. "We let the world practice listening before we make them."
"Then the Stage," Lilith said. "And the bottle's last bar."
Vegito leaned over them, tail sweeping the floor with a satisfied whisper. "And after the last round," he said softly, "we go tell a throne it's a chair."
Bell-mère blew smoke rings toward the open hatch and watched them drift into Water 7's starry air. "Make it laugh first," she said.
"Always," Vegito said.
System | Daily Login
[System | Daily Login Complete]Reward: Truth Tuner — A pocket-sized, three-throw device that, when activated, inverts hostile broadcast jammers within a two-block radius into ambient applause loops for 90 seconds. Recharge after 8 hours.[Inventory Updated][Crew Resonance] +3% (spoken-truth broadcast success)[Note]: Galley-La Affinity unlocked: Stage Integration +10% speed in Water 7.
Vegito clicked the Tuner on and off; somewhere in the city, a random rooftop relay politely clapped. Kalifa smirked. "Gift-wrapped," she said.