Grove Lights
The Sabaody Archipelago rose out of the afternoon like a hundred cathedrals pretending to be trees. Resin bubbles slid up the red bark trunks, wobbling like laughter that didn't want to leave yet. Sunlight filtered green and gold through leaves that had shaken for kings and criminals and kids selling skewers with equal indifference.
"The air smells like soap and bad decisions," Bell-mère said, lighting a cigarette she had no intention of finishing.
"It smells like second chances," Robin answered, shutting her book because Sabaody always insisted you look up.
The Heaven's Embrace skimmed low. People looked up and did that thing you only see in ports that remember auctions: they flinched first, then chose not to. A new sign hung above Grove 13, facing the plaza that used to be a wound:
THE BUBBLE & STARFISHA tavern rebuilt by freed hands. No collars. No kings. No tabs for slavers.
"Camie's handwriting," Nami said, smile curving like a sail in fair wind.
On the steps, a mermaid in a sea-green dress waved both arms so hard she almost tipped backward. "Vegito-san! Robin-san! Everyone-san!"
"Keimi!" Carrot launched; Wanda caught her belt one-handed without breaking stride. Pappag strutted beside Keimi in a tiny starfish tuxedo with a lapel flower that bubbled politely.
Hachi loomed in the doorway, eight arms and one embarrassed grin. "We… we did our best."
"You did," Vegito said, palm on the carved lintel, tail curling like punctuation. "Let's do more."
A Room That Once Sold People
The tavern smelled like soap, fried fish, and lemon peel—someone had decided the building would be clean forever. The long wall where a stage had once been reserved for cruelty now held a chalk mural of freed people's names, scrawled in every hand: little kids like fireworks, elders like careful signatures.
Pappag hopped onto the bar with a practiced ta-da. "Ladies, gentlemen, and various mammals: welcome to the Bubble & Starfish! We have drinks, we have snacks, we have—" he lowered his voice "—a no-arrest policy currently being honored by the Marine lieutenant across the way who owes me a favor."
The room was already full—Fish-men with gills flaring slow and content, human dockers still in work aprons, a smattering of tourists who didn't know they were here to learn. On one pillar: a collar welded open, hung like a broken question mark. People touched it as they passed without talking about why.
Cosette planted herself behind the service window like an invading deity. "Round for the house," she announced. "Paid forward by pirates with taste."
A cheer rolled through the rafters. Vegito set a padded case gently on a shelf behind the bar where sunlight teased the glass.
"Roger's bottle?" Keimi whispered.
"Pilgrimage," Vegito said. "We bring a story. We buy a round. We leave the bottle at the last bar. Today it gets to listen."
Keimi clasped her hands under her chin so hard Pappag had to pry them apart before she bruised herself. "It will love the gossip," she said solemnly.
Stories First
They didn't rush the prank. You never rush Sabaody; it thrashes back. They started with stories, as agreed since Loguetown.
Keimi rang a bell shaped like a bubble. A young Fish-man with a scar that had learned to be a smile cleared his throat.
"I used to polish the auction blocks," he said. "I thought if they shone it would hurt less. That was stupid. One night a girl my age asked me if I could see her in the wood when I wiped it. I said yes. She said, 'Good. Then I'm not disappearing.'" He lifted his mug. "To the stupid kid, and to the girl who made him smart."
Glasses lifted. The room shifted around a truth like furniture around a new baby.
A human woman with a fisherman's braid tugged her sleeve. A pale band of skin glared where a collar had been. "I took it off myself," she said, grinning without mercy. "And then I learned to weld so I could take off other people's." Hachi thumped the bar with a happy tentacle.
Pappag fanned himself theatrically. "And this, my friends, is why—"
The windows hummed. The bubbles outside quivered, then flattened, as if a big hand had pressed over the grove.
Lilith's glasses slid down her nose. "Oh, good. They're trying to be clever."
Bell-mère's cigarette burned a little faster. "Mean?"
"Mean," Robin said softly.
Imu's Kind of Trap
The mean isn't bigger guns. The mean is leverage.
Three groves over, an auction house that had been a museum since the raid lit up inside in colors no one had sanctioned. A projection blossomed in the archway: a white mask's silhouette with lips that didn't bother moving.
"Good evening, shoppers. Tonight's lot: Regret. Collars courtesy of the World Government. Winners get to keep their silence."
In the same breath, collars snapped around six wrists in the Bubble & Starfish—thin, new, elegant, disguised until they weren't. Not on the crew. On the owners. Keimi gasped and grabbed her arm. Hachi's lower right hand latched. Pappag's flower wilted; a ring of metal clicked snug around the stem where it met his… suit.
"Keimi," Robin said, calm as sand. "Breathe."
Across Sabaody, ten more collars blinked into being around former slaves and the ones who had freed them—mean: hurt symbols, not soldiers. Above, hidden arrays began to charge like spite.
Pappag laughed. It was a bright, brittle sound. "Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to be the floor show."
The projection's mask intoned: "For every minute the bottle remains in your possession, a collar tightens."
Vegito's tail went still.
He didn't glow. He didn't shout. He smiled. "I brought exactly the wrong audience for this bit," he said, and reached lazily for the padded case.
"Wait—" Nami hissed.
Vegito lifted the lid and took out a bottle.
The room flinched.
He held it up between two fingers and grinned so wide you could hear it. "Practice bottle," he said, and flicked the glass with a nail.
The decoy laughed—that happy Joy Boy chime—and every collar in the room loosened a notch in surprise.
Lilith's hands were already moving. "Their jammer grid is piggybacking the bubble pumps; they're using the mangroves to carry a trigger." She extended an index finger, clicked the Truth Tuner once.
Every hidden loudspeaker within two blocks began to applaud. Not polite applause. Roaring ovation. The projection tried to talk over it and only managed to look like it was acknowledging a standing O.
"Camie," Cosette called as if asking someone to pass the salt, "wet towels on wrists. Hachi—steady hands."
Pappag puffed up, still collared. "And me?"
Bell-mère smirked. "You're the MC. Stalling is your art."
Pappag pivoted to face the room like a star who'd just been heckled and would enjoy the meal. "Darlings! Clearly our surprise sponsors brought bracelets. Unasked. Unwanted. So we are going to accept their gift in the spirit intended—badly."
He bowed to the projection. "Cue the second act."
Bubble Mathematics
Lilith's holo splashed across the bar: a wireframe of the grove canopy, the pumps, the jammer nests, the collar resonance signature. "They braided the detonation signal into the bubble frequency," she said, almost admiring. "If the bubbles pop, the collars snap."
Wanda's ears tipped forward. "So we don't pop them," she said.
"We retune them," Robin said, eyes already scanning the Joy Boy chorus key in her mind. "Make them laugh at the wrong pitch."
Vegito slipped a hand into the Realm and palmed the Beacon Bell from the system gift pile without looking. He handed it to Nami. "Your weather. Your song."
Nami didn't ask; she didn't need to. She walked to the doorway, lifted the tiny bell, and rang it once.
The grove sighed. Bubbles swayed. The applause from the Truth Tuner looped through the branches and came back as soft shimmer. Lilith fed the chorus key into the ship's dorsal arrays. Robin murmured the shapes of old words. Pappag held the room's nerve together with scandal and jokes.
The collars paused. Heard the joke wrong. Laughed a little.
The projection's mask snarled. "Increase power."
"Seraphine?" Bell-mère said into a side snail.
"Here," came the Vice Admiral's voice from the quay, dry as a rope, already annoyed at someone who had outranked her. "I am not seeing anything unusual to report."
"Keep not seeing," Bell-mère said, and didn't hang up, because company helps.
Pacifistas Crash A Party
Of course the Government also brought teeth. Six PX units thudded into the grove, eyes hot, mouths dull. The lead CP0 agent—whiskers shaved since Lantern Ledger, dignity not recovered—stepped in behind them with a flourish that believed itself heroic.
"Hands up," he announced, "and surrender the artifact."
Kalifa blew a bubble right into his mask. It popped with regret.
"Which artifact?" she asked sweetly. "The bottle, the bell, or the nerve you misplaced?"
The PX palms glowed. Vegito didn't look at them. He looked at the collars and at the talking hurt that had been strung through the grove, and something in him said: No in a language weather recognizes.
"Chopper," he said without turning, cheerful as a lunch order. "Baby-proof the room."
Chopper went Monster Point for exactly three seconds—cute and horrifying—and then squeezed the collars once like a doctor popping a joint back into place. Keimi's snapped open with a harmless ping and fell off into Cosette's towel. Hachi's fell into a waiting pot. Pappag's ring unclasped itself and apologized in seastar.
"Ah." Pappag flexed. "New jewelry: freedom."
The PX units fired.
Vegito sighed, stepped forward, and clapped once.
Light bent the wrong way. The beams curved around the bar and into a bubble net Lilith had slid up like a magician's handkerchief; the beams hit the soap and turned into confetti. Real, multicolor, impossible. Kids screamed with glee. Adults did, too, on a delay.
"Whoops," Vegito said, absolutely deadpan. "Your science is leaking."
Two PX units tried to recalibrate. Wanda and Tristan were already on the beams, running up light like minks who had decided gravity was a rumor. A few precise kicks, one humiliating bonk with a tray by Cosette, and the pair decided to be furniture instead.
CP0 lunged for the shelf.
Pappag blocked with a trident he did not have a permit for. "Darling, please. I just did my nails."
Hachi's lower left arm plucked the agent out of mid-air and set him in a corner like an umbrella.
"Sit," Keimi said, wiping tears, furious and gentle as the ocean is when it spares you.
Paying with Their Money Again
Above the grove, jammers on the pump stacks spun to redline. Lilith grinned. "You're going to blow your own fuses. Let me help."
She dragged a window on the holo and re-routed the surplus into the same seizure account tether they'd stolen in Gildveil, which some slow learner in CP0 had had the audacity to keep. The Bottomless Tab marker on Cosette's station lit up like a sunrise.
Receipts printed at every bar in Groves 10–16:
PAID BY CP0 (AGAIN)This drink bought: because you deserve one.
People laughed in that angry way laughter heals. The projection tried to talk and choked on the applause loop. The hidden collars in other groves loosened; some fell. Other hands were ready there too—freed people who had taught everyone they love a single skill: how to help.
"Smile," Vegito told the projection, and used his tail as a pointer to the padded case on the shelf. "We're not letting you ruin this bit."
He palmed open the case—the real bottle glinted once in the light and vanished into the Realm with a flick of his fingers. In its place, he set a third bottle—Lilith's spare decoy, tuned to do exactly one thing when touched by a liar.
He looked at the lead CP0 agent. "Go on," he invited. "Steal the idea of joy."
The agent grabbed the bottle like proof.
It sang and turned his gloves to mittens with hearts on them. The room howled.
Broadcast Test #3 – Mirrors
"Time," Robin said, voice steady again, eyes on the bubbles.
Lilith gave a tiny nod. The dorsal array hummed. The chorus key shifted into the higher register Joy Boy had carved for days like this.
The grove's bubbles became mirrors. Not of faces—of moments. Not curated. Not edited. Tiny floating screens that reflected good: a man cutting a collar with borrowed tools; a mermaid sharing her scarf with a stranger; a Marine recruit quietly turning a blind eye and a bright heart. Projectors tried to jam; the mirrors copied the jammers' own receipts and displayed PAID FORWARD across soap film in shimmering letters.
Across Sabaody, radios didn't play music; they played applause and breathing and laughter caught in glass.
In Marine quarters, someone put down a baton. In a back office, a ledger decided to be a guest book for one hour; people signed and apologized and meant it. In Mariejois, a ceremonial gong that hadn't rung since it was stolen from a kinder city gave one soft boom and cracked internally.
The mask projection faltered. The lips stopped trying to move. The screen went gray and pushed out text it hadn't been built to understand:
YOU'RE RUINING THE SCRIPT.
Vegito tilted his head. "Good," he said, and the grove cheered.
Aftermath in Soap and Song
The PX units powered down in a sulk. CP0 agents found themselves escorted out, not beaten—escorted—by minks and grandmothers. Cosette fed everyone who wasn't already chewing. Keimi cried and laughed in one sound until Chopper made her sit and drink water and be adored properly. Hachi held the broken collar and bent it into a loop that wasn't a circle; Pappag climbed into it and posed until Wanda removed him like a toddler from a potted plant.
Bell-mère put a hand to her ear as the Den Den Mushi murmured. "Seraphine says officially nothing happened," she reported. "Unofficially she says the groves feel… 'lighter.' Her word."
Robin touched the mural of names with her ink-stained fingertips. "They're adding one now," she murmured, watching a kid kneel with chalk. The new name wasn't a person. It was a sentence:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER.
Vegito set the Bottomless Tab marker under the bar and tapped it once. The glow warmed the room like a hearth. PAID FORWARD stamped every chit.
"For bad nights," he told Keimi. "And good ones."
Keimi hugged him. He let her. Pappag cleared his tiny throat dramatically. "We also accept tips in the form of trinkets, tales, and tasteful vandalism of Government property," he announced.
Lilith looked up at the pump stacks. "I can arrange tasteful."
Cutaways — Teeth Grinding in Marble
Marineford – Briefing Sub-Level
Sengoku listened. The junior officer gulped. "Sir, the collars… didn't work."
"They worked," Tsuru corrected gently. "Just not how the ones who ordered them thought."
Sengoku looked at the ceiling like he could see an archipelago through it. "Issue an order: no more collar deployments. They don't win hearts; they win headlines we don't want."
The junior officer blinked. "Yes, sir."
"And," Sengoku added, almost smiling, "buy a round for the night watch."
Pangaea – The Hall With Too Much Echo
Warcury's cane ticked. "He keeps laughing through our nets."
Mars' hands were folded like prayer, knuckles white. "He keeps refusing the script."
Nusjuro's voice was dust with a knife in it. "Break his rhythm."
Saturn pressed fingers to his temples. "Target the nursery rumors. Plant fear."
From the dark behind the throne, Imu said, very softly, "Do not touch the children. Touch the idea of children. Let the world imagine him failing them."
Ju Peter smiled like a field in drought. "A famine of kindness, then."
Imu's shadow didn't nod. It didn't have to.
Bounties & Bulletin — Bubble Edition
The News Coo spiraled under the grove canopy, planted itself on the Bubble & Starfish's sign, and dropped a special. Morgans had printed a woodcut of a bubble reflecting a room full of people laughing with their mouths open and eyes wet. The headline insisted on being a joke:
CP0 BUYS ANOTHER ROUND (IS THIS A NEW TAX?)
Subhead:
Pacifistas Confused by Confetti; Locals Pleased
No numbers changed. Chopper taped his 1,000 Beli poster next to the woodcut and drew tiny bubbles around the edges. Brook added a little whale. Laboon, miles away, sneezed happily.
Nami drew a glossy droplet on the Twelve Taverns ring map and stuck a bright dot on Bubble & Starfish. "Seven down," she said. "Five to go."
"Seven," Robin echoed, eyes on the chalk promise on the wall. "And a chorus to tune."
Evening Air on Grove 13
They spilled back onto the deck at sundown. Bubbles drifted like lanterns rising from a festival that had decided to last a decade. Kids pointed. Grownups waved like they meant it. The Heaven's Embrace purred, soaking in praise like varnish.
Boa leaned on the rail, watching light caught in soap. "They will try the nursery," she said without moving her mouth. Vegito's hand slid over hers, answer and oath.
"We make safety into a joke they can't stop telling," he said. "Anyone who touches what's ours comes away with cake and shame."
Reiju bumped his shoulder. "Preferably in that order," she said, smiling toothy.
Lilith chalked Test #3: Mirrors under Stage Not Guillotine, circled it, and wrote Public Practice: Working.
Carrot listed Favorite Bubble Flavors with actual tasting notes. Cosette said there was no such thing as bubble flavor and then wrote down three of them because she'd noticed, too.
Robin sat on the steps and copied the names on the mural into her book. Not for a report. For her.
Bell-mère flicked ash into the sea and watched it hiss. "Next?"
Nami turned Roger's list. The next name had a flourish and oil smudges.
"Tequila Wolf," she read, eyebrows up. "The bridge."
"Chain gang," Bell-mère said, voice like a blade laid on a table. "We bring wire cutters."
"We bring stage lights," Lilith added, eyes cooking something reckless.
Vegito's tail tapped out a time signature the grove had already learned. "We bring a round," he said. "And a reason to stop building the wrong thing."
System | Daily Login
[System | Daily Login Complete]Reward: Collar Key (Sabaody Variant) — Single-use, area-wide pulse that unlocks and permanently disables all Type-13 control collars within a 500-meter radius. Triggers a "Paid Forward" credit siphon on any active jammer tether detected.[Inventory Updated][Crew Resonance] +5% (mean trap flipped; mirror broadcast)[Note]: Roger's Bottle resonance: amused.
Vegito flipped the key between fingers and tucked it into the sash under his coat. "For the road," he said.