The First Journey Part 4 // The West Seat

-{Scene Break}-{Time Lapse}-

The atmosphere the weeks after the little situation was not that great. The nobles avoided interactions with the Marines as much as possible, from what Green was able to overhear from them in the Mess was them having been told who Tsuru was and they all have been instructed by the older ones to not cause any more problems.

The Marines, especially the female part of the crew, were just happy that they stopped annoying them and let them do their work. Even Artoria seemed to get left alone mostly, even though Green thought that it was mostly because she was always close to Gion or Tsuru trying to get them to help her with her training.

He thought it was rather cute to watch Artoria follow them around with a notebook in her hand writing down any form of advice they part with while they were being stalked around by the persistent princess.

Green continued his routine with buying interesting looking books throughout the journey while Artoria had to visit each noble on every stop. He also watched Gion and Tsuru return a suspicious suitcase back every time they stopped but he was not able to reach any conclusion on what they were collecting.

This sort of situation went on until they reached their first big stop in the journey.

The West Seat

-{Scene Break}-{Now}-

If Green had to agree on something the World Government does good it is showing that they litteral govern the entire World.

The island looked like somebody tried to build an entire island only for rich nobles. The island was just one gigantic hill/mountain with a huge castle sitting on top of it. The castle had a big flagpole, at least 50 meters high with an equally sized flag of the World Government waving in the wind.

The slopes of the hill leading up to the castle of the World Government were pasted with "smaller" castles and mansions. Smaller, as around the sizes of the castle of the royals back at his home island, Britannia. And that was what Green could see from a couple of kilometres away and only one side of the hill as the other was obviously obstructed by itself.

As they got closer he was able to count 7 different big castles, around 2 dozen mansions with sort of centric streets leading up to the World Government castle. They did a half circle around the island and when they arrived Green was able to see the Marine base, G3, for the first time.

He had to nearly laugh as the base just looked like another castle, just with a wired design. As he had seen 22 different Marine bases during his trip he was able to see the big difference between this one and the other.

It was at least 4 times as large. Normal bases had 1 to 3 pillars, this one had 9, with 8 sorted in an octagon shape where two pillars stood fully in the water, guarding an port entrance. In the middle of the octagon was a pillar twice the size of a normal one with the name of the base on it.

As they entered the port Green was able to see that half the base was a port, so flooded and the other half was on land. They started docking and 20 minutes later they were tied to the dock.

Immititly when they mounted the gangway to the ship, a world government officer boarded the ship. Tsuru, foreseeing this already, waited there with a good amount of documents in her arms. And then followed something Green normally only knew from his old life, a passport control. Everyone got called forward, Marine and passenger alike, even Tsuru was called forward. After they confirmed their identity, they had to leave the ship and wait for a good bit next to the ship on the pier.

Green started to sweat a bit as he was called forward and he had to show his fake passport without his family name and only showing him being of the lowest noble standing. It went well, which in hindsight made sense since he got that one signed straight from his King, which made it "fake real" sort of.

When everybody got called and the ship should have been empty a small army of local Marines searched through it to confirm it. Afterwards they were given visitor badges and for those who will stay longer they got special ID cards which both had to be on your person at all time while being on this island.

The nobles immititly left after all the formalities were dealt with, while Green waited for a while. Artoria also stayed, because she would have to put on her "noble" clothes as on the island she would have to act as princess 24/7.

It took a good amount of time until Green was able to talk to Tsuru about where he was supposed to go. He learnt he would travel with her at least until the other side of the Redline, till Marineford. There he would take one of the regular patrol ships to Karakuri Island.

But now, they would first stay a week here on the island, first and foremost to check the ship from top to bottom to make sure it was Calm Belt and Grandline ready. Also the Marines would be able to get some rest as they had been on sea for nearly half a year straight.

After his short talk with Tsuru he returned to Artoria which still had not left for her residents in the city. As the leading family of a high ranked World Government nation, they also did own a large property on the island. Artoria would stay here on the island for a while, attending social events until returning back over a different route back home.

Green did not envy her about that. Just spending time here on the ship with those nobles without actually talking with them was already enough for him to swear to find somebody to take that burden off him later in life when he would inherit everything from his father.

"When do you want to leave?," Green asked the blonde princess.

"Never…" she groaned back.

"Come on, it will not be that bad…?," he tried to convince her.

"As soon as I leave the base, I will have to be the princess and everything I will do will make it back home. I just call the mansion and they will send me a carriage so that I do not have to deal with all the annoying noble stuff. I got so many things from Tsuru and Gion that I want to try out…."

She paused and took a deep breath between her rambling

"And I definitely do not want to wait till I am back home. Even back home I will not be able to train every day so I do not want to waste my day here and just train inside the mansion."

Not really having anything to say against her reasoning he just nodded to her explanation.

"You can stay for a week in the mansion if you want to," Artoria offered.

Green took up on the offer and they seperated, he going to pack a bag for his one week stay and her waiting for her carriage in her cabin.

Half an hour later he was standing right outside the gates out of the Marine base. He did not even have to take a step further to see the extravagance.

Every street and house was clean, every plant, grass and tree was cut neatly and all the people looked elegant and groomed. If he was not in the body of a kid he would definitely look out of place underdressed. All the carriages were heavily decorated and you could easily make out the emblems of the owners who wanted to show their wealth with it.

Not trying to be intimidated by the show of wealth, he decided to go on his pre-planned route.

Green found the entire atmosphere really stuffy, if he had to describe it. All the small talk he was able to overhear was the same as from the nobles on the ship, they all looked like they were on their way to a fancy evening ball.

After just waking around for an hour he had to agree to Artorias statement. He felt that he should actually play his role as a noble, despite being undercover in a way. The nobles who saw him probably thought that he was some servant boy, so whenever he got asked what he was doing, he would say that he was doing errands around the town and showed the paper on which he planned out his route.

Another highlight of the island was that the bookstores mainly carried law books, history, science with just a few for entertainment on the side. Also as none of the nobles would want to be seen selling stuff, they also did not have any rebought sections.

So, after visiting his third bookstore Green decided to remove all the rest of them in the noble corner and only went to the one in the "commoner" area. The "commoner" area was the housing district for the servants of the nobles which did not have to be 24/7 in reach to serve. Builders, carpenters, smiths, gardeners etc. all the other personnel to keep this somewhat city-island running were housed there.

From what he learned from Tsuru these people would sign a multiple year contract which pays insanely well, like 3 to 4 times what they would get on their islands, but they would only be allowed there alone and that most job are heavy duty ones, as such the ratio of men to women in that district is 20:1.

It is impossible to get an extension of these contracts as they would use this to keep the city clean of the commoners. If you were not showing up on the day your contract ends to leave the island you will be forcefully removed and all the money you earned will be confiscated.

Walking through the commoner area, Green felt a bit more home. The dress code was definitely lossend and the buildings were more uniform, looking like a worker district should look.

This bookstore was like the ones he had seen on every other island. Sort of messy, book shelves were overflowing with books, which were either tried to squeeze somehow in there or just piled up on the floor.

It also smelled like books in there, a clear difference to the clean city air outside, which never smelled bad but the contrast between the lack of smell and the bombardment of perfumes you would inhale while passing someone on the streets felt artificial.

Green smiled. If he learned something from his travels then the more messy the store looked the more hidden gems were spread throughout it.

While he searched for some good books, he spotted the cashier, an old man sitting behind it. Green paused for a second and took another look at the old man. Something about him alerted him, but he was not able to put his finger on it.

He shook the feeling off and asked his Nanobot-System to run a passive search through his memories to see if it would come up with something. One of the other Subsystems he learnt about from his recent discovery of the full potential of his given System.

Like he expected, he found some interesting books in between the mountain of uninteresting reading material. It took him a while to look through all of it, but it paid off in the end as he found something really spezial.

Another Devil Fruit Encyclopaedia.

An old one.

One which definitely was on the ban list. He found out about the ban list the moment he moved up in the Academy and was allowed to read the more "dangerous" material. The ban list is basically what it sounds like, books that the World Government banned in all their member nations.

But additionally to the ban list there is the grey list. Something he discovered was a fix the World Government implemented to try to fix the problem they had done with the ban list. As people were not knowledgeable about certain things, even the rulers of nations generations after the void century, it built problems which would have been fixed without the World Government or Marines having to micromanage everything on their own.

Problems were like an animal eating a Devil Fruit and being able to ran rampage especially when it was able to fly, some criminal also eating a Devil Fruits or finding a forgotten martial art which usually results in them becoming local overlords, a ruler starting to think that he could somehow overthrow the World Government…

He flipped through it quickly and it confirmed that it was old. Written in an older version of the standard world language, which for Green was just old japanese. The letters were wired, as they were a mix of the roman alphabet and Kanji. The current form of writing was mostly done in the roman alphabet where they spell out the japanese words(Romaji) plus some english words in between.

English is actually a language which is spoken in one of the biggest countries on this planet in the South Blue. The language spread as the country is known for being the paperpress of the world and as they have the HQ of the World Economy News Paper as also many other bog and famous printing houses there. The Wanted posters are also printed there, which is also the reason they are in english.

Green saw some older books back in the Academy, so he was not surprised by the actual Kanji use, no what surprised was that the language looked more like modern Japanese then the version they use currently in the world.

He was only able to identify it as a Devil Fruit Encyclopaedia because of the pictures of the Fruits inside it.

"Now I have to somehow get a dictionary…., " he sighed internally.

He put the book on his pile which he intended to buy. With one more look through the pile he decided to put two others away and walked with 23 to the counter.

The cashier eyed him weirdly for the time he piled the books on the counter but then shook his head when he saw that Green was serious about buying all. The old man went through all of the books adding together the price.

"That is going to be 534,000 Berri in total," the old man said flatly.

Green for a second was surprised as he had never spent more than 100,000 on any island. He thought for a second about haggling with the old man, but quickly decided against it. He knew that the quality of these books were much higher than anything he brought beforehand with also the Encyclopaedia in there, the price seemed to be justified.

After he stood there shocked for a moment, the old man probably thought that Green was not going to buy everything, but then the previous calm old man broke when Green pulled out his wallet and started to count the 10,000 Berri notes.

The old man seemed to snap out of it when Green held out a bundle of money. Never in his life did he see a random shopper come in here and buy so many on-stock books. His shop was normally only used as an order place for "problematic" books by the noble population. All the books in his shop were genuine only for show as he would maybe sell only a handful each week. The stock he had was just the extras he could show without getting into any problems, but they were all borderline.

As he was packing away his recent purchase, the front bell rang as apparently a new customer entered and right as the door closed a female voice rang through the store.

"Idama, I need your help,!" a woman called, if Green has to guess the old man.

The woman came with heavy steps around the corner and stopped abruptly.

"Oh, you have a customer. Sorry. I am going to wait."

Green now had his bags packed, so he picked them up and went on his way. As he turned around now, he got a look on the woman and he immediately stopped.

"System, is this who I think this is?"

[From the view sample size between drawn characters and the real human, the System is 95% sure it that person]

Green stared at the woman for a while.

"Do you know me?," the woman asked, snapping Green out of his trans.

"No, you just look like somebody I knew," Green answered quickly.

Green then continued his walk out of the store. After closing the store door and walking for a few blocks he arrived in front of a park bench, on which he sat down.

"Why the fuck did I just meet Nico Olvia?"