The First Journey Part 7 // The Storm before the Calm

-{Scene Break}-{POV: Green}-{Next Morning}-

Like Green had planned he woke up even before the sun rose. The wind seemed to be blowing pretty strongly as he was able to hear the arching of the ship in the heavy waves. After checking through his window that they were still in the haven, he took his time with his morning routine.

He was not really surprised to see Tsuru already sitting in the Mess, enjoying her breakfast. After he collected his breakfast he sat down on her table and began eating.

"Good morning, btw," he said lazaly.

"Good morning," she also said, not with a lot of motivation.

"Did you not sleep well?"

"Oh, I did not sleep at all, had to take care of something important and then I had to welcome last minute struggler," Tsuru replied with a small smile on her lips.

"Marine business?," he asked before taking another bit out of the loaf of bread.

"Yes for the first, but the second one was civilian"

"That has to be an important and rich civilian if he will be allowed to cross the Red Line," Green pondered about the information he gained. "Sooooo, who is the other passenger?"

"Ah, you know the passenger," Tsuru's smile turned mischievous.

"Are you going to tell?"

"No, that would ruin the surprise- and that you could not think who it could be is actually hilarious"

Green just stares blankly at her, but then decides to not press further as he is going to see who it is going to be. They keep eating in silence afterwards until Green remembered the question he actually wanted to ask.

"What about the big engine?," he asked bluntly.

"Uh, it is normally not known but it is near impossible to cross the Calm Belt directly, and I don't mean the Sea Kings, what I mean is that the Calm Belt is completely wind less and the ocean currents are comparatively really low," Tsuru took a sip of coffee and the continues, "so to cross the Calm Belt, ignoring the Sea King thread, you would have to rowe the entire way which even at the smallest stretches between Blues and Grand Line is around 500 Kilometres.

So yeah, that is nearly impossible and to that comes the thread of Sea Kings, which is always there. The engine will get us just over the Belt until we reach the Grand Line."

Green listened closely to Tsuru's explanation, and was a bit disappointed that he learned nothing new. "Is the ship even coated?," he thought, "has Vegapunk not invented that yet?"

After some pondering he tried to ask around to see if Vegapunk had not invented that, "How high are the chances that we will get attacked by Sea Kings then?"

"Mmmmm, it is hard to say, we normally get attacked at least two to three times, but they are always on the smaller side as the deeper you go the bigger they get, so only the one at the surface will realise that we are there and with us close to the Red Line the chances are once again reduced. For some reason the Sea Kings are holding a good amount of distance to the wall."

"Could you make it across in the middle?," Green asked to get more information.

"Yes, but I would have to be ready to fight the Sea Kings all the time. Normally when we do those missions we have at least two Vice-Admirals on board to be awake in shifts," Tsuru answered truthfully.

"So no Sea Stone coating, uh," Green pondered, "How much could I sell that technology for?"

"How many boats do the marines lose while crossing?," he asked carefully.

"Nowadays, nearly none. One of the instructors in the Marine Academy during my time, which at that point was over a 100 years old, said that they lost half their ships while crossing each year. Since then we got these steam engines, which reduced the time on the Belt significantly, which led to multiple changes to make the journey more safe as those engines are three to four times more expensive than the entire ships they are in. So you do not have to be scared about the crossing," she thinks that Green's questions were because he needed reassurance.

"Oh, no I was just surprised to see an engine actually. I read a lot about current technology and I was just surprised to see something in person then on a page," Green tried to come over as sheepish.

Tsuru hummend at that, not really taking it. She looked over to the clock on the wall and then said, "They will start to fire them up in half an hour and then you really don't want to be down there anymore, so do you want to see them?"

Green happily takes Tsuru up on that offer. When they finished their breakfast, she led him deeply into the belly of the ship. He was certain that they were now under the water line when they arrived in front of a heavy duty door.

Behind the door, Green was greeted by a smell he knew from his old life. Oil. It was machine oil precisely. He saw multiple men checking over the machine, while one, who Green identified as the leader of this group, was going over a list on a clipboard he held in his hand. The men greeted Tsuru as they saw her enter. When Green also entered he nearly lost his footing as small rocks were littered on the floor.

"Oh, those are not stones, that is coal," he analysed.

"You probably do not know what those stones are, they ar-," Tsuru's explanation was interrupted by Green.

"This coal or fire stone, one the biggest export products from the North Blue, something nearly impossible to get here," Green said out loud. When he finished he saw that the entire room was silent as they stared at him. Trying to break the situation he used his usual explanation. "I just read a lot…"

"It's just a bit of a surprise that somebody so young would know that," Tsuru explained. The personnel went back to their work, while Green walked around them and studied the engine. It was not too compact that anything would have been covered up by another piece of machinery, so after three rounds around it Green had a perfect plan of it in his head.

It did not surprise him that the design was on the primitive side. No, what surprised him was that a small electric generator was attached to it. All the lights normally are powered by oil lamps which get their fuel from some marine life. As this world has so much of it they would never be able to use it up. So Green was pondering what it was powering.

"Excuse me?," he asked one of the men, who seemed free for a moment. "Yes?," he replied. "What is that part doing? It seems out of place?," her asked as innocently as he could. "Oh, that is used to power the fridges and other equipment in the kitchen," the marine answered.

Green thanked the man for his answer and went back to Tsuru, who was waiting for him at the door. "Do you want to see the fridges and other stuff?," she asked him.

"Oh no, I have seen those things before. They had them in some of the fancy places in the capital," he answered. That was not even a lie as Green has seen these things in the Academy, which surprised him greatly. Over there they use a nearby small stream to power it whire water wheels. The entire system was so incredibly inefficient and badly designed, that Green literally could not decide what part in it was the worst.

And the worst part was that it was seen as the top of the top of what you could get in technology in the West Blue. He did not lie to the King when he said that he had nothing more to learn in this sea in engineering, other maybe from Ohara. So his reasoning to go to Karakuri Island was actually not a lie.

"Ah yeah, I sometimes forget where you come from," Tsuru then turned to the chief engineer, "Is everything ready for setting sail?"

"Yes captain, we are only doing the last checks, everything should be fine," he answered while saluting.

Green followed Tsuru out of the depths of the ship. When they arrived above deck, the sun was about to rise over the horizon. The wind was still blowing strong and the waves were decently high. They parted here, where Tsuru went to the helm and Green just watched as they left the West Seat.

They set sails aiming straight onto the Red Line which today was visible from the deck of the ship as they exited the Marine base. He actually watched the city getting smaller instead of the Red Line getting bigger.

Green thoughts were on a certain blonde knight nerd, which had over the span of the last weeks wiggled herself into his heart. He did not know why he was so sad of parting with her as with the life experience of his last world he knew that something like that was pretty common.

"Was it because of her actually working to goal? Because I could talk with her about all the strength stuff I would never talk about at home?" His thoughts were on their time spent and that he is going to try to stay in contact.

"Hope Artoria is going to stay on her way and reach her goal," he murmend to himself out loud.

"Artoria is definitely staying on her way," a familiar voice proclaimed behind him.

"I can even hear her now, can't escape the annoying princess voice…,"

"BONK"

Before he could even finish his sentence something hit him on the head.

"Oh, you little shit I even came with you because I thought it's going to be fun but now you're even insulting me," Green turned around and saw his familiar blond princess standing there. Gone were her dresses she would usually wear and now she was wearing a black leggings with a knee length skirt over it and a white top with a blue ribbon on her collar. Her long blonde hair was completely braided onto her head and another blue ribbon was holding it up.

"She now looks exactly like Saber," he mused, until he realised that she was here on the ship.

"You ran?" He asked bluntly.

"I ran," she answered confidently with a big smile on her face.

He sighed and smiled back. "Then welcome on my journey, I hope you are not going to be bored with me." Green reached his hand up so Artoria could shake on it, but she seemed to have other ideas. Instead of shaking his hand, she pulled him in a deep hug. A hug if Green was already in puberty, he would have liked very much as she nestled his face in between her breasts.

They stayed like that for a while until Artoria seemed to be satisfied and let Green out of his "soft prison".

They chatted for a bit while watching the Red Line getting bigger on the horizon, even though they had to yell a bit louder as the wind made talking hard.

It was simply massive.

And surprisingly it had a slight red hue to it. Despite being literally named Red Line, Green thought that it could not be that red, but the closer they got the more intense the red became. He reasoned that they may have a high Iron part, as that was one of the more common reasons for earth turning red.

Artoria and Green were now both quiet as the Red Line became so big that they could not see the peak anymore even when bending their heads completely upwards.

"It's like a world border in a video game. It's way too artificial…," were Green's thoughts as the ship now began turning to be parallel to the Red Line.

"What do you think about it?," was Artoria's question that pulled Green from his thoughts.

"That it's not real," he answered. Green thought that Artoria was satisfied with his answer but was slightly startled when he turned to her and saw her staring at him. "What?"

"You think that somebody put that," she gestured from one end of the visible Red Line to the other, "here, for some reason?"

"Yes" He answered but saw immediately that she was not satisfied with that simple answer. "Firstly, when has nature ever produced something this straight," he points at the Red Line, "and since when did nature learn to part things neatly in perfect 4 pieces."

Artoira's head exploded from that explanation. Green saw the girl with a wide open mouth and a puzzled expression, her thoughts running just around.

"And I am not even going to talk about the height of it and the connection it has with the Grandline. It's like some God pulled out his paint brush and decided to have some fun with the entire world."

"I didn't think you would believe in Gods," Artoria made the connection through his statement.

"Oh no, I completely do not believe in Gods whatsoever," was the answer from Green that threw Artoria once again out of the loop.

"So what is your theory about that," she once again pointed with her finger at the mountain range.

"I don't really know. Devil Fruits maybe?, over multiple decades or even centuries; or some old long forgotten world empire that decided to rearrange the globe for shits and giggles," Green said with a sarcastic monotone voice.

"If I could have had 100 Berries for every theorie I heard about the formation of the Red Line, I would have a mountain of cache higher than the Red Line," said a voice that they identify as Tsurus from behind them.The Vice-Admiral arrived next to them on the railing. She then starts to explain.

"The earliest records, which are currently in storage in the Holy Land or even the ones from Ohara, already have it in it. The same goes for Devil Fruits. A lot of notable researchers of the centuries which tried to crack the mystery around the Red Line have had to give up as they could not find any conclusive evidence. Life times have been wasted trying to find the answer to it, but it always ends the same…

But that does not matter right now as of a minute ago we exited the West Blue.

Welcome to the Calm Belt!"

Only then did they both realise that the wind was completely gone.