Departure

I do not own One Piece or any other works that I may have referenced or took inspiration from. They all belong to their respective Authors.

~~2 Year Time Skip ~~

A man was humming along to an unknown song as he was sitting on the edge of the tallest roof within a rather large, bustling town, staring out over the ocean to a shadow that pierces the clouds. He was leaning against his right knee with a bored look on his face, as his left leg hung off the edge of the roof.

Carter still wore the same clothes as 2 years prior and had cut his hair down only his waist. He was now 6 foot 4 and was just as lean as 2 years earlier. His muscles were still lean and powerful, without any of the useless muscle that people who spend all day lifting heavy weights gain. All of his skin had a healthy tan, reminiscent of someone who spent all day under the sun, but his skin was still as smooth as a baby's, receiving no real long-term damage from the sun. His noble temperament and his outfit choice made him the vision of a prince of the desert, as if no one was worthy of being on his level.

In the last 2 years, Carter had continued his pursuit for strength with an almost one-track mindedness. He travelled to every single dojo he had heard of and challenged them. Any time he saw one using a technique that he thought would be useful for his repertoire, he stayed at the dojo and requested to learn under them. Some dojos happily took him in as a student and others required payment to join, but with his continued bounty hunting he had no problem paying a "Tuition" of sorts.

He had continued to work on his stamina training and could now run with his weight at ten thousand kilograms for almost 5 days straight, with no stopping. He had only done it once, because he had to skip training for the next 3 days as his body recovered, but at least now he knows it is possible.

He had also continued working on Rokushiki, like his soru and Geppo mastery, as he could now use them with his full weight behind them, even if they were quite slow. His Rankyaku mastery now allowed him to use any of his limbs, and he could even send a small blade out with just his fingers. His Shigan can likewise be used on any limb, and he can now pierce just about anything he wants to.

His Tekkai and his Kami-e have received the most upgrade however, as he can now stand still and block any attack he has come across within the entire south blue. At first, he could still be slightly hurt by attacks when using Tekkai, but he spent many days just receiving attacks from anyone willing so that he could work on enhancing his Tekkai. His Kami-e skills now allow him to switch to the "Paper" state whenever he wants to. He can switch his weight to 1kg and instantly be in a Kami-e state, to flow around any attack coming at him.

He also managed to achieve the next level of body control, Seimei Kikan. Since he first arrived on the island 9 years ago, he has been working on calisthenic exercises, and stretching to achieve as perfect body control as possible. Within the last 4 months, he realized that now when he focuses, he can digest food faster, use energy within his body to heal his tired body quicker, and even control his hair without touching it. Though, he finds the last one pointless, unless he can master Busoshoku Haki and use his hair as a shield.

He still hadn't received too much accomplishment when it comes to haki, as the most he can do is somewhat feel when someone is trying to attack him. All of the attacks he has dealt with so far have been too weak for him to dodge, and he is strong enough to beat just about any enemy with hardly any strength used, so he hasn't had a stressful moment to 'unlock' Busoshoku.

The reason he is sitting on the edge of a building on South Blue's closest Island to the Reverse Mountain, Orianne, is that he finally met a character from the canon of one piece, and now knows somewhat the timeline he is at. Just last week he ran into a group of pirates who had already wiped out a town, killing every member there.

~Line Break~

Appearing in the air above the town and floating there, Carter could see fire everywhere, and there was not a single building still standing. He could see dead bodies littering the ground underneath him, some of them cut into pieces, but many of them just completely crushed into meat paste.

To the west of the island, at the town marina, there was a party actively going on, so he decided to head there to take out whoever had done this atrocious act. He had received a reputation within the last two years as a heroic and avenging bounty hunter. Whenever a town was attacked, he would either show up partway through and put a stop to it, capturing the pirates and handing them in for their bounties, or he would hear about it later, and hunt down the ones responsible for the act.

On the other side of the same coin, Carter was known to sometimes let the "Adventurer" style pirates leave without bothering to stop them. Although this often angered the marines, none of them had the guts required to put a bounty on him yet, as the pirates he let off didn't commit any great crimes.

No one, not even the marines, knew exactly how he was able to get around so fast, as he had managed to keep his soru a secret even now. People seeing him use it to just disappear usually either believe he somehow teleported, or that their eyes were playing tricks on them.

Appearing at the outskirts of the party with a quiet soru, Carter slowly walked into the bounds of the party giving off a dangerous and enraged vibe. He didn't mind if someone wanted to oppose the world government and be branded a pirate, but the moment someone decides that the way they want to do it is by slaughtering innocent people, Carter gets mad.

Everyone who saw him stopped what they were doing and could not keep their eyes off of him. As he walked through the party towards where he could see a head table, the party slowly halted, and the music died down.

Arriving in front of the table, Carter observed the pirates who lead this attack on innocent people. In a throne like seat as a young man with bright red hair reaching towards the sky, and a pair of goggles around his forehead. He wore a black captains coat with purple fur lining the inside and had an almost manic grin on his face.

Diagonally behind him stood a man about as tall as Carter, wearing a black dress shirt covered in white dots, and a blue and white vertically striped mask covering his entire face. He had his arms crossed, showing off his metal gauntlets on both of his hands with scythe style blades running up behind his arms. He had blonde hair fanning out from behind his mask, running the length of his back.

Taking in the vision of these two, Carter realized he knew them. The both of them were characters within the "Worst Generation" of pirates. Eustass "Captain" Kid and "Massacre Soldier" Killer. The members of the "Worst Generation" that truly deserve that title, as their entire bounty was gained through slaughter and bloodshed. They saw other pirates as being the same as them, so they saw nothing wrong in their actions, unlike pirates like the straw hats who gained their notoriety through opposing the world government.

When Carter saw Borsalino, aka Kizaru, taking down the straw hats on Sabaody Archipelago, he prayed that he would instead focus his attention on the murder duo in front of him now, and take them out for good. Instead, they got away, and managed to make it into the new world.

Right now, and right here, Carter could amend that mistake.

"Eustass Kid, Killer, the two of you have run rampant in my seas for too long. Come with me to hand yourselves into the marines or die here and now!" Carter announced, shocking the Kid pirates with his boldness.

"Weakling!" Kid bellowed out, "Are you here to get revenge for this trash, or are you here to become our new cabin boy?"

Carter slightly tilted his head as he stared straight at Kid for a few seconds, "then I guess you have chosen death" he said before disappearing.

Kid and Killer were both startled as Killer jumped back spinning his scythe blades, while Kid stood up and pulled all metal nearby toward him, to create a giant metal hand. All around the party, members of the Kid pirates were screaming and falling to the ground with broken bones, caved in chests, and blood flowing from every orifice. Although holding back and not bothering to use any of his true strength, every one of Carters casual attacks was enough to severely injure these weak members of the Kid pirates.

Noticing the mysterious party crashing avenger was too fast for him to even see, Kid disbanded part of his metal arm, and formed a magnetized sphere of metal around him and Killer, so that if Carter even tried to approach Kid would feel it and could react.

Carter, seeing this, just scoffed, and continued dealing with the lower rank members. Once he was finished, he refocused on the main 2 members. He used a slow soru, only slightly faster than the speed of sound, before switching his body to the paper like state offered by Kami-e to slip between the small gaps between the metal in the sphere with ease.

Landing silently between Killer and Kid, he decided to deal with Killer first, before moving on to Kid. Punching Killed in the face with a casual attack, he was surprised when his fist was met with a scythe blade, and another was flowing quickly towards his heart. Carters left hand reached out and grabbed the second blade, before slipping his right hand around the blade in a style similar to Snake Kung Fu, grabbing Killer by the mask carter squeezed his head, eliciting a blood curdling scream and causing the mask to shatter.

Kid had already reacted at this point, he decided that Killer was worthless to him and threw all his metal straight at both Carter and Killer. Immediately giving up on ending Killer at the moment, Carter's body turned paper like once more and flowed out through the small gaps to escape the encirclement.

As the metal coalesced into a sphere in front of Kid's outstretched hand, a quiet scream pierced the air for less than a second before blood spurted out from between the gaps in the metal. Kid's manic grin grew even more mad as he believed he had killed his foe; however, he felt a sudden pain in his chest.

With blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth, Kid turned his eyes downwards to see a hand sticking out of his chest where his heart used to be. Looking over his shoulder, He could only see Carter there with the coldest eyes he had ever seen. But Kid did not feel fear from this, but instead anger. He felt it fill his entire soul and body as an invisible pressure built, and with a scream it suddenly blasted out of his body, pushing Carter back a few steps and shaking his mind.

About 2 seconds later, when Carter had recovered from the sudden shock, he looked back up at Kid to see him standing where he was with his head tilted back mid scream, but no life left in his body. Even when he was weak as he was, Kid had a willpower that was shocking. A willpower that transferred over to his now dead body, that refused to fall down, even after his life was gone.

"Haoshoku Haki, The Will of the King" Carter mumbled. 'While surprising, it did not make me want to kneel. It just made me want to fight back harder' he thought.

While Kid was a horrible person, his will was extremely admirable. 'He would have gone very far if he hadn't had been such a shitty person,' he thought.

Throughout the 2 years he worked as a bounty hunter, Carter had created himself some rules. Pirates who Don't harm civilians will be left alone, Pirates who steal from civilians will be captured and handed to the marines, and Pirates who needlessly kill civilians will be killed in return. Though extremely simple, Carter felt the rules perfectly matched his personality. He wasn't a soft person, and he had no compunctions against killing, but he felt that only those who truly deserved it should be killed.

As he walked away from the two dead bodies, pulling out his Den-Den Mushi to call the marines to come and receive the bodies of all the pirates, he noticed a glint of silver to his side, in a bowl of fruit. Getting closer he saw a silver fruit covered in lightning shaped spikes, wrapped entirely in a bright yellow stem that comes out of the top of it in a lightning bolt style T shape.

~Line Break~

Back on that rooftop, Carter was thinking about setting off for the Grand Line. He should be capable of surviving by himself, but he would much rather he had his own crew or could join an already made crew. He had his savings in a large backpack behind him. Although he had hunted down a lot of pirates in the past, he had given a lot of money back to towns that had been attacked, so they could more easily rebuild, so he only had around one hundred million Berry left. That is still an exorbitant amount, however, and is more than any normal job would make in 50 years.

Suddenly, Carter heard a commotion from a restaurant down on the street below him.

"w-w-We are ou-out of foo-food miss. Please Stop already!" A cowardly voiced yelled.

"I'm Starving, Bring me more food!" A woman's voice complained.

"They don't have any left captain; we should just move on to a new restaurant." Another voice replied.

"Fine! Let's go elsewhere then!" The woman said before stomping out of the restaurant.

"W-Wait up, y-you haven't p-paid the bill yet!" The cowardly voice stuttered out.

"You think I'm paying when you couldn't even fill me up!" She yelled in return and grabbed him by the shirt, hauling him off his feet.

"Captain, we don't want to attract the attention of the marines right now, we still need to stock up for our voyage into the Grand Line." The voice from earlier said, "We will pay, but at a discount, as the captain said, you failed the one job of any restaurant." As the man spoke, he pulled out a small bag of gold coins, and dropped it on the floor in front of the cowardly man who was promptly thrown on the ground.

Carter was surprised seeing the pink haired lady stomp her way out onto the street. 'The Big Eater, "Jewelry Bonney",' he thought with some amusement. 'I guess she was being held by the world government here in south blue, before escaping and sailing towards the grand line.'

'I didn't think I would see her here' He thought, as he followed her with his eyes as she made her way down the street, 'If I am looking for a crew, why don't I just join hers? Her crew seems to all be a group of no named weaklings, so it should be easy enough to become second in command, and I can have them all help me train. Plus, with her iconic love for all things food, it should be incredibly easy to buy my way onto her ship.'

Deciding on his course of action, he waited for her to choose a new restaurant before he disappeared in another soru toward a restaurant that he had been to before. He had been to this island multiple times over the last few years to hand in bounties and had eaten at many of the restaurants. This restaurant is a small, out of the way pizza restaurant that specializes in massive portions of food. They create many different delicious pizzas and have multiple massive pizza ovens to cook food fit for a giant. He had eaten here a few times in the last few months, as he found Seimei Kikan allowed him to have no limit to his stomach size. Eating one of these pizzas was extremely enjoyable and would provide him with a massive burst of energy for days.

Walking in the store, he threw down a stack of Berry and said, "1 of each of your biggest size, thanks, and make them as quick as possible."

5 minutes later he was walking out of the store with 8 pizzas with a diameter of 6 meters each stacked in boxes, one on top of the next. He lightened the weight of all of the pizzas, before jumping up to a rooftop and hopping over to the restaurant he saw Bonney enter. He didn't hesitate to walk straight in and walk straight towards her.

Her crew tried to step in front of him, but a glare from him had them backpedaling quickly.

She had her back parallel to him, with both feet on the table as she yelled out with a mouthful full of food, "Bring me some damn steak!"

Walking straight to her side, he looked down and said in a calm, kind voice, "Jewelry Bonney?"

"What's it to you, bud?" She replied in a crass tone, still stuffing her face full of food.

"I would like to join your crew." Carter said, before dropping the 8 pizzas on the table in front of her, "A greeting gift, from me to you." He said while opening the box of the top pizza.

Staring at it with wide eyes, she immediately reached out and grabbed a piece, instantly stuffing it in her mouth she moaned in delight. "I don't recognize ya at all, so ya mustn't be strong enough to have a bounty yet." She mumbled through her food. "And you think just because ya gave me some pizza and you are handsomer than the rest of my crew, I'll let some no name weakling pirate join me?"

Keeping his customer service smile on his face while he imperceptibly blushed, Carter replied, "The reason you don't recognize me as a pirate is because until today, I was a bounty hunter. My face was never published so that pirates would underestimate me, but my epithet is well known. They called me The Avenger"

Even if he was a famous Bounty Hunter who was often corralled by the many beautiful women on the seas, he had turned them all down so still had no true experience with women, so he found it hard to control his natural reaction to a beautiful, and strong, woman.

For the first time since he first saw her, Jewelry Bonney stopped eating, as her eyes stayed locked on him and her face ever so slightly paled. "And? Why exactly would a famous bounty hunter want to join a crew of my infamy?"

Staring at her for a moment, smile still ever present on his face, he tilted his head as he said "I am pursuing strength. I have spent the last 2 years training myself to my limits as much as I can within the South Blue, but even when I first started, I was too strong for this sea, so my opponents were always too weak. I need stronger people to fight, but I didn't want to be underprepared to handle the Grand Line. I require a crew to travel with, but I refuse to sail with a coward who will attack random civilians who are unable to defend themselves." He stopped for a moment to organize his thoughts as Bonney started digging back into her pizza, "Although you aren't as righteous as I would prefer, you also don't go out of your way to harm others, so I found you the best fit to request this of. I can almost guarantee that with me on your ship, you will be protected from anyone up to vice admiral level. Not including the monsters among them of course, like Garp."

Bonney thought for a moment, before asking, "And why exactly didn't ya just join the marines? If you are looking for strength, they'd probably be ya best bet. I'm sure you could find many powerful marines willing to train you."

"Because" Carter started before pausing to think once more. "Because I have seen the travesties that the world government is capable of, which are often more despicable and abhorrent than pirates. In this situation, I have chosen the lesser of two evils. Choosing a lesser evil is still choosing an evil however, so I must be sure of my choice, and right now… right now I believe I am."

Bonney mulled over the decision as she finished off the second pizza and started on the third. "If you're coming along, I gotta make sure I can trust you."

"Likewise," he replied.

"I want to see you become a criminal before we leave here, otherwise you ain't gettin on my ship!"

"Understood," he said, "Would you like me to announce to the marines that I am now a Pirate, or attack the captain of the base here?"

"Hm, Attack that captain, but wait til we have loaded our ship. I aint leavin here til we have enough food!" She replied crassly, her speech getting crasser as she got more comfortable in his presence.

"I understand." He said. "When will we be leaving for the Grand line, Captain?"

"Tonight" she mumbled, "We should have enough food for the first part of the trip tonight, but you'll have to bring your own food on, as we are only packing for us."

"Understood, Captain." He said. "I will be at the ship tonight, packed, and ready to leave. I will attack the Marine base just before we leave, so be ready for a commotion." He punctuated his sentence with the first real smile he had given her yet.

Carter then turned around and slowly walked out of the restaurant, before disappearing once more in a Soru. First and foremost, he decided to get all the supplies he would need for the Grand Line. He started by finding a shop that sold Log Poses, so that he could ensure his crew had at least one, and perhaps multiple spares. Buying two for 100k Berry, he also bought a few maps of the first part of the grand line. Although the World Government tried to stop as many pirates as they could from getting out of the blues, they still allowed the sale of items like these to bounty hunters, merchants, and nobles aligned with the World Government.

He then went to a clothing store, and purchased a pair of red, durable, and warm boots that he could wear for Winter Islands as needed, as well as a Pristine white hoodie. He then grabbed a large towel and shoved it in his bag as well. Although he didn't ever need to change clothes within south blue, as the temperature change was not enough to affect him, he wanted to be prepared just in case the cold is too unbearable, even for him.

He next went to a medical center to stock up on medicines that are useful for anything they may find on the Grand Line, except for the rarest of diseases. Although this was technically the ship doctors' job, Carter found it hard to trust the doctor of a random pirate ship, if there even is one. Following through with the same line of thought, he went to grab some wood working tools, to ensure he is prepared to repair the Bonney Pirates ship if required.

His final stop on his trip was to stock up on food for his journey. Although Bonney asked him to only buy enough food for himself, he gathered roughly five times more than he would normally eat in case Bonney acted like Luffy and ate anything within reach. He could also quite easily hunt any sea king that he came upon, though he couldn't hunt them if they were under the water.

He also went by a blacksmith he had placed an order at months earlier. The work should have been finished a few weeks earlier, but he had not yet gone to pick it up. The reason it took so long to work on is because it is made out of a material that is incredibly difficult to work with. Arriving at the blacksmiths, he called out "Ossan, it's me, Carter, are you still alive?"

What answered him was a bald old man with a fully white beard, instead of fitting his age and having a frail body, his large frame was covered in large muscles. He wore a short sleeved brown woolen shirt under a dirty and stained apron. "Oh, Its you, Brat." Replied the newcomer with a disappointed tone.

"My order done yet?" Carter questioned.

"Sure is, you have the cash on ya?" the blacksmith asked.

"Yep" he said, popping the p, "Can I see it first?"

The old blacksmith leaned down to the counter and pulled out a small wooden box, putting it on the counter. He turned the box around and opened it, showing the contents to Carter.

Inside the box lay 8 beautifully crafted golden rings, only marred by the ugly stone inset in the center of them. Unlike the luster of the gold, the stone was a pale green matte color, that was extremely ugly in comparison. The stones were held in the mouth of two golden snakes, entwining themselves around the entire ring. To the side of the box was a set of golden knuckle dusters, with a row of stone inset along the top, not touching the wearer at all.

Slowly reaching out, Carter ran his finger over the stone inset in one of the rings, immediately feeling his strength leaving his body, but not enough to collapse. 'Kairoseki, a truly magical material' he thought. He immediately took his hand back and reached into his backpack, pulling out 30 million Berry, to complete the payment of 35 million Berry. Thanking the old man, Carter put the box in his bag and turned around to walk out.

~Line Break~

The sun was starting to go down, and the day shift of marines were packing up, ready to head home when they heard a loud *BANG* from downstairs. The intruder alarm immediately sounded throughout the base, as the marines panicked and grabbed their rifles and swords, rushing towards the front of the base, to do their job and defend the base from whoever was bold enough to attack them. Arriving at the gates, the marines all joined together to call out "Surrender right now!" at the young man in front of them.

A few of the marines had recognised the young man as The Avenger, a famous bounty hunter within these seas as he has come here to cash in bounties a few times, but the rest were completely clueless as to who this was.

Jumping down from the top of the base, a 3-meter-tall man in a marine captain coat landed in front of the base, staring down the smaller form of their attacker. "How dare you attack this marine base in the middle of Orianne! Identify yourself!" demanded the marine captain.

Before Carter could offer any response, a marine petty officer managed to stutter out "C-captain, That's The Avenger, that b-bounty hunter that has been taking down lots of p-pirates for the last t-two years."

"Hmm, is that so, you bounty hunter scum are now attacking us? There really isn't much difference between you bounty hunters and pirates, is there? All of you are criminal scum that needs to be put down." The captain growled out.

'Really? Are all marine captain's followers of Akainu or am I just unlucky?' carter questioned inwardly.

Outwardly, however, he replied with his customer service voice on and a smile on his face.

"Greetings, Marines. I have come here to announce my transition into piracy. My new captain wants me to prove that I am not a mole trying to join her just to take her out in her sleep, so here I am to make myself into a wanted criminal. I apologize, but this may hurt a fair bit."

After he finished his speech, the marines stood dumbfounded by his sudden confession for about 5 seconds, before one of them accidentally squeezed the trigger on his rifle. Disappearing in a soru, Carter landed on a roof above them, right as more than half of the marines holding rifles also pulled the trigger in reaction to the first gun shot.

Carter decided to try to limit the damage he does as much as possible, as he doesn't want to be known for slaughtering a base full of marines, but he also wants to prove to his future captain that he is serious about being a pirate.

Disappearing from the battlefield for over 2 seconds, he reappeared back in his original spot, as all of the marines who had shot at him had their eyes go white as they fell to the ground. He tapped each of them on the neck with a small percentage of his strength. With Seimei Kikan, he has perfect control of his entire body, so that only problem is predicting how much strength he needs to use to knock out opponents.

'This would be so much easier if I had Haoshoku,' Carter thought, as he dodged the captain's fast swipe attack. 'His speed almost matches a basic soru, even without using one' he thought, observing the captain once more.

Bent forward with his hands on the ground and his legs having grown longer and wider, the captains' eyes were an orange color, with a horizontal rectangular pupil in the center and a black outline, reminiscent of Naruto's eyes in his sage mode.

Taking a cue from what he saw of the Captains hybrid form, Carter thought 'Gama Gama no mi? A toad based Zoan fruit would explain his sudden immense speed. Toads have powerful legs, after all.'

Deciding to ignore the captain for now, Carter once more disappeared in a Soru, leaving marines dropping to the floor unconscious wherever he went. After about 15 seconds, he reappeared once more in the center of the area, about 5 meters in front of the now irate toad captain.

"Why are you doing this!" the captain growled in a husky voice.

"I already told you, I am only doing this to prove to my new captain I am willing to go against the Marines, It is nothing personal. I have held back as much as I can, and I truly hope I have not permanently injured any marines, but it couldn't have been avoided." He said, in a conversational tone, as if he didn't just knock out over forty marines.

As soon as he finished speaking, Carter once more disappeared, reappearing right where the captain was standing with his leg outstretched in a front kick, at the same time as the captain was embedded into the front wall of the marine base. Seeing that the toad man was barely conscious, he walked over to him, and said with a smile, "night night, captain", before tapping him on the side of the neck knocking him out immediately.

Carter looked around at his handywork, realizing that he knocked them all out, so there will be no proof of his actions, he picked up the captain's unconscious body and disappeared in another soru. He reappeared on a rooftop close to the dock where he had stored all of his belongings before the journey starts today. Picking all of his items up, he lowered their weight down to 1kg, and disappeared into a soru in the direction of the ship he could see with the Bonney pirate flag on top of it.

Landing in front of the gangplank, Carter walked up the ramp dragging the unconscious captain along in his right hand, while he wore a massive backpack on his back. Stepping onto the deck, he was met with the sight of Bonney sitting in a throne-like chair with a big piece of meat in her hand, chewing away. Immediately approaching the beautiful but crass lady who would soon be his captain, he said.

"Captain Bonney, here is my final entry test completed. One captain of the marines, thoroughly beaten up and knocked unconscious. I told them all I would be becoming a pirate, but not whose sail I would be under, so I should not increase your notoriety for the moment. At least not until you have gotten a bit stronger and can handle it."

"You dragged a marine captain to our ship? Are you insane? All the marines on the island will be hunting us down now!" She yelled, before barking out orders "Men, get out here and get this ship moving. The idiot newbie has kidnapped a marine captain, so we need to get out of here!"

Standing to the side with a bemused smile on his face, Carter just picked the marine captain up and threw him off of the ship, back down onto the deck and put his bag down, before saying to Bonney, "What can I do to help, cap?"

"Are you an idiot?" She barked through a mouthful of meat as she stood at the ship's wheel preparing to steer the ship out of the port. "Get down to the dock and unmoor the ship!"

"Understood, Cap." He said, with a lazy salute before running at a reasonable pace and jumping off of the side of the ship to unmoor it.

He had already decided prior to joining the Bonney Pirates that he would hide his full strength from them for a while and wear a Kairoseki ring as often as he could. This would allow him to hopefully, slowly build a resistance to the stone. Whether this resistance will also transfer over to water however, Carter does not currently know. This is just a theory he had come up with, after almost drowning multiple times while trying to have a bath.

The one weakness of every devil fruit user is the aura of still water, which is held within Kairoseki. To eliminate this weakness would automatically make him stronger, as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. With his body being suppressed by Kairoseki, he should also be able to train more efficiently, as he will be greatly weakened, and will not be able to use anywhere near his full strength. His devil fruit powers will also most likely be useless, but even with all of these drawbacks, he should still be fairly powerful. Kairoseki can not steal the many martial techniques he has trained in, after all.

Jumping back onto the ship after unmooring the ship, he slipped the ring onto the little finger of his right hand, making him immediately feel a fair bit weaker, as if his stamina was being drained out at a constant rate. Even so, he didn't feel that tired, just like it was time to have a lie down, but he could still do a workout if needed.

With the ship sailing rapidly toward the gigantic mountain in the distance, Carter stood calmly to the side with a small smile on his face as the rest of the crew frantically worked on the ship to get away from the island as fast as possible.

"Hey Cap, why did you decide to set sail anyway?" thinking of the famous barrel breaking scene of the straw hats declaring their dreams as they entered the impossible uphill river of the Reverse Mountain.

"Haa, do ya think we have time for this crap right now?" She questioned him with a derisive look on her face, before relenting anyway. "To become the Pirate Queen, why else?"

Although Carter could tell she was lying, he didn't decide call her out on it, and just gave her the same small smile as before. He knew a bit about her past, a spoiled princess of Sorbet Kingdom, and daughter of The Tyrant, Bartholomew Kuma. She was held by the World Government for a while, either to ensure Kuma's fealty or to use her for her devil fruit before she escaped and set sail around the world as a pirate. Her goal for setting out to sea is probably two-fold. Firstly, to escape the world government, since she escaped the world government has wanted to capture her once more. And secondly, to meet back up with her father, who she hasn't seen in years.

Walking down to the center of the deck, Carter asked the three crew members present whose names he did not yet know, "Why did you all set out to sea? Are you all following your dreams?"

"Ha, like being a pirate could be any one's dream. Nah, I accidentally angered a noble from my country, and set out to sea so I wouldn't get executed. The captain picked me up and protected me, and I swore to follow her." The first man replied. He had a top have with a V shaped brim on the front. He was a dopey looking man in a white singlet and suspenders with a black beard, and freckles on his face.

Another said, "Me dad was a pirate, since I was little, I heard stories of how he was out conquering the seas, and decided to give it a shot myself, it is in me blood after all." This man had a dark yellow headband around his head, with a mustache split into two by a rather large gap. He wore a black singlet, and he had a sword strapped over his left shoulder.

The final one sighed, before saying, "I have a dream, I want to explore the world, and see all it has to offer. Unfortunately, if I am not under the protection of a powerful captain, I would likely become a victim to the whims of other pirates." This was surprising, as the man looked like he was perpetually angry. He had a bald head with no eyebrows and two spikey cone shaped objects covering his ears. He was, also wore a singlet, his striped with black and white horizontal stripes, reminiscent of prisoner jumpsuits in some movies.

After talking with them for a bit longer he managed to get at the very least, their first name. They were, in order of appearance, Thomas, Richard, and Harrison. So, a real Tom, Dick, and Harry trio.

Finally, he asked one question he was curious about, "What roles does everyone have on the ship?"

"Well, the Captain has the role of captain, and the rest of us are chefs," Tom replied, unaware of how Carters instantly paled at the news. What kind of insane joke of a crew did he find himself on? How did Bonney survive all the way to the Sabaody Archipelago with this crew? Did she eat her way through whatever the Grand line could throw at them?

Realizing he would have to do a lot more for this crew than he originally signed up for, Carter just sighed. At the very least, he should be able to convince Captain Bonney to hire some more useful people than a group of chefs. It is unlikely that they can do much more than cook mediocre food.