The Pearl continued along the route, passing through the final gate. They were about to enter the Grand Line properly now—Paradise, the first half. Courtesy of the "goodwill" of the officials they had just "rewarded," they'd also obtained Log Poses—one for the general route and, miraculously, a set calibrated up to Alabasta, along with an Eternal Pose tucked into a sealed pouch like it was contraband.
Jack had stared at the poses with something almost like nostalgia, then quickly looked away as if nostalgia might bite.
He stood at the helm again, a wry smile pulling at his mouth, not sure if he was supposed to feel anything about returning to these waters. He'd been a merchant's son once. He'd known routes and ports and the smell of honest trade.
Then the sea had taught him what honesty got you.
Jack's hands tightened on the wood. He looked ahead.
And then Gibbs shouted, loud enough to shake the mood off the deck like dust. "Captain! We've got someone aboard!"
Jack froze. "Someone?"
Gibbs emerged from below deck dragging a woman by the arm—not roughly, but as if the woman might collapse if he moved too fast. She was frail, thinner than hunger and exhaustion allowed. Her hair was a mess, her clothes torn and wrong for the weather, and her eyes were too sharp for a body that looked like it had already surrendered.
In her arms, clinging to her like a lifeline, was a small child—two years old at most—crying with the desperate, hoarse intensity of someone who had been too afraid too many times.
Jack's smile vanished.
The air changed.
Pintel and Ragetti, who had been arguing about whether gold was better stored in barrels or "just in my pockets," both stopped dead.
Robin's face went pale so fast it looked like the sun had been turned off.
Augur climbed down from the crow's nest with a stiff, unusually guilty posture.
Jack stared at him. "Augur."
Augur cleared his throat. "I was on watch."
"And yet," Jack said, gesturing toward the woman and child, "we have acquired… guests."
Augur's face twitched with something that might have been shame if he were any other person. "I fainted."
Ragetti's voice rose from below deck like a confession. "I told you the soup was fine!"
Robin pinched the bridge of her nose. "What did you put in it?"
"A tea full of spoons," Ragetti said defensively.
Robin looked like she wanted to throw herself into the sea.
Gibbs snapped his fingers sharply. "Everyone. Attention. Now."
The crew's eyes snapped back to the intruders.
The woman looked at them with fear that was practiced—fear that knew what men did when they decided you were property. She held the child tighter and tried to speak, but her voice cracked.
Pintel stepped forward, trying to look threatening. Unfortunately, his idea of threatening was smiling with too much enthusiasm, it only made the child cry louder.
"We should make them walk the plank," Pintel offered, as if suggesting an afternoon activity.
Ragetti slapped him on the back of the head. "What in the world is wrong with you?"
Pintel rubbed his skull. "It's piracy!"
"It's a mother and a baby," Ragetti hissed.
"Well then," Pintel said, flustered, "we drop them at the nearest island."
The woman's eyes widened in terror at the word "drop."
Jack's hand drifted toward his sword without him consciously deciding to do it. He watched her carefully, the way he watched the sea before a storm—reading the signs, looking for the lie hidden inside the truth.
The woman forced herself to speak. "Please," she rasped. "We just… we just need refuge."
Gibbs stepped forward, positioning himself between her and the rest of them. It was instinctive, protective, and it made the woman's expression twitch—confusion at kindness, suspicion that it was another trap.
Gibbs' voice was firm. "Explain."
The woman swallowed. The child's sobs grew louder, tiny fists clutching at her torn sleeve.
"My name is Ginny," she said, and the name came out like it cost her something. "And… and this is my daughter."
Jack's eyes flicked to the child. Round cheeks smudged with dirt and tears. A tiny face scrunched in panic. The kind of face that shouldn't know fear yet.
Ginny took a trembling breath. "We were slaves."
The word hit the deck like a cannonball.
Robin flinched. Pintel's mouth fell open. Ragetti's hands clenched. Augur's gaze sharpened. Gibbs' expression darkened like a storm cloud rolling in.
Ginny's voice turned bitter. "I was taken. I was forced to be… a wife."
Jack's sword slid a fraction from its sheath.
Gibbs stared. "A wife. Of who?"
Ginny's eyes lifted, and whatever she saw in their faces gave her enough courage to speak the rest.
"A Celestial Dragon."
Silence swallowed the ship.
Then everything exploded at once.
Jack drew his sword fully with a sharp rasp. Augur's rifle was up in a blink, barrel trained not on Ginny but on the air around her, as if expecting assassins to materialize. Robin's hands trembled. Pintel made a strangled sound like someone had punched his lungs.
Ragetti whispered, "Bubbles…"
Gibbs barked, "Stand down! All of you!" He kept his stance between Ginny and the crew, not because he feared the woman—because he feared what panic might make them do.
Ginny looked like she might collapse under the sudden hostility. Her daughter's cries turned desperate.
Jack took one step forward, eyes narrowing. "You were the wife of one of those… creatures?"
Ginny nodded, shame and fury mixing together in her face. "The eighth," she whispered, voice cracking. "I— I didn't choose it. I didn't—"
Gibbs snapped again, louder. "Captain! She's not confessing to treason. She's confessing to being taken."
Jack's sword lowered a fraction. Not because his suspicion vanished—because his instinct, sharp as it was, recognized something in Ginny's eyes.
It was the gaze of someone trying to survive.
Jack exhaled slowly and sheathed his sword halfway. He still didn't trust her fully.
He studied Ginny again, then said, in a tone far too casual for the subject, "I can see why a Celestial Dragon wanted you."
Gibbs' head snapped toward him. "Captain."
Jack held up a hand. "It's an observation."
"It's a terrible observation," Robin muttered, still pale.
Ginny looked like she didn't know whether to be offended or relieved they weren't killing her. She swallowed hard and forced herself to continue.
"They threw us away," she said. "When we were no longer… useful."
Her arms tightened around her daughter. "I ran. I took the first ship I saw that wasn't flying their flag. I didn't know who you were. I didn't care. I only knew… not them."
The deck was quiet again, but this time it wasn't shock.
It was anger—slow, heavy, building.
Ginny looked down at her child, voice shaking as she spoke of experiments, of cruelty dressed in authority, of sickness like punishment. She didn't have the vocabulary for everything they'd done to her, but the horror came through anyway, clear enough to make even Augur's face harden.
By the time Ginny finished, her shoulders were trembling and her daughter had cried herself into hiccuping exhaustion.
No one on the Pearl spoke for a moment.
Gibbs' fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white. Robin stared at the deck like she could see Ohara burning again. Ragetti looked nauseated. Pintel's earlier pirate bravado had drained out of him like water from a punctured barrel.
Jack stood there, rum bottle in hand, gaze unreadable.
Then, quietly, he said, "Well."
Everyone looked at him.
Jack took a slow sip, as if buying time. Then he glanced toward the Red Line behind them and the gate they'd just passed through.
"Seems," Jack said, voice mild, "we've accidentally stolen more than gold."
Ginny hugged her daughter tighter, fear returning to her eyes.
Jack looked at her and gave a crooked smile—too light for the subject, but somehow the only kind of kindness he knew how to offer.