Three days out of Syrup Village the weather turned bad.
Not dangerously bad. Not the kind of bad that required everyone on deck fighting the boat to stay alive. Just — persistently unpleasant. Grey sky, choppy water, rain that came and went without committing to either stopping or becoming a proper storm. The kind of weather that didn't ask anything dramatic of you but ground you down through accumulation.
Nami had called it two hours before it arrived.
She'd been looking at the sky in the early morning with the particular focus she used for things she was reading rather than just observing and had said, without turning around, "Rain by midday. Choppy through to tomorrow morning. Nothing dangerous but stay off the deck if you don't need to be on it."
Midday came. Rain came with it.
Everyone moved below deck except Nami who stayed at the helm with a coat on and the expression of someone doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing and finding that sufficient.
Below deck the Merry was a different world from the boat. Actual room. A table. Somewhere to sit that wasn't the deck boards. Luffy found all of this deeply interesting for approximately seven minutes and then wanted to go back up.
"It's raining," Usopp said.
"I know," Luffy said.
"You'll get wet," Usopp said.
"I know," Luffy said.
"Then why—"
"Because it's raining," Luffy said. Like this was the answer rather than a restatement of the problem.
Usopp looked at Ronald for support.
Ronald was cleaning and checking a sword he'd found in Syrup Village — bought from a shop there, basic but functional, the first one he'd owned. He didn't look up. "Let him go."
Luffy went up.
Usopp watched him go through the hatch with the expression of someone who had just watched a decision being made that he didn't understand but couldn't argue with.
"He's going to be completely soaked," Usopp said.
"He'll dry," Ronald said.
Usopp sat down across from Ronald and watched him work on the sword. Ronald was learning the weight of it — not just the physical weight but the balance, the way it wanted to move when you let it rather than forcing it. The intermediate swordsmanship from the sign in reward had given him the technical knowledge. The knowledge and the physical relationship with a specific blade were two different things.
"You're learning to use that," Usopp said.
"Yes," Ronald said.
"Did you not know how before?"
"Not well," Ronald said. "Getting better."
Usopp watched him for a moment. "Zoro could teach you."
"Zoro teaches by fighting," Ronald said. "I'm not ready to fight him yet."
"When will you be ready?"
"When I am," Ronald said.
Usopp seemed to accept this. He pulled out a small notebook from somewhere in his jacket and opened it. He wrote things in it sometimes — Ronald had noticed. Not maps like Nami. Something else. Notes, sketches, ideas for something that he hadn't explained and Ronald hadn't asked about.
"What are you writing," Ronald said.
"Stories," Usopp said. He said it without the performance energy. Just factually. "Things that happen. Things I want to remember." He looked at the page. "Things I'm going to tell people later."
"About the journey," Ronald said.
"About all of it," Usopp said. "From the beginning. Kaya. Kuro. The way Luffy went through that wall." He paused. "You. The way you figured out what was wrong before any of us did."
Ronald looked up from the sword.
"Don't make me too knowing in the stories," Ronald said.
Usopp looked at him. "Why not?"
"Because nobody likes a person who knows everything," Ronald said. "It makes the story less interesting."
Usopp thought about this with genuine seriousness. "That's actually good storytelling advice."
"Make me useful," Ronald said. "Not omniscient."
"What's the difference," Usopp said.
"Useful means I help when it matters," Ronald said. "Omniscient means nothing is ever a surprise. And if nothing is ever a surprise then there's no story."
Usopp looked at his notebook. Made a note of something. "You think about stories the same way I do."
"I've read a lot of them," Ronald said.
"What kind?"
"All kinds," Ronald said. "Adventure. History. People who went somewhere and came back changed." He turned the sword over. "The best ones are always about the change more than the going."
Usopp was quiet for a moment. Writing something.
"We're going to change," Usopp said. Not sadly. Just as an observation.
"Yes," Ronald said.
"All of us."
"All of us," Ronald said.
Usopp looked at what he'd written. "Good," he said. "That'll make for a better story."
---
Zoro came below deck in the afternoon.
He sat down at the table and looked at the sword Ronald was working with. The look he'd been giving it periodically since Syrup Village — not dismissive, just assessing. Learning the object the way Zoro learned most things, through observation over time.
"Single blade," Zoro said.
"For now," Ronald said.
"You could work with two eventually," Zoro said. "Your hands are right for it. The way you use them — equal capability on both sides."
"I know," Ronald said.
Zoro looked at him. "You've thought about it."
"I think about most things," Ronald said.
Zoro leaned back. "Three blades takes years. Don't try to rush toward it." He said it without arrogance — just the factual delivery of someone passing on information they'd earned through the years it had taken them. "Two before three. One before two. The foundation matters."
"I know," Ronald said again.
Zoro looked at him for a moment. "You say that a lot."
"Because I usually do know," Ronald said. "What I'm working on is turning the knowing into the doing. That's the gap."
Zoro considered this. "That's the gap for everyone," he said. "Most people don't admit it."
"Admitting it is the first part of closing it," Ronald said.
Zoro was quiet for a moment. Something moved behind his eyes. Not agreement exactly — more like recognition. The look of someone who has arrived at the same place from a different direction and finds the company unexpected but not unwelcome.
"Mihawk," Zoro said. The name he said to the sky sometimes. "He's the world's greatest swordsman."
"I know," Ronald said.
"I'm going to beat him," Zoro said.
"I know that too," Ronald said.
Zoro looked at him. "You believe it."
"Yes," Ronald said simply.
The rain hit the hull above them in the steady way rain does when it's committed to a position. Somewhere above deck Luffy was doing something that produced a thump and then a laugh.
"Why," Zoro said. "You've barely seen me fight."
"I've seen enough," Ronald said. "The way you moved against Kuro's men. Against Buggy's crew." He set the sword down. "Most fighters have a ceiling you can see from the outside. Something in how they move that tells you where they stop. You don't have that."
Zoro looked at the table.
"I had a friend," he said. After a pause long enough that Ronald hadn't expected him to continue. "When I was learning. A girl named Kuina." He said the name the way people say names that mean something they haven't finished making peace with yet. "She was better than me. Always. No matter what I did." He was quiet for a moment. "She died when we were young."
Ronald said nothing. Let it sit.
"I made a promise," Zoro said. "To her and to myself. That I'd be the best. That the name Roronoa Zoro would be known as the greatest swordsman in the world." He looked up. "She couldn't get there anymore. So I had to get there for both of us."
The rain kept doing its thing on the hull.
"That's why there's no ceiling," Ronald said quietly. "A promise like that doesn't have one."
Zoro looked at him for a long moment.
Then he looked away. "Don't put that in whatever Usopp is writing in that notebook."
"I'm not writing this one," Usopp said from the corner where he'd apparently been so quiet that Zoro had forgotten he was there.
Zoro stared at him.
Usopp held up the notebook with the pages clearly closed. "Not writing it," he said. "But I heard it and it's going in here eventually." He tapped the side of his head. "Up here."
Zoro pointed at him. "Don't."
"Can't stop what's already in someone's head," Usopp said.
Zoro stared at him for another long moment. Then he turned and looked at the wall instead. "I'm going back up."
"It's still raining," Usopp said.
"Good," Zoro said, and went up through the hatch.
Usopp looked at the hatch. Then at Ronald. "He doesn't actually mind that I heard it."
"No," Ronald said. "He doesn't."
"He just can't say that," Usopp said.
"No," Ronald said. "He can't."
Usopp nodded wisely and opened his notebook.
---
The rain stopped the next morning exactly when Nami had said it would.
She came below deck for the first time since it had started, dried off with the efficiency of someone who had been wet before and had a system for dealing with it, and sat at the table and spread her charts.
Everyone gathered around.
It had become a thing — when Nami spread the charts it meant there was something to know about where they were and where they were going and everyone had figured out that knowing this information was better than not knowing it.
"We're here," she said, pointing at a position. "Wind conditions from here are favorable going south then southeast. There are two islands in that direction — one small, probably not worth stopping at, one larger." She traced a line with her finger. "Beyond that—" she paused.
"Beyond that what," Luffy said.
"Baratie," she said. "A floating restaurant on the sea. It's a known landmark out here. We're maybe four days out if the wind holds."
"A restaurant on the sea," Luffy said. His expression had gone to a particular place that meant food was involved and all other considerations were processing slowly.
"On a ship," Nami said. "Shaped like a fish. They serve anyone who comes — pirates, Marines, civilians. It's neutral ground."
"They have good food?" Luffy said.
"I've heard the chefs are exceptional," Nami said.
Luffy slammed both hands on the table. "We're going."
"That was already the plan," Nami said.
"We're going faster," Luffy said.
"We can't go faster than the wind," Nami said.
"Can we make the wind go faster," Luffy said.
Everyone looked at him.
"No," Nami said. "We cannot make the wind go faster."
Luffy sat back down and looked at the chart with the expression of someone negotiating with a reality that wasn't offering good terms.
Ronald looked at the route Nami had traced. Baratie. He kept his face completely still.
He had vaguer memories of what came at Baratie than he had of earlier things — the story getting hazier the further out it went, the details less precise, the broad strokes there but the specifics unclear. He knew there was someone important there. He knew things happened. He didn't know exactly how or in what order.
Which was fine. It meant he'd be experiencing it rather than anticipating it.
"Four days," he said.
"Give or take," Nami said.
"What do we do for four days," Usopp said.
"Train," Zoro said from his corner without opening his eyes.
"I was going to say something more fun than that," Usopp said.
"Train," Zoro said again.
"He's not wrong," Ronald said.
Usopp looked between the two of them. "You're both the same kind of person."
"No we're not," Ronald and Zoro said at the same time.
Luffy started laughing.
Nami rolled up her chart with the practiced efficiency of someone who had decided the meeting portion of the morning was concluded.
Outside the hatch the sea had gone back to being blue and cooperative. The sun was doing its job. The Merry sat in the water with the solid confidence of a ship that knew what it was.
Four days to Baratie.
Ronald picked up his sword and went up on deck to practice.
---
*End of Chapter 21*