Pirates: How Many Divisions Do the Five Elders Have? Navigational Talent

The sea was blue, and seagulls soared overhead.

A News Coo landed on the warship.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the one Ma Qiao knew.

It refused Ma Qiao's corn and dutifully handed the newspaper to Chief Petty Officer Qiangsen before spreading its wings and flying away.

Qiangsen was the delinquent marine who had previously wanted to rescue their commanding officer in Ma Qiao's place.

True to his name, the man had a fierce face and looked a great deal like Giant Stone Qiangsen.

But in the One Piece world's unusual art style, even Giant Stone was nothing more than an ordinary little pebble.

After Lieutenant Nezumi "turned over a new leaf," Chief Petty Officer Qiangsen had likewise rediscovered the passion he'd felt when he first enlisted.

Early that morning, he drove a group of delinquent marines to run across the deck toward the rising sun with muskets on their shoulders.

Unlike the past few days,

the delinquent marines were all working up a sweat without a word of complaint, marveling that this was youth.

None of this was because they'd seen the error of their ways. It was because a certain "bad girl" was leaning against the railing, letting the sea breeze tousle her long, sky-blue hair.

Even dressed as a bad girl, Vivi was, it had to be said, "bad" in a way that set hearts racing.

It was just like when a beautiful girl suddenly showed up courtside and all the guys on the basketball court instantly turned into Kobe.

Whether the ball went in was another matter, but they certainly weren't going to pass. They had to go one-on-one, and they had to shoot a fadeaway, even if nobody was guarding them.

Unfortunately, like most stories that played out on neighborhood courts, the pretty girl on the sidelines only ever had eyes for one person, and she would only applaud that one person.

It wasn't the best player.

It was the best-looking one.

"Mister, you've been staring at me for ages!"

Vivi rose onto her tiptoes and leaned suspiciously toward Ma Qiao's ear. "Were you thinking about something naughty?"

Ma Qiao stepped back, pulled an inflatable spiked club from behind him, and smacked her hard on the butt.

"I was just thinking. Besides, will that makeup of yours cost me points with the marine brass? I'm supposed to be their star instructor."

It was indeed a worrying matter.

After all, Ma Qiao was going to waste the taxpayers' Heavenly Tribute and become a high-ranking freeloader, so he had to make a good impression on the brass.

Having a little delinquent girl at his side would make it easy for people to see that he wasn't really respectable.

"Oh, come on! It's not like marine officers themselves necessarily dress all that respectably!" Vivi couldn't help retorting.

Ma Qiao rubbed his chin. That seemed to be true.

Once marine officers in the One Piece world reached a certain rank, they could wear whatever style of clothing they liked.

Garp's dog costume, Smoker's biker-gang outfit, and clothes like those were hardly respectable. (See image)

The same was true of female marine officers.

There was Hina, with sunglasses on her head, a cigarette in her mouth, and her cleavage right in the middle, and Momousagi, who showed off her long legs and had a black spider tattoo high on her thigh... (See image)

Those women didn't exactly look respectable either. If not for their justice capes, people would believe they were courtesans from Wano Country.

Thinking of it that way, Vivi's bad-girl outfit wasn't out of place at all. She even had the makings of a captain.

By comparison, Ma Qiao felt that his own outfit was a little old-fashioned.

To deal with the officials this time, Ma Qiao had deliberately changed into a crisp white suit with sleek lines.

His perfect physique, forged through years of training and a zero-calorie diet, was set off by the suit, giving him a distinctive beauty—that of a thug in a suit.

The only thing that somewhat spoiled the effect was the red scarf Ma Qiao still stubbornly wore around his neck.

Standing beside bad-girl Vivi in that outfit, he somehow looked both mismatched and well matched.

At least, that was what Vivi herself thought.

She called him a creepy old man for sneaking looks at her, but hadn't she been secretly admiring Ma Qiao's handsome face and perfect physique too?

"Vivi?"

"Hm?"

By the time Vivi came to her senses, Ma Qiao had already rested his head impatiently against the deck railing. "How long have we been sailing altogether?"

Vivi hurriedly tucked the strands of hair the sea breeze had tousled behind her small, fair ears. She pulled out her pocket watch and checked it, pretending to be calm. "About twenty-eight hours."

Ma Qiao asked again, "Then do you remember the route we took from Whiskey Peak to here?"

"Huh?"

Vivi shook her head. She'd been thinking about strange things the whole way, and had even come up with a name like Nefertari Matos.

"I don't remember at all, but I think we kept heading north? Anyway, that Nezumi gave you an Eternal Pose, so you don't need to worry about the route, right?"

"True."

Ma Qiao nodded.

He still thought it was a pity that Vivi didn't have Nami's astonishing navigational talent after all.

As South Blue's Destruction Dragon, Ma Qiao himself knew a little about navigation.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to drift around making extra money all these years.

But Ma Qiao had picked up those navigation skills piecemeal before he turned nineteen. They were probably about on par with Vivi's fighting ability—amateurish at best.

Did he still need to recruit a hero with a talent for navigation after all?

Gangplank had already gone off to start his own business. Who else would be suitable?

Ma Qiao sank into thought.

Plenty of heroes were good swimmers, and many knew how to navigate.

But Ma Qiao still felt that if he wanted to get into ocean shipping, relying on so-called genius navigators would be nowhere near enough.

In truth, what people called navigational talent was, plainly put, a gift from heaven.

People like Nami were few and far between.

And she herself was also suspected of having a cheat.

Princess Shirahoshi, the ultimate shut-in, had once said that she seemed to have met Nami somewhere before.

When Luffy, who had the ability to hear all things, drew portraits of the whole crew, he drew Nami as a salted fish with long hair...

Based on clues like these, the experts on Tieba had concluded that Nami was actually a high-level mermaid.

At the very least, she was a mermaid hybrid with mermaid blood.

That was why she was so sensitive to changes in the weather.

Ma Qiao didn't know whether the Tieba experts were right.

Presumably, they were at least more right than that lousy manga artist Oda.

But in any case, the fact that navigation in this era depended on talent really was a headache.

If only he had BeiDou navigation...

Den Den Mushi calls in the One Piece world worked on a principle similar to longwave radio, not satellite signals like the cell phones in his previous life.

To make navigation possible, he would still have to rely on orbital satellites.

The One Piece world had humanoid weapons like the Peacekeepers and humans modified with Germa's Lineage Factor, yet it had no space technology at all, not even airplanes. Its tech tree was absurdly lopsided.

Fortunately, Ma Qiao happened to know someone who was an expert at launching rockets.

She also had the same hair color as Vivi, and both were flat-chested.

Hmm...

Better to take things one step at a time. Take too big a step and you might pull a ball...