Arrival at Lost Island

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do we do, Luffy?! The Marines are about to surround us!" The warships around them slowly closed in on the Going Merry, and the encirclement was gradually taking shape.

"Are we fighting, Luffy?" Roronoa Zoro asked, leaning against the wall with his swords in his arms.

"Yeah, let's fight." Luffy pressed down his hat.

"Hold your horses! There are so many of them! How could you possibly beat them all? And Dragon Lord is on the ship now. What if those Marines hurt him?" Nami argued. "The urgent thing is finding a way to break through! We can't let them stop us here!"

While everyone racked their brains over how to get out, Aaron first looked up at the warships around them, then lowered his head to look at the sea. After calculating for a moment and scratching his head, he said, "I've got an idea!"

"Hm?" Everyone turned to look at Aaron.

Aaron poked his head out for another look, thought for a moment, then said to Nami, "Nami, keep us on course!" With that, Aaron jumped into the sea with a splash.

"Keep us on course? What's Aaron doing at a time like this?" Nami was confused. Just as she was about to think over what Aaron meant, the Going Merry suddenly began to shake.

Underwater, Aaron first swam beneath the Going Merry and looked up at the lower deck. Then he closed his eyes and slowly exhaled the stale air from his lungs. His chest and abdomen gradually caved in as strings of bubbles escaped from his nose and mouth, drifting upward.

A few seconds later, after all the air in his chest and stomach had been expelled, Aaron suddenly opened his eyes wide. His mouth stretched open, and his chest let out a thunderous roar. Like a powerful water pump, Aaron's mouth began sucking in seawater in a raging torrent.

The powerful suction even formed a whirlpool on the surface, and seawater poured into Aaron's body like enlightenment flooding his mind.

Aaron's body swelled as if inflated. First came his belly, then his limbs, and finally his head grew larger as well.

Aaron's size increased severalfold, until he was about five meters tall.

Yeah... he looked like a giant baby.

"Gulp!" Aaron puffed out his cheeks and swam toward the lower deck, pressing his back tightly against it.

"Whoosh!!" A massive amount of seawater blasted from Aaron's mouth, the tremendous force even pushing his face inward.

The diameter was probably close to half a meter. Don't ask why Aaron's mouth could get that big.

Aaron spread his entire body wide, bracing the Going Merry tightly to keep the violent impact from overturning it.

Gradually, the entire Going Merry rose away from the sea's surface, ascending vertically into the air under the Marines' astonished stares.

Bang bang bang bang!

The moment they left the water, the seawater Aaron sprayed out turned into white bubbles in midair. The instant it touched the air, it exploded violently, sending the Going Merry even higher into the sky.

As they gained altitude, more of the seawater Aaron expelled came into contact with the air. In an instant, it turned into bubbles and exploded outward in every direction. Thus, starting from Aaron's mouth, the water column gradually thickened as they rose. The stronger thrust allowed Aaron to keep the Going Merry flying longer and more steadily.

"So that's what he meant..." The violent shaking nearly threw Nami off the ship the moment the Going Merry left the water. After seeing what Aaron was doing, it took her a long while to close her mouth. Then she shut her eyes and felt for the wind. "Sanji, Usopp, raise the sails! Zoro, Luffy, pull up the anchor and hard starboard!"

"Got it!" everyone answered in unison before hurrying off.

"Hehehe! Aaron's amazing!" Luffy ran to the helm, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he raised his left hand high. "All right! Spaceship Going Merry, destination: Lost Island! Let's go!!"

"Damn it! Hey! Can we shoot that pirate ship down?!" The major aboard one of the ships had no idea what to do when he saw the Going Merry take to the sky, so he could only turn and ask his subordinates.

"No! The water column beneath the ship is blocking the cannonballs! We can't hit the pirate ship at all!"

"Damn it..." The major was at a complete loss.

"There's nothing bad about letting them go," Erik said from the side.

"What did you say?!"

"Even at such risk, they still insist on leaving this island. I think you know the legend of this island, don't you?" Erik said with a sinister smile.

"You mean..."

"The legendary Lost Island!" he sneered.

His futuristic-looking glasses...

"Even though we escaped, where exactly is Lost Island?" Usopp asked with some concern, leaning against the railing.

"Hm..." Everyone frowned deeply as they looked at Dragon Lord lying nearby, thinking hard.

"No choice. I'll check the nearby sea charts and see if I can find any clues." With that, Nami headed for the cabin.

"Hm... how about making this guy think really hard?" Luffy said then, staring at Dragon Lord with an eager look on his face.

"How are you going to make Dragon Lord remember?" Apis asked curiously when she heard Luffy actually had a method.

"Hehehe! All we need to do is this." Luffy rolled up his sleeves, loosened his shoulders, and walked toward Dragon Lord.

"Wait! What are you doing?!" Seeing Luffy's posture, Apis sensed something was wrong. She hurried in front of Dragon Lord and shielded him behind her.

"Make him remember," Luffy answered.

"So what are you going to do?!"

"Hit his head with my fist until he remembers," Luffy said as if it were only natural. "If you can't remember something, you just need to knock your head. That's common sense."

"What kind of common sense is that?! That's obviously just one of your stupid ideas!" Apis roared.

"Cat!" Apis's sudden shout woke Wo, who was perched on her shoulder. Wo looked around irritably. Once he saw Apis confronting Luffy, he curled his lips, shut his eyes again, and prepared to continue making use of the Seastone he had stolen.

"But if Dragon Lord doesn't remember, we won't know where Lost Island is," Usopp chimed in from the side.

"There must be another way! I'll never let you hit Dragon Lord's head!" Apis shouted at everyone with her arms spread wide like a hen protecting her chicks.

"Cat!!" Naturally, Wo was woken up again. He let out an annoyed roar, but this time he heard what everyone was arguing about.

So Wo jumped down from Apis's shoulder and walked toward Dragon Lord.

Apis felt the weight leave her shoulder and turned around in surprise.

Wo slowly approached Dragon Lord and stopped by his head. Then he extended his antennae and pressed them against Dragon Lord's mouth.

Several minutes later, Wo withdrew his antennae and leisurely climbed back onto Apis's shoulder. He swept his gaze across everyone, then suddenly shifted his eyes to one side. The direction they pointed was exactly where the ship was currently flying. A few seconds later, he pulled his eyes back, and his entire body curled into his shell again.

"Was he... pointing us toward Lost Island?" Sanji asked uncertainly as he stared at Wo's shell.

"I don't know... but judging from what he meant, probably..." Zoro said, equally unsure.

"I think it might be real..." Usopp cast his vote in favor.

"All right! Full speed ahead!" Luffy immediately gave the order.

"Hey, Luffy! We don't even know if that's really Lost Island! How can you give orders so casually?!" Usopp cast his vote against it.

"But we don't know the right direction either, do we?" Luffy turned back and said.

"Even so, you can't..." "Relax, Usopp!"

Luffy interrupted him, smiling at Usopp. "It'll be fine!"

"..." Seeing that expression on Luffy's face, Usopp sighed. "All right. Since you say so, let's head east and take a look."

"Yeah!" Luffy lowered the brim of his hat. He faced east and was about to wave his hand to give the command when—

"You guys know how to get to Lost Island now?" Aaron suddenly asked from the side.

Everyone looked over and found that Aaron's clothes had burst apart, leaving only a pink piece of close-fitting clothing on him.

Yeah, the one Kaya had given him.

"Yo! Aaron, you're out!" Luffy greeted him.

"Yeah. I ran out of water, so I had no choice but to come up," Aaron said sheepishly, scratching his head.

"I see..." Luffy nodded, not sensing that anything was off.

The scene fell silent for a moment.

"Then there's no one under the Going Merry anymore?!" Usopp was the first to react, his face turning pale.

"How could there not be? I only came up after taking every precaution! We can definitely return safely to the sea!" Aaron said, patting his chest.

"I see, that puts me at eas—" Before Usopp could finish, the Going Merry began falling straight down.

Yeah... as for why it hadn't fallen earlier—

Ha, anyone who cared about details was a ⑨.

Splash!!

It took a full ten seconds before the Going Merry finally hit the sea. Huge waves rose in an instant, yet no one aboard felt any jolting.

"I blew a huge bubble beneath the ship to cushion it! That way, the Going Merry wouldn't have to endure the impact!" Aaron said with a smile.

"But Aaron, you clearly forgot one thing." Usopp stared blankly past Aaron's back. "You forgot to give our ship protection, ahhhhhhh!"

Behind Aaron, a giant wave surged toward them like a clenched hand.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

Boom!

Hundreds of tons of seawater came crashing down, nearly overturning the Going Merry.

If they ran into waves this huge in reality, they would have been dead long ago.

But luckily, the original work was a hot-blooded comedy manga, and this story was also a wildly written mess with a broken plot, so there was no way the protagonists would die in a disaster like this.

Then again, there were no sailing ships falling from the sky in reality either, right?

Yeah... ships swept up by tornadoes didn't count.

"Ehehe! I forgot to blow a bubble around the Going Merry!" Aaron slapped his forehead and stuck out his tongue as he looked at everyone, drenched like drowned rats.

"..." Everyone looked at one another and saw the same thought in each other's eyes. They nodded in perfect unison, then walked toward Aaron.

"Uh... what are you doing?" Watching everyone approach him with sinister grins, Aaron had a bad feeling.

No one answered. They flexed their fingers and slowly closed in on Aaron.

Yeah... the scene became extremely bloody for a while.

"Look! There's an island ahead!" Luffy suddenly shouted.

Everyone leaned over to look, and sure enough, they saw an island standing quietly in the sea in the distance.

"Could that be Lost Island?" Sanji asked uncertainly as he looked at it.

"We'll find out if we go look!" Luffy said. "Let's go!"

Everyone: "Oh!"

"This might be the legendary Lost Island," Usopp said, pointing at a stone carving submerged in the water nearby. "Look, it's carved with a Thousand-Year Dragon!"

"Then there's no mistake," Sanji said with a cigarette in his mouth. "The dragon's nest might be up there."

Hearing their conversation, Luffy lowered the brim of his hat and grinned. "Hehehe! In that case, let's get going already!"

"Yeah!!"