Summary: An Ocean in the sky, with free bouncy castle included!

  Chapter 44: The White Sea

  It only took twenty seconds, give or take a few, for Luffy's theory about his and Nami's Devil Fruits to prove itself accurate. He knew it should take time to adjust to such a radical altitude change, but he could also actually feel his spiritual energy shift as the shape-changing nature of his Spirit Fruit sped the process up radically. For all of that, it was Nami that was upright first, looking a bit surprised as she took a deep breath. In this case, a more dedicated Fruit, focused on a high-altitude-capable mythical flying horse of all things, apparently beat out his more general shifting. Who knew?

  It honestly didn't really matter, given that both of them were on their feet in under 40 seconds…which was easily in time to see an asshole blow away a drifting ship in the far distance. Luffy was genuinely curious about that. Why was there even another ship up here? If it was empty, why had the idiot wasted an iron cannonball on the thing in a pce where those couldn't be easy to get? If it wasn't empty, where had it come from? Another Sky Isnd? It certainly hadn't come with them via the Knock Up Stream, after all.

  Whatever the case, the asshole in the bull mask turned towards them next. Luffy narrowed his eyes, quietly shifting both hands into lightning. He let the man get close enough to save himself by offering an expnation, if the fool wasn't as hotheaded as Luffy thought. When he only shouted about enemies and an attack name instead, Luffy fired two bolts of lightning from the fingers of his right hand, and one rger bolt from the clenched fist of his left. The rger bolt hit the cannonball Bull Shitter had fired as it screamed toward them, easily deflecting it in away from the ship.

  The two smaller bolts were the more critical shots, however. They hit the man's dial skates as he stupidly left himself hanging in midair, seemingly under the delusion that hanging in midair and watching his attack go off with smart. Something on the skates exploded…and Ass Wiper Man screamed as they failed utterly to catch him as he plunged into the White Sea. As Usopp would have found out in another version of this world, Sea Cloud doesn't have quite the same density as ocean water, and the man sank like a stone with the momentum of his fall.

  As Luffy understood it, it was possible to swim in these clouds, but not with that much momentum behind you. Possibly, the man might slow enough to recover before he fell out of the bottom of the sea clouds. Just as likely, the fool that had tried to shoot Luffy's ship would end up falling all the way to the Blue Sea below. Frankly, Luffy didn't care either way, so long as it kept him from causing trouble and pointlessly getting his own people killed with his rage issues.

  Satisfied, Luffy turned to see Nami looking at him a little strangely.

  "What? Have I not made it abundantly clear what happens to people that try to mess with the Discovery? He shouldn't have done that. At least I didn't kill him outright."

  Nami snorted, shook her head, and then moved off to poke and proud the rest of the crew. All of whom were at least starting to stir, though only Chopper was moving properly just yet. Zoan vitality? Or perhaps the simple fact that the Drum Rockies were actually high enough to require altitude adjustment as well, and Chopper had lived at the top of them for a while? Whatever the case, the Doctor was checking the others over, so Luffy would leave them to it. He, instead, moved to the wheel to get them moving. No point in letting that annoying bull fellow have a ptform to crawl back up onto, after all.

  ... ...

  It had taken perhaps twenty minutes of sailing for the st members of the crew to get back on their feet. Kaya had been the absolute st. Despite the incredible strides she had made, she was still physically the weakest of the crew and, unfortunately, the 'sickness' she'd had for so long had affected her lungs more than anything else. She was ultimately fine, thankfully, it had just taken her longer than the others to fully get used to the thin air. Vivi had been the next-to-st, a simple reflection of still needing more training.

  Luffy had frowned at the fact that Robin had been the next on the list. She wasn't out of shape, by any means, but he was going to have to gently prod her into more serious training soon. She was too overly reliant on clever usage of her Fruit. Which was doubly frustrating, given that her Fruit was one that massively benefited from increased baseline strength in the first pce. His observations on that point were nearly tucked away, however. Something to consider going forward, but not nearly as immediately fascinating as where they were at the moment.

  By the time everyone had recovered, they were well away from where the Knock Up Stream had deposited them, and Luffy had done the only intelligent thing for someone on the Grand Line by pointing them toward the log pose heading. Which, in turn, meant that they were now presented with a breathtaking view of what Luffy alone knew was the 'elevator' to the White White Sea.

  Enhancing his vision with the eyes of a falcon, he could see that what appeared to be a waterfall of sorts was nothing of the sort. Instead, it was a wide, twisty path of isnd cloud. One clearly formed purposely, by sentient hands, as a pathway between the White Sea and White White Sea. Everyone else was at the rails and staring out now, too, since he'd urged them all to get the various sets of binocurs they kept on board. It was Robin who finally said something coherent, as everyone else just stared around in various stages of disbelief.

  "Well, this is certainly far more enthralling than I expected. And that rampway has obviously been worked by someone intelligent. Between that and the fact the log pose is pointing us that direction, it's clear we still need to keep going up to find the actual isnd we're looking for. Of course, that means we need to find a way around those…Cloud Bergs? They look more solid than the Cloud Sea we're moving through."

  It was a good point. One that Luffy didn't have specific knowledge of. He vaguely remembered something about them from his past life, about the crew needing to navigate through them. But he mostly remembered something else. Smirking, he decided they needed to get close anyway, so why not have a little fun?

  "Well, there must be a way through them, if we're meant to get through to those ramps. Nami, take over here and I'll see what I can find!"

  The moment she absent-mindedly acknowledged him, Luffy shifted into his Swift form. The small birds normally wouldn't be found quite so high in altitude, but Luffy had long ago discovered that his transformations weren't exactly normal. Instead, they reflected the strength and power of his base form, and that meant his wings had more than enough power to take to the air despite how thin it was. He did struggle, just a touch, to adjust his flight for the extreme altitude, but only for a few seconds. After which he was quickly soaring ahead of the Discovery toward the 'Cloud Bergs,' as Robin had named them.

  It didn't take him long at all to spot the route through them, and the gate that would take them to the upward ramp of isnd cloud. While he quickly filed the route away, that wasn't really what he was interested in at the moment. Instead, grinning, he accelerated…and shifted. His turn back into a human was met with cries of shock that carried from the ship, despite the distance, only for his crew to go quiet as he bounced off the 'Cloud Berg.' Laughing in delight, he adjusted his fall the next time, treating it like a trampoline from his previous life.

  He'd been able to do a few tricks even in that life on such, and in this one he was far more agile, quickly doing bouncy front and backflips, then proceeding to ever more intricate maneuvers. He didn't miss once…until abruptly another weight came down at the same time he did, causing the Isnd Cloud to ripple and throw him sideways instead of up. He made an undignified yelp as he was thrown off course and into a thankfully soft nding against a 'cliff face.' Sitting up, he immediately forgave his giggling girlfriend. The things those giggles were doing to her chest would make any straight man and not a few less-than-straight women forgive her for far more.

  "Having fun without us, Captain~? That's just mean!"

  Luffy only ughed as they were quickly joined by Chopper, Usopp, Vivi and Nojiko. The rest of the crew looked amused but seemed to think the bouncing fun was a bit too childish for them. Deciding they should at least experience the soft fluffy heaven, Luffy hummed and drew his jian. In a fsh, he'd cut out a chunk of the marshmallow softness nearly his own size and then bounced back toward the ship with Geppo carrying it. Robin and Hina immediately expressed interest when he dropped in, with Kuina unable to resist herself once the other two women started exciming over its softness. Robin, being herself, followed up with another observation that Luffy was immediately interested in.

  "How odd. When we passed through the White Sea on the way up, I felt some measure of lethargy from exposure to so much 'sea' water. Yet, my Devil Fruit doesn't seem to be interacting with this type of cloud at all. Shouldn't they both be made of water?"

  Blinking, Luffy pced his own hand back on the delightfully soft substance. This time, instead of just having fun, he sent a pulse of Spiritual Energy into it, trying to figure out what it actually was. Frowning, he puzzled over the results he got.

  "Very odd. I don't know much about the isnd cloud phenomenon, but what little I know says that seastone is involved in its creation somehow. Natural or not, I have no idea. Yet, I don't detect anything of the sort here. Is the difference here the immersion factor? That the Sea Clouds were just a case of us being coated in too much water?"

  Robin hummed, then nodded.

  "I suppose that must be it. The effect was weaker than seawater, which I attributed to the lower density. But perhaps it's not salt water either? I know from my own testing that it takes a greater amount of fresh water to affect a Devil Fruit user, though the difference is only around four percent."

  Luffy blinked. He…hadn't actually known that. He'd confirmed early on that fresh water could be just as dangerous as saltwater, but hadn't thought to test to that extent.

  "Huh, ocean water has more than just salt in it. Is it possible that it actually has minuscule amounts of seastone diffused in it, where fresh water sources have it filtered out? Seastone resembles the sea to the extent that ocean life like Sea Kings can't sense it. Maybe that's why?"

  Robin gained a thoughtful look at that, pursing her lips and nodding.

  "That is a viable theory. I wonder if, then, it would be possible to distill Seastone out of water? Is that how the World Government gets the stuff in the first pce? I never have been able to discover where it comes from, so that would expin a lot."

  Hina interject at that point.

  "No. Hina is sure she would have heard of that. At least if it was done in any great quantity that way. She has heard of it being mined somewhere, though the locations of such mines are highly secretive."

  Robin nodded but kept up the line of thought.

  "They might be mining it from locations that filter the seastone out of water naturally. Much like salt is filtered out by certain factors. If the amounts in ocean water are small enough, it might be like gold. Technically present in insanely small amounts, but not practical to manually extract from ocean water."

  Luffy nodded. That made a sort of sense. It also gave him some vague ideas about what sort of pces he might be able to find seastone, if he ever needed to source rger amounts of it than he was willing to buy from his System Store. The seastone bullets he purchased from the Store were among the most expensive things he got from it. Only some of the exotic materials worked into steel to make it Lunar Steel were as expensive, and he got considerably more of those materials for the same price. He'd never have been able to build the Discovery if that wasn't true.

  "Well, whatever the case, I'm sure the locals know more about it, and I did spot a route through the Cloud Bergs, as you called them. I suppose we should gather everyone back together and head to the gate I saw leading into that ramp."

  Everyone nodded…and Luffy pretended not to notice that Sanji and Zoro couldn't help but sneak a feel of the Isnd Cloud chunk when he and Kuina broke off to gather the crew back together.

  ... ...

  The route through the Cloud Bergs had been hiriously simple to navigate with the Discovery's engines. As such, it was less than twenty minutes after gathering everyone together that they left them behind, seeing a rge golden set of arches with the words 'Heaven's Gate' on them. As they approached, a door cracked open and a tiny, wrinkled old woman with wings on her back exited. The crew, already having been commenting on the Gate, blinked and switched to commenting on those wings for a few moments. Luffy, who already had at least some idea what was going on here, shook his head and stepped forward to the bow of the ship to address her.

  "Ahoy, gatekeeper! I assume there is a toll, yes?"

  The old woman had clearly been about to speak, but stopped to blink in surprise as he threw her off. Still, she reset and continued gamely on.

  "Indeed there is, young man! I am Amazon, the gatekeeper of the Heaven's Gate. The toll for traveling up to the White White Sea from here is 1 billion extol per person."

  Luffy ignored Nami's instinctive shout about extortion, and the rest of the crew's inane confusion over what an 'extol' was. As Gan Fall had not appeared, likely do to the ck of threat Wipe Out Boy had been to the crew, it was an understandable confusion. One of the few good points of the World Government was that Belli were a near-universal currency.

  "Ah, my apologies Gatekeeper, but we've only just arrived via the Knock Up Stream and this is our first Sky Isnd. Do you take Blue Sea Belli? And if so, what is the exchange rate?"

  The Gatekeeper's eyes actually widened a bit at the mentioned the Knock Up Stream, and she seemed to reassess them for a few moments. Her tone was slightly more respectful than before as she answered.

  "We do accept it, for a small exchange fee. It is currently 10,000 Extol to 1 Belli, with a ten percent fee on top for the exchange."

  Luffy did some quick mental math. Even with the exchange fee, that meant it was only 110,000 Belli per person. With a dozen crew, that made for just over 1.3 million Belli. Somewhat steep for what was essentially a docking fee, but hardly enough to put a dent in their considerable wealth at this point. He knew they were inevitably going to fight Enel, he wasn't okay with what that dick was up to. But he also really wanted enough time to properly investigate Dial technology.

  "So, with a dozen crew, I believe that comes to 1,320,000 Belli, yes? Very well, I'll be down in a moment with the fee."

  The Gatekeeper seemed a bit surprised he was willing to pay, her eyes darting to their Jolly Roger. Huh, she apparently actually knew what that meant. It might also mean that the prices were infted for them, too. There were a quite a few Grand Line isnds that would allow pirates to dock, but only with infted fees and very pointedly under heavy port guns. Something those isnds did for their own safety. Pirates valued ports that they could legitimately trade with, as you had to sell loot somewhere. Which made such ports less likely to be hit by the pirates that found them useful.

  Luffy doubted that was the case here. Not with Enel in charge. But there was still some visible surprise from the old gatekeeper when he came back out and paid their fee in full. He hadn't actually needed to go below decks, since much of the crew's money was stored safely in his inventory where it couldn't be stolen and didn't take up space. But he was still very wary of letting anyone outside the crew know about that particur ability, and thus went through with the charade. Hopefully, their paying the entrance fee would prevent them from being immediately targeted by Enel. Luffy wasn't at all sure that would be the case, but for such a paltry sum it wouldn't hurt to try. Particurly with the amount of gold he fully intended to steal from Enel's gaudy-as-heck ship.

  The Gatekeeper accepted the money and called for the Mantis Shrimp Express. Luffy internally winced as the giant shrimp cmped onto his lovely ship. If the stupid seafood special even marred the wood, he'd be finding out if Sanji could cook it or not! That was his st thought before the Shrimp took off upward and even he gasped. Holy mother of cookies and boobs, this thing was bloody fast!

  ... ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N: I always find it silly that most authors don't realize how insanely small the gate fee actually is. Oh, it's not cheap. But the canon Strawhat crew would have only needed to pay like 600,000 belli. Nami being stingy I understand, but none of the rest of the crew brought that fact up. Luffy...well, I guess canon Luffy probably couldn't have done the math. Zoro wouldn't have cared and Robin was new. So...maybe it makes sense? Here, it doesn't, since Luffy is trying to gain a little time to do business with the isnders before Enel pulls a dick move.