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One Piece: As Heavy as a Gale #47
🕑 Added 2025-05-11 15:25:31 +0000 UTCThe Grand Line, in all its unpredictable glory, had once again decided to throw a full-blown tantrum.
Winds howled like drunken banshees. The rain lashed the deck like it had a personal grudge. Waves slapped the sides of Vice Admiral Garp’s ship hard enough to make the whole vessel shudder like it was having second thoughts about floating.
The mast creaked violently, the sails flapping so wildly they sounded like they were trying to start a mosh pit.
And through it all… Garp stood near the bow of the ship. Dozing. Upright. Completely untouched by the chaos.
The old man was snoring peacefully, arms crossed, chin dipped forward ever so slightly. A full-on sea maelstrom raging around him, and the legendary “Fist” of the Marines looked like he was catching up on some overdue afternoon nap time. Not a care in the world.
The ship could’ve flipped upside down and he’d probably still be there, snoozing on the ceiling.
“SECURE THAT RIGGING! GET OFF THE RAIL, YOU MORON! I SWEAR IF ONE MORE IDIOT DROPS A RIFLE INTO THE SEA—”
That was Bogard, Garp’s long-suffering right-hand man, somehow managing to keep his footing while bellowing orders like a drill sergeant possessed by a weather demon.
His coat whipped behind him as he stomped across the deck, barking at crewmen scrambling to tie down supplies and each other.
Gale, meanwhile, was sprinting from one end of the ship to the other like a hyperactive intern during budget cuts. Every time someone slipped or nearly got tossed overboard, he was there, grabbing the back of their coats, anchoring them with a quick density boost to his arms or legs, and dragging them back to safety.
“DON’T LET GO OF THE ROPE!” he shouted at a marine clinging to a barrel like it owed him money. “That thing’s not going to float you to safety! It’s just going to bonk you on the head when you fall in!”
“I—I thought barrels float?!”
“You don’t!” Gale shot back, yanking the guy back toward the mast just before another wave drenched the deck.
He skidded as the ship lurched again, catching himself with a hand on the slick planks. Thunder cracked overhead, and in the distance, lightning illuminated a dark swell in the sea—a bulge in the water that shouldn’t have been there.
Gale blinked.
The water dented.
“What the—?”
A moment later, with a mighty, guttural sploosh, the ocean spit out something large and loud and way too enthusiastic for this weather. A massive beast, striped black and white like a deranged sea-zebra, rocketed out of the water and aimed itself directly at the ship.
Its mouth opened wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth that had clearly never heard of dental insurance. It let out a warbling screech that sounded like someone stepped on a kazoo mid-roar.
“Oh come on!” Gale groaned, eyes wide as he sprang into action.
He kicked off the deck, launching himself skyward, and midair, he kicked his Devil Fruit powers into gear.
His muscles bulked up instantly, his fists growing heavier by the second, the force surging through his bones like a freight train with no brakes. He didn’t think, didn’t plan—just punched.
The impact was loud enough to drown out the thunder. The beast’s face compressed like it had just smacked into a wall of steel—and then it flew backward in a perfect arc, flopping back into the sea with a spectacular splash, limbs flailing like it had just made a grave scheduling mistake.
Gale landed back on the deck, soaking wet and panting, looking around for confirmation that yes, that just happened.
No one clapped. Because everyone was still too busy not dying.
Bogard gave him a sharp nod of approval from across the chaos, even as he continued barking at sailors.
Garp, of course, hadn’t even blinked. Still snoozing. Still standing. A small bubble formed and popped at the edge of his nose.
“…Man,” Gale muttered, brushing wet hair from his face. “If I live through this, I swear I’m investing in a cruise line. Calm weather. Fancy drinks. No death zebras.”
Another wave slammed the ship, knocking over a crate of potatoes, which started tumbling across the deck like they too had had enough of this storm.
Gale sighed and ran off again to stop a marine from slipping on them.
Just another day in paradise.
The storm finally gave up like a sore loser, peeling away with one last dramatic gust of wind and a defeated groan of thunder. Sunlight poked through the shredded clouds like a guilty kid sneaking back into the room after making a mess.
The sea calmed, the sky brightened, and for the first time in hours, there wasn’t a death scream or panicked shout echoing across the deck.
Gale collapsed onto the wooden planks with a tired thud, legs splayed out like a broken puppet. His chest rose and fell in heavy gasps, arms sprawled out like he was trying to hug the deck out of gratitude.
Every muscle in his body ached. Every inch of him felt waterlogged, bruised, or personally offended. His soaked uniform clung to him like it had unionized against comfort.
He tilted his head—because turning it required less energy than lifting anything—and looked toward the bow.
Garp was still standing there.
Still dozing.
Still snoring like the ship hadn’t just been attacked by an over-caffeinated zebra shark fired out of Poseidon's sneeze.
Gale’s left eye twitched violently.
“Oh come on…” he muttered, voice hoarse. “I’ve been playing whack-a-marine with sea monsters for the last two hours, and this guy gets beauty sleep?”
No response, obviously. Garp just let out a particularly loud snore and scratched his belly.
Gale leaned back with a groan and wiped his face with his sleeve. “Useless old fossil,” he grumbled. “Bet if a barrel of rice crackers got tossed overboard he’d have woken up in five seconds…”
Then something else struck him.
“…Wait. Where the hell is Poqin?”
He scanned the deck lazily. A few marines lay flat on their backs like they'd just survived a natural disaster—which they had, technically—but there was no sign of the bald, booze-sniffing monk anywhere. Not even his annoyingly zen humming.
“Oh, that’s great. Of course he bailed,” Gale muttered. “Probably curled up in the cargo hold with a sake bottle and a smile, calling this ‘another opportunity for spiritual alignment’ or whatever crap he’s always spouting.”
His hand slapped against his forehead. He’d nearly been flung into the sea twice. He'd suplexed a sea beast mid-air. And meanwhile his so-called friend was probably napping next to a barrel like a happy monk-shaped cat.
As the salty breeze washed over him and the sun started to warm his aching bones, Gale’s thoughts finally drifted to something else—something that had been nagging at the back of his mind even before the fish freak launched itself at them.
That storm… had been weird.
Not just “bad weather” weird. This wasn’t just wind and rain. The sea had caved in like it was trying to swallow them whole, then spit a beast at them like it got the order wrong.
Yeah, storms on the sea could be brutal. He’d been through his fair share in the Blue. But that? That kind of nonsense only happened in one place.
The Grand Line.
“…Wait a sec.”
Gale sat up slowly, the realization dawning on him like a headache. “We’re in the Grand Line?”
He squinted at the ocean horizon. Yep, it looked weird. Not that oceans weren’t already oceans, but something about this one had that same ‘this-place-is-cursed’ vibe he’d come to associate with the Grand Line. It didn’t make sense.
He remembered how Marines usually traveled from the Blues to Marine HQ. They used the Calm Belt. That was the whole point of those fancy paddle-wheel ships with sea stone-lined hulls—to glide past Sea Kings and avoid Grand Line madness altogether.
So why were they here?
“Wait… why the hell are we here?” Gale said out loud this time, like someone might answer him.
No one did.
Of course.
Gale was so close to clocking out. His body was already halfway to dreamland, his legs going limp as he mentally drafted the apology letter he’d send to his spine for sleeping directly on the deck.
A nap sounded divine.
Just twenty minutes of unconsciousness, and then he’d ask questions later—preferably when the world wasn’t trying to kill him with weather, sea beasts, and sleep deprivation.
But of course, the universe—like Garp—had no respect for timing.
THRASHHHHHH.
A loud, wet crash echoed from the back of the ship. Gale winced as the sound rattled through his skull like someone had drop-kicked a bathtub full of eels off the stern.
“...Nope,” he said, eyes still closed. “Didn’t hear that. Was the wind. Definitely the wind.”
THRASH-THUNK-KASPLASH.
His eyes snapped open.
“Damn it.”
Groaning like an old man with back problems and student loans, he dragged himself to his feet and staggered toward the rear of the ship. The sun had fully broken through now, turning the storm-soaked deck into a shimmering oven of sweat and regret.
As he reached the edge of the railing, Gale squinted at the strange metal structure being towed behind the ship—square, rusty, bobbing like an angry floatation device on bad terms with the sea.
It looked like a platform attached to the ship by heavy chains, with thick metallic bars stretching down into the water like the ribs of some half-sunken beast. A cage. A really big cage.
Another violent splash erupted from inside it, followed by a low, wet growl that made Gale’s stomach do an uncomfortable little somersault.
He stared at it for a long moment. Then sighed. Loudly.
“...Whatever’s in there,” he muttered to himself, “I don’t wanna know.”
“That’s smart.”
Gale jumped so hard his soul practically left his body, hovering somewhere above the deck screaming traitor!.
He spun around, ready to punch whoever it was—or maybe cry, depending on the situation—and found himself face-to-face with a man he hadn’t seen approach.
Not that he could’ve.
The guy had all the presence of a ninja ghost wearing socks.
The marine coat was draped over his shoulders like a cape, the Justice kanji bold on the back. His fedora was tilted low, casting a shadow across half his face.
He didn’t say another word. Didn’t need to. That low, almost bored tone said everything.
Bogard.
Gale recognized him instantly from stories and rumors—and from the way he exuded a quiet menace like a cat that will knock your glass off the table but will also disappear before you can scold it.
“Jeez—!” Gale clutched his chest. “Are you trying to kill me?! What are you, a ninja?!”
Bogard didn’t answer. Just gave the faintest shrug, like maybe he was.
He stepped beside Gale, eyes fixed calmly on the thrashing cage behind them. “The only way to survive the Vice Admiral’s ship with your sanity intact…” he said, tone bone-dry, “is to stop asking questions.”
Gale followed Bogard’s gaze back to the violently thrashing mystery cage and gave it a lazy wave, like he was shooing away a fly.
“Yeah, no thanks. I’m good not knowing whatever sea-thing is in there,” he said, already mentally duct-taping that part of his curiosity shut. “What I do wanna know is where we’re heading. ‘Cause call me crazy, but I’m getting the feeling it’s not Marine HQ.”
Bogard didn’t react at first, just kept his hands in his pockets and his face tilted toward the sunlight like he was absorbing vitamin D and ominous energy at the same time.
Then he finally spoke.
“What makes you say that?”
Gale snorted and crossed his arms, casually leaning against the railing like he wasn’t still mildly traumatized by the sea trying to eat them an hour ago.
“Well, for starters, we just sailed through the Calm Belt, right? Which—cool, by the way, even if it felt like the ocean was holding its breath the whole time. And after that, we should’ve hit that current—Tarai or whatever? The one that connects the important government facilities. Real clean, real direct.”
He gestured vaguely at the wide, sparkling sea stretching out behind them. “Instead, we got dropped into one of those ‘Grand Line hates you specifically’ storms, complete with collapsing ocean and airborne sea zebra. So unless the route got a dramatic new makeover while I wasn’t looking, we’re way off-course.”
Bogard actually blinked at that. A small thing, but from someone like him, it might as well have been a double take and jazz hands.
“You know about the Tarai Current?” he asked.
Gale smirked and tapped the side of his head. “I read a lot of books,” he said proudly. “You’d be amazed what libraries will let you borrow if you promise not to return them.”
Bogard exhaled, which might’ve been a chuckle. Or a sigh of eternal disappointment. Hard to tell with him.
“Well,” he said, finally turning to face Gale, “you’re not wrong. We’re not going straight to HQ. Not yet.”
Gale’s brow arched. “So where are we going, then?”
Bogard tilted his head toward the front of the ship. “Vice Admiral was on his time off when HQ called in the favor to escort you and the monk. So before we head to base, he’s making a quick stop back in East Blue.”
“...East Blue?” Gale echoed, blinking. “For what?”
“To check on his grandson.”
Gale froze. Like, visibly. His eyes went wide, his posture straightened, and his brain short-circuited in the most dramatic way possible. There was even a little background noise in his head that sounded suspiciously like a record scratch.
Garp’s grandson.
As in... Garp’s grandson.
And it was singular. Grandson, not grandsons. Which meant—
“Oh,” Gale said, a grin slowly creeping across his face. “Oh.”
He couldn’t help it. His heart did a little excited backflip and high-fived his inner anime nerd.
There was only one person that could be.
The Straw Hat. The actual protagonist of this whole insane world. The walking rubber-band disaster himself. Monkey D. Luffy.
To think… after all the chaos of waking up in this world, crash-landing onto Torino Island, surviving monk roommates, Devil Fruit drama, and nearly getting flung into the sea multiple times, he was actually going to meet the main character.
So soon.
So casually.
“...Man,” Gale muttered, still grinning like a goof, “this world really doesn’t do slow burn, huh?”
Somewhere in the distance, the cage thrashed again.
Gale didn't even flinch. He was already too busy thinking about what he was going to say or do when he met Luffy.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Play it cool, Gale. Just a normal guy meeting a rubber pirate kid. No big deal.”
