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One Piece: As Heavy as a Gale #26
🕑 Added 2025-04-19 23:23:54 +0000 UTCThe guitar hummed beneath Gale’s fingers, its strings vibrating with a tune so warm and smooth it could’ve melted butter—and probably a few hearts if he played it just a little longer. He leaned into the rhythm, eyes half-lidded, that practiced look of soulful detachment on his face… the kind musicians wear when they’re pretending they don’t notice everyone staring at them.
Spoiler: Gale noticed.
Especially the cluster of waitresses near the bar who were not-so-subtly whispering behind their trays. Every few notes, one of them—short bob, freckled cheeks, smile like she knew something he didn’t—would toss him a glance that lingered longer than casual curiosity.
Oh yeah, Gale thought, fighting the urge to smirk mid-note, tonight might just be my night.
And by “his night,” he meant finally, finally breaking the two-year romantic drought that had lasted longer than some sea voyages.
Boqin, the ever-shady monk and part-time chaos facilitator, was circling the room with a straw hat clutched in both hands, offering it to patrons with a serene smile that masked the ruthless efficiency of a man collecting tribute for a local warlord.
“For the musician,” Boqin would say in his soft monk-like tone, tilting the hat meaningfully. “It soothes the soul, does it not?”
He even managed to guilt a couple of burly dockworkers into tossing in some coins, mumbling something about “reminding them of their mothers.” Gale didn’t know if that was a compliment to his playing or a subtle roast, but as long as it paid for drinks, he wasn’t complaining.
This was his first proper day off after a month of hell. A month. Of brutal training in the morning, grueling sword drills in the afternoon, and agonizing guitar lessons in the evening that somehow made the sword drills feel like naps in comparison.
Florencio had thwacked his head so many times he was starting to worry about long-term brain damage—if the musical trauma didn’t beat the physical kind to the punch.
But now? Now he was clean, rested, dressed in a fresh shirt with only minimal scorch marks, and basking in the warm glow of alcohol, music, and feminine attention. The world was good.
His eyes flicked back to the freckled waitress just as she passed by his table again. She gave him a look. Not just any look—the kind that said, “I might pretend I don’t like musicians, but I absolutely do.”
Gale plucked a particularly soulful chord and thought, This is it. This is how it happens. I’m finally getting laid.
It had been a long, long time. Torino Island wasn’t exactly a romantic paradise. Unless you were into round, pear-shaped women who could bench-press small trees and saw your wiry frame as aesthetically underwhelming.
Gale, bless his heart, did not meet the local standard of beauty, and he’d accepted that… eventually. Through therapy. And lots of crying into jungle fruit.
Centaurea had been no better. His visit was brief, and between saving his own skin and kicking ass, he barely had time to blink, let alone flirt. Also, he was pretty sure everyone there thought he was some kind of fugitive bounty hunter pretending to be a traveling poet. Which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely untrue.
So yes—tonight? Tonight was his night.
Gale, thoroughly lost in his own romantic delusions, barely noticed the shift in atmosphere around him.
In his mind, things were going great. The song was hitting just the right sweet spot between “tragically beautiful” and “sensually mysterious,” the kind that might make a lonely waitress re-evaluate her life choices.
He was already imagining witty pillow talk and what he'd name the kids. Something cool. Maybe “Zephyr.”
But not everyone was enjoying his impromptu concert.
Across the room, one particular man sat hunched over his drink, staring at Gale with all the warmth of a tax auditor discovering creative accounting. His jaw was clenched, his fingers tight around the wooden mug, and his brow furrowed so hard it could’ve dug trenches.
Meet Larson Vane—broad-shouldered, square-jawed, and permanently scowling. He had a thick scar running across the bridge of his nose, like his face had been used as a training dummy one too many times.
His gi was slightly singed at the edges, hinting at recent intensive combat training, and his arms were bandaged in that “I punch boulders recreationally” sort of way.
Like Gale, Larson was also a martial arts student. Unlike Gale, he didn’t get random women smiling at him mid-song or people tossing money into hats out of appreciation. He’d come to this bar hoping for a quiet evening, a hot meal, and maybe a fight or two if someone spilled his drink.
Instead, he’d walked into what he could only describe as musical peacocking.
Boqin, ever the innocent instigator, made his way over to Larson’s table, hat in hand and that trademark beatific smile on his face.
“For the music,” he said gently. “If it brought you peace.”
Larson slowly turned to face him, expression unmoved. “The only thing that performance brought me is a headache,” he said, voice like gravel in a blender. “If I wanted to listen to a dying cat being strangled with its own tail, I’d go visit my uncle’s barn.”
Boqin, to his credit, didn’t even flinch. “Well, if you change your mind, the hat is here,” he said with the calm of a man who had seen actual war.
Unfortunately, calmness tends to have the opposite effect on already angry people.
“You deaf, cueball?” Larson stood up, his chair scraping back with a loud screech. “I said the music’s terrible. He’s been hogging the whole damn room with that noise. Some of us came here to unwind, not sit through a romance concert for rejects.”
Across the room, Gale paused mid-chord.
Ah. The dream is dying, he thought grimly.
He followed Larson’s voice and sure enough, caught sight of his freckled waitress. She was no longer smiling. In fact, she was frowning, already backing toward the kitchen with the wary look of someone who’d seen bar fights before and didn’t want to end up wearing soup.
Great, Gale sighed internally. This guy just killed my vibe, crushed my tip jar, and nuked my only chance at post-training affection. I hope he stubs all his toes on the way out.
Trying to salvage what was left of the evening, Gale strummed one last dramatic chord and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Boqin, did that man just compare me to a dying cat? Honestly, I’m flattered. That’s the most poetic insult I’ve gotten all week.”
Boqin tilted his head. “I thought it was kind of creative.”
“Thank you.”
Larson was not amused. “Keep flapping your mouth, bard-boy. I’ll give you something to sing about.”
Gale winced. Did he really just say that out loud? That’s the line he went with? Still, despite the cringe, he stood up slowly and gently set the guitar aside, sighing the sigh of a man who just watched his romantic prospects vanish into the kitchen with a slammed door.
He cracked his neck and looked Larson dead in the eye. “You owe me a date,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Gale said, stepping off the little performance platform. “Come on. Let’s take this outside. I’d hate to ruin the furniture. Again.”
Larson grinned. “Gladly.”
Boqin shook his head with a soft sigh and walked over to the barkeep. “Apologies in advance. We’ll try to keep the property damage to a minimum this time.”
The barkeep just handed him a mop.
...
Larson Vane dangled upside-down from a tree like a particularly angry piñata, his boots tied together with thick rope and a filthy rag stuffed in his mouth. His muffled grunts were pure rage, but Gale was too busy seething to care.
“You know,” Gale said, arms crossed, guitar slung lazily over his back, “I haven’t had a proper day off in a month. A whole month of bloody finger calluses, scales, chords, and that godforsaken ‘Song of the Blossoming Fern’ or whatever it was called. And then finally, finally, I get a little peace, some coin, a pretty girl giving me the look—the look—and what happens?”
He jabbed a thumb at the upside-down man swinging softly in the breeze.
“This jackass opens his big mouth and nukes it from orbit.”
Boqin nodded solemnly, though his version of solemn looked more like “quietly plotting your demise with a bowl of rice.”
“He did kill the vibe,” the monk said, arms tucked behind his back. “We could’ve gotten another plate of meat. And beer. Maybe even a tip large enough to cover the good beer.”
“We were on a roll,” Gale agreed. “And then this steroid-stuffed gorilla decided to play music critic.”
Larson thrashed in protest, but it came out sounding like, “Mmmffhhgnn!”
“Exactly,” Gale said. “Now he gets it.”
Boqin stared thoughtfully at the squirming brute. “So… what should we do with him?”
“Leave him here till morning? Let the bugs teach him a lesson?”
“Tempting,” Boqin said. “But then the local wildlife might get annoyed.”
They were midway through debating the ethics of larson-based compost when a sudden THWACK rang through the clearing. Boqin’s body jolted like he’d been struck by lightning, and before either of them could react, he was face-first in the dirt, groaning in pain.
A blur of maroon robes and righteous fury stood over him, fists clenched and eyes blazing.
“BOQIN!” the monk’s teacher roared, his voice shaking the leaves on nearby trees. “Why aren’t you meditating in the temple as I explicitly instructed?!”
Boqin tried to lift his head. “I was... spiritually fundraising?”
THWACK.
“I can smell the booze money in your robes!” the teacher snapped. “And you! Tormenting some poor soul like this? You were supposed to be cleansing your karmic impurities, not accumulating more of them!”
Another flurry of strikes followed. Boqin flailed helplessly, limbs flopping like a sack of potatoes being disciplined by a hurricane.
Gale, meanwhile, stood frozen a few paces away, mouth open, eyes wide, wondering if divine lightning was next on the agenda. Was this what spiritual discipline looked like? Because it seemed to involve a whole lot of concussions.
Boqin flopped onto his side and groaned, “Gale… a little help here…?”
As if on cue, the teacher slowly turned to face Gale. The man’s gaze was sharp enough to peel paint.
Gale blinked.
Then he turned on his heel, hands in pockets, and started whistling a completely unrelated tune as he casually inspected a very interesting patch of grass.
“Coward…” Boqin wheezed.
After several more beatings, the teacher finally paused, straightened his back, and with the air of a man doing the world a favor, hoisted Boqin over his shoulder like a sack of regrets.
Then he turned to Gale.
“You,” he said grimly. “Shouldn’t spend time with my student. He’ll only drag you down. Bad influence.”
Gale let out a nervous chuckle. “Heh… shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
The teacher didn’t break eye contact. “I wish that were the case.”
And with that, he turned and walked off, Boqin groaning softly as he bounced along like a worn-out punching bag.
Gale watched them go in stunned silence.
“…Some monks you are,” he muttered, eyebrows raised.
He looked up at the still-swinging Larson.
“To think even your behavior didn’t top that.”
Larson mumbled something rude through the cloth.
Gale sighed, the kind of long-suffering sigh reserved for men who’d just narrowly survived violence, humiliation, and emotional whiplash in the same afternoon.
“Alright, big guy,” he muttered, stepping toward Larson’s dangling form. “You’ve had your moment. The wrath of public embarrassment, one mouthful of sock, and a brief cameo in ‘Why You Shouldn’t Mess With Street Musicians: Volume 3.’ I think we’re even.”
Larson’s eyes lit up with hope as Gale reached for the knot securing him to the branch.
But before Gale could pull the rope free, a voice called out behind him.
“Hey!”
He turned.
And there she was.
The waitress.
The waitress.
Same flirty smile, same gorgeous eyes, and this time—walking toward him through the fading sunlight like some divine reward from the universe for enduring a week of finger cramps and interrupted serenades.
Gale’s grin spread across his face like butter on hot toast.
“Well, hello again,” he said, brushing a few imaginary specs of dust off his shoulder with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “Didn’t expect you out here. Or are you stalking me?”
She giggled. “I came to check on you. Things got… tense back there. Are you alright?”
He gave a lazy shrug, like the bruised ego and tree-hung meathead behind him were minor footnotes in an otherwise successful evening. “I was doing okay before. Now? I’m thriving.”
She laughed again and stepped closer. “Do you have any plans right now?”
Gale rubbed his chin, adopting the expression of a man deep in philosophical thought—despite having only two brain cells currently operational, both of which were screaming DO NOT MESS THIS UP.
“Well… I had a few things planned,” he said thoughtfully. “Defeat some pirates, punch a sea king, discover the secrets of the Void Century. You know, standard Tuesday stuff.”
She raised an eyebrow, amused. “That sounds important.”
“It is,” Gale nodded solemnly. “But I suppose it can wait a few hours.”
“Good,” she said with a wink. “Because I know a really nice spot to spend the evening. If you’re interested.”
“Oh, I am extremely interested,” he said, already walking in step beside her.
As they strolled off together, laughter trailing behind them and the sky turning gold above, Gale couldn’t help but feel like something was missing.
“Hmm,” he said aloud, glancing over his shoulder. “Did I forget something?”
A half-formed memory tried to bubble up from the back of his brain, but it was quickly drowned out by the waitress looping her arm around his.
“Probably nothing,” he said with a smirk.
Meanwhile… not far behind him...
Back at the tree, Larson Vane was still swinging upside-down like a cursed wind chime. His muffled cries had grown increasingly desperate as a large spider—hairy, curious, and utterly uninterested in boundaries—crawled up his leg and made itself quite at home somewhere very personal.
Larson thrashed wildly, eyes wide with silent horror.
But the forest, like the universe, remained indifferent.
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