Lara's POV;

I thought about it for a moment. Taking out Blackbeard now would fuck up any future canon, and I still needed it for some parts. But fleeing now might make him overconfident in taking us on at a later time. It would be good if he's wary of us.

Maybe a middle way? A few shots won't hurt and we are still able to outmanoeuvre him. There is also a new naval warfare attack I wanted to test.

“Lia, can you shoot down their oars? I don't want to confront them directly. Blackbeard has to be strong, he wounded Shanks. Confronting him now won't bring us anything, but fleeing with the tail between our legs will only show weakness where there is none.” Lia nodded in understanding.

She took a whole hand of pebbles out of her pouch. And with a swift swing, the nearly two dozen pebbles turned bullets, raced towards the raft of Blackbeard. Fifteen were shot out of the sky, yet the rest carried on.

Another two were blocked by someone who jumped between them and the raft. Four missed the ship and made mid-sized water fountains. If there were more I couldn't see them or their effect.

Lia clicked her tongue in annoyance. “The last one was deflected by the dead looking guy on the horse, he used his scythe to realign it. It flew off into the north. Well, they are a crew that won't have a problem in the New World. What next?” A good question, we will have to get closer if we want to fight back effectively.

I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated. They are still far away, but getting closer, if I focus completely on them I might be able to use my Devil Fruit. “Let me concentrate, there is something I want to use”, I finally said and sat down, hands raised towards their ship and eyes closed.

Finding their aura took me a few seconds and I knew that they were by far not the weak crew they were portrayed at the start of One Piece. Blackbeard was a dark blotch in the world, like a black hole.

His crew too had a presence, sure none of them at the level of the Vice Admiral Momonga, but by far stronger than Luffy. Each of them could take him out easily. Each of them was at least able to use a single form of Haki.

Anyway, their aura was not really important now, even if it confirmed their danger. I focused on the surrounding water and started to let the molecules vibrate rapidly. They got energised and started to heat up. Within seconds a large amount of water has turned into vapour and rose upwards.

A quick glance confirmed that the whole raft and surrounding air was now clouded in a very thick fog. I contemplated briefly if this will be enough. Stopping the vibrations now would instantly freeze the water and, as a side effect, freeze anyone in contact with it.

It is sure to be enough against normal Marines or pirates, but probably not this crew.

That was why I continued, more and more water rose into the air as steam. I didn't supply the fog itself with my power, so it started, at some point, to rain back down. That was when I knew that I had enough. With a massive amount of my available power, I stopped any and all vibrations in the water molecules.

The water steam was a rapidly moving net of loosely connected molecules that all almost instantly stopped their movement, ice shards formed and began to rain down. The nitrogen, which is always in the air was flash freezing and creating liquid nitrogen. It started to flash freeze the ship, the water and the crew, before dispersing in the air.

They will now have a strong frost burn.

It sadly wasn't a perfect block of ice, for that Lia would have to concentrate the vapour with her pressure. However, small ice shards rained down. The ship and its crew were also momentarily frozen in place.

That was not everything, seems like the extremely fast change in temperature was also cause for an instant storm. A tornado was forming from the rapid change in temperature and started to pick water up. The fast winds energised the remaining ice shards and lightning lighted the vortex up.

A second twister formed itself and ripped part of Blackbeard's ship off. High waves began to splash around and the sky darkened.

“Huh, seems like the freed electrons from my flash heating created something like a small magnetic field. It's wrecking havoc with the weather.” I turned around and saw the awed look of Fiara.

“Miss Lara, did you just create an ionised field, which might form something similar to the magnetic field that is seen by Grand Line islands?” Fiara's tone was even and composed, yet her lone open eye was staring blankly at the rapidly growing storm.

Waves were now throwing the raft around like an angry child its old toy. “Lara, we might want to run, this thing will only grow and once it reaches us we are next”, warned Nojiko with some worry.

There were now close to a dozen tornados and lightning was raining down as if it was rain. The clouds were already hanging over us and small droplets were falling down.

“I didn't expect for it to get this big. At most I expected a small ice block falling down on them.” I defended myself while helping with setting the sail away from the storm.

“What did you expect from flash heating a few thousand tonnes of water?”, shot Lia back. The ship was turned around and we started to gain some speed.

However, the storm was faster. Heavy rain was already pelting us, with the tornadoes close behind.

“Oy Lia, do something,” I shouted over the storm. She glared at me briefly and then closed her eyes.

A few seconds later the whole sea began to rumble. “Do I want to know what you have done now?”, questioned Nojiko with a sigh.

We looked at Lia, who shrugged nonchalantly. “We are in a nock up-stream field. What better way to evade a storm than flying over it?”

Nojiko had only enough time to facepalm before a massive geyser shot upwards from directly under us. The pillar of water shot upwards with us at the top.

“I'm keeping the ship in the middle of the water, this way we won't fall down!”, shouted Lia over the loud winds.

I righted myself into a standing position and looked over the railing. The sea was getting smaller by the second and we will soon hit the first line of clouds. Under us were dark clouds and the lightning streaks of thunderbolts.

Might have to train this some more. Jaya will be fucked once the storm hits it. There were waves as high as thirty meters before we were shot up.

“Lia if we survive this I'll kill you!”, shouted Jo. He was clinging to the main mast, Jonny and Yosaku were doing the same.

“Is this normal for you?”, asked Fiara in a scared tone. Her four 'arms' had anchored themselves into the floor.

“Maybe?”, I replied with a wry grin.

“I think we will soon reach the end of our trip, I can feel how the pressure of the water lessens”, informed Lia us five minutes later.

Soon the pillar of water became smaller until it could only hold the ship. Then the ship made another sudden lurch upwards and crashed through the next line of clouds. Sometime later we left the cloud and hovered over it for a moment, before landing down in it.

“Seems like we won't fall back down. That would have been quite annoying”, muttered Lia a moment later. The rest of the crew could only groan in response. The trip was fast and nerve-racking.

“Why did I agree to come with you again? I could have stayed home and look after my tangerines. Drinking a cold glass of juice and laughing over the adventures of Nami that are shown in the news.

But NO! little Noji wanted to see the world. Wanted to get hunted by Marines, wanted to fight pirates and wanted to get shot into the sky by an oversized geyser.” Complained Nojiko in a whiny tone.

“Shut up woman, you know as well as I do that you like it”, shot Jo back. He too was laying on the floor and moaning in sickness from the ride.

“Yes Nojiko you wanted to go on an adventure”, said Jonny in support of Jo. He was rewarded by getting hit in the face by Nojiko's shoe.

“As much as this amuses me, we have stuff to do. One thing is that we need to do a bit of sport. The thin air here will tire us out if we don't get used to it”, I said while helping Yosaku up.

“Now?”, whined Noa. I did want to answer, yet a massive sky shark did that for me. It jumped out of the water, it's mouth wide open and with Noa as its target.

The fish hit by one of Noa's hammers and thrown back into the water. “Fine, I won't speak anymore”, he then said and began to jumps and sit-ups. The rest of the crew did quickly the same.

The training was short, very short. It lasted no longer than half an hour. Then again, a normal human would not be able to breathe at this height.

The abnormality that was the One Piece world showed itself again when all of us could act normally after another three sets of training. It took our bodies less than two hours to adapt. Speak of the impossible and you will get it on the Grand Line.

“So what now?”, asked Yosaku. We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating a few sandwiches. Fiara's was high enough to reach her chest. Having her will only increase our food consumption minimally.

“I've looked into my trusty navigation book and it says that there should be a few different sky islands around here. One is called Skypia, the other Skyprie. Which one do you want to visit?”, explained Nojiko, while showing us a page of her book. It showed the map of a sky sea and two possible directions.

“Both sound good enough”, shrugged Noa with Yosaku nodding in agreement.

Hmm, I don't want to go to Skypia. Enel's fruit is freaking strong and will be a danger to all of us. I'm not sure if my Armament Haki is strong enough to withstand him. And Lia could only dodge him. Her Armament will be too weak.

Mrs Chicken Wing will be able to kill him easily, but where is the fun in that. And the rest could only play sitting ducks. His Observation Haki alone allows him to read our thoughts, thanks to his Devil Fruit enhancement.

I pointed at Skyprie and showed that it was closer to us. “I think Skyprie will do just fine.” The rest either agreed or shrugged. None knew either of them and I was the captain.

“Can we rest for a few hours then? All this was quite taxing and I am dead tired”, asked Nojiko once she planned the course.

“Of course, I'm gonna take the first shift,” I agreed easily. Staying here without moving wouldn't harm us much. Maybe we can even find some Sky Warrior.