Yosaku's POV;

I was watching Josef doing the patch up for Urouge while thinking about the fight. It went well for the most time and then I botched up and Lara had to save me. Why do I always need to get saved? I know that I am growing stronger, Urouge would have killed me a few months ago with ease.

I'm able to cut steel and am working on Haki as well as a skill called Iron Body. My sword weights over 300 kilograms and normal pirates are falling under my swords by like flies.

Then why is it that I always fuck up. It was the same with the Devil Fruit user that could turn his body into iron. The same with the previous owner of my sword and the same with Urouge.

“Don't let it bother you, dude”, spoke Jonny suddenly from my side. I haven't noticed him coming close, the last time I saw him he was going through the belongings of the dead pirates.

“I don't know what you mean”, I grumbled in return and stared at the still form of Urouge. Josef was nearly done with bandaging his wounds. He would still have his bones broken, but those wounds weren't life-threatening.

“You are going all emo over the fact that Lara needed to save you. Thinking that you are still weak, that you might still be the weak nobody that left the East Blue, hoping to get strong.” I didn't comment. Jonny knows me like a true brother, he knows what I think sometimes before I do.

“Half a year ago, would you have believed it if somebody has had told you that you would be able to fight someone with a bounty of over 80 million? Neither you nor I would have. With Lara's and Lia's help, we will get strong, are already strong.

You just have to be a little more careful.” He continued. And no, I would not have believed someone saying that. I would have wished it to be true, but such a thing was dreamlike.

“You aren't the one who has to get saved all the time”, I replied with a slight growl. He knows that I wasn't angry at him, more at myself.

“No, but I am also not the one who fights the strongest of our opponents. The iron using guy would have been unbeatable for me, you at least were able to nick and slightly cut his skin.

The guy in Alabasta would have killed me with a single attack, he was also fast enough to might have hit me. You only needed my save because he had more experience with being wounded during a fight.

And Urouge wouldn't have even needed to hit me directly. I heard and saw the strength behind his swings. I would have had to evade far wide than I'd like to in a fight. And on top of that comes that he was basically a tank. There were only four places on his body I could have even have some hope of wounding him.

You can take on those who are strong and hard to wound, while I can take those that are fast and weasel-like. Together we can match up and beat anyone”, he explained and patted me on the back with his last sentence, a large grin on his face.

I let out a small chuckle. True, we were always together. I never needed Lara or Lia to save me with Jonny at my side. Maybe it wasn't that I am weak, but that Jonny was not guarding me when it needed to happen. Together we were stronger, together we will be able to beat anyone.

“Maybe you are right,” I replied with a small smile.

“And then we can even beat Lia and Lara,” he declared in a whisper. Knowing that Lara has really good ears. She can distinct the sizzling of frying chicken and goose from everywhere on the ship

I looked up from Josef and Urouge and saw Lara looking at us, a slight grin on her face. “Thanks, Jonny”, I mumbled, realising what he has done.

He looked at first confused and then looked to where I was looking, then he paled rapidly. “You think she will use my words against me and make us do team training with her as our opponent?” I had to strain my ears to even hear half of his words, but Lara's nod lets me know that she heard him. Probably even better than I have since she started to manipulate sound she was able to hear all kinds of things.

A ship leaves little privacy, to begin with, but knowing that someone could hear everything you were saying from everywhere on the ship took time to get used to. Knowing that she could even hear us when I had sex with Nojiko, or myself was embarrassing. I desperately hoped that she was not listening in on us. Only the fact that she was a girl made me not care too much. A peeping woman was hot, a peeping guy not. It made it even hotter when I imagined her masturbating while listening in on us.

And Lara wasn't one of those women who would hit a man for saying perverted things or doing something stupidly manly, like bragging or wishful speaking about a hot naked girl. She was cool like that and didn't even care if we were talking about her, only giving us death glares if it was about Lia. Her possessiveness over her sister was well known to us. The force she uses to hit someone who was trying to get a feel of her sister was enough to kill some people. And even did occasionally.

“You coming?”, asked Jonny, suddenly standing away from me and next to Lara. I must have been deep in my thoughts to not notice him leaving.

Hurried to catch up and we three went deeper into the forest. The same way Urouge and his men must have come from. We needed five minutes or so to reach their camp. There were food, booze and stuff strewn around.

“Let's search for one of these Balloon Octopus animals. Hopefully, he had some in this camp and not on their ship. That would be bad”, ordered Lara and began to search herself.

I walked over to the barrels and looked inside the opened ones. There was booze inside, something we will definitely take with us. A package of pills that would clean water was next to a group of closed barrels. But there was nothing that could have been the cage of an animal.

“I found money!”, shouted Jonny from his position while holding up a stack of Berry. “Seems to be close to a hundred million,” he added with a clear grin in his tone.

“And I have booze and water,” I shouted back.

“That's so unfair, I only got some half-eaten food and a dead woman”, grumbled Lara from her place. My head snapped to where she was and found her standing next to a naked, bruised and dead woman. Her throat was cut open and the blood was still wet. She must have been killed by them before they attacked us.

“Maybe they killed her so that she wouldn't be able to run”, contemplated Lara out loud. She then picked the dead woman up and carried her off to the side of the clearing. There she touched her chest and the woman began to burn to ashes within seconds.

“I don't know if burying her would have been a good idea, with clouds having under us instead of dirt.” She then explained. Lara dug a hole and placed the ashes inside. After that she walked back to us, grabbed a chair and cut it into a small cross, to signal the place of the grave.

“I hate it when we find this”, grumbled Jonny angrily. I nodded as well, the delight of finding the money and alcohol now forgotten.

“I don't think there is any of these octopuses here, maybe there is one on the two ships. Maybe, there weren't any on their main ships, that one is a lost cause. We shouldn't have shot at them with our new cannon”, said Lara once we looked over the rest of their things, not having much hope in her tone at all.

“What if not?”, I asked a little worried.

“Then we take what we can and use my initial plan of jumping off”, she answered with a grin. I shuddered and desperately hoped this would not have to happen.

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It came as I feared. There weren't any on the remains of their ship and if there were some, then they were dead by now, burned to crisps by the flames that consumed the ship.

“Well fuck, what now?” Asked a deeply worried Nojiko. Josef, who had bandaged my cracked rips in the meantime, wasn't looking any happier as well.

“We sail to the rim of this cloud and jump off. I will able to hold us and possibly some of our more liked possessions in the air. Especially if we use some sheets as gliders”, answered Lia. Nojiko starred at her with wide and fearful eyes. Not happy with this declaration.

“And then we fall to our death,” prophesied Josef darkly.

“Not all of us, Mrs Chicken Wing will survive, without doubt, she can fly,” denied Lara brightly. The hen in question clucked from her place on Lara's shoulder. Agreeing, but still in a worried, sort of, tone about us. Is it strange that I could interpret the clucking of a chicken?

No one laughed at Lara's joke and each of us thought hard about another possible way to survive this, most preferably with our ship and body intact. “What if we bind our spare sails on our ship and use them as gliders? Lia doesn't have to stop the fall completely. Just enough for us to not die a quick and gruesome death once we hit the sea”, suggested Noa. I nodded hopefully.

“But can they hold the ship? Lia never lifted the Shadow for a long time and almost never completely”, voiced Josef his worry.

“I don't know if I can, we have to see. We could prepare just in case. We all bind us together and have a parachute of our own. If I can't hold us then I stop and let the ship fall. Holding only us will be easy if aided by a parachute. We then only have to find an island or other ship, while falling”, answered Lia, not the least bit worried.

I don't know how Lara and Lia can stay this calm in this situation.

“Abandoning the ship you say?”, muttered Noa. He didn't look as if he liked the idea, at all.

“Look, we don't know how much Lia has to carry when we use the remaining sails as help. Maybe she will be able to lower us easily.”Argued Lara. It was true as well. Lia was able to hold the ship over the holes in the sky and that was unaided.

With the help of sails, she might really be able to keep us from a death caused by falling into rock-hard water.

“It's not like we have other options left”, muttered Jonny with a shrug. I looked at him in mild disbelieve, doesn't he realize that Lia and Lara were suggestion a fall out of 10.000 meters above the ground?

“Good, then let's prepare the ship, as well as for the worst case,” declared Lara cheerfully, as if she hasn't just decided our possible death.

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It took us half of the remaining sunlight, as well as a few good additional hours to prepare the ship and reach the rim of the sea cloud. We then decided to eat an especially big and good dinner, with it having the possibility of being our last and then went to sleep.

As good as you could sleep, knowing that you might die the next day.

Early the next morning we rose and prepared for the last step. The plan was to bind each of us together by a rope at our ankles and also carry a parachute, made out of spare sails. If, and that is something I desperately hope won't happen, the ships become too heavy for Lia, then we would jump off the ship, leaving it to its own death.

We then would move into a position, from where Lia and Lara could use Geppo to first stop our fall and then use the parachute, as well as Lia's Devil Fruit to reach the nearest island.

Nojiko had already planned the way we need to travel for that to happen. Everything left now were the final few metres over the edge and then there would be nothing between our ship and the sea that was ten thousand meters below.

What joy, sometimes I wish I would have stayed a puny and weak bounty hunter in the East Blue. At least then I would die at the hands of some wannabe pirate and not by falling to my own death from the literal sky.