"Huh, there's more movement now."
"That lady turned back into her normal self but there's a strange fruit in her hand now?"
Gan Fall stroked his beard and looked toward Nojiko with puzzlement.
"If I'm not mistaken, that fruit is the source of Enel's lightning power," Wyper muttered with a frown.
Unlike Gan Fall, Wyper had at least some contact with people from the Blue Sea.
Of course, by contact, that mostly meant attacking the Blue Sea people who came up to Skypiea.
Because of that, he knew a little about Devil Fruits.
That was also why he knew Seastone could suppress Enel's lightning abilities.
Still, even if he knew that much, he had never heard from any of the Blue Sea people he attacked that a Devil Fruit could be extracted like the way Nojiko had just done it.
So naturally, he found what Nojiko had done pretty shocking.
"That's the source of Enel's lightning powers?"
"So that's what they wanted."
Gan Fall nodded slowly.
He felt a little relieved.
Even if Enel's power didn't seem like much in front of Conis and Arton, from Gan Fall's perspective, it was still an extremely powerful ability.
If it weren't, Enel never would have ruled Skypiea for so many years through sheer lightning power alone.
So Gan Fall understood why Nojiko would take Enel's power away.
What he didn't know was that Arton and his crew didn't really think much of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit at all.
With far better templates right in front of them, who would care that much about the Rumble-Rumble Fruit?
The only reason they bothered taking it was because, at worst, it was still a pretty decent little extra.
"Should we go over now?" Wyper asked Gan Fall.
He did want to walk over right away, but to avoid causing any misunderstandings, he decided to ask the calmer-looking Gan Fall first.
Wyper knew perfectly well that letting a warrior like himself handle negotiations was… difficult.
One wrong word, and things could get awkward fast.
That was exactly what he didn't want right now.
As for treating Arton and his group the way he treated Enel?
Wyper had absolutely no intention of doing that.
Setting aside the fact that Raki already seemed to have become good friends with Arton and the others, their power alone was enough to kill any thought of resistance.
That strength—strength that clearly surpassed even Enel's—was enough to make Wyper's scalp tingle just imagining it.
Sure, he was a hot-blooded warrior, but that didn't mean he was stupid.
When the gap in power was this huge, something numbers alone couldn't make up for, Wyper simply did not dare think of Arton as an enemy.
At this point, all Wyper could think was that Raki's earlier choice had been a very smart one.
If she hadn't stepped in and acted as a bridge between the Shandians and Arton's group, then Arton and the others might have already retaliated for the Shandians' earlier attack, and if that had happened, Wyper honestly had no idea how he would've cleaned up that mess.
"Go over there…" Gan Fall glanced at Arton, Nojiko, and the others, who were still talking among themselves, then slowly shook his head.
"Let's hold off for now. Once they're done talking, then we can go."
"Fine. We'll do it your way," Wyper said.
Gan Fall gave him a slightly surprised look.
After all, in his eyes, Wyper was not usually this easy to reason with.
Looks like Arton's presence really did make this Shandian behave a lot more carefully, Gan Fall thought with a sigh.
Chapter 607: Whitey Bay and Makino's Conversation
"Miss Nojiko… the thing in her hand, that's Enel's Rumble-Rumble Fruit, isn't it?"
Makino sat cross-legged on the bed, curiously looking at Whitey Bay in front of her.
She was wearing a light tank top, with nothing on below but green-and-white striped shorts.
Tiny beads of sweat clung to her skin, making her fatigue obvious.
"You didn't know?"
Whitey Bay blinked, then quickly realized why.
"Right. You've been living in the East Blue, so you don't really have much of a feel for Devil Fruits."
"So of course you wouldn't have a clear idea of what one looks like."
Whitey Bay was dressed in her usual blue-toned outfit, a sword hanging at her waist, while her large captain's hat had been set aside on the table.
Her pale thighs were wrapped in black suspender stockings.
"You guessed right. That really is the Rumble-Rumble Fruit."
"Even though I'd never seen the Rumble-Rumble Fruit in person before Nojiko pulled it out of Enel's body…"
"I can guarantee it."
As she spoke, Whitey Bay glanced at Makino's current state and couldn't help sighing a little.
"Your training's been rough, huh?"
"By the way, do you really need to push yourself this hard?"
"I'm not exactly confident in my ability to train other people. You could've just waited until we found Arton before starting all this."
"That way, your points would probably be more useful too."
The sweat on Makino's body was the result of her asking Whitey Bay to train her.
"Even though you keep saying you're not good at training other people, Miss Whitey Bay…"
"The truth is, you've still been taking my training very seriously."
"I think I can still grow quickly under your guidance."
Makino smiled sweetly, then continued, "As for waiting until after we find Arton to train, that's just too uncertain."
"Leaving aside when we'll actually find him, or whether we'll even be able to convince him to accept us after we do…"
"Just the fact that the enemies he faces are only going to get stronger is enough reason for me to care."
"If I'm too weak by the time I reach him, and I end up becoming a weakness he has to protect, that would be awful."
Makino understood very well that after seeing everything through the diary copies, the women in the Marines, the female agents, and even female pirates with bad intentions toward Arton would become more and more active in trying to get control of him, and she also understood that not every holder of a diary copy was as genuinely well-intentioned toward Arton as she and Whitey Bay were.
Whitey Bay did want to invite Arton into the Whitebeard Pirates, but if Arton refused, it wasn't like she hadn't already considered joining Arton's Flameblade Pirates instead.
After all, Whitey Bay knew full well that a man like Arton—someone bound to become stronger than even the Four Emperors someday—had almost no chance of willingly joining another Emperor's crew, and besides, Whitey Bay herself was only the captain of an allied pirate crew under Whitebeard.
In a sense, she was still fairly free.
So even if she joined Arton's crew, it wouldn't really count as betraying the Whitebeard Pirates, and joining Arton wouldn't mean she'd stop acknowledging Whitebeard as Pops, either.
That was something Whitey Bay had personally talked through with Makino before.
As for Makino, her situation was even simpler.
She didn't belong to any pirate crew to begin with, so joining Arton's crew would be perfectly natural.
The only problem was finding a good excuse for it.
She couldn't exactly say, "I learned from Arton's diary that Ace will be executed by the Marines in the future, and I want to join the Flameblade Pirates to stop that from happening," now could she?
And when it came to the other diary-copy holders… there was no guarantee they'd be thinking the way she and Whitey Bay were at all.