Chapter 149: It's Just a Poorly Drawn Picture
"Senior! All the supplies have been transferred! Is there anything else you need?!"
"It's fine. Nothing else is necessary."
The Straw Hats had gathered on the Thousand Sunny, and Bartolomeo and his crew were lined up along the railing of the Going Luffy-Senpai, their farewells growing increasingly tearful by the second.
"It's been our greatest honor to carry you this far! Truly, the luckiest voyage of our lives!" Bartolomeo's voice cracked. "I want so badly to climb up there with you—to meet ALL the Straw Hat seniors—but I can't! I WON'T! Because that would be intruding on your sacred adventure!"
He was sobbing openly now.
"However... I can't help but feel..."
THUD.
A package flew from the Sunny and struck Bartolomeo square in the face. Itachi had thrown it one-handed without looking back.
Two more packages followed—Franky's contributions.
"We don't need your chewing gum."
"And you're so hopeless at sea, you should take back at least half this food. Consider it survival rations."
Bartolomeo clutched the packages to his chest. "THIS... THIS GENEROSITY...!"
And so the Going Luffy-Senpai sailed off into the mist, its crew weeping and waving until the fog swallowed them whole.
"Alright!" Kanjuro rolled up his sleeves and knelt on the Sunny's deck, paintbrush in hand. With broad, confident strokes, he sketched a circular shape on the wood. "Behold my solution to our climbing problem!"
The Straw Hats gathered around. The shape was... something.
"What is that?" Luffy tilted his head.
"A snake, I think." Usopp squinted.
"Is it really a snake?" Kin'emon asked doubtfully.
"Witness the power of my devil fruit! COME FORTH, CLIMBING DRAGON!"
The ink glowed. The drawing swelled. And from the deck emerged a creature that defied description.
It was pink. It had horns. Its body was somewhere between a caterpillar and a badly stuffed sausage. It had a pig-like snout that twitched nervously, and when it finally lifted its head, sweat was already beading on its brow.
"DRAGON~! DRAGON~! DRAGON~!"
Its cry was thin. Reedy. The voice of a creature that had been born moments ago and was already exhausted by the mere fact of its existence.
"Shishishi! This'll be super convenient!" Luffy was already climbing aboard.
"I feel like he drew some kind of pitiful creature," Usopp observed.
"I think it's going to die the moment it starts moving." Zoro's assessment was, as usual, brutally honest.
But Robin had pressed both hands to her cheeks. A faint blush colored her features. Her eyes sparkled.
"...It's adorable."
"Anyway, being able to fly up on a dragon IS pretty convenient!" Usopp was trying very hard to be positive.
"Alright! Dragon, lie down here. Everyone grab onto its back and we'll climb up!" Kanjuro directed.
No one moved.
Itachi had already completed his seals.
"Fire Release: Black Fire Crow."
The familiar construct materialized beneath him, dark flames licking at the edges of its wooden frame. He stepped onto its back.
"Perhaps it would be better to ride mine."
Kanjuro stared at the crow. He had been watching Itachi's hands—had seen the seals, the blur of motion too fast to follow. A cold sweat traced down his temple. What kind of ninjutsu is that?!
"I'm coming."
"Same here."
Law and Zoro climbed aboard the Black Fire Crow without hesitation.
"I want the dragon!" Luffy wrapped his arms around the pink creature's neck.
"Me too! This is going to be an adventure!" Usopp was already aboard.
"I..." Robin looked at Itachi's sleek, efficient crow. Then at the pathetic, sweating dragon. Her blush deepened. "I simply must ride this one."
She climbed aboard.
"COUNT ME IN!" Franky leaped onto the dragon's back, and the creature's legs nearly buckled.
Kin'emon and Kanjuro took the rear position.
"YOSH! ONWARD!"
At Kanjuro's command, the dragon began to climb.
It took one step. Panted heavily. Took another step. Its legs trembled. Sweat poured from its brow in torrents. Its cry of "Dragon~! Dragon~!" had become a desperate wheeze.
By the time it had taken its third step, Itachi's Black Fire Crow had already vanished into the mist above.
"Itachi-ya." Law looked back at the struggling creature far below. "Aren't you going to try to convince them?"
"They seem happy."
Zoro shrugged. "Let them have their fun."
Itachi closed his eyes. "Are there fewer and fewer normal people in this world, or is it just this crew?"
"You're asking the wrong guy," Zoro said.
The Black Fire Crow reached the elephant's back in minutes. The landscape that greeted them was a dense, primordial jungle—trees larger than any they had seen in the world below, their roots tangled in the living earth of the elephant's skin. The air was thick with humidity and the distant calls of unfamiliar animals.
Itachi, Law, and Zoro landed. They waited.
They waited through the afternoon. Through the evening. Through the night.
At one point, a small monkey tumbled from a high branch and knocked Kanjuro and Kin'emon—who had been clinging to the dragon's tail—clean off. Itachi had to ride the Black Fire Crow down to retrieve them. The monkey, unfortunately, was unconscious and could provide no information about the island.
At dawn, they were still waiting.
At noon, they were still waiting.
By late afternoon, Itachi had settled into a meditative pose on a large root. Zoro was napping against a tree. Law was reviewing navigation notes. Kin'emon paced anxiously at the cliff's edge.
"I'm truly sorry." Kanjuro sat in the corner, drawing circles in the dirt with a gloomy expression. "I never imagined it would be this slow."
"Kanjuro! Perhaps you should simply admit that your ability is USELESS!" Kin'emon's patience had clearly expired.
"Should we go ahead and gather information?" Law asked Itachi. "We could be inside the Mink settlement by now."
The question struck a nerve.
In a normal operation—an ANBU mission, an Akatsuki infiltration—Itachi would have been deep in enemy territory hours ago. He would have mapped every path, identified every threat, and established multiple escape routes before the sun set. That was protocol. That was efficiency.
But leaving these people unsupervised on the edge of a cliff, in an unknown country, with no clear chain of command...
No. Better to wait.
"A little longer."
"Kin'emon." Itachi opened his eyes. "You seem less anxious about Momonosuke than I expected."
Kin'emon straightened. A complex expression crossed his face—the look of a man weighing how much to reveal.
"It's time I told you the truth. There are actually two reasons I needed to reach Zou."
Itachi's gaze sharpened.
"The first, of course, is to reunite with Momonosuke. But the second..." Kin'emon paused. "We have another companion. He's here on this island."
"Another companion?" Zoro had woken up. Law looked up from his notes.
"You still have more allies?"
Itachi was studying Kin'emon's face—but his peripheral vision caught something else. A flicker in Kanjuro's expression. Just for an instant. The kind of micro-expression that most people would never notice.
Itachi noticed.
His eyes shifted to Kanjuro, who was already nodding.
"Yes. Our third companion. He's a ninja."
"NINJA?!"
Law and Zoro turned to Itachi in perfect synchronization.
Itachi's expression flickered. "There are actual ninja in this world?"
"Indeed." Kanjuro straightened, attempting what he clearly believed was an impressive ninja hand seal. "He knows many ninjutsu techniques. A true shinobi of Wano."
A true shinobi.
Law and Zoro exchanged glances. Their imaginations were already running wild. They had seen what Itachi could do. The Susanoo. The Amaterasu. The Tsukuyomi. The countless techniques that blurred the line between combat and sorcery. If this other ninja was anything like Itachi—even half as capable—they would be a formidable addition.
"What kind of techniques does he specialize in?" Law asked.
"How does his combat ability compare?" Zoro was already interested.
"I do not know the specifics," Kanjuro admitted. "But I am certain he will prove most useful."
Itachi studied Kanjuro for a long moment. Then he closed his eyes again.
Interesting.
"FINALLY! WE'RE HERE!"
Luffy's shout echoed up the cliff face. The exhausted crew turned to see the pink dragon hauling itself over the edge with what could only be described as its dying breath. Its face was a mask of pure suffering. Its legs had stopped working approximately halfway up, and it had been inching forward through sheer desperate willpower for the last several hours.
"Ryūnosuke! You did it!" Franky wept openly.
Sometime during the climb, they had named the creature. No one could remember exactly when.
"Well done, Ryūnosuke. Well done." Tears streamed down Robin's face as she stroked the dragon's head. It was already beginning to dissolve, its ink body returning to the elemental form from which it had been created.
"It's fading back into a drawing, isn't it?" Robin's voice cracked.
"RYŪNOSUKE!!!"
"THANK YOU!!!"
Luffy, Usopp, and Franky were bawling. The pink dragon—this poorly drawn, barely functional, utterly pathetic creature—had somehow earned a more emotional farewell than Bartolomeo had received after an entire week of devoted service.
Zoro and Law had already turned away.
"Ridiculous," Law muttered.
"It's just a badly drawn picture," Zoro agreed.
"Hey." Itachi sighed.
Somewhere in the depths of the jungle, a monkey chittered. The Mink settlement awaited. And the Straw Hats—minus one cook, one navigator, one doctor, and one skeleton—were finally, belatedly, ready to begin their exploration of Zou.
(End of Chapter)
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