Chapter 217: Water 7, Franky
They stayed on Drum Island for several more days.
The kingdom treated them well. There were meals, celebrations, and a steady rotation of residents who wanted to shake Amon's hand or simply stand near him for a moment.
Beyond the food and the festivities, Amon spent most of those days talking medicine with Kureha. She had wanted to the moment she heard he had cured Hiriluk's terminal illness, and now that her schedule had cleared she was entirely direct about it. They covered diagnostics, pharmacology, unconventional field treatments, and a number of remedies that Kureha had developed through sheer accumulated experience in places and circumstances she declined to describe in detail.
Amon found himself genuinely surprised. Her knowledge of alternative treatments, the ones that worked not through conventional medicine but through something older and stranger, was unlike anything he had encountered. He left those conversations with a considerably broader understanding of what medicine could do when pushed past its comfortable boundaries.
There was one afternoon where Kureha looked at him for a long moment and asked if he had perhaps taken some kind of age-preserving compound.
Amon explained, patiently, that he had not.
She seemed to believe him by the end of the explanation, though not entirely.
Alongside his sessions with Kureha, he spent time teaching Chopper. This turned out to be one of the more unexpectedly enjoyable parts of the stay. Chopper absorbed medical knowledge at an unsettling speed, learning in hours what most students took weeks to internalize. He asked precise questions, remembered everything, and applied new information with an instinctive creativity that Amon found difficult to attribute to anything other than raw talent.
He reminded himself that this was, after all, the future doctor of the Straw Hat Pirates. The talent had always been there. It simply needed something to grow toward.
Chopper's feelings toward Amon shifted visibly across those days, from gratitude for his life being saved, to quiet admiration. He also formed an easy friendship with Lily, the two of them often found together doing something that neither of them could quite explain to an adult when asked.
His relationship with Robin was a different matter.
Robin had discovered that Chopper was extraordinarily easy to frighten. Amon watched her spend a portion of every day engineering new ways to make Chopper bolt across the room, and then watched her look deeply satisfied with herself afterward.
He tried to feel exasperated about it and mostly failed. Robin was technically eighteen, and apparently eighteen-year-olds were exactly as mischievous as the age suggested, even when they had spent the last decade in mortal danger. The stability of the ship had allowed her to become her actual age for the first time.
He found this difficult to disapprove of.
...
On the fifth additional day, the system chimed.
[Ding. Drum Island task complete. New task issued: proceed to Water Seven.]
Water Seven. He had been expecting it eventually.
He said his goodbyes the next morning. Chopper stood at the shore with red eyes and a great deal of determination, and managed not to cry until Amon had already turned to board the ship, at which point he abandoned the determination entirely.
"Thank you for everything, Mr. Amon. I'll remember it my whole life. Come back and visit when you can."
Hiriluk bowed deeply without speaking. Kureha raised her bottle in a short, precise salute.
The people of Drum Kingdom had turned out in great numbers, lining the shore and calling out that followed the ship well out past the harbor.
He lifted a hand from the stern and didn't look back until the island had become a line on the horizon and then faded away.
...
The stretch of open sea between Drum Island and Water Seven was long, and the sea was not particularly eventful.
Amon broke out the cards.
"Come on, one more round."
He, Robin, and Lily had been playing card games for most of the voyage, and Amon had developed a winning streak that he was unwilling to acknowledge might have something to do with mild cheating.
"Three with one, four threes, and a bomb." He laid down his hand and threw both arms up. "I win again."
"Right then." Amon picked up the marker pen. "Two flower cats, coming up."
Robin's composure was remarkable under the circumstances.
The marker had barely left the cap when the sea around them erupted.
A wall of water shot up off the port side, and something struck the ship's outer hull with a sound like a bell being hit wrong. The ship's built-in shielding absorbed most of it, leaving no real damage, but the concussive force was enough to scatter the cards across the deck and tip Lily off her seat.
Amon set the marker down slowly.
Robin stood up from the table and began scanning the water.
"There," she said.
A vessel was approaching. Unusual design, heavily modified, painted in a style that suggested its owner had strong feelings about its appearance. At the helm stood a figure in a yellow shirt, a shock of blue hair, and a face that Amon recognized before the man had come within hailing distance.
"Franky," Amon said quietly.
"Heyyy, sorry about that!" The figure was already steering toward them. "My Franky Battle got a little excited there. I was aiming for the Sea Kings!"
It was absolutely Franky. The voice, the hair, the complete absence of social self-consciousness, all of it confirmed.
"No harm done," Amon called back, as the gap between the two ships closed. "Actually, while I have you. This is the water around Water Seven, isn't it? And if I remember correctly, the best shipwright in Water Seven trained the best apprentice in Water Seven." He leaned against the railing. "Would that apprentice happen to be a man called Franky, student of the legendary Tom?"
The figure on the opposite deck stood a little straighter.
"You know my master?" He planted both hands on his chest. "That's right. Tom's finest student. Franky, in the flesh."