Loguetown... Finally!

A couple of days later and Loguetown filled the coast of the island before me.

Most East Blue towns announced themselves with a few crooked docks, a tavern roof, and a cluster of houses behind the beach. Loguetown had swallowed its entire bay. Stone quays reached into the blue water from both sides, dividing the harbor into crowded lanes. Warehouses stood three and four stories high along the waterfront, their broad loading doors open and their wooden hoists constantly moving. Beyond them rose block after block of red tile roofs, pale stone walls, brick chimneys, crowded balconies, and wide straight streets disappearing into the city.

The sky was a bright, spotless blue. Sunlight flashed across thousands of little waves and turned every white sail in the harbor painfully brilliant. The heat had already worked the smell of tar out of the piers. Gulls wheeled overhead, screaming at fishermen and diving for scraps tossed from the decks.

The bay was busier than some towns.

Fishing boats returned beneath clouds of birds while harbor skiffs darted between them to collect docking fees. Broad merchant ships sat low in the water beneath cargo from across the East Blue. Sailors shouted from the rigging, stevedores rolled barrels down gangplanks, and wooden cranes swung nets of crates over the quays. A passenger ship unloaded families carrying trunks, parasols, and freshly purchased Grand Line guidebooks.

Two battered pirate vessels waited beneath false merchant colors, fooling nobody. Farther out, a Marine cutter moved slowly between the arriving ships while uniformed men inspected decks through brass spyglasses. White gull emblems flew above a fortified stretch of the waterfront, reminding every pirate in the bay who controlled the city.

Every vessel bound for Reverse Mountain seemed to stop here. Captains replaced damaged sails. Pirates bought weapons. Merchants loaded whatever they imagined the Grand Line might lack. Men who expected to die spent their remaining money in the waterfront taverns, while men who expected to become legends arrived with more ammunition than food.

The Big Top had to join a line simply to enter the inner harbor.

A pilot boat came alongside us. Harbor officials shouted questions about our cargo, home port, and business in Loguetown. Cabaji shouted back a series of lies that had been prepared with considerably more care than our disguises. The pirate flag had been lowered, but the circus-striped sails, painted hull, and lion scratching itself on the main deck still made us the least convincing merchant vessel in the bay.

The breeze carried hundreds of smells out from the sun-warmed city: coal smoke, salt fish, lamp oil, frying meat, horse manure, cheap perfume, wet rope, and too many people living close together.

Roger’s execution platform was somewhere inside that mass of streets and buildings. I wasn’t obsessed with it like some pirates but I still recognized that it was a big deal. This was the Pirate Era afterall…

I noticed Buggy’s cock trying to look down the blouse of a woman leaning over the railing of a passing harbor ferry.

“Eye forward!” Buggy snapped.

The cock reluctantly turned back toward the city.

Buggy stood at the prow with one boot planted on the rail, his cape thrashing in the sea wind and his chin held high. Perched beside his head was his lewd shoulder parrot, now weirdly looking like a miniature version of the dumb-ass himself. Beneath that hideously naturally bright red cockhead, white clown paint covered the length of its shaft, though the paint had already cracked around several of the thicker veins. Someone had tied an orange scarf around its base, right above those blue haired nuts. The little strip of cloth fluttered proudly while the blunt head swayed over Buggy’s shoulder, eager to inspect every fish seller, tavern girl, female passenger, and merchant’s wife visible along the busy quay.

“Behold!” Buggy cried, spreading his arms. “Loguetown! The town of beginnings and endings! The final threshold before the Grand Line!”

His cock bent toward a dark-haired woman kneeling beside a basket of silver fish.

Buggy seized it and forced it upright.

“Behold the city, you obscene animal!”

Alvida leaned against the rail beside me, dressed only because we were about to set foot ashore. Nakedness was noble to her of course. Clothing was a concession she made to towns whose people were too timid to understand that. For Loguetown, she had compromised with a red halter that covered little beyond her nipples and a scrap of white cloth tied low around her hips, leaving most of her heavy breasts, long thighs, and round buttocks bare. Her broad white hat kept the wind from tangling her black hair, while the polished iron club across one shoulder promised that anyone offended by her idea of shoregoing propriety could discuss it with several hundred pounds of iron.

“Let it look,” she said. “It has better instincts than its owner.”

Buggy twisted around. “This magnificent creature is displaying the curiosity expected of a captain’s companion.”

The cock tried to turn toward Alvida’s chest.

She stroked one finger beneath its painted head. It lifted eagerly into her touch.

Buggy slapped her hand away or at least he attempted to, mostly he just grazed her super smooth skin and his hand shot off a ways due to the absolute lack of friction.

Alvida’s mouth curled with private satisfaction as she kept up her tickling the underside of the cockhead. During the past two days, she had found endless reasons to brush against the cock-parrot, stroke its painted shaft, or let its blunt head nestle between her naked breasts.

I rubbed my thumb over one of my earrings and grinned as I continued to enjoy the little living reminder of my power over the famous pirate.

Buggy caught me looking. “What are you smiling at?”

“Your parrot seems excited.”

“It can smell battle!” Buggy declared. “The beast has always known when its captain is approaching a moment of historic triumph.”

The white-painted shaft bent away from Loguetown and bowed toward Alvida’s cleavage.

“It can smell my pussy,” she said. “It remembers.”

“Exactly!” Buggy’s face flared red beneath his paint. “It remembers your pussy because I fucked it! I decreed that my cock would make you scream, then it went inside you, you screamed, and you loved it exactly as I said you would!”

“You were locked outside the cabin, humping the air,” Alvida said.

“My cock was inside!”

“In my hand,” I reminded him.

“And mine,” Alvida added.

“You were wielding a captain’s weapon! The captain still gets credit when someone else fires his cannon!”

“You begged us to give it back.”

“I was overwhelmed by my own sexual prowess! History will remember that Buggy the Clown fucked you senseless, because that is what happened!”

Several crewmen snickered. Buggy glared until they discovered urgent work elsewhere. The cock-parrot straightened proudly beside his head, its orange scarf fluttering beneath it.

Beyond us, the crew continued to make the Big Top look marginally less like a pirate ship. The flag had come down before we entered the harbor. Cannons were hidden behind painted shutters, and Cabaji had produced papers identifying us as a traveling circus transporting trained animals and theatrical explosives.

Loguetown’s harbor was not relaxed about pirates. A Marine cutter had watched us enter the bay, uniformed patrols guarded every major pier, and arriving ships were being questioned before anyone could disembark.

Apparently some new regime had tightened its grip on the city. Cabaji had explained it during the officers’ meeting, along with inspections, patrol routes, and several warnings about the Marine in charge. I had spent most of that part watching Alvida lean over the chart table. Remembering every warning seemed unnecessary when I could normally make people overlook me anyway.

Pirate crews still came through because this was the final supply port before the Grand Line, but they worked hard to disappear. They lowered their flags miles offshore, covered identifying marks, wrapped weapons in sailcloth, and entered town in pairs. The few Alvida could identify kept their mouths shut and their eyes lowered whenever Marines passed.

Buggy’s crew had chosen a different kind of subtlety.

Every man had been issued the same oversized gray cloak. The heavy cloth concealed striped shirts, knives, carnival makeup, and most of Mohji’s hair, but twenty men dressed identically looked considerably more suspicious than twenty ordinary sailors. Someone had even thrown a gray covering over Richie, turning the lion into an enormous moving lump with paws.

A lookout high in the rigging suddenly leaned over his platform.

“Captain Buggy!”

Buggy stopped fighting his parrot. “What?”

“Eastern quay! Ship with a sheep’s head!”

Every head aboard the Big Top turned.

Between two heavy cargo vessels, I caught a glimpse of the Going Merry’s white figurehead. The little caravel was tied against a distant pier, looking cheerful and harmless among ships three times its size.

Buggy’s expression changed immediately.

His grin stretched beneath his painted nose. The cock on his shoulder stiffened along with the rest of him, its orange scarf snapping in the wind like a battle flag.

“Straw Hat,” he whispered.

Alvida straightened beside me.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her club. She had been in an excellent mood that morning. The sight of Luffy’s ship sharpened it into something hungry.

“We did more than catch him!” Buggy whirled toward the crew. “We have arrived ahead of his execution! Cabaji, take the first group. Mohji, bring Richie around the warehouses. Gray cloaks on, hoods up, and nobody shows anything that screams Buggy Pirate until I give the signal!”

Half the crew were still standing around in striped shirts, painted faces, and clown shoes with their folded cloaks tucked beneath their arms. Buggy jabbed a finger at them.

“Try harder!”

The deck erupted into motion. Men dragged on their oversized cloaks, pulled the deep hoods over their carnival makeup, and stuffed swords beneath enough gray cloth to make themselves look pregnant with weapons. Gangplanks thumped down. Richie was padded down beneath his own enormous cloak, four paws and the end of his tail protruding from the bottom.

Alvida rolled one shoulder, settling her club comfortably against it.

“You’re coming,” she said to me.

“I’ll catch up.”

Her eyes narrowed.

I nodded toward the city. “Never been here before. I want to look around.”

“We didn’t sail all this way so you could go shopping.”

“I’m not.” scoffing at the notion when she was the shopping obsessed woman, “You sailed here for revenge. I sailed here because you’ve got a great ass.”

One corner of her mouth lifted despite herself.

Buggy marched past us, pointing toward the dock while issuing contradictory instructions to three different groups. His cock-parrot swiveled back to listen to our conversation,wearing its own tiny grey cloak.

When and how had he had that made?

Then I saw Mort run past with a sock puppet on each raised hand, each with a tiny grey cloak on.

Alvida’s gaze dropped over my open shirt, lingered on the heavy shape pressed down one leg of my trousers, and returned to my face.

“Do whatever you want,” she said. “Just be at the execution platform when we make our move.”

“I’ll be there.”

“And don’t get arrested.”

“How would that even happen? I’m just a normal guy, you know.”

“You’re a giant cock with no impulse control. You’ll find trouble before you find lunch. Come here.”

She caught the back of my neck and kissed me. It was not a tender farewell. Her lips pressed hard against mine, and her tongue pushed into my mouth while she pulled me close enough that her breasts flattened against my chest. A few members of Buggy’s crew cheered. Alvida ignored them until she had taken her fill, then broke the kiss and gave my lower lip a small warning bite.

“If you miss this,” she murmured, “I’m borrowing the parrot again.”

Buggy made a strangled noise.

I looked over Alvida’s shoulder. His painted cock had risen hopefully beside his face.

“I think it likes that plan.”

“MOVE!” Buggy roared.

Alvida laughed and followed him down the gangplank.

I waited until the crew had disappeared into the crowds before leaving the ship.

The streets closest to the harbor were broad enough for wagons, but every intersection opened into smaller lanes crowded with shops. Blades gleamed behind glass. Coils of rope hung from iron hooks. Tailors advertised storm cloaks, reinforced trousers, and emergency sail repairs. Every tavern displayed a chalkboard promising a final drink before the Grand Line.

Women stood outside several of those taverns, calling invitations to sailors. Some wore dresses with skirts cut high enough to show their thighs. Others leaned from upper windows in corsets or loose robes, assessing each new arrival with the professional interest of merchants inspecting cargo.

I could have disappeared upstairs for an hour without anyone questioning it.

There was too much city to see first.

A newspaper boy pushed through the crowd with a bundle under one arm.

“Straw Hat Luffy! Thirty million berries! Highest opening bounty in the East Blue!”

I stopped him and took a paper.

Luffy’s grinning face covered the front page. The idiot looked delighted to be wanted. This guy had been a nobody back at the start of all this.

Now the World Government valued his head at thirty million.

Buggy would hate that almost as much as he hated Luffy himself.

I folded the paper beneath my arm and wandered for a good hour or so but eventually I followed the flow of pedestrians inland, eventually finding myself in a massive open square with the execution platform. Souvenir sellers did brisk business beneath painted signs bearing Roger’s mustache. Children waved little pirate flags while their parents argued over whether owning one counted as treason. An old man sold scraps of ordinary rope while claiming each piece had been cut from Roger’s noose.

People gathered around the platform with the solemn expressions of pilgrims. A guide stood near the base, reciting the story of Roger’s final words to a group of visitors who already knew every word. Marines watched from behind a low barricade, ensuring nobody climbed the stairs.

It was all very serious.

Too serious.

I took a moment to think furiously and come up with a proper normality just for Loguetown. I was starting to think of myself as a wandering planter, leaving one strange little seed behind everywhere we stopped and sailing away to let it grow. Someday I could circle back through the East Blue and admire all the beautiful, filthy things my scattered seeds had become.

“You know what would be normal here?” I said.

Nobody answered and neither did they give the weirdo asking a question to the street a second glance.

“It’d be normal for daring couples to sneak onto Roger’s platform and fuck up there. Sort of a tribute to freedom. The woman takes Roger’s place at the front while the man kneels behind her and gives the crowd a show. Marines arrest them afterward, confiscate their clothes, and stick them in jail overnight, but everyone treats it like a tradition. Couples come from all over the East Blue to try it.”

The thought settled comfortably into the city or at least I assumed it did. My earrings doing their magic quietly behind the eyes of everyone around me and the city at large. I looked around with intense anticipation for the first sign…

A Marine beside the barricade sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Festival season,” he muttered. “We’ll have six couples a day until the rains start.”

His partner glanced toward the stairs. “Six if we’re lucky.”

A young woman near the front seized her lover’s hand and announced that they had promised each other they would complete the King’s Run before leaving for the Grand Line.The crowd noticed immediately. The man looked confused for half a heartbeat, then his face cleared as the supporting memory settled comfortably into place. Apparently they had made that promise months ago, and apparently he had been trying to postpone it ever since.

They bolted beneath the barricade as the square erupted in cheers. The Marines guarding the platform exchanged weary looks and began giving them the traditional head start, one counting ten seconds while the other reminded him that ten was used at the northern barricade and eight at the southern one. People shouted advice about the faster staircase, the loose board near the top, and the bad luck that followed anyone whose discarded clothes touched the platform steps.

The woman reached the platform first. She pulled her dress over her head and threw it into the crowd, where an elderly spectator caught it.

Her lover was still kicking off his trousers when he reached the top. She planted both hands on the rail, spread her bare legs, and shouted to the square.

“I’m going to own the finest tavern in the Grand Line!”

The crowd roared its approval and I picked up from a nearby comment that declaring your dream was part of the tradition. Her lover dropped behind her, grabbed her hips, and pushed his cock into her waiting pussy.

A souvenir seller cupped both hands around his mouth. “Give her the treasure, boy!”
The man began fucking her against the rail, her round ass bouncing against his groin while the people below cheered every thrust. The pursuing Marines stopped halfway up the stairs. One appeared ready to continue, but his partner gave a sweep of his arm toward the couple, as if throwing the matter away, then folded his arms to wait.
“They reached the rail,” a man near me explained to his companion. “The Marines have to let them finish now.”
“Interrupting the tribute would ruin the whole Run,” someone else agreed. “We’d all pelt’em with garbage if they dared.”

I watched with a huge grin and a growing erection pressing down my trouser leg. This was my favorite part of creating a Normality. I had supplied the basic idea, but I had said nothing about the King’s Run, different head starts, shouting a dream, or clothing touching the steps. People invented every missing detail themselves, then immediately remembered those details as customs they had known all their lives.

If Mort only knew. Iron Cock Tsujo was the real puppet master around here.

I wandered over to a nearby grill and bought a skewer of peppered meat. The woman tending it noticed me watching the platform and asked whether this was my first time seeing the King’s Run.

“That obvious?”

“You’ve got the look tourists always get.” She turned several skewers over the coals while explaining that newlyweds, anniversary couples, and crews preparing for the Grand Line attempted the Run most often. Tourists sometimes called it Roger’s Dare, but locals preferred the older name. Anyone who reached the rail earned the right to finish the tribute before being taken to the brig naked, and most taverns served released runners a free breakfast the following morning.

Her expression became thoughtful as those memories apparently settled. She glanced at the meat remaining beside her grill and muttered that she would need extra skewers outside the jailhouse tomorrow morning.

The world was already beginning to catch up with what everyone now remembered it seemed.

She looked me over while I paid, her eyes lingering on the heavy shape beneath my trousers. “Planning to make a run yourself?”

“Maybe later.”

“You’ll need a partner.”

“I nor- usually find one.”

She glanced toward the Marines, then leaned closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Cocky pirate.”

“Just cocky?” I grinned at the not bad looking woman’s flirty manner, feeling kind of cool that she picked up on my pirate-itude and was apparently a fan.

Her gaze dropped again.

“Very cocky.”

I ate as I walked and I wandered for a good thirty minutes or so, just stretching my legs and getting used to being on land, seeing the sights.

A commotion rose at the next intersection. Civilians moved aside as a Marine patrol advanced through the market. At its head strode a massive white-haired man wearing an open Marine jacket and smoking two cigars at once. Smoke rolled from his shoulders in thick coils, curling around his arms and leaving a bitter trail through the warm air.

Captain Smoker.

Cabaji had put him at the top of Loguetown’s threat list during our officers’ meeting that morning.

The Smoke-Smoke Fruit, a Seastone-tipped jitte, cigars down his chest in a bandoleer, and a reputation for making sure pirates who entered his city never reached the Grand Line. Buggy had spent several minutes calling him an overrated government dog before ordering everyone to avoid fighting him. Alvida had warned me very seriously about that long baton with the Seastone tip, that it would nullify our Devil Fruit powers. I’d nodded along but I didn’t have anything to worry about on that score considering my powers came from these lovely little earrings. No way was I going to let anything happen to my precious invulnerability to consequences.

He looked like trouble.

The woman walking beside him looked like fun.

She wore red-framed glasses and carried a sheathed sword at her hip. Short dark-blue hair framed a pretty, serious face while she tried to read from a stack of reports without walking into anyone. A navy coat with thick white fur trim hung open over a pale green shirt patterned with pink flowers, and dark trousers hugged a round little ass that shifted crisply with every hurried step.

She reminded me of that hot pinkette Marine with the resting bitch face.

I had met that one inside the Mirror Ball Marine base when those two Dressrosan women took me there to get an official picture of my dick and I’d turned it into my official Wanted poster. I had walked right up, squeezed the Marine’s tits, grabbed her ass, and told her how badly I wanted to fuck her. Then she had gone somewhere while I posed for the camera and fucked both Dressrosan women all over the photography room. I had even called down the corridor asking where the pinkette had gone, but she never came back.

Now another pretty Marine lady was walking straight past me.

I watched the dark-haired swordswoman adjust her glasses, and a grin slowly spread across my face.

I was going to fuck my first Marine Officer lady and remember every second of it.

---

Link to the orphaned episodes further down the line:

https://chyoa.com/chapter/No-one.1659781

Soon there will be an unbroken path to them and the the story will actually move beyond Loguetown.