Chapter 91: Undercurrents

Chapter 91: Undercurrents

After a fairly awkward breakfast and helping transport supplies to the Going Merry, Thomas, Vivi, Caenis, Astolfo, Benienma, Atalanta, Robin, Illya, Chloe, Artoria, and Ruby stood on the shores of the Sandora River as they saw off Lucy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Chopper. Vivi, Astolfo, and Chopper teared up quite a bit during the departure, but virtually everyone wore smiles as they vowed to meet again.

"There they go..." muttered Thomas, his eyes fixed on the quarterdeck where Lucy, Usopp, and Chopper continued to wave.

Resting her head against Thomas's bicep, Vivi replied, "I'm certain we'll see them again..."

Though he nodded his head, neither Thomas nor anyone else present said anything until the Merry had become a dot on the horizon. Unsurprisingly, the first to disrupt the silence was Caenis, questioning, "How much longer are we planning to just stand here?"

Exhaling a faint sigh through his nose, Thomas replied, "This is long enough," before turning to Robin and asking, "You about ready to read your first Poneglyph...?"

As her smile became more prominent, Robin mused, "I've had twenty years to prepare. However, shouldn't we wait until this evening before making our move?"

Answering in place of Thomas, Astolfo adopted a massive grin as she revealed, "I discovered a secret access tunnel while I was exploring the underground waterway. Alubarna actually has a ton of secret passages and hidden chambers to explore."

Narrowing her eyes slightly, Robin replied, "I see..." before looking to Thomas and questioning, "Will you be a gentleman and escort me~?"

Though he was originally planning to help Benienma set up an Enma-tei near their current location, Thomas didn't hesitate to reply, "Sure. I doubt you need one, but I don't mind accompanying you."

Exhaling a faint chuckle, Robin stared directly into Thomas's eyes as she remarked, "I'm actually a lot more vulnerable than I appear..."

Raising his brows, Thomas resisted the urge to express his doubts. Robin hadn't been made Crocodile's partner simply because of her knowledge and ability to read Poneglyphs. She had remarkable mastery of her Devil Fruit, so much so that she could effortlessly defeat the 'strongest' warrior of Alabasta in an instant.

Seeing through Thomas's thoughts, Robin mused, "You think too highly of me..." before shifting her gaze to Caenis and adding, "Compared to some of the other women around you, I'm fairly average."

Adopting a toothy grin, Caenis asserted, "You're a scholar. I'm a warrior. We may both be women, but our specializations are completely different. Comparing your strength to mine is just stupid. You won't find me pitting my knowledge of this world's history against yours."

Not expecting Caenis to be so 'reasonable,' Robin's eyes widened ever so slightly. She had a pretty good sense for other people's characters and thought Caenis to be the type that boasted unabashedly. It was rare for her to be wrong.

Worried that a fight might break out, Vivi promptly suggested returning to the palace. Thomas agreed with her, but as they were already at the site of the future Enma-tei, he had Benienma utilize her Inn Creation ability to construct an enormous bathhouse. Cobra had gifted him the ruined city of Erumalu as part of Vivi's 'dowry,' so Thomas intended to turn the former Green City into a metropolis even greater than Alubarna and the port city of Nanohana...

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Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Thomas gestured for Astolfo to come over so he could caress her alongside Vivi. He then noticed that Artoria was staring at them with a deadpan look on her face, but, as he was still a little perturbed by her inclusion in their group, he suppressed the urge to invite her over to join them...

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With Robin committing the Poneglyph to memory and Thomas's journal making a perfect copy of the text, the group returned to the Royal Palace for a quick audience with the King before returning to the Enma-tei. Cobra had already dispatched a preliminary workforce of six-thousand people to assist in reclaiming and eventually settling the city, but they still had a lot of work to do.

Unfortunately, unless Thomas paid off their debts, the Yokai within the Enma-tei could not leave its grounds. He had already done so with a few Oni, forming the Enma-tei's security forces, but he couldn't force them to do manual labor. His Bounty also prevented him from drawing too much attention to himself, so his options were to leave the reclamation to the people of Alabasta or abide by Benienma's suggestion to contract a group of merchants to operate outside the Enma-tei.

Since he would eventually need to create a fleet of ships to 'explain' how he was able to transport goods between the various Enma-tei, Thomas decided to follow Benienma's suggestion, investing 3.8 billion Berries in a small fleet of ships and enough people to crew them. This included a red-haired woman that reminded Thomas of Baiken from Guilty Gear. The two had strikingly similar appearances, but the woman was named Wang Zhi, a former smuggler-turned-Pirate Lord who eventually became an Oni due to introducing and spreading firearms throughout Southeast Asia. She even smuggled goods for Oda Nobunaga, putting her on a similar level as many 'modern' Heroic Spirits.

Though Wang Zhi alone had cost him nearly a billion Berries, Thomas believed her to be a sound investment as she possessed Voyager of the Storms and a form of Presence Concealment that applied to all ships within her fleet. By flipping themselves over, her ships could enter the Boundary between Hell and the Mortal World, a method remarkably similar to how people entered 'Davy Jones' Locker' in the Pirates of the Caribean movies. Their reflections could still be seen in the water, but they were impossible to interact with unless you had a similar ability to cross Boundaries.

With Wang Zhi's help, it only took three weeks for the area between the Enma-tei and the Sandora River to be transformed into a fully functional port, complete with several warehouses, a wharf, and a drydock. The rest of the city took much longer to reclaim, but the process gradually sped up as people from all over Alabasta migrated over to benefit from the Enma-tei's provisionally free food and baths.

In a mere three months, Erumalu went from being a half-buried ghost town to the fifth most populous city in all of Alabasta. During that time, Thomas remained hidden within the Enma-tei, dividing his time between training, supplying Mana to Caenis, and coordinating the formation of his burgeoning information network with Robin. Through her, he learned that most islands in the Grand Line, even Alabasta, had an underground family or Mafia managing the black market. Baroque Works had taken over that position during Crocodile's reign, but now that he was absent, there were a lot of people attempting to make a move on Alabasta.

Fortunately, as Cobra was concentrating forces in Nanohana, most of the people wishing to create a foothold within Alabasta were forced to sail up the Sandora River, invariably finding themselves at the revitalized Erumalu and, shortly after that, the doors of the Enma-tei. In their eyes, the latter was a prime choice for a base of operations, so Thomas, having changed his appearance and adopted the alias 'Tenno,' was rapidly gaining infamy in the underworld by crushing anyone that attempted to encroach on his territory and benefit from Alabasta's imminent economic boom. He even received a delegation from one of the Six Underworld Emperors, the one responsible for shipping, 'Deep Ocean Current' Umit.

Though Umit's group threatened to scuttle Meng Zhi's fleet if they didn't yield 30% of their total earnings, Thomas ignored their warning. Instead, he ordered Meng Zhi to sink any merchant or pirate ship lacking a permit to conduct trade in Alabasta's territorial water. This kicked off a miniature war between Thomas's and Umit's forces, but as the latter was never able to secure a foothold in the region, their skirmishes were 'very' one-sided. Umit had developed a unique method of Coating that allowed his ships to travel great distances under the sea, but, even with numerous Fishmen in his crew, his men were absolutely no match for Caenis, who, after sinking more than a hundred ships, earned the epithet 'Humanoid Sea King'...

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(A/N: Sasuga, Tenno-sama...)