Chapter 69: Exposure of the Wonder Pirates

Chapter 69: Exposure of the Wonder Pirates

Chapter 69 Exposure of the Wonder Pirates

Rayleigh sat in a small cot in the cargo ship's crew quarters with an old newspaper in hand. His fight against Vice Admiral Momonga and his 'minor contribution' to driving away Wild King from Gilliad island had been compiled into a page five story. Had Captain Bogard not made him look like a toddler, it might have become a page two or three story, but the current situation still fell within the plan's expectations.

His gains from the Bogard fight were worth far more than a second-page story, since it was pointless for him to have anything but a first-page story and he already had plans for just that.

Although he lost to Bogard, the man did not tell anyone he would take Rayleigh as a student and no one in the Marines had the balls to force Vice Admiral Garp's Number Two to do anything, and since he was not technically a Vice Admiral, no one pushed for Rayleigh to join the Marines after the match.

Even though he was not a Marine, he was still able to use the good reputation he gained from the lives saved on Gilliad and Goddess of Ice's recommendation to board this ship that would be robbed by Wonder Woman in a couple of hours.

With his previous entry in the news ensuring that he was no longer a no name, his next entry should be able to reach the first page. Of course, he would still ask Wonder Woman to give up the attack without a fight. If she really agreed, Rayleigh's ability to drive off the Wonder Pirates without a fight should still be a page two story, but he'd still need to get a front page entry as a swordsman to fulfill the conditions that Mihawk's tutelage required. That being said, Rayleigh did not feel he would need a plan B, since everything about Wonder Woman's personality showed that she was willful to the extreme.

Wonder Woman, just like Titan, Dragon Chef, and himself, was an Enhancer. She did not have a devil fruit but according to Goddess of Ice, she had the highest Haki and Nen proficiency in this half of the Grand Line and practiced a Vibration based Martial Art that heavily amplified the damage of every one of her punches. Considering how active she was, Wonder Woman also had the most live combat experience on this half of the Grand Line. Dyna Might picked a fight with her a few months ago and got One-Shotted. His explosions could not even leave a scratch through her Armament Haki and Ren.

There was of course something nagging at him. It really seemed like Wonder Woman was strong enough to survive in the second half of the Grand Line. So why was she staying here, robbing things? It would be one thing if she challenged the Vice Admirals for combat experience, but she always fled when one showed up, only beating up Rear Admirals and leaving them alive. It was obvious that she was avoiding the attention of the Admirals by pretending to run from the Vice Admirals, but why bother?

If it was another kind of Player, then Rayleigh wouldn't find it odd, but since Wonder Woman was an Enhancer, she should have the same drive to fight strong opponents since Enhancers got stronger after such fights. That meant she had to be after something that had more value than a good fight.

With his curiosity peaked, Rayleigh got up from his cot and did something he was told, practically at gunpoint, not to do when he got on the ship. He went to the Cargo hold.

Rayleigh erased his presence using Zetsu and Force Stealth. He was still visible, but not noticeable. After walking down a few flights of stairs, he passed by some men in suits that did not look like pushovers. They did not talk or pass the time speaking to each other, they simply stood and stared, so their attention could not be diverted as easily.

Before either could say anything, Rayleigh connected to the pair using his Empathy and said, "Nothing to see, nothing is wrong, go about your business." Rayleigh then made himself feel apathetic, calm, and disinterested, something he then transmitted to the pair using Mind Trick as he walked past them.

Both lost interest in him as he walked past their line of sight, which made them lose awareness of him thanks to his Force Stealth and lack of a presence.

After turning another corner and a long hall, Rayleigh found the inner ship entrance of the cargo bay. When the ship docked, the exterior of the ship would be opened to quickly unload the cargo, but inside the ship, this was the only entrance to this space while sailing.

The entrance had a very formidable looking lock on a metal door with a metal frame on what he now recognized as a metal wall disguised as a wooden one. Now that was interesting. He didn't feel the presence of any life on the other side, so there were no guards or slaves within, but what required so much security?

Rayleigh held the lock and used Psychometry. He saw the lock being set on the door, he saw the shape of the key, and he even saw the lock being assembled. Since he knew the internal mechanism, he could easily use some Telekinesis to shift the hidden pieces and unlock the bolt without needing to turn the tumbler or set the pins.

A usage of Force Muffle ensured that the popping of the lock and the opening of the door was not heard by others. When Rayleigh peered inside, he saw hundreds of rolls of silk. Was that it?

Not convinced, Rayleigh used telekinesis to move the rolls of silk and in doing so, revealed the giant, silk covered cube hidden behind the massive piles. Another usage of telekinesis removed the sheet and a massive cube made of some sort of bluish stone could be seen. On a single side was a large amount of unrecognizable symbols carved into the surface.

Not being able to resist, Rayleigh touched the cube with the intention of using Psychometry, but the moment he did, a Pop-Up message appeared in his Player Interface.

[You have Discovered an Easter Egg, the Instructional Poneglyph #3. As the first Player to touch it, a Treasure Map has been deposited into your Inventory. The Map cannot be returned to the Inventory once removed. In addition to the treasure, the first Player to find the treasure located on the Treasure Map will be awarded 10,000 Mission Points.]

Eh? This thing was an Easter Egg like the Tho Yors of Typhon? Rayleigh tried using Psychometry on the stone, but the information he could receive was being blocked. He tried using Shatterpoint to see the block's weak point, but even that was being blocked. It seemed that the Tavern didn't want Players to spoil the mystery of this thing so easily.

Rayleigh considered copying the lines of text on the stone, but he doubted he'd be able to do anything with them, so he returned the silk sheet over the block, set all the silk rolls back where they were, and exited the room, leaving it exactly like he had found it.

Another use of Mind Trick allowed Rayleigh to pass the guards a second time without being noticed or questioned, and he only started thinking about the Easter Egg after returning to his cot.

At least that explained why Wonder Woman was coming. With his current strength, Rayleigh could pass a 500~700 Point Tavern Mission a week as long as he didn't get unlucky, and he doubted many Players could say the same since he had a lot of advantages like his Psychometry for investigations and his speed for travel and escape. Even for him, 10,000 points would take four months to accumulate, so it wasn't a small sum. Mission Points could be used to purchase Easy Masteries, convert items into Inventory Items, and use the Player's Arena.

Maybe the reason Wonder Woman stayed in the shallow end of the kiddy pool was to find these Easter Eggs and use the points to fight in the Arena. A fight in the Arena was only really expensive the first time you purchased it. If Rayleigh paid to fight Netero again, it would only cost a fraction of the initial price since Rayleigh already knew most of Netero's skills. If he ever fought Netero and got him to go all out, revealing all of his skills, then the price of fighting him would be even cheaper.

For all Rayleigh knew, Wonder Woman could be sparring with Garp, the Admirals, and the Four Emperors of the New World every day. If that was the case, everything would make sense.

Of course, it was also possible that she was wasting points on frivolous and useless crap, but Rayleigh didn't think that was possible.

Rayleigh wondered if the other Players knew about these Easter Eggs. He recalled that the Player Shadowcat was a thief who could move through walls, so she might have discovered it.

After pondering for a bit, Rayleigh arrived at the most likely scenario. The guys in suits were agents of the World Government, so they were the ones responsible for moving these blocks. As for why they were being moved, Rayleigh guessed that it was Shadowcat's fault. If they discovered that someone who could swim through walls was looking for these things, then no amount of security was enough. They had to be moved, perhaps regularly.

So how did Wonder Woman know that this block would be moved on this ship on this day? Rayleigh had some suspicions. If he was right, then Wonder Woman would abort the attack without even appearing, so the show of him driving them away would never be seen.

Thankfully, Rayleigh had a way to ensure that didn't happen. He started reciting his Force Code. After some trial and error, Rayleigh figured that if he devoted sixteen Wills to reciting his Force Code at the same time, he only needed to recite it twice instead of three times. Once he had thirty-two Wills, he could devote them all to reciting the code and only need to recite it a single time to materialize the Empty Sword or the Sword of Babylon. Not useable during battle at the moment, but better than nothing for now.

Once the Empty Sword materialized in Rayleigh's hands, he automatically entered his Second Stage Zetsu, completely cutting himself off from the Force and his Aura. Why do this? Because it also had the effect of making him practically invisible to Clairvoyants and Precogs.

Several hours later, a High-Speed Luxury Yacht could be seen speeding toward the direction of the Cargo ship and the pair of Marine Vessels guarding it.

Wonder Woman sat in a comfortable chair lounging in the sun and looked to the side to see the other two Players in her crew. A skinny girl with her black hair tied into a ponytail played on a cellphone. It didn't have a signal but it did have a lot of games that worked without one. Next to her was a teen with long, auburn hair flowing in the wind and staring off into the distance. Wonder Woman asked her, "Do you See any problems?"

All Seeing Prophet shouted, "It's over! Let's go! Now!"

Wonder Woman was a lot more prudent than she led others to believe, so she heeded the advice of the woman she knew could peep into the future and jumped back to her yacht before ordering her helmswoman to sail away.

Glitter turned back to normal, got up from the floor, and shouted, "I can't believe that guy! I'm gonna get back at him one day."

All Seeing Prophet rolled her eyes and picked up the object that Rayleigh had thrown at Glitter. It was a familiar looking roll of paper. Wonder Woman recognized it immediately and said, "He gave us the Map?!"

All Seeing Prophet answered, "I tried to read his mind using my Devil Fruit but I got blocked. His Force Mastery is at the Jedi Master level. Inside his head, he told me that he had not looked at the map, that he had no interest in it, and that he would give it to us if I agreed to convince you to leave. You can't lie while inside your own head, so I knew he was telling the truth. He really didn't want the treasure and as long as we don't say anything, he won't either."

Wonder Woman looked perplexed and asked, "Then why didn't he just give us the map at the start?"

All Seeing Prophet turned her head away and said, "He wanted some good pictures."

"Pictures?"

It was at that moment that Glitter, who had gone inside, came back out with a change of clothes and handed them to Wonder Woman. Seeing these, Wonder Woman looked down and realized that her clothes had become a completely tattered mess, barely covering anything.

Once the realization hit her she shouted again, "PICTURES?!"

She asked herself how she hadn't noticed her state. Then she remembered what Rayleigh had said to her, 'You should pay more attention to our fight, and less attention to things that don't matter.'

After being told something that, at the time sounded like very good advice, she did stop thinking about anything but the fight, not noticing the state her clothes had been cut into afterwards. In hindsight, it had obviously been a Jedi Mind Trick. Swordsman actually used a Jedi Mind Trick on her. Before that point, he had not targeted her clothes so she had no reason to think that he would have stooped so low.

Glitter, trying to stay positive, said, "At least we don't owe him a favor anymore." She was upset at the fact that Rayleigh had moved her while she was in the form of a diamond. It didn't take a genius to realize that she could have been tossed overboard just as easily as being tilted over, and she could only grumble at the fact that she forgot that Swordsman could do that.

All Seeing Prophet, someone who could See what a debt to Swordsman really meant, shook her head. "No. It would have been one thing if we really did leave when he asked, but we did not and only left after he got his pictures and gave us the Map in exchange. The debt remains."

Wonder Woman turned to All Seeing Prophet and asked, "How bad is it?"

All Seeing Prophet awkwardly shrugged and said, "Glass Half-full, at least you'll make the front page of tomorrow's newspaper."

Wonder Woman's scream of frustration echoed to the sky.

Rayleigh, back on the Cargo ship, received glowing commendations from the Merchants and Cipher Pol Operatives. Rayleigh was surprised that the latter did not ask him to join them since he figured they would want to recruit him after the Marines failed to do so, but he didn't know that Cipher Pol only recruited children and orphans so they could be brainwashed from a young age.

Although he had an empty feeling from the quality of the fight, at least he confirmed that his mental defenses against mind readers worked just fine. After that incident with the Phantom Troupe, he'd never been able to test if the defensive measures he put into place had any effect. The result was that the Peeper wasn't able to see his thoughts, memories, or multiple instances of Wills which let him keep that a secret.

Even if the fight was lacking compared to his expectations, Rayleigh was at least satisfied that the cameraman confirmed that he got a few golden shots. His eyes were shining brightly as this was the first time Wonder Woman had been defeated and driven back by someone who wasn't a Vice Admiral. It was also the first time someone had harmed her clothes since her Ren usually deflected attacks and kept her clothes safe. From the perspective of the witnesses, it seemed that Rayleigh was unable to injure her at first, then got stronger and was able to cut her clothes. If he got even stronger, perhaps he could have cut her down, so it made sense that she ran away at the time.

No one thought that she had run because of the state of her clothes since it looked like she hadn't cared about them during the fight. As long as the story kept this in mind, it would not make Rayleigh look like a complete scoundrel who tears off the clothes of every pirate he meets.

Rayleigh's next task was to find Mihawk. This was the main reason he gave up the treasure map. He didn't have time to look for treasure and had much better things to do, like learn Haki from this world's number one swordsman.

There was the slight issue that Rayleigh had no idea where Mihawk lived and the fact that he often traveled randomly didn't help matters. For anyone else, this task would be a thousand times harder than entering the Grand Line. For Rayleigh, he just had to rely on the almighty power that was his Force GPS.

After receiving the thanks of the various parties and confirming in the Pirate Chat Room that Wonder Woman hadn't said anything, Rayleigh started meditating on the path that would lead him to Mihawk.

The next day, as predicted, Rayleigh and his long sword appeared on the front page of the Grand Line News along side the determined looking Wonder Woman. Rayleigh did not cut anything important and the picture was at best PG-13, but the partially revealed skin left a lot to the imagination and Wonder Woman's notoriety did the rest.

With that paper in hand, Rayleigh picked another merchant ship to guard during the voyage and headed off once more. Three days into the journey, Rayleigh jumped off the ship and started sprinting along the water in a certain direction, much to the crew's confusion.

A half hour of running later, Rayleigh encountered a misty, muddy, muggy island that looked right out of the set of a Tim Burton movie. Somewhat close to the shore was a massive castle. Since the Force had led him to this island, Rayleigh wondered if the occupant knew where Mihawk was.

*Author's Note*

Kuraigana Island is on the Paradise side of the Grand Line, so this is possible through the almighty power that is Force GPS.

Wonder Woman represents a Player that is just trying to have fun. She bought the "Enhancer Aura Type, Don't Change Personality" trait during character creation, so Rayleigh completely misread her intentions as what he would do. She is an above average Player at best. In the beginning, there won't be much of a difference between above average players like Wonder Woman and skilled players who practice a lot like Goddess of Ice. Later though, there will be a vast difference. Talent only takes you so far in this game.

The only time I switch to another person's perspective is for comedic value, like showing Nick Fury getting frustrated. Even then, I will only ever do it if the other person is in the vicinity of Rayleigh or thinking about him or talking about him. This story only has One MC. Everyone else will have their adventures, but I prefer to leave those to the reader's imagination.

Using the Force to see the future doesn't work for people who 100% lack the Force, this is canon. I used this to justify that when Rayleigh uses Second Stage Zetsu and completely cuts himself off from the Force, he is invisible to those looking using the Force and other similar means. This means that when he stays in this state, he is invisible to all means of future sight. When not invisible, he is fuzzy to future sight due to his massive presence in the Force making it difficult to see through, though it gets clearer the closer to the present the attempted prediction is.

There will be 5 Prophets, all girls, one for Each Class besides Ninjas. I can't think of a single way that the Ninjas can see into the future. The Prophets can't do much at the moment but will be very impressive by the start of the MCU Arc.

For now, it's finally time to learn the sword from Mihawk.