Year One – Whispers and Wind
The Byakko soared above the clouds, a gleaming ghost in the skies of West Blue. No sails, no visible means of propulsion, only the low, persistent hum of the rear propeller and the twin side rotors spinning through wind that bent to Victor's will. Below, the ocean stretched endlessly, dotted with archipelagos, merchant convoys, pirate flotillas, and the isolated homes of people who had forgotten the reach of the World Government.
Victor stood at the bow, arms crossed, his coat rippling behind him. Beside him, Robin sat with her knees hugged to her chest. Her eyes, once deadened by loss and grief, now held a soft, uncertain spark.
She hadn't smiled yet. Not fully. But sometimes, when she was reading one of the history books Victor scavenged from sunken libraries or abandoned forts, her lips would twitch. And that was enough.
Their journey across the West Blue was not one of war or vengeance. Not yet. It was one of healing. Of quiet adventures.
They stopped at forgotten islands, helped farmers whose homes were destroyed by storms, saved villages from wild beasts mutated by Devil Fruits, even aided a drifting convoy from a collapsing nation-state. Robin watched Victor from the shadows of each encounter. Watched how he never asked for thanks, never gave his name. He only moved like a phantom—swift, silent, sure.
They didn't talk much in those early months. Victor had always been silent by nature, and Robin, though eloquent, carried a thousand unshed tears. But there were moments—quiet ones—where they shared a meal, read side by side, or stared into the fire while the Byakko hovered over a sea of stars.
One night, over a simple dinner of grilled fish and rice, Robin broke the silence.
"Why are you helping me?"
Victor didn't look up from his plate. "Because you survived."
Robin tilted her head. "Many did."
Victor finally met her eyes. "Not many still hope."
Robin didn't answer, but her fingers curled gently around the edge of her bowl. That night, for the first time, she slept without nightmares.
By the end of the first year, stories had begun to circulate through the West Blue.
A flying ship.
It was always above the clouds. Merchants spotted it while crossing trade routes. Pirates claimed it followed them through storms. Even a few Marine ships reported seeing a silhouette gliding above them before the wind shifted, pushing them off course.
The Marines took notice. Bases in Illusia, Briss, and even parts of South Blue began dispatching scout vessels with modified skyward cannons. Surveillance birds were released from the World Government's covert towers.
But the Byakko was never caught.
When Victor didn't want to be seen, he bent the wind to scatter sound and light. Radar-style Den Den Mushi tech couldn't track what didn't echo. And with Robin's growing knack for maps and decoding naval signals, they always stayed one step ahead.
A Marine captain from New Haven wrote in his report:
"It passed above us without sound. The wind went silent. Our lookout fainted from fear. No crew, no sails. Just the shape of a leviathan that vanished like smoke."
Some said it was a ghost ship.
Others said it was an experiment—perhaps Vegapunk's secret project.
But those who had been saved by the ship never forgot. In coastal towns and isolated islands, children drew sketches of a white ship with wings like blades. Old men told stories over sake about the day the sky opened and a guardian descended.
Victor never stayed long.
He left behind repaired roads, healed wounds, and the silent comfort of a protector unseen.
And slowly, Robin changed.
Year Two – The Girl Who Laughed
They found an island garden in the middle of nowhere. It had once been a forgotten world government outpost, now overgrown with wild roses and moss. Birds nested in the cannon tubes. Trees burst from the ruins.
Victor landed the Byakko on the cliffside and they stayed there for two weeks.
Robin explored it like a child discovering a dream. She catalogued the plants, read what was left of the old books, and named the waterfall at the center of the island "Oharan Falls."
"It's not really part of Ohara," she said one evening as they sat beside it, her feet dangling in the stream, "but I think the trees would've liked it."
Victor said nothing. Just nodded.
Robin smiled.
It was the first true smile.
Later that week, they saved a village from a fever plague. Robin, who had once studied medicine with her mother, worked tirelessly alongside the local doctors. She taught them how to boil instruments properly, how to make natural salves.
When it was over, the mayor offered them a barrel of the island's finest fruit wine.
Victor declined.
Robin didn't. She drank, laughed, and told the children stories of the sea.
Victor watched, silent, as her past began to loosen its grip.
But the whispers didn't stop.
By the end of the second year, the Yonko had heard.
Big Mom's network of chefs and sweet-sellers had picked up on stories of "an angel's ship" that hovered above sugar islands.
Kaido's brutes in the Grand Line heard from ex-pirates who fled to West Blue: a ship that never touched water.
Shanks heard from travelers and merchants, intrigued more by the idea than the fear.
And Whitebeard, ever the family man, told his sons "You don't have to worry. I am sure that this is a new player in the seas. As long as I am here, there is nothing to worry about.
They all uncovered fragments.
"The ship doesn't cast a shadow."
"The girl on board has dark hair and eyes older than the sea."
"The man wears no uniform, but the sea respects him."
But nothing definitive.
The Byakko had become a myth. A ghost ship that lifted the broken and vanished before power could lay chains upon it.
Victor and Robin watched the skies as they flew through lightning storms. They danced on wind that no chart could track.
And in time, Robin began laughing freely.
Not often.
But enough.
Their bond deepened—not as soldier and ward, nor even protector and survivor. But as two people once severed from the world, trying to rebuild something that felt like a future.
Victor never asked about her trauma again.
And Robin never pried into his past.
They existed in the present, in the sky, far above the reach of sorrow.
Until the day Robin found an old journal hidden in a merchant's crate. One with a worn leather cover and the symbol of a sun surrounded by words in the ancient tongue.
Her fingers trembled.
She looked up at Victor.
"There's more. I think... I think there are more survivors."
Victor's gaze sharpened. "Where?"
"I don't know yet. But this was hidden on a trade ship from the North. And the dialect matches an Ohara scholar's. We weren't alone."
Victor turned to the controls of the Byakko.
Wind began to gather.
Robin stood beside him, fire lighting her eyes for the first time in years.
"Let's find them."
The ship lifted.
And once again, the skies of West Blue bent to a legend reborn.