ShayleeDup
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- Parts 28
A ship doesn't sink. A ship waits.
For eleven years, the most legendary vessel in the history of the world lay hidden beneath the surface of a forgotten sea - the Oro Jackson, the ship that carried Gol D. Roger to the end of the Grand Line, the ship that should have been lost when its captain died on the execution platform in Loguetown. The world moved on. The crew scattered. The legend faded. And the ship - built from the wood of the Treasure Tree Adam, the rarest and strongest timber in the world - slept underwater, in a graveyard of broken hulls and forgotten names, and waited.
She waited for someone to find her.
Raven is twelve. No parents. No home. No last name that anyone remembers. He survives in the wrecks of dead ships - scavenging, reading, staying invisible - because invisible is safe and safe is all he's ever had. He doesn't trust people. He doesn't trust food he didn't watch someone make. He trusts charts and books and the quiet competence of a mind that learned early that the only person you can rely on is yourself.
Then he finds a ship.
She surfaces in the graveyard. Three masts. Lion figurehead. Adam wood hull. She's beautiful, impossible, and completely empty. Raven walks on board because he's curious and the door is open. He explores the ship - the galley, the chart room, the crew corridor with its thirty-eight brass-plated doors, the captain's cabin with its bed and its shelves and its drawer.In the drawer is a letter. And a stone.
The letter is from Gol D. Roger. The Pirate King. Written before his execution, instructions for whoever found the ship, a letter and a revival stone
Raven doesn't run. He reads the letter twice. He takes the stone. He finds the grave. He digs - with his hands, with tools, with the stubborn, methodical persistence of a boy who has never had a reason to do anything and has finally found one. He places the stone on the dead man's chest. He steps back. He waits.