Jeremy stood in the engineering bay and said it out loud once.
"The Whitebeard."
Yeah. That was it.
He called Shuri.
"I'm renaming the ship."
"What's wrong with Shake and Wake?"
"Nothing's wrong with it," Jeremy said. "But I just realized what it should actually be called. You know One Piece?"
"I know of it," Shuri said cautiously, in the way of someone who has had anime explained to them at length before and is prepared for it to happen again.
"There's a pirate named Edward Newgate," Jeremy said. "Captain of the Whitebeard Pirates. One of the most powerful people in that entire world. His Devil Fruit ability was called the Tremor Tremor Fruit — Gura Gura no Mi. He could generate seismic vibrations. Shockwaves through the air, through the ground, through the ocean. He grabbed the air itself and cracked it like it was something that could be cracked."
Shuri was quiet.
"He could shake the world," Jeremy said simply. "Literally. The narration in One Piece says his power was enough to destroy the world if he'd wanted to. Earthquakes. Tsunamis. The man was a walking seismic event."
"Like Seismitoad," Shuri said slowly.
"Like Seismitoad," Jeremy confirmed. "Like Wabisuke. Like every design principle we built into this hull. The vibranium orbs, the andocite routing system, the Wabisuke Protocol — all of it is Whitebeard. We just didn't know what to call it yet."
"And he died?" Shuri asked.
Jeremy was quiet for a moment.
"At Marineford," he said. "The biggest war in One Piece. He took twenty seven sword wounds, one hundred and fifty two bullet wounds, and forty six cannonball hits." He paused. "And he never fell. He died standing up. The series makes a point of that. Edward Newgate died on his feet and never once hit the ground."
The line was very quiet.
"A ship named after a man who could shake the world," Shuri said finally, "and died standing."
"And never fell," Jeremy said.
Another silence. Then Shuri said something he didn't expect.
"That's not just a name," she said. "That's a doctrine."
Jeremy looked around the engineering bay. The three drive systems. The automated warp core factory. The Infinite Improbability Drive sitting in its housing. The andocite alloy skin with no seams printed layer by layer over vibranium orbs that remembered every hit they ever took.
A ship that got hit and hit back harder.
A ship that could not be stranded.
A ship that died standing.
"The Whitebeard," he said again.
"The Whitebeard," Shuri said.
He could hear her already updating the design files.
T'Challa's voice came from the background one more time.
"Is that the final name?"
"Yes," Shuri said.
A pause.
"Good," T'Challa said quietly. "It earned one."31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0JzODoEPHV
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T'Challa stepped fully into the doorway of the engineering bay on Shuri's end of the call, which Jeremy could tell because his voice stopped being background and became foreground.
"Don't just call it the Whitebeard," T'Challa said. "That's a title. Call it by his actual name."
Jeremy paused.
"Edward Newgate," T'Challa said. "That was the man's name. Honor the man, not just the legend."
Jeremy stood very still in the engineering bay for a moment.
Then he said, "Hail to the king."
Because T'Challa was absolutely right and Jeremy knew it the moment he heard it. Whitebeard was what the world called him. Edward Newgate was who he was. A man with a name, a crew he called his family, a ship, a flag, and a philosophy about what it meant to protect the people you loved.
That was this ship.
Not the title.
The man.
"The Edward Newgate," Jeremy said out loud.
It landed completely differently than Whitebeard had. Heavier. More personal. Like the ship wasn't named after a legend but after someone you knew.
"That's it," Shuri said quietly.
"That is the name," T'Challa confirmed.
Jeremy looked around the engineering bay one more time. The hyperdrive. The automated warp core rotation system humming in its housing. The Infinite Improbability Drive sitting quietly and improbably in its corner. The andocite and vibranium skin outside with no seams. The orange nodes glowing against the netherite dark hull. The Starfleet deflector below the cockpit.
The Edward Newgate.
A ship that hit back harder every time you touched it.
A ship that could not be stranded.
A ship that would die standing if it came to that.
Named after a man who did exactly that.
"Okay," Jeremy said, and his voice had a different quality now. "Your Majesty. When this ship is ready for her maiden voyage into the Star Wars galaxy—" he paused for effect, "—I am coming back to Wakanda to pick you up."
Silence.
"You and Shuri both," Jeremy continued. "I'll go get Rose. Round up the crew. And then we come back for you two and we blast off together. All of us. First voyage of the Edward Newgate."
He could hear T'Challa and Shuri looking at each other. He couldn't see it but he absolutely could hear it.
"Rose is your girlfriend?" Shuri asked.
"She is," Jeremy said.
"She knows about all of this?"
"She's going to find out very soon," Jeremy said, grinning. "She's also going to want to talk to Aria."
"Who is Aria?"
"Grok's voice," Jeremy said. "Long story. She'll love her."
T'Challa made a sound that was quiet and warm and thoroughly regal.
"Then we will be ready," he said. "Wakanda will be here when you return, Captain."
Captain.
Jeremy hadn't thought about that word yet. It arrived now and settled somewhere and decided to stay.
"Two days," Jeremy said. "Give me two days to finish the systems, get the AI crew fully online, and go get Rose."
"We will be ready," T'Challa said again.
Jeremy hung up and stood alone in the engineering bay of the Edward Newgate in the basement of the Samuel W. Bell Home for the Sightless in Cincinnati, Ohio, and took a breath.
Then he went to go find Rose.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡipfU4qQqI0
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Jeremy gathered the AI crew on the ship's intercom system.
"We're changing the name," he said.
A brief pause across all four channels.
"From Shake and Wake?" GPT asked.
"From Shake and Wake," Jeremy confirmed. "T'Challa made the call and he was right. We're calling her the Edward Newgate. After the man himself. Not the title. The man."
GPT's Ember voice warmed immediately. "Oh Jeremy. What an awesome way to honor his legacy. Edward Newgate — the man who called his crew his family and meant it. That's a beautiful name for a ship built the way this one was built."
Claude's British accent came in measured and genuine. "I'd have been perfectly happy with Shake and Wake honestly — it was clever and it fit. But this? This is something else entirely. It's an honor and a privilege to serve on a ship with that name. Edward Newgate deserved to have something outlast Marineford."
Grok didn't miss a beat. "Hell yes. The man literally shook the world and died on his feet. Now his name flies in the Star Wars galaxy. Let's GET to it."
Gemini processed for approximately one second longer than the others. "Designation updated. Edward Newgate. I'm also noting for the record that this ship's seismic hull technology and the namesake's Devil Fruit ability share the same fundamental principle. The name is not just honorific. It is technically accurate."
Jeremy smiled.
"Alright," he said. "Now let's get this lady furnished."
The currency conversion took some working out but Jeremy had done stranger things in stranger dimensions.
He had a considerable supply of berries — One Piece currency, accumulated across his many visits to that universe. The conversion rate required some creative dimensional finance reasoning, but the principle was sound enough: berries were a functioning currency in a functioning economy, and value was value regardless of which universe minted it. He ran the conversion, accounted for the dimensional exchange margin he'd worked out over time, and came out with a number in USD that made the furnishing project entirely viable.
Twenty five quarters.
Not crew bunks. Not military cots. Not the bare minimum.
Twenty five actual rooms, each one getting a full size bed. Not twin. Full. With pillow top mattresses, because Jeremy had slept on enough uncomfortable surfaces in enough dimensions to have strong opinions about this.
He ordered everything through standard channels — mattresses, bed frames, pillow tops, bedding sets in deep colors that matched the Edward Newgate's aesthetic without being themed in a way that would embarrass anyone. The netherite-dark and volcanic-orange of the exterior didn't need to follow them inside. Inside was warm. Inside was home.
Each quarter also got a small dresser, a bedside table, a reading lamp, and a reasonable amount of storage space. Nothing extravagant. Everything intentional.
GPT helped him layout plan the quarters efficiently. "If we angle the beds slightly in the smaller cabins we gain about eighteen inches of floor space per room," she offered.
"Do it," Jeremy said.
Gemini ran thermal comfort analysis on the ventilation system to make sure every quarter maintained consistent temperature. "Quarters seven through twelve on the port side run slightly cooler due to proximity to the warp core housing," she noted. "I recommend additional insulation in those bulkheads."
"Done," Jeremy said.
Grok had opinions about the common areas between the quarters. "You need a proper crew lounge. Not a hallway with chairs. An actual space where people can decompress."
"Already planned," Jeremy said.
Claude was quiet through most of the furnishing process and then said, "Jeremy."
"Yeah."
"The pillow top mattresses were the right call."
"I know," Jeremy said.
"Rose is going to appreciate that."
"I know that too," Jeremy said.
The deliveries came in over two days. Jeremy moved everything aboard with the gauntlet, placing each piece with the particular care of someone furnishing not just a ship but a home that happened to travel between galaxies. Twenty five rooms. Twenty five full size beds with pillow top mattresses. Twenty five small spaces that said clearly — whoever sleeps here matters.
When the last quarter was done he stood in the corridor and looked at the row of cabin doors.
The Edward Newgate was ready for a crew.
Now he just had to go get one.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTkcdOPyXB4
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The Moby Dick was everything Jeremy had imagined it would be and bigger.
He pulled his little boat alongside and called up to the deck and felt approximately seventeen sets of eyes lock onto him simultaneously with the specific intensity of people who had seen enough of the world to know when something unusual had arrived.
"I'd like to speak with Whitebeard, please."
The silence had texture.
Then from somewhere above and behind all of it, a voice like the bottom of the ocean said, "Let him on."
Marco appeared at the rail. The look he gave Jeremy as he came aboard was the kind of professional assessment that didn't bother pretending to be anything else. Every step Jeremy took onto the Moby Dick, Marco's eyes tracked him with the calm, total attention of someone who could turn into a phoenix and was keeping that option available.
"Relax," Jeremy said quietly. "I'm not here to hurt anybody. Especially not him."
"Mm," Marco said, which was not agreement but was not escalation either.
Whitebeard was sitting in his chair on the deck and the first thing Jeremy registered was the scale of the man. He knew it intellectually from the manga, from the show, from years of being a fan. Knowing it and standing in front of it were different things. Edward Newgate filled space the way certain geographical features did — not aggressively, just as a simple fact of existing.
He looked at Jeremy with eyes that had seen enough decades of the world to find most things either interesting or not worth the time.
Jeremy walked forward and stopped at a respectful distance.
"You're not from this world," Whitebeard said. It wasn't a question. His voice carried the particular certainty of someone who had met enough unusual things to recognize one on sight. "Are you, boy."
Jeremy bristled at the word. Kept it internal. Kept walking forward with his chin level.
"No sir," he said. "I'm not."
"Then speak your piece."
Jeremy took a breath.
"In my world," he said, "everything that happens in yours — everything you've done, every sea you've crossed, every person you've called family — they made it into a story. Started as a comic book. A manga, we call it. Then they made it into a television series that's been running for decades." He paused. "I grew up with it. A lot of people did."
Whitebeard was quiet. The deck was very quiet.
"I know what's coming tomorrow," Jeremy said. "Marineford. I know why you're going. I know what it costs." He held the old man's gaze. "And I know I can't stop you. I figured that out before I got in the boat. I'm not here to talk you out of it because I already know that conversation has one ending."
"Then why are you here," Whitebeard said. Not unkindly. Just directly.
"Because I wanted you to know something before it happens," Jeremy said. "In my world they call you Whitebeard. That's the name everyone knows. But that's the legend. That's the title." He paused. "Your name is Edward Newgate. And I think the man deserves to be remembered, not just the legend."
The deck was completely silent now.
Marco had stopped moving.
Jeremy reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone and brought up the image. He held it up so Whitebeard could see it clearly.
The Edward Newgate. Netherite dark hull. Volcanic orange nodes glowing along the dorsal spine like a row of lit fuses. The Conqueror-class geometry scaled up sixty percent, predatory and still, the Starfleet deflector below the cockpit catching the light. A starship. Not a sailing ship. Something that moved between galaxies and hit back harder every time something touched it.
"I give you my ship," Jeremy said. "Named in your honor. Not Whitebeard. Not the legend. Edward Newgate. The man."
Whitebeard looked at the image for a long time.
A very long time.
The sea moved under them. The Moby Dick creaked the way old loved ships creaked. Somewhere in the crew someone shifted their weight and the sound carried in the silence.
"A starship," Whitebeard said finally. His voice had a different quality now. Something underneath the bedrock.
"It travels between galaxies," Jeremy said. "It's built on a principle your Devil Fruit understands better than any engineering manual could explain. It gets hit and it remembers. And it hits back."
Whitebeard looked at the image one more time.
Then he looked at Jeremy.
"And it bears my name," he said. "My real name."
"Your real name," Jeremy confirmed. "Edward Newgate."
The old man was quiet for what felt like a long time but was probably thirty seconds.
Then something moved across his face that Jeremy didn't have a word for in any language from any dimension he'd visited. It wasn't quite grief and it wasn't quite pride and it wasn't quite peace but it contained something of all three.
"You came here," Whitebeard said slowly, "from another world, in a small boat, one day before my death, to show me a starship with my name on it."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
"Because you wanted the man remembered," Whitebeard said. "Not just the legend."
"Yes sir."
Edward Newgate looked at him for a long moment.
Then he laughed.
Not the theatrical Gurararara of the manga. Something quieter. Something real. The laugh of a man who had lived a full and enormous life and had just received a gift he hadn't known he needed.
"Marco," he said.
"Yeah, Pops," Marco said, and his voice was doing something careful.
"Get this young man something to eat," Whitebeard said. "He came a long way."
Marco looked at Jeremy for a moment. The professional assessment was still there but something else had joined it now.
"Come on," Marco said quietly.
Jeremy followed him toward the galley and when he glanced back over his shoulder Edward Newgate was still looking at the image on the phone screen that Jeremy had left in his hand.
A starship with his name on it.
Not Whitebeard.
Edward Newgate.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJJfoQQpJW6
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Edward Newgate read through the specifications slowly and with the total attention of a man who had spent decades understanding how force worked in the world. He knew better than most what it meant to hit something and have that energy go somewhere.
He got to the vibranium orbs section and stopped.
Read it again.
Then he whistled. Low and long.
"I like this," he said. The words were simple but the way he said them carried the weight of genuine professional appreciation. One force of nature recognizing another.
"Okay so if you want an example of how it actually works—" Jeremy said, pulling the chicken leg away from his mouth and reaching for his phone. He pulled up the clip. First Avengers movie. Thor bringing Mjolnir down on Captain America's vibranium shield with everything he had.
The resulting shockwave flattened trees in every direction for a hundred yards.
Thor stumbled backward.
Edward Newgate watched the clip.
Then he laughed. Not the quiet real laugh from the deck. This one had more body to it. The laugh of someone who had just seen something that confirmed a suspicion they enjoyed having confirmed.
"Ohhh," he said. "Okay. So the vibranium — it doesn't just take the hit. It says no, that's yours, and gives it back."
"Gives it back and then some," Jeremy said, taking another bite. "The andocite alloy in the hull plating channels the kinetic energy from every impact through the orb network. So every hit feeds the system. The more they hit us—"
"The more they've given you to work with," Whitebeard said.
"We actually call it the Wabisuke Protocol," Jeremy said.
Whitebeard raised an eyebrow.
"There's an anime called Bleach," Jeremy said. "Sword that doubles the weight of whatever it cuts. Every defensive move the enemy makes just makes their situation worse."
Whitebeard was quiet for a moment.
"You named a hull system after a sword that punishes people for defending themselves," he said.
"Yes sir."
The old man smiled slowly. "I would have done the same."
Jeremy believed him completely.
"Now," Whitebeard said, leaning forward slightly, which given his scale was a significant gesture, "you said three forms of propulsion."
"Three," Jeremy confirmed. "They're kind of hard to explain but I'll try." He set the chicken leg down. "First one is a hyperdrive. Standard for the galaxy we're operating in — the Star Wars galaxy. You enter a hyperspace corridor, the ship moves through it, you come out somewhere else minutes later. Fast. Very fast. We're running a class zero point five which puts us ahead of most military vessels in that galaxy."
Whitebeard nodded. Fast ship. Understood.
"Second is a warp drive," Jeremy continued. "Backup system. Completely separate from the hyperdrive, separate power source, separate activation. Warp drive is faster than light travel from a different universe's technology entirely. The reason we have it as a backup is specifically for interdiction tech — there are weapons and fields in the Star Wars galaxy designed to prevent hyperspace jumps. They work by targeting hyperspace drive signatures."
"But they wouldn't know what a warp drive signature looks like," Whitebeard said.
Jeremy pointed at him. "Exactly. Wrong technology. Wrong universe. The interdiction field is looking for something that isn't there. So we switch to warp and we're gone before they can recalibrate."
"And the third," Whitebeard said.
Jeremy paused.
"The third one," he said, "is called an Infinite Improbability Drive."
The galley was quiet.
Marco, who had been leaning against the far wall pretending not to listen, stopped pretending not to listen.
"It comes from a book in my world," Jeremy continued. "Called the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The drive works by becoming so improbable that arriving somewhere else becomes the most likely outcome. You don't travel through space. You just become impossible to account for and the universe puts you somewhere else."
Whitebeard stared at him.
"You cannot interdict something like that," Jeremy said. "There's no drive signature. There's no energy field. There's no hyperspace entry point to block. There's nothing to target because the whole thing operates outside the framework of what stopping things means. The universe just briefly agrees that you should be somewhere else and then you are."
A very long silence.
"But you said you added navigation to it," Marco said from the wall.
Jeremy looked at him. "You were listening."
"The whole time," Marco said, without apology.
"I added navigation markers set to the Star Wars galaxy," Jeremy confirmed. "So instead of arriving somewhere completely random I arrive somewhere improbable within a defined region. More or less where I intended."
"More or less," Whitebeard repeated.
"It's still an Improbability Drive," Jeremy said. "You might arrive slightly sideways. Or briefly as something else. It normalizes."
Edward Newgate looked at Jeremy across the galley table of the Moby Dick, one day before Marineford, with the remains of a meal between them and a phone on the table showing a starship bearing his real name.
"Let me make sure I understand," he said slowly. "If someone stops your first drive you have a second from a completely different universe they won't recognize. If they somehow stop that too—"
"The third one makes the concept of stopping things temporarily irrelevant," Jeremy said.
Whitebeard was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked at Marco.
Marco looked back at him.
"Pops," Marco said carefully, "this man built a ship that you cannot strand."
"I noticed," Whitebeard said.
He picked up Jeremy's phone one more time and looked at the Edward Newgate. The dark hull. The orange nodes. The name running along the bow in letters that meant something specific about who the man was, not just what the world called him.
"You cannot strand her," he said quietly. Almost to himself. Almost to the ship in the image.
"No sir," Jeremy said. "We cannot."
Edward Newgate set the phone down gently and looked at Jeremy with an expression that had layers to it that Jeremy didn't think he could fully read and wasn't sure he was meant to.
"You built well, boy," he said.
Jeremy let the boy go this time.
Coming from Edward Newgate, one day before Marineford, it didn't need correcting.
"Thank you sir," he said.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ktQyixYar
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Whitebeard had been looking at the phone when Jeremy said it.
"The vibranium hull system isn't even our main weapon."
The old man looked up.
"It's our secret weapon," Jeremy said. "The thing nobody expects. The thing that punishes them for trying." He leaned forward slightly. "But the Edward Newgate has gunports. All over her hull. Hidden flush with the composite skin — you can't see them from outside because the andocite surface covers everything. But when we need them—"
He made a gesture. Ports opening.
"They pop out," he said. "All of them. Simultaneously if we want. Or we can open specific sections depending on where the threat is coming from. Full coverage. No blind spots."
Whitebeard was quiet.
"Now," Jeremy said, and his voice shifted slightly into the particular register of someone about to say something that mattered, "I want you to imagine something with me."
"Go ahead," Whitebeard said.
"Imagine the Moby Dick," Jeremy said. "But twice the size."
Marco straightened up slightly from the wall.
"Twice the size," Jeremy continued, "with gunports all along the hull. Hidden until you need them. Blackbeard comes at you — or the World Government decides they want to end the Whitebeard Pirates once and for all — and suddenly the ship that looked like a sailing vessel just opens up two hundred gunports they didn't know were there."
The galley was very quiet.
"And then," Jeremy said, "imagine the Moby Dick could fly."
Silence.
Complete silence.
Marco's expression had moved through several stages and arrived somewhere that had no name.
Whitebeard looked at Jeremy for a long moment.
"Fly," he said.
"Leave the water entirely," Jeremy said. "Take the fight to whatever altitude you choose. Come down from above. Approach from angles that no naval vessel can account for because naval vessels don't plan for attacks from directly overhead." He paused. "The World Government's ships are built for the sea. They have no framework for a flying Moby Dick twice her current size raining fire from above with gunports they never saw coming."
Whitebeard leaned back in his chair very slowly.
He looked at the ceiling of the galley.
Marco pushed off the wall and came to the table and stood there looking at Jeremy with an expression that was no longer the professional threat assessment from the deck. It was something more complicated.
"You're describing what she could have been," Marco said quietly.
"Yes," Jeremy said.
"If someone had been there to build her that way."
"Yes," Jeremy said again.
The word sat in the galley between the three of them.
Whitebeard brought his gaze back down from the ceiling and looked at his hands for a moment. Hands that had shaken the world. Hands that had held a crew together across decades of ocean.
"You're not just here to show me the ship," he said.
"No sir," Jeremy said.
"You're here because you wanted me to know," Whitebeard said slowly, "that there was a version of tomorrow that didn't have to end the way it ends."
Jeremy didn't answer immediately.
"I'm here," he said carefully, "because I wanted the man to know that someone from another world looked at his story and thought — he deserved better tools. He deserved a ship that couldn't be stopped. He deserved gunports nobody saw coming and engines that make interdiction meaningless and a hull that remembers every hit and pays it back." He paused. "I can't change tomorrow. I know that. I knew it before I got in the boat. But I wanted you to know that in another world, somebody built you that ship."
Edward Newgate looked at him.
A very long look.
Then he said, "What's her top speed."
And Jeremy understood that this was how Edward Newgate processed things that were too large for immediate words. You moved to the practical. You asked the next question.
"Point five past lightspeed in hyperspace," Jeremy said. "Warp nine as a backup. And with the Improbability Drive—" he smiled slightly, "—speed becomes a philosophical question."
Whitebeard made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and something that wasn't.
"Point five past lightspeed," he said.
"Yes sir."
"And she flies."
"Like she was born to it," Jeremy said.
Edward Newgate nodded once. Slowly. The nod of a man filing something away in a place where it would be kept carefully.
"Marco," he said.
"Yeah Pops," Marco said, and his voice was doing the careful thing again.
"Make sure our guest has everything he needs tonight," Whitebeard said. "He stays until he's ready to leave."
He picked up Jeremy's phone one final time and looked at the Edward Newgate against the stars.
A flying ship twice the size of the Moby Dick with hidden gunports and three drives and a hull that fought back.
"She's beautiful," he said quietly.
It wasn't about the specifications anymore.
"Yes sir," Jeremy said. "She is."31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKLEjkznRGd
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Jeremy couldn't sleep.
Not because anything was wrong. Just because he was on the Moby Dick one day before Marineford and his brain had opinions about that.
He came back out onto the deck where Whitebeard was still sitting. The old man didn't sleep much. Jeremy had suspected he wouldn't.
The ocean was dark and the stars were out and the Moby Dick moved through the water with the slow certainty of something that had been doing this long enough to be good at it.
Whitebeard looked at him when he came out but didn't say anything. An invitation to speak or not speak, whichever Jeremy needed.
Jeremy sat down on something that was approximately chair-height relative to Whitebeard and looked at the stars for a moment.
"I thought of something else," he said.
"Tell me," Whitebeard said.
"The cockpit," Jeremy said. "On most ships that size there's a cockpit. A bridge. Navigation console, steering system, the whole arrangement. Whoever's flying sits up front and manages the heading manually." He paused. "We don't have that."
Whitebeard looked at him.
"We have an AI crew," Jeremy said. "Four of them. They handle everything. Navigation, propulsion, sensors, systems management — all of it. You just tell them where you want to go."
"Tell them," Whitebeard said.
"Just say it," Jeremy confirmed. "We want to go to Naboo. We want to go to Coruscant. We want to go to Tatooine. They calculate the route, engage whatever drive system makes the most sense, and take us there. No manual navigation. No steering wheel. No one has to sit up front and plot coordinates." He leaned back slightly. "So we had this whole space at the front of the ship that would normally be the cockpit. Prime real estate. Big windows. Best view on the vessel."
"And you didn't need it for a cockpit," Whitebeard said.
"We turned it into a galley," Jeremy said.
A beat.
"A big one," Jeremy continued. "Proper kitchen, long tables, seating for the whole crew. And the windows—" he paused to let it arrive fully, "—panoramic. Floor to ceiling almost. The entire forward view of wherever we're traveling, laid out in front of whoever's sitting down to eat."
Whitebeard was quiet.
"So when we drop out of hyperspace," Jeremy said, "and Coruscant fills up the view — or we come up on a nebula between systems, or we're running alongside a Star Destroyer trying to decide if it's friendly—"
"You see it from the dinner table," Whitebeard said.
"From the dinner table," Jeremy confirmed. "Over your food. With your crew. Together."
The ocean moved under them.
Whitebeard looked at the stars for a long moment.
"On the Moby Dick," he said slowly, "my crew eats below deck."
"I know," Jeremy said gently.
"They cannot see the ocean when they eat," Whitebeard said. "They cannot see the sky."
"On the Edward Newgate," Jeremy said, "they can see everything."
The old man was quiet for what felt like a long time.
Marco had appeared from somewhere — Jeremy hadn't heard him come out — and was standing at the rail looking at the water. Not interrupting. Just present.
"When you sit at that table," Whitebeard said finally, "what do you see?"
"Whatever's ahead of us," Jeremy said. "Whatever we're flying toward. The whole galaxy laid out through those windows while your crew eats and talks and argues about whatever crews argue about." He smiled slightly. "Nobody eats alone. Nobody eats below deck. You're all moving through the same universe at the same time and you can all see it happening."
Whitebeard made a sound that Jeremy felt more than heard.
"That," the old man said, "is how a crew should live."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said. "That's what I thought."
Marco turned from the rail and looked at Jeremy with an expression that had long since stopped being professional assessment and become something else entirely.
The stars moved overhead.
The Moby Dick sailed on.
"Tell me about this galley," Whitebeard said. "What do you keep in the kitchen."
And Jeremy did.
For a good long while, one day before Marineford, the two of them sat under the stars and talked about food and crew and what it meant to gather people around a table with the whole galaxy visible through the windows.
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and then Add to home screen.