As she arcs through the air towards the water of the Grand Line, the only thing on Dowell's mind is that she had said they were coming in too fast. It was a miracle that the Reverse Mountain had taken as long as it had to tear the Cradle Princess to splinters; Dowell had heard stories of daredevils who tried to brave the wild mountain current without a ship, and they rarely ended happily.
From her bird's eye view of the wreckage, she could already tell that the damage done to the Princess was beyond the point of being repaired. The little caravel ship had exploded like a ripe melon at the impact, barely anything more than driftwood. Dowell had known something like this could happen, but Alveara had laughed at the suggestion of putting the ship in drydock for a few weeks to do repairs.
'Nothing more pointless than a pirate crew without a ship,' she thought. The wind whipped through her hair as she finally lost upward momentum, and began to plummet towards the water. 'Now Alveara'll expect me to make a new ship, and I don't know where she expects to find the money for the materials. The only reason the Princess [i]was so cheap is because I didn't use expensive wood, but that's because I only made it for practice. And she wants to expand our crew, so I'll bet the new ship'll need to be bigger. A brig sloop at the minimum, but she'll probably want something bigger-'
"Right. Falling," Dowell reminded herself. She sized up her surroundings. The city of Twin Capes stretched out from the foot of Reverse Mountain, on both sides of the mountain's downflow. She took a thick loop of rope off her belt, and tied a loop knot on both ends. She didn't check if it was tight enough; she'd been tying knots like this since she was four years old. She could do this in her sleep.
Sixty feet to the water. Dowell heaved one end of the rope towards a building on the northern cape. It caught on a chimneypipe, good and sturdy. She tossed the other end towards the southern cape, hoping that she'd judged the distance right. Forty feet to the water. The other end landed on a weathervane, which wasn't the sturdiest anchor point, but Dowell was in too much of a hurry to be too picky. She gripped the rope, and pulled both ends taut.
With her two new anchor points, Dowell's plummet became a swing. She hit the water hard, but not as hard as she would have hit it without the ropes. She surfaced quickly, and pushed her long, black hair out of her eyes. "Too damn fast," she grumbled, wrenching the south end of the rope free with a sturdy tug. She began to pull herself towards the northern shore, muttering curses at her captain.
