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Ships are not eternal creations. They are built of wood, canvas, hemp fibers, oakum. Franky knows this well. From his own fleet, painstakingly tended to, spending hours fixing oversights from his previous iterations. Back at the drafting table, trying to catch those endless shapes in his mind and put them on paper so they may sail free. Initially, he gripes at the organic nature of wood, prone to rot and drying out. Why not build a ship out of something hardier? Tom had laughed at his complains. Stepping towards steel and bronze only invites the bite of rust and oxidization. And large quantities of metal are hard to come by in the scrap yard for they are valuable, enough so that Franky can make a good money selling scrap if it's the right kind.
Water Seven has no way of producing its own metal. There are large clay deposits near Water Seven, hidden in the murky depths of the Grand Line. The salt content makes it corrosive to kilns, but the citizens of Water Seven pride themselves on the glorious red tiles that their sacrifice yields. The masks that many citizens love and wear are also sculpted from this clay. The bright, ruddy tiles and masks that Water Seven produces is their largest abiotic export. Aside from boatbuilding and fishing, throwing pottery is one of the largest job markets on the island. Galley-La imports nearly all of their raw materials and processes them on-site, something only possible thanks to Puffing Tom's reliable transport between more forested islands and Water Seven. But the outstanding reputation of Water Seven's shipwrights means that customers are more than willing to pay for the cost of exporting materials.
Metal is not the only resource that is scarce in the city of water. As the city has sunk, teams of excavators dive to the lower levels and take old stone, now riddled with biofouling, to remake it anew above water. It is said that the oldest stones are the heaviest, since they carry with them generations of ghosts come to see Water Seven once more. Water Seven is a city of infinite autocannibalization, of birth and death and rebirth anew. Layers of lives piling atop one another, indifferent to age, caring only for utility. Ships, too, undergo this process. The Merry had burned, alight with love for her crew. She died with Enies Lobby just over the horizon. And Franky had seen to it that she return to the Strawhats again.
Luffy had agreed to Franky's request to salvage from Merry without really seeming to understand what it was he agreed too. His head bobbled as if he could barely hold it up. Franky was surprised Luffy was even conscious at that point; he was exhausted, wrung out physically and emotionally. His head bobbled as if he could barely hold it up even the scant few centimeters above deck to look at his crew. His eyes, bloodshot and vacant, tracked Robin, as if she might disappear if he looked away.
Franky made quick work of his inspection and his salvage, and selected only a handful of things from the ship. The delicate carved ram's head on her whipstaff. A few teak planks. Much of her structural timber was beyond saving - rot had set in, worming its way into bungs, between seams and mating surfaces. Her keel had been the worst. Steel plates fastened with an overzealous hand had trapped seawater right where she was most vulnerable. Rot and rust festered underwater, seeping through the checks running fore and aft, stealing away Merry's strength sight unseen. The teak decks were broken and replaced in random spots with an assortment of species. Her mast was frankly unusable. Franky eyed the lines still taut and singing in the wind and hadn't pressed his luck going aloft. The yards he wouldn't touch - that would take away Merry's shape too much. He doesn't mean to take away Merry's identity, only keep her memory alive.
Franky returned to Galley-La's ship with a few planks slung over his shoulder as Chopper finished his triage. Demolition, with a specialty in preserving useable wood, was the Franky Family's specialty. Merry still looked herself, but Franky had plans for what he had saved from her.
The wood on his back seemed to hum as the Merry burned. It glowed bright in the corner of Tom's Workers as he gathered his tools, and Franky swore he heard a giggle when he set the salvaged planks down at the scrap yard beside the Adam wood.
Franky had drawn the ship up knowing his own capabilities, his tools. He may not have built a ship in years, he would be damned if he parted with even a single saw or chisel. The less said about his bevel gauge collection, the better. Iceberg always gave him shit for it, but that man had more hand planers than there were stars in the sky.
Gally-La came with their own arsenal. Some of the work is done in Gally-La's yard - the Adam wood is live edge and needs to be processed for planking. The Gally-La's shipsaw, a massive, hulking thing that needs two people to crank the bevel gear, is used to make the frames. The ship will have a round bottom with a gentle deadrise, but a high freeboard and tumblehome. Franky had gone back and forth on speed versus stability designing her, but the ship won't be limited to sail power for speed, so stability had won out. She is meant to sail in all sorts of seas, and capsizing is not an option. She's going to be tough as hell. The futtocks are cut, layer and cover matched, 62 frames total. Franky gets out his adze. His foot no longer bears the scar, but he had nearly taken off a toe once being too careless with an adze. Now, they're made of iron. Cannon-proof.
"Watch your toes!" calls Iceberg. Franky laughs.
By the second day, they lay the keelson. And the sister keelson. Franky's never seen a ship come together so fast. Tilestone, despite his loudness, proves a delicate touch, and as they secure the deck beams and start planking the deck, he takes over the fine tuning of the interior architecture. Franky puts the handful of planks he salvaged from the Merry right underneath the helm. Paulie is master caulker, running through yards and yards of oakum and cotton, hunkered over a pitch pot late into the night. The chirp of his caulking irons accompanies Franky as he secures the garboard. No steel fasteners here - Franky runs some quick calculations and figures that he'll be using somewhere north of one billion bungs on this ship. Iceburg is shaping the yards, which are actually a light redwood rather than the dense Adam wood. Adam wood is deceptively springy for a hardwood, and as Franky steams planks and bends them on, he finds himself in awe at the ease of the process. The ship looks more and more real and Kokoro comes to watch her boys work.
The fourth day they step the masts with the help of the giants from Enies Lobby, who pick up the 176 foot tall timber as if it's a walking stick. Franky tosses a 100 beri coin under the mainmast before it goes up. The giants also make quick work of the ballast - hundreds of pounds of lead are pinched between their fingers and dropped into the cradle of the waiting hull. Above deck, Paulie takes portside and Lulu starboard; together, they rig the shrouds and stays, Oimo obediently looping shroud collars over the top of the mast, while Kashii holds the mast upright. Tilestone drives wedges all around the base of the mast and then the mast is set. The fore goes even quicker. Iceberg has the yards ready with coils and coils (and coils and coils) of line. Paulie and Lulu take their lunch aloft, swinging from bosun's chairs as they rig the yards and blocks. Franky descends belowdecks to focus on his specialties: mechanics. The cola-fueled system requires careful calibration to appropriate levels of carbonation. Too much pressure and Franky's system could be damaged - not enough and it won't work. It's eerily similar to building Puffing Tom and Rocketman all those years ago, especially when Iceberg comes down to find him. He's wearing a bandage, but out of the corner of his eye Franky mistakes it for a white bandana, grimy with sweat and grease. Back when Iceberg had long hair, unconcerned with his image. Back when Franky had a number never not sitting in the back of his head, ticking down even when he laughed and smiled with Tom. Back when Kokoro taught him how to build an engine and before Franky realized combustion could be more than destruction.
Now, he pauses at Iceberg's call, joins him and Kokoro around a small campfire. His hands are oily, but it wipes free after a scrub. Iceberg hands him a bowl of curry (Kokoro's favorite for how easy and filling it was after a long day. When Tom cooked, he liked fresh seafood. Neither of them were overly fond of rice, so usually only he and Iceberg had any). Franky eyes the grime tucked into Iceberg's hands, stuck between the thin ridges on his palms, the stains on his fingertips and nail beds. That shit takes forever to come out. Franky's hands are rough enough for a bit of friction, of course, but they are smooth and clean and dwarf the bowl Iceberg hands him with a smile. Chimney scampers over with a cola for him (and one for her), Gonbe close at her heels, and Kokoro lifts her glass to Franky with a grin.
She joins him below decks after food, peering down at his work. The alcohol she leans on these days makes her sway like the boat is already out on the high seas, but she asks for a crescent wrench and Franky finally gets to work alongside her. It was Kokoro who helped Tom build Puffing Tom after all. She wasn't keen on design, said Tom had all the aesthetics. She was just there to get her hands dirty. And she did, skin soaked in grease and grime and seawater. The filth never bothered her, not hydraulic fluid, not coal dust, not even red lead. But blood did, it seems, and after Puffing Tom saw its creator to his death, Kokoro seemed sick of the mess on her hands. Franky hasn't seen her touch a tool in years. And yet here she is. Humming to herself, a sip or two from the bottle, hunched over the half-built Soldier Docking System worm gear. Franky smiles.
They come up for air some time later - the sun has risen. Kokoro groans at the light, a hand on her back but a smile on her face. Iceberg does a double take from where he is on deck, a near mountain of sailcloth at his feet. The giants come by again to help, and although their hands are large they prove exceedingly delicate. Iceberg trusts the sailmakers he has at Galley-La, but even the best canvas would tear should Oimo or Kashii use it as a tissue. Iceberg joins Paulie and Lulu aloft to bend on the main, and soon lines spill down as they finalize the rigging and find every line it's proper belay point. Tilestone dances around them on deck as he oversees the arrival of a slew of furniture and fixtures and such. It's all packed inside and neatly installed: the new gas range Sanji requested, counter space and a bar, a table big enough for 15 and seats to match, huge sheets of glass for the aquarium, a large couch for the saloon, mirrors in the crow's nest and a weightlifting bench - Franky had initially blanched when Zoro asked if the new crow's nest could double as a workout room. That much weight that high up?! He was asking for trouble.
But Franky had paused. The ship was meant to be heavy, and the crow's nest would only be so big. And the Adam wood... it was unlike any wood Franky had seen. Heavy, a strong hardwood, but amicable. It could handle what Franky would ask of it. After a moment, Franky struck his signature pose.
"Any other shipwright," he said to Zoro. "Any other shipwright would tell you no. But this is going to be a ship of dreams. So if that is what you want, you shall get it, bro!" His dramatic framing seemed a bit lost on Zoro, who blinked at him sleepily and didn't seem to have a change in expression.
"Ok. I trust you," is all he said. Franky had run all the way back to the yard, and if anyone said he was crying, well they were liars. Cowards, too, probably, and bastards to boot.
So up go Zoro's weights. Nami's drafting table, which matches the dusty drafting tables in Tom's Worker's old shop in design but not age, mysteriously appears with Iceberg, who looks all too pleased with himself for such a nice touch. Shelves and shelves are installed in the library and soon heaps of books are arriving. Medical texts too, and a specific kind of bed meant to be raised, lowered, and adjusted, cabinets full of drawers. Sealed medical supplies, glassware, bandages. They have barrels and barrels of cola on board both for the Sunny's mechanical and hydraulic systems but also for cannons. Nami's neat scrawl still requests gunpowder - there's something scribbled out next to it, but Franky hadn't been able to read it. He had ordered the gunpowder, because who was he to question these people, as well as some flammable oil and happened to find within his impressive array of tooling a handful of tools any beginner carpenter or shipwright's apprentice should have - a combo square, a bevel, some of his old chisels, a set of whetstones, pliers, a small handsaw. He's pretty sure he saw a mallet in that brown bag, though, and an awl.
Nami's tangerine trees are planted the same time they do the grass. Soil is nonexistent on Water Seven - whatever land the island was originally built on has long since sunk beneath the waves. Franky had sent out his orders as soon as he could, and on the fifth day he receives bags and bags of soil and rolls of grass. He and Iceberg do the gardening together as Paulie shapes stanchions and Lulu gets to work painting and varnishing. Tilestone, inside, packs in every bit of furniture, custom-installs fiddles on all the tables and counters, builds sea rails and pot holders, installs latches on every cabinet. It's almost obscene, how fast the process is over. The sun starts to set as the last coats of varnish go on and Franky walks through, double checking everything before she tastes the sea. The ram's head from Merry's whipstaff is placed above the crew quarter's door.
His dream ship hits the water and the lion's head grins at the glitter of the sunrise over the water. Franky breaks a bottle of cola on her hull and he's not the only one who cries. The rising sun pours across her decks, a gentle morning breeze kisses the furled sails, and Franky swears he can hear the Merry's joyous giggle as he blows his nose.
He knows she won't last forever, but she's a vibrant, resolute blaze in the sunlight now. The man who is her captain smiles at Franky with that same ferocity. And Franky sails forth to new horizons.