I sat on a wooden crate in a quiet alley behind the Marine base, my head between my knees, taking long, deep breaths.
Gammamon patted my back sympathetically, his heavy cloak rustling.
“Okay,” I muttered, rubbing my face.
“Okay, let’s think about this logically.
Panic doesn’t build ships.”
My analytical mind, sharpened by five months of constant survival, finally pushed through the shock of seeing my sister’s wanted poster.
I started piecing the puzzle together.
Damine didn’t just bring me here, he brought three people.
Victor aka me, Jasmine aka my sister, and an unknown third.
We were all scattered.
But looking at that 300 million Beri bounty, one thing was absolutely clear: my sister did not need saving.
She had the “Thunder Maiden” moniker.
She had a massive pole-hammer.
She had Togemon, a giant, boxing cactus, watching her back.
And, most importantly, she was deeply entrenched in the Revolutionary Army, which meant she had almost certainly linked up with our “cousin” Koala by now.
Jasmine was safe.
Well, as safe as a globally wanted fugitive could be.
“She can wait a little longer for her ass-kicking,” I decided aloud, standing up and dusting off my pants.
“She’s been here a year and a half.
Another few weeks won’t hurt.
We stick to the original plan.
Baterilla first.
We pay our respects to Aunt Rouge, and then we figure out how to track down the Revolutionaries.”
“Sounds good,” Gammamon chirped.
“But how do we get to Baterilla?
You said riding the giant bird for days over the ocean would give us windburn and sunstroke.”
“It will.
Which is why we aren’t riding on the bird,” I explained, pulling a crumpled wanted poster out of my pocket that I had grabbed off the local board before my meltdown.
“We’re going to commission a local shipwright to build us a custom, enclosed carriage.
A heavy, aerodynamic cabin with thick windows that the Sky-Rift Roc can carry in its talons.
A flying taxi.”
Gammamon’s eyes lit up beneath his hood.
“Ooh!
With comfortable seats?”
“And snacks,” I confirmed.
“But to pay for a custom flying gondola, we need capital.
Which brings us to this guy.”
I unrolled the poster.
It featured a scruffy, heavily tattooed pirate captain named “Iron-Tooth” Bellamy (no relation to the hyena, hopefully).
“Twenty million Berries,” I read.
“Reportedly docked on the east side of the island.
Let’s go make a withdrawal.”
Tracking Iron-Tooth and his crew took less than an hour.
They had commandeered a large tavern near the eastern docks, kicking out the locals and turning the place into a loud, obnoxious stronghold.
There were about forty men inside, drinking, breaking furniture, and generally acting like stereotypical South Blue bullies.
I didn’t even bother kicking the door in.
I just pushed it open and walked inside, the tavern’s heavy wooden door creaking loudly.
The music and shouting died down.
Forty heavily armed pirates turned to look at me, and at the short, cloaked figure waddling beside me.
“Tavern’s closed, pretty boy,” a massive pirate with actual iron teeth sneered from the center table.
He hefted a massive cutlass.
“Unless you’re looking to get gutted.”
I didn’t draw the Jade Wings.
I didn’t even take my hands out of my pockets.
I just tapped the black disk at my hip with my elbow.
“Summon: Night-Terror.”
A puff of green mist hugged the floorboards.
The pirates blinked, looking around, but the jade ferret was incredibly small, entirely pitch-black, and already moving.
It darted across the room, perfectly blending into the dim lighting, and dove straight into Iron-Tooth’s shadow cast by the fireplace.
Silhouette Mimicry.
“Kill him,” Iron-Tooth barked, pointing his cutlass at me.
His men drew their pistols, but before a single shot could be fired, Iron-Tooth let out a strangled gasp.
His arm, completely against his will, swung in a vicious, horizontal arc.
The heavy cutlass cleaved through the table and slammed flat into the chests of his two first mates, sending them crashing through a window.
“Captain?!” a pirate yelled in shock.
“I didn’t do that!” Iron-Tooth screamed, his eyes wide with terror as his body moved like a marionette.
In the shadows beneath his boots, the jade ferret twitched its tiny paws.
Iron-Tooth lunged forward, spinning like a top, his cutlass batting his own men aside with brutal, bone-breaking force.
The crew panicked.
Half of them tried to restrain their captain, while the other half aimed their flintlocks at me, figuring I was the cause.
Three pirates fired.
Before the lead bullets could cross the room, the ferret pulled the shadows from the floorboards, hardening them into a solid, pitch-black shield that intercepted the bullets with a dull clink.
“What kind of devil trick is this?!” a pirate shrieked.
I just watched, vaguely bored, as the 20-million Beri captain was forced to systematically dismantle his own crew until he was the last man standing, panting and sobbing in terror.
With a final twitch from the ferret, Iron-Tooth brought the pommel of his own sword down onto his forehead, knocking himself out cold.
“Grab his legs,” I told Gammamon, tossing a coil of rope.
We tied him up and dragged him out of the tavern by his ankles.
It was almost embarrassingly easy.
Five months of dodging monsters had completely skewed my perspective on what constituted a threat.
We were halfway back to the Marine Base, dragging the unconscious Iron-Tooth down the cobblestone street, when a massive commotion erupted in the town square ahead.
Citizens were screaming and running in all directions.
A fruit cart was violently hurled through the air, smashing into a brick wall.
Standing in the center of the square was a towering, heavily muscled brute of a man wielding a massive spiked club, roaring drunkenly and demanding tribute from the fleeing merchants.
Two local town guards were already bleeding on the ground.
“Nobody walks out on ‘Blood-Axe’ without paying the toll!” the giant bellowed, smashing a water fountain to pieces.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.
We’re trying to walk here.”
Gammamon stepped forward, dropping the rope.
“He’s being really annoying.
And loud.”
“Go ahead,” I said, waving a hand.
“Just don’t destroy the street.”
The giant brute spotted us.
He sneered, hefting his spiked club.
“What are you looking at, shorty?!”
He swung the massive iron club down in a lethal arc, aiming directly to crush the cloaked figure.
Gammamon didn’t even flinch.
He didn’t evolve.
He simply raised one small, white, three-clawed paw and caught the head of the descending iron club.
CLANG.
The shockwave cracked the cobblestones beneath Gammamon’s feet, but the dinosaur didn’t budge an inch.
The brute’s eyes bulged out of his skull.
He strained, trying to push the club down, but it was like pressing against a mountain.
“You’re a nuisance,” Gammamon said plainly from beneath his hood.
Gammamon pulled his arm back, his fist glowing with a concentrated, blinding red light.
He drove his small fist squarely into the brute’s stomach.
Breaker Claw.
The impact sounded like a cannon firing.
The giant pirate’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, all the air violently escaping his lungs.
He folded entirely over Gammamon’s fist before being launched backward, skipping across the cobblestones like a thrown stone until he crashed into a brick wall, out cold.
“Nice punch,” I commented, tossing Gammamon, the other end of the rope.
“Tie him up.
We’ll dump him with the Marines so he stops bothering people.”
Ten minutes later, I kicked the doors of the Marine lobby open and dragged the two unconscious men inside, dropping them heavily onto the polished floor.
The clerk behind the desk jumped, nearly spilling his inkwell.
“I’m here to cash in,” I said, pointing to Iron-Tooth.
“Twenty million.”
The clerk adjusted his glasses, looking from Iron-Tooth to the massive brute tied up next to him.
The Marine’s jaw dropped.
“Sir…” the clerk stammered, pointing a shaking finger at the brute Gammamon had punched.
“Do you…
do you know who that is?”
“Just some loud drunk who was blocking the street,” I shrugged.
“That is ‘Blood-Axe’ Barton!” the clerk squeaked, pulling a poster from beneath his desk.
“He has a bounty of forty-five million Berries!
He’s terrorized the eastern coast for months!”
I blinked.
I looked at Gammamon, who just gave me a hooded shrug.
“Well,” I said, a slow smile spreading across my face.
“I guess it’s my lucky day.
Sixty-five million, please.
In large bills.”
Flush with a ridiculous amount of cash, we left the base and walked straight to the largest shipyard on the island.
The foreman, a burly shipwright covered in grease, looked at me skeptically until I dropped a stack of ten million Berries onto his desk.
“I need a custom carrier,” I inquired politely, laying out a rough sketch on his desk.
“Aerodynamic, heavily reinforced, completely enclosed with thick glass windows, and strong iron ring-mounts on the roof.
I don’t need an engine or sails.
Just the cabin.”
The shipwright inspected the drawing, then the cash.
“A flying box, eh?
Building from scratch would take a month.”
“I don’t have a month.”
“But,” the shipwright continued, scratching his chin, “if I take the hull of that luxury sloop out back, strip the mast, reinforce the keel, and seal the top deck into a fortified cabin…
I can have it done in a week.”
“A week is perfect,” I said, sliding the money forward.
“We’ll be back.”
While Victor D.
Costa booked a hotel room and settled in to wait for his custom flying carriage, the automated systems of the World Government were executing their protocols with terrifying efficiency.
On a sleek, unmarked vessel sailing swiftly through the South Blue, a man in a crisp, dark suit sat in a dimly lit communications room.
The Den Den Mushi on his desk purred, spitting out a short strip of paper.
The Cipher Pol agent picked it up, his cold eyes scanning the text.
FLAG TRIPPED: Victor D.
Costa.
LOCATION: Port Island 44, South Blue.
ACTION: Registered Bounty Hunter.
Claimed 65,000,000 ฿.
NOTES: Requested navigational charts.
Searched registry for ‘Baterilla’.
The agent’s eyes narrowed.
The surname “Costa” was an immediate red flag, matching the Revolutionary Army’s “Thunder Maiden.” But it was the destination that solidified the threat.
“Baterilla,” the agent muttered.
They had no idea exactly why he wanted to go there, but they knew the history of that cursed, unmarked island.
It was the grave of the Pirate King’s bloodline.
If a person of interest related to a Revolutionary Commander was heading there, it was a threat to the World Government.
The agent stood up, walking to the helm.
“Adjust course,” he ordered the helmsman.
“Intercept trajectory.
We are heading to Baterilla.
Let him come to us.”
Hundreds of miles away, in the windless, sea-king-infested waters of the Calm Belt, a massive Marine warship was being rowed toward the Grand Line.
Inside the captain’s quarters, Rear Admiral Hototogisu sat at her desk, nursing a cup of black tea.
Her usually sharp, composed demeanor had been frayed over the last year and a half.
Ever since she had narrowly escaped the horrific, fog-shrouded island in the South Blue, she had been plagued by doubts.
The report she had filed, about petrified woods, gravity-crushing apes, and a sarcastic boy wielding shifting jade weapons, had been met with intense skepticism by her superiors at Marine HQ.
Some whispered that the stress of losing her fleet had broken her mind.
That she had hallucinated the boy.
A Marine ensign knocked timidly on her door, stepping inside with a faxed report.
“Rear Admiral,” the ensign saluted.
“An automated flag you placed before you left…
it just tripped on a local South Blue network.”
Hototogisu snatched the paper from his hands.
She read the name.
Victor D.
Costa.
She read the bounty claimed.
Sixty-five million Berries in a single afternoon.
Slowly, her hands stopped shaking.
The heavy, suffocating weight of self-doubt that had rested on her chest for eighteen months evaporated.
A sharp, terrifying, and immensely validated smirk crossed her face.
She wasn’t crazy.
The nightmares were real.
The monster from the island had finally stepped into the world.
“Send a message to Vice Admiral Garp at Headquarters,” Hototogisu ordered, her voice ringing with renewed, absolute authority.
“Tell him I have a verified target.”
In a hidden, subterranean bunker beneath a bustling South Blue city, the rhythmic clacking of keyboards filled the air.
A young Revolutionary Army hacker stared at his monitor, watching a stream of intercepted Marine data scroll by.
Suddenly, an encrypted flag caught his eye.
He isolated the data packet, decrypted the basic headers, and read the name.
His eyes widened.
He scrambled out of his chair, nearly tripping over a mess of cables, and bolted down the stone hallway.
He burst into a makeshift command office, waving the printout.
Sitting at the desk was a young woman with short, light brown hair and a newsboy cap.
Koala looked up from her maps, her large eyes blinking in surprise.
“Look at this!” the hacker gasped, slamming the paper onto her desk.
“Marine intelligence just flagged a new bounty hunter.
Look at the name!”
Koala picked up the paper.
Her eyes scanned the text: Victor D.
Costa.
The blood drained from Koala’s face.
She stared at the name, her mind racing.
She knew that name.
She had heard it whispered in the dead of night, spoken with immense grief by one of the Army’s most fearsome commanders.
“Is it…” the hacker swallowed.
“Do you think it’s her brother?
The one she said was lost?”
“I don’t know,” Koala whispered, her hands trembling slightly as she held the paper.
The implications were staggering.
If Victor was alive, and he was here, it changed everything.
Koala abruptly stood up, grabbing her coat.
“I need a secure line to the Grand Line immediately.
Get me Baltigo.
I need to confirm this with Sis.”
Word Count: 2333
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