Rumble—crash—!!!!
A blue bolt of lightning tore through the clear sky and struck the massive execution platform head-on.
A blinding flash and an ear-splitting blast shook the entire square.
The legendary wooden execution platform, which had stood firm as an oak thousands of years old, was reduced to a blackened lump of charcoal by a single bolt and came crashing down. Burning fragments and thick smoke rained across the square.
"Aaaah!" "Lightning! Lightning struck the execution platform!!"
The screams of fleeing spectators and panic-stricken Marines tangled together in utter chaos.
Within the smoke lay Buggy the Clown, sprawled on the ground, his whole body charred black and smoking. And right beside him—
Tap, tap.
A little brat in a straw hat casually brushed himself off as he rose from the ashes. Completely unscorched, without so much as a smudge of soot on his face, he grinned from ear to ear and shouted.
"Ahahaha! What the heck, I’m alive?! Lucky!!"
At that bizarre, chilling sight, the hundreds of Marines deployed across the square froze in stunned disbelief. But there was one man who did not.
Sssizzle!
"Those lunatics...!"
The twin thick cigars clenched in Colonel Smoker’s mouth burned fiercely, spraying red sparks. Enormous clouds of pure white smoke poured from his arms and began to coil around the entire square like a storm.
"All troops, weapons up! Don’t let Straw Hat or those clown bastards leave this city alive! Arrest every last one of them!!"
"Ooooh!!"
In an instant, a bloody melee erupted. Zoro and Sanji rushed in to shield Luffy, the remnants of Buggy the Clown Pirates ran amok, and Smoker’s smoke swallowed pirates whole—a legendary, world-class clusterfuck.
Taking a swallow of forty-year-aged rum beneath a roof’s eaves, I brushed up the brim of my hat and smiled in deep, profound satisfaction.
"Oh... ladies and gentlemen, that was a truly dazzling and moving circus."
I spat out the cigar I had been chewing, ground it out beneath my foot, then lightly leaped down from the roof and turned my back on the square.
"Since the leading actors are heating up the stage with such passion, it seems this audience member ought to go plunder the treasure vault backstage."
The rain was steadily growing heavier. Damp, savage gusts carrying the promise of a massive storm whipped the tails of my old coat violently about.
With every Marine’s attention and manpower focused on the Straw Hat in the central square, the military harbor of Loguetown’s Marine 8th Branch was... nothing more than a feast laid out for a host who had stepped away.
Whoooosh.
After pushing through the pounding rain, I found Loguetown’s military harbor unnervingly quiet.
The emergency in the square had drawn away nearly all its primary forces. Streetlamp light gleamed off the rainwater pooled on the docks, and in the gap between the deepest, most imposing stone pillars of the harbor, that gigantic “monster” crouched at anchor.
...There you are, my personal transport ship.
I tipped up my rain-soaked tricorn and let out a crooked grin.
A Marine special prisoner transport.
A fortress ship clad from bow to stern in thick riveted iron plating to withstand the savage waves of the Grand Line and attacks by Sea Kings, with large-caliber cannons packed densely along both port and starboard.
But the ship’s sturdy armor was not all I was after.
I had already learned something from eavesdropping on back-alley gambling dens and Marine communications.
The major East Blue criminals recently beaten to a pulp and handed over to the Marines by the Straw Hat crew were all chained together in this ship’s special lower-deck prison, awaiting transport to Headquarters’ massive prison.
I was thoroughly sick of the hard labor of sailing a ship alone.
If I meant to make for the Grand Line, I desperately needed sturdy hands and feet capable of weathering rough seas. And down below, there was no shortage of slaves... no, diligent worker candidates with strength to spare and stubbornness left in them.
Click.
"Who goes there?!"
Five or six Marine guards stationed at the boarding bridge and on the deck emerged through the rain, leveling their bayonets.
"This is a restricted area! Show your fa—urk?!"
Swish—thud!
Before he could finish, a heavy chunk of metal flashed between my fingers as I slipped through the rain.
The ruby dagger I had picked up at the weapons shop. The weighted pommel, thinly coated in Haki, struck the leading Marine squarely beneath the jaw.
"Guh...!"
The man rolled back his eyes and crumpled. In that instant, I flicked up the sling of the bayonet he had dropped with the tip of my foot.
Whirl—bang!
The gun flying into the air snagged its trigger and fired a stray shot into the sky. The two guards behind him squeezed their eyes shut at the flash.
"I’ll pass on a dazzling gunfight, gentlemen."
Exploiting that tenth of a second of opening, I slid between the two men with my distinctive loose-limbed footwork. My rain-soaked coat flapped through the air as both hands caught the backs of the Marines’ heads and smashed their faces together.
Crack!
"Aaargh!"
Without even watching the pair collapse in a bloody heap, I drew my cutlass and sliced through the knot of the thick anchor cable moored to the dock, aimed at the rest charging down from the deck.
Rrrumble—crash!!
The several-hundred-kilogram iron pulley, which had been held taut, lashed through the air like a whip and smashed straight through the deck stairs.
"Aaaah—!"
With screams, the three Marines standing on the stairs took a most refreshing dive straight toward the sea.
Splash!Splash!
An elegant cleanup that had taken less than ten seconds.
"Whew... and after I so strongly urged everyone to travel safely on wet roads."
Shaking off my soaked tricorn, I approached the waist of the fallen Marine noncommissioned officer. With a heavy metallic jingle, I snatched up a large brass key ring crowded with keys of every size.
Creeeak.
I shoved open the heavy iron hatch and strode down the damp stairs leading into the ship’s belly.
A suffocating stench of mold, stale blood, and the heavy scrape of dragging chains.
At the bottom of the stairs, just as expected, some very familiar and miserable faces appeared in the torchlight.
The first premium cell.
A man with his greasy slicked-back hair in disarray, seated against the wall. An intellectual criminal with the habit of pushing up his cracked glasses by the wrist: “Kuro of a Thousand Plans.”
The cell across from him.
His once-flamboyant golden armor stripped away, he was covered in bandages and gripping the iron bars as he panted: “Don Krieg.”
And in the deepest cell, crouched in a special room sealed tight behind a heavy iron door and chains, was the sawshark Fish-Man, “Arlong.”
The brutes once said to rule East Blue were all gathered in one place, rotting away.
Clank.
Arlong bared his teeth, his bloodshot yellow eyes flashing.
"...Who the hell are you? Where are those Marine dogs?"
Krieg snarled as well, his eyes blazing red, while Kuro measured my footsteps with murder in his gaze.
With a bottle of forty-year-aged rum slung over my shoulder,
I hooked the stolen brass key ring around one finger and spun it with a jingle as I sauntered before their cells in my usual swaggering gait.
Jingle, jingle.
"Oh, splendid to see you, gentlemen. Just as the rumors said, you’re all gathered in quite a cozy suite."
At my languid, glib voice, the eyes of the three big shots flashed.
I blew a stream of cigar smoke from my mouth and gestured toward the bars with my chin.
"My word... have you formed some sort of victims’ association for those who got thoroughly thrashed and driven out by that Straw Hat brat? You’re certainly a sight to behold."
"What did you say...?" "Shut your mouth, you piece of trash!!"
Krieg frothed at the mouth as he shook the bars, while Arlong’s fist pulled his steel shackles taut with a creak.
But without so much as blinking, I
stopped the key ring right in front of their nostrils.
"Now, now, don’t get your blood pressure up. You’ll spray spit all over a valued guest."
Grinning, I popped the stopper from the rum bottle.
"As you gentlemen know, this ship was soon due to sail for Impel Down in the Grand Line. But...
today, I’ve come bearing the very happy news that your tedious and dreadful prison terms
may come to an end."
For a moment,
the breathing of the three big shots, who had been radiating murderous intent, stopped as if by magic.
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