"Cap... Smo...?! Cap'n... Smok...?!! CAPTAIN SMOKER?!!!"
Smoker's eyes snapped open, and he saw a dark blot against a pale background. A deafening emptiness filled his head, as though his ears had been stuffed with cotton. There was not a drop of strength in his body, and his bones ached as if he had been struck down by a serious illness. Yet the instant Smoker regained consciousness, his condition began improving with every passing second. Strength returned to his body, his brain slowly started working again, his hearing came back — and only the pain in his bones remained exactly as it had been.
"Captain Smoker?"
The repeated question made him focus on the unknown voice. His brain might have started working, but it was still moving unforgivably slowly, so it took the captain about ten seconds to connect the voice he heard with the dark silhouette looming over him. Only then did Smoker realize that he was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, and that the dark silhouette belonged to one of his lieutenants.
"What... what happened?" the man forced out with difficulty.
"Sir, are... are you sure you're all right?"
Smoker swallowed several times to wet his throat. Instead of answering, he repeated his question, this time in a much firmer voice.
"What happened?"
"Sir... we... sir, we don't know what happened here ourselves," the lieutenant answered somewhat helplessly, beginning to look around.
By then Smoker's thoughts had accelerated to an acceptable speed, and the captain finally managed to grasp that his lieutenant was genuinely terrified. His face was pale, his forehead slick with sweat, and his body was visibly trembling. What the hell has happened here? His brain was more or less functioning again, but his memory still refused to wake up. He had no idea where he was, why he was lying on his back, why he felt so awful, or why his lieutenant was so frightened. He needed to get up.
"Let me help you, sir!" Noticing Smoker awkwardly trying to shift and raise himself, the lieutenant immediately came to his captain's aid.
With great difficulty, Smoker got to his feet. Still leaning on the shoulder of the lieutenant supporting him, he looked around — and understood why his subordinate was so frightened. The entire pier was strewn with the unconscious bodies of Marine soldiers, while their numerous comrades tried to rouse them. Without success. Smoker was the very first to wake. The others looked as though they were in deep comas; no amount of shouting, shaking, or even resounding slaps could bring them back to consciousness. And then Smoker's memory finally decided to make itself known.
"Shit," the man said with feeling.
"Sir?"
"Go tell everyone to leave the unconscious soldiers alone," Smoker ordered, releasing the lieutenant's shoulder and finally straightening to his full height. "They'll all wake up on their own in a few hours. Until then, there's no point trying to bring them around."
"Sir, but you—"
"I woke up so quickly only because I'm much stronger than an ordinary soldier," Smoker explained, cutting him off. "We were affected by an extremely rare ability that attacks the mind, which is why none of us has a single wound. All the soldiers are to be taken to the barracks. They'll wake up there on their own... Now go and pass on my order."
After hearing his captain's explanation, the lieutenant visibly brightened.
"Yes, sir!" The young man snapped to attention, saluted, and hurried toward the other lieutenants.
Smoker looked around once more. The more he saw, the more he remembered, the more he understood, and the better he felt, the darker his expression became. In the end, the captain could only repeat himself.
"Shit."
Roronoa Zoro did not merely possess Conqueror's Haki—he had already awakened it and learned how to use it. Smoker, however, could not say how skilled he was. The captain knew only the bare basics about Conqueror's Haki, things he had once heard from his teacher, Zephyr-sensei, and no details. To be honest, he did not know all that much about the other forms of Haki either, though still noticeably more than he knew about Conqueror's... Speaking of the other forms, Roronoa Zoro could use at least Armament Haki in addition to Conqueror's. Smoker himself was inclined to believe that the chief 'Pirate Slayer' could use all three types. It was extremely doubtful that someone who consciously wielded Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki did not know Observation Haki. It also immediately explained how the 'Pirate Slayers,' the moment they came ashore, had found and disabled every observer at once: Observation Haki had allowed Roronoa Zoro to locate them, and Conqueror's Haki had knocked them out. At the very least, Smoker now knew for certain that all the observers had been felled specifically by Conqueror's Haki. A Haki user in East Blue—and a bearer of Conqueror's Haki at that. Unable to help himself, the man repeated yet again:
'Shit.'
Those words probably expressed the seriousness of the situation better than anything else. Roronoa Zoro was a pirate who belonged in the New World, not East Blue. Worse still, if Roronoa Zoro could consciously use Haki, then his entire so-called family knew about Haki as well and had most likely been training to master it for quite some time. How much longer would they need before they succeed? Smoker did not even consider the possibility that they might fail. The captain now understood exactly what sort of monsters had visited his island. And he involuntarily remembered Luffy's warning.
"He was right!" The captain's hands clenched into fists.
A pirate capable of consciously using several forms of Haki was at the level of a Marine vice admiral. In the future, they truly would need to send a full vice admiral or a strong rear admiral against Roronoa Zoro; otherwise, the chance of defeat would be far too high. An admiral, of course, would guarantee complete success. Even after everything that had happened, however, Smoker did not believe Roronoa Zoro could defeat a vice admiral, so he considered deploying a full admiral against the 'Pirate Slayers' excessive. Zoro was not the commander-in-chief of one of the Four Emperors, after all.
Lost in thought, Smoker did not immediately notice that the lieutenant had returned.
"Sir?" the man said to attract his attention.
"Report," the captain said curtly.
"Sir, I've passed your order to the other lieutenants. The soldiers are being carried to the barracks!"
Raising his head, Smoker watched the numerous soldiers pick up their unconscious comrades—some alone, some in pairs, and sometimes in groups of three or four when the man in question was especially large or fat—and carry them away from the pier. Despite all their efforts, however, hundreds upon hundreds of unconscious bodies remained. At that moment the captain's brain finally returned to full working order, and he realized that he had much more urgent problems than contemplating Roronoa Zoro's true strength.
"What about the ambush ships?" was the first thing he asked.
Although the captain had directed the question at his subordinate, he had no doubt about the answer. The only thing Smoker truly wanted to know was how many people had survived. But asking that question directly would shatter the already low morale of his men.
"No one... no one is responding, sir!" The lieutenant's face, which had only just regained some color, rapidly turned pale again. "The last message we received said that the 'Pirate Slayers' were just about to enter the battleship's firing range."
"How long has it been since the 'Pirate Slayers' ship left port?"
"No more than an hour, sir!"
"No more than an hour? Send one of our ships to the ambush site immediately!" the captain roared.
"Yes, sir!" The lieutenant vanished as though blown away by the wind.
For the next several hours, Smoker dealt with the aftermath of the trap that had been set for the 'Pirate Slayers.' In truth, after everything that had happened, he was not sure the word trap was appropriate at all. 'Once you mount a tiger, don't be surprised if it eats you'—that proverb described what had happened with the 'Pirate Slayers' far better than the word trap. Nevertheless, four hours later, Smoker could say with absolute certainty that he and all his people had been fantastically lucky that day. Yes, several dozen houses had burned down. Yes, ten ships had been destroyed, including an expensive battleship. But not a single person had died. At worst, there were severe injuries—and certainly not because of incredible training or individual strength. Lieutenant Radvid, for example, had been impaled through the body by his own katana, and the doctors had managed to save him only because the 'Butcher' had not been trying to kill him. After questioning the lieutenants who had commanded the ambush ships, Smoker could say with confidence that the only reason his men had not suffered hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths was that none of the 'Pirate Slayers' had regarded the Marines as actual opponents. They had been brushed aside like gnats. Even Johnny the 'Beheader,' when he had tried to burn Smoker's men alive, had not been attacking enemies—only the same unbearably irritating gnats, as far as he was concerned. Thus, aside from countless fractures, scrapes, bruises, dislocations, burns, stab wounds, and cuts, only one person could be listed as a casualty. And Smoker was ready to pray day and night that she would not have to be listed among the permanent losses.
"Lieutenant Tashigi's whereabouts still haven't been established?" Smoker asked without much hope, almost six hours after the 'Pirate Slayers' had sailed away.
Every lieutenant under the captain's command who was currently fit for duty had gathered in the emergency conference room. The chamber had never been designed for so many people, and now it was packed shoulder to shoulder.
"Yes and no, sir!" One of the lieutenants rose from his chair. "The soldiers escorting Lieutenant Tashigi woke up twenty minutes ago. According to them, before they lost consciousness, the man they were escorting became extremely frightened and started begging forgiveness from someone they never saw. That's where their memories end. It appears the same ability used on you and all the soldiers at the pier was used on them."
The report did not surprise Smoker in the slightest. It was more or less what he had expected. In fact, the man had realized some time ago that Tashigi had been captured by the 'Pirate Slayers', but like a drowning man he kept clutching at the final straw. After everything he had heard from the traitor—and, most importantly, after personally confirming nearly all of the information—Smoker knew that nothing good awaited Tashigi aboard the 'Pirate Slayers' ship. Even if Roronoa Zoro did not kill her once he grew tired of her, and even if she later managed to escape, she would never be the same again. And as the captain understood all too clearly, the blame lay entirely with his own overconfidence. Without it, Tashigi would never have ended up a prisoner of the 'Pirate Slayers'. He had been the one who decided to set a trap, damn him!
"Were the photographs taken?" Smoker asked grimly.
While most of those gathered tried to understand what photographs had to do with a missing person, another lieutenant sprang from his chair with a folder in his hands. He clearly intended to deliver it directly to Smoker, but the packed room prevented him from taking even one step. In the end, the folder was passed from hand to hand among the other lieutenants—who followed it with openly curious eyes—until it landed on the table directly in front of Smoker. Opening the folder and examining its contents, the captain wearily rubbed his forehead. He liked the thought of his forthcoming report to headquarters less and less. One piece of news was worse than the last. And here was the paradox: no matter which item he began with, the next would still sound worse than the previous one. Another 'Shit' was begging to leave his mouth. Ever since waking on the pier, those words had come to Smoker's mind at least once every ten minutes, and half the time they had escaped his lips as well.
The captain was absolutely certain that he would never forget this day for the rest of his life. It was also hard to imagine a louder declaration of ambition than the spectacle Roronoa Zoro had staged. It would have been one thing if some arrogant rookie had done it—then to hell with him—but a Haki user who very likely possessed all three forms? A declaration from such a person could not be dismissed as the ordinary overconfidence of a youth who knew nothing of the wider world. Headquarters was about to receive some truly shitty news.