"Land on the horizon!"
At the shout from one of the two lookouts in the crow's nest, the rest of the Heart Pirates answered at once with a thunderous roar of joy, while the entire Straw Hat family simply continued whatever they had been doing. After three weeks at sea on the Grand Line, especially amid its insane weather, Law's whole crew literally dreamed of setting foot on land as soon as possible. The Straw Hats themselves, meanwhile, no longer cared in the slightest. They had long since grown accustomed to the unpredictable weather—especially since Nami had made it considerably less unpredictable. Long periods at sea did not bother them—Sanji's spices had not yet run out, and the blond cook himself could go years without setting foot ashore—and their initial enthusiasm for traveling the Grand Line had faded somewhat. That did not mean the Straw Hats were already tired of it. Rather, they had simply calmed down and returned to their usual state. In other words, they were content to drift along. What was the point of hurrying anywhere? The wonders of the Grand Line were certainly not going to disappear, so they could simply enjoy whatever gave them pleasure. At present, an ordinary sea voyage was enough for all the Straw Hats—even Usopp, unused to lengthy voyages, had thrown himself completely into training—so they greeted the news of land on the horizon with the serenity of veteran monks. It had to happen sooner or later, so what was there to celebrate? Besides, the appearance of land had been entirely expected. The weather had not changed for more than five hours, which was the best possible confirmation that an island lay nearby. And someone considered its appearance on the horizon sufficient reason to make a call he had been anticipating for a long time.
*******
"I warned you! I warned you!!!"
"..."
"Never, do you hear me?! Never underestimate them again!!!"
"...How is she?"
"What do you think?!"
"..."
"The most important thing is that she's still alive. As for the rest... I warned you that he had his eye on her, so you should understand everything yourself."
"...How is she?"
"Ah..."
"I have to know."
"...Bad."
"I have to know!"
"...She's holding on and refusing to give in, but we've already been at sea for almost a month, and the sea is still the sea even on the Grand Line. There isn't much to do here. So he... He spends almost all his time with her, forcing her to... He doesn't hide his fascination, so everyone can watch what he does to her, and recently... Ah..."
"The truth!"
"..."
"Speak!"
"...A few days ago, he allowed the Butcher and the Beheader to join him... join them. For the last three days, they don't stop with her... They only finish after she loses consciousness... And from what I can see, little by little, she has already begun getting used to what they do to her. Over the past month, you could say she completely grew accustomed to the Pirate Slayer's attention. That was probably the main reason he allowed the Butcher and the Beheader to join them... The worst part is that she has begun adapting to their attention even faster. It seems that after everything the Pirate Slayer did to her, she was already prepared for the idea that, among a succession of tormentors, he would only be the first... Damn it! I have to go! We're approaching some unknown island now. As soon as I can, I'll report its name, but don't expect a miracle. That's all—I have to go!"
With the satisfaction of a job well done, Luffy put the Den Den Mushi receiver back in place. Roughly a thousand kilometers away, aboard another ship, an identical receiver was crushed quite literally into powder.
"C-Captain?"
Smoker's murderous gaze, fixed on the wall before him, slowly shifted toward one of his subordinates like the main guns of a battleship, nearly making the man faint. In the month since Tashigi's abduction, Smoker had not changed very much outwardly—apart from the deep shadows beneath his eyes and a somewhat untidy appearance—but the aura surrounding him had unquestionably become different. Harder. Sharper. Darker. Yet until that day, it had contained no bloodlust. Despite his somewhat delinquent reputation—he constantly had trouble obeying orders from his superiors—Smoker had always been almost excessively proper and rational in certain ways. Throughout his entire career, the captain had killed only a handful of people, while taking all his other opponents alive, undoubtedly another side effect of possessing a Logia power. Smoker could afford to capture opponents alive, and despite all his harshness, he had never radiated bloodlust. The captain simply did not want to kill anyone. But now, after that conversation, his aura changed in a single instant, as though some enormous, bloodthirsty monster had awakened.
Which was not very far from the truth.
Smoker's face turned a sickly white, while his eyes, by contrast, became literally bloodshot, as though he were not a man but a Sea King. The communications officer seated beside him froze motionless in his chair, unable to draw even a single breath because fear constricted his chest so tightly. Smoker truly looked like a monster in human form, ready to tear apart anyone who entered his sight. Yet he was too proper and rational to genuinely lose control of his emotions and lash out at an innocent man. Gradually, he brought himself under control. Then, without saying a word, he left the communications room and headed directly for his cabin. The soldiers he encountered along the way, seeing his slightly pale yet apparently emotionless face, nearly smashed through the bulkheads between cabins and compartments in their attempts to get out of his path as quickly as possible.
At the same time, Luffy—once again pleased with himself—climbed from the cabin he shared with Nami to the upper deck. Instead of staring at the slowly approaching island, he went to watch Tashigi's latest training session. Everything had been exactly as he told Smoker. Exactly, exactly. As so often happened with him, Luffy had told the captain the 'truth,' the whole 'truth,' and nothing but the 'truth.' After four weeks of training, Zoro had judged the girl prepared enough to increase the intensity of her 'practical lessons' and, at the same time, eliminate another of Tashigi's weaknesses.
As her training progressed, they discovered that she was almost completely defenseless when fighting numerous opponents. She was accustomed to fighting as part of a group alongside other Marines, and therefore depended too heavily on loyal people always guarding her back. She simply had never learned to watch it herself. So Zoro brought Johnny and Yosaku into Tashigi's training. Thanks to the difference in strength and skill, the three men could easily make the Marine feel as though enemies surrounded her on every side and would never stop coming. It also provided excellent endurance and concentration training, since the girl had to fight at the limit of her abilities. With such strain on body and mind, it was hardly surprising that every sparring session ended, just as Luffy had told Smoker, with her losing consciousness. She simply fainted from exhaustion. Zoro was not merely teaching Tashigi; he was effectively squeezing every drop of potential out of her. Enormous potential, it should be noted. And the result matched it.
Under Zoro's merciless supervision, in only a month Tashigi advanced from a middling low-level swordsman to an ordinary mid-level swordsman. Or, in Luffy's terms, she had risen from the second tier of weak swordsmen to the first tier of average swordsmen. The girl could now cut steel without much difficulty. A skill whose very existence Tashigi had once dismissed as the empty boasting of drunken idiots had been mastered in less than a month. After such results, there was no need even to mention how much more tangled her feelings toward her 'sensei' had become.
Tashigi's own accomplishments could not be diminished either. Potential was one thing, but not everyone could fight until they lost consciousness. And then there was enduring pain. Constant pain. The girl's body had long since come to resemble one enormous bruise, but there was no other way. Talent, perseverance, and willpower. She possessed everything necessary to achieve greatness. All she needed was a little luck. And there, matters became far less clear. At least, despite all her incredible progress, no one could say for certain whether meeting Zoro had been good luck or bad. The Straw Hat Pirates were far too unusual a crew—or rather, not a crew at all—and prolonged contact with them had never left anyone unchanged. Tashigi, naturally, was no exception. Thus, all of Law's reasoning—correct reasoning, it should be noted—lacked the most important question: "After returning to the Marines, will Tashigi actually pass any important information about the Straw Hats to her superiors?" It was the abyss theory in action. She had been staring into it for far too long. Law himself had as well. Luffy's greatest danger had never come from his personal strength—an error everyone realized far too late.
On the other hand, most people who entered the field of the Straw Hat family's interests simply did not live long enough to reach that blessed moment when they could understand Luffy's true greatest danger. Baroque Works, also known as Broke Shwarks, was one such example—especially those members of the organization unfortunate enough to be present in Whisky Peak, a town on Cactus Island, named for mountains that strongly resembled enormous cacti. The small town, originally built solely as a base for pirate hunters, had been under Baroque Works' complete control for several years. Every inhabitant was both a pirate hunter and a member of the organization, greatly simplifying their work. Who would immediately suspect that an entire town was a hunters' base? For better camouflage, the island even had children between roughly eight and eleven years old. Former orphans who had already swallowed more than enough of real life's filth, they were prepared to tear out pirates' throats with their teeth for the sake of a better life. Usually, of course, it was enough to drive a dagger into someone's back—very few people expected an attack from a child—but the fact remained.
The hunters living in Whisky Peak followed the simplest possible plan. First, they gave newly arrived pirates a lavish welcome filled with music, free food, and drink. Then, once the drinking and relaxation had stripped the pirates of all vigilance, the natural conclusion arrived. Most often, it ended with the entire pirate crew bound hand and foot. Without delay, they were handed over to the Marines for the appropriate bounty, while the pirates' ship and all their personal property went to the townspeople. Sometimes, however, a captain with a functioning brain appeared, and then the standard reception of food, alcohol, and music ended in a mass battle between every resident of the town and the pirates. Intelligence or not, even the smartest and most cautious people never imagined that every inhabitant of the town was a bounty hunter. More importantly, the level of the Grand Line could not be compared with that of hunters in the other seas. Any one of them was fully capable of defeating, alone, a pirate worth two to five million. And several hundred such hunters lived there. The especially strong ones—the so-called officers—could even handle pirates worth ten or fifteen million berries in a direct confrontation. What, then, was there to say about a situation in which the attack came unexpectedly, from every direction at once, while the 'brave warriors of the sea' were relaxed and drunk? Under those conditions, even pirates with bounties of thirty million or more were easily defeated.
Nor could one forget the important fact that every crew arriving at Whisky Peak consisted, in essence, of newcomers who had not yet properly tasted the Grand Line's madness. They were like barely fledged chicks who had escaped into the wider world without understanding how enormous and dangerous it was. Nevertheless, the system of hunter base-towns had functioned for several decades, having appeared long before the formation of Baroque Works, and as with any system, it occasionally failed. Most often, as one might easily guess, those failures were caused by Devil Fruit users with abilities too unpredictable to account for, with Logias consistently occupying first place in terms of danger. Sometimes, however, an exceptionally strong or numerous crew simply appeared, and the usual methods stopped working altogether. Such events were still so rare that no one ever considered abandoning the practice of hunter base-towns. For that reason, every now and then a day came when one such town unexpectedly vanished from the map, after which people usually found either a burned-out ruin filled with corpses, or simply a town buried beneath bodies. Some pirate crews proved too difficult to crack. And unfortunately for the residents of Whisky Peak, two such crews were approaching their town at once, which was frankly excessive even by the standards of the unpredictable Grand Line.
One of the observers, the first to spot the coupled pair of vessels, nearly suffered a heart attack when he made out the pirate symbols displayed on them. As both a bounty hunter and one of the permanently assigned lookouts, the man knew the flags of various pirate crews by heart and immediately grasped the level of the approaching threat. Frankly, there was not much to grasp: the strongest pirate crew in East Blue paired with the strongest pirate crew in North Blue. Worse still, both crews had managed to establish new historical records for their respective seas. By the time they departed for the Grand Line, the bounties on their heads were the largest in the histories of East Blue and North Blue. And every one of the Pirate Slayers enjoyed a special kind of 'popularity' among bounty hunters. On the other hand, with whom could they possibly have been unpopular? Certainly not after the article about the Pirate Slayer printed two weeks earlier.
The moment the observer pulled himself together, he sprinted at full speed to report what he had seen to the town's mayor, who also happened to be the senior-most Baroque Works agent in all of Whisky Peak—Mr. Eight. What the man did not know was that even the identity of Mr. Eight was merely another mask, which meant that at that exact moment he already had an excess of problems without any additional news.
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