"VIVI-SAMA!!!"
Tears once again streamed endlessly down his cheeks, but this time they were tears of joy.
"Well done, Traffy!" Nami praised Law with a smile.
"Nothing is over yet," the gloomy man replied. "You could even say that nothing has properly begun. She has extensive internal damage and catastrophic blood loss, so her chances are poor."
"What if we cut off her head and attach it to another body?" Luffy suggested. "You can do that, can't you?"
"There's no time to explain, so for now I'll say only this: it won't work," Law replied. "Ikkaku! Shachi! Clione!" he called loudly, turning toward his crew.
Of all his people, the girl and two men he had summoned were not only completely sober, but capable of assisting him during surgery, analyzing blood, and collecting samples. As a doctor, Law willingly accepted people with medical knowledge into his crew, which meant that a good half of the Heart Pirates were genuinely qualified physicians. None could match Law himself, but any one of them could easily have taken the position of ship's doctor on another crew.
"Yes, Captain!" All three instantly appeared beside him.
"Analyze the girl's blood." No one knew when he had managed it, but a test tube containing the blood had suddenly appeared in Law's hand. He passed it to Ikkaku. "Then find every possible donor on the island. We're going to need a great deal of blood."
In reality, they needed to test only the Straw Hats and the surviving hunters. The number of doctors aboard Law's submarine was so large that it would have been exceptionally strange if none of them had thought to create medical records for every crew member, complete with detailed information including blood tests, contraindications, and medical history.
For that reason, Ikkaku, Shachi, and Clione needed to check only the Straw Hats and the hunters. They already possessed complete data on their own people.
"We'll do it, Captain!"
"Then begin immediately."
Law did not waste words. He used his fruit's power again. As soon as the expanding Room reached the submarine, Ikkaku vanished without a trace and an ordinary chair appeared in her place. Next, stones lying nearby 'turned into' small plastic boxes. Shachi and Clione removed syringes and test tubes from them, then began collecting blood samples from everyone around them—quickly and professionally.
With so many doctors aboard their submarine, along with an entire mass of rare and expensive medical equipment, the Heart Pirates resembled a floating hospital more than a pirate crew. Which, in truth, was not very far from reality.
"Do not disturb me," Law told Luffy. Then another chair appeared where Law had stood, while an ordinary sheet replaced Vivi's body on the ground.
As the Straw Hats became acquainted with them, they gradually learned that the Heart Pirates received more than ninety percent of their finances not from piracy, but from treating people. Wealthy patients whom other doctors had declared incurable paid especially well—which, frequently, was not far from the truth. Rich people could afford excellent physicians, but thanks to his fruit, Law stood head and shoulders above them.
Even before raising a pirate flag, he had been a rather famous doctor in North Blue—well known in certain circles, one might say—so the Heart Pirates had never suffered from a shortage of patients. Most importantly, there was no need to threaten or rob anyone. People were willing to hand over their last pair of trousers if only Law would cure them.
The world was not without idiots, however. Some of Law's patients—almost always among the very rich, with only a couple of exceptions—recovered and immediately lost both their lives and their money at the hands of the Heart Pirates.
And over what? Ordinary greed.
The murder of recent patients was one of the reasons Law had earned the title Surgeon of Death.
"Zoro, get your useless ass up immediately!" Luffy said sternly. "Take Ryu and Yosaku with you and drag over every surviving pira—damn it! That's what habit does to you! Anyway, bring every living hunter here. My billions are at stake, so no slacking!"
From the displeasure on the swordsman's face, it was easy to tell that he had no desire whatsoever to 'get his useless ass up.' Nevertheless, he did.
"Fine, fine, I'm getting up… And do I deal with that pair myself?"
"What pair?!" Johnny instantly became wary, because he and Yosaku were the only two people nearby to whom the word 'pair' could apply.
Instead of answering, Luffy gave him a nasty grin. Without taking his eyes off Johnny, he drew one of the revolvers from its holster. Johnny immediately hid cowardly behind Nami—unlike Yosaku, he was not immortal.
Still staring ominously at Johnny, Luffy pointed the revolver straight into the sky.
BANG!
After firing, he silently returned the weapon to its holster.
"What was that supposed to be?" Nami asked, failing to understand his actions.
Luffy did not need to answer. With two relatively quiet booms, a pair of bodies struck the ground nearby one after the other. One landed in silence. The other arrived with a strange squealing cry.
The first body belonged to a large headless bird that appeared, by every sign, to be a vulture. Judging by the blood still pouring from the stump of its neck, Luffy's shot had removed its head completely.
The second corpse looked truly strange. It belonged to an actual otter—an otter dressed in polka-dot pajamas, or perhaps some sort of dress, and wearing sunglasses that now lay beside its body. Unlike the vulture, the otter had not died from Luffy's bullet, but from striking the ground.
Johnny would not have been Johnny if he had not asked one of his favorite questions at that moment.
"What the hell is that?"
"I'd say it's a vulture and an otter." Captain Luffy performed his Captain Obvious impression. "And I'd say they aren't exactly your typical vulture and otter," he pronounced thoughtfully, once again voicing a fact already obvious to everyone. "I might even suggest that they work for Broke Shwarks," he added while rummaging through the satchel strapped across the otter's back, stating one more fact, though one slightly less obvious than the previous two. "And they're probably some sort of combat couriers," Luffy finally concluded after a moment, dumping the bag's contents onto the ground as proof.
An album, colored pencils, two sandwiches packed in a plastic container, four bombs with fuses, a large shell that split into two halves with blades attached to it, a large Den Den Mushi—alive, but knocked unconscious by the impact and sporting a crack in its shell—and an entire pile of Eternal Poses fell from the bag.
Fifteen, to be exact. Three appeared completely intact. The other twelve had become a heap of broken glass mixed with needles, metal plates, and wooden housings, the result of the otter's fall from a great height.
"Is this some kind of weapon?" Johnny asked, lifting the shell and separating it into two parts. He examined what looked like a pair of clawed gloves that could not actually be worn. "Sharp!" he exclaimed after slicing a nearby stick in half without effort. "Damn sharp!" he corrected himself immediately after managing, with little difficulty, to cut through a concrete mooring post buried in the ground.
"Awesome bird!" While Johnny played with the claw-shell, Yosaku rolled the headless vulture from its back onto its belly and discovered two heavy machine guns with ammunition belts mounted across the bird's back. "Holy crap! How much can this thing carry? These are insanely heavy!"
After cutting through the retaining straps, Yosaku took one machine gun in each hand and straightened to his full height.
"Light a cigar!" Luffy demanded the instant he looked at him.
Yosaku understood the idea immediately. He put the guns back on the ground and began lighting one of his many cigars.
"Hey, how do I look?" he asked, picking up the guns again. A cigar smoked between his teeth, and he wore the most vicious expression he could manage, looking immensely pleased with himself.
Yosaku had quite literally fallen in love with Smoker's jacket, mainly because of the incredible number of special straps designed to hold cigars, so he had not parted with it since. Smoker's open jacket over his bare torso, loose black trousers, heavy black boots, a white band around his forehead to keep sweat from running into his eyes during training, short blond hair cropped close to his scalp—his once-luxuriant mane had been sacrificed to laziness—and two machine guns in his hands, their ammunition belts hanging almost to the ground.
Although the guns no longer looked quite as enormous in Yosaku's hands as they had on the vulture's corpse, they remained deeply impressive. One could say the machine guns emphasized the man's brutal appearance, while the man made the weapons look even more threatening.
They seemed made for each other.
"Bwahahahaha!" Turning toward the burning houses, Yosaku opened fire with both machine guns at once, adding an evil laugh for atmosphere. "Bwahahahaha… Oops!"
Another burst 'crossed out' a man who had just leaped from between two houses, cutting across his body and flinging him back into the gap from which he had emerged a moment earlier.
"Yosaku, for fuck's sake!" Luffy roared.
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Yosaku shouted at the same time.
"Every surviving pira—damn it, now it's stuck! Fine, I'll repeat myself one more time: we need every surviving hunter alive!"
"I know, I know! But how was I supposed to know someone was there?! It's nothing but fire! How did he even survive in there?!" Yosaku sounded sincerely outraged by such cosmic injustice.
"Hey, talking head!" Grabbing the otter's corpse by the scruff, Luffy walked over to Igaram's severed head. "So what are these little animals supposed to be?" he asked, shaking the tiny body in front of him for clarity.
"…The Unluckies," Igaram replied after a short pause.
"The Unluckies?" Johnny repeated doubtfully. "Are you sure? I agree the animals were seriously unlucky to run into us, but I think they were just too stupid. Instead of fleeing immediately, they kept circling the area."
"The Unluckies is what Baroque Works members call them," Igaram explained. At the moment he was experiencing an entire storm of conflicting emotions for a great many reasons. "Their code names are Mr. Thirteen for the otter and Miss Friday for the vulture."
"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" Doubt returned to Johnny's voice. "The otter's wearing a little polka-dot dress. That doesn't seem very masculine."
Judging by his tone, the fact that the otter was not human, and that applying human standards to it made little sense, did not enter into Johnny's calculations. Nor did the fact that an aquatic mammal belonged to a secret organization and wore clothes. Perfectly ordinary, really. Like Bepo, except not a bear.
The man did not even realize that he had already begun losing the ability to distinguish normal things—as most people understood them—from abnormal ones. Had Usopp announced in his village that he had met an otter and a vulture who worked for an underground organization, everyone would immediately have dismissed the claim as another of his inventions—or, more simply, a lie. No one would have imagined that such a thing could be encountered in real life.
"And what did this pair of animals do in your organization?" Nami asked, preventing Johnny's curiosity from steering the conversation elsewhere.
"They were cleaners," Igaram explained. "That is precisely why the other members of Baroque Works called them the Unluckies. They eliminated unwanted people and useless agents who repeatedly failed assignments. They also delivered secret messages from the Boss."
At that moment, realization dawned in the eyes of most of the Straw Hats present.
"Exactly!" came from nearly every direction at once.
Johnny, Yosaku, Nami, and Sanji exchanged glances, surprised by how perfectly synchronized they had been, before realizing that all of them had reached the same conclusion. Nami chose to speak for them.
"Luffy, you still haven't told us the details! Alabasta, a princess, money, and the supreme Boss! You haven't explained anything!"
"I'll explain later!" the boy waved her off. "First we need to gather every surviving pira—damn it, what is wrong with me?! Every surviving hunter, before they scatter across the island like cockroaches in a kitchen when someone turns on the light. Speaking of kitchens… Sanji, cook the otter and vulture for us!"
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