"The problem isn't how long he has held the position or what his old bounty was. The problem is the two idiots! A pair of morons infiltrated his so-called underground organization at once, and he doesn't have the slightest clue they're there! That is the real problem! I refuse to believe someone that stupid can represent a genuine danger."
"What do I care whether he represents a genuine danger or not? The only thing that matters is whether his personal strength is appropriate!" This time Zoro disagreed with his captain. "If he raised a pirate flag back in Roger's era, then he must have visited the New World at some point. And if he's still alive, he can't be completely weak."
"…He might simply have been lucky."
"Lucky? He crossed our path, and you call him lucky?"
"Zoro-aniki, he hasn't interfered with us at all, much less crossed our path," Johnny could not keep silent. Yosaku, standing beside him, immediately drove an elbow into his ribs.
"His organization tried to recruit me."
"Because they recognized your strength and potential."
"Shut up, you idiot!" Yosaku squeezed his friend's shoulder with all his strength and turned his head slightly so Zoro could not see his lips as he hissed almost inaudibly.
"They wanted to make me a subordinate!"
"Have you ever seen an organization where some completely random guy recruited from outside is immediately made the Boss?"
Yosaku nearly smashed his own face with his palm. Sometimes Johnny was impossibly stupid. Damn truth-lover.
"…I don't think I understand, Ryu. Are you asking for trouble?" The swordsman stared at him without blinking.
"I only told the truth!" Only then did Johnny finally realize that things were heating up, and not because of the burning town.
"No, I think you're asking for trouble." Zoro began drawing his white katana from its sheath.
Upon seeing this turn of events, Johnny practically teleported behind Nami's back.
"As far as I'm concerned, all of you dragged the conversation in a completely unrelated direction!" the girl said decisively while the man behind her tried unsuccessfully to shrink himself. "We were discussing how we take the princess home, kill the Big Boss there, and receive one billion berries. Correct?" She looked questioningly at Luffy.
"Correct."
"What happens if she dies?"
Igaram's reaction was immediate.
"VIVI-SAMA!!!"
"Shut up," Nami said curtly toward the head. From Igaram's expression, one might have thought she had hammered all his teeth and his tongue down his throat. "So what do we do if Traffy fails?" she repeated.
"Exactly the same thing, only without the princess!" Luffy shrugged carelessly. "You must understand that it will be much easier to shake money out of the king while waving the princess's living corpse in front of him than while holding an urn of her ashes… I'm not carrying a dead corpse aboard my ship."
"Are you certain the princess will agree to cooperate with us at all if she survives?" Sanji asked while examining the vulture and otter carcasses before him with a critical eye. "After all, we killed her."
"And her animal too," Johnny added from his hiding place.
"The worst possible first impression," Yosaku agreed with a nod.
"Oh, come on, Yosaku!" Luffy waved him off. "If we went out right now, found the corpse of her duck, ate half of it, fed the other half to the princess while she recovered, and then told her what we'd done—then, and only then, would her impression become terrible!"
"Don't even think about it!" Nami warned him immediately.
"I'm speaking purely theoretically! Judging by the severed head's reaction, the princess is very close to her animal, so after a joke like that we'd have to kill her again. Otherwise, we'd gain an entire country as a personal enemy."
"Luffy-aniki, your last joke already turned the entire world against us! And you're planning to challenge the World Government directly, which includes more than a hundred and fifty countries!" Yosaku reminded him of two important facts.
"You know, now that you mention it…"
"We are not feeding the princess her own duck!" Nami said with emphasis.
"Right! Why let good food go to waste? We'll eat it ourselves!"
"Luffy!"
"I'm joking, I'm joking! But as they say, every joke contains a little bit of joke."
"Luffy!"
"No, seriously, why waste good food? You know how our Sanji cooks—it'll be delicious enough to lick your fingers clean! We'll have roast duck with apples. If it's already dead, what difference does it make to anyone?"
"I have a feeling it will make a difference to the princess," Yosaku once again served as the voice of reason.
By that point, nothing but all-consuming fear remained in Igaram's eyes. Had he been given the chance to return only a few hours into the past, he would immediately have grabbed Vivi and set a direct course for Alabasta. Their chances of survival would clearly have been greater.
No matter how hard he tried, he could no longer remember what he had been thinking when he decided to oppose the Pirate Slayers. What arguments had he used? Why had he believed they possessed any chance of victory?
Until that day, Igaram had never considered himself an idiot. Now he had begun seriously doubting his own mental abilities. Had he possessed a functioning brain, Vivi and Karoo would be alive and healthy, while his head would remain in the place nature intended for it.
Only now, after listening to the Pirate Slayers, did Igaram understand that there had never been any confrontation to begin with. The pirates had known about their trap-town and Baroque Works long ago yet had entered the center of danger anyway. While he and the other agents wagered their lives, the Pirate Slayers had merely been entertaining themselves.
He had never imagined their entire operation would end so abruptly and so stupidly. And Igaram could blame no one but himself. He had failed to protect Vivi and Karoo. If only he had listened to the girl and fled the island with her while they still had a chance.
While everyone talked, Usopp finally deigned to wake up.
"…Why the hell did you set the entire town on fire?" the sleepy man asked first after looking around.
"Why not?" the dissatisfied Johnny replied with a question of his own.
"Logical."
For someone who until recently had hated using his fire abilities—soot, grime, the destruction of every valuable object, and the smell of burned meat that made his stomach search for an exit—Johnny had grown far too fond of fire lately.
No one in the family had intended to burn Whisky Peak to the ground. But the moment Johnny transformed into the tail-bearing monstrosity, he immediately began pretending to be a flamethrower.
A very large and powerful flamethrower.
A fucking enormous and powerful flamethrower.
Now he enjoyed seeing everything around him burn. No fortune-teller was needed to determine the cause of the change: his fruit was influencing him more and more strongly.
A year earlier, when Johnny transformed under the fruit's power, he had looked almost no different from an ordinary human. One had needed to stare closely to notice any changes at all. Now? Only a blind person could fail to notice such a xenomorph.
His sudden love of fire had advantages as well. Johnny had learned to control the flames around him to a certain extent. How else could he, Yosaku, and Nami have crossed the burning town so easily? Nami and the princess would have been thoroughly roasted without him.
On the other hand, without Johnny, there would have been no fire in the first place.
"What happened to the bounty hunters?" Usopp asked while rubbing his sleep-creased face.
"We killed almost all of them. What else were we supposed to do?" Yosaku replied.
"Logical."
"You'd better tell us why you drank so much," Yosaku asked Usopp. "You knew it was a trap and that your resistance to poison and sleeping drugs isn't as strong as ours yet, but you kept drinking anyway."
"Why not?"
"Logical."
"…You'd better tell me what happened while I was asleep… And is that the transvestite's severed head?"
"Boys, I'll explain everything to him. You can go search for the surviving hunters." Nami waved a hand as she walked toward Usopp.
"Have you lost your mind? You're going to search too!" Luffy disagreed.
"I'm too beautiful for that," the girl countered with disagreement of her own. "Besides, without Observation Haki I could search for hours and find no one, while you and Zoro already know where everyone is hiding and exactly how many there are."
"Can't argue with that," Johnny agreed.
"You absolutely can!" Predictably, Luffy held the exact opposite opinion. "I never intended to make you search! We'll split into two groups. Zoro and I will locate them, and the rest of you will drag them here."
"I'm still not going! I don't want to! And I'm too beautiful for you to force me! Besides, if all of us leave, who will watch the girls?" Nami's elegant finger pointed toward the terrified huntresses, who had remained utterly silent the entire time and were doing everything possible not to attract attention. "Almost all of Traffy's people are unconscious."
"Leave her alone," Zoro advised. "If she doesn't want to go, she'll cause more trouble than she'll be worth."
A dazzling smile lit Nami's face.
"Listen to your first mate. He won't advise you badly!"
"Am I going with you or staying to cook?" Sanji asked. "A little longer and their blood will begin to clot." He pointed toward the animal carcasses.
"Cook!" Luffy permitted. "We're also going to take a look at the duck, and if we're lucky, it's already dead."
"If it's alive, finishing it off is completely unnecessary," Nami inserted.
"Then come with me and see for yourself."
"Ryu-chan will tell me everything later."
"Ryu-chan loves living far too much to tell you everything."
"For me, Ryu-chan won't mind dying at all."
The jaw of the aforementioned Ryu-chan dropped to the ground.
"…I don't think I understand, Nami. Are you asking for trouble?" Like captain, like first mate—and the rule worked in reverse as well.
"Yes, I am. Is that a problem?" The girl's already beautiful smile became even more beautiful.
"You're playing with fire."
"No. I'm afraid Ryu-chan won't be able to handle me."
Looking at Nami, who practically glowed with satisfaction, Luffy merely smacked his lips in silence before turning to Johnny.
"Come on. Show me exactly where you last saw the duck."
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