"If we don't intervene, the Night Wolf Gang won't survive the Fang Gang's invasion," Robin analyzed smoothly, referencing the intelligence report. "Even in the past, the Night Wolf Gang's overall strength was slightly inferior to the Fang Gang's. The only reason they successfully repelled previous invasions was due to their former boss, Oliver, fighting on the front lines. But now, the Fang Gang has the explicit backing of the Capone Family. They undoubtedly have massive upgrades in weaponry and likely reinforcements in manpower. Relying solely on their own strength, the Night Wolves have zero chance of holding them off."
Robin paused for a moment before continuing. "However, if we do intervene, we will inevitably draw the attention of the Capone Family. If that happens, we might find ourselves in a direct, open conflict with them."
"How about we just assassinate Capone Bege?" Bardock suggested, tapping his chin thoughtfully.
He clearly remembered from the manga that Bege eventually unified the entire West Blue underworld. After conquering everything there was to conquer and losing any sense of challenge, he formed the Fire Tank Pirates and sailed into the New World, eventually becoming one of the infamous Supernovas of the Worst Generation alongside Monkey D. Luffy.
"Assassinating Capone Bege might end the immediate chaos, but it's far more likely to trigger an even greater war," Robin reasoned, shaking her head. "The main issue is that our current crew is simply too small to absorb his territory. If we kill him, we gain absolutely nothing, but we guarantee that the surviving members of the Capone Family will hunt us down with suicidal fury. Furthermore, the other four Mafia Families won't thank us for taking him out; they'll just view us as an unpredictable, hyper-lethal threat and target us next. Even if we can easily assassinate him, there's no strategic benefit in doing so."
"You're right," Bardock agreed, crossing his arms. "Killing him isn't the hard part, but if we do, other gangs will just swoop in and steal all his territory. That just turns me into a free hitman for the other Mafia Families. What's the point of killing him then?"
Bardock wasn't a bloodthirsty maniac. If there was zero practical benefit to killing someone, he wasn't interested.
"There's one more thing," Robin added. "Capone Bege is notorious for utilizing decapitation tactics against rival organizations—taking out their leaders via ambush. Because he favors that strategy, he is incredibly paranoid about his own safety. Even if we wanted to assassinate him, bypassing his personal security would be quite troublesome."
Bardock blinked, genuinely impressed. How in the world had Robin gathered intelligence on Bege's personal tactics and paranoia in such a short amount of time?
"So we just abandon the Night Wolf Gang?" Bardock asked. "Honestly, I don't really care about street-level mafias. We're heading to the Grand Line and eventually the New World anyway. If Oliver hadn't explicitly tried to kill me, I never would have bothered subjugating them in the first place. But... since they did swear loyalty to me, and they've been running errands for us for the past few months, I can't just toss them to the wolves."
"It's not actually that difficult of a problem to solve," Robin smiled, interlacing her fingers on the table. "People naturally prefer to pick soft persimmons to squeeze. First, we need to display a very specific level of force against the Fang Gang to force them to redirect their expansion elsewhere. Since they just swore fealty to the Capone Family, they absolutely cannot afford to look incompetent to their new bosses. If they encounter a surprisingly tough bone to chew, they'll prioritize easier targets first and save the Night Wolves for last."
Robin paused to organize her thoughts before outlining the rest of the strategy. "The Capone Family is incredibly ambitious. By forcefully expanding their territory now, they are blatantly ignoring the unspoken rules the Five Great Families have upheld for years. By attacking the buffer zones, they are directly tugging on the whiskers of the other four Families. Since those four Families clawed their way to the top of the underworld, they undoubtedly have highly capable leaders and hidden experts.
"If they don't want their territories slowly swallowed whole, they will absolutely begin funding and arming their own proxy gangs to push back against the Capone Family's proxies. Eventually, this proxy war will escalate into open, bloody warfare between the Five Families themselves. Once the entire West Blue underworld descends into total chaos, you can decide whether the Night Wolf Gang advances or retreats with a single word."
"I see exactly what you're getting at," Bardock grinned, his eyes gleaming with understanding. "You want us to sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight. As long as we display just enough power to make the Fang Gang hesitate and look for easier prey, we buy ourselves time. Eventually, the Five Great Mafia Families will tear each other apart. When that happens, none of them will have the spare resources or attention to care about a tiny street gang like the Night Wolves.
"The key is strictly controlling the amount of power we display. It has to be just enough to make the Fang Gang think we're a massive headache, but not so overwhelming that they run crying to Capone Bege and drag the main family into the fight early. Alright, Robin. In that case, we'll only deploy Perona's Negative Hollows for this operation. I'll leave the exact execution and scaling up to you."
"Understood. Leave it to Perona and me," Robin nodded confidently. "I guarantee the Fang Gang will give the Night Wolves a wide berth, but they won't feel the need to escalate it to their bosses."
"And hey, if we accidentally piss off the Capone Family early, it's fine," Bardock laughed, waving a hand casually. "We'll just crush them outright. So don't hold back too much, do whatever you need to do."
Truthfully, Capone Bege wasn't someone Bardock feared in the slightest. In fact, if Bege's ambitions weren't so massive—to the point where even the Yonko Big Mom marrying one of her daughters to him couldn't secure his true loyalty—Bardock would have considered recruiting him. Who could say no to a literal walking fortress? Bardock still hadn't figured out how they were going to haul all that gold out of Shandora when they eventually found it.
That very night, the Fang Gang's forward reconnaissance squads, who had secretly infiltrated the city, were ambushed by the Night Wolf Gang.
With Robin's Flower-Flower Fruit, locating hidden targets within a city was incredibly simple. Less than fifteen minutes after her conversation with Bardock, she had pinpointed the exact location of every single enemy scout. She brought Perona along for the raid and ordered Andrew to follow behind them for cleanup.
"Are these the scumbags?" Perona yawned, rubbing her cheek in annoyance as she hovered over a dimly lit alleyway. "Making me work this late at night... it's terrible for my skin." She glared at the thugs below as if they had committed an unforgivable sin against humanity.
"Just get it over with so we can go back to sleep," Robin sighed. "Besides, we all know you stay up late reading anyway. That's why you're breaking out."
"Shut up! Negative Hollows!"
Perona fought the urge to shove a ghost straight through Robin's chest, instead directing a swarm of them down at the alleyway.
Andrew, true to his orders, was strictly there for cleanup. He watched from the end of the alley as several glowing white ghosts phased directly through the brick walls and into the hidden Fang Gang scouts. A moment later, Robin signaled for him and his men to move in.
Every single hardened Fang Gang scout was currently on their hands and knees, weeping uncontrollably and bashing their heads against the pavement.
"I'm so sorry for being born..." "I'm utterly useless... even stray dogs won't look at me..." "Why did I become a gangster... I just wanted to be a beautiful ballerina..." "Coach... I just want to play soccer..."
The rest of the operation was incredibly straightforward. Robin had Andrew use a Den Den Mushi to contact the Fang Gang directly, negotiating a ransom. The Fang Gang quickly agreed to pay a hefty sum of Berries and weapons to get their elite scouts back alive.
Back in the neighboring city, Alva, the boss of the Fang Gang, was initially furious. He had sent his absolute best men to gather intelligence, and they had been captured without a single shot fired! How could they be so utterly useless? Why didn't they just go back to the countryside and farm pigs?! Didn't they understand the stakes? With the Capone Family breathing down their necks, one major screw-up could get them all executed!
However, his fury quickly gave way to deep suspicion. He knew for a fact that Oliver, the Night Wolf Gang's powerhouse, had been killed recently. The Night Wolves shouldn't have any capable fighters left. Meanwhile, Alva's men had recently received massive weapon upgrades from the Capone Family and were highly trained elites. How could the supposedly crippled Night Wolves have captured them so flawlessly?
The moment the ransomed scouts returned, Alva summoned them to his office immediately.
"Start talking. What the hell happened? How did not a single one of you manage to escape?!"
"B-Boss! It was ghosts!" "Yeah! They were real! You could see them, but you couldn't touch them, and they phased right through the walls!" "Boss, they have someone who can control ghosts! The second one phased through my chest, I completely lost the will to live!"
As the men babbled over each other, Alva finally pieced the story together. The Night Wolf Gang had recruited a Devil Fruit user who controlled ghosts that sapped a person's will to fight. Alva had heard rumors of Devil Fruits for years, but it wasn't until he saw Oliver transform into a bobcat with his own two eyes that he believed the treasures of the sea were real.
"Shut up!" Alva barked, silencing the room. "Besides making you depressed, what else can these ghosts do? How many people can they affect at once? How long does the effect last?!"
The scouts looked at each other nervously before the bravest one stepped forward. "Boss, we were all ambushed in small squads, so we don't know the maximum number of people it can affect. But the depression doesn't last very long at all. We snapped out of it after a few minutes. But... in those few minutes, we were completely incapacitated, and the enemy easily surrounded and tied us up."
"Useless trash. Get out of my sight!"
Alva waved them off, slumping back in his chair to think.
On its own, the ghost ability didn't seem to have high lethal force. But when paired with the massive manpower of the Night Wolf Gang waiting to tie up anyone incapacitated, it was an incredibly thorny defense to crack. If he launched a full-scale invasion as his very first major operation under the Capone Family and failed, Capone Bege would undoubtedly have him killed. Bege was notoriously ruthless; he wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in his own executives' heads if they disappointed him, let alone a newly acquired proxy boss.
'I have to pivot and expand in a different direction for now,' Alva decided, gritting his teeth. 'If I conquer a few other territories and prove my worth first, the Capone Family will be much more forgiving when I request reinforcements to deal with this Devil Fruit user later. Dammit... I thought with Oliver dead, the Night Wolves were just a soft persimmon waiting to be squeezed. How the hell did they instantly find another Devil Fruit user? Why can't I ever find one?!'