Chapter 151: Pedro's Fear
The Whale Forest
The sounds of battle had drawn attention across the island. As Itachi's Wood Locking Wall settled into place and Luffy reluctantly disengaged from the two minks, a familiar white shape came crashing through the underbrush.
"STOP! STOP FIGHTING! DON'T FIGHT ANYMORE!"
Bepo—Law's navigator, the polar bear mink of the Heart Pirates—burst into the clearing, his paws waving frantically. "That guy is my acquaintance! He's—"
He skidded to a halt. His mouth fell open.
The scene before him was not at all what he had expected. He had sprinted all the way from the town, terrified that he would arrive too late—that the Guardian Knights would have already torn apart whoever had wandered into the Whale Forest. He had steeled himself for bloodshed. For casualties. For the worst.
Instead, the battle was already over.
The orangutan mink, BB, lay on the ground with vacant eyes, his massive body utterly still. He was breathing—Bepo could see his chest rising and falling—but he made no attempt to move. His eyes stared at nothing.
The bull mink, Roddy, was even more dramatically incapacitated. His horns had been driven deep into the trunk of a nearby tree, and he thrashed and bellowed like a beast in a trap. Thick branches—not vines, not rope, but solid, living wood—had grown around his horns and anchored him in place.
"What... what happened here?" Luffy scratched his head, looking at Itachi. He hadn't even seen his crewmate arrive.
Itachi's Sharingan faded, the crimson tomoe retreating into obsidian darkness. "The orangutan was subdued with a standard genjutsu. The bull's momentum was redirected into the tree during his charge. He did most of the work himself."
"Be careful. There's one more."
He looked up.
Carrot and Wanda arrived at that moment, their crocodile mount skidding to a halt. The two minks stared at the subdued Guardians with expressions of naked disbelief.
"Roddy... and the others... they were taken down?" Wanda's voice was barely a whisper.
"It seems you're the minks who live here." Itachi glanced back at the two newcomers. His senses stretched upward, toward the presence lurking in the canopy above. "The one in the trees hasn't attacked. For now."
"Who are you?" Luffy peered at Carrot and Wanda with open curiosity. "A rabbit? And a dog?"
Wanda and Carrot dismounted. "We made it in time. Thank goodness there were no casualties."
"LET ME GO! LET ME GO RIGHT NOW!" Roddy's horns scraped uselessly against the wood. His hooves churned the earth. His tail lashed.
"Stop attacking them, Roddy. These aren't enemies." Wanda stepped forward, her eyes moving between Luffy and the dark-haired man who had appeared from nowhere.
"You're Straw Hat Luffy, aren't you?"
"Yeah. Who's asking?"
"I'm Wanda. This is Carrot." The dog mink gestured to her rabbit companion. "We're not going to harm you. You..."
She had intended to tell them to stop resisting. The words died in her throat. Resistance wasn't exactly the issue here.
"I wasn't even doing anything!" Luffy pointed at the trapped bull. "Why'd they attack me the second I got here?!"
Wanda knelt beside him. Without warning, she leaned forward and licked his nose.
Luffy went cross-eyed.
"The Guardian Knights eliminate all outsiders who enter this forest. That's their duty. It's nothing personal."
Wanda raised her head toward the dense canopy above. "I'll take these two away. Let them go, Pedro."
High above, hidden among the leaves, the lion mink Pedro stared down at the scene below. His claws dug into the branch beneath him.
He had watched the entire confrontation. He had seen Luffy clash with Roddy—the Straw Hat captain's rubber fists meeting the bull mink's electrified horns in a contest of raw power. And then, in the span of a heartbeat, the other one had appeared. The dark-haired human. The one with eyes that burned red.
BB had fallen without a sound. Roddy had been neutralized mid-charge. And Pedro—Pedro, who had fought for decades, who had led the Guardians through countless battles—had not even seen the technique being used.
A dangerous one.
But even so—in this forest, on our territory, with our numbers—two humans cannot possibly—
Those men didn't even beat us without their poison gas.
His jaw tightened. He made his decision.
"For Wanda's sake... RETREAT!"
Silence.
The forest did not move. The branches did not rustle. The dozens of Guardians he had positioned in ambush did not emerge.
"Did you not hear me?! I said—"
Pedro looked again. Really looked. And his blood ran cold.
Dozens of his warriors—his comrades, his brothers-in-arms, fighters who had trained their whole lives in the art of forest combat—were bound. Branches. Crossbars. Living wood had grown around their limbs, their torsos, their mouths. They were cocooned in timber so tightly that they could not move, could not speak, could not even tremble.
Pedro had not noticed. He had not heard a single sound.
When?! When did he—?!
He looked down.
Itachi was staring directly at him.
Those eyes. Those crimson, spinning eyes. They pierced through the foliage, through the distance, through every defense Pedro had ever learned to trust. The lion mink had faced Warlords. He had sailed with the Pirate King's own crew. He had walked through horrors that would have broken lesser men.
He shuddered.
I didn't even sense it. Not a whisper. Not a trace. If he had wanted us dead...
Below, the branches that had bound the Guardians began to withdraw. Wood creaked. Limbs loosened. One by one, the trapped minks were released. They scrambled backward in panicked retreat, their earlier ferocity replaced by wide-eyed terror.
Roddy tore his horns free from the tree with a bellow of effort. He spun toward Itachi, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. "YOU! What kind of freakish ability was that?! Answer me!"
Itachi did not look at him.
"DAMN YOU—!"
"RODDY!" Pedro's roar cut through the forest. "Take BB and FALL BACK! That's an ORDER!"
The bull mink's muscles bunched with the effort of restraining himself. Two rough breaths steamed from his nostrils. Then, with a final glare at Itachi's unresponsive back, he hauled the still-catatonic BB over his shoulder and vanished into the trees. The rest of the Guardians followed, shadows retreating into shadow.
Luffy blinked. "There were THAT many people hiding in the woods? I didn't feel them at all."
"Thank you, Straw Hat." Wanda's voice was subdued. "It's fortunate the moon isn't full tonight."
"What happens on a full moon?" Itachi asked.
"That's... beyond our control." Wanda's eyes were distant. She still hadn't realized what had happened in the trees—still thought Pedro had simply called off an attack that hadn't yet begun.
Bepo finally remembered how to move. He rushed forward, his paws waving, his round body jiggling with relief. "You scared me to death! Straw Hat! Long time no see!"
Luffy tilted his head. "Who are you?"
"WHAT?! Don't you remember me?! I took care of you after the war at Marineford! You were unconscious for days!"
"Ohhhh." Recognition dawned. Luffy pointed at Bepo's nose. "You're the bear on Tra-guy's ship."
"What's a 'Tra-guy'?!" Bepo's paws flew up in indignation. "We're Trafalgar Law's crew! The Heart Pirates! Have some respect!"
"That's what I said."
"YOU DIDN'T SAY ANY OF THAT!"
Behind Bepo, two more figures emerged. Shachi and Penguin—Law's oldest crewmates, the men who had sailed with him since the North Blue—stepped into the clearing. Shachi's eyes went wide the moment he saw Itachi.
"OH! It's you! The new Straw Hat! Uchiha Itachi! The one with the billion-berry bounty!"
"One BILLION?" Wanda and Carrot turned to stare at Itachi in unison.
Penguin nodded vigorously. "We've been following the newspapers. SO much has happened. Dressrosa. The Birdcage. The bounties!" He turned to Itachi with barely contained excitement. "And now we're allies, right? The Heart Pirates and the Straw Hats?"
"Yeah." Luffy grinned. "Tra-guy's here too. He's back in the town."
"WHO'S TRA-GUY?!" all three Heart Pirates demanded in perfect synchronization, their arms flapping like enraged cranes.
"Tra-guy is Law."
"Oh! The captain! The captain's here?!" Bepo's earlier indignation evaporated into pure joy. "I can't wait to see him! It's been so long!"
While the Heart Pirates celebrated, Wanda had been studying Itachi with new eyes. A billion berries. She had heard the rumors, of course—whispers drifting through the New World about the Straw Hats' mysterious new crewmate. But rumors were just rumors. The reality was standing in front of her, calm and unreadable, having apparently ended a battle she hadn't even seen begin.
"We should move to the town," she said carefully. "There's much to discuss."
Kurau City — The Ruins
The group that arrived in the ruined city was a strange procession. Luffy bounced ahead with Carrot, who had taken an immediate and enthusiastic interest in the rubber man's abilities. Bepo and the Heart Pirates walked with Itachi, peppering him with questions about Dressrosa that he answered with patient, measured responses. Wanda led the way, her expression growing grimmer with every step.
The city was a graveyard.
Buildings that had stood for centuries lay in rubble. Streets were scarred with claw marks and impact craters. The ancient stone walls that had protected the mink civilization for a thousand years had been breached in a dozen places.
"It's exactly like the gate we saw earlier," Itachi observed. "The same pattern of destruction. Brute force applied systematically."
Usopp and Franky had found something worse. A footprint—massive, deep, unmistakable. Beside it, claw marks raked through stone like it was wet clay.
"This is terrifying." Usopp's voice was very small. "Was this place attacked by some kind of monster?"
"I don't know." Robin knelt beside the footprint, her expression troubled. "But one thing is certain. This destruction is recent. Days, at most. Perhaps less."
"AAAAH!" Usopp clutched his head. "If that's true, then Sanji and the others—they would've walked right into this!"
Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out. The sound echoed through the empty streets like a warning.
And in the shadows of the ruined buildings, something watched. Something that had been waiting for a very long time.
(End of Chapter)
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