"They're here! It's them!" he shouted toward the inside of the shack.
I didn't understand a damn thing.
"Where's Luffy?" I asked the boys, hands on my hips.
Neither of my sons had the chance to answer. The ragged blond man beat them to it.
"You looking for that brat?" he spat, then shoved the door open wider.
Inside, Luffy hung from a rope tied to the ceiling. Blood was running down his face. The child didn't even have the strength to cry or scream. He simply dangled there, barely conscious.
"Ace. Sabo. Leave," I said calmly, wrenching the metal pipe out of one of their hands.
I saw them bolt from the corner of my eye. In front of me stood—
"We're from Bluejam's crew, you bitch! Get out of here and maybe we won't come after you!" he snarled.
His neck snapped before the sentence had properly finished. He collapsed. I stepped inside.
Another man stood beneath Luffy's hanging body. I walked up, lifted the boy down with one quick motion—careful not to hurt him further—and carried him outside. The other two pirates stumbled out after me. For a moment they hadn't even noticed their dead companion.
Blood sprayed across the packed earth. One of them I ran through the chest with the pipe.
The other lost his spine. I turned slowly toward the last man.
He was staring at me in horror. On his hands were blood-soaked gloves, each knuckle fitted with two-centimeter metal spikes.
Ah.
Of course.
Luffy was made of rubber. He had eaten a Devil Fruit. Ordinary beatings wouldn't do much to him.
So they had used those gloves. That was why my little boy—my eternally smiling child—had been hanging from that rope, bleeding and half dead.
This had to be handled quickly.
Then I had to get him to High Town. Immediately.
"You're pirates, aren't you?" I asked the last man quietly. He was the one responsible for my son's condition. "Then go back to your captain." I adjusted Luffy carefully in my arms. "And tell him you hurt the child of Emeral D. Ralagan."
I looked him straight in the eyes.
"Do you hear me? You almost killed the child of an Emperor." My voice was calm. "Be certain to collect your payment."
"N-no! It was them! Ace and Sabo! It's because of them! I just wanted to know—! And that kid said he knew them!" he stammered, his deep voice breaking into a shrill whine.
Luffy wheezed faintly in my arms.
I turned around and walked straight toward the hospital.
Anger and hatred had never been strangers to me. Quite the opposite. I could say with confidence they had been made especially for me. But since becoming a mother, I had noticed something strange.
I used them less.
In fact, after some time—hard to say exactly when—they stopped ruling me entirely.
Of course, sometimes I got angry with the boys. But truth be told, it always passed quickly. I could never bring myself to punish them properly.
It had begun to seem to me that anger could not truly grow from love.
That belief ended that day.
Because the fury born from love…
Is something terrifying.
A few days later I realized I had felt something like it once before.
When Roger died.
But over the last three years I had buried that memory.
Now some second-rate pirates had dug it up again.
I looked at the child Garp had entrusted to me.
Covered in bandages.
Breathing unevenly.
Attached to an IV.
For a moment it felt like a dream.
I had met countless bastards and scum in every corner of the world. But never had I felt anything like this. Everything inside me was screaming for one thing.
Blood.