Chapter 17: The Frustrated Bluejam
"You... you little...!"
Bluejam's face twisted violently.
Axel's calm reply hit him harder than the injury itself. The moment rage surged through his chest, the wounds all over his body worsened at once. Blood began pouring out even faster, running down his clothes and dripping onto the ground in thick red streaks.
For a second, Bluejam looked as though he wanted to tear Axel apart with his bare hands.
Then survival won.
He forcefully suppressed his fury, abandoned all intention of continuing the fight, turned around, and bolted straight toward the forest.
The battlefield froze for a heartbeat.
Then the shouting exploded.
"He ran!"
"Captain Bluejam ran!"
The news spread faster than fire in dry grass.
The pirates who had been relying entirely on Bluejam's presence for courage suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath their feet. Their nearly invincible captain, the man they feared and followed, had actually turned tail and fled.
Panic swallowed the entire field.
Some of the pirates who were still tangled up in combat immediately threw down their weapons and surrendered on the spot. Others abandoned everything and rushed toward the trees like frightened rats.
Axel, Ace, Sabo, and Luffy were stunned for a moment too.
Even they had not expected Bluejam to abandon his men so cleanly.
Dadan, however, reacted first.
With the instincts of someone who had survived years in the mountains, she understood the danger immediately.
If Bluejam got away and returned to Gray Terminal, then even after today's defeat, he could gather another mob sooner or later and come back for revenge.
He could not be allowed to escape.
Dadan surged forward at once, charging after him with her axe in hand.
Luffy and the others followed without hesitation.
Only Axel stayed where he was.
His arms were in terrible shape.
When Bluejam forced the iron pipe down on him earlier, Axel had absorbed and redirected most of the force, but not all of it. His current control was still not enough to nullify an attack of that level completely. Both arms had been wrenched badly in the exchange, and the strain had left his joints half dislocated and burning with pain.
Going after Bluejam now would only slow everyone else down.
Besides, judging from Bluejam's state, Axel did not think the man could get far.
And he was right.
Bluejam only managed to struggle ahead for a short while before Dadan caught up. She seized the opening, smashed him to the ground, and pinned him long enough for the others to bind him up completely.
That ended it.
Bluejam had lost.
When Axel finally walked over, he found Bluejam on his knees, tightly bound, bloodstained, and glaring at everyone around him like a beast too angry to die.
Ace looked at him coldly.
"So much talk about the strong and the weak," he said. "In the end, you threw away your own men and ran."
Bluejam did not show even a trace of shame.
His face held no panic, no regret, not even real fear.
Instead, he scoffed.
"Throw away my men?" His lip curled with contempt. "Don't make me laugh. In the pirate world, there are only the strong and the weak. The weak submit to the strong. That's all." He lifted his chin slightly despite his condition. "I had no crew when I first set foot on this path. I was ready to die a long time ago."
That belief was genuine.
Cruel.
Ugly.
But genuine.
It was the kind of logic that thrived in the Great Pirate Era. The strong ruled. The weak obeyed. Those who could not endure were swallowed.
Axel was not surprised in the slightest.
In a twisted way, it fit Bluejam perfectly.
Even when cornered, even after being captured, he still clung to that world view as though it were something noble.
Bluejam continued, voice growing harsher.
"On the battlefield, only the strong and the cowards survive. Idiots like you, children playing at bravery, will die sooner or later." A savage grin spread across his face. "I'll be waiting for all of you in hell. Hahahaha..."
Dadan stepped forward and stuffed a dirty cloth straight into his mouth.
Bluejam's laughter instantly turned into muffled, furious noises.
"Shut up," Dadan snapped.
Bluejam could only glare, face red from anger, his threat reduced to pathetic grunts.
Dadan ignored him completely and turned toward the children, waiting to see what they intended to do next.
Sabo folded his arms and looked at the kneeling pirate for a moment.
"So... what now?" he asked. "Do we kill him?"
From a practical perspective, that was the cleanest answer.
If Bluejam was allowed to live and return to Gray Terminal, trouble would follow. Killing him would end the problem at the root.
Ace nodded slowly, expression dark.
"Kill him," he said.
Then he looked at Sabo.
"You do it."
Sabo blinked.
"Why me?!"
Ace answered with perfect shamelessness.
"Luffy looks useless. Axel's injured. I don't have experience with this. So you do it."
Sabo stared at him.
"What does experience have to do with anything?" he muttered. "I don't have any either."
Still, after muttering that under his breath, he gritted his teeth, picked up a knife, stepped in front of Bluejam, and raised it above the pirate's head.
Then he froze.
The knife stayed there.
Hovering.
Not falling.
Not lowering.
Just hanging over Bluejam's skull while Sabo wrestled with himself.
Bluejam, who had closed his eyes to accept the blow, slowly opened them again.
The knife was still there.
His eye twitched.
What kind of torture is this?
For a prisoner, the moment before execution was often the worst part. Even someone mentally prepared for death could not completely suppress the body's instinctive terror. Bluejam had been bracing himself for a swift end.
Instead, he got this.
A knife hanging over his head with no sign of actually coming down.
Since his mouth was stuffed with cloth, all he could do was struggle and make angry, muffled sounds.
Unfortunately for him, those sounds only made Sabo hesitate even more.
After several agonizing seconds, Sabo lowered the knife and looked at Ace.
"...I can't do it," he admitted. "You do it."
Ace snorted immediately.
"You spent all that time getting ready just to give up?"
Even while mocking him, Ace accepted the knife.
Sabo's mouth twitched.
"You really dare say that to me..."
Ace ignored him.
"I'm different," he said. "I'm... preparing."
Sabo said nothing, only watched in silence as Ace took a deep breath, adjusted his grip, took another deep breath, then yet another.
Bluejam stared at them with gloomy eyes.
Even dying is this troublesome?
At this point, Axel almost felt a little sorry for the man.
Almost.
This was the same Bluejam who had strutted around Gray Terminal like a tyrant, decided other people's lives on a whim, and nearly killed them more than once.
And now he was being psychologically tortured by two boys who could not bring themselves to finish the job.
Honestly, it was almost absurd.
Finally, Ace straightened, as if he had reached a conclusion after immense internal struggle.
Then he said, "Let's just lock him up for now. Once we're stronger than him, he won't be a threat anymore."
Sabo stared.
Then exploded.
"That was your preparation?!" he shouted. "You took all that time just to say one sentence!"
Ace immediately fired back, "What do you know? Mental preparation matters!"
Bluejam's eyes dulled.
He was exhausted.
Frustrated.
And for the first time in a long while, he felt a kind of helplessness that had nothing to do with physical injury.
Dadan watched the whole scene with an expression caught somewhere between relief and despair.
The relief came from one simple fact.
The children were still kind.
They had not been twisted by this cruel world yet.
The despair came from an equally obvious truth.
Kindness like that could get them killed someday.
In the end, Dadan took responsibility.
"We'll handle Bluejam," she said firmly. "You four deal with the rest of the pirates."
Without waiting for debate, she ordered her men to drag Bluejam away.
As he was hauled off, a strange look of relief actually appeared on his face.
At least this nightmare was over.
Ace and the others were more than happy to let Dadan take the problem off their hands. Truthfully, none of them had known what to do with Bluejam anyway.
That left only the remaining pirates.
Sabo looked toward the scattered, frightened men and asked, "So what about them?"
Ace answered much more easily this time.
"Take some valuables, then let them go."
These pirates were not Bluejam.
Without him, they were little more than a loose pack of frightened scavengers. They did not represent the same level of threat. Most of them would probably scatter on their own anyway.
Luffy, who had not been especially invested in the discussion until now, suddenly lit up.
"Meat!"
The other three ignored him on instinct.
After a brief exchange, they quickly settled on what to do.
In the end, Axel was the one chosen to make the declaration.
Among all of them, his authority over these pirates was undoubtedly the greatest. He was the one who had injured Bluejam. To the remaining men, that alone made him the most terrifying person on the field.
So Axel stepped forward.
He walked into the center of the defeated pirates, his body slim, pale, and still almost delicate enough to be mistaken for a girl at first glance. Yet not a single pirate dared underestimate him anymore.
They watched him in complete silence, waiting for judgment.
.....
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