Rowan asked curiously, "What is it?"
Orochimaru licked his lips and said, "Our research into Devil Fruits is nearly at its final stage. We've already cracked Zoans, and Paramecias are in the process of being solved. So now we want to capture someone and unravel the secret of how a person can consume multiple Devil Fruits."
"Blackbeard?" Rowan murmured.
Rowan himself could consume multiple Devil Fruits because he had the power of the Shinigami, which let him refine Devil Fruit powers directly.
But Orochimaru and the others couldn't do that. If they wanted to eat multiple Devil Fruits, they had to find Blackbeard and crack his secret.
"That's right, Blackbeard." Orochimaru flicked out his tongue. "According to our investigation, Blackbeard is currently in Mock Town."
Mock Town was an independent settlement on the western side of Jaya, a pirate haven outside government control, famous for its culture of spending money like water.
You could call it paradise for pirates, basically the lawless district of Sabaody in miniature.
In the original story, after Luffy entered the Grand Line, he ran into Blackbeard there.
So Blackbeard showing up there wasn't strange at all.
"Fine. I'll go with you."
As it happened, Rowan was a little curious about Mock Town himself, so he headed there with Hashirama, Issho, Tobirama, and Orochimaru.
With those four around, capturing Blackbeard would be almost absurdly easy.
Even if Blackbeard had instantly become Emperor-level on the spot, he still wouldn't be able to withstand that lineup.
When Rowan and the others entered Mock Town, the first thing they saw wasn't corpses everywhere or bloodshed running wild.
Mock Town might be a lawless pirate gathering place, but it still had its own kind of order.
It was just chaotic, that was all.
After only a few steps, Rowan saw a drunk being thrown out of a bar.
Off to the side, two pirates were in the middle of a duel right on the street, and not only was no one stopping them, the crowd was actively cheering them on.
"Come on, Dark! You're the captain of the Mad Lion Pirates!"
"Don't lose, Kilo! Show them the spirit of the Blood Ghost Pirates!"
With the spectators making noise and stirring things up, the two pirate captains fought to the death in the middle of the street, and the scene was brutally bloody.
Some people nearby had even started a little betting pool, taking wagers on which captain would win.
Blood and violence seemed like completely ordinary things in this place.
Issho's expression remained calm. His Observation Haki had already taken in everything happening around them, but he had no intention of interfering, because every last person here was trash.
Even if they killed each other to the last man, there would be no reason to pity them.
At most, someone would collect the bodies afterward.
And not because he was soft-hearted. It was simply because leaving that many corpses out in the open would make it easy for disease to break out, so for the sake of those still alive, the dead still had to be buried.
"I found him."
Just then, Issho suddenly spoke. "Blackbeard is in the bar ahead."
Rowan nodded, and the group entered the bar one after another.
Even though it was still daytime, the place was packed with noise and pirates.
Rowan's arrival didn't attract any attention.
To the pirates there, he and his group were just a bunch of nobodies. None of them even had bounties, so they weren't worth noticing.
Rowan swept his gaze across the room and immediately spotted the original members of the Blackbeard Pirates sitting in a row at the counter.
Besides Marshall D. Teach, the man he was looking for, there was helmsman Jesus Burgess, sniper Van Augur, navigator Lafitte, and ship's doctor Doc Q.
Those were the Blackbeard Pirates' original core members.
People like Avalo Pizarro, Catarina Devon, Sanjuan Wolf, and Vasco Shot were still locked up in Impel Down at this point. Blackbeard wouldn't break them out and recruit them until the Marineford War.
So for now, the Blackbeard Pirates were still only a handful of people.
Sensing someone staring at him, Teach instinctively looked for the source of the gaze.
In an instant, his eyes met Rowan's.
Rowan smiled faintly and immediately activated mind-control magic. Blackbeard's expression turned blank on the spot.
That move had worked every time so far. Neither Gecko Moria nor Golden Lion had escaped Rowan's control, and Blackbeard was no exception.
Without mental resistance, this spell was basically unbeatable.
Of course, there had to be Devil Fruits somewhere that could strengthen the mind.
But the Shadow-Shadow Fruit, the Float-Float Fruit, and the Dark-Dark Fruit definitely weren't among them.
So Blackbeard being controlled was only natural.
"Huh?"
The instant Blackbeard fell under the spell, the others around him all noticed the change.
Jesus Burgess, Van Augur, Lafitte, and Doc Q all realized at once that something was wrong.
But as quick as their reactions were, Rowan's group moved even faster.
Tobirama opened by throwing out a kunai straight at Doc Q. Doc Q dodged without a second thought.
But in the very next instant, Tobirama appeared behind him.
Flying Thunder God Slash!
Even Izuna Uchiha hadn't been able to react to that move, much less some ship's doctor.
Doc Q's head came off in a flash. He died instantly.
The Blackbeard Pirates had lost two fighters the moment the fight started, and they were immediately thrown into shock.
But just as Doc Q's head hit the floor, a crushing pressure slammed down onto the rest of them.
Press-Press Fruit: Gravity Field!
There was no question now—Issho had made his move.
The moment the gravity field descended, Tobirama used Flying Thunder God to slip out of its range and wasn't affected at all.
The Blackbeard Pirates, on the other hand, were instantly smashed flat against the ground.
And they weren't the only ones. Everyone else in the bar besides Rowan's group was caught in it too.
With chakra reinforcing him, Issho's control over the Press-Press Fruit had improved again. He could now push the gravity field to more than a hundred times normal gravity.
Under that kind of pressure, none of the Blackbeard Pirates could hold out.
Van Augur, especially.
He was a sniper. His physical condition was decent, better than that of ordinary pirates, and he'd even learned Haki, but he still wasn't on Lafitte's level, let alone Burgess's.
The instant the gravity field hit, he let out a scream and blacked out on the spot.
And everyone else in the bar fared the same way. The moment the field dropped, they were all crushed into unconsciousness.
In the end, only three people remained conscious in the room: Blackbeard, Jesus Burgess, and Lafitte.
But Blackbeard had already been mentally controlled and couldn't resist at all.
And the other two were trapped under the gravity field, suppressed so badly that they couldn't even bring out half their strength.
At the same time, both of them realized the same thing.
They were done for.
The enemy had acted decisively, their abilities were bizarre, and they'd struck first with teleportation, a gravity field, and a mental attack.
How was anyone supposed to fight that?
It was impossible.
Lafitte shouted first, "I surrender!"
He was clearly terrified that if he surrendered too late, he'd get cut down on the spot.
The Blackbeard Pirates at this stage had only just been formed. They weren't anything like the later version, so it was perfectly normal for them to scatter at the first sign of disaster.
The one thing that truly united them later was Blackbeard getting Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit at Marineford.
That was when Teach had really won them over.
Right now, they might follow him, but none of them had reached the point where they'd throw their lives away for him.
So surrendering was the obvious move.
Next to him, Jesus Burgess looked at Lafitte in disbelief, as if asking him how he could be so spineless.
Surrendering that fast—was that even human?
And worse, Lafitte had done it before he could. That made him even less human.
"I surrender too!" Burgess shouted even louder than Lafitte.
He couldn't help it. He was scared too. He was still young and had no desire to die.
If he got his head taken off like Doc Q, it would be way too pointless.
Rowan snapped his fingers. Issho understood and released the gravity field.
"You two really mean to surrender?"
"Yes. We surrender." Lafitte and Burgess raised both hands obediently, terrified that even the slightest wrong move might make the other side misunderstand and kill them.
That would be way too unfair.
Rowan turned to Issho. "So, should we accept their surrender?"
Issho shook his head. "I don't know enough about them."
Rowan said, "The tall, skinny one is Lafitte. He used to be a policeman in the West Blue, but became infamous for excessive violence and was eventually exiled."
"The other one is Jesus Burgess. He's incredibly strong, but I don't know much about his past. Judging from his personality, though, he's probably not a good man either."
Tobirama said, "That's fine. We're not good people either."
Ninja had never been good people.
They were tools of killing.
Issho asked, "Have either of you slaughtered civilians?"
"No." Lafitte shook his head. When he was a policeman in the West Blue, he'd abused violence, sure, but he'd never done anything like that.
Burgess's answer was even more direct. "Huh? Why would I slaughter weaklings like that?"
As long as ordinary people didn't provoke him, he had no interest in killing civilians. He preferred dealing with strong people.
Issho's Observation Haki wasn't at the level of reading minds, but it could detect malice and goodwill. He could read the movements of clouds in the sky and even locate meteors in space to drag them down with his fruit.
He could tell whether these two were lying.
And they weren't.
That was enough for him. He didn't object to Rowan taking them in.
Because in this era, there were very few truly good people.
Not slaughtering civilians already counted for quite a lot.