Turning toward the blond man, who was still fondling his huntresses on the sofa, Luffy issued the order and once again shook the otter's corpse for emphasis.
"What the hell do you need them for?!" the question came in several different voices from nearly every direction at once.
"What do you mean, why?!" Genuine incomprehension appeared on Luffy's face. "They belonged to the enemy camp! And we've killed, tortured, robbed, ruined, tormented, betrayed, turned in, and sold our enemies—but we've never eaten them! Do you understand the difference? It's one thing to say I killed my enemies, and something else entirely when you can honestly tell someone that you slaughtered your enemies and then ate them! Cool, right?"
Zoro nodded seriously, acknowledging the validity of the argument. Johnny, Yosaku, and Sanji became thoughtful. Only Nami silently rolled her eyes.
"Fine. Let's say I cook them," Sanji finally surrendered, reluctantly freeing himself from the huntresses' embrace and rising to his feet. "But the most they'll be good for is appetizers!"
He knew what he was talking about. Either Johnny or Yosaku could easily out-eat the entire Heart Pirates crew combined. Luffy and Zoro could do the same if they wished. One otter, even one the size of a six-year-old child, and a vulture only slightly larger than an adult human were nowhere near enough to feed everyone.
On the other hand, people had been eating and drinking all evening, so appetizers alone might be sufficient now.
"By the way, since we're talking about appetizers, the charred corpse of a mutated duck should be floating somewhere nearby," Johnny added when he emerged from his contemplation of eating enemies.
"What kind of mutated duck?" Luffy asked with interest.
"It was the size of a horse! And it croaked!"
"Croaked?! Not quacked, but croaked? And the size of a horse? Really?! I want to see it!"
"Well, it didn't exactly croak," Johnny began wriggling out of his statement immediately. "It was more like some borderline state between quacking and croaking, but I wasn't lying about the size! It was so huge you could probably ride it like a horse! I think it even had a saddle… and maybe a blue fur hat with earflaps."
"A saddle and an earflap hat?! Where is it now?!"
"I already told you. Its corpse should be floating somewhere over there." Johnny turned and pointed toward the water. "I was setting fire to the town when it jumped out in front of me. Eyes bulging, mucus, drool, tears. And it was either quacking or croaking, running back and forth like it had lost its mind, as though it was searching for someone or didn't know where to hide. All that darting around and quack-croaking seriously got on my nerves, so I roasted it."
Only then did Igaram finally understand which 'mutated duck' the nearby pirates were discussing. His concern for Vivi had made him completely forget that Karoo had been on the island all this time and would never have left the girl unattended.
The moment realization struck, another cry from the depths of his soul shook the area.
"YOU KILLED KAROO?!"
Igaram's unblinking stare fixed directly on Johnny.
"…I killed a lot of people," the man answered evasively, in no hurry to accept the charge brought against him. "It would help to know who this Karoo of yours is first."
"A duck! The duck you were talking about! Was it large and yellow?!"
"More or less."
"That was Karoo!"
"Maybe it was some other duck?" Johnny once again refused to admit guilt. "Perhaps the duck I roasted merely resembled your Karoo. Who knows how many similar-looking ducks there are in the world? How do you know it was specifically your Karoo?"
Nami could not help rolling her eyes again. Luffy's corrupting influence could be seen in absolutely everything. Under any other circumstances, Johnny would have been the first person to blurt out—or boast—that he had killed someone. But now, apparently, sheer contrariness had taken hold.
Someone accuses me of something? Deny it.
Am I guilty? Deny it anyway.
Is the evidence irrefutable? Are you sure? Want to argue? If I kill you right now, will it remain irrefutable? How will you prove anything while dead?
Luffy's standard modus operandi.
"Those ducks are found only in Alabasta!" Igaram sprayed saliva as he spoke. "They cannot fly, but they run extremely fast! Alabasta has an entire special unit composed of such ducks!"
"A squad of racing ducks? Exactly what I'd expect from the Grand Line!" Luffy nodded wisely. "But I don't understand. If these ducks exist exclusively in Alabasta, how did one end up here on Whisky Peak? Did you bring it with you? Don't tell me you took it along on your super-secret mission?"
The boy looked at the severed head as though regarding a complete idiot.
"What else equally 'inconspicuous' did you bring?" Luffy made quotation marks with his fingers around the word. "The princess's personal ship with all the appropriate royal symbols?"
"Seriously, Luffy!" Nami could no longer endure it. "Could you explain what is happening already? What 'super-secret mission'?" Like the boy, she formed quotation marks with her fingers.
Luffy grimaced irritably, but finally deigned to clarify the situation.
"The severed head is named Igaram, and he is captain of Alabasta's royal guard. That dead-dead corpse you brought with you, the one Traffy went off to dissect, belongs to some Nefelari… Neferami… Nephrite… Whatever! Nyarlathotep's little sister is the princess of Alabasta! Her name is Vivi! These two alternatively developed individuals infiltrated Broke Shwarks to discover the identity of the supreme Big Boss."
"And why did they need to do that?" While Johnny, Yosaku, Zoro, and Sanji moved their lips, translating Luffy's 'explanation' into normal language, Nami went directly to the heart of the matter.
"It turns out our Big Boss is a greedy, scheming bastard who decided to take Alabasta for himself and uses Broke Shwarks as his tool. So these two degenerates climbed into the very center of the fire to learn the truth. More precisely, the old idiot transvestite and the snot-nosed little brat. And they've already been here for two years! I nearly lost my mind when I heard all that nonsense."
"Doesn't a country have its own intelligence service for situations like this?" Nami still had not grasped the full scale of the problem. "At least some kind of special unit? An agent for exceptional assignments, at the very least! It's an entire country! Why send the captain and the princess?"
"I told you—they're morons!"
"And while infiltrating a secret organization threatening the welfare of their state, they brought along a duck that can only be found in their own country?" Now Nami began to comprehend the true scope of the disaster.
"I told you—they're idiots!"
This time Nami herself looked at Igaram's head with the appropriate expression. And when someone with her appearance looked at you as though she saw a worm that had crawled directly out of a street latrine… Even the men standing beside her felt it in their livers. There was nothing to say about Igaram himself.
"But that isn't even the worst part." Luffy sighed heavily, finally finding someone with whom he could share his pain. "The worst part is that they infiltrated the organization two whole years ago! Two years, Nami! And this pair of imbeciles still hasn't been exposed! More than that, they recently managed to discover the Big Boss's true identity! Can you imagine?!"
Nami did not disappoint her captain. She answered honestly.
"I'm shocked."
"Exactly!" Luffy's outrage knew no bounds. "If not for the money and the Big Boss's real identity, I would already have given up on all these idiots! An organization this stupid doesn't even need to be destroyed. Sooner or later, they'll destroy themselves because they're impossibly dumb!"
"Money?" Nami extracted the most important part for herself. "What money?"
"We agree to deliver the princess's corpse to Alabasta, kill the Big Boss, and receive a billion berries. Naturally, in the original version, the princess was supposed to be alive."
"…Isn't that too little?" the girl doubted, accustomed to entirely different prices. "Only one miserable little billion? From an entire country?"
"The country is nearly screwed, so there isn't much to take from them," Luffy now shared Nami's pain. "Besides, it's on our way."
"Hmm…"
"…So who is our Big Boss?" Zoro asked.
His voice held undisguised enthusiasm.
"Oh! You're going to like this! We're dealing with one of the Shichibukai!"
Johnny, Yosaku, Nami, and Sanji once again demonstrated perfect synchronization in response.
"A SHICHIBUKAI?!"
"Lucky, right? It's fate!"
Only Zoro spoiled everything.
"…A Shichibukai?"
Luffy nearly tore himself apart.
"Zoro, for fuck's sake! I'm talking about the Shichibukai! Shichibukai, do you hear me?! The same Shichibukai that include your beloved Mihawk! The one with the title of World's Strongest Swordsman! Remember now?! I understand and approve of your refusal to memorize the names of future corpses, but every rule has exceptions! And all the Shichibukai belong among those exceptions!"
The enthusiasm in the swordsman's eyes flared three times brighter.
"So I'll finally be able to fight a strong opponent?!"
Luffy quickly brought him back down to earth.
"Theoretically."
"What do you mean, theoretically? You just called them exceptions!"
"Sometimes exceptions have exceptions of their own."
"…Is he weak?" Zoro practically deflated.
"How should I put it? His name is Crocodile. He ate the Suna Suna no Mi—the Sand-Sand Fruit—which made him a sand Logia. He began pirating back in the days of Roger Our Everything, and before becoming a Shichibukai, his bounty was eighty million berries… Eighty-one million, to be exact."
"A Logia?" Zoro became even more disappointed. He held a very low opinion of opponents who relied too heavily on their immunity to physical attacks. "And only eighty million? That's almost the same as Law!"
The swordsman was implying that he could kill Law with his eyes closed—both literally and figuratively.
"There's no point judging a Shichibukai by their bounty," Luffy disagreed with his first mate. "When they take the position, the bounty on their head is frozen and their wanted posters are withdrawn. So the amount doesn't reflect their true strength at all. It would be like offering you the position of Shichibukai immediately after your first bounty was announced. No matter how much stronger and more famous you became afterward, people would still say there was a hundred-million-berry bounty on your head."
"And when did he become a Shichibukai?" Zoro understood the point. "How many years has it been?"
"To be honest, even I don't know exactly, but I can say for certain that he has held the post for more than five years."
"Right."
The enthusiasm that Zoro had lost so rapidly began gradually returning. Noticing the change in his first mate's mood, Luffy hurried to clarify.
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