On this day, Marine officer Mashaku received an earth-shattering piece of information.
With a sweaty palm pressed to his forehead, he stood by the front door of the Loguetown Marine base.
"Sear, why would you do this? Being the son of a deceased Marine, this is very unfortunate."
Mashaku reminisced about Jacob, Sear's father and his benefactor. Jacob had been a man of honor whom he deeply respected.
Until the age of 14, Sear had received government allowances. Mashaku had been the one to hand-deliver them to the young boy. Over the years, he had watched the orphaned boy grow up.
"How could you join the revolutionaries?" he muttered in disbelief..
"But there is no room for doubt, this is you. It is circulating throughout the base." He was holding a picture of Sear that captured him in the heat of battle.
"It was a mistake to not frequently visit the village after he reached 14." Mashaku whispered, with guilt rising in his throat. "If only I looked after him better! if only..."
. . .
In another street
At the moment, with the Marines after him, Sear was in the open in enemy territory.
Having altered his appearance, he wore a tall hat and a wig to hide his horns, along with a fake mustache.
'Where could that engineer be' he was searching for a particular shop
'I am sure this is the place that the informant told me about.'
In front of him was a common clothes shop. Apparently, it was a front for something else.
He was suspicious about the informant's claim, in any case, he entered the shop, just to check it out.
"This looks like a clothes shop alright.."
He rang the bell on the front desk.
A girl around his age emerged from the back door, giving the impression of a thug, with her red hair, long coat, and short blouse.
She greeted him with a smile "What could I get for you?"
Sear remained silent, he felt the girl looked familiar. He just couldn't point out the reason.
Still, after a few seconds of gawking at the girl like an owl, he made sure to follow proper procedure before anything else.
"I want a red wedding dress for women, along with a striped gray and blue dress for men, 3 pairs."
It was a secret code.
Right after hearing it, the girl had locked in, her eyes becoming serious.
"That's a strange request for a wedding dress. Please follow after me to select a design and other details"
"Okey!"
Sear followed after the girl into whatever was behind the back door. Taking stairs, they arrived at a hidden underground floor.
It was a workshop down there, with three people absorbed in their tasks.
Sear; after curiously looking around the place, spoke: "Before we begin our discussion, may we introduce ourselves."
"I am Desire" the girl cut it short "Anything else you want to know?"
"Hmm that is your name, right! I am Sear, actually I did have something else to ask."
"Go on, I will answer any reasonable question."
With the permission granted, Sear didn't beat around the bush, "Did you recently sell a 300 horsepower engine to people claiming to be merchants?"
"I did!, is anything wrong?" Hearing his question, the girl became tense; her hands reaching back to a bat leaning against a pillar. The 3 workers also became alert.
Seeing this, Sear hurried to calm the situation.
"There's no need to make it so intense, I just wanted to inform that they weren't merchants but rather pirates who tricked you into selling them the engine."
The girl sighed.
She was both relieved that the guy didn't have any ulterior intentions and also regretted that she had sold her machine to unknown pirates.
"To think they lied to me, they sure looked pretty legit. Are you aware of where those pirates are now?, what are they up to?"
"Don't worry, I have the engine now, you can probably guess how?"
"Oh!!" Desire nodded, seeing the guy in a new light.
"Of course, the main reason I am here is to order a few more boat engines from you and..."
"And.." the girl repeated the word after him.
"I would like to invite you into joining the Revolutionary Army"
. . .
"You, a Rev?"
"You could say that." Sear shed his disguise.
Pupils widened in surprise at his true face, Desire and everybody else in the room fell silent.
The girl had clearly underestimated him.. Subsequently, she narrowed her eyes.
"I have a policy of not revealing client information to anyone, so we can pretend this conversation never happened" She averted her gaze and turned to the side.
Sear readily accepted this response, he put the disguise back. As he was doing that, Desire called out to one of her colleagues "Bill, write down his requirements"
"Yes!" The young man named Bill indicated the two other guys to stand up, which the two promptly did, putting down their tools.
While Desire kept speaking.
"However, don't get the wrong idea, we have nothing more to talk about. Dealing with the RA is a risk.. Still, I will fulfill this request to repay your favor."
Exiting the place, Sear was smiling, having fulfilled his primary objective.
'We can take it slow no need to hurry.' he thought, then suddenly remembered something..
'Now I remember, Desire was a filler character in the anime. She is a childhood friend of Bartolomeo, right, I had nearly forgotten, she even becomes a pirate herself.'
Even surer that the girl would accept his offer eventually, he walked away and right after he left, someone else entered the workshop impersonating as a regular cloth shop.
Inside the shop, Desire was yet again having a conversation.
The other person being none other than Mashaku.
"Desire I don't have enough time to go into details but do you remember the boy whom I sometime used to tell you about?"
"You mean the son of Mr Jacob who rescued me from drowning. How could I forget, I am forever grateful to that Marine Uncle."
She was reminded of her childhood, although she was a kid back then, it was such an impactful memory that she clearly remembered.
That day she had tried to use a junk jet ski that she had found on the shores. even though she had spent weeks tinkering with it and made adjustment before operating it, the vast ocean was always unpredictable.
What had been a calm weather had quickly turned into a deadly storm.
At that time, one man had sacrificed his life to save another.
Mashaku, seeing her reaction, spoke further..
"His name is Sear; a revolutionary and he's on this island right now."
'Sear?' Desire was struck by lightning at the name, stunned, her mind raced 'That's the guy who just came here, did he know about this connection?, it didn't seem like it...'
[what a twist of fate it was, a full circle.]