Three people and one duck walked along the roads of this town.
In the distant horizon, a faint white glow was beginning to appear. Dawn was almost here, and the people of this town had practically been up in arms all night long.
Yet Vivi felt not the slightest bit of sleepiness. Truth be told, the mood of this fallen princess was pretty complicated right now.
She'd first fallen into the hands of a vicious pirate with a 70 million berry bounty, then nearly been killed by the Baroque Works assassins chasing her. But in the end, that seemingly vicious pirate had saved her instead. And after learning she was a princess, his attitude had even turned incredibly friendly, leaving her utterly baffled.
(No matter what, I'm alive now!) Vivi comforted herself with that thought. She turned her gaze to the bespectacled man walking ahead, staring at his back, and for some reason felt an inexplicable sense of security.
(I never would've thought a refined-looking guy like him could be so strong. That swordsman too—so many bounty hunters weren't even enough for him to cut down alone. Their straw-hatted captain probably isn't far behind either. Speaking of which, are they really newcomers who just entered the Grand Line? .........) Princess Vivi fell into deep thought.
Up ahead, Sherlock and Karoo—more precisely, Miss Valentine lying parallel on Karoo's back—were walking side by side as Sherlock questioned the Baroque Works assassin for the information he wanted.
"So, you're saying you were chasing her because she found out your boss's true identity?" Sherlock pushed up his glasses, his brows furrowing slightly. All this secrecy—it seemed things were getting complicated.
Miss Valentine nodded, her face flushed red. She was tightly bound in a turtle-shell pattern by the "Devil's Rope," forcing her to lie in an utterly humiliating position on Karoo's not-so-broad back. This made the ordinarily proud assassin lady feel an exceptional level of shame and anger. She squirmed uneasily for a moment, only to provoke a dissatisfied quack from Karoo beneath her. Fearing she'd fall off, she had no choice but to settle down and behave.
Miss Valentine's golden hair was a bit disheveled. She was finally experiencing what Vivi had gone through earlier. And never mind the rope's tentacle-like, perverse sensation—the thing she couldn't stand most was Sherlock's gaze upon her, as calm and indifferent as ever. It was as if the one on the big duck's back wasn't a seductively posed, completely defenseless beauty, but a white-cut chicken trussed up with rope and ready for the pot.
Vivi looked with some sympathy at the Kilo-Lemon woman on the big duck's back, her fair face flushing a little as well. Then she smoothed her own watery-blue hair and asked Sherlock:
"Where are you taking us?"
"To break up a fight." Sherlock replied without turning his head.
"Break up a fight?" Princess Vivi and Miss Valentine both expressed extreme confusion at this.
"According to what she said, if the only assassins sent to kill you were these two, then the ones causing all that commotion earlier were probably my companions."
Sherlock pushed up his glasses and continued with a helpless tone:
"That idiot captain of mine is capable of any kind of idiotic thing."
On the other side, the idiot captain Sherlock was referring to was laughing his head off with his mouth wide open.
"Hahaha, Zoro, you should've said something sooner! I thought you were upset about their food or something!" Luffy slapped his thigh and laughed at Zoro.
"You have to give me a chance to explain first! And unlike you, this food-obsessed idiot, I—" Zoro crossed his arms over his chest, his face twisted in exasperation. When it came to this idiot captain, the green-haired swordsman always felt like he had pent-up frustration with nowhere to vent.
"Hey, this isn't the time for you two to chat after calling a truce!" Nami, the great demon king who had KO'd both Luffy and Zoro with a single punch each, declared to them with full authority:
"Hurry up and find Princess Vivi—my 1 billion berries are all riding on her~" As she said this, the greedy navigator put a hand to her forehead.
"You two unreliable guys... Sigh, if only Sherlock were here."
"Looking for me? Nami."
As if on cue, the moment Nami's words left her mouth, Sherlock and his group emerged from a nearby street corner.
Sherlock pushed up his glasses, pointed to the beautiful girl with watery-blue long hair beside him, and asked: "Also, when exactly did she owe you 1 billion berries?"
"Th-that..." Vivi looked flustered at the group she'd reunited with.
Silence...
Nami and the others froze, taking a good while to snap out of it. Then, the three of them gave reactions that were completely different yet perfectly in line with their individual styles.
"Aaaaaah! I love you to death, Sherlock!" Nami had always thought of Sherlock as a highly reliable companion, but she never imagined he'd be this reliable—especially compared to her other two pitfall teammates, it moved her to the point of tears.
So the navigator lady excitedly pounced toward Sherlock, planting a fierce "bite" on his rather fair face. Then, ignoring the somewhat stunned Sherlock, she grabbed Princess Vivi's small hand, her face breaking into an extremely charming smile—though this smile inexplicably sent a shiver down Vivi's spine.
Zoro shot a pitying glance at Princess Vivi. The next moment, he turned his eyes to the Baroque Works assassin Miss Valentine lying on Karoo's back, narrowing his eyes slightly before looking at Sherlock with confusion in his gaze.
Understanding what Zoro's confusion was about, Sherlock shook his head at the green-haired swordsman, indicating that this one posed no threat whatsoever.
"Yo~ Sherlock!" Luffy greeted Sherlock with a cheerful grin. But then, his full attention was completely captured by a big duck wearing a hat.
"Is this prey you caught, Sherlock?"
Luffy stared at Karoo with eyes full of "carnivorous" desire, the greed and malice in them far surpassing that of a certain bespectacled man from before. This terrified the poor duck brother into backing up in panic several times, nearly throwing Miss Valentine off his back.
"It'll definitely be super delicious!" Luffy swallowed his saliva, utterly baffled as to why, despite having eaten so much food already, he was hungry again so soon.
Setting aside the turtle-shell-bound assassin lady and Luffy circling Karoo, the remaining few exchanged information and generally understood what had happened earlier.
However, Princess Vivi firmly and righteously refused a certain navigator's utterly unreasonable demand.
"What the... You're a princess of a whole country, right? How can you not even come up with 1 billion berries?" Nami refused to give up, continuing to swindle Vivi.
A princess of a whole country? Vivi smiled bitterly and shook her head, then explained to the group about the Baroque Works conspiracy and the rebellion in the Alabasta Kingdom.
"A rebellion, huh? No wonder you can't even scrape together 1 billion." Nami's expression turned somewhat serious.
"So, you joined Baroque Works to investigate who's targeting your country?" Zoro raised an eyebrow, secretly admiring the girl's courage.
Sherlock remained silent on the side, his eyes flickering behind his transparent lenses as his brain ran like a precise computer at full speed.
At that moment, Luffy suddenly asked Vivi with curiosity: "So, who's the mastermind behind it all?"
"N-no, I can't tell you—that'll get you all killed!" Vivi anxiously waved her hands, this kind-hearted girl truly not wanting the Straw Hat crew to get involved in this mess.
Nami glared fiercely at the idiot captain who was digging his own grave, then gave Vivi an awkward smile: "We get it. You'll be hunted down, and anyone trying to seize a country has to be a big shot."
Nami inwardly cursed her luck— not only did she fail to get the money, but now they were almost dragged into something huge.
"Exactly." Vivi nodded, then casually added: "No matter how strong you are, you couldn't possibly beat one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Crocodile..."
"!"
The moment the words left her mouth, Vivi realized she'd messed up. She hurriedly clapped a hand over her lips, but it was no use.
Silence...
Sherlock glanced in surprise at the dumbfounded Princess Vivi, feeling extremely speechless inside. If he didn't know her better, he'd almost think this fallen princess had deliberately let it slip to drag them all into the water.
At that moment, a sunglasses-wearing otter and a similarly sunglassed bald vulture suddenly appeared on the rooftop beside the group. These two odd creatures looked over everyone's appearances, memorizing them one by one, before the otter hopped onto the vulture's back and they flew off at high speed.
Nami was nearly scared out of her wits on the spot. She grabbed Vivi by the collar and shook her violently: "What the heck are that bird and otter?! Hey, do you even realize what you just did?!"
"They're the Unluckies!" Miss Valentine, sitting on the ground, answered Nami: "You're done for. They've memorized your faces. Even if you run to the ends of the earth, you won't escape Baroque Works' pursuit!"
"Don't say 'you'—it should be 'we.'" Sherlock corrected the smug assassin lady: "After all, you know your boss's true identity too, don't you?"
As he said this, Sherlock pushed up his glasses, his expression as indifferently calm as ever, as if being targeted by a Warlord of the Sea was no big deal.
"And I really can't think of any reason Crocodile would keep a failed assassin like you around."
The Kilo-Lemon woman froze at first, but the more she thought about it, the more Sherlock's words made sense. Her face gradually drained of all color.
"Why is my life so miserable?!" x2
Nami and Miss Valentine let out mournful cries almost in unison, then the two equally pitiful women collapsed to the ground, looking utterly broken.
The other two guys' reactions were the complete opposite of Nami and company's.
"Huh? She just said Warlord of the Sea!" Luffy excitedly said to Zoro in a daze, clearly very interested in what the Seven Warlords were.
Zoro's lips curled up at that. Warlord of the Sea? Wasn't that the same level as Hawkeye? At the thought, the green-haired swordsman felt his blood beginning to boil.
"I'm so sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to." Vivi stood to the side, apologizing nonstop to everyone, especially at Nami's utterly despairing expression, making the little princess feel so guilty she was on the verge of tears.
"Quack quack~" Karoo, not understanding a thing, tilted his head and cutely quacked away.
Sherlock leaned against the wall, lost in thought.
"To think we'd get targeted by a Warlord of the Sea right after entering the Grand Line. This is really..." Sherlock smiled helplessly: "We've got a huge problem on our hands!"
Then he turned his gaze to the distance, looking at the far-off sky—it seemed the sun would rise in just a little while.
"But as a Warlord of the Sea, why would he go to all this trouble to seize control of a single country?" Sherlock felt quite puzzled about this in his heart.
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