Chapter 9: Breakthrough
"It's all your fault!"
Ace shouted the moment he caught up to Luffy, who was still laughing as they ran.
Luffy looked completely unbothered.
"Wasn't it funny?"
"Not funny at all!"
Sabo, running beside them with a face full of exhaustion and resignation, let out a long sigh.
"Ace, give it up. You can't reason with Luffy."
Ace clenched his jaw, then finally gave up arguing.
Sabo was right.
This was hardly the first time Luffy had turned a simple plan into chaos, and experience had already proven that scolding him rarely achieved anything. At best, it made Luffy pout. At worst, it encouraged him to do something even more incomprehensible.
Just then, Axel smoothly joined their retreat from the side.
"Yo," he said, falling into pace with them as if he had not just watched their entire operation collapse in spectacular fashion.
Behind them, the outpost Axel had set on fire had already descended into noisy confusion. Men were shouting, scrambling to put out the flames, and cursing whoever had done it. But the commotion caused by Ace, Sabo, and Luffy being chased drew even more attention.
Very quickly, the men at the burning outpost realized the truth.
The fire had not been an accident.
It had been a diversion.
A large group peeled away from the flames and joined the pursuit.
Sabo glanced back once and nearly swore.
"Damn it! Another group's coming!"
His shout drew the attention of one of the men among the pursuers, a middle aged pirate with a familiar sleepy face.
He stared at Sabo, then at Luffy, and his eyes suddenly widened.
"Ah!" he shouted. "Those are the brats from my dream!"
Even while running, Axel could not help turning to look at him.
"The brats from your dream?"
Sabo's face instantly grew strange.
That phrase had hit too close to home.
But before anyone could press him, he forcefully changed the subject.
"Forget that! The plan's changed!"
His voice turned sharp, his mind already racing.
"We can't use the original route anymore. The whole point was to distract the bay outposts, then use the gap to break through the others one by one. That's impossible now."
Ace clicked his tongue. "So what's the new route?"
Sabo's eyes swept across the terrain ahead and the positions of the outposts burned into his memory.
"We're already off the original line," he said. "If we try to force our way back toward the first planned target, we'll be boxed in."
He took a breath and made the call.
"We skip the first route entirely and break through from the second outpost instead."
Ace frowned. "Explain."
Sabo answered immediately, even while sprinting through the filth and broken ground of Gray Terminal.
"The original plan marked the attack points from one to six in a lightning shaped route. But now we've been pushed off course before reaching the first one. If we try to return to that line, we risk being surrounded from both sides."
His voice became more decisive with every word.
"So we cut out one branch completely. We abandon routes two, four, and six, push through the remaining line, and then use the previously discarded seventh route to retreat into the forest."
Luffy listened for about three seconds before giving up and making a confused face.
Ace at least understood enough to know one thing.
"Meaning we just keep running where you tell us."
"Yes," Sabo said bluntly. "And try not to make things worse."
Luffy immediately puffed up.
"I don't make things worse!"
Ace and Sabo both looked at him.
Neither said a word.
That silence hurt more than any insult.
Axel glanced at Sabo, then toward the direction of the seventh route.
He silently offered Terao Kazu a bit of sympathy.
Sorry.
I bought your information, and now I'm about to use it to wreck your people.
With the new route decided, the group no longer hesitated.
They changed direction under Sabo's lead and sprinted deeper into Gray Terminal.
But the uproar they had caused was already spreading.
Shouts echoed through the junk covered settlement. More doors opened. More thugs, scavengers, and half awake hooligans stuck their heads out to see what the noise was about. Gray Terminal was full of vermin who lived for trouble. Any disturbance large enough to smell like profit would always attract attention.
And then Bluejam's men shouted the worst possible words.
"Those brats are wanted by Captain Bluejam!"
"Catch them and you can join his crew!"
"There's a reward too!"
That did it.
People who had originally planned to watch from the sidelines suddenly changed their expressions.
Bluejam was the tyrant of Gray Terminal. Joining his gang meant food, status, and protection. Add the promise of a reward on top of that, and even trash with half a spine would start running.
One by one, more people joined the chase.
They were not strong.
Most were much weaker than actual pirates, little more than bullies and scavengers with weapons.
But strength was not the problem.
Numbers were.
Soon enough, people started lunging from side alleys, broken houses, and trash heaps, forcing the four boys to swerve, slow down, and strike while running.
"Damn it!"
Ace drove a kick into the stomach of a man who jumped into his path, sending him rolling across the dirt. But before the man even stopped moving, two more took his place.
"These bastards are so annoying!"
And worse, the crowd kept growing.
The more noise they made, the more people came.
At this rate, they would be swallowed by sheer numbers long before they reached the outpost.
Axel's eyes narrowed.
This was bad.
Not because these people were dangerous individually, but because the pursuit would keep compressing their movement until someone strong enough arrived to finish the job.
He made the decision instantly.
"I'll hold them off," Axel said. "You three break the path ahead."
Sabo glanced at him sharply. "Can you do it?"
"I'm the best one for this."
That much was true.
Against a crowd, Axel was nearly untouchable. Vector manipulation made frontal pressure meaningless, and his mobility far surpassed the others. If anyone could disrupt the pursuit and still slip away cleanly, it was him.
Sabo nodded once.
"Alright. Be careful."
Ace did not argue either. He knew enough now to trust Axel's judgment.
Luffy opened his mouth, probably to say something unhelpful, but Axel was already slowing down.
"I know."
He let the others surge slightly ahead while he drifted back toward the pursuing pirates.
There was no need for him to throw himself directly into the crowd.
Gray Terminal itself was a weapon.
Broken boards, rusted iron, cracked barrels, shattered furniture, piles of scrap and nameless junk covered the entire place. To Axel, it was a battlefield overflowing with ammunition.
He lowered his center of gravity and flicked his leg.
What looked like a casual kick sent a chunk of solid trash screaming through the air like a cannonball.
The pirates behind him did not sense the danger in time.
By the time the first one noticed, the object had already smashed into the front line.
Bang!
Two men went down instantly, one clutching his ribs, the other spinning sideways into a pile of refuse.
"Watch out!"
The pirates reacted quickly after that.
Whatever else they were, many of them were still men who had fought before. The tightly packed formation immediately loosened, each trying to give the others more room to dodge.
Axel smiled faintly.
"You really think that'll help?"
He raised one hand.
Then the battlefield answered him.
A heap of scattered junk more than a meter high lifted from the ground, dragged upward by invisible force. Metal scraps, broken wood, stones, bottles, bent tools, and other debris hovered at impossible angles around him.
The pirates' expressions changed.
Then Axel sent it all flying.
The hailstorm of debris tore through the air with terrifying speed, but the worst part was not the speed.
It was the trajectories.
Nothing moved in a straight line.
Each piece curved, twisted, dipped, and accelerated at strange angles as if guided by an invisible hand. The pirates could not predict where anything would go. One man dodged left only to be struck in the shoulder by a plank that changed direction mid flight. Another ducked a bottle and got clipped in the temple by a chunk of rusted metal coming from above.
In an instant, the entire pursuit line fell into chaos.
Cries of pain rang out.
Men stumbled over each other.
Some were only bruised.
Some were bleeding.
A few were knocked flat on their backs and could do nothing but groan.
Axel did not linger.
The moment the formation broke, he turned and sprinted away, effortlessly catching up to the others.
Behind him, furious voices rose from the disorganized crowd.
"That monster...!"
But none of them could stop him.
They had to regroup first.
And by the time they did, the distance between both sides had widened again.
When Axel rejoined the group, Sabo gave him a quick thumbs up without breaking stride.
"Nicely done. That should buy us some time."
Luffy looked at Axel with sparkling eyes full of admiration.
"That was amazing! What move was that? I want to learn it too!"
Ace answered first, merciless as always.
"An idiot like you could never learn that."
Luffy's face immediately twisted in protest.
"What did you say?!"
Ace did not even look at him.
"I said you're an idiot. If you hadn't ruined things, we could've taken the outposts the safe way."
That hit.
Luffy's anger deflated just a little.
"I was only trying to help Sabo..."
The complaint came out much weaker than before.
Sabo glanced at him and sighed internally. For all his recklessness, Luffy had meant well. That was what made it so hard to stay angry for long.
"Enough," Sabo said, cutting in before the argument could grow. "What's done is done."
Ace clicked his tongue but stopped pressing.
Luffy fell silent too, clearly a little aggrieved.
Sabo breathed out softly.
Honestly, he had to admire the three of them in a very particular, frustrating way.
They were being hunted through Gray Terminal by half the scum in the district, and they still had the energy to bicker like this was a normal morning.
Then the next problem appeared.
Ahead of them, at the outpost they were now targeting, Bluejam's men were already gathered outside.
The commotion had been too large.
They would have had to be deaf, blind, and dead not to notice.
As the four boys came charging toward them, several pirates broke into greedy grins.
Rumors about these brats had spread for a while now.
Some said they were tough.
Some said they were fast.
Some even claimed they had beaten full grown men badly enough to leave them whimpering.
But most of the pirates here dismissed that talk as excuses from weaklings too ashamed to admit they had been beaten by children.
How strong could a bunch of brats really be?
They were men under Captain Bluejam.
Real pirates.
Not some pathetic trash from the gutters.
In their eyes, the boys had only one talent.
Running.
And now those same brats were charging straight at them.
To the pirates, it looked less like a fight and more like four rewards delivering themselves to the door.