I had just finished storing the strange-looking spear of Don Krieg in my Dimensional Bag when the bastard himself decided to make his grand encore.
'Apparently, getting thoroughly demolished by a rubber boy wasn't enough to keep his oversized ego in check.'
"AREN'T I THE STRONGEST?!" Krieg bellowed, springing up like some demented jack-in-the-box, his remaining armor pieces rattling with each wild gesture. His eyes had that look of someone who'd completely lost their mind to alcohol. "I AM DON KRIEG! THE STRONGEST MAN IN EAST BLUE!"
I watched his subordinates scramble around him like worker ants trying to contain a rampaging elephant. How terrifying... watching grown men reduced to nursemaids for their captain's literally wounded pride.
The irony wasn't lost on me—here was the man who'd proclaimed himself the strongest, now being treated like an unruly toddler having a tantrum.
"Don, please calm down!" one of them pleaded, reaching out tentatively only to get backhanded for his trouble.
"No one dares to go against me! I'll…Win…And I will…Con…tinue to win!" Krieg swung wildly, his movements erratic and unfocused. The man was completely unhinged.
I suppose this was what happened when someone's entire identity was built on being 'the strongest' and then reality came knocking with brass knuckles, or rubber knuckles in this case.
Not that I felt particularly sorry for him—the man had tried to murder everyone in this restaurant not twenty minutes ago. My sympathy reserves were running critically low.
His crew kept trying to restrain him, but Krieg was like a raging bull, all mindless fury and destructive force.
Then Gin, who had woken up, stepped forward.
The man looked like he'd been through a blender, exhaustion written in every line of his face.
But there was something different in his expression now—a kind of grim resolve that hadn't been there before. Without hesitation, he drew back his fist and delivered a precise blow to Krieg's temple.
The self-proclaimed strongest man in East Blue dropped like a sack of potatoes.
The sudden silence was almost deafening after all that chaos. Gin stood over his captain's unconscious form, breathing heavily, his expression unreadable.
There was something oddly poetic about it—the loyal subordinate putting down his master not out of malice, but out of necessity.
'How very... human.'
"Well," I muttered under my breath, "that's one way to handle a midlife crisis."
The sound of water being disturbed drew my attention back to the restaurant's edge. Sanji emerged from the water, supporting a waterlogged but conscious Luffy. The cook was saying something to Gin, their voices low and intense. I couldn't make out the words, but the tone was unmistakably serious.
I shifted my weight as I walked toward them. The adrenaline from the fight was finally wearing off, leaving behind the usual cocktail of mild exhaustion and irritation that seemed to be my default state these days.
"...take out the supplies boat," I heard Sanji say, his voice carrying across the deck now. "You can use it to—"
"Where exactly do you think you're going?"
The words left my mouth before I'd fully processed them, loud enough to cut through the ambient noise of the restaurant.
Every head turned toward me, and I felt that familiar flutter of social anxiety in my chest, something that I had managed to adapt to over the years.
As this wasn't about my social comfort zone. This was about basic common sense, something that seemed to be in short supply around here.
I let my hand rest on my sword hilt, the familiar weight of the Gryffindor sword a comfort against my palm. "Because if you're planning to just... let them sail away into the sunset, I'm afraid I have some concerns about that particular strategy."
Sanji's eyebrows rose slightly. "Hey now, there's no need to—"
Shiiiiiing!!
"Oh, but there is." I unsheathed my sword in one fluid motion, the blade singing as it cleared the scabbard. The sound had the desired effect—everyone fell silent, their attention now completely focused on me and the weapon in my hand.
"You see, I'm operating under this apparently radical notion that pirates who attack civilian areas and attempt mass murder should face some consequences for their actions."
I could feel my voice taking on that particular edge it got when I was irritated. Sharp enough to cut, but controlled. Always controlled.
"All of these pirates will be handed over to the Marines," I declared, letting my gaze sweep across the assembled Krieg crew. "Every. Single. One."
The reaction was immediate. The pirates started muttering among themselves, their earlier relief at surviving the battle now replaced with obvious panic. Good. They should be worried.
"Come on, there's no need to go that far," Sanji said, taking a step forward with his hands raised in a placating gesture. "They're already beaten, and—"
"THIS ISN'T A CHILD'S GAME!!"
The words came out loud and with more bite than I'd intended, but I didn't care. Sometimes people needed to hear uncomfortable truths, even if it made me the bad guy. "This isn't some schoolyard scuffle where everyone shakes hands afterward and goes home for dinner!"
I gestured around the damaged restaurant with my free hand, noting the broken railings, the scorch marks, the bloodstains on the deck.
"These people attacked this ship! They tried to kill everyone on board—you, me, the cooks, any customers who happened to be unlucky enough to be here. And you want to just... let them leave? Give them a boat and wave goodbye like they're old friends going on vacation?"
The silence stretched uncomfortably. I could feel their eyes on me, judging, calculating. Part of me wanted to back down, to shrug and say 'whatever' like I might have done back home. But this wasn't home, and the stakes here were considerably higher than hurt feelings or social awkwardness.
"Letting them leave like this means endangering everyone here when they come back for revenge," I continued, my voice steady despite the knot forming in my stomach. "Because that's what pirates do, in case anyone's forgotten."
More uncomfortable shifting. I suppose nobody wanted to think about the practical consequences of mercy when it felt so good to be magnanimous.
"That won't happen."
Gin's voice cut through the tension, quiet but firm. He was looking directly at me now, those dark eyes serious and oddly compelling. "I give you my word—we won't attack this restaurant again."
I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me, short and bitter. "Oh, well, if you give me your word. Because the promises of pirates are famously reliable."
I shifted my sword's position slightly, the tip now pointing in his general direction. "Tell me, how exactly does that work? Do you have some sort of honor code I'm not aware of? A pirate's oath that's binding in... what, maritime law?"
Gin's expression didn't change, but I caught the slight tightening around his eyes. He knew I had a point, even if he didn't want to admit it.
"Even if I believed you," I continued, letting my gaze drift toward the unconscious form of Don Krieg, "there's absolutely no way I would trust that man. The same man who, let me check my notes here, shot his loyal subordinate in cold blood." I paused, letting that sink in. "You'll forgive me if I don't find his word particularly reassuring."
The pirate crew was getting more agitated by the second. I could see them exchanging glances, probably weighing their options. Fight or flight responses are kicking in. Not that they had many options with their captain unconscious and most of their numbers... well, let's say down.
"You have every right to be concerned," Gin said, his voice still maddeningly calm. "I understand your position completely."
Then he did something that caught me completely off guard.
He knelt down, carefully laying Krieg's unconscious form on the deck, and then... he bowed.
Not just a polite nod or a formal bow, but a full Dogeza. Forehead to the deck, the whole humiliating package.
'What the hell was this supposed to be?' I felt my sword arm waver slightly.
"I'm begging you," Gin said, his voice muffled by his position but still clearly audible. "Please let us go."
The deck had gone absolutely silent. Even the waves seemed to have quieted, as if the ocean itself was holding its breath.
This was... not what I'd expected. Pirates weren't supposed to beg. They were supposed to bluster and threaten and generally behave like the lawless scum they were.
'They weren't supposed to prostrate themselves and appeal to mercy they had no right to expect.'
I felt that familiar tightness in my chest, the one that always came when situations got emotionally complicated.
When people stopped being simple categories—'good guy,' 'bad guy,' 'victim,' 'perpetrator'—and became actual human beings with motivations I couldn't easily dismiss.
"What exactly are you trying to do here?" I asked, and I was proud that my voice came out cold and controlled instead of betraying the confusion I felt.
Gin raised his head slightly, just enough to meet my eyes. His face was streaked with dirt and dried blood, but his expression was completely sincere.
"I have nothing to offer you that would earn your trust," he said simply.
"No treasures, no information, no guarantees that would mean anything to you. The only thing I can do is beg you to let us go, and promise that we won't attack you or this restaurant ever again. I'll make sure of it, even if I have to offer my life to keep that promise."
I stared at him, my mind racing. This was either the most pathetic manipulation I'd ever encountered, or... or this man was actually sincere.
In this world of larger-than-life personalities and casual violence, here was someone displaying something that looked remarkably like genuine remorse and responsibility.
How terrifying.
"Even if keeping that promise meant taking Krieg's life?" I asked the question, leaving my mouth before I'd fully thought it through.
The silence that followed was deafening. Gin's eyes widened slightly, and I saw something flicker across his face—surprise, maybe, or recognition that I'd just asked him to make an impossible choice. The other pirates were staring at their first mate with expressions ranging from shock to horror.
I waited. In negotiations—and this was definitely a negotiation, regardless of the unusual circumstances—the person who spoke first usually lost. So I waited, my sword still steady in my hand, my expression carefully neutral.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Gin spoke. "Yes," he said quietly. "Even if it meant Don Krieg's life."
The words hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre. I could see the other pirates processing what their first mate had just said, the implications of his promise.
Their captain, the man they'd followed across the East Blue, had just been casually written off by his most loyal subordinate.
I found myself studying Gin's face, looking for any sign of deception or hesitation. But there was none. Just a kind of grim resolve that was both admirable and deeply unsettling.
The rational part of my mind—the part that had kept me alive for two years in this insane world—was screaming at me to reject this offer.
'Promises were cheap, especially from pirates. Even if Gin meant what he said right now, people have changed. Circumstances changed. Loyalty was a fluid thing, and revenge had a way of making people forget their better impulses.'
"Oi, Hikigaya…"
But then Sanji stepped forward. "Just…let it go," he said, his voice carrying that particular tone of someone who'd made up their mind. "These guys have learned their lesson."
"That's right," Patty chimed in from somewhere behind me. "We can handle ourselves if they try anything funny. We're not helpless, you know."
I felt that familiar surge of irritation that came whenever people dismissed my concerns as overprotectiveness or paranoia.
'Not that I cared about their opinion of me, but it was frustrating when people refused to acknowledge obvious practical realities.'
Still, looking around at the assembled cooks, I could see they'd already made their decision.
They were willing to take the risk, to believe in redemption and second chances and all those other idealistic concepts that sounded great in theory but had a tendency to get people killed in practice.
The people directly affected by this decision didn't seem to care about the potential consequences. Which meant my care, my concern for their safety, amounted to exactly nothing.
'How familiar that felt.'
I let out a slow breath, feeling the weight of inevitability settling on my shoulders like a lead blanket.
"Fine," I said finally, the word tasting bitter in my mouth. "But there are conditions."
Gin's head came up sharply, hope flickering in his eyes. The other pirates leaned forward, hanging on my next words.
"First," I said, letting my voice carry across the deck, "you leave everything. Every weapon, every piece of equipment, every tool that could conceivably be used for piracy. If you're leaving, you're leaving empty-handed and defenseless."
There were murmurs of protest from the crew, but Gin silenced them with a sharp look.
"Second," I continued, my gaze fixed on Gin, "You owe me a life debt. Not a favor, not a promise of future cooperation—a life debt. Which means that if I ever contact you and tell you to die, you do it. No questions, no negotiations, no exceptions. Non-negotiable."
Gin's face went very serious at that, his eyes searching mine as if trying to determine whether I was bluffing.
I wasn't. It sounded really edgy, but I needed something that would give me leverage if this decision came back to haunt me.
After a long moment, he nodded. "Agreed."
"Third," I said, raising my voice so every pirate could hear me clearly, "this is a warning, not a condition. If any of you—any of you—attack this restaurant again, if you come after me personally, or if you—Gin— refused to honor your promise to me, I will hunt you down."
"All of you. Wherever you go, whatever hole you crawl into, I will find you—I am very good at that—and I will end every single one of your lives personally."
The threat hung in the air like poison gas. I could see some of the pirates swallowing nervously, their eyes darting between me and their unconscious captain. Good. Fear was a more reliable deterrent than honor or gratitude.
"Those are my terms," I said, finally lowering my sword but not sheathing it. "Take them or leave them."
The negotiation was over almost before it had begun. Within minutes, the Krieg pirates were piling onto the Baratie's spare boat like refugees fleeing a sinking ship.
They'd stripped off their weapons and equipment with the resigned efficiency of people who knew they had no choice, creating a small mountain of abandoned gear on the restaurant's deck.
Gin was the last to board, pausing to give me one final look. "Thank you," he said simply. "I'll keep my word. See you on the Grand Line, hopefully under better circumstances than this."
And then they were gone, the small boat disappearing into the distance like a bad memory.
The cooks around me started to celebrate, their voices loud and relieved, but only briefly as they started taking care of the aftermath.
I moved to the field hospital, which was just a corner for the injured, and used Hamon on the few who needed it the most, managing to save their life.
It was a miracle that no one had died, looks like they were really tough cooks, and after they were patched up with Hamon enough to stand again, the reverence in the eyes of the cooks was reaching a new height.
But I pretended to ignore it, as I found myself staring at the pile of abandoned equipment with growing interest.
Most of it was standard pirate fare—cutlasses, flintlocks, and the occasional exotic weapons here and there.
'Good quality stuff, certainly better than what most East Blue pirates carried, but nothing extraordinary.'
The Krieg crew had been well-equipped, I'd give them that. Like a military unit rather than a typical pirate band.
But what really caught my attention was Don Krieg's armor, or what remained of it after Luffy's enthusiastic 'dismantling'.
Even broken and battered, it was a fascinating piece of engineering. The exoskeleton design of the arm pieces, the integrated weapon systems, the sheer complexity of the thing as it was all mechanical—it was like something out of a science fiction story.
I knelt down beside the largest piece, running my fingers along the damaged steel plating.
'The craftsmanship was exceptional, whoever had built this knew their business. But more than that, the design philosophy behind it was interesting.'
This wasn't just armor—it was a weapons platform, a force multiplier designed to turn one man into a small army.
The arms were particularly intriguing. Even damaged, I could see the remains of multiple weapon systems built into the armguards.
'Flamethrowers, net launchers, what looked like the remains of some kind of anti-armor shotgun, gas dispensers, and at least two conventional firearms.'
It was like something from the American Comics.
The irony wasn't lost on me. In a world where people could stretch like rubber or cut through steel with pure determination, this man had chosen to rely on technology.
Missiles and armor, and clever engineering instead of whatever supernatural abilities seemed to be the norm here. There was something almost... relatable about that approach.
Not that it had worked out particularly well for him. And from what I know of this world, there are people who only need to spit to destroy an army of full-armored Don Krieg.
'But still, I wonder who had made this thing…maybe the engineers on the Clockwork Island?'
"You sure about this?" one of the cooks asked as I started examining the armor more closely. "I mean, we heard about what happened to you earlier—getting robbed and all. You could probably use the money from selling all this stuff."
I looked up at him, noting the genuine concern in his expression. These people barely knew me, and yet they were worried about my financial situation. How strange. How... unexpectedly considerate.
"The robber didn't take everything," I said, which was technically true. My most valuable possessions were either in my Dimensional Bag or bonded to me in ways that made theft nearly impossible. "And I don't need all of this."
"But still," another cook pressed, "this has got to be worth a fortune. That armor alone—"
"Is the most valuable thing," I interrupted, and my hands were moving to put all the armor pieces in a big cloth sack, which was going to my Dimensional Bag. "The rest is yours. Use it for the security of the restaurant."
The cooks exchanged glances, clearly surprised by my generosity. I could see them trying to figure out my angle, my ulterior motive. Because obviously nobody just gave away valuable treasure without expecting something in return, right?
"The rumors about you are true, then," Patty said finally. "About your generosity, I mean."
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. "I just took what I wanted. The rest is clutter."
Which was true, I just didn't need the stuff. What was I going to do with all of these extra weapons? My dimensional bag is full of those.
'As for the armor, I could make use of it. For now, an arm guard with an integrated weapon, or a place to install my pistol, could be useful. Not to mention the Wootz Steel as a material…'
The sound of an approaching boat drew my attention. Delgado was bringing our ship alongside the Baratie, his usually immaculate appearance somewhat disheveled from whatever repairs he'd been making.
"Master," he called out in that respectful tone he always used, "the ship is ready to depart whenever you are."
I nodded to him, then looked back at the celebrating cooks. "We'll stay for a bit," I called back. "You should rest, and I hear they're preparing a victory feast."
Delgado's face lit up at the mention of food. The man took his meals seriously, which I suppose was understandable given that we'd been living on the ship's rations for weeks. "Excellent, sir. I'll secure the vessel and join you shortly."
A few hours later, the Marines arrived. Three ships this time, flying the familiar flags of justice and order that always made me want to spit. Not because I was some kind of outlaw, but because of how much corruption I had seen from these people.
The ranking officer was a young Commander who looked like he'd stepped straight out of a recruitment poster—clean uniform, earnest expression, the kind of overenthusiasm that usually got people killed in this world.
He listened to our account of the battle—the overly edited version— with obvious frustration, probably because he'd missed all the action.
"So, the pirates escaped?" he asked, His subordinate making notes in a small journal.
"They departed," I replied, which was technically accurate if somewhat misleading.
"And which direction did they go?"
Before I could answer, Sanji stepped forward with that easy smile of his. "North-northeast," he said confidently, gesturing toward the opposite direction from where the pirates had actually gone. "Seemed to be in quite a hurry."
The lieutenant made another note, apparently accepting Sanji's directions without question. I felt a small sigh escape me.
'Of course, the cook would misdirect the Marines. Because apparently protecting escaped pirates was just something we did now.'
Not that I particularly cared whether Krieg's crew got caught or not—I'd extracted my own insurance policy, after all. But the casual way everyone seemed to lie to law enforcement was... well, it was probably par for the course in this world, which I understand why.
After the Marines left (presumably to chase ghosts in the wrong direction), the victory feast was almost ready.
All kinds of aromas were wafting from the kitchen; the Baratie's kitchen staff had outdone themselves, producing a spread that would have impressed a royal banquet.
I was just winding down when one of the younger cooks approached me nervously.
"Um, sir?" he said. "Owner Zeff wants to see you in his quarters."
…
A/N: I wanted to finish the Baratie part today, but the Chapter was getting very long, so I will finish it by the next Chapter.
Anyway, Thank you all for reading! Hope you enjoyed this one!
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