Captain Kuro lay face down on the dirt path, the blades of one of his Cat Claws shattered and broken. For a moment, there was silence. The remaining Black Cat Pirates stared, their minds unable to process the sight of their invincible captain being so thoroughly dominated.
Slowly, Kuro pushed himself up, his movements stiff with a barely controlled rage. He calmly adjusted his spectacles.
The pirates, seeing him rise, found their courage again. "GO, CAPTAIN KURO!" one of them yelled, forgetting his captain's earlier command. "SHOW THAT BRAT THE TERROR OF THE BLACK CAT PIRATES!"
Kuro's head snapped towards the man who had spoken, his eyes burning with a cold fire behind his lenses. "Shut up," he hissed.
He looked around at the faces of his crew, men who had followed him for years, and a cruel, chilling smile spread across his lips.
"Don't worry. Once my plan is successful, once I have the entirety of the young mistress's fortune, I plan to kill you all anyway. Jango included."
The air turned to ice. The pirates froze, their cheers dying in their throats, replaced by looks of pure, disbelieving horror.
Deep in the forest, Jango's pursuit of Kaya and the Usopp Pirates was having little success.
"Look into my ring, little mistress…" Jango cooed, trying to hypnotize the fleeing girl. "One… Two…"
But Kaya squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look. The three boys, Piiman, Ninjin, and Tamanegi, who had been pretending to be asleep after Jango's earlier hypnosis, suddenly sprang into action.
It was an ambush.
"Pepper Spray Flash!" Tamanegi yelled, throwing a handful of crushed pepper directly into Jango's eyes.
"AAAAH! MY EYES!" Jango screamed, stumbling backward.
As he staggered, blinded, Ninjin ran in and delivered a swift, powerful kick directly to his groin. When Jango recovered, his eyes streaming with tears, Kaya and the children were gone. Enraged, he began wandering through the woods, searching for them. He didn't notice the three small figures hiding in the treetops, who then launched a second ambush of falling branches and thrown rocks.
The sounds of this chaotic chase—shouts, crashes, and screams—echoed through the forest. Zoro and Usopp, now deep in the woods themselves, heard the commotion and began heading towards the noise. The Usopp Pirates continued their hit-and-run attacks on Jango, who, in a fit of rage, managed to grab Tamanegi and throw him hard against a tree.
Back at the coastline, Kuro calmly elaborated on his horrifying plan.
"For the story to be truly realistic," he said, as if discussing the weather, "it makes sense that a few of my 'former' crewmates would be found dead at the scene of the tragic pirate raid. In truth, I never planned on letting any of you live from the very beginning."
He pushed his glasses up with the palm of his hand.
"In order to wipe the name of Kuro from this world, not only must my plan to inherit the fortune succeed, but my entire crew must die as well. There can be no one left alive who knows my true identity."
Luffy listened to this cold, methodical plan for mass murder, and his expression hardened. "You really are the worst kind of scumbag."
Kuro just scoffed. "You speak of things you do not understand. In a true pirate fleet, all crew members are nothing but pawns for their captain. They exist to follow orders and sacrifice themselves for the greater plan without question. That is the way of things."
"You're wrong," Luffy said simply. "And that's why, even with all your men, you could never beat Usopp."
Kuro was genuinely amused by this. "Oh? And why is that?"
"It's the way you think," Luffy replied, his fist already clenched.
BAM!
He threw another punch, striking Kuro and sending him stumbling back.
"You don't know the first thing about being a true pirate!"
After recovering from the hit, Kuro's amusement was gone, replaced by a deep, murderous rage. "You have insulted me for the last time, brat," he hissed. "You want to know what a true pirate is? I will show you."
He lowered himself into a strange, unsettling stance, his body almost parallel to the ground, his arms held out wide. His body began to tremble, a low hum of energy emanating from him.
The Black Cat Pirates, who had been watching, suddenly screamed in a new kind of terror, a fear that dwarfed anything they felt for Luffy.
"NO, CAPTAIN, DON'T!"
"NOT THAT MOVE!"
"HE'S GOING TO KILL US ALL!"
Luffy watched on, clueless as to what was causing them to panic.
On board the Black Cat Pirates' ship, Nami, having secured the crew's treasure, looked back towards the coast through her spyglass. "Is the fight over yet?" she wondered.
Suddenly, the world on the slope erupted into pure, untethered chaos.
SHING! SLASH! SHINK!
The crew began to be cut up. Deep gashes appeared on their bodies as if from nowhere. Blood flew. They were being cut down, one by one, by a phantom they couldn't see.
Luffy couldn't figure out how Kuro had gotten past him so fast. He couldn't see him at all.
One of the terrified survivors scrambled towards Luffy, his eyes wide with madness. "HE CAN'T CONTROL IT!" he shrieked. "HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHO HE'S CUTTING! IT'S THE SHAKUSHI! HE WON'T STOP UNTIL EVERYONE IS DEAD OR HE GETS TIRED! THERE'S NO USE TRYING TO TALK HIM OUT OF IT!"
Luffy stood in the middle of this whirlwind of invisible death, his eyes wide as he watched Kuro's own men being slaughtered indiscriminately. His expression shifted from confusion to pure, righteous fury.
Nami watched from the boat, utterly amazed. "He's… he's angry… for them?"
This was not a fight. It was a massacre. And Luffy was standing right in the middle of it.