Pirates: How Many Divisions Do the Five Elders Have? The Escaped Convict

Ma Qiao had been in the world of pirates for five full years, and he was no longer the clueless novice he had once been.

Very, very few pirates were innocent.

Even Luffy and his crew had indirectly caused no small number of human tragedies through what they had done in Impel Down, releasing a great many prisoners.

The great Impel Down riot had practically become a wholesale market for pirate movie bosses.

To put it bluntly, King Luffy had brought it on himself.

But then again...

Everything was relative.

There was, of course, a reason why the notorious profession of piracy could produce the protagonist of a hot-blooded shonen manga and even become its undisputed force for good.

It was all because of the Celestial Dragons' system of slavery.

In any world, the damage scattered, independent evildoers could do to society and order paled in comparison to a cancer built into the system from the top down.

As long as the Celestial Dragon system existed, the seas would never know peace.

Whether pirates or the Revolutionary Army, they were merely immune cells that attacked indiscriminately, produced by this world's attempt to correct itself.

Ma Qiao was no moral purist, nor did he have the deeply personal pain that had sunk into Zephyr's bones. He wouldn't treat every pirate he met like the man who had killed his father.

Ma Qiao still had standards for judging people and moral boundaries of his own.

Much of the time, pirates were simply Ma Qiao's bread and butter, the source of his food and money.

Only those who had lost their humanity were evils he had to cut down.

Lieutenant Nezumi waved two marines over to count the prisoners, then joined the others in surrounding Ma Qiao and Vivi with nasty grins.

"Hey, kid, you and this ugly woman are pirates too, aren't you?"

Lieutenant Nezumi asked in a sinister voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ma Qiao replied, looking utterly innocent. "I'm just a teacher who couldn't hurt a fly, running a respectable bar..."

"Pah! With that appetite, you're obviously not respectable! What respectable man has chest muscles that big?"

Lieutenant Nezumi lifted a foot and kicked at Ma Qiao, only to miss.

Although Ma Qiao wasn't known for his agility, dodging that kick was easy.

Lieutenant Nezumi hadn't expected him to dodge. Losing his balance, he pitched forward and landed on the ground in a full split.

Seeing this, the crooked marines around them hurriedly drew their swords and closed in.

"Kid, how dare you attack Lord Nezumi!"

"Yeah, that's a seriously outrageous thing to do. Without a hundred thousand Beli—no, five hundred thousand Beli—this isn't over!"

Judging by how practiced they were, these men had clearly done plenty of intimidating law-abiding people and extorting money from them.

"Uncle, are you okay?"

After a moment of initial shock, Vivi immediately stepped to Ma Qiao's side. A short length of chainlike weapon had slipped from her sleeve and was hooked around her little finger, ready for her to strike at any moment.

"Oh, you even dare resist! That's another crime!"

The crooked marines kept shouting.

A confined space like this was the perfect place to strike from the shadows.

Ma Qiao was actually thinking the same thing.

He was working out how to get his good student out of the way.

If I hit her slender, fair neck with a knife hand at a forty-five-degree tangent, she'd surely stay unconscious for a long time, wouldn't she?

Ma Qiao stroked his chin and examined her closely.

Just then...

"Ow, it hurts so much!"

Lieutenant Nezumi's features twisted grotesquely, making his already unfortunate appearance even uglier. His eyes and snot were a sticky mess. "My butt! It hurts!"

"Huh? Isn't this marine lieutenant pathetic?"

Vivi frowned, her face full of disdain. "He just did a split. Does he have to howl like that?"

Ma Qiao shook his head.

Lieutenant Nezumi was indeed a weakling, but he shouldn't have been this useless.

He was a marine, after all. He must have trained when he was young, and he was far more flexible than an ordinary person.

A mere split shouldn't have hurt him enough to make his features twist like that.

The crooked marines still thought their superior's acting had gotten even better. Laughing, they threatened Ma Qiao again, hoping to extort more money.

But just then, the marines who had been sent to count the prisoners came running over in a panic.

"Bad news!"

"One of the prisoners is missing! There's a big hole in the floor of his cell!"

Before they had even finished speaking, blood began spurting from Captain Nezumi's butt.

Immediately afterward, a drill-shaped head thrust up from below, lifting him into the air...

"Hahaha! I've been waiting for you for a long time!"

A heavily muscled man over three meters tall emerged from the rocky ground, Lieutenant Nezumi hanging from his pointed head in a state of exquisite agony.

"Huh? What's that awful smell? And it's all sticky?"

The pointed-headed man stuck out his tongue and licked the slime at the corner of his mouth, then looked up in confusion.

As he raised his head, his pointed skull tilted backward, so naturally all he could see was a stalactite dripping water.

Could the fluid from this stalactite contain Devil Fruit?

That was a taste the pointed-headed man would never forget!

Fortunately, several of his men were still locked in the cells. Seeing what had happened, they immediately warned him, "Boss, the marine stuck on your head just shit himself! You're eating shit!"

"Damn it! Was this part of the despicable marines' plan too?"

The pointed-headed man hurriedly wiped his mouth clean and glared angrily at the marines. "Speak! Where's your commanding officer?"

Naturally, the marines couldn't say, "Our commanding officer is hanging from your head, and you've skewered the shit out of him."

That would only remind him to take their superior hostage.

Seeing that he was alone, the marines exchanged glances, preparing to attack together and hack the escaped pirate to death.

But the pointed-headed man stared fixedly at Ma Qiao and sneered. "Do you remember me, Pirate Hunter?"

Ma Qiao nodded and smiled. "Of course I remember you, Karen Santini, bounty of three million Beli... You helped me meet my performance target for this quarter. Thanks!"

As he spoke, Ma Qiao even cupped his hands in genuine gratitude.

Santini didn't recognize the gesture, but he could sense the contempt in Ma Qiao's words.

"Foolish Pirate Hunter, I deliberately let you catch me, and I deliberately hid my strength!"

Santini swung his right arm, which transformed into a pitch-black drill that looked like tungsten steel. He swept aside a group of marines trying to sneak up on him as if swatting flies.

The marine-issue sabers, reasonably well made as they were, shattered upon contact with the tungsten-steel drill. They were no match for it.

"Wah—"

The marines spat out blood and shouted in terror, "This kind of power... He's a Devil Fruit User, and a very powerful one at that! He's definitely not an ordinary pirate with a three-million bounty! It has to be at least fifteen million!"

"Hahaha, as expected of marines from the G2 branch, you really know your stuff!"

Santini laughed. "I'm a drill man who ate the Drill-Drill Fruit. I can turn any part of my body into an incredibly hard drill..."

His words suddenly made Ma Qiao's eyes light up. "Um... can you do it with that too...?" he murmured.

Vivi, already wound up tight, nearly exploded. "You lecherous uncle, is this the time to be thinking about something so weird?"

"You actually know what I was thinking?"

Ma Qiao looked at Vivi in surprise. "Aren't you a little too filthy-minded?"

Vivi: ...