The fact that Chouchou could talk directly blew up the Merry's dining room.
Even the slow-reacting Luffy, Sanji, Zoro, Usopp, and the two captives looked as if they had seen a ghost.
Stars sparkled in Luffy's eyes as he jumped to Chouchou's side, picked him up, and inspected him from top to bottom.
He poked here and rubbed there, even trying to investigate Chouchou's private parts.
As a result, Chouchou bit him on the head, making him howl in pain.
After his shock, Zoro fell into thought, then looked at Can Yue.
"Chouchou's change had something to do with you, didn't it?"
The clever ones all came to the same conclusion as Zoro. Only Luffy could not figure out what the two had to do with each other.
Can Yue sighed and said it might have been related to the improvement in his strength, but he did not elaborate.
No one pressed him for answers. As companions, trust was enough. They did not have to dig up every secret.
When the day came that Can Yue wanted to talk about it, they could learn then.
That was the Straw Hat Crew. Once someone became a companion, they received unconditional trust.
Vivi's heart trembled as she felt that atmosphere.
She was drawn in by the Straw Hat Crew's uniqueness.
Based on the Straw Hat Crew's behavior over the past two days, it was difficult to connect them with the murder, arson, and plundering she had seen described in the news before.
In Vivi's memory, the previous newspaper had explicitly stated—
The Straw Hat Pirates were an evil pirate crew that murdered eighty-year-old women, ate three-year-old babies, committed every imaginable evil, and treated human lives like livestock.
Compared to the Straw Hat Crew she had experienced these past two days, the stark