"Are you pirates?!!"
This was the first time Austin had met the protagonist of this world,
King Luffy.
Wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and red shorts, Luffy had a lump on his head, probably from the Fist of Love. Completely carefree, he stood before the pirate ship.
This was the Red-Haired Pirates,
and within the vast reach of Austin's Observation Haki,
in the mountain forest behind the village, a black-haired brat and a blond-haired brat were fighting a bear together.
"Well... isn't that Ace? Long time no see. You've really grown sturdy!!!"
His gaze skipped right over King Luffy.
With his mother by his side this time, Ace had not been handed directly to Mountain Bandits by Garp to be raised. Instead, he had lived in seclusion in the forest like an ordinary child from a single-parent family.
And the brat beside him was naturally Sabo, whom Ace had dragged over.
The arrival of the Red-Haired Pirates did not bring much change to this peaceful little village. It was only Uta and King Luffy's bickering and friendship that the adults found quite amusing.
"When we were kids, it felt like we used to bicker and fight like this all the time too~"
Austin walked through Foosha Village with Shanks and the others beside him, along with King Luffy, the lonely little brat who had tagged along.
"Yeah. I remember we were only nine when we first met, right?"
Shanks smiled. The three scars over his eye did not diminish his bearing too much.
Though fighting was fighting and bickering was bickering back then, most of it had been Buggy and Shanks squabbling with each other. They both knew that once Austin joined in...
there would be no squabbling at all.
It would just become one-sided bullying.
"Let those two go