Bounty

Only one table remained occupied in the quiet restaurant, with the sound of chewing rising from it now and then.

"Luffy, are you okay?" Usopp couldn't help asking, worried.

Luffy's belly had swollen round like a balloon.

Even so, he was still gripping food in both hands and stuffing it into his mouth without stopping.

"Mmm, this is so good!" Luffy gulped down the food filling his mouth. "I've never eaten anything this delicious!"

"I've gotta get him to join the crew!... Aham!" He shoved another mouthful into his stomach.

"...Ahem..."

Lina and Sanji walked out of the kitchen side by side, each with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Sanji took his cigarette between his fingers and exhaled a long plume of smoke. "All right, I'll go with you."

Luffy turned around, an excited grin spreading across his face. "I won!... Hic~"

"I only agreed to join your crew. I didn't say I lost!"

"Shishishi, then you win. I can't eat... hic~... any more."

Luffy's voice gradually grew more dispirited. When he finished speaking, he toppled over and swayed on the floor like a bobblehead, his face blank.

Nami and Usopp couldn't resist pushing Luffy back and forth from either side, playing with him.

"Honestly." Lina sighed, rubbing his forehead. "With you two competing, this meal's going to cost a fortune."

A burly chef, built like Popeye, hurried over with a fawning smile.

"Thank you for dining with us! Your bill comes to 1.2 million berries."

"That's outrageous! You're ripping us off!" Nami shouted before anyone else could respond.

Even though Lina was in charge of the money, it was the whole crew's fund, so of course Nami hated to see it spent.

"It's fine, Nami." Lina waved a hand.

This was, after all, a famous high-end restaurant in the East Blue, so its prices were bound to be steep. And with Luffy's meal on top of that...

"Here's ten million berries. Use the rest to pack up some provisions for us."

Lina pulled out a thick bundle of large-denomination bills and handed it over. "Sanji, go get your things ready. We'll be leaving soon."

Once he'd taken care of that, Lina went outside the restaurant.

Krieg had commanded a fleet of five thousand men, and simply keeping them fed would have cost a fortune.

There had to be some treasure or cash aboard his flagship.

With that in mind, Lina summoned dozens of fish-man undead and sent them diving into the sea to search.

They were among the more than sixty fish-man undead he'd collected at Arlong Park. To make better use of their ability to swim, he'd kept features like their webbed hands and fins.

He could also shape an ordinary human template to look like a fish-man, but he couldn't give it the attributes or swimming skills. Those could only be inherited from the template.

After a while, Sanji emerged with a huge backpack full of things, followed by Luffy and the others.

Most of it was food supplies. The rest was Sanji's cooking equipment.

"Let's go, Lina!"

"Oh! Hang on!" Lina called back. Dozens of dark shapes were gradually surfacing from the sea.

Fish-man-shaped undead bubbled up one after another.

"Let's see what you found."

Lina guided the undead ashore and walked over to them.

Some came up empty-handed, while others carried a few scattered treasures and crumpled, soaking-wet bills.

"Whoa!" Nami's eyes turned into dollar signs again as she hurried over.

"Nice work, Lina."

"Don't praise me. It won't get you a share."

Lina had the undead carry all the treasure aboard. Then, after saying goodbye to Baratie, they set sail.

They hadn't been sailing long when a newspaper gull wearing a white cap landed on the railing.

"Prices went up again? If they go up next time, I'm not buying. You hear me?"

"You're awful. Picking on a newspaper gull, too." Lina laughed.

"Mind your own business." Nami stuck out her tongue, sat down in a deck chair, and began reading the paper.

"This is..."

"Your wanted posters!?"

Huh?

All of us?

Lina jolted and sat up, taking the wanted posters from Nami.

Luffy and the others crowded around as soon as they heard.

The first one showed Luffy, grinning in his straw hat in a half-body portrait. The background looked like Arlong Park.

The angle suggested it had been taken secretly. One of Colonel Mouse's men?

"Straw Hat Pirates captain, Monkey D. Luffy, thirty million!"

Usopp clutched his face and let out a gasp as he stared at the long string of digits below.

Luffy, though, looked thrilled. "Shishishi, what's next? Are there more?"

Lina couldn't wait to snatch the first poster away, his heart sinking. I didn't even stand out. Don't tell me they got me, too. I really don't want a bounty on my head this soon.

"Roronoa Zoro, sixteen million!"

"Oh? I got a bounty too?" Zoro couldn't help grinning.

Lina, however, found it strange. If he remembered right, Zoro was supposed to get his first bounty of sixty million after the events in the Sand Kingdom.

Could it be because he helped take down Arlong? Lina wondered.

After Zoro's wanted poster was taken away, only one remained. But the figure on it wasn't Lina.

"The Blade Saw Duo?" Lina stared at the two figures on the poster, puzzled.

The Blade Devil and Chainsaw Devil had bounties on them?

That was good news, but why hadn't the poster gone to the Wolverine undead who'd ambushed Arlong and taken him out?

"Combined bounty: twenty-five million!"

So they were being listed as a duo, like the Cat Brothers who worked for Kuro?

"The Marines must've made a mistake. Why isn't Lina himself wanted?"

"No, no, this is right. Completely right!"

Lina looked over the newspaper again and saw that the Wolverine undead had been reported as dying alongside Arlong.

He remembered how Arlong had chopped down with the edge of his hand, breaking the undead's neck so its head hung crookedly.

Meanwhile, clear pictures had been taken of the two undead from the Blade Saw Duo slaughtering their way through the enemy.

Nami hadn't been given a bounty. The person who'd taken the pictures had probably slipped away when Arlong went down.

Night fell. On the dark sea, the faint glow of a single small ship's lights was all that could be seen.

In the upstairs cabin on the Merry's deck, Lina and the others were raising their glasses.

"Let's welcome Sanji aboard! Cheers!"

"Cheers!"

They were celebrating Sanji's joining the crew. Now Lina had his smoking buddy, Sanji, and his drinking buddy, Zoro.

All they needed was... Ahem.

His king's right-hand men, his pack of troublemaking friends...

"What a haul today."

"Yeah! Not only did Sanji join us, Lina also brought in a fortune!"

"Don't try to wheedle me, Nami." Lina sighed, rubbing his forehead.

The treasure they'd found today was probably worth around fifty million in total.

It wasn't much. Most pirates lived by the sword, never knowing what tomorrow would bring, so whenever they got their hands on money, they tended to spend it fast.

A fleet of five thousand men, and they'd only managed to save up fifty million.

"The Grand Line is really close now."

Nami took a sip of her drink before telling the others, "We should reach Twin Capes and enter the Grand Line by tomorrow noon."

"But... there's a large town on an island nearby."

"I think you might be interested. Should we stop there to restock?"

"You mean Loguetown, right?"

Sanji knew what she meant. He passed Lina a cigarette and said, "It's known as the town of beginning and end. More than twenty years ago, Gol D. Roger was executed there."

"Cool!" Luffy lit up as soon as he heard.

As it happened, Lina had been planning to take care of something in Loguetown, too.

Once they entered the Grand Line, his first target would be the two giants on Little Garden, followed by Crocodile.

He still couldn't use Armament Haki, so going after that Sand Crocodile wasn't exactly safe.

Loguetown wasn't the largest town in the East Blue, but its location near Twin Capes and its historical significance as the place where Roger had been executed had made it extraordinarily prosperous.

It was also a melting pot of all kinds of people. Lina planned to check the black market for Seastone.

If the rumors that a certain underground power was active there were true, he might have a chance to buy some...

The nights on the sea were dark, like an endless black fog that swept over the Merry, cloaking her in loneliness and fear.

Only dim, yellow light remained in the cabin. The shifting shadows and sounds of laughter brought the Merry a little comfort.

She wasn't alone.

The white ram's head sailed on, quiet and steady, through the boundless darkness.

I'll take everyone there...

No matter where the next stop may be.