For the past few days, nothing major had happened at the Marine base near Area 60 of the Sabaody Archipelago. The Marines seemed to have no desire—and not much courage—to launch another attack of any kind against a certain ferocious "brat" pirate.
That didn't mean they were doing nothing, though.
Thanks to extensive newspaper coverage and publicity, the bounty poster for a certain "brat" pirate had finally been approved.
WANTED (????-)? DEAD OR ALIVE Annie Hastur ฿5500000000-
It was an outrageous sum: 5,500,000,000 Berries. Those dizzying strings of zeroes added up to a full five and a half billion!
That was right—an absurd five and a half billion!
And that was only the provisional amount the Marines had arrived at after much careful consideration.
More than a thousand Marines had been transformed, and then Admiral Kizaru and the Science Unit had suffered a crushing defeat. For that, Marine Headquarters had put up a bounty of 1.5 billion Berries.
But Marine Headquarters wasn't the only one offering a reward.
In light of the Marines' incompetence, the wealthy and furious Celestial Dragons Saint Rosward and Saint Shalulia had each put up two billion Berries, adding an astonishing four billion to the bounty poster in one go.
And so, the bounty on the ferocious pirate known as "Brat" had shot up to an outrageous 5.5 billion Berries—only a mere 64.8 million short of the 5.5648 billion Berries once placed on the captain of the Roger Pirates, the former "Pirate King," Gol D. Roger, before his public execution.
What was even more shocking was that this was actually only the first time the "brat" pirate Annie Hastur had appeared and made a move in the Sabaody Archipelago—or anywhere in the world.
Presumably, as long as the troublesome "brat" pirate continued to make