Four Pirate Captains

"Only a third of them are left..."

At that number, Aokiji's gaze flickered slightly. He was not particularly surprised. "Hmm, for so many of them to hold on under the sudden pressure of massively increased pirate reinforcements is already no easy feat."

These were recruits who had only been at Marine Headquarters for less than a year. All one could say was that they truly deserved to be Zephyr's personally trained disciples.

As for where those two thousand-odd pirates had come from...

At first glance, it did indeed seem rather strange.

But from Aokiji's position, he did not even need to go down the mountain himself. All he had to do was have his subordinates capture a few pirates and interrogate them, and the answer would be easy to obtain—

"A Door-Door Fruit user."

Faced with Noah's question, Shiryu ground out his cigarette and slowly gave that answer.

At that moment, pirates lay sprawled all over the ground in the alley.

Of the three who had dealt with them, only Noah still seemed full of energy. Shiryu and Rosinante were both sitting against the wall, exhausted. Yet Shiryu still roused himself to explain things to Noah.

Two hours before meeting Noah, he had intercepted and killed an officer in a western district. Before finishing the man off, he had used a few interrogation methods and extracted plenty of useful information.

That included several questions that had long puzzled Noah.

According to that officer, all two thousand-plus pirates belonged to an organization called the West Blue Underground Alliance.

The organization had more than a dozen pirate crews under its banner. Capone Beate, who had risen from a mafia family, was one of the organization's leaders.

After learning that his stronghold had come under Marine attack, Beate had been frantic, wishing he could rush there personally. Unfortunately, he was busy fighting another mafia family and simply could not get away.

Left with no choice, he paid a huge sum to send these people, who could be considered half-allies, rushing over as reinforcements.

This force of two thousand reinforcements consisted of four pirate crews. Their four captains were all veteran pirates who had spent years in West Blue and had close ties with Beate.

The captain of the Black Brim Hat Pirates was Roan, known as "Big Black Hat." With a bounty of only 28 million Beli, his was the lowest among the four captains.

Yet this man was a Devil Fruit user rarely seen in the Four Blues. More than a decade ago, he had eaten the Paramecia-type Door-Door Fruit.

As they were about to reach Citrus Island, in order to avoid the Marines watching the port, Captain Roan had taken the initiative to suggest using his Fruit ability to transport all the pirates directly into the city and catch the Marines off guard.

The other three captains unanimously agreed with the idea, and subsequent events proved that this surprise attack tactic had indeed been highly effective.

Not only had the Elite Training Camp soldiers, who had originally held the upper hand, been thrown into confusion, even Aokiji, monitoring the entire island from the mountaintop, had failed to react immediately.

Otherwise, he would not have allowed such an unexpected situation to arise.

"So the unmanned ship I ran into at sea earlier belonged to these pirates?"

Noah shook the black pirate flag in his hand and clicked his tongue.

"Big Black Hat... so it happened to be Captain Roan's ship, the Door-Door Fruit user's. How did it drift all the way out there?"

"Probably one of his men messed up while dropping anchor."

With a cigarette in his mouth, Shiryu exhaled a large cloud of smoke and said flatly, "You only encountered one unmanned ship. The others should be perfectly fine."

"Yeah, that's probably it." Noah shrugged. "What a miserable bastard."

It was unclear whether he meant Captain Roan himself or the entire pirate reinforcement alliance.

Clearly, although Beate had spent many years in West Blue's underworld, his intelligence network was not all that well-developed.

Otherwise—

If he had known that the Marine warship attacking his stronghold carried a group of Marine Headquarters recruits taking an examination...

He would have been frightened into immediately abandoning Citrus Island and cutting off all contact, lest anyone follow the trail back to him. Why would he ever make such a losing deal?

A group of inexperienced Marine Headquarters recruits was naturally nothing to fear.

But... if students were taking an exam, there had to be "teachers" following along to protect and supervise them. Anyone could figure that out.

Beate himself had escaped disaster for now, but the fate of these allies who had come to throw away their lives for him was clearly sealed.

"The Door-Door Fruit, huh..."

Noah casually tossed aside the pirate flag, his eyes thoughtful.

This truly was beyond his expectations.

Originally, he had guessed that if these suddenly appearing pirates were really connected to that unmanned ghost ship...

Then it was probably a fat guy named Capone Bege, secretly using the Castle-Castle Fruit to transport all the reinforcements inside.

Now that he thought about it, he had indeed been too influenced by his preconceptions.

Though they were both in West Blue, the Capone Family might not necessarily have anything to do with Capone Bege.

And if he counted carefully, that guy was only in his early twenties right now, still struggling along the path to becoming a mafia godfather. It was uncertain whether he had even eaten a Devil Fruit yet.

"So what now?"

After sorting through his thoughts, he looked toward Shiryu and Rosinante.

"I'm planning to try my luck and see if I can run into those captains, raise my ranking in the exam. What about you two? Coming with me?"

"Huh?"

Monica, who had been quietly listening nearby, was immediately startled. She could not help looking up in astonishment.

"No way, Noah?"

Though Noah was indeed very strong in her eyes now and had improved greatly compared to the examination over a month ago, wasn't targeting those pirate captains a little too outrageous?

These were not enemies that recruits who had been in camp for less than a year could handle.

After all, even Roan, "Big Black Hat," who had the lowest bounty among the four, had a bounty of nearly thirty million Beli!

"What are you babbling about? Do you even need to ask? Let's go."

To her even greater surprise, Shiryu directly snuffed out his cigarette butt and stood up.

Rosinante beside him also rose without the slightest hesitation.

The trio had always moved in astonishingly perfect sync.

"Tch, boring."

Noah curled his lip, looking disappointed. "I thought you were so tired you couldn't even walk anymore and were planning to let me take all the credit alone."

"Hey, hey, what the hell are you dreaming about?"

Shiryu sneered. "Take it all alone? If you get surrounded, you'll be lucky not to lose half your life. No matter how tired I am, I'm coming. Four captains—however you slice it, two of them should be mine, right?"

"I... I think I can take two too."

Rosinante refused to be outdone.

"You're all full of nonsense. I can practically see pigs flying."

Noah rolled his eyes and said irritably.

"Fine, then. When the time comes, it'll be every man for himself. But let's make this clear: if you really can't hold on, don't force it. Give up your spot and watch me work..."

As they spoke, the three of them strode toward the alley entrance together. They bickered and competed with one another all the way, their quarrels faintly echoing into the distance.

"It should be you watching me work. I'm returning those exact words to you, Brother Noah."

"Return rejected!"

"Shut up! You two immature brats are so damn noisy!"

The girls left behind had no chance to get a word in. They could only stand there and watch helplessly as the trio's backs disappeared into the distance.

"Damn it, those guys never intended to bring us along..."

Monica stomped her foot angrily. "Hey, Shiya, what do we do? Follow them, or go after those smaller groups of separated pirates?"

After resting for so long, she had recovered a fair amount of stamina and could barely fight again. But the decision still had to be made by Shiya, the strongest among the three girls.

Yet after a long while, she heard no response. Confused, she turned her head. "Shiya?"

The blue-haired girl, whose eyes had been quietly fixed on a certain figure, finally withdrew her gaze.

"Hmm?"

She turned expressionlessly toward Monica and blinked. In her clear, seawater-blue eyes, a rare trace of confusion finally appeared.

"Were you saying something just now?"

I failed to stay up again last night, so consider this chapter a makeup update. Today's update will be posted tonight.

PS: I recommend my friend Siyang's new book, Ninja World Duel Arena. He's a veteran author, and the quality of his Naruto fanfiction has always been reliable. He has a previous book with over ten thousand subscriptions. The link is below, so those who like this sort of thing can give it a try~