The pirates wailed, the marines laughed and played, and blood trickled from the corpses, staining the target posts.
Conrad walked at an unhurried pace. "Drake, did your damned father ever tell you why he defected?"
Drake nodded. He remembered it clearly. Every time his father finished drinking, he would beat him and say:
"There's no money in being a marine, and you're not free, either. Pirates can take whatever they like, and they don't have to follow any rules."
"You cling to some useless banner of justice, watching pirates feast and enjoy themselves while you suffer and seethe with envy. You might as well become a pirate."
Conrad said nothing. He kept his eyes on the path ahead and walked on.
Kujaku came up on his other side and grabbed his wrist. "What are you doing?"
"Practicing archery."
Kujaku stared at him in disbelief. "You're going to hang out with these people?"
"I'm going to practice archery!"
Kujaku raised her Combat Whip and cracked it against the floor, leaving a groove. "Go by yourself! You're not taking Baby-5!"
Drake was incredulous, too. He couldn't believe Conrad was interested in this kind of brutal slaughter.
"How am I supposed to practice archery without her?"
Conrad wrapped an arm around Baby-5's waist and pointed at the bow drawn taut in Very Good's hands. "I want..."
"A Haki bow?" Baby-5 glanced up at him, her cheeks turning pink.
"Exactly!" Conrad rolled up his sleeves, revealing his bandaged arms.
Baby-5 raised both hands and clasped them over Conrad's shoulders. She leaned forward, her supple body stretching as she bent at the waist.
Her red dress gathered like flames, forming a blazing-red-wind-pattern longbow, six feet and two inches long, like a firebird spreading flames across the wilderness. In an instant, it was ready.
A hundred meters away, Very Good took aim, then released. The arrow flew toward a sobbing pirate two hundred meters farther off.
Three hundred meters behind him, Conrad held the red bow horizontally, drew it to full tension in an instant, and loosed without an arrow.
"Bullseye! Another perfect ten!" Very Good cheered, lifting his bow. "Free drinks again tonight..."
Clang!
A red blur shot past and knocked the arrow aside.
A butterfly hair clip struck the target post, five centimeters above the pirate's head.
The cheering stopped abruptly. Very Good and the other marines turned to look at the boy holding up a longbow taller than himself.
Conrad strode past Kujaku, whose eyes had turned dangerous, and walked over to face the marines. "Tell me! Are all of these men under sentence of death?"
Drake and Bling Bling exchanged glances, then immediately followed, standing behind Conrad like his guards.
Very Good sized up the three of them. They were all unfamiliar faces. He had grown up at Marine Headquarters, but out of caution, he asked, "Which of the Four Blues and which branch are you from?"
"None of them! Why are you asking so many questions? Answer me!" Conrad took a handful of arrows from the quiver, tossed them in front of himself, and swaggered into the group of marines.
When Very Good heard they weren't from one of the Four Blues branches, his expression grew much more respectful. Judging by Conrad's age and the fact that his father had made it into Headquarters, his father had to be at least a flag officer.
With that arrogant attitude, two guards, and a bow that looked very expensive, he was probably the son of a base Vice Admiral!
He answered solemnly, "If you want to know, go look up the files yourself. These are routine executions. I have no authority to tell unrelated people anything."
Conrad was a man of chivalry. A man could be killed, but never humiliated. To him, anyone who tortured people for fun was no better than an animal.
If this weren't Marineford, he would have taken justice into his own hands, putting an arrow through every last one of them!
What a pity. The Navy wasn't supposed to be like this. It needed to change! Change completely! Change wisely! How could the Navy possibly be made better when it was full of vermin?!
"Bling Bling! Is arbitrarily carrying out private punishments against the law?"
Bling Bling froze. He hadn't expected to be dragged into this, but the word "Justice" on his cape compelled him to answer solemnly at once. "The law of the World Government clearly states that those who commit crimes must be sentenced according to their convictions, and those who commit no crimes must not be convicted or sentenced."
"Correct!" Conrad pointed at the pirates on the target posts. His dark eyes blazed as he glared down at the marines and bellowed, "Now tell me! What crimes have these pirates committed? Under what law are they being convicted and sentenced?"
Very Good was dumbfounded. He hadn't expected that, as a Headquarters lieutenant who'd simply captured a few pirates on his way back and killed them for fun, someone would actually come along and demand answers.
He hadn't gone through any judicial process at all.
Looking at the boy, his gaze grew stern, his face and jaw set. "Friend, this has nothing to do with you. I'd advise you not to meddle."
"If I see something, I'm going to step in!"
Conrad's righteous fury surged through him. Conqueror's Haki boiled within his body. Though it hadn't erupted, its pressure already rippled through the surroundings.
Sweat appeared on Very Good's forehead. An aura of righteous indignation flooded his thoughts, forcing him to reconsider. If you saw something nice, you looked at it and left it at that. Who would actually take it seriously?
He shut his mouth and waved to the marines beside him, then started toward the pirates.
His comrades understood at once. They were going to destroy the evidence. Grab the men and toss them away; without proof, no one could figure out what had happened.
Seven or eight hulking figures with scarred faces pressed forward, making for a fearsome sight.
But Conrad wasn't about to back down. Considering his injuries, he decided not to fight for now and give his buddies a chance to show what they could do. He roared, "Drake! Transform! Stop them!"
"Huh?" Drake stared blankly, mouth hanging open. He'd forgotten who he was.
But Conrad had already stepped back and planted a hand against his back.
He shoved Drake toward Very Good and the group of aggressive marine officers behind him.
As the marines' shadows fell over him, Drake's bones swelled grotesquely beneath his skin. In an instant, he transformed into an Allosaurus. He opened his mouth to shout, "Don't come any closer!"
But fear robbed him of speech. All that came out was a savage, animal roar: "Raaagh!!!"
Thud, thud~
The marines' faces quivered like loose masks pressed tight against their cheekbones, their eyes nearly watering from the force.
Conrad took a few quick steps up Drake's back and planted himself atop the Allosaurus's head. He raised the red bow, drew an arrow, and looked down at the marines.
"Good deeds are rewarded, and evil deeds are punished! It's not that punishment never comes, but that I hadn't arrived yet! Now that I'm here, there's no way I'm letting this slide!"
Very Good panicked. He had the Berry-Berry Fruit, which let him split his body apart, but there was no way he could take on that dinosaur.
"I don't understand. They're pirates! Why do you care about them?"
"I'm not here to deal with the pirates! I'm here to deal with you!"
Conrad pointed to the sky, delivering each word with emphatic precision. "I, Conrad, will not allow lawless acts of favoritism to exist in Marineford, this holy city of the Navy!"
Conrad's impassioned speech rang across the entire training ground, from east to west.
The first step to making a name for himself was to stand against scum. Only by making their enemies clear could like-minded people rally to their cause.
But the first person to show up was often not an ally. It was the darkness, trying to snuff out the first sparks of justice.
"Practicing on stationary targets is no challenge at all. If you ask me, they should let the pirates loose before the contest. Dodging targets would really test your aim. Heh."
A broad-coated officer with gray skin, a hideous face, a red-plumed helmet, and a sword at his waist walked into the training ground, belly thrust forward and a cigarette dangling from his lips.
Conrad recognized him at a glance: Vice Admiral Onigumo, a brutal hawk who would shoot subordinates for disobedience and order his guns to fire on fellow marines' ships.
"Vice Admiral Onigumo!" Very Good looked as though he'd been rescued. Onigumo was his direct superior.
"I told him to teach the pirates a lesson. They've done plenty of bad things. Do you have a problem with that, kid?"
Onigumo exhaled a cloud of smoke, his eyes—almost entirely white—turning toward Conrad atop the Allosaurus's head.
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