Natsu: Do a Bunch of Lowly Insects Deserve a Seat at the Table?
A pirate with a scarred face stepped on her fishtail from above, pulled out a slave-catching rope from his waist, and shouted triumphantly towards the alley entrance that this end was his and no one was allowed to take it.
The mermaid woman struggled to lift her head, and through her tear-blurred vision, she saw her husband being pinned to the ground and several pirates walking towards her child. Despair and fear completely choked her, and she couldn't even make a sound.
On the other side of the warehouse area, several young Fish-Man who had just returned from hauling in their nets were surrounded by seven or eight pirates.
They still held their harpoons in their hands, but faced with the pirates' gleaming knives and spears and their clearly trained hunting formation, these fishermen, who had never experienced real combat, trembled even with their hands gripping the harpoons.
A burly man who looked like a pirate captain swung his curved sword and ordered his men to hurry up and gather a hundred before dawn, or they would be rich.
His deputy, flipping through the ledgers, casually reminded him that some of his men were also making moves at the port, and asked if he should send someone to check it out.
The burly man spat and retorted disdainfully, "What's there to be afraid of? What about the Whitebeard Pirates already being kicked out of the New World? Fish-Man Island is now just a piece of fat meat that nobody cares about; whoever makes the first move gets to eat it."
What he didn't know was that the "untouchable fat meat" he mentioned had already been adorned with the Uchiha Gunbai banner a year earlier.
The Whitebeard Pirates, whom he called "get out of the New World," had already recuperated and reorganized under that banner.
The scarred pirate who stepped on the mermaid woman's tail was the first to realize what was happening.
He was admiring his prey when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of an unfamiliar figure at the alley entrance.
The figure was not tall, and against the dim light of the warehouse area, one could vaguely make out that he was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen years old.
Scarface the pirate narrowed his eyes, and when he saw that the person was indeed just a teenager, his tense nerves immediately relaxed, replaced by a sense of pleasure mixed with contempt and cruelty.
"Hey, where did this brat come from?" He kicked aside the struggling mermaid woman at his feet, shouldered his scimitar, took a few steps toward the figure, sized him up, and a ferocious smile spread across his face.
"What's wrong? Can't find your mother? Do you want me to take you somewhere nice?"
His accomplices around him burst into laughter. The deputy, who was flipping through the ledger, glanced up, then lowered his head again to continue writing his inventory list.
The seven or eight pirates who were hunting the Fish-Man also temporarily stopped. Some of them whistled, while others swung their slave-catching ropes, making a whooshing sound.
In their eyes, this suddenly appearing boy was either a lost child from one of the island's families, or a naive young man hiding in the harbor watching the commotion.
Regardless of the type, they are prey delivered to our doorstep. This deal has already yielded over eighty slaves, so adding one more human brat would be a bonus.
The boy's expression remained unchanged.
The dim lighting in the warehouse area cast half a shadow on his face, revealing only the sharp lines of his jaw and a pair of eyes so calm they seemed inhuman.
Scarface's smile froze for a moment.
He noticed the color of the boy's eyes, which was unlike anyone he had ever seen in his life—it was an extremely deep scarlet, with three jet-black Tomoe around the edges of the pupils, moving slowly and steadily.
Then he heard the boy speak.
The voice wasn't loud, but it clearly pierced through the surrounding laughter and the faint cries in the distance, each word reaching everyone's ears.
"You guys just said whoever bites first gets to keep it?" The boy tilted his head slightly, his scarlet eyes sweeping over the faces of all the pirates present. "Did I hear that right?"
Scarface the pirate paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.
He turned back to his accomplices, shrugging with an exaggerated expression that seemed to say, "Did you hear what this kid said?" Then he turned back again, fiddling with the curved knife still stained with the blood of the previous victim, and strode towards Natsu.
He moved slowly, thoroughly enjoying the cat -Nezumi game.
"What, kid, trying to be a hero?" He grinned, revealing a mouthful of teeth stained yellow from cheap tobacco.
"Fine, I'll grant your wish. Once I catch you, I'll sell you to Mary Geoise along with those mermaids. Your face might even be worth a few more dollars then."
His accomplices behind him joined in the jeering, some whistling, others urging him to hurry up and finish so as not to delay the loading. The deputy had already closed the ledger and was leaning against the cargo container, waiting with great interest to see what would happen.
Natsu tilted his head, a slight smile curving his lips. It wasn't a smile, but a smile somewhere between mockery and pity, like watching a group of fish hopping on a chopping board and asking why the knife hadn't fallen yet.
"A bunch of lowly insects, do they even deserve to eat at the table?"
Scarface's smile froze.
It wasn't because of the content of that sentence, but because his right hand suddenly stopped obeying his commands.
The hand that was used to holding a knife slowly and stiffly turned over, pointing the blade at his own neck.
He tried to loosen his grip, but his five fingers seemed welded to the handle of a knife, remaining completely still.
He wanted to curse, but only a few indistinct syllables came out of his throat. Everyone on the ship could see that his body no longer belonged to him.
"I said—" Natsu's voice wasn't loud, but it drowned out all the noise in the harbor, "You lowly insects don't even deserve to be given charity."
Scarface's pupils dilated suddenly. He saw his hand shove forward, the blade cutting through his throat with a cold, fleeting sensation, before the world plunged into endless darkness.
The dull thud of the body falling to the ground startled everyone present.
An eerie silence fell over the warehouse area—the pirates had seen dead people before, but they had never seen their own comrade stab himself to death right before their eyes.
Then someone noticed Natsu's eyes.
The eyes gleamed crimson in the dim warehouse light, and the three Tomoe at the edge of the pupils rotated slowly, like some ancient and cold totem.
Those eyes, every pirate recognizes them.
I've seen the bounty posters countless times, and heard about them countless times from my colleagues who escaped from the West Blue.
The Godslayer of 15 Billion Beli, the Demon-Subduing Ghost Clan, Uchiha.
"Wait, wait a minute—those eyes—it's Uchiha! Someone from the Uchiha Clan! Run!!"
The warehouse area exploded like a punctured honeycomb.
The pirates threw away their weapons, their uncounted cargo, and even the ropes they had already tied to capture slaves, scattering in all directions like a swarm of frightened cockroaches.
Some climbed over walls by stepping on their companions' shoulders; some tripped and fell on cargo boxes in the dark, breaking their legs but still crawling forward; some panicked and stumbled into dead ends.