East Blue.
Flocks of white seagulls soared through the sky.
Upon the rolling azure sea, a small fishing boat had raised its sail and drifted with the wind.
Four men stood on the deck of that fishing boat, discussing something.
"Captain Kuro, now that we've formed the Black Cat Pirates.
Why don't we hurry up and make our own pirate flag to hang from the mast...?"
"Yeah! Once we have a pirate flag, with the strength of the four of us.
We'll surely make a name for ourselves on these seas in no time and recruit more men!"
The two speakers, one fat and one thin, both had catlike faces that somehow looked rather comical...
Hearing their questions, Kuro, dressed in a black suit and wearing rimless round glasses, frowned slightly and explained helplessly:
"Buchi! Sham!
First, you need to recognize one fact!
This is our first time at sea. We're complete unknowns on these waters, not even wanted criminals...
Therefore, as long as we make good use of that, we can create unimaginable value.
As for the pirate flag...
Let's wait until we have a more impressive ship before making one and hanging it from the mast!"
A man in a blue suit with heart-shaped glasses pointed at a warship appearing on the distant sea and cried out:
"Captain Kuro!
It's a Marine warship. What do we do now?"
At that, Kuro raised his right hand and lightly pushed up his glasses with his wrist before speaking in a low voice:
"Jango, what are you panicking for? We haven't even hung up a pirate flag.
As long as we don't give ourselves away, we can pretend to be an ordinary fishing boat... Hmm!?"
As he spoke, an idea suddenly came to Kuro. He fixed his eyes on the warship