Arlong's Crew

"What are you?" Arlong asked in surprise as he looked at the blade in his hand, which had been snapped by a sudden kick from a young man who had appeared out of nowhere.

As far as he knew, none of the nearby villages had anyone strong enough to break a blade with one kick. Besides, the young man before him was covered in bandages, clearly injured.

"Just a passerby," William said casually.

In fact, he had already been sitting on a nearby rooftop when Arlong entered Cocoyasi Village. Everyone's attention had been on Genzo, so no one had noticed him.

"A passerby? You lowly humans actually dare resist me?" Arlong furiously threw a punch at William.

William suddenly leaped backward, grabbed the still-stunned Genzo, and dodged Arlong's fist. The chair, however, was unlucky enough to be smashed to pieces by Arlong's punch.

Seeing that William had not only avoided his punch but also rescued Genzo, who had been about to be executed, and fled onto the roof of a house, Arlong instantly flew into a rage.

"Boss Arlong, are you going to level the village?" The fish-men behind Arlong saw him furiously overturn the house beneath William's feet and immediately grew nervous. They hated humans too, but they were not as extreme as Arlong, and destroying the village was not their goal.

"Boss Arlong, destroying a village is easy, but don't forget that our purpose is to rule them!"

"If it ends up like Gosa Town, there'll be one less place paying tribute to us!"

"If there's one less, we'll just find another!" Arlong completely ignored his companions' attempts to stop him and stubbornly insisted on killing William for daring to oppose him.

"At this rate, the village will be destroyed." Chew, the fish-man officer and a whiting fish-man, tried to stop Arlong, but Arlong was simply too strong. They could not restrain him at all.

"You're Arlong, right? If it weren't for Fisher Tiger and Jinbe, I'd butcher you today!" Although William said that, he knew he was still seriously injured. If he fought Arlong, it was impossible to say who would win.

Arlong's treatment of humans was infuriating, but setting race aside, he was a loyal and honorable man—though only toward his own kind. Even that made him better than quite a few humans. Among humans, there was no shortage of shameless people who plotted against their own companions.

"Just who are you?" Arlong calmed down upon hearing the names of the two fish-man heroes, Fisher Tiger and Jinbe. In the East Blue, perhaps well-informed people knew Jinbe as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, but almost no one knew the name of Fisher Tiger, captain of the Sun Pirates.

"My name is William. I came under my captain's orders to find our navigator!" William smiled as he warned Arlong, "I don't care how you treat the villagers. After all, we're different races. But if you push things too far, I'll kill you—only you, of course!"

William's meaning was obvious. If Arlong kept causing trouble, William would no longer be polite with him. But he also made it clear that even if he killed Arlong, he would not lay a hand on the other fish-men.

"William? Are you here to arrest me?" Instead of getting angry at William's words, Arlong became wary.

The fish-man companions behind him had been wondering whether to stop Arlong, but they found that he had not gone berserk and was instead strangely calm. As for the villagers of Cocoyasi Village, their hearts were in turmoil. They had no idea what Arlong intended to do.

"So you know who I am? But I'm not interested in you. I'm a pirate now!" From Arlong's words, William guessed that Arlong already knew his identity.

Although Arlong looked like the type to solve everything with brute force, he was actually quite cunning. Otherwise, he would not have cooperated with Colonel Nezumi, nor would he have spotted young Nami's talent at a glance. Judging by Arlong's expression, Colonel Nezumi probably had not told him about the contents of that Marine Headquarters document. That was hardly surprising, since it had nothing to do with Arlong.

"But I'm very interested in you! I'll prepare a banquet for you at Arlong Park!" Once Arlong learned that William had left the Marines and become a pirate, he clearly wanted to recruit him. A former Marine colonel from the Grand Line was bound to possess considerable strength, and the intelligence in his hands certainly could not compare to the worthless information possessed by someone like Colonel Nezumi.

"I'll definitely pay you a visit!" But when William said he would pay a visit, he did not mean to discuss cooperation with Arlong. He meant he would come smash the place up. Arlong simply did not know it.

"We'll come back another day. Consider yourselves lucky to have kept your lives!" Kuroobi, the fish-man officer and a ray fish-man, left those words behind before following Arlong out of Cocoyasi Village.

Seeing Arlong finally leave, William let out a sigh of relief. That bastard was Arlong, the sawshark fish-man with a bounty of ten thousand Beli. If William had not been seriously injured, he really would not have wasted so many words on him. Although William's injuries were severe and he might not have been Arlong's match right now, Arlong was still not strong enough to keep him there. But the villagers of Cocoyasi Village would have suffered.

William did not want Nami to hate him for the rest of her life. Moreover, in order to better develop one of his Devil Fruit powers, the "castle ability," he planned to gather some promising people and station them inside the castle within his body. Like Capone Bege, a Castle-Castle Fruit user, he would turn himself into a mobile fortress and carry an army with him wherever he went. Of course, William needed an army with quality, not merely numbers.

Although the Straw Hat Pirates followed an elite path, this army would be one of his "abilities," and not just any lackey could join William's army. He had always thought the Castle-Castle Fruit was a good Devil Fruit. It was just that Capone Bege's subordinates were all lackeys.

What if the army stationed inside the castle consisted entirely of Devil Fruit users or the human weapons developed by the Marines, Pacifistas? Of course, for the current William, that was nothing more than a wild fantasy.

"Genzo, are you all right?" Seeing William casually toss Genzo onto the ground, Nojiko hurried over to ask.

"Thank you!" Genzo did not hold it against William for throwing him onto the ground. If William had not appeared in time, Arlong would have executed him long ago. He was only curious about who William really was. He had dodged Arlong's punch while carrying someone, and Arlong had become interested in him just from hearing his name.

"That was quite an impressive show of spirit from this beautiful lady. Hello, I'm William!" To William's disappointment, Nojiko completely ignored him. She seemed very displeased that he had casually thrown Genzo onto the ground.

However, William had forgotten how Nojiko felt about Genzo. In the sisters' hearts, Genzo was practically half a father to them. If their adoptive mother had not been killed by Arlong, Genzo might really have become their adoptive father. The scars all over Genzo's body had been left when he resisted Arlong for the sake of Nami and their adoptive mother. If his vitality had not been so strong, he could not possibly have survived.

"Forget it." William said nothing more in response to Nojiko's disregard, but he still told Genzo, "If you want to resist Arlong, I advise you to give up. At your level, don't fight Arlong. Even defeating one of his officers would be pure luck."

William was not exaggerating. Those officers were far stronger than ordinary fish-men. If they wanted to win through numbers, how many villagers would have to die just to defeat one officer? Those fish-men were not idiots. Other than Arlong, who among them would challenge an entire village's worth of villagers alone?

Genzo and Nojiko said nothing. Clearly, they did not want to discuss such matters in front of an outsider.

"Can you defeat Arlong?" Nojiko suddenly asked.

"I could before. Not now, because I'm injured!" William pointed at the bandages around his body.

Nojiko and Genzo had also noticed the thick bandages around William. He was obviously badly hurt. Someone who still dared provoke Arlong while injured was either a fool who did not know his own limits or someone confident in his strength.

But both Nojiko and Genzo believed William was the latter. If William had not been injured, perhaps they might even have begged him to save Cocoyasi Village. But the thought merely flashed through their minds before they cast it aside.