Three days before Werther killed Sanjuan Wolf, a sailboat drifted with the wind about a kilometer from Blackbeard's headquarters.
The boat was not particularly large, little more than a fishing vessel scaled up several times. But atop its mainmast stood a small lookout cabin.
Inside that cabin, which measured only a few square meters, a man knelt on one knee. Resting against his shoulder was a massive sniper rifle at least two meters long. It was not as sophisticated as the rifles from Werther's previous life, but it had the same cold metallic feel.
The man rested the rifle on the lookout window and peered through its scope at Blackbeard's headquarters.
His golden eyes had vertical pupils, like those of a feline.
He was no Devil Fruit User. He had been born with those unusual eyes, and they had made him an outcast. In the village where he grew up, ignorant villagers called him the child of a beast.
When he was ten, he killed an adult who had bullied him with a battered pistol. The man, a fellow villager, often mocked his beastlike eyes and had given him a nickname: Stray Cat.
He had not killed the man for mocking him. The thug had tried to sell him to the Slave Auction House because his unusual eyes would fetch a good price.
After killing the thug, he gave himself a name: Jin Hu. A Tiger with golden eyes. He was no Stray Cat, as the thug had called him, but a Tiger that chose its prey.
He had discarded his original name when his parents abandoned him.
After the killing, the villagers reported him to the local Marines. On that prosperous island with its Marine garrison, murder was a serious crime, even for a ten-year-old child.
Jin Hu used