With all the "important business" settled, there was still the question of what to do with the pirates before him.
Taking them to a Marine Base to collect their bounties was a given, but which base he took them to mattered too.
Having just left the Conomi Islands, the nearest Marine Base was naturally the 16th Marine Branch, where Captain Nezumi was stationed. But considering that the man might well use the Black Cat Pirates to pull another round of collusion between officials and criminals, Xie Wen was never going to hand Jango and the others over to Nezumi.
So Xie Wen took out the Hunter's Notes and searched around, discovering that aside from the 16th Marine Branch, the closest base was the 77th Branch...
Huh? That Commodore who got killed in the original story seemed to have belonged to this branch.
Although the man's strength was most likely nothing impressive, his attitude in the manga had been proper enough. He had gone outside his own jurisdiction to fight pirates, so handing the Black Cat Pirates over to him should be fairly reliable.
And so, after confirming their destination, Xie Wen...
Untied the Black Cat Pirates' helmsman and lookout.
Obviously. Why not use free labor when it was available? Why make his own cats work so hard?
Xie Wen did not believe that these men, whom Kuro had cowed so thoroughly that they still obediently followed his orders years after leaving him, would dare resist him and the cats who had easily dealt with Kuro.
Things went just as Xie Wen expected. Although delivering themselves to a Marine Base was deeply humiliating for pirates, at least that terrifying cat would not slaughter them, right?
So even after temporarily regaining their freedom, none of these pirates had the slightest thought of