The Last Meal Before Parting

The smile on Garp's face froze completely the moment Luffy shouted those words.

The atmosphere, so warm just a second earlier with the relief of surviving and the bond between brothers, seemed to be brutally snuffed out by an invisible hand. The temperature plunged to freezing.

"What did you... say?"

Garp slowly turned his head and stared hard at Luffy, who had jumped up from the ground and planted his hands on his hips, proudly announcing his dream.

"I said I'm going to be the Pirate King!" Completely oblivious, Luffy puffed out his chest and repeated himself. "That's my promise to Shanks! I don't want to be some Marine!"

"..."

The air fell deathly silent.

Even Ace, who had been snickering nearby, froze. He instinctively drew his head back as an ominous premonition rose within him.

Leaning against a broken tree nearby, Lorne watched the scene, his beast ears drooping helplessly.

He had known this would happen.

"The... Pirate... King?" Garp repeated the words one at a time.

But a cross-shaped vein on his forehead was throbbing wildly out of control.

"Ha... hahahaha..." Garp suddenly lowered his head and gave a dry laugh, his shoulders shaking violently. "Good. Very good! What a fine grandson I have! You actually want to become the leader of that scum!"

The next second, he snapped his head up!

There was no trace of affection left in those eyes, only towering fury!

"Today, I'm going to beat that ridiculous dream right out of you!!!"

Boom!!!

A terrifying aura far beyond anything from their previous training sessions erupted from Garp!

"This is bad!" Ace's expression changed drastically.

"Grandpa's serious!"

Leaving an afterimage where he stood, Garp appeared before Luffy in an instant!

"Brace yourself, you little brat!"

Holding nothing back, that Fist of Love, filled with all the fury of the Marine hero, came crashing down squarely on Luffy's head with a shriek that tore through the air!

"Waaaaaah-!!!!"

Luffy's agonized scream rang shrilly across all of Mount Colubo.

"Thud-!!!"

An immensely deep, muffled crash rang out!

The ground burst apart, and dust filled the air.

When the dust cleared, Luffy had vanished. Only his straw hat lay abandoned on the ground.

Where he had stood, a fresh human-shaped pit was plainly visible. Inside it, Luffy had been hammered snugly into the dirt with his arms and legs spread wide, his eyes rolled back, already unconscious.

Only the enormous lump on his rubber head stood out in the sunlight, larger than his head itself and puffing out little spurts of white steam.

"..."

Once again, everyone fell into deathly silence.

Ace shuddered in fright and instinctively covered his own head with both hands, as though that punch had landed on him.

Looking at that steaming lump, he swallowed hard and felt a chill at the back of his head.

"Tsk."

Leaning against the trunk with his arms folded, Lorne watched with interest and could not help marveling inwardly.

This is way more hardcore than it looked in the manga...

A one-punch knockout.

Clean and decisive.

Garp shook his steaming fist and blew on it.

Then his eyes, still slightly red with anger, swept toward Ace, who was still trembling nearby, as though searching for his next prey.

"!!!"

Ace felt as if a primordial beast had fixed its gaze on him. Every hair on his body stood on end!

"Ace."

Garp's voice was low and oppressive.

"What about you?"

"Do you want to become a pirate too?"

The terrifying pressure bore down on Ace like a solid mountain!

Ace shook even harder, beads of cold sweat seeping from his forehead. He could feel that if he said a single wrong word, he would end up exactly like Luffy!

But he gritted his teeth, stared hard at the ground, and stubbornly refused to speak.

Make him promise to become a Marine?

Impossible!

"Not talking?" Garp took a step forward, and the ground beneath his feet cracked. "Looks like you're a naughty boy who won't listen either. I'll have to straighten out those dangerous ideas of yours!"

Just as the second Fist of Love was about to fall-

"That's enough, old man."

A voice abruptly cut in.

Garp paused and slowly turned his head.

At some point, Lorne had straightened up from the tree. He walked over step by step and finally stopped in front of Ace, shielding him completely behind his back.

Sheltered behind him, Ace felt the pressure on his body ease. He jerked his head up and looked at the figure before him-not particularly burly, yet utterly dependable at that moment-and warmth filled his heart.

"Lorne..." Garp narrowed his eyes at this "grandson" who dared stand directly in his way. "What are you trying to do? Are you going to oppose me too?"

"I wouldn't go that far." Lorne shrugged, his beast ears swaying gently. "I just think you don't need to trouble yourself with disciplining my little brothers."

He looked back at the still-trembling Ace and grinned.

"After all, I'm their big brother now, aren't I?"

"Hahahaha!" Garp suddenly burst out laughing, and that terrifying pressure vanished along with it. "Good! Let's see how you plan to discipline them as their big brother!"

He withdrew his fist, hauled the still-unconscious Luffy out of the pit, and slung him over his shoulder like a sack.

"That's enough for today! All of you, get back and eat!"

Garp strode toward the Bandit Hideout. "If you dare mention pirates again at dinner, I'll string all three of you up and beat you!"

Watching Garp walk away, Ace finally breathed a sigh of relief and dropped onto the ground as if all his strength had drained away.

"Thanks... Big Brother Lorne." He lowered his head, his voice a little dry.

"No big deal." Lorne patted his shoulder. "But next time he asks, you'd better be smarter about it. Don't butt heads with him."

"I..." Ace wanted to argue, but swallowed the words before they left his mouth.

He knew Lorne had been protecting him.

"Come on, let's eat." Lorne pulled Ace to his feet. "If we're late, we really won't get a single bite of meat."

Inside the bandit Dadan's hideout, the atmosphere that evening was especially "lively."

An enormous wooden table was piled with all the meat the bandits had treasured away: whole roast pig, stewed wild ox legs, sausages... It formed a little mountain giving off a mouthwatering aroma.

This was their last meal before parting.

"Dig in!"

At Garp's command, a savage battle over food officially began!

"Meat! That meat's mine!"

Luffy, who had woken up at some point, yelled as both arms stretched out like springs toward the largest roast pig leg.

"You've still got a ways to go, brat!"

"Gahahaha!" Garp laughed and swept his big hand out as fast as lightning, tying Luffy's arms into a knot halfway before snatching the pig leg neatly into his own bowl.

"Aaah! My meat! Grandpa, you're cheating!" Luffy was so frantic he nearly cried.

"There's no such thing as cheating on a battlefield!" Garp lectured indistinctly as he took huge bites of meat.

On the other side, Ace joined the fray too. Having learned his lesson, he no longer simply kept his head down and ate. Instead, he copied Garp, keeping his eyes sharp and his hands quick, specifically targeting the meat in other people's bowls.

For a while, the table became a battlefield. Forks and fists flew together, plates and bones collided everywhere, and everything descended into a lively uproar.

Dadan and her bandit underlings huddled in a corner, watching the food reserves they had worked so hard to gather disappear before their very eyes. Their hearts ached, but they dared not say a word.

Lorne alone stayed out of the chaotic scramble.

He simply sat in his seat, leisurely cutting the steak before him with his knife and fork, as though none of this had anything to do with him.

Yet whenever a "stray projectile"-such as a flying bone or a wildly thrusting fork-came his way, he precisely blocked or dodged it without even looking up.

"Hey, big brother, why aren't you grabbing anything?" Even with his mouth stuffed full of meat, Luffy did not forget to check on Lorne.

"Yeah, Big Brother Lorne! If you don't grab some now, there won't be any left!" Ace also found time in the midst of the struggle to call out.

Lorne smiled without speaking.

With his table knife, he cut off a piece of meat, neither too big nor too small, roasted crisp outside and tender within, then picked it up with his fork.

Just as Garp and Luffy were fighting fiercely over the last chicken leg, and Ace was preparing to seize the opening and raid Garp's bowl-

Lorne flicked his wrist.

The piece of meat traced a precise arc through the air, passing over all the chaos before landing squarely in Ace's bowl with a slap.

Ace froze.

Garp and Luffy stopped too, both turning to look at him.

Ace looked at the still-steaming piece of meat in his bowl, then at the perfectly composed Lorne. His cheeks flushed slightly, but he still speared it with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth in one bite.

"Gahahahaha!" At the sight, Garp burst into laughter again.

The chaotic yet warm battle over food finally ended with the complete destruction of the mountain of food.

Everyone had eaten their fill and sprawled in their chairs, burping.

The sadness of parting seemed to have been diluted considerably by all the fooling around.

But everyone knew that once dawn came, they would truly part.

The night gradually deepened.

Mount Colubo grew quiet once more.

As the first ray of morning light pierced the mist over Mount Colubo, a low, lingering blast of a ship's horn sounded from the distant horizon.

The Dog-Head Warship had arrived.