"Get them! Wreck these two!" If they'd been out on the street, the blond thug might've shown a little restraint. But inside this bar? Not a chance. This was his turf.
He wasn't about to let someone waltz in and step all over him while he hid in a corner with his mouth shut.
Sure, the two militia men were armed. But the other side had numbers. And empty bottles were everywhere. You could grab one off any table and it became a weapon.
Under these conditions, those two were in for a rough time.
"Hold it." Just as the fight was about to kick off, Shirakawa spoke up. After all, those two had come here because of him. If something happened to them on his account, wouldn't that make him look a little... scummy?
Shirakawa stepped between the two groups.
"And who the hell are you, sticking your nose in our business?"
The blond saw Shirakawa was an unfamiliar face and figured he wasn't a local. He leaned hard into his big-shot-on-campus attitude.
The two militia men, however, looked stunned and genuinely moved. They never expected the guy they'd been tailing to be the one stepping up for them.
"I'm nobody special. Just your average, run-of-the-mill pirate."
Shirakawa answered with a smile, making an effort to keep his expression as gentle as possible.
"Hah! A pirate, huh? You think I'm scared of a pirate? I've put more pirates in the dirt than I can count. At least eight hundred, easy."
The blond boasted. Nobody could tell if he was lying or telling the truth.
The blond hadn't recognized him, but plenty of other pirates in the bar had. Especially one particular captain sitting off to the side. Big guy, tall and burly. But the second he got a good look at Shirakawa's face, he started trembling.
"What's a guy like that doing here?"
This captain's question echoed the same confusion shared by every island resident who knew who Shirakawa was. Was he just cruising the first half of the Grand Line for the cheap thrill of crushing weaklings?
"Captain? What's wrong with you?"
Noticing their captain's legs shaking uncontrollably, one of his crewmates asked.
The captain tilted his head toward the bar counter. Pinned to the side wall was a stack of wanted posters. Right at the very front, in the most visible spot, was Shirakawa's.
Shirakawa had noticed that poster the moment he walked in. What puzzled him was that nobody in the room had shot him a single terrified glance. For a moment, he actually thought these people weren't afraid of him.
But seeing this captain's reaction now, Shirakawa knew he'd read it wrong. They weren't unafraid. They'd simply blanked. It never crossed their minds that someone like him would set foot in a place like this.
The captain's crewman followed his captain's gaze. He looked at the poster. Then at Shirakawa. Back to the poster. Back to Shirakawa.
"Captain! He looks exactly like the guy on the wanted poster!"
The crewman blurted out, loud and stunned. The entire bar fell dead silent. The captain now seriously wanted to throttle his own subordinate.
Every pair of eyes in the room swiveled toward them. Then, in unison, they all checked the poster and then stared at Shirakawa.
Instantly, the blond thug's swagger evaporated like mist.
"You're... the guy on that poster?" The blond raised a trembling finger and pointed at the wanted sheet.
Shirakawa glanced at the poster and then struck the exact same expression it depicted. "What's wrong? Don't I look like him?"
"You do." The blond's reply came out stiff, robotic.
"So, do I qualify to meddle in your affairs here or not?"
"Yeah, yeah, you do." But then a thought struck the blond. This was his territory. Most of the people here were his crew. The other guy was alone. What did he have to be scared of?
"Actually, screw that! Kid, I suggest you turn around and walk out of here right now. Mind your own damn business. Just because you look like that guy doesn't mean I'm scared of you. And you know what? Even if you were him, so what? I could take ten little runts like you without breaking a sweat."
"Pfft."
Shirakawa almost laughed. The sheer ignorance of this blond idiot was actually amusing. This was a textbook case of a frog at the bottom of a well.
Meanwhile, the pirate captain sitting in the corner silently saluted the blond's bravery. He was a pirate too, and he knew how the Marines set bounties. It came down to two categories.
One: overwhelming strength. Two: unrepentant, violent criminal.
Which one applied to Shirakawa, this captain had no idea. The guy's face was far too misleading.
He didn't look strong. He didn't look like a menace to society, either.
"What are you laughing at, kid? You looking down on me?"
Shirakawa's smirk set the blond off, erasing any trace of the fear he'd shown moments ago.
"What do you think?" Shirakawa didn't answer directly. He tossed the question right back.
"Boys, get him! Anyone with a blade, pull it out! We'll take this punk's head and cash it in with the Marines!"
"Yeah!"
His cronies were just as blindly overconfident.
Behind Shirakawa, the two militia men were panicking hard. Things had spiraled way past anything they expected. They had no clue how to stop this now.
"Wait."
Just as the mob surged forward to jump him, Shirakawa shouted again.
"What now, kid? Having second thoughts? Too late for that! I'm taking your head today, no two ways about it."
"No, I just want to ask the others here a question."
"What question?"
"You pirates sitting over there. Are you with them?"
When Shirakawa directed the question at him, the other pirate captain nearly jumped out of his skin. He shook his head violently, denying everything. "We're not with them! We don't even know them!"
"Good."
The blond sneered at the other pirates' cowardice. If he'd known they were this gutless, he'd have made them his underlings ages ago.
"You done asking?"
"Done. You can start now."
This time, the blond didn't even need to give the order. His goons charged on their own.
The pirate captain watched with bated breath, eager to see what a four-hundred-million-berry heavyweight could actually do. His own bounty was barely in the tens of millions.
But he never saw Shirakawa lift a finger. The attackers all just... crumpled. Unconscious. And he felt something wash over him, an overwhelming, domineering pressure that swept through his very core.
"Did he move too fast? Did I miss it?" The captain quickly dismissed the thought. Shirakawa's posture hadn't shifted an inch. He was standing exactly as he'd been before.
"What the hell just happened, Captain? What's wrong with them?" One of his crewmen asked, desperate for an explanation.
"I don't know." The captain shook his head, staring at Shirakawa with pure dread in his eyes. Bounties in the hundreds of millions were no joke. That much was clear.
But the matter wasn't quite over.
Shirakawa had no intention of letting the blond walk away alive. The details aren't worth dwelling on, but the scene was messy enough to need censorship.
This blond was clearly a menace to the town, a local tyrant. Shirakawa figured he was doing a public service. As for the rest of them? He let them off with a warning.