"What exactly do you people want?"
Seeing the injuries on Iceburg and Franky, Tom roared with fury.
"Simple. All you have to do is build me a ship that's no less impressive than the Pirate King Roger's," the one-eyed captain declared arrogantly, as if he already had Tom in the palm of his hand.
"Impossible. I will never build a ship for scum like you."
Tom rejected his demand outright.
"Don't be so ungrateful! Our captain is doing you an honor by letting you build him a ship!"
One of the crewmen immediately bristled, snarling at Tom with barely-contained rage.
"If that's what this is, then I'm begging you—please don't do me any honors. I don't need your honors."
"Old man, you'd better not refuse a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit."
The one-eyed captain's temper was starting to fray. Was building him a ship really that hard?
"Hmph. No matter what you do, I will never help you build a ship."
Tom had his own unshakable principles. He knew exactly who he could build ships for—and who he absolutely could not.
"In that case, don't blame my men for getting rough. Do it."
At his command, his crewmen immediately seized Franky and Iceburg again, pressing blades against their throats.
"What are you doing?!"
Seeing this, Tom's composure shattered into panic.
"What are we doing? Isn't it perfectly obvious?"
"Stop it! Let me go!"
Iceburg and Franky thrashed and struggled in their captors' grips. This time, they might really die.
"Stay still."
The two pirates holding Franky and Iceburg slammed them face-first into the ground. With the bodies and strength of children, there was no way the two could fight back against grown pirate men.
"You're going to regret this."
Tom's eyes were bulging, shot through with veins of blood.
"Whether we regret it or not—how would we know without trying? Do it. Let this fishman get a taste of a pirate's cruelty."
"No—stop! I agree—"
Tom could only roar in helpless, unwilling fury.
But before Tom could force out those final words, the two pirates tasked with executing Franky and Iceburg suddenly rolled their eyes back and collapsed.
Feeling the restraints gone, Iceburg and Franky immediately broke free and bolted behind Tom.
"What the hell happened?"
Everyone stood stunned by the scene before them. How had two healthy men just dropped like that out of nowhere?
"That was way too close. Good thing I made it in time."
A voice rang out from above them. They looked up to see a figure standing in midair—dressed in a white windbreaker, a fox mask covering his face.
The moment Tom and the two boys saw who it was, they all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Even with the face concealed, they were one hundred percent certain—this was Shirakawa.
"Who the hell are you?"
The one-eyed captain glared up at Shirakawa, his expression dark. The man was hiding his face, all mysterious and shady. Clearly the type who didn't dare show himself in public.
"Just a passerby who can't stand injustice and draws his blade to help. Remember that well."
"Mr. Tom, what should be done with these people?"
Shirakawa didn't dispose of them directly. Instead, he turned the question over to Tom.
"Kill them all."
As he spoke those words, pure killing intent surfaced on Tom's face. Shirakawa glanced at him with a flicker of genuine surprise. It seemed Tom wasn't as simple a man as he appeared.
"No problem."
"Hey! The two of you, talking about killing us like it's nothing—you think we're just some kids waiting to be butchered?"
The one-eyed captain's anger was mounting. The way these two were acting, they clearly didn't consider them a threat at all. To a pirate, being dismissed like that was the ultimate humiliation.
"No. In my eyes, you don't even qualify as children. At best, you're ants. The kind you can crush casually underfoot."
"You bastard—shoot him down!"
This time, the one-eyed captain's rage detonated completely. He ordered his crew to blast that posturing fraud out of the sky.
The crewmen who had guns took aim at Shirakawa and opened fire in unison. A cruel grin spread across the one-eyed captain's lips. He could already envision Shirakawa riddled full of holes like a sieve.
"Watch out!"
Iceburg couldn't help calling out a warning.
But Shirakawa simply stood there, utterly motionless, letting the bullets fly at him. Yet when every projectile came within two meters of his body, they all stopped dead, as if snagged on something unseen.
"I'm not particularly fond of the gifts you've sent me. So I think I'll return them."
The moment those words left Shirakawa's mouth, every bullet reversed course along its original trajectory and shot back.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Every single person who had fired on Shirakawa erupted in blossoms of blood.
"A Devil Fruit user, huh?"
A trace of gravity crept into the one-eyed captain's expression. Pirates who sailed the Grand Line were hardly ignorant of the world—he'd seen his fair share of Devil Fruit users before.
"We're admitting defeat this time. Fall back!"
Having witnessed Shirakawa's power, the one-eyed captain issued the retreat order without a shred of hesitation.
"Now that won't do. Mr. Tom said to kill every last one of you."
"You're really going to force a mutual destruction?"
At Shirakawa's words, the one-eyed captain's face twisted into something truly ugly. He'd already offered to retreat—why was this man still pressing the attack?
"The fish may die, but the net will not break."
With that, Shirakawa drew his blade and unleashed two arcs of flying sword pressure. The sword pressure of a Great Swordsman was not something ordinary men could hope to withstand—even if their captain was a notorious pirate with a seventy-million-berry bounty.
Still, he was worthy of the title "notorious pirate." He actually survived Shirakawa's sword pressure, though the wounds carved into his body were horrifying—deep enough to expose ghastly white bone beneath.
"Oh? Not bad."
Seeing the one-eyed captain still breathing after taking one of his strikes, Shirakawa offered a word of praise.
But then Shirakawa noticed something—the captain's wounds were writhing, slowly knitting themselves back to normal.
"A Devil Fruit user... with recovery powers too!"
Shirakawa exclaimed in genuine surprise. Yet judging by the one-eyed captain's grim expression, he took no pleasure whatsoever in Shirakawa's compliment.
This was the second time Shirakawa had encountered a Devil Fruit of this type. The first had been Marco the Phoenix—a Zoan-class fruit. This one, by the look of it, was likely a Paramecia.
"Still... this Devil Fruit is truly wasted in your hands."
Shirakawa didn't know the exact fruit, but any Devil Fruit with recovery abilities was certainly no joke. For this man to have such a power and yet fail to make a real name for himself on the seas—that was an embarrassment to the fruit.
"Hmph. My crew's all dead by your hand. You can let me go now, can't you?"
"Of course not. Mr. Tom's words were 'not a single one left.' Besides, I'm rather curious to see where this Devil Fruit of yours reaches its limit."
So saying, Shirakawa raised his blade and began walking toward the man.
"In that case... don't blame me for taking you down with me!"
When Shirakawa reached him, a detonator suddenly appeared in the captain's hand. He slammed his thumb down on it—and in the next instant, his body erupted in a massive explosion.
What he could never have imagined, however, was that an attack like this would do absolutely nothing to Shirakawa.
/-\
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