"Our bounties have gone up again." Furaese spread the day's newspaper and the freshly printed wanted posters across the deck. The moment the word "bounty" was mentioned, nobody could sit still.
Nekomamushi and Inuarashi shot over on all four legs in an instant. Buggy, who had been in the bathroom, poked his head out of the hatch and craned his neck to see. Even Enel, his body wrapped in bandages like a white cactus tree, hopped onto the deck in stiff, zombie-like jumps.
"How much did my bounty go up?" Enel blurted out the moment only his face was visible. He figured that as the one who had inflicted the most damage on Big Mom, his bounty should see a serious boost.
Perhaps even surpassing Buggy's to make him the highest-bounty member of the entire crew. If that happened, he would have grounds to demand Buggy hand over the captain's title.
"Go, go, go — what is this mummy doing here?" Buggy, still reduced to a single head, butted his red nose furiously at Enel in an attempt to shoo him away. He knew perfectly well that Enel had at least two hundred pounds of rebellious bone for every hundred pounds of body weight, and the eagerness with which he scrambled here at the mention of bounties said everything about what was going through his mind. Enel and Buggy heard this and were basically on the same page.
"You're the one who should go back to the toilet!" Enel shouted.
"Both of you — shut up!" Furaese punched them each once. Two children, whose combined IQ probably did not exceed eight years.
"But after everything that happened, we're real pirates now, aren't we?" Inuarashi said excitedly. All of them held Ren in immense reverence, and Ren's bounty had already reached 4.3 billion berries. Having now defeated Big Mom — herself worth around four billion — their own bounties were certain to soar.
"Maybe I'll get a bounty of over a billion, like Shutendouji! That would feel absolutely amazing, meow!" Nekomamushi said, curling his tongue around the words.
"Over a billion might be a stretch," Inuarashi replied, "but I think five hundred million or more is definitely possible!"
"That would still be incredible — we were only worth a few tens of millions before!"
The two went back and forth like this, leaving Furaese unable to get a word in. Kawamatsu watched her with a shy, expectant gaze, waiting patiently for her to read out everyone's bounties.
Furaese sighed. "Don't you think you're all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? But let me warn you now — reality and imagination are not always the same."
Her gaze drifted toward Buggy. After all, he was the captain; he would be announced first.
Buggy shot Enel a triumphant eyebrow-raise, a smug expression so infuriating that Enel wanted to lunge forward and bite his nose clean off.
But Buggy's smugness did not last long. Furaese read aloud: "Buggy the Clown — bounty: two billion, one hundred and sixty million berries."
Buggy froze. "You said… how much…?"
"Two billion, one hundred and sixty million berries." Furaese repeated it, looking straight at him.
"Are you sure you didn't miss a zero?" Buggy asked cautiously, his voice barely above a whisper. He had helped defeat Big Mom — surely his bounty was worth at least three billion, if not Ren's level? And how much was it? Just two billion one hundred million?
"Oh please — you're the kind of fool who has to take himself apart and count piece by piece just to do arithmetic, and you're doubting Furaese?" Enel snapped.
"Besides, you weren't the one who did the most work against Big Mom." He mimicked Buggy's earlier eyebrow raise, subtly emphasizing that he was the one who had dealt Big Mom the heaviest blow.
Without his Atomic Punch, could they have won? Obviously not. Rounded up, Big Mom was his solo takedown — was that really too much to say?
The thought popped into Enel's head, and even he flushed slightly. That was going too far.
At minimum, he would need to include Furaese in the equation. And as someone who had joined Furaese to end a legend, a bounty of 3.9 billion was hardly unreasonable.
He did not need to be greedy — just 3.9 billion. That would be perfectly appropriate.
Enel basked in his own reasoning, his eyes fixed on Furaese, ready for his glorious moment.
"The Bomb Man, Enel — bounty: one billion, five hundred and seventy-six million berries."
Enel: ??? "What? One billion, five hundred million? How is it only one billion five hundred million?
Where is my 3.9 billion?"
Buggy's head rolled across the deck in hysterics. "Ha ha ha ha ha! One billion five hundred million! Ha ha ha ha ha!
That is the funniest thing I have ever heard! You didn't even break two billion, and there you were making faces at me — what was that, eye spasms?!"
"Shut up!" Enel roared, his face red with fury.
Though neither of them was particularly satisfied, the bounty figures were roughly in line with expectations.
Berries still carried real value in this era — Enel's 1.5 billion was genuinely impressive, putting him on par with Yukiko and Jasmine, whose combat strengths were all roughly comparable.
Buggy's fighting power had already begun to separate from Enel's, thanks in large part to the superiority of Advanced Conqueror's Coating. As captain, the Marines had also added a symbolic premium, placing him just over two billion.
Shanks and Doflamingo were in a similar position. Both captains surpassed two billion, though none of their subordinates broke the one billion mark.
Crocodile and Mihawk, on the other hand, had seen substantial increases.
Crocodile — who in the original timeline had failed to cross one hundred million even after the Seven Warlords system was established — now sat at 430 million. Mihawk's bounty stood at 600 million berries.
"My bounty is 430 million berries." Furaese had not made any spectacular display of power during the battle, but her strength was nothing to scoff at — she was easily worth seven or eight hundred million on paper.
With those three precedents, Inuarashi and Nekomamushi began lowering their expectations with each passing second. Kawamatsu quietly hoped that breaking one hundred million would count as a success.
"Nekomamushi, the big-faced cat — bounty: 275 million berries. Inuarashi — bounty: 275 million, two hundred thousand berries."
"What?! You filthy dog — why is your bounty two hundred thousand higher than mine?!" Nekomamushi was furious the instant he heard the numbers.
Two hundred thousand was not much, but it meant that in the eyes of the Marines, he — Nekomamushi — was somehow inferior to that mangy mutt. The two rivals immediately started brawling on the deck.
[
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