"Don't push it, brat!"
Scarface froze for a beat, then flew into a rage, yanking Luffy up by the collar.
"How dare you say you don't know us! Do you even realize how much food you've stolen from us these past days?"
"Food?"
Luffy tilted his head, thinking hard—then his eyes widened. "Uncle, you mean that roasted meat? That was yours?"
"Of course it was!"
Scarface roared, spraying spit across Luffy's face. "What, you think roasted meat grows out of the ground by itself?"
"But… I didn't see anyone around." Luffy scratched his head in confusion. "So I just picked it up. I thought maybe the mountain beasts cooked it."
Absurd as it sounded—he wasn't lying.
In the Colbo Mountains, anything was possible: apes that fished, monkeys that brewed liquor, bears that knitted sweaters, leopards that built treehouses… Luffy had seen it all.
Compared to that, beasts that roasted meat didn't seem that strange. Maybe their cooking was even better than humans'.
Scarface had seen some of those sights himself, so for a moment, he faltered.
"So this was just a misunderstanding? Then why, every time we came to question you about the missing food, did you attack us without a word?"
"You were all carrying weapons and shouting from afar that you were the Scarface Bandits. It was scary, uncle!"
Luffy made a face. "I hate bandits. Even after that woman took me in, I still hated them. I just… I just can't stand bandits!"
Scarface's eye twitched.
What, being bandits means we raided your rice supply or something?
Lucky for this brat, he was talking to him. If it had been the notorious great bandit Sig, his head would already be twisted off!
"…Forget it. Untie him."
Scarface sighed and waved lazily.
"Really?" Luffy's face lit up.
"But on one condition."
Scarface snorted coldly. "You've got a partner, don't you? When's he coming to rescue you?"
"That guy stole food too, same as you. You two little brats can fight, can't you? When he gets here, the both of you will go hunting. All the meat we lost—you'll bring back five times… no, ten times as much!"
"Ten times?!"
Luffy's eyes bulged. That was insane!
He and Ace had been thrown into the mountains by Dadan, on Garp's orders, to train and survive the winter on their own.
The beasts here were fierce and hard to hunt. Feeding themselves was already difficult enough. And now this guy wanted ten times the meat?
"Ten times is too much! Six times!"
"Nine. I'll be generous, since you're just a kid."
"Five!"
"Eight. Not a scrap less."
"Three!"
"What kind of bargaining is that, you little pest! At least learn some math first!"
Scarface bellowed, nearly fainting from rage, before waving his men off. "Forget it. Don't untie him yet. We'll wait for his friend. No way both of them are this brainless."
"You should untie him," a voice drifted down from above. "If his friend shows up and you blow a gasket again, you might just keel over."
"Who's there?!"
Scarface's face darkened as he drew his machete and looked up.
On the tree above, a black-haired boy crouched, staring at him with an odd look.
"The infamous bandit worth three million berries—Scarface?"
Shanu shook the bounty poster he'd snatched from Skinny Monkey, squinting back and forth between paper and man. "No way. These are two completely different people."
The man on the poster had vicious eyes and rolls of fat.
The man before him was just stocky at best, and his features didn't even match.
The only similarity: both bore a long scar across the face.
"This picture really you?"
Shanu flipped the poster around and jabbed a finger at the photo.
"Yeah. That's me," Scarface admitted. "Back then, I was a lot fatter."
"Not buying it."
Shanu sneered. "I'd heard about Scarface before even coming up here—murder, rape, arson, all sorts of filth. The townsfolk speak your name like the plague. If you were really him, you think this brat would still be alive to spout nonsense in your face?"
He gestured at Luffy, then swept his gaze over the camp.
"And your men? They don't look like bandits at all. Three or four of them together can't even handle an eight-year-old kid."
Indeed, the dozen "bandits" in camp were all gaunt, ragged, and armed with little more than sharpened sticks. Only two even carried rusty old flintlocks.
Scarface went quiet, mumbling, "…So you noticed."
"Still weird, though. One of your guys can shoot straight."
Shanu shoved Skinny Monkey, gagged with rags, down to the ground. "If I hadn't dodged fast, he would've blown a hole right through my forehead."
"Straight shooting?"
Scarface blinked, staring at the whimpering Skinny Monkey. He yanked the rag from his mouth. "Gin, when did you become a sharpshooter?"
"I didn't! I didn't!"
Skinny Monkey gasped for air, nearly crying. "I aimed at the branch under his foot! Just wanted him to fall! How was I supposed to know it'd go that far off—?"
From the branch to the forehead—that's "a little off"?!
Shanu's forehead twitched. He was nearly 1.8 meters tall!
Scarface, however, seemed to get the picture. He quickly turned back to explain:
"Sir, you've misunderstood. Gin would never aim for your head! He's not that kind of person, and his shooting's nowhere near that good!"
"In fact, his aim is trash—everyone who knows him knows that. That's why he ended up stuck with me in the mountains!"
"He used to be a royal guard cadet. At the New Year's celebration two years ago, he was told to fire a ceremonial shot into the sky. Instead, he blasted Her Majesty the Queen right in the face… got crippled for it, then dumped in the Grey Terminal."
How is he even alive after that?!
Shanu was dumbstruck. He glanced at the dejected Skinny Monkey and smacked his own forehead. "So what you're saying is… you're not even bandits. You're refugees from the Grey Terminal?"
His expression darkened as a thought struck him. "…Your homes were burned down?"
The Goa Kingdom was hailed as "the most beautiful country in the East Blue."
But in truth, its gleaming city walls hid the massive garbage-burning dump of Grey Terminal.
All filth, waste, and starving outcasts were thrown there, where it festered into a squalid slum.
And just last year, the king of Goa had decided to "cleanse" it all for the Celestial Dragons' inspection—burning Grey Terminal, residents and all, calling the poor "trash" to be disposed of.
"Yeah. It's gone. All gone."
Scarface's voice grew heavy with memory. "That night, countless people died. I heard the Revolutionaries came with big ships to rescue some refugees at the harbor. But others like us… we ran south, driven by the flames, into the Colbo Mountains just to survive."
"At the mountain's edge, I stumbled across the real Scarface's charred corpse. So, a few months ago, I started using his name, bluffing as him to keep other bandits from preying on us."
He let out a long sigh, then raised his head with a bitter smile.
"Sir, we never wanted this. We're terrified of becoming real bandits. But tell me—what other choice do we have?"