West Blue smelled different from East Blue.
The air had less salt and more smoke, less open sea and more people. The port itself was busy in the way civilized places were busy—crates being hauled, merchants arguing, sailors boasting, children darting between legs.
A black ship with a strange flag and a hull that looked like it had crawled out of hell drew attention whether it wanted to or not. But the port was a place where minding your business was a survival skill, so most of them settled for looking once and then walking faster.
Pintel stayed behind as lookout, standing with exaggerated seriousness, arms crossed, chin up, doing his best to look like a man who belonged on a terrifying pirate ship rather than a boy who had fallen into the sea several times this week.
Jack Sparrow wandered.
He wandered the way Jack Sparrow always wandered: with no obvious direction, no apparent plan, and the unsettling confidence of a man who believed the world would arrange itself around him.
A bottle of rum hung loosely from his fingers. He took small sips as he walked. His hat sat low. His coat wasn't as dramatic as the bounty poster had claimed, but Jack carried himself as if it were.
He drifted past the main street, past the loud taverns and shouting vendors. Past the obvious trouble and the obvious scams. His eyes slid over faces, over signs, over doors that looked like they had seen too much.
Then he felt it.
A pull.
Not like Wado Ichimonji had been. This was an instinct, a sense that something quiet was hiding in plain sight because it didn't want to be found.
Jack slowed.
In the corner of the port, tucked between a boarded-up warehouse and a shop that sold nothing but fishing hooks, sat a small storefront with no shouting, no lanterns, no line outside.
Just a door.
And inside, dim light, shelves, and the faint glint of metal.
Jack took a sip of rum and smiled faintly.
"That," he murmured to no one, "looks like a place where I might get stabbed."
He headed toward it anyway.
—
Gibbs and Ragetti went the other direction.
Gibbs had insisted on a tavern immediately, not for drinking—though he did not refuse it—but for information. Ports were the arteries of the world. Taverns were where the people talked.
Ragetti had insisted on a tavern immediately because Ragetti believed all solutions began with food and ended with shouting and fighting.
They found one that smelled like spilled ale and poor life decisions. The kind of place where the tables were already scarred and the chairs were already broken, which meant no one would look too closely if you added your own damage.
They slid into a corner.
Gibbs ordered meat. Ragetti ordered ale.
Gibbs kept his head lowered and his ears open.
At the table behind them, two men spoke in low voices.
"…telling you, he never misses," one whispered.
The other snorted. "Everyone misses."
"This one doesn't," the first insisted. "Distance don't matter. Wind don't matter. Chaos don't matter. You pay him, you point, someone falls."
Gibbs kept his expression neutral. He took a slow sip of his drink and leaned back just enough to hear better.
"A sniper?" the second asked, skeptical.
"A sniper for hire," the first replied. "Some say he can put a bullet through a coin from a mile away."
"That's a story."
"It's real," the first corrected. "And if you're smart, you don't become the target."
Gibbs tapped his fingers once on the table.
He simply spoke slightly louder than before, as if making casual conversation with Ragetti.
"West Blue has interesting talent," Gibbs remarked.
Ragetti chewed loudly. "Mm."
Gibbs angled his head just enough to sound curious rather than hungry. "Snipers for hire, you say?"
The two men behind them went quiet.
Gibbs smiled faintly into his cup. He'd heard that silence before. It meant he was close.
He tried again, softer. "Where does one find a man like that?"
A pause.
Then the first man spoke, voice even lower. "You don't find him. He finds you."
"And if you see him?" Gibbs asked.
"Then you're already in trouble," the man replied.
Gibbs let it go after that.
Information was like fishing. Pull too hard and the line snapped.
Ragetti swallowed his food and leaned closer, eyes wide with excitement. "Gibbs."
"What?"
"I heard something."
Gibbs sighed. "Please don't tell me it was your stomach."
"It was not my stomach," Ragetti said proudly. "It was men talking. About West Blue. About… families."
Gibbs frowned. "What families?"
Ragetti lowered his voice as if he was about to share a sacred truth. "Five big mafia families control West Blue."
Gibbs' expression sharpened immediately. That was the kind of information that mattered.
Ragetti continued, completely unaware of how dangerous the topic was. "They run the ports. They run the trades. They run the gambling. They run—"
"Lower your voice," Gibbs warned.
Ragetti lowered it by approximately one percent. "They run everything. Even pirates pay them sometimes."
"Ragetti," Gibbs said, more urgently, "stop saying—"
Too late.
A group of pirates at the next table turned their heads at once, like dogs hearing a whistle.
One of them stood up slowly.
He was broad, with a nasty grin and the kind of face that suggested he'd been punched often enough to stop feeling it. His crew followed him, chairs scraping the floor.
"Oi," the man said, strolling over. "What'd you say?"
Ragetti blinked. "Hello."
Gibbs kept his voice calm. "Just talking. No trouble."
The man ignored Gibbs and leaned toward Ragetti. "Five families, huh? You saying names?"
Ragetti smiled nervously. "I don't know names."
The man narrowed his eyes. "Then why talk about it?"
Ragetti opened his mouth.
Gibbs kicked him under the table.
Ragetti yelped. "Because I like… jiografy (geography)?"
The pirate stared at him like he was trying to decide whether stupidity counted as an insult.
Then he swung.
His fist caught Ragetti across the face and Ragetti went down instantly, chair tipping backward with a crash.
"Ragetti!" Gibbs snapped, rising.
Two more pirates moved in. One kicked Ragetti in the ribs. Another grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him up just to punch him again.
Gibbs' jaw tightened.
He stepped forward and slapped the nearest pirate across the face.
It was a clean, sharp, deeply disrespectful slap, something he had picked from Koushirou.
The tavern went quiet for half a heartbeat.
The slapped pirate blinked slowly, eyes widening, hand lifting to his cheek as if he couldn't believe what had happened.
"What…" he whispered. "Did you just—"
Gibbs drew his flintlock.
The motion was smooth. Old habit. Old muscle memory.
He fired.
Bang.
A pirate at the edge of the group took the bullet in the shoulder and spun, crashing into a table. Drinks flew. Someone screamed. Someone laughed in shock.
The entire tavern fell silent.
Every gaze in the room turned toward Gibbs.
Hostile.
Ragetti, half on his knees, wiped blood from his lip and whispered, "We should leave."
Gibbs nodded slowly. "Aye."
Then the tavern exploded.
"FREE FOR ALL!"
The pirates surged.
Someone hurled a mug that shattered against the wall. Someone else flipped a table for cover. A chair went airborne and hit a man who hadn't even stood up yet.
Gibbs grabbed Ragetti by the collar and shoved him behind him. "Stay up," Gibbs ordered.
Ragetti nodded and immediately got punched again.
Gibbs cursed.
He swung the flintlock like a club, cracking it into a man's forehead. The man dropped. Another pirate lunged with a knife. Gibbs sidestepped and slammed his elbow into the attacker's jaw.
Once one table joined, another decided it was safer to punch first than ask questions later. A man who had been drinking quietly stood up and headbutted someone simply because the opportunity had presented itself. A barmaid screamed, then grabbed a bottle and smashed it over a pirate's head like she'd been waiting for this moment all day (he kept making lewd faces at her).
Ragetti crawled under a table and came out swinging a stool wildly, hitting ankles, shins, anything he could reach.
"You're not helping!" Gibbs shouted.
"I'M HELPING!" Ragetti shouted back.
A pirate grabbed Gibbs from behind.
By the ears.
He pinched and twisted hard, wrenching Gibbs' head sideways.
Gibbs screamed, voice cracking like a teenager's.
"YAARGH!"
The pirate leaned in, grinning. "Got you, old man."
Gibbs' eyes watered. Pain shot straight through his skull. He flailed, searching for anything to grab.
His hand found the pirate's chest.
His fingers closed around the nearest target.
A nipple.
Gibbs squeezed.
Hard.
The pirate's grin disappeared instantly.
His face contorted in horror.
"YAARGH!" the pirate screamed too.
Now both men were screaming.
The entire tavern paused for a fraction of a second, stunned by the absurdity.
Then the brawl resumed around them as if this was perfectly normal West Blue behavior.
Gibbs and the pirate released each other at the same time, both staggering back.
Gibbs clutched his ears, breathing hard.
The pirate clutched his chest with both hands like his soul had been wounded.
"You—!" the pirate gasped. "Do you know who I am?!"
Gibbs blinked, still dazed. "No."
The pirate puffed up with pride despite the trauma. "I am the great Captain Morgan of the Morgan Pirates!"
Someone in the tavern shouted, "WHO?!"
Morgan's eye twitched.
"My bounty is twenty million berries!" Morgan roared. "FEAR ME!"
Gibbs stared at him, ears throbbing, and managed only a weak, offended: "Why are you twisting ears, then?"
Morgan looked personally insulted by the question.
Ragetti, clutching his stool like a weapon of destiny, whispered, "Gibbs… I think we should leave."
Gibbs glared. "I don't think we can leave easily."
Morgan jabbed a finger toward them, recovering his dignity. "You'll regret this!"
Gibbs straightened as much as his ears allowed. "Aye," he said grimly. "I'm already regretting it."
Morgan's crew surged forward again.