One Piece: It All Started When I Found Shanks' Arm

Chapter 46: An Unplanned Uninvited Guest

Under the warm, orange light, the family was having dinner together.

Shane buried his head in his food and ate fiercely. After resolving the weight on his heart, everything he ate tasted even more delicious. The plates in front of him piled higher and higher, nearly reaching the ceiling.

Belle-mère had long since finished eating. She lit a slim cigarette and leaned against the door, watching the scene with a smile. This child's appetite was getting more and more exaggerated. A meal of over a hundred pounds of food was a common occurrence. She had specially expanded the kitchen and built a small wooden cabin next to it to serve as a pantry.

The food problem was solved. But the clothes...

Belle-mère was a little worried. The shops she frequented most now, besides the grocers, were clothing stores. Every month or two, Shane's figure would shoot up and widen. The clothes she made herself couldn't keep up at all, and she had to buy large batches of ready-made clothes to supplement them.

But winter was approaching again soon, and the sweaters she knitted were still the warmest. The question was, what size should she make?

She was racking her brain.

Shane, who was busy stuffing his face, was also thinking about a similar problem.

His current figure, compared to his peers, was indeed a bit too freakish. His terrifying muscles were a great deterrent to enemies, but they weren't so convenient in daily life. For example, right now, he didn't dare to shift his butt while eating. A slightly larger movement would make the chair under him creak ominously. The bathtub was also unusable; he had to wash himself outside with the lawn sprinkler. As for the doors in the house, those that could be modified had been. For those that couldn't, he had to turn sideways, bend over, and lower his head carefully to get through.

"It would be great if I could have two forms, a daily form and a combat form, just like Frieza..." Shane thought to himself.

For the next few days, Shane was busy with the clean-up.

After dealing with the Arlong Pirates, several new problems had presented themselves.

First, what to do with the treasure on the ship? Genzo, Manba, and the others had counted it. It was over three hundred million Belli.

Shane was no saint. If it were treasure Arlong had plundered on the Grand Line, he couldn't be bothered to travel so far and go through so much trouble to investigate and return it one by one. He would have just accepted it with a smile.

But the tragedy had occurred on the neighboring islands, especially Gosa Village, which was destroyed into ruins for not being able to pay, suffering heavy casualties. He couldn't remain indifferent to that.

After much thought, being averse to trouble, he simply entrusted everything to Uncle Genzo. Genzo would contact the surrounding villages and return the property to their original owners. Any surplus would be used for the reconstruction of Gosa Village.

This act, combined with his previous feat of defeating the Arlong Pirates, raised his prestige in Cocoyasi Village to a new height. A casual stroll through the town would have shop owners on both sides greeting him enthusiastically. By the time he walked down one street, his hands would be full of things that people had insisted on giving him.

However... in the end, it all went to his two little sisters, who would snatch everything from him the moment he got home.

Additionally, Arlong's pirate ship now belonged to him. This was easy to handle. With a little modification and cleaning, removing the pirate flag and the sawfish figurehead, it was transformed into a very nice civilian ship. With the family's orange grove business now booming, they were in desperate need of a transport ship with such a large capacity.

The last remaining problem was where to collect the bounties for these pirates. Arlong's bounty was 20 million Belli, and Kuroobi's was 9 million. The other officers like Hachi and Chu also had bounties in the several millions. All told, the total amount reached over 80 million Belli.

Shane was already very rich and wasn't particularly interested in making more money. But he couldn't sacrifice the heads, and it felt like a waste not to realize their proper value, especially since this was money he deserved.

So, he found a nearby sea chart from the books he had bought for Nami, cut off the heads of the fish-men, and prepared to head to the nearest Marine branch to collect the reward.

There were two nearby Marine branches. One was Branch 16 to the northwest. The other was Branch 77 to the southeast.

Needless to say, for Branch 16, Shane had Belle-mère help him contact her former colleagues. After learning that the current base commander, who had just been appointed last year, was a captain named Nezumi, he immediately gave up the idea of going there to claim the bounty.

As for Branch 77, Shane had a vague impression of it. It seemed that in the original timeline, the warship that had dared to fire on Arlong Park belonged to Branch 77. The base commander might have been replaced in the meantime, but it had to be much more reliable than Nezumi.

"So you want to go out to sea again tomorrow morning, to Branch 77?" At the dinner table, Belle-mère was a little unhappy. "A round trip will take four or five days."

"Uh, four or five days might not be enough. It might take over half a month," Shane said. "I made some friends on my last trip out to sea and plan to visit them along the way."

And also to do another round of wool-fleecing. That's actually more important.

"Over half a month?" Belle-mère's eyes widened, but after a moment's thought, she sighed. "Do as you please. Just remember to come back as soon as possible."

Before, she was worried about Shane's safety when he went out to sea alone. But now? Belle-mère snorted. A whole den of pirates from the Grand Line had been beaten down. In the entire East Blue, who else was a match for her son? Although she didn't boast about it everywhere like Nami, deep down, she was incredibly proud to have such a son!

"Bro, I want to go too!"

"Me, me, me too!"

His two sisters suddenly raised their hands eagerly. Belle-mère narrowed her eyes, her expression instantly turning unfriendly.

But Shane just smiled. "Let them come along. It's boring to be cooped up at home all the time. It'll be good for them to see the world."

The two little ones looked at Belle-mère with pitiful eyes.

"..." Belle-mère sighed and facepalmed. "Fine. But one thing's for sure: you must listen to your brother when you're out. If I find out you've been misbehaving when you get back, you can forget about ever going out again!"

"Yay!"

Nojiko and Nami cheered and high-fived each other.

"Then it's settled! For this trip, I'll be the navigator!" Nami said proudly, wiping her nose with her thumb. "Hmph, who else knows as much about this stuff as I do?"

"Then I'll be the helmsman!" Nojiko lifted her head. "I can even ride a bicycle! I'm the best at driving vehicles!"

You ride a children's bicycle, and it's the kind you begged me to modify with training wheels.

Shane speechlessly patted their little heads.

"Don't even dream about it. The ship I'm taking out this time is the big one from the Arlong Pirates. I've already hired a professional helmsman and navigator from the village to help. Manba and a few of his guys will be coming along too. It's fine for you two to watch and learn from the side, but don't even think about taking the helm yourselves."

Nojiko and Nami's cheers instantly turned into wails.

"Ehh—why—"

The next day.

The group was all packed and ready to head to Branch 77. Shane stood on the deck, leaning against the railing, waiting for his two sisters to board while taking out a sea chart to confirm their route.

"Branch 77 and Shimotsuki Village are in the same direction. That will save a lot of time. As for going to the Goa Kingdom, Manba and his group are very familiar with the terrain there, so they can help me find Luffy quickly."

As he was pondering, he suddenly heard Nami's surprised cry from the shore. "Huh? Bro! Look, a big ship is coming! That symbol... Wow, it's a Marine warship!"

A warship?

Shane looked up, puzzled, and followed the sound.

In the distance, a warship was indeed sailing towards Cocoyasi Village. On the white sail it flew, besides the iconic seagull-and-scales symbol of the Marines, the two large black characters for "16" fluttered in the wind, quite conspicuously.