Chapter 33: Manba
"Don't push it, you brat!"
Manba was stunned for a moment, then flew into a rage, grabbing Luffy by the collar.
"How dare you say you don't know us! How can you say that with a straight face? Do you have any idea how much food you've taken from us these past few days?!"
"Food?"
Luffy thought hard, then his eyes widened. "Uncle, are you talking about that roasted meat? Was that all your stuff?"
"What else!"
Manba grew even more furious, roaring as spittle flew onto Luffy's face. "Does roasted meat grow out of the ground?"
"But I didn't see anyone around," Luffy said blankly. "So I just picked it up. I thought the wild animals in the mountains had cooked it."
It sounded a bit absurd, but Luffy wasn't lying.
Fishing gorillas, wine-making monkeys, sweater-knitting bears, leopards that build huts in trees... Mt. Colubo was full of talented beasts, all sorts of wonders. He had seen them all with his own eyes. Compared to that, a beast that could roast meat was perfectly normal. Its skills might even be better than most people's.
Manba had seen similar sights, so he was momentarily taken aback. "So you're saying it was a misunderstanding? Then why did you attack us without a word the last few times we found food missing and came to ask you about it?"
"You were all holding weapons and shouting from a distance that you were the Manba Bandits! It was really scary, Uncle!" Luffy said with a pained look. "I have a really bad impression of bandits. Even after being taken in by that woman, I still feel the same way. Anyway... anyway, I hate people who are bandits the most!"
Manba's eye twitched.
Did a bandit steal rice from your family or something?
You're lucky you're standing in front of me. If it were that infamous great bandit Higuma, he would have twisted your little head off for saying that!
"Forget it. Untie the kid," Manba sighed and waved his hand dismissively.
"Really?" Luffy was overjoyed.
"But on one condition," Manba snorted coldly. "You have an accomplice, right? When is he coming to rescue you?"
"He's just like you, stole our food a few times. You two little brats are pretty good at fighting, aren't you? When he gets here, you two will go hunting for me. The meat you stole... you'll pay us back five... no, ten times over!"
Ten times?!
Luffy's eyes widened. Isn't that asking for my life?!
He and Ace had been sent into the mountains by Dadan at Garp's request to train. They had to survive the winter on their own. Many of the beasts in the mountains were fierce and hard to hunt. It was already difficult enough to feed themselves. Now he had to come up with so much meat?
"Ten times is too much! Six times!"
"Nine times. I'll reduce it a bit since you're still young."
"Five times!"
"Eight times! Absolutely no less."
"Three times!"
"That's not how you bargain, you brat! Go learn some math, will you!"
Manba roared, nearly fainting from anger. He held up a hand to stop his subordinates. "It's impossible to communicate with him! Don't untie him yet! We'll talk after his accomplice gets here. I refuse to believe that guy is as brainless as this one."
"Then you'd better untie him now," a leisurely voice suddenly came from above. "I'm afraid when his accomplice gets here, you'll be angered to death all over again."
"Who's there?!"
Manba's expression changed drastically. He drew his machete and aimed it at the source of the voice—only to see a black-haired boy squatting in the tree above, looking him over with a strange expression.
"The great bandit with a three-million-Belli bounty, Manba?" Shane shook the wanted poster he had taken from the skinny bandit, comparing it back and forth for a long time. "No matter how I look at it, you're completely different people..."
The Manba on the wanted poster had a grim expression and was covered in fat. The leader in front of him was only slightly burly, and his facial features were completely different. The only similarity was the long scar on both their faces.
"Is this picture you?" Shane turned the wanted poster around, pointing at the photo.
"It is," Manba nodded. "I was very fat back then."
"This isn't you!" Shane sneered. "I heard about Manba's reputation before I entered the mountains. Murder, rape, arson, he's done it all. The townspeople are terrified of his name. If you were really Manba, would this little brat still be here, alive and spouting nonsense?"
"And your men, they don't look like bandits at all. Otherwise, three or four of them together wouldn't have lost to an eight-year-old kid."
Shane glanced around. The dozen or so bandits in the camp were all sallow and emaciated, their clothes ragged, and their weapons shabby. Only two of them had old flintlocks; most were just holding sharpened wooden sticks.
Manba was silent for a moment, then murmured, "...You saw through it."
"But strangely enough, you have a subordinate whose marksmanship is quite accurate," Shane said, tossing the skinny bandit, whose mouth he had stuffed with a rag, down to the ground. "If I hadn't dodged quickly, he would have shot me right between the eyebrows."
"Good marksmanship?"
Manba was dumbfounded. He looked at the skinny bandit whimpering on the ground, pulled the cloth from his mouth, and asked in confusion, "Gin, when did you become a sharpshooter?"
"I didn't! I didn't!" The skinny man gasped for breath. After holding it in for so long, he could finally speak, and tears were about to stream down his face. "I was aiming for the branch under his feet! I wanted to make him fall! Who knew... who knew I'd miss by that much..."
From his feet to between my eyebrows, that's missing by "that much"?! I'm almost one hundred and eighty centimeters tall!
Black lines appeared on Shane's forehead.
Manba, however, seemed to understand the gist of it and hurriedly looked up to explain. "Sir, you may have misunderstood! There's no way Gin would shoot you in the head right off the bat! He's not that kind of person, and his aim could never be that good!"
"In fact, his marksmanship is absolutely terrible! Everyone who knows him knows that! Otherwise, he wouldn't have ended up in the mountains with me!"
"He used to be a reserve soldier in the Royal Guard. During the New Year's celebration two years ago, he was temporarily pulled up to fire the ceremonial cannon. It was supposed to be fired into the sky, but he ended up blasting Her Majesty the Queen in the face... After that, his leg was broken, and he was thrown into the Gray Terminal."
And he's still alive after that?
Shane was stunned. He looked at the aggrieved-looking skinny man and slapped his forehead, speechless. "So you're saying... you guys aren't really bandits at all? You're all residents from the Gray Terminal?"
He suddenly thought of something, and his expression became complicated. "Your homes were all burned down?"
The Goa Kingdom had always been hailed as the "most beautiful country in the East Blue." In reality, only the city proper was glamorous on the surface. Hidden behind high walls was a massive garbage incineration site—the Gray Terminal. All the filth, trash, and starving poor were concentrated there, and it gradually evolved into a large slum with an unbearable environment.
And at the end of last year, the king of the Goa Kingdom, in order to welcome the inspection of the Celestial Dragons, didn't even leave them this last difficult path to survival. He directly set the entire terminal on fire, along with its residents, treating the poor as "trash" to be cleaned up.
"Yes. Gone. All gone."
Manba's expression was desolate, a reminiscent look in his eyes. "Many people died that night. I heard a group of kind people called the Revolutionary Army came with a large ship and took in refugees at the pier. But there were also people like us who fled south and were forced into the Colubo Mountains by the fire to survive."
"On the outskirts of the mountains, I accidentally stumbled upon the burnt corpse of the real Manba. So, starting a few months ago, I just started using his name to operate in the mountains. At least that way, I can scare off many other bandits and keep them from bothering us."
He let out a long sigh, looked up, and said with a bitter smile, "Sir, we don't want to be like this either. We're even afraid that if we continue like this, we'll slowly become real bandits. But... what other choice do we have?"