Chapter 13: Vulture's Path
Kaito Town Harbor, East Blue — Day 25, Pre-Dawn
The Marine cutter's second day in harbor was the day Ino stopped waiting.
He'd watched it from the supply shop window for sixteen hours. The patrol vessel sat at the commercial pier like a splinter under a thumbnail — small, uncomfortable, impossible to ignore. Its junior officer spent the morning interviewing dockworkers and the afternoon at the tavern, buying drinks and asking questions with the practiced casualness of a man who'd been trained to make interrogation look like conversation.
"We leave today," Ino said.
Johnny looked up from the floor where he was doing the restricted stretches Marin had approved. Two days post-clearance and he was testing the stitches with every movement, pushing boundaries with the impatience of a body that resented being told to heal. "Today? You said three days."
"The Marine's going to start cross-referencing. A bounty crew that hit a fruit-user pirate at the Fang Brothers' location, then showed up in the same town where a Marine lieutenant was asking about that exact kind of activity two weeks ago. We're a data point. I don't want to be two data points."
Yosaku was already packing. He'd started the moment Ino said "leave."
They cleared the room in twenty minutes, returned the key to the supply shop owner, and left through the back street that ran parallel to the harbor — away from the Marine cutter's sightline. The rented sloop was moored at the fishing pier, three hundred meters south of the patrol vessel. Yosaku cast off while Johnny hoisted the sail one-handed, favoring his wounded side.
The harbor fell behind. The Marine cutter stayed at its pier. Nobody followed.
---
Day 27, Afternoon.
Johnny had been quiet for two days, which was like a river being quiet — technically possible, deeply unnatural, and a sign that pressure was building behind a dam.
The dam broke on the afternoon of day twenty-seven, between Yosaku's watch shift and dinner preparation, while Ino was adjusting their heading by a mental chart he shouldn't have possessed.
"So when were you going to tell me?"
Ino's hand stalled on the tiller. Johnny stood at the mast with his arms crossed — the pose he adopted when he was trying to look serious, which usually meant he was about to say something he'd been rehearsing. Yosaku, sitting on the bow with his back to them, did not turn around.
"Tell you what?"
"Whatever you told Yosaku. He's different since Kaito Town. You two had a conversation I wasn't in, and he went from 'I'm watching you' to 'I'm in.' That doesn't happen because of a card game."
The sloop rocked gently. Gulls circled overhead, tracking the fishing line Yosaku had trailing off the port side.
He's sharper than people give him credit for. Social awareness isn't intelligence, but it's a form of perception, and Johnny's perception for human dynamics is better than mine.
"You're right," Ino said. "I told Yosaku something I should have told both of you."
Johnny's arms tightened across his chest. Not anger — readiness. The posture of someone bracing for impact.
"I have an ability. Not a Devil Fruit — something else. I can detect Devil Fruit users within a certain range. Feel where they are, what type of fruit they carry, roughly how strong the ability is."
He watched Johnny process it. The swordsman's face cycled through surprise, confusion, and then — unexpectedly — a grin.
"That's how you found Softhand. And the Fang Brothers."
"Yes."
"So we're not just bounty hunters. We're hunting fruits."
The phrasing landed differently than Ino expected. Not alarmed, not suspicious — excited. Johnny was a man who thrived on purpose, and "bounty hunter" had been a purpose without a direction. "Fruit hunter" was specific. Rare. The kind of specialization that turned anonymous freelancers into something with a reputation.
"There's more," Ino said. "I can extract essences from Devil Fruit users after they die. Pull out the core of what makes the fruit work. I need those essences for... something I'm building. Something I can't fully explain yet."
"Is that what you were doing with Garro's body? When you knelt down after the fight?"
He noticed. Of course he noticed. He was bleeding from a tusk wound and he still noticed.
"Yes."
Johnny uncrossed his arms. His katana shifted at his hip — the cheap Briss Island replacement, still pulling left despite two weeks of maintenance. The binding fever on Anchor Island had felt like this — a period of discomfort that had to be endured before the real work could start. Except this time the fever was someone else's trust, and the discomfort was the silence between a partial truth and the parts he was holding back.
"Okay," Johnny said.
"Okay?"
"I didn't understand half of what you just said about essences and extraction, but here's what I do understand: you find the targets, you know what they can do, you get us paid, and you've got a plan that goes beyond 'find poster, find pirate, hope we don't die.' That's more than anyone's ever offered us."
He sat down on the deck, cross-legged, wincing as the stitches pulled.
"Johnny and Yosaku, fruit hunters. I like how that sounds."
Yosaku's fishing line tugged. He hauled it in — empty hook, bait stolen — and re-baited it with the mechanical patience of a man who'd been listening to every word and had decided, before the conversation started, that this outcome was acceptable.
"Now," Johnny said, leaning forward with the intensity of a man who'd been restraining curiosity for two days and had just been given permission to stop. "Where are we going?"
---
Ino briefed them over dinner — salt fish and rice, the last of the Kaito Town provisions, eaten on deck while the sloop drifted on a south-by-southeast heading.
"Orange Town. East coast of the Organ Islands cluster. Two weeks ago, a pirate captain named Buggy attacked the town with his crew. Someone defeated him — beat his crew, scattered his officers, wrecked their ships."
"Who?" Johnny asked.
"Don't know. Rumors say a kid with a straw hat." The lie was strategic — identifying Luffy would raise questions about where Ino's information came from. A vague rumor was safe.
"A kid?"
"A kid who punched a cannon-wielding pirate through half a town. Don't underestimate straw hats." He tore a piece of fish with his fingers. "The point isn't who did it. The point is the aftermath. Buggy's officers scattered along the coastline when the crew collapsed. Some were captured. Some ran. And some died — in the water, in the wreckage, wherever the fighting left them."
"You want to scavenge the dead," Yosaku said. Not a question. He'd already mapped the logic.
"I want to extract from anyone who died with a Devil Fruit ability intact. The essence doesn't last forever after death — there's a window. Hours to days, depending on the fruit. We need to get there fast, search the wreckage, and extract before the window closes."
Johnny had stopped eating. Not from disgust — from a different kind of processing. The tangerine-colored sunset reflected in the water and cast warm light across a face that was, for once, completely serious.
"That village the Fang Brothers were raiding. The people there. That kind of thing happens because of guys like Buggy."
"Yes."
"And the towns that get destroyed don't always have some kid in a straw hat to save them."
"No. They don't."
Johnny picked up his rice. Ate the rest in silence. When he was done, he cleaned his plate with seawater and set it in the provision box with the careful domesticity of a man whose mother had taught him better than his sword instructors.
"How far?"
"Day and a half with this wind."
"Then we'd better hope the wind holds."
Ino adjusted the tiller. The sloop's heading was clean — smoother now, after Yosaku's lessons, though his instinct was still to grip too tight and fight the current instead of reading it. The Organ Islands' silhouette was invisible in the distance, but the detection pulse had been flickering at maximum range for the past six hours. Something was out there. Faint. Fading.
The fish sat warm in his stomach, and the wind held.
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