The Grand Line, First Half of the Grand Line.
A certain stretch of sea situated roughly around its midpoint.
"What are you all doing!? There's only one of them!"
"B-But Captain... th-that little girl, she's way too strong! Almost everyone's been taken down in a single hit..."
"She's too fast, guns can't hit her, nothing can... Damn it, what the hell is she!?"
"And she's doing it with that toy of hers... Shit, is she making fun of us!?"
A lone pirate ship floated on the open sea.
On its deck, the pirates who served as its crew were throwing themselves into a desperate battle.
The attacker who had shown up moments ago was just one person.
What's more, to all appearances she looked like nothing but a frail young girl. From the pirates' perspective, their assessment had been nothing more than "some foolish prey came to us of her own accord."
They could capture her, sell her off, convert her to cash. Or they could "use" her themselves to liven up their tedious life at sea. The sailors' minds had long since turned to how they would make use of this pitiful girl.
And so there was no way they could have imagined it.
This nightmarish situation, where a single girl was on the verge of annihilating the entire Pirate Crew.
The first man who carelessly approached to grab her was beaten to the ground the instant he tried to lay a hand on her.
While the others stood stunned, the girl moved again, sweeping several nearby men off their feet at a speed that made her hands blur.
By this point, the sailors finally realized this was not the easy pickings they had envisioned, but it was already far too late on multiple fronts, and even if they had realized it sooner, it wouldn't have changed much.
The simple truth was that whether they had their guard up or not, there was nothing they could have done about the girl who had boarded their ship: Sue.
The captain of this ship was a pirate known as Iron Arm Blame.
As one might guess from his height of over three meters and his massively muscular frame, he was a power-type fighter who prided himself on brute strength, wielding metal gauntlets on both arms as weapons and fighting by simply pummeling his enemies into submission. The name "Iron Arm" came from that equipment and fighting style.
His Bounty had climbed steadily from his initial wanted poster, reaching its current level of 36 million Berry in a remarkably short time. He had never doubted that it would keep rising, that he as a pirate would continue his meteoric ascent.
Which was precisely why Blame could not keep his composure watching the Crew he had built being trampled by a girl who didn't even look old enough to be an adult.
"What the hell is this brat... My men are going down this easily..."
Sabers slashed at her from every direction, guns fired to shoot her down, yet she dodged every attack with effortless ease, or caught them on her "weapon."
And without letting the slightest opening slip by, she stepped in sharply and finished each one with a single blow.
"And what the hell even is that toy!? Using something like that as a weapon... Are you mocking us!?"
"No, not really. I just use it because it's easy to use."
Saying this, she swept another one off his feet and knocked him cold, then spun her weapon with a flourish as if showing it off.
At a glance, it was something no one would consider a weapon: a single umbrella.
Not an umbrella made of cloth or vinyl. It was what's known as a Japanese umbrella, crafted from a wooden frame with paper stretched over it.
By any normal logic, no one would use such a thing as a weapon in combat, and even if someone did, it couldn't possibly hold up in a real fight.
At best, it might barely work for a children's sword-fighting game.
And yet, with a single swing of that "toy," grown men had been felled, dozens of them by now. By a slender-armed girl who didn't even break a sweat.
If this wasn't a nightmare, what was it?
"Using this makes it easier to hold back. Bounty Targets are generally better off captured alive, and depending on the situation, killing them can reduce the payout."
"So you're a Bounty Hunter... Damn you, don't look down on me! This 'Iron Arm'... I ain't so weak that some snot-nosed brat like you can take me down!"
Charging forward with a roar as if to fire himself up, Blame raised his trademark steel gauntlets high.
The fist he threw with his full body weight behind it flew straight at the girl's face.
The blow, launched with every intention of crushing that small, pretty head and shattering skull and all to pieces, was effortlessly caught by a Japanese umbrella interposed in its path.
With a metallic clang utterly impossible for something made of wood and paper, it stopped the punch without so much as a slight deformation.
Blame gaped in shock, but in the next instant, Sue redirected his momentum behind her in a flowing parry without fully killing it, then swung the Japanese umbrella back around in a return stroke, sweeping hard across Blame's torso.
Again, the vicious sound and force were impossible to believe from being struck with an umbrella.
The sheer impact left Blame feeling as though nearly all the air had been driven from his lungs.
His body folded in half, and he was hurled onto the deck in a heap. Something inside must have been damaged; the taste of iron spread through his mouth.
"Oh, not bad. As expected from someone over 30 million, you didn't pass out... Guess I've still got a ways to go."
"Gah... Y-You... monster...!"
Despite the devastating damage, Blame struggled to get back to his feet.
Sue walked over at a casual pace to deliver the finishing blow.
The sailors threw themselves at her one after another, shouting "Protect the Captain!", but it was exactly the same as before. Dodged, blocked, cut down in counterattack after counterattack.
Some tried to target her with guns from a distance, but that was equally futile.
Being dodged was the better outcome. Other times the bullets were stopped by the opened Japanese umbrella as if they were nothing more than raindrops, or Sue would casually twist her body aside so that the shots hit their own allies standing behind her.
When one gunner's ammunition ran out, leaving an opening, Sue did something like a golf swing, launching a downed sailor lying nearby in a full-swing shot straight into him.
The impact sent the gunner, along with his teammate-turned-ball, plummeting into the sea.
The utterly one-sided trampling continued for several more minutes after that.
Before anyone knew it, the deck held nothing that moved except Captain Blame and Sue.
"Damn... Just my luck. Why is a monster like you in a place like this... Who the hell are you?"
"Who I am doesn't matter, and where I go and when is my business. And while I'm at it, you never know what you'll run into, or where, or when. That's just how it goes on this Grand Line."
"Yeah... you're right about that... Damn it."
Cursing to the end, Iron Arm Blame's strength gave out, and he collapsed flat on his back.
In addition to the first blow to his gut, bruises marked his arm and the crown of his head. Three strikes in total had stripped him of all will to resist, and he surrendered to unconsciousness.
Having annihilated the entire Crew and effortlessly claimed the 36 million Berry head, Sue stowed the Japanese umbrella in the holder on her back, pulled a set of portable restraints from her pouch, and swiftly fastened them onto Blame.
Next, Sue brought a hand to her arm, and suddenly a rather large sheet of rolled paper appeared, as though it had grown right out of her arm.
Unrolled, it was large enough to easily carry a person on it. Like some kind of magic carpet, it floated gently in place, hovering and waiting.
Onto it, Sue loaded the unconscious Blame, along with the various spoils she had recovered from the ship.
When Sue began to walk, the paper floated through the air and followed along behind her as if in attendance.
With that, Sue boarded the ship she had arrived on, confirmed her heading, and set sail.
***
Hello, everyone. How do you do? I'm Sue, now fourteen years old. Almost fifteen, though.
I just found a nice Bounty Target a moment ago and took care of it real quick. Now I'm heading to the nearest Marine Base to turn the bounty in.
I usually spend my days adventuring and writing, but I also do Bounty Hunter work like this fairly often for living expenses and such.
It's not like I chase anyone specific across the seas. More like, if there happens to be a decent target nearby, I go hunting.
I've kept up my training without fail, so I've gotten considerably stronger.
These days, Bounty Targets in the 30 to 40 million range are well within my ability to handle comfortably.
Of course, basic training like swordsmanship is important and I keep it up, but what's really been the biggest factor in getting this strong is, without a doubt, learning Haki.
The truth is, after that drifting life, I realized at some point that I could use it.
My memory's a bit fuzzy, but Haki is normally something you build up little by little through long-term training. That said, I seem to recall there being a setting where Awakening can progress rapidly when someone hovers between life and death or is placed in an extreme situation.
For me, that drifting life must have been exactly that kind of extreme situation. Being placed in a life-or-death scenario forcibly jolted my Haki awake.
Come to think of it, back then, I was able to detect the pirate ship approaching from a distance where I shouldn't have been able to see it with the naked eye at all, and on top of that, my eyes were blurry and my ears could barely hear from malnutrition.
I think Observation Haki had already awakened in me at that point.
Shortly after that, once my stamina had recovered and I resumed training, I became able to use Armament Haki as well.
I remember being genuinely moved when the blade in my hand turned faintly, just faintly, black.
From then on, I always made a conscious effort to train my Haki during practice.
Thanks to that, my base combat ability got a massive boost, skyrocketing upward.
On top of that, regarding the weapon I've been using a lot lately: the Japanese umbrella that played such a starring role on that pirate ship is my current main weapon.
It's just an ordinary umbrella made of paper and wood, but even something like this can deliver attack power and durability surpassing metal when imbued with Haki. Knocking someone out with a good whack or deflecting bullets is child's play.
Also, this might be a subtly important detail: a Japanese umbrella is made of paper, right?
And I'm the Paper Human who ate the Paper-Paper Fruit, right?
It might just be my imagination, but when I use something made of paper as a weapon, I feel like I handle it slightly better than I would a normal weapon.
On top of that, its performance also feels like it's improved beyond what Haki alone accounts for.
Both in the direction of increasing attack power, and conversely, in the direction of holding back with just the right touch to avoid killing.
Like I said on the pirate ship, it's "easy to use." I can't really put it any better than that.
For the record, this Japanese umbrella does have a blade concealed inside the handle. Pull it out and it functions as a regular sword, making it a hidden weapon. Doesn't get much use, though.
In terms of pure durability, imbuing Haki on a metal blade that's already hard and sturdy to begin with provides better offensive and defensive capability, and it allows for the "cutting" attacks that the umbrella can't do. So I use it as needed.
By the way, I kind of glossed over it, but there's the other power I gained during that drifting life: the Powers of the Paper-Paper Fruit.
I've been honing these over the past year or so, and the range of things I can do has been growing.
It didn't come into play in today's fight, but if the enemy had been a bit tougher, I would of course use those Power in combat as well.
For today, they've been limited to transportation duty like this.
It looks like a magic carpet. Made of paper, though.
I'll introduce how I use them in combat when the opportunity comes up.
Now then, all that's left is to check my heading from time to time and wait until I reach my destination, so in the meantime, let me take stock of today's spoils.
There are two main things I took from the pirate ship along with Iron Arm's person.
The first is the treasure they had. Whether they hadn't gotten around to converting it to cash after plundering it, or whether they'd been saving it up, I don't know, but I managed to claim a considerable amount.
In this world, anything you do to pirates carries no legal consequence. Raiding them and helping yourself to their treasure included.
Combined with the Bounty, it should add up to a hefty sum. Same as always, it's a lucrative business.
Of course, the danger is equally great, and if you let your guard down, you die, or worse.
Especially me, being a woman. And reasonably good-looking, at that.
Well, anyway, the treasure's no big deal. I'll convert it to cash later or something.
The other spoil. This one's the real prize for me.
The Logbook of the Iron Arm Pirate Crew, which I found in the Captain's Quarters.
Surprisingly meticulous, it seems Iron Arm had diligently recorded each day's events, making it possible to learn what kind of adventures they'd had on their way here.
It's genuinely useful as a Source of information about the supremely harsh Grand Line, but even more than that, for me, reading something like this lets me vicariously Experience another person's adventures.
Granted, it's nothing more than knowledge gleaned from written words, but simply learning that "things like this exist" or "an island like that is out there" sets my heart racing.
I have plenty of time. I'll read every last page, every last character, and make it all mine.
Who knows, maybe knowledge gained from reading this will end up appearing in some Book I write in the future as a writer.
To be continued...