Chapter 98: Talent
“Wah!”*n
With Skipgate’s loud roar, the pirates on the shore were stunned for a moment, then came rushing toward him.
Skipgate and his group immediately went to meet them.
The two sides together totaled dozens of big men who huddled together in groups of two or three and actually began bawling loudly.
The oppressive feeling from pretending to be friends with enemies for days on end, the sense of relief from deciding to go all-in and perish together, the sudden bewilderment of surviving the disaster…
All sorts of complex emotions erupted all at once when they saw their companions, whom they had been separated from for many days and thought they would never see again, causing these burly men to no longer hold back their feelings.
“Mr. Wright, it’s so great that you’re still alive.”
The squad leader, who had always acted very steadily, was now holding Wright tightly with tears in his eyes.
“Haha. Dante, don’t cry. See, I’m fine.”
Wright patted the other’s back to comfort this person who was half his student.
“But what you said on the Den Den Mushi before… I thought, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Alright, alright, I’m not that easy to kill.”
“By the way, do you still have the calligraphy copybook I gave you? Have you kept up with the daily practice?”
“Uh…”
Wright clearly felt the other’s body suddenly stiffen for a moment, giving him a bad premonition.
Sure enough, the squad leader, that is, Dante, let go, wiped the tears from his face, and said awkwardly:
“Th-that calligraphy copybook is gone. Before, Third Child suddenly had to go really badly, and when I wasn’t paying attention, he just… just…”
“Just what?” Wright’s gaze turned dangerous.
“Just used it…”
“Used it?!”
“Do you know how valuable that calligraphy copybook is! That’s a freaking antique!”
“I went to great trouble to get someone to bid it for me on the black market, it cost me hundreds of thousands of Belly! And now you let him use it to wipe his ass!!”
Wright grew more agitated as he spoke, his fist already winding up.
“I was wrong, I really was wrong!”
“Mr. Wright, don’t hit my face…”
“You little brat! Don’t run!”
“I was wrong~~~”
……
Leaving aside the heartwarming reunion of teacher and student over there, Skipgate was also surrounded by people at the moment.
“Gah! Gate Boss!”
One person hugged Skipgate’s pants leg and began sobbing loudly—it was that impulsive pirate from before.
“Alright, alright, Pearl. You’re an old-timer on the ship after all, aren’t you ashamed…”
Skipgate patted the other’s shoulder to comfort him, but this warm scene didn’t last long, and the next moment…
“Hey! Don’t you dare wipe your snot on me! These pants cost me twenty thousand Belly! And you guys too…”
Ignoring Skipgate’s disgust, the pirates all clung to him tightly and wouldn’t let go, especially one pirate taller than him who kept rubbing his head against Skipgate’s explosive hair.
“Ga-Gate Boss, I thought I’d never see you again!”
“Yeah, I was thinking it was such a shame I couldn’t give your explosive head one last squeeze before dying.”
“Squeeze~ Squeeze~”
……
“Enough!”
Feeling the strange sensation on his head, Skipgate could no longer hold back and shoved the pirates off him one by one.
That tall pirate was even kicked in the butt by him and went gurgling rolling several meters away.
Skipgate fixed his hair back into place, then noticed Lapp standing to the side, and said awkwardly:
“Haha~ They’re all a bunch of unserious guys. Sorry you had to see this, Miss Lapp.”
“Not at all.”
Lapp gently shook her head.
“They’re all a very energetic bunch. I imagine your pirate crew before was quite lively too?”
“Yeah~”
Hearing Lapp mention his pirate crew, Skipgate couldn’t help but recall the time when they had just entered the Grand Line following Foll.
“Back then, it really, really was lively…”
“Beasts Pirates is also a place that never quiets down. I’m sure you’ll adapt well there.”
Lapp quietly watched the pirates who had finished crying and were now laughing again, then said: “I’m looking forward to you joining us.”
“Beasts Pirates, huh…”
At this point, how could Skipgate not understand what Lapp meant? He immediately assured her.
“Don’t worry, Miss Lapp. I’ll keep my promise and join the Beasts Pirates. I’ll talk to Wright too, and we’ll definitely tell you all the intelligence on the ‘Golden Land’.”
“Mm.”
Lapp nodded, then looked toward the pirate named Wright.
The man looked quite ordinary; just from his appearance, it was hard to remember him at a glance.
Messy blond hair piled on top of his head, looking like it hadn’t been tended to in a long time, and the dense stubble on his chin seemed to confirm this.
The stains on the collar and cuffs of his clothes made it hard to tell they were originally white.
His pants were one leg long and one short, with holes in some places… Of course, this level of dishevelment was nothing unusual in the pirate crowd.
Lapp naturally didn’t care about these things; rather, some inconspicuous details on him caught her attention…
This man named Wright seemed to be the only one in the group wearing glasses.
Not the decorative sunglasses kind, but actual concave lenses for nearsightedness.
The style of the glasses was also quite unique, similar to the ones Miss Lapp wore when researching new dishes, very much in the West Sea style.
Her gaze shifted down to his hands—the inside of his right thumb was indented, and there was a small callus on the first joint of his middle finger, undoubtedly from frequently holding a pen.
In contrast, his left hand clearly held weapons often, with many and thick calluses on the palm and numerous scars on the hand.
『Left-handed? Or…』
In any case, this pirate named Wright felt out of place.
Though his appearance was no different from the other pirates, he exuded a scholarly air inside; if tidied up carefully, he could pass as a scholar with no issue.
And in fact, he had indeed been a scholar before.
Similar to Old Cook’s experience, he too had been targeted by a group of pirates during a scientific expedition and was going to be sold as a slave.
Then, by a stroke of luck, he was rescued by the Foll Pirate Crew who had just entered the Grand Line, and he naturally joined them to handle logistical record-keeping.
As the Foll Pirate Crew made a bit of a name for themselves in the New World, then joined under John and split off the original first mate Skipgate at his request to garrison Hati Island, he became the nominal first mate of the Foll Pirate Crew and the actual manager of Fenrir Island.
The neatly categorized and detailed records in the archive room on the island were his handiwork.
『This is a talent; he can manage the affairs of the various islands in the future.』
In the Beasts Pirates, the management of various supplies and accounts had always been handled by Ember.
But he wasn’t good at it at all; it was like forcing a duck onto a perch.
It could be said that there were hardly any in Beasts Pirates who were skilled at this kind of clerical work.
This had led to very chaotic internal management and allocation in the pirate crew, with supplies and weapons often going missing or simply unfindable, and the organization’s funds being spent unclearly.
And the only one who had been somewhat effective, Deke, had now been transferred away…
Now with the pirate crew’s numbers multiplied several times, Lapp could already imagine the tangled mess inside the pirate crew in the future, like earphone cords pulled from a pocket.
Lapp could of course handle these matters personally; she was confident she could establish a complete and efficient management system within the pirate crew.
But still, she had no desire to do so.
Or rather, she preferred to seek out and spend her time on those ‘miscellaneous matters’ that piqued her interest, like making cooking, researching scripts, tinkering with musical instruments, and such…
So she could only trouble this ‘scholar’ to return to his old trade, and when the opportunity arose, get him something like a Mythical Zoan Paramecia fruit to bolster his body…
With this thought, Lapp decided to first communicate with this future head of logistics for Beasts Pirates.
