chapter 44

Wilson and I heard the train's departure announcement and froze just as our fists were about to hit each other's faces. "That was close," I said as I unclenched my hand and drew it back, then heard the rest of the crew heave sighs of relief.

"Yea, I forgot where we were for a minute. It's a good thing that we stopped when we did. This train would have been a wreck otherwise," Wilson said as he drew his fist as well and started laughing.

"Tehahah, we wouldn't want that now, would we?" I replied as I put my hand around Wilson's neck and started cackling as well.

Wilson did the same, and so we made our way towards the train with our arms around each other's neck as we kept laughing like maniacs.

The rest of the crew looked at this scene, and they had different reactions. Laffite merely chuckled as he stood up and started following us while spinning his cane with one hand while the other was on his top hat. Elly sighed while rubbing her forehead and then stood up to follow with a smile after shaking her head. Bob merely snorted in amusement at our antics and got up to follow us, too.

It only took us several minutes to board the train and find the private cabin that Laffite had booked for us. Once there, we made ourselves comfortable and began chatting with each other.

"So captain, you never told me what that Haki thing is," Elly said after adjusting herself in her seat while reclining her rifle on her shoulder.

"Haki, huh? It's somewhat complicated, so I'll try to make this explanation as short as I can," I said with a shrug. "There are three kinds of Haki in total, hardening Haki, observation Haki, and conquerors Haki," I explained as I raised three fingers.

"The hardening and observation Haki can theoretically be obtained by anyone through emotional trauma or training," I stated with a calm voice as I lowered two fingers.

"conquerors Haki, on the other hand, is something you are born with, and no one can get it unless they are born with it," I concluded as I lowered the last finger.

"Then what is the use of these three types of Haki? Are they something like the six powers you and Wilson use?" Elly asked with curiosity as she tilted her head to the side.

I took several seconds to organize my thoughts and chose the best way to describe the uses of Haki to my crew. I then explained How all three kinds of Haki can be applied, and the conversation then turned to devil fruits and their types as Wilson asked why hardening Haki was necessary to defeat the users of certain devil fruits.

The conversation's subject changed again as they began asking me about the world in general.

Wilson was interested in the powerful people that we could come across on the sea, so I told him about the seven warlords of the sea and four emperors in the new world.

Laffite asked me about the weather in the grand line and how it differed from the four blues, and I told what little I know, like the unchanging seasons on some islands and the strange weather phenomena that I remembered.

Elly was not interested in anything in particular, but kept listening with rapt attention as I answered Wilson and Laffite's questions, while sometimes asking questions about things she didn't understand.

Bob, however, was content with listening from the side asking no questions of his own or commenting on anything I said.

When they asked how I knew all of this, I used the same excuse I used on Bob. I told them I learned it from a pirate diary, which I found inside a buried treasure on the deserted island Where Wilson and I met.

Wilson also chose that time to reveal that he was a gorilla who ate the human fruit and gained the ability to turn into a human, and not the other way around.

His revelation, however, only surprised Elly, but she accepted it without making a fuss about it.

Laffite only seemed slightly surprised by the revelation as he chuckled and waved his hands, stating that we will most likely encounter even weirder things if we keep roaming the seas.

Bob, however, was the least surprised. He said that the world is big and that he'd already seen weirder things.

And so we kept chatting like that about topics both big and small until we reached our destination.

When we departed the train, a man of average height, wearing a set of tattered work clothes, approached us.

"I assume you are johnny silver hand?" he asked as he pointed to a group of men behind him. "We work for old Jim. We're here to transport your wood to his shipyard," he concluded, as he offered his hand to me for a handshake.

"Johnny silver hand?" I asked in amusement as I shook the man's hand. My questioning tone seemed to have taken him by surprise and he looked at my prosthetic hand and then back at my face, and only understood my meaning after several seconds of awkward staring.

"New of what you did in the capital has already made its way here, and that's what people are calling you, you know, because of that," he said sheepishly while pointing at my hand. "And the fact that you called your group the silver hand bounty hunters," he concluded, while rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"I guess it kind of makes sense, but no matter," I said with a shrug. "You and your boys can get to work, but why don't you point us in the old Jim's shipyard first," I concluded with a smirk, and the dock worker hurriedly pointed us in the right direction and then went to work immediately.

It didn't take us long to make our way into old Jim's shipyard, and we were greeted by the man himself when we arrived.

"You must be the bounty hunters who my little brother told you so much about," said a short man with short spikey hair and bushy eyebrows the same color. "Thank you for saving his life and his store in the capital," he concluded as he offered his hand to me to ask for a handshake.

"your little brother? I'm sorry, but who was he again?" I asked in confusion as I shook the man's extended hand. "the old man who you saved from those despicable Nitti family thugs, they might have beaten him to death if it weren't for you," he stated with a concerned but grateful smile. I finally realized who he was talking about: He probably meant the elderly shopkeeper I saved from the little worm and its friends.