At the place where the Pirate King died, Luffy nearly meets the same end.
Luffy’s first bounty makes his name public before he understands what recognition will attract. Loguetown, Roger’s birthplace and execution site, is the last major stop before the Grand Line. It offers supplies and practical preparation, but also a confrontation with the distance between wanting to be Pirate King and accepting the possibility of death along the way.
The town introduces pursuers whose objections differ from those of earlier villains. Smoker is a Marine who takes his responsibility seriously, and Tashigi believes famous swords should not remain in criminal hands. Their presence makes the crew’s outlaw status a continuing condition rather than a label reserved for especially cruel opponents. Luffy cannot solve every conflict by proving that the local authority is corrupt.
Story
The first bounty travels Ch. 96
A wanted poster with a price of thirty million berries passes from hand to hand across the East Blue. It reaches Coby at a Marine base, Kaya at her window, the Baratie’s kitchen, the tangerine grove, and finally Shanks, who reads it and calls for a party. Luffy’s small victories have been assembled by strangers into a reputation he has never seen.
The poster also reaches Buggy, marooned on a small island and reunited with his crew, and Alvida, who has eaten the Slip-Slip Fruit and become sleek, beautiful, and devoted to the boy who once flattened her. The two join forces to hunt the straw hat. The Merry, meanwhile, heads for Loguetown to buy food and a proper sword before Reverse Mountain.
The White Hunter Ch. 96–97
Loguetown is where Gold Roger was born and where he was executed twenty-two years ago, and every pirate who passes through wants to see the scaffold. The town’s Marine captain, Smoker, sits on the harbor wall eating ice cream with a small girl, and when a pirate knocks her cone to the ground he makes the man eat it off the stones. He has never let a pirate leave Loguetown, and the newest poster in his pocket does not worry him.
His subordinate Tashigi is a swordswoman who catalogues famous blades and believes none should be in a criminal’s hands. She is also short-sighted enough to walk into walls, and she does not recognize the man she bumps into in a sword shop as the bounty hunter Roronoa Zoro.
A cursed blade tests its owner Ch. 97
Zoro has one sword left after Mihawk and one hundred thousand berries to replace two. In a small shop he finds Tashigi arguing over prices, and she identifies his Wado Ichimonji as one of the twenty-one great blades. The shopkeeper Ipponmatsu tries to swindle him until Zoro pulls Sandai Kitetsu from a barrel of bargain swords, a fine blade that has killed every owner it has had.
Zoro tests the curse by tossing the sword spinning into the air and holding out his arm. It buries itself in the floor beside him without a scratch. Ipponmatsu, shaken, gives him Kitetsu for nothing and adds his family’s heirloom Yubashiri as well. Zoro leaves with three swords and a woman who will hunt him for one of them.
Preparations meet the past Ch. 98–99
Luffy finds the execution platform in the town square and climbs it to see what Roger saw. Cabaji knocks him flat and Buggy locks his neck in a wooden stock while Alvida keeps the crowd back. Buggy raises a sword to take the head that Shanks’s hat sits on. Storm clouds gather, Zoro and Sanji fight through the crowd, and the Marines close in on the square.
Luffy shouts to the crowd that he is the man who will become King of the Pirates, and then, with the blade descending, he grins and says he is going to die. Lightning strikes the scaffold and burns it to the ground, dropping him unharmed into the rubble. Smoker, watching, sees the grin Roger wore at the same spot and does not like the coincidence. Tashigi learns that the courteous swordsman from the shop is Roronoa Zoro.
Five promises on a barrel Ch. 100
The crew runs for the harbor through the rain while Tashigi corners Zoro and Smoker turns himself to smoke and pins Luffy to the stones. No punch can land on a body that is not there. Smoker has the captain’s head under his jitte when a hooded man with a tattooed face stops his hand and tells him to let the boy go. A gale rises out of nowhere and flings Luffy back toward his ship.
The Straw Hats do not learn the stranger’s name. Smoker does: Monkey D. Dragon, the revolutionary, who says the world is waiting for the answer to something. Smoker requisitions a ship and follows the Merry out of the East Blue.
Aboard the Merry, with the storm still blowing and Reverse Mountain ahead, the five set one foot each on a barrel and say what they are sailing for. King of the Pirates. The greatest swordsman. A map of the world. A brave warrior of the sea. The All Blue. They kick the barrel over and turn the ship toward the Grand Line.