Cover Page: Absalom and Hogback attending a "konkatsu", an activity involving looking for potential brides or grooms, at a beach.

Young Luffy discovered Ace's hideout and met Ace's friend, Sabo. The two tied Luffy up and planned on killing him, until they heard a few crew members of the Bluejam Pirates, from whom Ace had stolen treasure, looking for Ace and Sabo. The two of them hid, leaving Luffy still tied up. The Bluejam Pirates captured Luffy and interrogated him, but Luffy did not reveal the whereabouts of the money.

Young Luffy tried to adjust to his new home with Dadan; however, he struggled since the Mountain Bandits wished to use Luffy to do their errands. Luffy tried to go out into the woods around his new home to search for food and get to know Ace. However, Ace appeared to not want anything to do with Luffy at all. He then blocked every path that Luffy took to follow him, but Luffy found another way around to follow Ace as he came home injured from fighting wild animals. After three months of following Ace and taking on almost every tough animal in the woods, Luffy found Ace's hideout in Gray Terminal.

Also at Ace's hideout, there was a 10 year old boy named Sabo. Ace and Sabo had been stealing money and other valuables and hiding them so they could purchase a pirate ship of their own and become pirates someday. This excited Luffy since he too wanted to be a pirate. Angered that Luffy knows where their money was hidden, Ace and Sabo tied him to a tree and decided to kill him. After tying Luffy up, both struggled to decide which one of them should actually kill Luffy.

Before they could do anything, they heard the voices of some adults, who turned out be members of the Bluejam Pirates lead by Captain Bluejam. Porchemy and three other crewmembers were talking about Ace and Sabo and Ace was identified as the one who had stolen the money. As the boys hid, they noticed Luffy was now missing and the Bluejam Pirates had somehow taken him captive. The pirates started to interrogate him hoping to find out where their stolen money was hidden. Luffy pretended to not know anything, but Porchemy did not believe the obvious lie so he decided take Luffy away for further questioning. Ace and Sabo watched in stunned silence as the pirates carried Luffy away.

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