The town of Mad Hatter was a chaotic blend of scoundrels, smugglers, bounty hunters, and pirates—a notorious haven in the West Blue, often whispered about as the "pirate auction den." A melting pot of crime, its shadowed alleyways and dim-lit streets were steeped in filth and ambition.
Mad Hatter owed its existence not to politics or kings, but to a single man's dying words.
When Gol D. Roger, the Pirate King, declared the existence of the One Piece before his execution, he didn't just set the seas ablaze—he lit a fire under every criminal syndicate from the West Blue to the Grand Line. The age of piracy had begun, and Mad Hatter quickly evolved into one of its darkest commercial outposts.
Its underground economy thrived on a simple principle: desire. Pirates plundered kingdoms, spilling innocent blood to hoard wealth, while black market bosses engineered ways to reclaim that stolen treasure—by appealing to vice, addiction, or brutality. From this twisted symbiosis, Mad Hatter's infamous industries emerged.
Slave trade.
Organ harvesting.
Arms dealing.
Flower Street brothels.
Each one a nerve-jarring pillar in a town that treated morals like sand in the wind.
Among these shadow professions was a peculiar but vital post: Undertaker.
Their job was to collect corpses—no questions asked. Depending on the client, they doubled as back-alley doctors or quiet middlemen in the illegal organ trade. One such undertaker, Arthur, was who Sunny had called to dispose of Watt's body.
Though undertakers were low on the underworld's totem pole, Arthur's connections and sharp instincts put him near the top of his field.
In fact, it was Arthur who'd first handled Maud's near-lifeless body when Sol dragged him in days ago.
Now, seeing Maud on his feet, Arthur was visibly stunned.
"What do you mean… 'woke up'?" Sol asked sharply, narrowing his eyes.
Arthur flinched slightly under Sol's scrutiny. He had promised—confidently, perhaps falsely—that Maud's chance of recovery post-treatment was over fifty percent. It was that assurance that had pushed Sol to take a gamble.
After all, if Maud didn't wake up, he could still be sold to the black market as a slave—a human body still held value, even if not alive.
But from Arthur's reaction now, the truth was clear.
Back then, Maud's chances had been well below fifty percent.
He'd simply fudged the numbers.
Busted.
Arthur raised his hands in mock surrender, sighing. "Hey, if I hadn't said that, you wouldn't have let me take the job. Gotta close the deal somehow, right?"
"You damn fraud," Sol growled. "Trying to cheat an old merchant—may the sea drown your tongue."
Arthur, unfazed, gave a casual shrug. "Says the guy who paid only fifty thousand Berries for a full treatment. You could flip him for ten times that. You're the one walking away with a bargain."
"Maud's not a slave," Sunny said coldly from the side.
She didn't add the rest of the truth aloud: Maud is a coolie now—ours.
Arthur glanced at her, but said nothing. Instead, he stood and approached Maud.
Maud tensed instantly.
This guy gave off a bad smell—not literal, but instinctual. Predatory.
Arthur loomed over him, inspecting the bloodstained bandage around Maud's head. Without warning, he reached out to grab it.
But Maud had been ready. He stepped back swiftly, evading the grasp with unexpected agility.
"…Oh?"
Arthur's masked face betrayed a flicker of surprise.
That reflex had been sharp. Too sharp.
Based on Maud's original condition—comatose, nerve-damaged, organs shutting down—he shouldn't have been able to walk straight, let alone dodge a sudden grab. Even with treatment, it was supposed to take weeks before his nervous system rebooted properly.
Yet here he was. Balanced. Controlled.
Not just alive—but recovering unnaturally fast.
Arthur's surprise quickly gave way to calculation. In his line of work, rare recoveries often signaled rare merchandise. Some clients—especially nobles or World Government freaks—were obsessed with humans who could survive the impossible. To them, people like Maud weren't patients. They were products.
And this product had potential.
Arthur stepped in again, hoping to test Maud's condition further.
But then—he froze.
He felt it. A gaze like lead.
Turning slowly, he spotted Sol watching from the counter, puffing a dry-smoked tobacco cigarette. His expression was unreadable, but his glare felt solid—like the weight of a cannonball.
Arthur paused.
He realized, then and there, that Maud was not for sale.
The boy was under Sol's protection. Whatever profit Arthur had just smelled in the air—it wasn't on the table.
A damn shame.
But Arthur knew better than to press a turf boss in his own den.
He stepped back, raising his hands slightly in mock humility.
"My mistake," he said smoothly. "Guess I got too excited. Seeing one of my own patients wake up—it's a rare treat. Forgot I'm just here to collect."
With that, he turned back to Watt's body and resumed the job he'd been summoned for.
Sol exhaled, and the tension in the room eased.
But Maud didn't miss the glint in Arthur's eye as he worked.
Nor did he forget it.
Although being manipulated by Arthur left a bitter taste, Maud didn't question the undertaker's professional conduct. The treatment he'd received—however begrudgingly delivered—was clearly legitimate. Every single Berry paid had gone into real medical supplies and effort, not theatrics.
If Arthur had dared to skim off the top or fake anything, Maud was confident Sol would've made sure the man left the store sideways in a body bag. Their years of friendship had weight, but even friendship had limits in a place like Mad Hatter Town.
Maud silently observed Arthur's back as the undertaker worked.
Arthur, huh…
Beside him, Sunny tilted her head, peering at Maud's profile. A flicker of curiosity crossed her expression, her gaze lingering on his face longer than usual.
At the counter near the corpse, Arthur was already assessing the damage. He knelt beside Watt's lifeless body, pulling a delicate curved needle threaded with surgical line from a concealed pocket under his collar. His gloved fingers were surprisingly nimble for such a large man.
"The heart's been skewered more than once," he muttered. "I'll have to dock the payout. Sixty percent of market value at best."
"Fine, just hurry up and get lost," Sol said with a puff of smoke, waving his hand impatiently.
Without another word, Arthur's hand moved like a blur.
Maud's eyes narrowed as Arthur's needle danced through flesh, his right hand producing a rapid series of blurred movements—a technique Maud recognized from his previous life in the world of Hunters. The man wasn't just stitching for preservation—he was closing the wounds to preserve the product value, something akin to what black market Harvesters did with Nen-infused medical threading back in the Hunter x Hunter world.
Damn… this guy never even got named in the manga, yet look at that technique.
Maud couldn't help but make the comparison to a certain Phantom Troupe member—Machi, whose mastery of threads made her one of the most dangerous assassins in Meteor City.
How could some no-name undertaker on the far side of the West Blue match that level of dexterity?
Then there was Sol. Short in stature, quick-tempered, and running a back-alley shop—but Maud had seen the man carry Watt's corpse alone without strain. His presence carried weight. The kind of quiet danger old pirates possessed—the kind that came from surviving the Old Era.
And this was still just the West Blue.
What about the Grand Line? What about the New World, where monsters like Kaido, Big Mom, and Blackbeard roamed?
Maud's expression hardened, his thoughts sobering. If he wanted to hunt using the Hunter's Note, he'd need to be very careful about picking his targets.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be the hunter—he'd be the hunted.
Still, Maud was overthinking it.
In a place like Mad Hatter, where the criminal ecosystem operated on survival of the fittest, people didn't group up by coincidence. Anyone in Sol's circle was likely a survivor—possibly even a former pirate from the era before Roger's death.
And how many old pirates like Sol, half-retired and hiding in the shadows, existed in this one crooked town?
Once Arthur finished stitching the corpse's wounds with eerie precision, he dropped a modest stack of Berries on the table and hauled the corpse over his shoulder like a duffel bag.
Then he was gone.
The door shut behind him, and the "Closed" sign was flipped. The shop had ended its business for the day.
As for the blood pooled across the wooden floor? That was Maud's responsibility now.
Though he was starving and parched, Maud knew better than to complain.
Fortunately, Sunny now seemed to view him as a fellow worker, not a disposable asset. She silently placed a small slice of cake and a cup of hot water beside him on the counter.
Maud devoured the food without shame, gulped down the water, and finally felt his stomach settle—barely. Then he grabbed a mop and a bucket and got to work.
Sol, having said nothing more, took his pipe and headed upstairs.
Sunny, however, stayed behind.
The shop's counter had two stools—one tall and one short. The short one was Sol's usual perch so he could lean over the counter, while the tall one was meant for sitting.
Sunny perched on the short stool, elbow on the counter, cheek resting against her palm, watching Maud as he cleaned.
Finally, when he finished wiping the last smear of blood from the floorboards, she spoke up—revisiting the doubt that had clearly been bugging her since earlier.
"…How did you dodge him?"
"Uh?" Maud blinked, confused.