Screw It, I'm Going Out to Find It!

Chapter XLIII: Chat, Is This Real?

The butt of a mug slammed down against the wooden table with a satisfied breath from the large man. Deciding that he had drunk enough for the moment — though his doctors would say any was too much — he looked over the script once more. They certainly were toeing the line with each livestream. In this unprecedented territory, it was hard to say just how far they could go without getting in trouble. Not that he cared; the marines going after him would mean war after all. A bellowing laugh came from the thought, all but shaking the room as he threw his head back.

"Let them try," he told himself. "I'll come out of retirement just to show them a thing or two."

"Show who what, Pops?" Marco was double checking their equipment. The technology was far different from the simplistic snails they once used, filled with tangled wires and plug-ins.

The man grunted dismissively. "I'm just thinking to myself, Marco. Just get the stream ready."

Minutes passed before they were finally ready to go live. The man settled into his chair, a large structure that would fit three normal humans in its width, but barely encompassed him. He pulled the mic closer to his face, double checked his lighting, and made sure he could see his software set up in the leftmost monitor. Then, after a quick countdown, he went live.

"What's up guys? Whitebeard here with a new topic today. I'm going to be talking about ten things that the government is hiding from you."

His live chat slowly trickled in, visible on his central monitor. Overnight he had become a sensation, as to be expected of the former rival of the King of the Pirates. Formidable in his own right, many were interested to see what the powerful man that had seemingly disappeared was now up to.

"Real quick before we start, you may have noticed that I had to change our symbol. Quiver threatened to ban me for it, and I threatened to invade them in return. Eventually, we settled on just changing it and everyone's happy."

Chat blew up in anger, or so he expected. It was difficult to tell when it was moving that fast and the words were flashing by. Not to mention his difficulty reading in the first place. Marco insisted that he could benefit from a pair of glasses, but Whitebeard would just scoff at him. He was old enough to live as he pleased, dammit. That meant not having to deal with finding anyone who would make a custom pair large enough for his head and wasting the money on them when he could see just fine.

Having calmed down, Whitebeard could see that chat was attempting to use the old emote in a form of protest, but it was gone now. That had been part of the deal. With that initial headache out of the way, he squinted down at his paper just to triple-check where he was starting.

"Alright, first on the list is seagulls. What the marines don't want you to know is that they're free. I mean, they're just flying around and there's nothing stopping you from just grabbing one and taking it home. Now if you manage to get one, there is a law about feeding them, so you'll have to let it eat on its own. But don't let that stop you from going out and getting your free pet. Can I get some Free-beards in the chat for that?"

Sure enough, his chat blew up with the Free-beard emote that he called for. He gave them a moment to have their fun before moving on.

"The next one on the list isn't so fun," Whitebeard admitted. "This happened some years ago, back when I was still sailing around. See, in the West Blue there's this small island. Its most notable features were a large tree that spanned nearly the entire island and its jagged coast, which made it look almost flower-like. Now, on this island were many scholars — and those of you who know this story may have picked it up from that alone. This island was Ohara. Now, whatever the scholars on Ohara found out, the government destroyed everything on the island for it."