Commodore Pudding always thought of himself a stoic man that had his emotions under control. But he couldn't help but be stupefied by the situation. Two bounty hunters had the entire Arlong Pirates chained up. He quickly calmed his expression and subtly signaled to his subordinates to get ready to take the pirates in. A gangplank was laid on the shore of what was Arlong Park, before it was demolished. Pudding then continued to question the bounty hunters to understand what exactly happened, specially on how the Arlong Pirates were actually beaten.
"You two can't possibly have beaten the Arlong Pirates by yourselves." he subtly tried to provoke them into revealing more information.
"We never said that we did. We just claim the bounty for bringing their wanted heads in, but we're not taking credit for actually beating them. A pirate crew named...uhm...a pirate crew with a jolly roger wearing a straw hat beat them."
The entire Conomi Islands celebrated the downfall of the Arlong pirates for days and nights. Usopp and Luffy became the life of the party with Luffy's pure enthusiasm and joyful energy, and Usopp entertainment skills. Sanji showed a masterclass in cooking by preparing and directing the other cooks who were preparing food. Chabo, the kid Sanji rushed towards the doctor survived, albeit still with severe injuries. The child was still massively depressed with the death of his father and the destruction of his village. But reminded by Nojiko of his still very much alive mother and the downfall of the Fishmen, his mental state seems to have somewhat improved.
The people praised the Straw Hats, but not all of the Straw Hats accepted their praise. Usopp and Sanji relished in the attention, with Sanji more specifically relishing the attention of female origin. Luffy just wanted to party, eat meat and have fun.
Nami on the other hand, finally took her time to truly process and grieve for her mother Bell-mère. She still went to the party every now and again for free drinks and company, but most of her time was spent either more personally with her sister, fixing up their farm, visiting and talking with her mother's grave, or helping Zoro, who aside from eating and a few drinks, spent his time training.
Zoro has ramped up his training even more. He personally felt responsible for Chabo's near death, and put even more of his time in his training, completely disregarding his lack of knowledge of Chabo's situation. He racked his brains on all the future possible threats that they could encounter and noted them all down. After reviewing it, he then had an idea and invited to Nami to help his training, and when he told Nami what he had in mind, she thought he was going insane.
"You want me to fucking hit you...multiple times...with the strongest lightning I could summon...for your training?!"
"Not only for me, it's for you as well. Remember, you have to be able to aim at your opponents better, specially in a more fast-paced close quarters combat. The lightning you can summon might be fast, but you yourself aren't. I'll be running around and not just stand still for you to hit me, and I'll poke you every time you miss, so try and protect yourself. This'll improve both your speed and your observation haki." he explained, trying, and failing, to persuade her into liking his idea.
"So you're also going to train your speed and observation haki then?" even while still in disbelief Nami, tried to roll with it.
"Not only that, but also polish my armament, and try to learn to cut lightning." Zoro added to the absurdity.
"Learn to cut lightni...you know what, never mind."
The parties weren't the only source of bright flashing lights on the island in those few days.
"You really should've just left their wallets alone."
Usopp told Nami while he and Zoro was stuffing the villager's wallets on a small empty barrel they had. Usopp then sealed barrel tight and Zoro threw it a great distance, just several meters off shore.
"Yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that." she half-heartedly admitted.
"There were ID's and likely picture of their loved ones in there." Zoro added.
"Both of you get off Nami-swan's back!" the white knight defended her.
The Going Merry leisurely started sailing south west, away from Conomi Islands towards Logue town, and the start of the Grand Line. Zoro spent that time either carrying things around, training, exercising, or resting. Usopp spent his time tinkering, playing around with Luffy, or training with Zoro, and sometimes both at the same time. Luffy simply played around, primarily with Usopp, but sometimes Zoro joins and makes it very competitive, essentially making it training for both him and Luffy, and sometimes Luffy even asks Zoro to train his haki. Nami treated it as a cruise, a vacation she rightfully deserved for what she went through, but she still spent some of her time doing haki training.
Sanji just kept his daily routine cooking and doing chores, doing no training at all. But Zoro let him be, knowing that Sanji hasn't really faced opposition yet and therefore has no feeling of urgency to improve. Sanji always had the lowest motivation of improvement among the Straw Hats, not weak enough to feel fatal danger, neither having a dream that necessitates strength. He relied mostly to his natural, or unnatural depending on your definition, growth in strength, so pushing him to train now wouldn't amount to anything but make him less enthusiastic to training.
"Nami, can I eat some of the mikan?" Luffy asked, while already only a few centimeters away from grabbing one.
"No! You can't just pick fruits from my trees!" Nami was still protective of them, and specially quite wary of Luffy damaging them or overeating the fruits.
"Don't worry Nami, I'll guard this grove with all my heart." Sanji enthusiastically swore to Nami.
"She's really got you as a slave this early on." Zoro muttered to himself.
"Thank you Sanji." Nami nonchalantly said, while really focusing on waving on the News Coo, the seagulls that delvers the newspapers. "You guys fucking raised the prices again?! Ugh! If you raise the damn prices again, I'll never buy your papers." Even though she said that, she still bought a copy and started reading them.
"You're done collecting money aren't you?" Usopp said to Nami, wondering why she's being so cheap.
"Yeah! Without Arlong, It's time to make money for myself! I'm not gonna be a poor pirate." Nami replied to Usopp. "Speaking of which, you sure those two aren't going to screw us over with the bounties?" Nami then turned the conversational spotlight towards Zoro about their bounty deal with Johnny and Yosaku.
"Don't worry about it. If I remember correctly, they're pretty ok guys. Worst case scenario, you'd make us chase them around East Blue anyway, and there's nobody in East Blue who could protect them. They're gonna give us our cut for the Fishmen bounties for sure, by hook or by crook." Zoro replied while doing his stretches.
"About those dial things, Zoro, you sure they're worth it? The way you described them still sounds like straight up magic to me." Usopp asked Zoro about the additional request for Johnny and Yosaku, to find dials around East Blue.
"Yeah! I can't believe you gave them a budget of 2.5 million for those things!" Nami added, frustrated about the amount of money Zoro allowed them to use to purchase the Dials.
"Again, Nami, using those things, Usopp was able to upgrade you Clima-Tact to be able to bring down a small building in one shot. Usopp, on the other hand, was able to use them in combat to absorb and release impacts and explosions. Also, even though Johnny and Yosaku does have a relationship with information brokers due to their job, within the timeframe we gave them and just the novelty value of those things, it'll cost them money to both locate and procure those things on time. It'll be fine if we use money now anyways, we'd have our literal weight in gold in due time." Zoro explained to them.
"Fine, whatever stupid plant brain..." Nami muttered then started burying her head on the newspaper. She started reading about all the civil unrest and wars all around the world when a few wanted posters fell off. "This world is really going to shit huh...What the fuck?!" Nami reacted as two of the wanted poster that fell off had the very familiar face of Luffy and Zoro on them.
"Hahaha! Look! We're wanted! I'm worth 35 million! What about you Zoro?" Luffy happily showed his bounty poster, like a child showing his mom and dad his high grades. His wanted poster even reflected Luffy's personality with a picture of Luffy with his big bright smile, and funnily enough, the back of Usopp's head was once again present.
"I got 36 million." Zoro tried to play it cool, but a hint of smug showed in his expression when he answered Luffy.
"That's not fair! How come you have a higher bounty?! I'm the captain!" Luffy pouted, clearly jealous of Zoro's slightly higher bounty.
"I'm not claiming that I am. But I was the one that took down Buggy, Hachi and Kuroobi. I also killed Krieg and that rat Marine Captain. Even before I joined and became a pirate, I took care of a lot of pirates as a bounty hunter, and I also took down another Marine Captain with an axe hand. They probably think I'm the real captain or something, and they correctly guessed that I'm the strongest. I'm surprised I'm not that much higher than you." Zoro simply laid out the likely reasons why he has a higher bounty than Luffy, despite Luffy making it clear that he's the captain to literally everyone they've come across.
"That's so unfair, and you took Krieg from me!" Luffy, still being salty, whined at Zoro.
"You had plenty of time, but you couldn't help but watch the drama." Zoro rebutted.
Luffy, knowing he couldn't win against Zoro in that argument, simply sulked on the corner. While doing so till he noticed an island off in the distance. It turned his mood to a complete 180. "Land Ho!" he shouted.
"There it is. The town where the Pirate King was born and executed. The town of the Beginning and the End." Nami informed them.
"Our last stop till the Grand Line."