## One Piece Chapter 697, pages 7-9: Dealings - Chapter: 697 - Pages: 7-9 - Characters: G-5 Marines, Punk Hazard Children, Tashigi, Smoker, Monkey D. Luffy, Tony Tony Chopper ### Summary Page 7: G-5 keeps hammering the old lesson into the children: "GOT IT? PIRATES ARE EVIL!!! IT'S THE MARINES THAT REPRESENT JUSTICE!!" But the children have lived through something that refuses to fit that lesson. One of them cries that when they asked the pirates to save them, "THEY DID... EVEN THOUGH..." The words spill out through tears: "...THEY DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT US" and "THEY DIDN'T CARE THAT WE WERE GIANTS," yet they still came and got them out. Memories of terror and rescue overlap on the page. The children remember wanting to go home: "I WANNA GO HOME...!!" They remember being told, "WE'LL GO HOME SOON... JUST HANG IN THERE!!" On an island where there was nothing and where no one should have come looking, they did come: "ON AN ISLAND WITH NOTHING, WHERE NO ONE WOULD EVER COME FOR US..." "THEY CAME!!" The grief breaks into apology too: "I'M SO SORRY!! IF ONLY I'D FOUND YOU SOONER...!!" The children are not defending piracy as an idea; they are defending the people who reached them when no one else did. Page 8: The Marines try to keep the performance going: "PIRATES ARE DIRTY AND SMELLY BUT THE MARINES ARE-" But the children's anger cuts through it. If the Marines will not even let them say goodbye, then the children are ready to call the Marines something terrible instead. A Marine scrambles to interrupt with, "SORRY ABOUT THIS!!" and another forces the old slogan back into the air: "THE MARINES ARE BRAVE AND ALWAYS IN THE RIGHT..." Tashigi can no longer stand it. Seeing grown men twist themselves into cruelty just to keep a clean public story, she shouts, "PLEASE STOP, YOU GUYS!! THIS IS DISGRACEFUL!!" The G-5 men answer with tears and panic: "BUT TASHIGI-CHAN!! IF WE DON'T KEEP INSULTING THEM...!! THESE NO-GOOD OUTLAWS...!!" Their voices shake because the insult campaign is no longer convincing even to themselves. Page 9: G-5 finally confesses the real danger they are fighting: "WE'RE GONNA END UP LIKING THEM!! EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE PIRATES!!" The admission breaks the scene open. The Marines cry, Tashigi cries, and Smoker hides his face rather than let the emotion show too openly. Luffy, on the other hand, bursts into laughter: "HAHAHA HAHAHA." He sees the contradiction and accepts it without needing to solve it. Chopper watches the Marines bawl and sums them up with innocent bluntness: "WHAT WEIRD MARINES." The farewell has become comic, painful, and sincere all at once. G-5 has not stopped being the Marines, and the Straw Hats have not stopped being pirates, but for this moment everyone understands that the children were saved because these particular people crossed the official line between justice and evil.