Dog

Bragging to his crew about his standing as a pirate, Buggy commands them to track down Luffy, Nami, and Zoro by any means. Mohji rides up on his lion Richie and requests the job of taking out Zoro, which Buggy readily allows. Across town, exhaustion drops Zoro to the ground while he is still carrying Luffy's cage, and the two spot a strangely still dog watching them. Luffy pokes it until it bites him, then Nami arrives and tosses over the cage key to repay him for rescuing her. The dog snatches and swallows the key before Luffy can reach it, and an enraged Luffy lunges to choke the animal.

The town's mayor, Boodle, stops the commotion and tells them about the dog. Named Chouchou, the dog guards a pet shop that the mayor's friend opened ten years earlier. That owner fell ill, entered a hospital roughly three months earlier, and never came back, yet the wounded Chouchou keeps watch over the shop he prizes as his own treasure, fully aware his master will never come home. Boodle confesses he has often thought about moving away and bringing the dog, only to reverse himself again and again. Their talk is cut short by Richie's roar, and Boodle and Nami run off, leaving Chouchou, Luffy, and Zoro as Mohji and his lion appear to find Luffy still trapped in the cage.

Luffy taunts Mohji over his hairstyle, and although Mohji brags that every beast obeys him as a master trainer, Chouchou bites him all the same. Richie then leaps onto the cage to kill Luffy, but the impact breaks it open and sets him free instead. Assuming Luffy is dead, Mohji and Richie turn toward the food inside the pet shop, and Mohji tells the lion it may eat. The chapter opens with a color spread built in two stacked tiers, the upper showing Luffy, Zoro, and Nami in full as they ready for battle and the lower closing in on each of their faces. This installment belongs to the Orange Town Arc.