Cavendish’s Bounty at 330,000,000 Berries

His real grievance is a press problem. Cavendish was famous before the rest of them: he reached the New World three years earlier and made a name there while nobody was talking about rookies yet. Then Sabaody, Marineford and Blackbeard took everything, his share of the coverage collapsed, and he swore to kill every Supernova he came across. He arrived at Dressrosa carrying that.

It says more about how these numbers work than it first appears. An amount does not only measure acts. It also measures how much attention a name has managed to hold, and Cavendish is the one man of his generation who says so aloud instead of pretending the figure means nothing to him.

He entered the Corrida Colosseum to be seen at least as much as to win, and he did not even win. Hakuba flattened the last twenty fighters of Block D in an instant, all except Rebecca, the only one who could see the strike coming, and she took the block while Cavendish was dropping off to sleep. He then publicly demanded Luffy's head before charging the palace at his side against Doflamingo's officers, with Hakuba taking his own turn on the field without anyone being consulted.

The rise recorded here covers that arc and nothing else, and it did not deliver what he came for. The same edition of the paper that announces it announces Luffy at five hundred million, and Cavendish leaves the island as captain of the first ship of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. The man who demanded to be talked about ended up sailing under somebody else's flag. None of the ridiculousness he cultivates has ever cost him anything with a sword in his hand.