For small-time pirates, seeing Kaido of the Beasts in the flesh was terror on a level they had never imagined.
"Who? Who knocked me out? Get out here, now!"
Kaido clutched the swollen lump on his head and bellowed. Every pirate nearby shook where he stood, too scared to even lift a foot.
"K... Kaido of the Beasts..."
Gulps rippled through the crowd. Most of them had only heard the name in stories. Meeting the man himself, feeling that hulking presence and the invisible crush of his Haki, left them frozen.
"Who was it? Stand up and own it. I am going to beat you to death with my bare hands."
No answer. Kaido's temper spiked. Someone had dared provoke the so-called strongest creature in history. That was poking a tiger in the eye. A death wish.
"Was it you?" He turned, glaring across the ring of pirates. Rage burned in his bull's-eye pupils. He looked ready to pulp everyone in sight.
"N... no..."
That single look made knees knock. No one dared say another word.
"Then who smashed me? Damn it, that hit hurt like hell." He cursed at the sky and rubbed the tall, human-shaped welt bulging from his scalp.
"W... we do not know."
"Ka... Kaido, we did not see who hit you. We thought you fell from the sky yourself." A pirate with a hundred million bounty stammered.
"Rubbish. You think I have a screw loose and jumped for fun?" Kaido's glare deepened. His Conqueror's Haki rolled out and pressed on every chest.
Truth was, he had been on his way to raise hell at the World Government. The man had a masochist's itch. If a day passed without a beating, his skin crawled. Call it a compulsion. He had planned to blast straight from the New World to Mary Geoise.
He had barely left when fate sniped him here.
Kaido prided himself on an invincible body, proven over and over by every failed execution and impossible survival. Today he had eaten a raw loss, flattened by some mystery meteor-man and left with stars in his eyes. For the creature called the strongest, being knocked cold was an unforgivable humiliation.
"If you do not know, then you can all pay for it with your lives."
He exploded. His hand lashed out into the crowd.
"Run."
"Please, Kaido, spare us."
They did not even have the courage to face him. Even if he stood still and let them swing, they would not have scratched him. Now he was furious.
The mob broke like birds flushed from brush.
"Die, all of you."
He stopped wasting words. A single sweep of his hand caught a fleeing pirate. One squeeze, and the man crumpled like an ant under a boot. Meat and blood.
The survivors ran harder, eyes white.
"Monster. Monster."
"Run."
It did not matter. Each casual slap wrote another line of carnage. In minutes, the island looked like a butcher's yard. Arms and legs torn away. Bodies in pieces. Pulp where people had been.
At last, Kaido dropped onto his rear and went back to kneading the lump on his skull.
"Damn, that smash hurt. Ugh..."
A handful of pirates slipped away with their lives and fled toward the New World, wanting no part of this nightmare.
The culprit himself, Rakuya, drifted on through the sky as if nothing had happened.
"Perv, where are you taking me?" Momousagi pouted, still mad about the earlier thrill ride.
"Wherever I go. Just keep up."
"No. You have to tell me where."
"Fish-Man Island."
To cut off her nagging, Rakuya just said it.
"You want to go to Fish-Man Island? How? It is ten thousand meters under the sea. Do you have a ship?" She blinked, baffled.
"What ship? We are swimming."
She snorted. "You really did knock your brains loose. That deep, you will drown before you get there, or the pressure will crush you, or a Sea King will swallow you. I heard it is insanely dangerous from Tsuru."
"Tsuru does not know squat." Rakuya rolled his eyes. He called up the Sea Sovereign power at full mastery. His whole body blurred, turning into a translucent, waterlike form that held only his outline.
"Whoa. What kind of ability is that?" Momousagi stared, shock giving way to the wide-eyed curiosity of a new fan.
"Grab on. I will take you down."
"No way. That is suicide." She refused on instinct.
"How?"
"You are a Devil Fruit user. Touch the sea and you are a stone. If you die, I die. If you want to go, go alone. I am not."
"Idiot, I am not a Devil Fruit user." He looked at her with theatrical pity.
"You expect me to believe that with what you can do? Do not take me for a fool."
"You really are a fool. Watch and learn."
He looped a fluid arm around her and closed his eyes. "System, how do I sense every water source in the world?"
"Ding. Water Resource Map initializing. Initialization complete."
A constellation of light points bloomed in his mind, each pinpointing a source. Labels overlaid themselves, neat and readable.
Marine Headquarters, Marineford. New World islands. Punk Hazard. Dressrosa. Even Mary Geoise.
Tens of thousands of points, every one a place with water.
"Can I zoom?"
"You can."
He focused. Marineford swelled a thousandfold in his mind's eye. Names and base perimeters snapped into focus. With another flick he pulled it into a clean 3D model. It was almost obscene how useful it was.
After a bit of tinkering, he had it down. He slid the map to ten thousand meters beneath the Sabaody Archipelago and tapped a point of light. The label read Fish-Man Island.
He zoomed closer.
The selected point sat inside a mermaid's bath.
"Well now..."
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