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It wasn't long after nightfall.
Perched atop a narrow wall along the royal city streets, a green Den Den Mushi lay quietly.
Inside its miniature "city fortress," Ross, who had just been implanted with the Munch-Munch Fruit chip by Liam, was struggling to follow his bizarre instructions, to "eat herself" and thereby digest the abnormal negative effects the Rot-Rot Fruit had left in her body.
"Is that really even possible?!" Ross opened her mouth uncertainly, utterly unable to visualize how she was supposed to bite into her own flesh.
Having only known the power of the Pipe-Pipe Fruit, she couldn't wrap her mind around this new, strange ability.
Liam, on the other hand, couldn't fathom what the big deal was. The Munch-Munch Fruit was hers now; all she needed to do was take a bite. As long as she had a mouth, how could it be complicated?
Robin, sipping her tea nearby, calmly commented, "Not everyone is like you, Liam. You can take any Devil Fruit and somehow use it as if you were born with it."
Even as she spoke, Liam was already grabbing Ross by the face, tugging at her jaw up and down, as though attempting to forcibly dislocate it and fold it back over her head, apparently to help her swallow herself whole.
Robin quickly intervened. Ross covered her mouth, her eyes brimming with grievance, though she wasn't actually hurt. After all, as a Munch-Munch Fruit user, her mouth was now the toughest, most versatile part of her entire body, capable of biting through steel or expanding wide enough to swallow an elephant.
In the end, Liam settled on another idea: he placed a large hand over Ross's face and began to hypnotize her.
Before a man whose mastery of "Life Return" was as profound as Liam's, a frail girl like Ross had no defense. Her conscious mind was swept away the moment his hypnotic aura took hold.
After a few moments of internal struggle, Ross finally managed to use the Munch-Munch Fruit to completely digest the corrupting influence within her. She sat dazed for a long moment, then suddenly lowered her head as silent tears began to fall.
"...What have I been doing these past two years..." Ross bit her lip, tears streaming down her face. "Hyena… when did she turn me into this...?"
Robin gently patted her head without a word.
"Jolyne, Giorno…" Ross choked out softly. "You have to… stop Gance…"
The former guard commander had joined forces with pirates to rob the Heavenly Tribute of an allied kingdom, it was agonizingly clear that Gance, too, had fallen under the Rot-Rot Fruit's corrupting influence.
"Things are starting to get lively out there," Liam said, peering through the window of the Den Den Mushi's inner fortress. On the streets outside, crowds of enraged citizens were gathering, slowly moving toward the royal palace.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Ross lifted her head and pleaded, "Please… help me…"
Robin offered a gentle smile and a nod. "We're pirates, after all. How could we possibly miss out on the treasure in a royal vault?"
Halfway up the mountainside where the royal palace stood, more and more common citizens had begun exchanging frantic gunfire with the palace guards.
From one of the palace's upper corners, fresh bursts of gunfire and screams tore through the night air.
Amid this chaotic scene, the small Den Den Mushi darted through the darkness like a streak of emerald lightning.
Its treads transformed into tank-like caterpillar tracks as "Little Green" calmly crawled up the rugged slope, skimming over the stone steps and weaving silently through the panicked feet of guards. It slipped unnoticed into the palace interior.
Inside the tiny fortress, Ross looked out the window at the escalating street battles, a painful mix of fear and hatred twisting in her heart, hatred for the Warlord, Hyena.
The scene outside was agonizingly familiar, exactly what had happened in her homeland.
HyenE… it really was her pulling the strings all along. She had turned this country's people into the same kind of monsters… just like before. Even that kind old man… everyone's homes were destroyed because of her…
The tank-like Den Den Mushi continued to crawl through the palace halls, nearly getting lost in the maze before finding its way toward the unmistakable sounds of fighting near the treasury.
"There are Marines up ahead," Robin observed from behind the fortress window. "If Marines are guarding a room alongside palace soldiers, that can only mean one thing, the Heavenly Tribute is kept there."
Little Green scaled a wall, its tracks gripping the stone as it sped forward. The closer they got to the treasury, the more bullet holes appeared in the walls, and the more wounded and dead soldiers and Marines they saw sprawled across the floor.
The entrance to the treasury was littered with the most corpses and smelled sickly of smoke and blood.
"They've already started," Robin murmured from behind the Den Den Mushi's door.
The giant steel lock on the treasury gate had been blown apart; the door hung half-open, smoke and the frantic roar of gunfire pouring from within. The stench of gunpowder was so strong it seemed to erupt from the cracks like volcanic ash.
Inside the smoke-filled vault, Gance, leading a mixed group of Haiqi Chamber of Commerce thugs and pirates under Stiel, was battling a mysterious figure, someone they had not expected to be guarding the Heavenly Tribute.
"Cough! Cough! Cough... !"
In a corner of the treasury, the bald middle-aged man from the Haiqi Chamber of Commerce covered his nose and mouth, his eyes watering from the smoke. He squinted toward the center of the room, where one towering figure was holding off the entire group single-handedly, and gasped, "Who the hell is that guy?! How is he so strong?!"
Such agile movements! Gance's arms had transformed into gun barrels, spitting out a storm of bullets, da-da-da-da-da!, but not a single shot could hit that tall, wild-haired opponent who moved like the wind.
The lion-like man stepped through the storm of bullets using Rokushiki's Soru (Shave), his movements flickering like lightning. Both of his index fingers jabbed out in rapid succession, shua-shua, striking down the gangsters and pirates one after another.
"Shigan (Finger Pistol)!"
With every flicker of his fingers came a piercing shriek of agony.
"Hey, why aren't you helping them?!" the bald middle-aged man hiding in the corner hissed urgently at Stiel beside him. He reached into his coat and nervously gripped his Den Den Mushi, muttering, "If anything goes wrong here, I'll have to report the truth to Lord Feld…"
Stiel shot him a sidelong glance. "You think if I leave your side, that messy-haired guy over there won't pierce your pig head with a single finger in a few seconds?"
The bald man bristled, ready to snap back, but immediately swallowed his words.
Because in just those few moments, the lion-like youth had already taken down everyone except Gance.
His ghostlike speed, the bullet-like Shigan, and the cyclone kicks that occasionally erupted from underfoot...
This unexpected guardian of the Heavenly Tribute was a monster!
Damn that King of the Prosperous Kingdom, the bald man thought, to have hired such a monster to guard his treasury…
He trembled, shock and hatred mixing in his chest. A sudden, chilling thought struck him, Could the massacre at the branch office earlier today… also be connected to this lion-like monster?!
Across the hall, the lion-man blurred forward, appearing before Gance in an instant, extending two bloodstained fingers.
Startled, Gance's body erupted with countless gun barrels, unleashing a wild hail of bullets at him.
"Tekkai (Iron Body)!"
The lion-man's body hardened into steel, standing firm against the torrent of bullets.
Gance gaped in disbelief, how could a mere human body withstand gunfire head-on?!
Though the lion-man couldn't move while using Tekkai, his hair was a different matter, his thick, wild mane, like a lion's, began to twist and writhe, quickly entwining into dozens of human-like fingers, reaching out from all directions to ensnare Gance.
"Life Return: Lion Shigan!"
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
The dozen or so hair-woven fingers blurred into afterimages, darting through the forest of gun barrels to stab at Gance from every conceivable angle... …
"Him?!" Stiel's eyes widened as a tall figure suddenly appeared in a flash between Gance and the lion-man.
The bald, portly merchant from the Haiqi Chamber of Commerce broke into a cold sweat, his face turning deathly pale.
"W–Why is it him?! What the hell is he doing here?!"
"You are…?!"
Smoke rose from the lion-man's Tekkai-hardened body, spent bullet shells clattering to the ground with a metallic clink-clink-clink. Yet his face showed an expression of utter shock.
He had used Life Return to control his sakura-pink hair, forming over a dozen hands to unleash his Rokushiki Shigan... But that same attack had been blocked by another's identical technique... A dozen black hair-woven hands, each alive and distinct like his own, had intercepted every single one of his strikes.
Each black-haired hand had seized a pink-haired Shigan hand, locking them in place, the lion-man couldn't even pull his hair free!
What startled him most, however, was the man before him, the owner of those black strands.
That unforgettable, strikingly handsome young face… it was unmistakable.
He was the pirate who had dominated newspaper headlines for months after the Sword Hero Tournament!
"You... ?! Chopper-na~~ Giorno~~?!" the lion-man exclaimed in a half-singing, half-trembling tone of disbelief. "The reports said you also mastered Life Return… looks like it wasn't a lie after all~~!!"
Liam's black hair twisted tighter, tangling the lion-man's long mane together before forming a single giant black hand, which came crashing down toward the lion-man's massive head...
(End Of This Chapter)