Hachinisou is a den of vipers just as King remembered it.
And he had just survived an encounter with the fattest and nastiest of the bunch. Ochoku had been sickly courteous just like the last time he'd been here with his captain four years ago. That time, he tried to win his boss over with good-quality booze, this time he peddled stories that he and Kaido had always been best friends. Both times, he'd been after the bounty of Wano they'd just conquered: seastone weapons to bolster the defences of his Pirate Kingdom. In the end, he hadn't even bothered to keep the farce going, as soon as he'd realized that King wasn't going to bite it, he'd changed his tune and told the Lunarian to grab the kid and the get the hell out of his island.
The brothel wasn't that far from the docks, where his ship was docked. The cloying perfumes made a good job at hiding the salty tang of sweat, and other bodily fluids, but they couldn't hide the stench of cigar-smoke coming from the madam. She took a good look at him, as he craned to get inside.
"Second floor, third door to the left. Name's Sadicchan, the safe word's Sea-King Curry. The price is 10.000 berry at night, plus tipping. Money upfront, no service on board."
"I'm not here for pleasure." King replied. The Madam did a once-over, arched an eyebrow as if to ask, if he was serious. King sighted. "I'm here for the brat."
"Of course you are…" The woman groaned, standing from behind the reception desk. "Follow me, big guy. Feel free to take a look to merchandise, if you change your mind."
He didn't bother. Last time, he'd laid with a woman, he'd woke up in manacles and not of the fun kind. The seastone to be specific, followed a by a CP-0 agent contacting their superiors saying that the package was in on its way. It had been Queen that pulled out for him. The fat bastard didn't stop remember him of the fact ever since.
As if, the only reason he burst through the wall and turned the CP0 Agent into paste with his rotary cannon wasn't that he was jealous she'd "preferred" King over him.
They left the guest spaces behind and moved deeper into the building. The décor shifted from deliberate luxury to plain, lived-in comfort. The place was clean. It was a good brothel, the kind that treats its workers well, which is a rarity in a lawless place such Hachinosu. Then again, Pirates are fickle, sentimental creatures, and a whore can hit a soft-spot between the love of your life waiting for you on the shore, and the one-night fling for each port you visit. Intimate enough to care, transactional enough to not feel guilty about it…
"So, how's the kid?"
"Weird." The madam muttered, as they passed by a group of plainly dressed girls carrying large bundles of soiled pillowcases and bed-sheets. They winked at him, the leather mask had its charm, or so they said. "She's smart. Too smart. Found her sneaking around reading book. As soon as she could walk, I started to give her a few jobs. She always did what she was told. She doesn't complain, and I don't mean in "she never cries" way. That too. I mean it in a "we need to replace the mattresses on the third floor, their are in the storage room" and she did it all by herself. Not a word."
"Not what I was expecting, to be honest…" King asked warily.
"Yeah, you would think Kaido's bastard daughter would raid the cellar to get wasted, not try to file your taxes when most of Ochoku's lieutenants can't even read. Ah!" She chuckled. "I swear sometimes I feel that the girl is trying to butter me up like some kind of ambitious career-hound."
Again, that was as an opposite to his Captain as there ever was. Even Yamato, ignoring massive headache that her new Oden's phase caused him, was more like her father than either the two liked to admit. "Are you sure she is his?" King asked. "I'd like to interrogate her mother. Where I can find her?"
"Anya's dead. Those sharp horns your Captain put her in belly tore through her womb as she gave birth. Little monster came to the world soaked in her mother's blood, and she didn't even make a sound. Not wonder, she's fucked up in the head. Poor Anya," The madam shook her head. "Blonde hair like spun gold, eyes as blue as an ocean of sapphires, good tits and a fantastic ass too. Always a professional. Never afraid of taking any challenge, including your captain." She added after a pause. "She was from Rhine."
Rhine. King remembered Rhine, it had been one of the first territories the Beast Pirates claimed. Rich ore under lush verdant forests, scattered tribes ruled by a loosely elected king Kaido drank with once. The king died, and the prince tried to join the World Government behind their back. King always suspected foul-play from the Cipher Pol, but Kaido wiping out the prince, the royal family, and razing the entire island put an end to that all the same. Now Rhine is a dry wasteland, the mines built there feeding Wano's war-machine.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing is just ironic, isn't it? The father took her country, then the daughter takes her life." The madam spoke. "Anya said to the very last moment that she'd been careful, that she had taken precautions. Still had a kid. Almost as if it's an act of God…"
"Anyways," the madam brought her to a small room on the second floor. "If you have doubt about her parentage, why don't you take a look for yourself?" She pushed the door open.
King had to crane to enter inside the bedroom. She found the brat already awake, sitting on the bed like a cute little soldier, squinting her eyes, as the flames of his back illuminated the room. A little girl, no taller than five feet, with deep blue eyes and short blonde hair. Kaido snorted.
"Was Ochoku's or yours the idea of pass a nine year old as the child of my Captain?" King muttered, glaring to the matron that looked unfazed. "Kaido had never been at Hachinosu nine years ago." And he knew that well because it was the time, Kaido was looking for the lady who would become Yamato's mother.
"Nine? I told you, Tanya's four."
King's eyes twitched. He turned to the brat. "Can you speak?"
"Yes, sir." She replied crisply, unnervingly and dissonantly calm. King wasn't exactly the kind of figure that put children at ease, and yet the girl showed no discomfort whatsoever. "The madam isn't lying… I was born four years ago."
King stretched his haki. His observation tendrils wrapping around the bright, surprisingly strong soul-stuff of the kid. Either she wasn't lying, or she had already mastered Observation at such young age that would make her purchase a safe bet for entirely different reasons than her parentage. Four years old, and she was already taller than Yamato which was twice her age.
The little girl stood up from her bed and moved towards a corner of the room. She pointed to a wall, scribbles on the wall to be precise. Little black squiggly lines at regular vertical intervals.
"I've been measuring my height every month," Tanya said, and each month carried a considerable increase of height. "My father, is a tall person, he is?"
"Oni can usually calculate their height from the diameter of their horns." King stated the facts Kaido had drilled into his skull.
"Uh," The girl looked at the prongs of bone poking from the sides of her head. They were of a dirty white and much thicker than her half-brother, much more like her father.
"By the time you are an adult, you'll not fit through most doors." King answered the question on the little girl's mind. She mumbled something under her breath about "overshooting in the other direction." He elected to ignore it.
"She's clearly Kaido's daughter." The madam added.
Even if she wasn't, it wouldn't have changed much. The important had always been to make sure she was really a Oni and not another half-fishman that happened to have horns. Kaido always had this dream of reuniting the scattered Oni tribe into a single kingdom, possibly ruled by his son, and in that regard, had monopolised the human trafficking market with a combination of the carrot and the stick. It was probably one of the big reasons, Ochoku didn't pawn her off to the World Government.
The other, besides trying again to sweet out a trading deal on seastone weapons, was that the idea of the Marines having their own personal Kaido was incredibly more terrifying than the Strongest Creature in the World simply gaining another powerful subordinate.
Besides, the timelines did match. Kaido had been at Hachinosu four years ago. He had left Wano for Hanafuda's wedding with the Oni Woman he'd found for him. They had to make a fast retreat when that hoodlum of Gekko Moria raised hell in Ringo, but then Ochoku invited Kaido to stop at Hachinosu to recruit foot soldiers, reminisce about the good old days, and try to this barrel of mysterious booze from the Void Century whose very existence had been erased from history. Nobody knows if Ochoku was talking out of his ass with the booze, still Kaido the next morning was nowhere to be found.
They had to sail without him. He caught up with them with his dragon form before they made it to Wano. Could have Kaido sired a children during his drunken spree? King had been with him for years and had seen him angry drunk, sad drunk, happy drunk, flirty drunk…
Horny drunk? Absolutely a possibility. Honestly, it was surprising it hadn't happened sooner.
In the end, it came to the hagging, the madam and King mock fought for the price which had already been decided beforehand. They threw something in for Ochoku too, he was no Yonko but it made no good to have him on your bad side, especially when he'd rendered them a good service.
Tanya's pretty little head came down to a price of 250.000.000 berry now, 250.000.000 later if Kaido acknowledges Tanya as his daughter, and four casts of seastone guns as a tribute for the Pirate Guru.
Tanya said goodbye to the matron, and a few ladies there. But as King walked with the kid in tow, he couldn't help but feel something unnerving: the girl seemed utterly at ease with leaving what has been her home for the entire life to jump in the unknown. Perhaps, she didn't understand what kind of life was waiting for her among the Beast Pirates, but the kid seemed too smart for that.
As she skipped her step behind him, whistling a slow rendition of Binks' Sake, King had to agree with the Madam: this was one hell of a creepy kid.
We are one year past Oden's death, timeline wise.698Monk789Dec 9, 2025Reader modeThreadmarks Threadmarks Prologue - The Skies over Wano Threadmarks Monk789Dec 9, 2025#2Mfw I realize it's Beasts Pirates and not Beast Pirates as I edit this post.
King stepped inside the Skull Dome and knew instantly that something was wrong.
Onigashima had been a wild place, even before the Beasts Pirates set their headquarters there. The caste was a beast of a mountain built over five years of backbreaking work by Wano's best carpenters and stone-masons, and they had wasted no time to turn into a place where mayhem and murder was peddled like coins at market.
Still, the castle wasn't supposed to be on fire.
King swept his wings, a gust of cold air enhanced with his Lunarian abilities smothered flames. They subsided, revealing the bodies filling the blackened corridors.
A lot of bodies.
King knelt down to inspect the nearest corpse. His head had been caved in, but he could still recognise the tattoo over the neck. MAU MAU. He'd been inducted in the crew only a month ago. Good with knives and poisons. He had looked to make a name for himself taking down Emperor, but stopped at a King. It's hard to pierce a Lunarian's body. Nonetheless, the Calamity saw value in the pirate, so he came with another idea. After two hours of excruciating torture, he agreed to join as a new Tobi Roppo and everything was good.
…Or maybe not, because Mau Mau was dead.
He followed the trail of bodies and King found the brat. "What happened here," he growled, feeling dread building up inside. He'd been gone of only a week.
"Kaido came down." Jack replied, he was sitting on top of a pile of bodies, his stubby fingers shoving chunks of elephant meat in his sharp-toothed mouth. "He began to drink with them the Tobi Roppo. Queen was there too." He tore another piece of steak and chewed on it with dissonant serenity.
"That isn't unusual." King replied, still an idea was forming in his mind and he didn't like it in the slightest.
"Kaido drank and drank and drank. The Tobi Roppo drank too. They had a drinking contest, Kaido won, obviously. At first he was happy, then, he was sad, he drank some more and then he said: I miss Oden."
Oh, no.
No. King now understood what just happened. "Where was Queen in all of this?" King was now gritting his teeth, why he had to be only one remotely sane in this crew? "Why that fat bastard didn't something about this?"
"He excused himself," Jack said. "Said he suddenly remembered he'd left the stove on back in Udon." Of course he did.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"Who, Queen?"
"Kaido."
"I am nine." Jack replied.
"So what?" King said. "All the Tobi Roppo are dead. The Beasts Pirates are this close to collapse outright!"
Jack blinked, then grabbed another elephant steak from the plate between his crossed legs and chewed on it contemplatively. "Eh, we had a good run."
After so many years, King was beyond caring. He closed his eyes suppressing the urge to burn everything into his closest proximity to a charred husk which thanks to his captain already was. "Where did he go…" He finally muttered through clenched teeth. "After wiping out his own middle management… Where did Kaido go?"
"He drank more, then he flew out." Jack said. "Said something about turning the Flower Capital into a beautiful funeral pyre for Oden."
Oh, great. That was just great. Absolutely fantastic, Nika on a pike. "How long ago?"
"Eh, you missed him by a fifteen minutes." Thanks the heavens, maybe he could salvage something from this situation.
"I'm going out. I'll sober him up before he does something we both regret." King stated. "Because apparently I can't expect anyone else in this place to do their damn job."
"Again," Jack replied. "Can I remind you I'm just nine years old?"
"Yeah, and she's four." King nudged Tanya, reminded of the child who must have listened to the entire conversation in silence. He sighed. Welcome to the Beasts Pirates, brat. "She's Kaido's kid. Can I trust you to not screw up this one too?"
He made it for the rooftop. He couldn't help but partially overhear the conversation.
"Hi, I'm Tanya."
"Hullo, I'm Jack." There was a ripping sound, greasy stubby fingers tearing on meat. "Want some?"
"Yeah, thank you." Two brats chewing on elephant meat amidst a sea of stewed corpses.
In his pteranodon form, he didn't take long to find Kaido, or at least, to hear his bellowing voice.
"Oden! Oden, my beatiful Oden! They took you from me! Oden! We could have fought to the bitter end, a worthy duel, a worthier death! They took you from me, those damned Kurozumi. SO I AM TAKING EVERYTHING FROM THEM! AS ODEN HAS BOILED, SO THE KUROZUMI WILL BURN!"
King ignited the flames on his back even hotter, shaping them in a propelling engine. There was a sonic crack of displaced air as he accelerated and between the dark stormy clouds, he spotted it. The cerulean tail swaying drunkenly.
There he was. The coils of scaled azure stretching far and wide. The great and monstrous beast that King knew one day would become King of the Pirates.
SUPREME OVERLORD OF THE BEASTS PIRATES, EMPEROR OF THE SEA,
KAIDO OF THE BEASTS [OMNICIDIALLY DRUNK]
King conjured a fireball, still in his Pteranodon form, and threw it a Kaido. It exploded with a loud thunderclap, loud noise but little damage. It got the Emperor attention, at least.
"Captain, stop!" King flew all the way to Kaido head. The All-Star bore little kindness to the people of the Flower Capital, but they needed them all same. Controlling Wano without Orochi would been hard enough if their leadership had not just been annihilated overnight. "This is madness." King said to the man responsible for that.
But there was no use.
"LOOK ODEN…" Kaido bellowed with his dragon voice. So close to his face, he could see his eyes were swirly and glazy, he was so drunk he didn't even recognise his first mate "MORE GNATS, MORE LACKEYS OF THE VILE HAG. SHE TOOK YOU FROM ME, THE HAG. We could have fought to the death, and now she sends her lackeys after me. Their words poison laced with honey! LOOK ODEN, how do I send them flying! TATSUMAKI!"
King had barely the time to put on the defence, and that was mostly because Kaido was raging drunk. Nonetheless, his Captain massive body coiled into a spiral and then unleashed a devastating wind upon him. King's Lunarian heritage bore the wind stoically, but in the air his chiropteran wings betrayed him, unfurling with a visible quiver. He felt them swell and pull, like a ship ensnared by an ominous wind. He veered out of Kaido's path.
And they were already above the Flower Capital.
He was too far away to stop what came next.
Kaido raised his draconic head to the sky, and it throat began to swell, bloated like a frogsack, the scales leaking burning-hot scorching light slowly pushing itself forward, until the blinding glow reached Kaido's mouth.
"BORO BREATH: RYUSEIGUN!"
The blast punched skyward, blowing apart the clouds in a kilometre-wide radius. It disappeared for a moment, then the grey sky over Wano lit up with a swarm of stars.
It was only mid-afternoon.
The meteor shower rained on the Flower Capital, each one strong enough to obliterate a small fortress. King was still high enough in the air to not see the damage or hear the screams, but he had fought with his captain long enough to know what would happen. He had to end this fast, before Kaido could finish the job.
He pushed his flames into overdrive, catching up with his Captain as he was rearing his head back. Kaido blinked stupidly, thankfully drunk and therefore slower than sober. King had one shot and he would make it count.
His back of his cranium was already drawn backwards as he came face-to-face with the Emperor. Thanks to the secret ways of the Dinosaurs that hunted in ancient times, his head stretched and stretched until his beak retreated inside his head. King let his crest go.
The slingshot beak hit Kaido right in the centre of the skull with the dull toll of a iron bell and the crack of displaced hair. King had angled the shot so that the impact wouldn't just reverberate through Kaido's thick brainpan but also travel back to his break like a rubber band, the momentum stretching his head back so that he could hit him again, and again, and again.
At the same time time, King worked the muscles of his neck into overdrive. Headbanging his head so hard he could feel his own brain wobble. Had anyone seen the high-altitude battle in real time, they would have sworn the All-Star had sprouted a dozen extra heads from the storm of afterimages.
"OMORI TEMPURAUDON!"
King kept hitting, and hitting, and hitting with a barrage of blows. It was only when he felt Kaido's body going limp and that he stopped. His Captain began to fall, slowly at first. Surely, he didn't…
King took a moment to clear his spinning head. Then, he swoop down landing gently, as Kaido's draconic bulk carved a ravine with his prodigious mass. He shifted back in human form, just as the dragon shifted back into a his. A large Oni lying at the bottom of a crater its own making, groaning.
"My head…" The oni clutched his skull. "Who's ringing that bell?"
"Captain, are you alright?"
"Uh, oh… hey, King. Yeah… I was drinking with the boys and…" He shook head and cracked his neck. "One of the new meats asked me about Oden and…" Kaido frowned. King tensed, desperately hoping that wasn't the start of another round, but his Captain looked more confused than anything else. "Where the hell am I?"
"On the edge of the Flower Capital." What remains of it. They could see several thick columns of smoke rising from behind the hills. King would call it a lucky day, if half of the Capital survived Kaido's attack. "You got drunk." Again.
"Oh… and the Tobi Roppo?"
"Dead. All of them. We'll have to recruit a new batch from scratch."
Kaido chewed on his words. He didn't look like a pirate captain who'd just lost all his lieutenants, but rather like a man discovering his dog had shat on the carpet. "And the castle?"
"Burning. I put a stop to it, but there will be repairs. I'll contact Minatomo"
"And the cellar? Is it safe?" A look of worry passed on Kaido's face. "The booze, I mean."
"I…" King suppressed a deeply frustrated sight. "…I was hurrying, so I didn't have the chance to check." Because I had to make sure you just didn't turn this whole Wano fiasco into a big smouldering crater.
"Goddammit, Arber!" Kaido berated him, pointing a finger. "It's your damn job to make sure screw up like this don't happen! I'm not going to sit another meeting with that Orochi bastard sober! Where the hell were you, anyway?"
"Picking up your brat." King replied.
"Uh?"
"She seems to be okay with joining the crew…" During their trip, Tanya had proved herself a surprisingly mature kid. She'd been pestering him with questions about the inner workings of her father's crew. He'd been surprised, something about the way she acted felt terribly wrong for a four-year-old. As if she'd been trying to please a superior. "She'll make a fine officer, I think." Heavens, knew they needed some right now.
"Why didn't start with that?!" Kaido shouted sounding excited and pleased in a way that was getting rarer and rarer to see these days. "About damn time, the brat decides to obey. Great job, King!"
"Thanks, Captain." Wait, obey?
"I don't know what you did to get her drop out that moronic I'm Oden phase, but good job!" Kaido grinned. "Now that Yamato finally got brought into the fold, we can—"
"Kaido, this isn't about Yamato…"
Kaido grin fell off. "Then who are we talking about?"
"Your other kid." King rubbed his temples. "We stopped on Hachinisou on the way back to Wano to deal with Moria. You decided to party in honour of the good ol' days. You went missing the entire night, and we had to sail without you." Then, the Lunarian shrugged. "You were busy apparently."
"Oh.." Kaido blinked. "And the brat's name is…"
"Tanya, big for her age. She got your bones at least. Blonde hair, blue eyes."
"Bah, I'm just surprised that Ochoku didn't sell her to the World Government too…" Kaido replied sourly. King knew by this point that, even after so many years, Kaido's former crew was still a touchy subject.
"Are you surprised that a Pirate doesn't want the Marines to have their mini-version of you?"
"I guess…" He shrugged his massive shoulders. "Anyway, you got me excited there. Thought that Yamato finally got his act together for a moment…"
King at this point also knew how stubborn his Captain could get with he got an idea on his idea. In the end, Tanya was a bastard, while Yamato was the Oni Princess. He was royalty. He doubted that Kaido would ever love Tanya the same way he "loved" his son.
Still… if she's anything like her father, she'll make a powerful subordinate eventually. And she's a Oni, too. Halfbreed bastard she's may be.
"Bring her with the rest of the crew, she'll be an apprentice. If she survives, we'll think about it when she's old enough to pull her weight around." Kaido paused for a moment. "Mmmh… all this planning is making me thirsty, let's stop somewhere to get some booze."
Kaido turned around, getting ready to walk back towards Onigashima looming across the sea. King looked back the Flower Capital, the rising smoke in the distance, he could hear the screams. The Calamity knew that there would be no consequences for the actions of today. Orochi depended on them to exist. There was also at not negligible chance that the Shogun got a kick watching his fellow countrymen burn under Kaido's shower of meteors.
Kaido stopped for a moment. He scratched his chin, then spat onto his feet. It was a glob of saliva, marred pink. Despite so many years with him, King still felt a stab to his pride. Omori Tempuradon was one of his strongest attacks and that was all the damage he caused him? A pinkish phlegm that could be barely called a drop of blood? He could have just bitten his cheek on the way there, and the results would be the same.
In the end, it was it.
Kaido would face no repercussion for burning half the Flower Capital in a drunken fit of pique.
Kaido would face no repercussion for wiping out his own elite cadre in a drunk fit of pique.
Because, in the end the truth was simple and brutal…
…Kaido was insanely strong