"Now, how should I deal with you next?" Rosinante's gaze shifted to Charlotte Linlin.
She was still unconscious. That last blow had clearly wounded her badly, badly enough that she hadn't come around even now. She lay sprawled face-down on the deck, as wretched a sight as anyone could be.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet," Rosinante said evenly. No one saw him form a single hand seal, yet from the sea beside them a dragon of water rose twisting into the air and came howling down over the unconscious Charlotte Linlin.
"You bastard!" Seeing it, Cracker couldn't stop himself from lunging at Rosinante again, but Perospero held him back.
"Don't be rash. In a situation like this, rashness only puts Mama in greater danger. Even if every last one of us charged him, we're no match for Dragon King Rosinante. The moment we raise a hand, we die, and we drag Mama into an even worse spot," Perospero said.
Cracker still seethed, but he didn't try to rush out again. Perospero's words had cooled him a little.
The Water Dragon Bullet did Charlotte Linlin no harm at all. Like a bucket of cold water thrown over her, it slowly roused her, and her eyes drifted open. She looked around in confusion, unable for a moment to make sense of where she was, until the violent pain wracking her whole body brought back the moments before she'd blacked out. Remembering that one earth-shattering strike of Rosinante's, she felt a chill ripple through her even now.
Where is this? On one of Totto Land's ships? Did I shake off Rosinante's pursuit? she wondered.
"Oh, so you're awake." Just then Charlotte Linlin heard Rosinante's voice come from behind her.
"You bastard, Rosinante!" She started at the sound, twisted her head around, and found him standing with one foot planted on top of her, looking down at her with utter contempt.
"Seems you still don't understand your situation." Rosinante bore down with his foot. The deck beneath her cracked apart, and a surge of force drove straight through her iron-hard defenses and into her body, forcing up another mouthful of blood.
"Rosinante, what exactly do you want?" The string of grievous wounds had left her breath weaker and weaker, the strength draining out of her entirely. In that moment she finally grasped one plain fact: her life and death now rested in Rosinante's hands.
"To be honest, I'm in something of a bind myself. How should I dispose of you? Kill you? That would be easy. One flick of my foot and I could send you off to meet the Reaper. But once you're dead, the balance of the seas comes apart, and I'd rather this world didn't fall into too much chaos. Besides, you're Katakuri's mother. If I killed you, I can't say whether it would grieve him. Even if he's got no real love left for you, I know he still cares deeply for his younger brothers and sisters. With you gone, the Big Mom Pirates are finished, and all your years of tyranny across the New World would draw countless pirates to the Charlotte Family like sharks scenting blood, hungry for revenge. The Charlotte Family would be certain to suffer terribly then. Katakuri has followed me for many years, after all, and these past years while I was away, it was he who kept the Oathblood Guard safe, who led them clear of utter ruin. I'm grateful to him for that. So your life is spared. But I can't let you off so easily," Rosinante said.
"Then what do you want?" Charlotte Linlin had never imagined the day would come when her own son was the reason her life was spared.
"Secret Art: Deathward Curse Seal." Rosinante laid a hand against her, and countless dense little seals went streaming out of his palm, wriggling like tadpoles across the whole of her body. When he drew his hand back, the seals vanished from sight.
"Remember not to do anything that puts me in a hard spot from now on. Otherwise..." Rosinante said.
As his words trailed off, sudden, terrible agony twisted across Charlotte Linlin's face, and curse seals surfaced one after another over her skin.
"This Deathward Curse Seal draws out the life force of whoever it's planted on and turns it into death energy. The conversion is a brutal thing, so you'll feel agony beyond anything you've ever known. And that's only the beginning. Once your vitality has been turned to death energy, your body withers. You'll watch your own flesh rot and fall away piece by piece, until nothing's left but a bare skeleton, and only when the death energy reaches your head will you finally die," Rosinante said.
Hearing it, every last one of the Big Mom Pirates wore a look of pure dread. And it wasn't only them. Even the Oathblood Guard were deeply shaken. As for the one it was happening to, Charlotte Linlin's face had gone ghostly pale.
"Your life is in my hands from this day on, so you'd do well not to make things difficult for me. Otherwise, what I just described happens to you. Like this."
As he spoke, Rosinante lifted a hand and closed it in a grasping motion, then released. At once an immense pull of gravity appeared, dragging one of the Big Mom Pirates' underlings over to him. Rosinante pressed a hand to the man and planted a Deathward Curse Seal on him. The underling collapsed to the deck in agony, thrashing and rolling, his whole body wracked with pain.
As he writhed, black vapor began to seep from the seals on his skin, sinking into him and rotting his body away. Soon, as he rolled, chunks of flesh and blood were dropping off of him, and across his face spread a look of utter horror.
Rosinante paid no further attention to the underling's screaming, nor to whatever reaction the Big Mom Pirates or Charlotte Linlin might have. He simply turned and left with Enel.
By then the whole of the Big Mom Pirates were staring, dumbstruck, at the underling marked with the Deathward Curse Seal. None of them had even noticed when Rosinante and Enel had gone. By the time the man was fully dead, all that remained of him was a heap of bones.
Having watched the whole thing unfold, even many of the bloodthirsty fanatics among the Charlotte Family had gone white in the face, and some of them couldn't keep from retching. Every one of them wore a look of raw terror. They had only to imagine watching their own flesh fall away piece by piece, and the dread became impossible to hold back.
For a long while afterward, the Big Mom Pirates remained sunk in absolute panic, their eyes vacant and bloodless.