"Achoo, Komachiyo, lend this girl your tail to cover up~"
On the rain and snow covered river, the young girl sneezed and instinctively nuzzled toward a warm place.
"Hey, don't wipe your snot on me!"
Ace, wearing a beach shirt, squirmed, trying to stop her but it was too late.
"Ugh, big brother?" The movement woke Tama. "What's wrong? Where am I?"
"Don't worry. Try to feel the power inside your body."
Ace taught Tama according to Sakura's prior instructions. "Remember not to refine too much Chakra at once. It's bad for your growth, unless you want to end up as flat as Sakura-nee in the future..."
Crack, crack, crack!
The sound of ice spikes suddenly growing rang out. Ace held his cowboy hat and jumped up, letting the icicle graze his butt and pierce through the cabin.
He and Tama were stuck together in the angle between the cabin roof and the ice spike, unable to move.
"Big brother, please stop causing trouble!"
Tama looked helplessly at this big brother. He was already sixteen, yet he still acted like a child every day.
"Hehehe~" Ace showed a mischievous grin.
He drew his Supreme Grade blade from his waist and swung it lightly. The ice pillar broke into four or five pieces, and he landed smoothly on the ground.
He took Tama and walked out of the cabin.
Outside in the icy world, the pink-haired girl stood alone atop a hill that had turned into frozen earth.
Below, countless Homies surrounded her. Relying on their weapons, shields, and metal bodies, they gradually approached Sakura in this harsh environment where normal humans could not survive.
"To specifically use Homies without physiological structures to counter my Senjutsu. It seems Kaido and the others have studied my abilities very thoroughly. But..."
Sakura's gaze swept over these metal chess-piece soldiers, which she could easily knock down but would quickly get back up. "Abilities are, after all, just abilities. You think you can defeat me with fakes that don't have Haki? Dream on!"
The laughing girl pulled out the hilt of a sword without a blade from behind her back. After pressing a switch, the cloud rope spat out iron clouds, forming a giant sword.
Under the heat cycle, the high-energy particles inside the cloud rope began to collide with each other, generating electric current through friction.
—Sword of Resounding Light: Ikoku Sovereignty!
The plasma cloud shockwaves born from collision ionization howled out, each one lighting up successive flashes of lightning in the void.
The thunderstorm woven from countless flashes of lightning engulfed everything, completely destroying those metal chess-piece soldiers whose bodies were still covered in frost and who made harsh scraping sounds with every step.
The metal was melted and flowed to the ground by the violent lightning. Haki and abilities destroyed the physical forms of these soldiers, but did not touch the souls contained within.
So much so that the melted metal liquid seeped into the embankments and ground, yet still retained its own consciousness and faces.
Some were crying, some laughing, some angry, some regretful... The entire river looked like it had mistakenly entered some unspeakable biological nest, utterly bizarre.
"Hey, you bastard! Look what you've done!"
After the mountains of blades, seas of fire, thunder, and lightning, a crimson-red flame burned red across the entire sky.
Carrying immense fear from the soul, a violent, ferocious giant sun descended from the sky.
"Evil Spirit, Charlotte Linlin!"
Sakura twirled the giant cloud rope, casually resting it on her shoulder.
"Ugh!!!"
Inside the Tenshukaku, Linlin, observing the battlefield through the Homies' vision, widened her eyes. Her whole body swayed, and she was about to rush out of the Tenshukaku to go after Sakura.
"Mama, no!"
Members of the Charlotte Family stepped forward to stop her, bringing her massive body down, smashing through the wooden floor, and wedging her in the gap between the towers.
Falling, Linlin's eyes began to roll back. The past appeared before her eyes.
She remembered the happy childhood she had spent in the village of Elbaf, and the subsequent anguish of being hostile to all giants.
The intense emotions traveled through the soul connection to all the Homies, and together with the Empress at the center of the soul network, they displayed the Emperor's rage.
"Why? Why do you know… that title!!!"
The huge roar erupted from her soul, echoing in the Tenshukaku, causing members of both pirate crews to cover their ears tightly, their faces pained.
"Shut up, old hag!"
Kaido, his enjoyment of drinking ruined, simply transformed into a dragon and flew from the Tenshukaku toward the Yoshiwara of the Flower Capital.
Near Udon, Prometheus burning in the sky and the chess-piece soldiers that had turned into a metal ground showed fierce eyes, all staring at the girl standing atop the ice hill.
"I want you dead!"
Prometheus made a sound that did not belong to it, opened its mouth, bit itself, and spun, transforming into a huge pillar of fire.
The increasingly raging firelight flowed across the sky, gradually turning into a crimson-red flame that rose, enveloping the entire ground, diving downward.
—Stolen Fire!
"Too bad. I couldn't provoke her out?"
Not knowing the scene of four or five Charlotte Family's members holding Linlin down inside the Tenshukaku, Sakura clicked her tongue.
The iron clouds of the cloud rope in her hand contracted, the giant sword returning to the size of an ordinary blade. Conqueror's coating, Armament flowing, she leaped into the air and used the swordsmanship she had stolen from Roger against the pillar of fire falling from the sky.
—Divine Departure!
The flames in the sky seemed to collapse for a moment, then a clear sword cry resounded across the sky.
A brilliant flying slash swept through the void, cutting the pillar of fire that Prometheus had transformed into in two. The remaining momentum continued unabated, crossing hundreds of miles, flipping over the frozen river along with the frozen sewage slime.
"Ah!!!"
The pillar of fire contracted back into the split sun, wailing inside the sharp slash breath.
The same sound reached the ears of Orochi, who had arrived at the bank of the Udon River in a palanquin. The hellish battlefield nearly made him faint.
"This is not a place for humans. Let me go back!"
Orochi struggled, flipping over to jump out of the palanquin.
But the palanquin, which was suspended in the air without being carried, seemed to come alive. The carriage turned into a giant mouth, biting Orochi's body, making him struggle in mid-air.
The Oniwabanshu and Wano's magistrates and samurai, whom he had brought along to protect himself, were helplessly escorted by the surrounding Homies onto the battlefield facing Sakura.
Clearing out the small fry, the girl noticed that among the enemies around her, Wano's samurai and ninja began to appear. She then switched her Observation Haki from close-range prediction to wide-area sensing.
Her spreading Observation Haki detected Orochi at the rear of the army, locked in the palanquin and liable to be forcibly 'saved reputation' at any moment.
Combined with the similarly ashen-faced ninja and samurai around him, Sakura had already guessed what the two guys holed up in the Flower Capital were planning.
'But if you, Kaido and Charlotte Linlin, could use the principle of 'if the lord is insulted, his subjects should die', why couldn't I, Haruno Sakura, use 'serve the emperor to punish the unworthy'?'
'With the righteous cause in hand, who was the bandit and who was the legitimate ruler in Wano was still up for debate!'
Thinking this, the girl showed a bright smile and rushed at high speed toward Orochi in the distance.
All the Homies stared at her movements with malicious eyes. Even the paper crane Homies in the sky, preparing to drop bombs, stopped their actions for her and cleared a straight path.
Sakura reached Orochi without hindrance and, under many expectant gazes, raised her hand.
'Raised her hand???'
The Homies' eyes bulged out of their sockets. Feeling that things had exceeded expectations, they swarmed toward her position.
But Sakura was a step ahead of them, grabbing Orochi and using the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport away.
A crisp, flattering voice lingered in the air as it slowly dissipated.
"Hahahaha, Your Excellency the Shogun, you've arrived. Wano Country will be at peace!!!"
"Ah?" x n