—Broadcast—
The Sky Screen's displaying brief pictorial snapshots finally ended, transitioning to the next highlight sequence. The broadcast would now focus on Admiral Tenryu's connection to the legendary fish-man Fisher Tiger—the liberation hero who'd once brought Mary Geoise's holy land to its knees.
History was about to repeat itself. Mary Geoise would be destroyed by foreign enemies once again.
But first, the viewers needed to understand what drove a young girl to commit such an act.
Wendy walked barefoot along the beach, feeling waves hitting her feet with rhythmic persistence. Sunlight shone down on the girl with tropical intensity, warm and bright and utterly at odds with her internal emotional state.
She used to love playing here—collecting shells, building sand castles, watching crabs scuttle between rocks. But now she felt no happiness whatsoever. Depression had settled over her like a heavy blanket, weighing down every movement.
"Brother," she whispered to the empty horizon, voice barely audible over the surf. "Don't you want me anymore? Why don't you come back to see me? It's been so long since the agreed time. You promised one month. It's been three."
Three months had passed in a flash—though for Wendy, each day had felt like a week of anxious waiting.
She'd been living with her Marine sisters during this period. The female sailors assigned to watch over her mow after Gion were low-ranked personnel with minimal combat effectiveness. They were typically responsible for logistics work during Marine operations—supply management, medical assistance, administrative tasks.
Living with the Celestial Dragon's sister near this deserted island, they faced no danger whatsoever. The assignment was essentially a semi-vacation. The sailors were occasionally rotated out, so Wendy had lived with several different groups over the three months.
Initially, when Wendy asked about her brother's whereabouts, these women answered straightforwardly: they didn't know. The movements of Celestial Dragons weren't information accessible to low-ranked personnel.
But something had changed these past few days.
When Wendy asked the same questions again, the Marine sisters' answers became evasive and vague. Their body language shifted—avoiding eye contact, fidgeting with their uniforms, changing subjects quickly.
Even with her limited experience reading adults, the little girl could tell they were lying. Their acting skills were poor enough that a child could see through the deception.
A terrible thought occurred to her with creeping dread: Could something have happened to Saint Mjosgard? Otherwise, why would the Marines have changed their behavior so dramatically?
Mother Grandine had possessed telepathic abilities that penetrated surface thoughts and revealed deeper truths. Before dying, she'd thoroughly investigated Saint Mjosgard's inner character—reading his memories, sensing his genuine emotions, evaluating his moral foundation.
She'd determined this Celestial Dragon was a good and responsible man. Entrusting Wendy to him had seemed the best available choice for her daughter's future.
Otherwise, Grandine never would have revealed the blood relationship between them. That revelation had been strategic—ensuring Wendy would have family protection after her mother's death.
After interacting with many humans over these months—Marine sisters with their various personalities, visiting officers conducting inspections, supply ship crews who occasionally lingered to chat—the girl was certain Grandine's judgment had been correct.
Her mother's telepathic assessment hadn't been wrong about Mjosgard's character.
Which meant something external must have happened to prevent his return.
To verify her growing suspicions, Wendy pretended to be innocent and harmless—adopting the childish demeanor adults expected. She approached the Marine sisters again with the same questions.
"When will Mjosgard come back?" Her voice carried carefully calculated youthful confusion. "Can we take a boat to find him? I miss my brother so much."
The answers she received were almost exactly identical to previous responses. The women were too lazy to even fabricate decent new excuses—they simply repeated the same vague deflections about "not knowing" and "waiting patiently."
However, this played perfectly into the girl's strategy.
After asking her questions, Wendy left on her own initiative—appearing to accept the non-answers with childish resignation. Then she relied on her intimate familiarity with the island's terrain, finding a secret corner near the Marine camp where she could hide undetected.
There, she listened attentively to the private conversation between two female sailors who thought they were alone.
"I really don't want to lie to her," one woman said, her voice heavy with guilt. "But telling Wendy the truth will only cause her pain. Saint Mjosgard is scheduled for public execution. It's tragic—the world will lose another genuinely good person."
The second sailor sighed deeply. "Our accompanying mission may be ending soon. Orders came through this morning. I really don't know how that girl will survive alone on this deserted island after the Marine leaves."
Wendy felt as if struck by lightning—every muscle in her body going rigid with shock.
She'd merely assumed her brother was delayed outside for some important business. Politics. Negotiations. Administrative complications.
She'd never imagined Saint Mjosgard would be publicly executed. Killed by his own people. Murdered by the system he'd been born into.
Was their last meeting truly a final farewell forever? Had she hugged him for the last time without knowing it?
Losing her mother and now her brother—this was totally unacceptable to the girl. Absolutely, fundamentally impossible to endure.
As someone who'd been surrounded by family affection since birth—first Grandine's protective wings, then Mjosgard's brotherly care—the prospect of losing family connections meant a life worse than death. Isolation. Abandonment. Complete solitude.
At this moment, she recalled the last words of Mother Grandine with crystalline clarity. The dying woman's instructions about the Devil Fruit. About choice. About power and its costs.
An idea began growing wildly in Wendy's mind—desperate, terrifying, but offering the only possible path forward.
The girl sprinted back to her hiding place—a small cave where she kept precious possessions away from the Marines' well-meaning oversight. She retrieved the Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Seiryū with trembling hands.
This fruit was her mother's relic. She'd kept it close as a remembrance, something to hold when grief became overwhelming, a tangible connection to Grandine's memory.
But now Mjosgard was in mortal danger. Wendy wanted to save her kind brother by herself as quickly as possible. Waiting for permission or assistance wasn't an option—there was no time.
The girl stared at the cloud-patterned fruit for several long seconds, steeling her resolve.
Then she bit into the Devil Fruit decisively.
The taste was absolutely horrific—like rotten meat mixed with sewage and burning rubber, exactly as every Devil Fruit user described. Wendy couldn't help complaining even as she forced herself to chew and swallow: "What a disgusting fruit! Eating this thing is simply torture!"
But to save her brother, she could endure any taste. She forced down the entire fruit despite her stomach's rebellion, consuming every last piece of the vile substance.
Wendy instantly felt impossibly full—as though she'd eaten ten meals simultaneously. Her stomach distended slightly from the supernatural volume.
Then magical changes began occurring throughout her body and the surrounding environment.
Suddenly, she felt the air around her becoming extremely friendly—almost welcoming. The atmosphere contained rich energy molecules imperceptible to normal humans. Particles of condensed sky essence, responding to her fruit's power.
They flowed constantly into the girl's skin through osmosis, reshaping Wendy's human body from multiple angles simultaneously. Bones strengthened. Muscles refined. Neural pathways rewired to accommodate draconic senses. Organs adapted to process atmospheric energy as supplemental nutrition.
Wendy—who'd just consumed her first Devil Fruit moments ago—didn't comprehend how remarkable her new ability truly was. Every technique she would develop in the future could replenish energy through environmental absorption. She'd become uniquely suited for protracted battles, never running out of stamina as long as sky existed above her.
This trump card would make her nearly unstoppable.
With newfound power surging through her veins, Wendy decided to confront the Marine sisters directly. She'd tell them about eavesdropping, demand the complete truth, and force them to help her reach Mary Geoise.
During the confrontation, tears streamed down her face periodically—genuine grief mixed with strategic manipulation. Her pitiful appearance made the Marine sisters feel profound distress. Children crying always struck deeply at maternal instincts.
Now that secrecy seemed pointless, the women told Wendy everything they knew about Saint Mjosgard's situation.
During the World Conference—that grand gathering of fifty kings held every four years in Mary Geoise—Saint Mjosgard had attempted to help Prince Fukaboshi escape from a dangerous situation.
The prince of Fish-Man Island and his brothers had been attending the conference as official representatives of the Ryugu Kingdom. As fish-men walking through Mary Geoise's sacred halls, they'd faced constant harassment, mockery, and threats from Celestial Dragons who viewed their species as subhuman.
Saint Charlos—one of the most notoriously cruel and stupid Celestial Dragons—had decided to capture Prince Fukaboshi as a slave. He'd been openly discussing chaining the prince and adding him to his "collection" of exotic species.
To help Prince Fukaboshi and the other Fish-Man Island delegates escape this nightmarish fate, Saint Mjosgard had taken the initiative to provoke a direct confrontation with Saint Charlos's family.
The two factions of Celestial Dragons had engaged in stick-to-stick combat directly in front of assembled dignitaries—dozens of kings and queens watching in shock as "gods" brawled like common thugs.
Saint Mjosgard—who exercised regularly and possessed actual combat training unlike most Celestial Dragons—had easily won the physical altercation. He'd beaten Saint Charlos unconscious with a wooden rod, humiliating the man before international witnesses.
Prince Fukaboshi and the other Fish-Man Island conference members had taken advantage of the chaos to escape Mary Geoise, fleeing back to their underwater kingdom before CP0 could organize pursuit.
But the consequences for Mjosgard had been catastrophic.
As loyal lackeys of the Celestial Dragons, CP0 wasn't qualified to arrest and judge members of the God Clan themselves. Celestial Dragons existed above even those elite assassins in the organizational hierarchy.
But in Mary Geoise, there existed a specialized force created specifically to handle internal struggles among Celestial Dragons: disputes, crimes, rebellions within the God Clan that couldn't be trusted to outside enforcement.
The God's Knights—led by Saint Figarland Garling, a terrifying warrior who commanded absolute authority among Celestial Dragon military forces—had captured Saint Mjosgard immediately after the brawl concluded.
They'd conducted an internal trial following Celestial Dragon law rather than World Government justice. The verdict had been unanimous: death.
Saint Mjosgard would be publicly executed in Mary Geoise as an example to other potential "traitors" who might consider placing compassion above class solidarity.
Most noble groups participating in the World Conference hadn't departed yet. What was happening to Saint Mjosgard represented a once-in-a-century spectacle—the public execution of a Celestial Dragon had never been witnessed in living memory.
Naturally, these idle aristocrats would attend. Entertainment was entertainment, regardless of how disturbing the source.
"The execution is scheduled for today," one Marine sister finished quietly. "I'm so sorry, Wendy. There's nothing anyone can do."
The girl took out the Life Card from her pocket with hands shaking from emotion. The piece of paper Mjosgard had given her during their parting—the navigation tool meant to reunite them.
What she saw made her heart stop.
The originally white paper was actively burning—flames consuming it from the edges inward. Only half its original size remained, the rest already turned to ash.
Through the Marine sisters' active explanation—they couldn't maintain deception now that everything was revealed—Wendy finally understood what this Life Card phenomenon represented and how it connected to human vitality.
Life Cards were created by infusing someone's fingernail clippings into special paper through alchemical process. The resulting card always pointed toward its creator and reflected their life force directly.
If a person's Life Card burned completely to ash, it meant that person had died. The connection severed. Life extinguished.
Saint Mjosgard was in catastrophically poor condition right now—hovering on the threshold between life and death. Injured. Imprisoned. Dying.
"I must go save him," Wendy stated with absolute conviction, her innocent voice carrying steel underneath. "I can't afford to lose another loved one. Not Mother and Brother both. I won't accept it."
The girl's innocent words made the adults even more uncomfortable than they'd already been. The Marine sisters didn't think Wendy—who appeared powerless before them, just a small child with no combat training or Devil Fruit abilities could accomplish anything meaningful in Mary Geoise's holy land.
That fortress was protected by CP0, the God's Knights, Marine Admirals, and countless other security forces. One girl couldn't possibly infiltrate it, much less rescue a condemned Celestial Dragon from execution.
Moreover, calculating the timeline carefully, even if they departed on the fastest speedboat immediately, they wouldn't arrive before Saint Mjosgard's scheduled execution concluded. The mathematics were unforgiving.
This was something that couldn't be changed through human power or determination.
But if the rescuer wasn't human—then perhaps it could be changed after all.
Suddenly, a strong wind erupted from ground level without warning. Sand and rocks blew everywhere, forcing the Marine sisters to shield their faces with raised arms. The gale was too powerful to look directly into—they squeezed their eyes shut against the stinging debris.
When the two women finally opened their eyes again, a massive white creature had appeared before them where Wendy had been standing moments ago.
A dragon.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. A literal dragon.
A serpentine body easily one hundred meters long, covered entirely in pristine white feathers that caught the sunlight and seemed to glow with internal radiance. The head was distinctly draconic—elongated snout with whisker-like tendrils, intelligent eyes that burned with azure fire, elegant horns curving back from the skull.
Massive wings spread from the shoulders, each individual primary feather longer than a grown man was tall. The membrane between feathers wasn't skin but condensed clouds—actual atmospheric matter shaped into functional wing structure through supernatural power.
Four legs with taloned claws gripped the beach sand, each digit capable of crushing boulders. The tail extended behind the body like a living whip, tipped with flowing cloud formations that moved independently.
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