Among all the subordinates Hiruto Blake could find in the short term, Aramaki was the strongest by far, so Blake planned to entrust him with the job of hunting Devil Fruits.
The Fire-Fire Fruit that even dogs would not bother eating, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit on Skypiea, the Mythical Zoan Vampire form in Sleepy Ancient Town, the Mythical Zoan Pink Dragon on Punk Hazard, the Op-Op Fruit in the North Blue…
Whether their locations were already known or there were solid leads to follow, Blake had no intention of letting any of those Devil Fruits slip through his fingers.
This little mission to find the Paramecia-type Hollow-Hollow Fruit was just a warm up test for Aramaki.
Just as Blake was pondering which Devil Fruits would be easiest to intercept next, Stella's voice drifted over.
"Your Highness, that girl is awake."
Blake rose to his feet and headed into the cabin with Stella.
Perona was sitting on the bed, eyes still a bit unfocused. When she saw Blake, she clearly shrank back.
Blake gave her a once over from head to toe, nodded in satisfaction and said with a wicked grin,
"Congratulations. From today on you are my little slave."
"Waaaah I do not want to be a little slave!"
Blake had never thought of himself as a mean spirited person, but every time he looked at Perona he just could not help wanting to bully her a little.
Maybe it was because the current Perona gave off that "if you punch her once she will cry for half a day" kind of vibe, or maybe her image in the original story had just burned itself too deeply into his brain.
"Hahahahaha…"
Seeing Perona about to cry again, Blake laughed out loud.
"Not bad. You did not faint this time. So, tell me. Why were you on that ship?"
Perona's sobs slowly died down. She snuck a cautious glance at Blake, then at Stella behind him, and began to talk about what had happened in her soft, sticky little voice.
There was nothing particularly dramatic about it. Pirates had attacked her hometown, she had fled over and over, and eventually snuck aboard that merchant ship.
Because she had sneaked on as a stowaway, she could not let the crew find her. She had hidden in the storage room, then stumbled across the hidden compartment there by accident and crawled inside.
After listening to her story, Blake smiled and pinched her cheeks.
"So right now you have nowhere to go, is that it? Then you can stay on my ship."
"He does not seem that terrible after all."
Perona's heart actually loosened a little at his smile, and she asked carefully,
"Then am I still a little slave?"
"Of course."
Perona's face crumpled again as if she were about to cry. Blake laughed and walked out of the room.
Stella could only shake her head helplessly before stepping forward to comfort the girl.
She had never raised a child before, but that warm and optimistic smile of hers had a way of easing people's hearts. Perona quickly stopped crying.
She shook her tiny fist angrily in the direction Blake had left and thought to herself,
"I am definitely going to escape from this big villain someday."
On the other side, Aramaki, who had found nothing on the merchant ship, had already boarded Thriller Bark.
The sight that greeted him made him frown.
Dark green slime seeped from between the floorboards. Withered corpses dangled from the mast, swaying in the sea breeze like puppets on strings.
The ship's hull deliberately blocked out most of the light. With only the interior lanterns shining, your own shadow would twist on the walls into unfamiliar shapes. Sometimes a shadow would have one extra arm. Sometimes it would be missing an eye.
The only sound in the silent corridors was that of chains dragging slowly and rhythmically across the floor.
"Flashy and pointless."
Aramaki snorted. Massive wooden trunks sprouted from his body, bursting through the cabin around him.
Two tree spikes thick enough that it would take two men to wrap their arms around them shot forward like javelins, straight toward Gecko Moria's position.
Moria, who had been fiddling with a freshly captured small time pirate, finally snapped back to awareness and dodged in a panic.
He was not yet the bloated land whale he would become in the future. A probing strike like this was not going to hurt him.
He had just raised his head in angry shock when Aramaki's figure appeared right in front of him.
At three meters tall, Aramaki looked like a child in front of the nearly seven meter tall Moria.
But their auras were completely reversed. Aramaki chuckled softly.
"So you are Moria. The trash out on the sea really is useless if someone like you can be called a great pirate."
"You… you nobody. I do not know where you crawled out from, but scum like you does not get to judge me."
Moria's emotions had already been unstable for a while. Hearing that, he flew into a rage. He spit out a threat and attacked without hesitation.
"Shadow Asgard Spear."
His strike slammed into where Aramaki had just been standing, but Aramaki was already gone.
"Where are you looking?"
Two voices rang out at the same time.
Moria whirled around in terror. Aramaki was already above him, one hand pressed onto that onion shaped head.
When Garp used this move even Kuzan could not react in time, let alone Moria in his current state.
Aramaki drove Moria's head hard into the floor, smashing a deep crater into the deck.
"Garbage like you should find some deserted corner and wait quietly to die."
Aramaki stepped onto Moria's back and nudged that dizzy onion head with his foot.
"Where are the Devil Fruits you collected hidden?"
"Who… who are you people? How could someone as strong as you exist on the sea without any fame at all?"
Moria felt incredibly aggrieved. He had been flattened before he could even use half his strength.
Hearing his counter question, Aramaki's thick brows knitted together. He slammed a kick down on Moria's head.
"Right now I am the one asking questions. Where are the Devil Fruits you collected?"
That kick left Moria dazed for quite a while before he finally came back to his senses, only to immediately start roaring and ranting again, leaving Aramaki completely exasperated.
This was exactly why Blake had no interest in recruiting these so called great pirates.
Most of the time they acted like they could not even understand human speech, ready to fight to the death for all sorts of bizarre reasons.
What they valued most were abstract and hazy ideals that Blake could not grant them.
What they valued least was their own lives, so there was no way to threaten them.
With no other choice, Aramaki had to resort to what Blake jokingly called the Great Memory Recovery Technique.
After a round of very physical persuasion, he finally dug up two Devil Fruits from a hidden compartment in the ship. Without a moment of hesitation, Aramaki turned and left, leaving behind a swollen and bruised Moria lying on the floor.
Having teased Perona for a while, Blake was in a great mood as he stepped out of the cabin, only to see Aramaki flying back from afar using Moonwalk.
He landed on the deck, holding two boxes in his arms.
"Your Highness. This subordinate discovered two Devil Fruits on Moria's island ship."
He stepped forward and presented the boxes to Blake, opening them one by one.
Blake glanced down and saw two very familiar fruits.
Paramecia type Hollow-Hollow Fruit.
Paramecia type Clear-Clear Fruit.
They were precisely the fruits that belonged to Perona and Absalom in the original story.