It turned out that the ferocious gale from earlier had been stirred up entirely by this very figure!
This man was none other than the one El had been waiting for—the first of the Beasts Pirates' Three Disasters, King the Conflagration!
He retracted his jet‑black armor and wings, shifting back from his Ancient Zoan Dragon‑Dragon Fruit, Model: Pteranodon form into his human shape.
"At last, I have found you…"
King had already lost a great deal of time on this island searching for Caesar, but now he had finally tracked down this research facility.
Following the faint clues the scientist had left behind, intentionally or otherwise, it seemed almost certain that Caesar was hiding right here!
Capturing him would finally give King something to report back to his captain.
His mission was already proving trickier than expected.
Queen and Jack had been dispatched to Dressrosa with orders to fight a quick, decisive battle, seize several key officers of the Donquixote Family, and wring every last detail about the Artificial Devil Fruit industry from them.
After all, this was a complete production chain; even with Caesar in hand, rebuilding the entire operation from scratch would be far from easy.
Still, there was no denying that the scientist himself was the most critical piece of the puzzle.
The fact that Kaido had sent King personally spoke volumes of how seriously the captain took this task.
To King, Kaido's orders were absolute law. Long ago, Kaido had freed him from the chains of slavery under the Celestial Dragons—back when both were still young.
From that day forward, King had sworn to devote his entire life to this captain, and his immense strength had proven an invaluable asset to the Beasts Pirates.
Beneath Kaido, only the Three Disasters held true authority within the crew—and among them, King stood first.
Compared to Queen, the eccentric genius obsessed with designing twisted weapons of slaughter, and Jack, the hotheaded brute who charged blindly without thought, King was far more reliable, and thus far more trusted by Kaido.
What was more, King belonged to a race unto himself: he was the last surviving Lunarian, a fact that drew the keen interest of the World Government, the Marines, and even the Big Mom Pirates.
The Lunarians had been all but wiped out entirely at the Celestial Dragons' behest; if Kaido had not been imprisoned alongside him as a slave, King would have perished with his people, and the Lunarian line would have vanished forever.
The Marines had acted as the World Government's enforcers in that genocide.
The Big Mom Pirates, however—or more precisely, their captain, Charlotte Linlin—sought the Lunarians purely out of personal obsession.
Even Emperors had their strange quirks: Kaido constantly sought out ways to court death and "test his limits," Whitebeard stubbornly refused all medical treatment, and Linlin dreamed of gathering every race in the world within her nation of Totto Land.
As things stood, every single race on Earth could be found there—save for the Lunarians and the Giants.
Only King's own immense power kept him free; otherwise, the World Government and Big Mom would surely have seized him long ago.
Surrounded by enemies on all sides, the strongest of the Three Disasters rarely undertook missions at all—partly out of caution, and partly because most tasks were simply not worthy of his attention.
Now that his captain had commanded him to bring Caesar back, he would see it done perfectly.
As a flying pteranodon, he was uniquely suited to capture and transport targets; so confident was he in his might that he had not brought a single other officer with him.
Bringing others would only slow him down, or worse—if trouble arose, he would waste precious time rescuing them.
There were precious few in the New World who could threaten someone of his caliber.
He fully believed that even if a Marine Admiral appeared, he could vanish into the skies without breaking a sweat—a feat owed less to raw power alone, and more to his unique Devil Fruit and natural gifts.
The Lunarians were instantly recognizable by two traits: their great black wings, and the flames that burned perpetually along their backs.
It was this very conspicuousness that had made them so hard to hide, and ultimately sealed their fate.
For all their wings, however, Lunarians could not fly on them alone; to soar, King had to assume his Devil Fruit form as a giant pteranodon.
Those black wings were largely ornamental—but the flames were very real, and very useful: every Lunarian could wield fire at will.
Ancient Zoan users were prized for their boosted physical strength and terrifying resilience, though their Awakening was far harder to achieve, and granted even greater regenerative power.
Even so, they remained bound by the limits of the Zoan class—stronger than common Zoans, but lacking the extra elemental or mystical abilities of the rarer Mythical Zoans.
Mythical Zoans combined the physical traits of an animal with powers that bordered on Logia or Paramecie—making them the most coveted of all Devil Fruits, for scarcity truly bred superiority.
Though King possessed only what was considered a "standard" Ancient Zoan, his Lunarian heritage gave him unparalleled mastery over fire.
In effect, his Ancient Zoan abilities were enhanced by innate pyrokinesis—bringing him nearly on par with a Mythical Zoan user.
Take Marco, the First Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, and eater of the Bird‑Bird Fruit, Mythical Type: Phoenix.
He could transform into a great bird of legend, and the blue flames that wreathed his form possessed miraculous healing properties—capable of fully restoring his own body without injury, and even soothing wounds in others.
That was why Marco had stayed aboard the Moby Dick: to tend to Whitebeard in his declining years, wracked by age and illness.
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