"You lowly commoners, hurry up and—"
He never finished the sentence. Saint Rosward, father of Charlos, rolled his eyes back as a searing hole of blood burst open in his chest. The stench of scorched flesh filled the air as red cracks radiated outward from the wound, and his entire body crumbled apart in agony.
Misfortune Transfer—the ability to redirect one's own bad luck onto someone else. Under normal circumstances, something like "being scalded to death" that should have happened to Yimi would manifest on the target as a different but equally gruesome death, shaped by whatever environmental factors happened to be nearby.
For example, say there was a bear in the area, and the person in question was hidden well enough that it never would have found them. Well, now that the "misfortune" had been transferred over, tough luck.
When Yimi first arrived in the previous world, her Love Train had worked exactly this way. But as the Saint's Corpse gradually fused with her—perhaps because the cat was simply too good at attracting trouble—the transfer of "misfortune" no longer depended on the surrounding conditions at all, collapsing into a straightforward "suffer whatever should have happened to Yimi" with no conditions attached.
The targeting had even developed a degree of intent, though from Yimi's perspective it still felt random.
Were the Celestial Dragons noble? As founders of the World Government, they certainly qualified as World Nobles. But to the people they'd oppressed for centuries, they were nothing more than a pack of inhuman imbeciles—and yet everyone was too afraid of the World Government looming overhead to so much as raise a hand against them.
After several exchanges, no matter how focused Akainu was on the attacks coming from within the White Light, he couldn't help but glance toward where those attacks ultimately landed. He'd already noticed the truth: the barrier of light was continuously redirecting damage onto the Celestial Dragons.
His heart sank, but honestly? Part of him didn't want to stop. This was who he was. To eradicate evil, he would drag civilians and colleagues alike into the crossfire without a second thought. Better to kill a thousand by mistake than let one criminal slip through.
He even wondered if the brat called Charlos had been cursed by the little girl, and whether the Celestial Dragons all dying would break this misfortune transfer that couldn't even be overcome with Haki.
"Congratulations to the host for earning the achievement [Sorry for Not Entertaining Lady Yimi Enough]. Reward: 5% portal energy."
Loath as he was to admit it, even though attacks without Armament Haki couldn't deal real damage to his Logia body, the one being suppressed was still him.
Of course he wasn't foolish enough to fight without Armament Haki, and Yimi's slashes were purely brute force—they didn't inherently bypass defenses.
But what good was tanking her hits? Every single one of the brat's strikes came as though she had endless stamina, ultimate techniques tossed out like casual swings. Akainu's Armament Haki was no weaker than either of the other two Admirals, but his durability was nowhere near Kaido's level—that monster who could plummet from ten thousand meters and walk away without a scratch.
Besides, under normal circumstances, when two evenly matched attacks collided the force would dissipate outward for both sides. But Yimi didn't even consider that possibility. The slightest lapse in focus and he ended up like this—bisected at the waist, getting Buggy's fruit ability forced on him.
"That's enough, Akainu. It's chaos up there." Frost descended over the magma, cooling it. The cavalry had finally arrived.
A curly-haired man rode up on a bicycle. Judging by the direction he'd come from, he'd apparently pedaled straight across the ocean surface.
Admiral Aokiji. Real name: Kuzan. A Logia-type Ice-Ice Fruit user.
In truth, if speed were the priority—whether to eliminate the culprit or break up the fight—it would have made more sense to send the other Admiral, Kizaru, with his Glint-Glint Fruit. But that man was off investigating an Ancient Weapon that had appeared in some stretch of ocean a week ago. He hadn't turned up any results, though he'd apparently nabbed someone rather significant.
Aokiji looked down at his colleague. "Rough day... You still alive?"
Meanwhile, the girl across from him stood without so much as a scratch. The contrast was almost comical.
On his way here, Aokiji had spotted several slash marks carved into the ocean that showed no sign of healing. That kind of characteristic made it hard not to think of the mushroom cloud that had erupted over the sea two weeks ago. What, had an Ancient Weapon eaten a Human-Human Fruit and come out looking for a fight?
"Tell me to stop? What's that supposed to mean?" Akainu braced himself on both hands and twisted his torso to glare at Aokiji. "Evil stands right before us, and you—a fellow Admiral—instead of joining me against the enemy, you're telling me to let her go?"
You're telling ME to stop? Take a damn look at who's losing here!
Aokiji crouched down. "Say what you want, but you've already lost, haven't you?"
Glancing up, the little girl across from them seemed to have lost interest in fighting as well, lowering her weapon for the moment.
Then she opened her small mouth and pointed at Aokiji in shock. "Diego!"
Don't think the cat can't recognize your voice just because you changed your skin! You've been following her for three worlds in a row!
"..."
So much for losing interest—the hostility radiating toward the newcomer was palpable.
Aokiji lifted the sleep mask on his forehead. "The Celestial Dragons are dropping dead for no apparent reason, and it's gotten out of hand up there. The World Government has already forced Sengoku to step down as Fleet Admiral. The Five Elders are starting to suspect you're colluding with the enemy. Keep this up and you might be looking at prison time yourself."
"What did you just say?" Akainu's fury was written all over his face.
Who gave the order in the first place, and now who was threatening him with prison? Those Five Elders, those absolute—
In truth, the orders Kuzan had received even carried a subtext: assess whether Akainu had defected, and if necessary, place him under arrest.
After all, a single Celestial Dragon's death was a serious enough incident to warrant a Buster Call and an Admiral's deployment. Let alone a wholesale massacre at Mary Geoise.
As for arresting Akainu... Aokiji found himself rather looking forward to it.
He turned to look at Yimi, who had dispersed her White Light and still stood without a scratch, yet for some reason had her spear tip aimed squarely at him. Confusion flickered through his gaze once more.
Twenty years ago. The Ohara Incident. It had been him and Akainu then, too. A Buster Call, and another little girl about the same age as the one in front of him. Orders had been to leave no survivors, but he'd let that girl slip away in secret.
How similar it all was. The only difference was that the little girl standing before him now actually had the power to fight an Admiral head-on.
He didn't know the details, but anything involving Celestial Dragons was enough for him to piece together the general picture.
"If you didn't have that Logia fruit, you'd be dead right now." Another voice cut in, laced with exasperation and a hint of chagrin.
"Dark King Rayleigh..."
The old man walked forward with sword in hand, stepping onto the magma without so much as flinching, eyes closed as he tried his best to mask the turmoil inside.
On one hand, he hadn't realized the brat he'd been training for a week was this terrifying. On the other, before leaving, the little runt had taken the wine he'd hidden for three years and used it to stew a pot of rats—not even proper cooking ingredients, just big fat sewer rats.
"Is the new generation starting to frighten you, Marines?" Having delivered that line with suitable gravitas, Rayleigh turned to survey the slash marks extending all the way out to sea.
Forget the Marines—he was shaken too. If a Yonko had carved those, he wouldn't have batted an eye. But this was a tiny little girl who couldn't even make him flinch when he'd let her punch him last week.
A natural-born monster like Big Mom, then? At least, based on the past few days together, aside from her immature mind and mischievous streak, the kid didn't seem to be trending toward becoming a demon like Big Mom.
No, wait. She was still pretty evil.
Rayleigh looked down at the wine bottle in his hand. Only one sip left.
Yimi walked over to Rayleigh and grabbed onto his clothes.
Akainu: "Shut up. How are you not dead yet, you old geezer?"
"I think I can manage to outlive you." Rayleigh drained that last mouthful. "Fighting any longer won't end well for either of us. You've pretty much lost already, haven't you? How about we both take a step back before this gets out of hand?"
Shuffling his body around like a Geodude, Akainu glared at the pair—one old, one small. "So you two were in cahoots all along... Your bounty is never getting revoked, Rayleigh."
No, no, no—worry about yourself first, buddy.
Aokiji watched Akainu with an inscrutable expression.
With one last glance at the old man and the child, he attempted to use his ice powers to fuse Akainu's upper and lower halves back together. It failed. He settled for hauling both pieces away as they were.
He would face judgment when they got back.
The towering tree, now reduced to a charred husk, collapsed and blocked Rayleigh's view of their retreating figures. He looked down at Yimi instead. "Haki is important, isn't it?"
If you'd had Haki, you would've won already.
He glanced at the now-empty wine bottle, then at the long gashes scarring the earth, and with great reluctance suppressed his carefully rehearsed plan of "putting the little girl over his knee and giving her a good spanking."
"Alert: quest updated. Please check at your earliest convenience."
"Mew?"
Yimi rushed to check her main quest: Defeat the Three Admirals and the Fleet Admiral — 1/4
Because Akainu had withdrawn, the system compared both parties' conditions and ruled Yimi the victor.
The cat's heart was doused with cold water. Comparing both sides' strength, she arrived at a conclusion: the Admirals were way stronger than the Yonko. Better to go pick fights with the Yonko instead.
"The Admiral retreated... Why does Akainu look so beat up?" Pirates clinging to the wreckage of their ships had no time to mourn their own ruined voyages. They prayed the two Marines wouldn't notice them as they stared out at the hellscape that had once been Sabaody.
"Was it the old man who did that?"
"No..." One pirate with binoculars couldn't find his voice for a long time. "It was the little girl."