"Hmm, a News Coo. Morgans' information network is as sharp as ever."
Garp watched the seagull swoop down nearby, picking his nose as he muttered, "Never mind. That guy should know what to write and what to hide."
He snatched the camera hanging from the bird's neck, snapped a quick selfie, and tossed it back.
The Punk Hazard incident involved one of the Four Emperors, meaning certain information absolutely could not be leaked before the investigation concluded.
This selfie would temporarily serve as a cover-up, leaving Sengoku to handle the public opinion control.
Lying on the ground not far away, Cain paid no attention to Garp's antics, focusing entirely on Conqueror's Haki.
As the rarest of the three types of Haki, it could not be acquired through training.
It was purely an innate kingly quality, a spirit engraved right into a person's bones.
When he first arrived in this world, Cain never imagined he could wield such power.
In his previous life, he grew up in a peaceful country and was wrapped in stability from childhood, never experiencing the chaos of war.
He always assumed the fiery spirit of a conqueror was reserved for hardened warriors who had bathed in blood, not an ordinary person from an era of peace.
But he had forgotten that his deep-seated belief—that all people are equal and should coexist in peace—was incredibly rare in this chaotic world.
In an era where Celestial Dragons reigned supreme and commoners were reduced to slaves, his convictions were truly noble.
Following Garp on Marine missions, Cain witnessed scenes of brutal slaughter, ruined towns, and the desperate cries of orphaned infants.
The suffocating sense of powerlessness and the scent of death permeating the air made him want to quit more than once.
Yet the more cruelty he saw, the stronger his longing for a better era became, fueling his burning desire to change this broken world.
Without realizing it, that obsession had accumulated the willpower necessary to awaken his Conqueror's Haki.
A peaceful life was his pursuit, but changing the world was his ambition.
That was why Cain trained harder than anyone else in the Marines, yet acted like the laziest soldier in the room during his time off.
His only real problem was picking a side.
Choosing between the Marines and the pirates felt pointless to Cain, as the world was never simply black and white.
There were righteous individuals among the pirates and a lot of bastards hiding within the Marines.
To appease his grandfather after Ace set sail, he simply followed Garp to Marine Headquarters.
But he could not stay neutral forever.
One brother was a pirate, and his grandfather was the Hero of the Marines.
He often thought about the agony Garp must have felt during the Summit War, torn between duty and family.
To stop that tragedy, Cain urgently sought greater strength, making the artificial Azure Dragon Fruit his ultimate goal.
But Garp was always hovering around him.
To justify a solo trip to an uninhabited island, Cain had to comb through vast amounts of information about Vegapunk to build a reasonable excuse.
With the Summit War rapidly approaching, he had to be ready.
He could not let Ace get captured, nor could he allow the Marines to uncover his true plans.
With only a few months left before the timeline exploded, following the usual Marine approval procedures would have taken too long.
'It looks like I will have to go with that plan after all,' Cain thought. 'I will just have to let Grandpa down when the time comes. Well, I can talk it out with him when we get back.'
His eyes snapped open.
'Wait... get back?'
Cain froze, sitting up to turn toward Garp. "Grandpa, how are we getting back? You sent the warship away."
Garp blinked, stiffening before he picked his nose and offered an awkward grin.
"I was planning to make you swim back for training. But since you ate a Devil Fruit, you would just sink."
A dangerous spark lit up in Garp's eyes, and a massive grin spread across his face.
"Hey, Cain. You just gained a new ability. You should get familiar with flying, right?"
Cain swallowed hard.
'He totally forgot about the ship,' he groaned inwardly. 'And he already knew I was a Devil Fruit user when he sent them away!'
Cain didn't even need to ask what the old man was planning.
...
Minutes later, a massive pink dragon soared into the sky, clutching flame clouds to stay airborne.
To avoid being seen, Cain flew high above the cloud line.
Garp stood right on top of the dragon's head, cheering excitedly. "I always wanted to do this! That bastard Kaido never let me ride him! But now, I finally get to ride a dragon!"
Cain rolled his giant eyes.
'They really are family. He looks just like Luffy when he sees a robot. But I guess I'm basically a Monkey family now too. I even picked up the narcolepsy...'
Snore... snore...
Two giant snot bubbles inflated in the wind.
Mid-flight, both Garp and the giant pink dragon fell fast asleep.
They drifted for hours.
Since Cain was still unfamiliar with his new powers, the flame clouds faded while he slept.
Unsurprisingly, the giant dragon and the Marine Hero began plummeting towards the ocean!
Pop!
The snot bubble burst, and Cain jolted awake. "Oh crap! We're gonna die! Grandpa, wake up!"
He looked up, only to see Garp still standing on his head, snoring peacefully.
Cain panicked, kicking the air to use Moonwalk while still in his dragon form so he could summon new flame clouds.
'Using Moonwalk as a giant dragon feels ridiculous! And how do we land?!'
He looked down and realized they had drifted all the way to Marineford.
The Marine Headquarters base below appeared small, but it was growing larger by the second.
"How do we get down? Like this!" Garp was suddenly awake.
He laughed and jumped straight off Cain's head.
"Are you kidding me?!" Cain yelled, swallowing hard as he thought of Kaido jumping from sky islands.
'If Kaido can do it, So can i!'
He shifted back into his human form and went into a free-fall right after Garp.
For Garp, a drop from the clouds was routine.
Right before hitting the water, he punched the air to slow his fall, stepped down with Moonwalk and landed safely at the port.
Cain was not so lucky.
His landing trajectory happened to be the top floor of Marine Headquarters—specifically, Fleet Admiral Sengoku's office.
To make matters worse, he was falling headfirst and couldn't adjust his posture in time!
...
"Hmm, an enemy attack... from above."
Inside the office, Sengoku sensed the presence dropping from the sky, and his expression turned grave.
'An aerial assault on Marineford? Was it Shiki?'
With no time to evacuate anyone, Sengoku's aura flared.
He smashed right through his own roof and leaped into the air to intercept the threat.
Mid-air, Sengoku and Cain recognized each other.
Both of them panicked and tried to dodge, but worrying about destroying the headquarters below, they both adjusted in the exact same direction.
Their heads slammed together!
A sharp cracking sound echoed across all of Marineford, ringing as clearly as two giant steel bells crashing.
A second later, a furious roar shook the entire base.
"GARP—!!!"
Because Sengoku possessed the power of the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Buddha, his skin was tough enough to take the hit unharmed even without transforming.
The base was also saved, as the upward force of Sengoku's leap and Cain's falling momentum canceled each other out.
The only real casualty was Sengoku's office roof, which now had three massive holes in it.