Cain shot upright from the futon, grabbed the nearest clothes, and started pulling them on as he rushed for the door.
"Damn it, damn it! I'm going to be late!"
He made it halfway down the stairs before abruptly stopping.
Something was wrong.
Someone was missing.
Where was Uta?
When Cain woke up, the space beside him had been empty. The bedding still carried the indentation where Uta had slept, but she herself was nowhere to be seen.
Cain spread his Observation Haki through the building and quickly picked up the sound of cheerful singing.
Following it along the corridor, he reached the bathhouse and slid open the wooden door.
Steam immediately rolled over him.
Uta was sitting on a small washing stool beside the hot spring, humming while rinsing herself beneath the shower. Water streamed down her shoulders and back, and Cain's gaze unconsciously followed it for half a second before he caught himself, his ears instantly turning red.
Uta glanced over and burst out laughing when she saw him standing rigidly in the doorway.
"What are you staring at? Come wash up."
She gestured toward the shower beside her.
"We were up ridiculously late last night. You smell."
"O-Oh."
Cain instinctively lifted one arm and sniffed his sleeve.
All right.
She had a point.
He stepped inside, removed his clothes beside the shower, and turned on the water. Warm water poured over him, and Cain had barely scrubbed himself twice before his sleepy brain finally started functioning properly.
He froze.
"Wait, this is not the important part!"
Cain spun toward Uta.
"We're about to be late for the war!"
"Relax. We still have time."
Uta continued calmly working through her hair and waved him off.
"Bella's already there. She can handle most situations until we arrive."
"But Bella's still a kid—"
"Cain, you really need to stop treating Bella like she'll stay a little child forever."
Uta set down her comb and stretched.
"Children grow up. You've been her father for this long and you still haven't figured that out?"
She glanced back at him.
"Besides, when we stopped the Beasts Pirates from interfering with Ace and Kaido's fight, I wasn't standing around doing nothing either."
"If I want to, I can make my singing reach every corner of Onigashima now."
Then she gave him a teasing wink.
"Although, to be fair, I still don't understand why you insist on personally fighting Kaido when I could probably solve most of this with a song."
"I want to see how strong I really am now."
Cain rinsed the soap from one arm.
"And fighting Shanks doesn't count. Neither of us can genuinely fight to the death."
His answer was perfectly reasonable.
His wandering eyes were considerably less so.
Uta noticed immediately.
With an unimpressed smile, she reached over and gave him a sharp, intimate warning that made Cain jolt upright.
"We spent the entire night fooling around and you're still this restless?"
Cain's voice immediately went strange.
"Uh…"
He desperately searched for a safer subject.
"Actually, wait. That's what I don't understand."
"After everything last night… how are you still standing like nothing happened?"
Uta answered with complete composure.
"If I'd done all of that with just one body, obviously I wouldn't be."
"That's why I made so many projections. Spreading everything between them made it much easier on me."
She smiled.
"Otherwise, I'd still be lying in bed beside you right now."
Cain's face became hot enough to fry an egg.
"…Right. Understood."
He hurriedly caught her wrist.
"But now is really not the time for this."
Uta finally released him, rinsed the soap from her hand, shut off the shower, and stood.
"All right, then hurry up."
She lightly patted Cain's back.
"You're about to fight one of the Four Emperors. Don't be late because you spent too long showering."
As she headed for the changing room, Uta suddenly looked back.
"Oh, right. I prepared new clothes for you."
"Make sure you wear them."
Cain blinked.
"…Huh?"
…
Meanwhile, the war on Onigashima had already begun.
Yamato and her forces had successfully crossed the inland sea and landed on the island.
Unlike the original assault in which Luffy's alliance infiltrated Onigashima from within, Yamato had no intention of hiding anything.
This was an open declaration of war.
Both armies gathered on the broad wasteland beneath Onigashima's skull dome, their formations spreading across the battlefield in dense ranks.
The Beasts Pirates occupied the higher ground.
Kaido, already transformed into his Azure Dragon form, circled above Onigashima, his enormous shadow covering much of the battlefield.
Directly beneath him stood the three All-Stars in a line—
King the Wildfire.
Queen the Plague.
And Jack the Drought.
Below them were the Flying Six—or rather, the Flying Five now.
X Drake had been reduced to a Headliner and was currently mixed into the formations with the rest of the officers.
Because his authority was no longer high enough to access Kaido's most sensitive information, Drake had only learned that very morning who Kaido's opponent actually was.
Cain.
The same man who had turned the Summit War upside down and now carried a bounty of 2.3 billion Berries.
Drake was desperately searching for any possible way to transmit the information to the Marines.
After all—
he had absolutely no idea that Cain himself possessed another identity within the Marines.
Behind the officers stood the Numbers, the failed Ancient Giant experiments, followed by enormous ranks of Gifters and ordinary Beasts Pirates.
Altogether, tens of thousands of men crowded around the base of the skull dome.
Compared with that army, the samurai Yamato had brought looked hopelessly outnumbered.
Exactly as Uta had said.
But they had Bella.
"Excuse me, mister. Could you move aside for a second?"
"Coming through! Bella needs to get past!"
Bella casually floated through the Beasts Pirates' formation at the very front of Yamato's army, politely weaving between enemies as though moving through a crowded marketplace.
As Kuzan's student and the wielder of the More-More Fruit, Bella had absolutely no difficulty dealing with an army of this size.
In overall combat ability, she was essentially a miniature Kuzan.
And when it came specifically to controlling cold, the multiplication granted by the More-More Fruit arguably made her even more outrageous than her teacher.
The only major area where she still lagged behind Kuzan was Haki.
A moment later—
an enormous wave of cold swept across the battlefield.
Thousands of Beasts Pirates froze where they stood.
"Thank you so much, Bella!"
Yamato grabbed the little cloud and rubbed her cool cheeks enthusiastically before turning toward the samurai behind her.
"Most of their army is already out of the fight!"
She raised her kanabo.
"Everyone else, follow me!"
High above, Kaido stared down at the field of frozen Beasts Pirates.
Then he looked at the small white ice cloud floating innocently over the battlefield.
One corner of his eye twitched.
Slowly, his dragon head turned toward King.
"What the hell is that cloud?"
His irritation was impossible to miss.
"Since when did one of Linlin's little Homies have that kind of strength?"
Kaido looked back down at Bella.
"She's running around bullying fodder by the thousands. What exactly has Cain been teaching these things?"
King remained silent.
He had absolutely no explanation.
Kaido's irritation found another target.
He turned toward Yamato below and unleashed a massive breath of fire.
"Bolo Breath!!"
Yamato didn't even bother dodging.
She drew in a breath and answered directly.
"Namuji Glacier Fang!!"
Flame and freezing energy collided above the battlefield.
The resulting explosion sent a violent shockwave outward, blowing away dozens of Beasts Pirates who hadn't managed to retreat in time.
If everything before this could still be called preliminary skirmishing—
the war had now officially begun.
Although Bella had frozen most of the ordinary Beasts Pirates, large numbers of Gifters remained mobile and collided with Yamato's samurai.
The formations shattered almost immediately after the first charge as warriors on both sides found their respective opponents.
Bella's strength was so absurd that several of the Numbers and the Flying Five were forced to focus on her together.
Their numerical advantage was blatantly unfair.
Bella didn't particularly care.
A hundredfold-enhanced wall of ice erupted across the battlefield, freezing several Numbers in place simultaneously before they could even properly surround her.
Izo remained behind the main line, coordinating the battlefield while providing long-range support.
Ashura Doji simply shouldered his sword and headed directly for Jack the Drought.
Above them, Yamato and Kaido were still locked in their clash, the remaining energy from Bolo Breath and Namuji Glacier Fang churning through the sky.
Then—
another overwhelming presence appeared.
A tremendous burst of Conqueror's Haki swept toward Onigashima from across the water and locked onto the battlefield.
Kaido's eyes immediately shifted toward it.
Yamato looked in the same direction.
On a mountain across the inland sea, a pink dragon rose into the sky.
Cain spiraled upward before accelerating toward Onigashima.
Uta sat securely between his dragon horns.
At last—
everyone had arrived.
Yamato withdrew her attention from Kaido and immediately charged toward the opponent she had chosen beforehand.
She had originally intended to fight King.
Unfortunately, her injured arm still hadn't fully recovered.
So instead—
she went after Queen.
The man might look round and ridiculous, but he was still one of Kaido's three All-Stars. Between his physical power and the countless weapons built into his modified body, underestimating him would be a serious mistake.
King, meanwhile—
was taken by Uta.
"I'll draw him away."
Uta watched the black-winged figure flying alongside Kaido and immediately switched into her combat gear.
Her jetpack appeared across her back, along with her massive golden sword.
Then she glanced toward Cain's dragon head.
"Cain, those black wings…"
"And the fire burning behind him."
"I wasn't imagining it before, was I?"
Cain nodded.
"No."
His dragon eyes settled on King.
"The power used to create the Seraphim…"
"…came from his Lunarian bloodline."