"Whew. You scared me. So it really does grow back."
Cain rubbed the back of his head and let out a long sigh of relief.
"For a second there, I thought getting stronger had somehow made me go bald too."
"That still doesn't mean you have to grow it this long. Trimming it is a pain."
Uta stood behind him with a pair of scissors, carefully cutting the hair that had exploded in length after Cain used Life Return to regrow what Garp had plucked out.
"Besides, you got off easy. Think about what you did to Shanks."
She snipped off another lock.
"His legs are still completely hairless."
Cain laughed awkwardly.
"Uh… I apologized back then. It wasn't like I burned off his leg hair on purpose."
"And he doesn't seem to care anymore. He never brought it up again."
"That's not true."
Uta kept cutting, though her voice now carried a hint of poorly concealed amusement.
"Shanks told me privately that when the real showdown comes, he's getting revenge for his leg hair."
"Huh?! Seriously?"
Cain immediately tried to turn around.
Uta laughed and pressed his head back into place.
"Hold still."
Then she gently rubbed his hair as if comforting him.
"He was actually pretty annoyed about it. He'd already entrusted me to you, which meant he'd lost one perfectly reasonable excuse to beat you up."
Cain stared ahead in disbelief.
"So the leg hair was never the point!"
"He just wants to hit me!"
"Well, you did steal his daughter."
Uta smiled.
"And burned off his leg hair."
"…Can we stop talking about his leg hair? We were discussing my hair."
Cain sighed in resignation and tried to drag the conversation back on track.
"Just make sure you give me a cool haircut."
"Okay. Leave it to me."
Uta tightened her grip on the scissors, still smiling.
…
At the same time, somewhere else in the New World—
"You called me all the way out here because you wanted me to maintain your sword…"
Dracule Mihawk, the World's Strongest Swordsman, stared at the grinning red-haired man in front of him.
"…so you could go beat up your future son-in-law?"
His disbelief was obvious.
Shanks scratched the back of his head.
"Well, watching Uta get proposed to nearly gave me a heart attack."
"That's why I called you over in a hurry."
"I figured we could spar a little so I could get my edge back, and while you were here, you could help me maintain Gryphon."
He grinned.
"I also heard you got your hands on some excellent wine—"
Mihawk's eyes narrowed.
"…maintenance oil."
Shanks corrected himself instantly.
"Excellent maintenance oil. Exactly what I need."
Then he sighed.
"Who knew it would take you this long to get here? If I'd known, I would've gone to find you instead."
Mihawk stared at him flatly.
"You were after my wine from the beginning, weren't you?"
Then he glanced away.
"And do you think traveling from Paradise to the New World in one jump is easy?"
"I'm a swordsman, not a helmsman."
"Even an actual helmsman couldn't sail a ship that quickly."
"Couldn't you just split the sea with your black blade and ride the waves across? That would be faster."
Shanks started talking animatedly.
"Like that time I once saw—"
He suddenly stopped.
His eyes shifted guiltily toward Mihawk's unmistakable coffin-shaped boat floating nearby.
Shanks had mocked the thing more than once, asking whether Mihawk seriously owned no other vessel.
But if Mihawk had really crossed that much distance in such a tiny boat, there was no way ordinary sailing could have gotten him here this quickly.
Which meant—
'Did this bastard actually paddle here with Yoru?'
Mihawk stared at Shanks' suspicious expression.
"Were you just insulting me in your head?"
Shanks immediately looked innocent.
Mihawk sighed.
"Forget it. Let me see Gryphon."
He accepted the sword and examined it carefully.
"You may be an accomplished swordsman yourself, but this blade…"
Shanks leaned forward expectantly.
"Well? Well?"
They had known each other for years and understood one another better than most, but Shanks had never actually heard Mihawk give Gryphon a serious evaluation.
"The sword itself is excellent."
Mihawk glanced up at the completely disheveled redhead standing in front of him.
"I've known that from the beginning."
Then he mercilessly added,
"I just sometimes feel that you don't deserve it."
Shanks' smile froze.
"Your strength isn't the issue."
Mihawk gave him another slow look.
"I'm talking about your appearance. You could at least make some effort to look presentable."
He paused.
"Your legs are nicely shaved, though."
The crew behind Shanks immediately erupted into laughter.
Shanks' face darkened.
He silently swore that when Cain finally arrived, the brat would pay for this insult twice over.
…
"Achoo!"
Cain rubbed his nose.
"Seriously, why does it feel like everyone's talking about me today?"
"With that many people thinking about you, I'm starting to get jealous."
Uta removed the cloth draped around his shoulders and brought over a mirror.
"All done. Take a look."
Cain studied his reflection.
His hair was now medium length, close to his previous style, though instead of the ends sticking dramatically upward, it fell much more naturally around his face.
A loose strand hung beside his right eye, partially covering the outer corner. Combined with Uta's own bangs, the two hairstyles almost mirrored one another.
Cain smiled.
"Yeah. It looks really good next to yours."
He looked at Uta through the mirror.
Their reflections stood side by side inside the same frame.
Cain reached back, pulled Uta closer, and adjusted them until both faces were centered together.
"Now we look even more like a couple."
"Of course we do."
Uta smiled proudly.
"I cut it that way on purpose."
After cleaning up the haircut supplies, Cain casually waved one hand.
A small whirlwind swept the loose hair from the floor and deposited it neatly into a trash bag.
Cain clapped his hands and shouted toward the bow.
"Now that the hair problem's dealt with—Bella!"
"It's time."
"Full speed!"
Uta immediately pointed forward with a grin.
"Merry, get ready! We're accelerating!"
"Destination—Elbaf, to the east!"
The moment she finished, Merry manifested aboard the ship through Uta's ability.
The little ship spirit raised her wooden mallet high above her head and shouted excitedly,
"Elbaf!"
Bella activated the More-More Fruit at the same moment.
The Going Merry accelerated violently.
Its bow lifted as the ship surged forward, and the incoming wind scattered everyone's laughter almost as quickly as they produced it.
Then the Merry shot straight out of Wano.
Which created one small problem.
Cain had spent so long getting his haircut that the ship had only just left Wano's harbor.
And Wano was built high above sea level.
Directly below it was an enormous waterfall dropping thousands of feet toward the ocean.
Which meant—
the excitement on everyone's faces transformed into horror at exactly the same moment.
Within a heartbeat, the Going Merry launched from the edge of Wano like an artillery shell, ship and passengers tracing a beautiful arc through open air.
Bella was still enthusiastically accelerating them.
Merry, however, had already begun trembling uncontrollably.
"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!"
"BELLA, STOP!"
Cain immediately summoned an enormous mass of Flame Clouds and wrapped them beneath the ship.
The clouds caught the Merry in midair, halting its fall before the entire vessel smashed into the sea below.
Cain sagged in relief.
"Whew…"
"We almost died before the journey even started."
…
The situation in Wano had finally settled.
Fleet Admiral Sakazuki, however, wasn't happy in the slightest.
Sengoku's latest report had been clear.
Kaido had been defeated.
The arrangement with Wano had been settled.
All relevant intelligence and documentation had been collected.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
There was only one problem Sakazuki could not understand.
The Admiral he had dispatched—
Aramaki—
was missing.
From the day he left Headquarters until now, there had been no report, no contact, and no trace of him whatsoever.
An Admiral had been sent to capture Kaido.
Yet he hadn't delivered the news of Kaido's defeat.
He hadn't filed the post-battle report.
He hadn't even appeared once during the entire operation.
Sakazuki stared at the signed deployment order sitting on his desk while the cigar between his teeth slowly bent under the pressure of his jaw.
"Find him."
His voice was low.
"Search every location between Headquarters and Wano."
"I want him found whether he's alive or dead."
His adjutant immediately acknowledged the order and left.
Once the room was empty, Sakazuki remained behind his desk and exhaled an irritated cloud of smoke.
A Marine Admiral had somehow vanished without a sound.
How was he supposed to accept that?
More importantly—
how the hell was he supposed to explain it to the World Government?
Sakazuki muttered bitterly to himself.
"There's no way that idiot got mistaken for a pirate and thrown into Impel Down again…"
The exact same misunderstanding shouldn't happen twice.
Then again…
This was Aramaki.
Sakazuki thought about it for a few seconds.
Suddenly, it didn't seem completely impossible.
So he contacted Impel Down.
The answer came back clearly.
No prisoner matching Aramaki's identity had arrived.
Of course, the reason was simple.
The prison transport carrying Aramaki was still somewhere out at sea.
Regardless, Sakazuki decided the matter needed to be kept completely hidden from the World Government for now.
After nearly two years as Fleet Admiral, he had long since grown sick of dealing with those old men.
If they didn't ask—
he wasn't volunteering anything.
…
At the same time, high above the world in Mary Geoise, another group was preparing to move.
They had rested long enough.
Now it was time.
Their destination—
Elbaf.
---------
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