Chapter 280: If I Summon My Dear Father Kaido, How Will You Respond?
That kick landed completely solid, with absolute, devastating force.
Unlike his previous careless blunders, even though his reawakened Observation Haki had perfectly detected the incoming danger, Crocodile had been entirely unable to dodge the attack.
Water had always been his absolute nemesis. Although moisture was incredibly scarce in the desert, when Yamato's ice was vaporized by Chloe's flames, the resulting dense cloud of water vapor was entirely weaponized by Chloe and blasted directly onto his body.
Violently launched through the air, Crocodile was completely unable to utilize his elemental intangibility to cushion the impact. He crashed heavily into the golden sand, remaining buried in the dune for quite some time without moving.
"Mom? We could have handled him! You stepped in too early!" Chloe complained, hovering in the air.
"Our objective here was not to get into a drawn-out brawl," Amphelite replied calmly, stepping out from the shadows of a nearby alley. "You two were making far too much noise. The local authorities in Nanohana have already noticed the commotion. Dragging this out any longer provides us no strategic benefit. It's time to leave."
Amphelite hadn't intervened because Crocodile had managed to scratch Chloe. A superficial flesh wound like that was entirely negligible in her eyes.
Lunarians possessed absolute biological supremacy; they never had to worry about trivial matters like wound infections or lethal toxins. Enduring minor injuries was a perfectly normal part of their combat growth.
Although Crocodile's behavior had been incredibly bizarre—somehow becoming significantly stronger and sharper after getting violently bashed in the skull a few times—this awakened version of Crocodile was exactly what Amphelite considered a "qualified sparring partner."
The previous version—a pathetic weakling who purely relied on Logia intangibility to bully rookies in the first half of the Grand Line—was utterly meaningless to fight. Once such fools entered the New World, the brutal cruelty of the sea would naturally teach them a fatal lesson anyway.
As for Crocodile himself, killing him right here would be incredibly easy for Amphelite, but it was politically meaningless. Assassinating one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea provided Fish-Man Island with absolutely zero tangible benefits.
The most likely outcome would simply be the World Government using the incident as a highly annoying pretext to endlessly harass Nereus at the diplomatic negotiation table.
This was merely a routine smuggling run to pick up Dance Powder and give the two kids some practical field experience. There was no need to cause unnecessary geopolitical trouble for Fish-Man Island.
Perhaps Crocodile himself had never realized that his title as a Warlord of the Sea didn't just grant him immunity from the Marines; it occasionally saved his life purely because apex monsters found the resulting diplomatic paperwork "too annoying" to deal with.
"There's no need to feel dissatisfied," Amphelite said gently, patting Chloe's head. "No matter how pathetic he looked, that man is still one of the Seven Warlords. He won't just mysteriously drop dead out here. Once you two grow a bit stronger, you can simply come back and beat him properly yourselves."
Amphelite effortlessly hoisted the heavy crates of Dance Powder, grabbed Yamato by the collar, and signaled Chloe to follow. Without casting a single backward glance at the crater where Crocodile remained buried, she led them away.
Of course, if Crocodile had possessed a death wish and attempted to pursue them, the outcome would have been entirely different.
But Crocodile made no attempt to give chase. He couldn't secure a quick victory against those two terrifying brats, and dealing with the unknown adult who had just effortlessly kicked him into the dirt would be infinitely more difficult. One careless mistake, and he would genuinely die here in the sand.
Crocodile wasn't the type of prideful idiot who would fight a completely unwinnable battle to the death purely for the sake of his ego. If he were, he wouldn't have survived his clash with Whitebeard; he would have simply been another nameless corpse crushed beneath the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
A tiny, flickering wisp of the Flames of Rebirth was gently placed over the shallow gash on Chloe's forearm. The wound, which had already stopped bleeding and begun to naturally knit itself back together, instantly vanished without a trace. Her skin was left flawlessly smooth, not a single scar remaining.
The Fish-Man crew was busy safely stowing the Dance Powder and various other exotic supplies below deck. The fragmented, island-based geography of the Grand Line naturally fostered highly localized economies. Because maritime travel was incredibly dangerous and inconvenient, neighboring nations often had absolutely zero trade relations.
A cheap, common commodity on one island could often be sold for an astronomical fortune on the next.
Chloe didn't dwell on the brief skirmish with Crocodile. She simply felt slightly frustrated that her Armament Haki wasn't dense enough yet. Without her flame burning, her baseline physical durability in "Speed Mode" was still somewhat lacking.
However, Yamato was sitting cross-legged at the bow of the ship, looking incredibly sullen and brooding over something.
This struck Chloe as highly illogical. In her mind, Yamato was a brainless, hyper-energetic optimist. Even when the topic of Kaido came up, Yamato usually just unleashed an endless, highly creative torrent of verbal abuse rather than sulking quietly in a corner.
(Of course, if Kaido were actually standing right in front of her, her reaction would be vastly different.)
"What's wrong with you?" Chloe asked, walking over.
"That attack... should have hit me," Yamato muttered gloomily.
"What are you talking about?"
"That sand-crocodile guy's venomous hook! He was clearly aiming straight for me! If you hadn't extinguished your flame to pull me out of the way, he never would have been able to scratch you!"
"You're brooding over that?" Chloe rolled her eyes. "My baseline defense is way higher than yours anyway! And considering his hook was dripping with lethal scorpion venom, me taking the hit for you was objectively the optimal tactical choice. Toxins don't affect me in the slightest.
"Uncle Wobbegong ran extensive antibody tests on me in the lab. Even the hyper-lethal neurotoxin of a Blue-Ringed Octopus Fish-Man is completely useless against my immune system.
"Besides, look! You can't even tell I was scratched!" Chloe proudly waved her flawlessly smooth arm in front of Yamato's face.
"But you still got hurt because of me..." Yamato said softly, her ears drooping guiltily.
"Aren't we friends?" Chloe crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. "If I were in trouble, would you just stand there and watch?"
Chloe rubbed her chin, staring intently at Yamato as if trying to dissect whatever bizarre, melodramatic thoughts were currently malfunctioning inside the older girl's head.
"Of course I wouldn't!" Yamato instantly bounded up from the deck, her tone fiercely absolute.
"Then there you go! Instead of wasting time brooding over this, we should just train harder. As long as we both get stronger, we won't ever be put in a situation like this again, right?"
Chloe grabbed Yamato's hand and dragged her toward the center of the deck, eagerly initiating a new sparring session. Yamato hesitated for a moment, looking as if she wanted to say something else, but ultimately swallowed her words.
The truth was, Yamato had been brooding over more than just the scratch. Even though Amphelite had told them they could come back and handle Crocodile themselves in the future, the fact that he had deliberately used her as bait to injure Chloe sat like a burning coal in Yamato's chest.
For a brief, dark moment, she had actually felt a terrifying, overwhelming urge to pick up a Den Den Mushi and call Kaido.
Although Kaido would forever remain a "violent bastard" and a "psychotic old man" in her heart, if she really thought about it... despite his highly unconventional methods, he did actually accommodate many of her demands. Case in point: he had personally brought her to her idol, Nereus.
If she called him, cried a little, and played the victim, the result would inevitably be Kaido flying into a catastrophic, drunken rage. He would absolutely use her "pathetic weakness" as an excuse to violently beat her up—but after beating her up, he would undeniably take a minor detour to absolutely annihilate Crocodile and his entire country off the face of the map.
Before Chloe had interrupted her, Yamato was seriously debating whether to execute this apocalyptic "Mutually Assured Destruction" tactic to summon Kaido.
Fortunately, Chloe had managed to completely dispel the notion. Compared to unleashing Kaido upon the world, grinding her own strength and beating Crocodile into the dirt with her own two hands sounded infinitely more satisfying.
Standing alone in Nanohana, Crocodile was entirely oblivious to the terrifying reality that his name had just been hovering precariously on the brink of being crossed out of the Book of Life and Death.
Currently, his head was tightly wrapped in a massive, ridiculous turban of medical bandages, with several layers tightly wound around his neck as well. He was gripping a Den Den Mushi, aggressively questioning his own sanity.
"What exactly is the meaning of this?!" Crocodile snarled into the receiver.
"Our meaning is precisely what we stated," the cold, bureaucratic voice of a World Government official replied. "Your intelligence is flawed. That individual is absolutely not a Lunarian. It is merely a coincidental physical resemblance. Do you have a problem with that?"
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