Seven days passed quickly—faster than time at sea, at any rate.
Yimi spread her five fingers. Faint arcs of something resembling electricity crackled across her hand, though it wasn't Armament Haki. It was an application of Conqueror's.
She'd been in this world for over a month now. She hadn't grown an inch, but her hair had gotten a bit longer—at least long enough that even with a baseball cap on, nobody would mistake her for a boy anymore.
"All done." Shakky leaned down, kissed Yimi on the cheek, and lifted her off her lap.
Shakky—owner of Shakky's Rip-off Bar, information broker on the side, former queen of Amazon Lily, former captain of the Kuja Pirates, and currently living in retirement with Rayleigh. In a certain sense, you could call her his other half.
Yimi scrambled away from her. This woman reeked of cigarettes. Enough to choke a cat to death.
The old man and the old woman—probably because they'd never had children of their own—had taken an instant liking to the ball of energy that had suddenly appeared in their home. Shakky didn't even want to give her back to Mihawk.
Yimi ran to the mirror Shakky had set out in advance and preened left and right. Two neat little braids now hung from the back of her head.
"So cute." Shakky smiled, eyes crinkling, and lit herself a cigarette. "That Mihawk really is a single dad through and through, huh."
She figured Mihawk had just cut Yimi's hair short for convenience—saved him the trouble of braiding it.
This past week, Yimi had trained with Rayleigh during the day and been left in Shakky's care at night. But Yimi thoroughly despised the cigarette smell on Shakky—she wouldn't even knead biscuits on her.
Whether it was because the kitten wasn't native to this world or because of her urgency to keep one of the Four Emperors from getting beaten to death in a street fight, her Conqueror's Haki was the only area that showed major progress over the week. Even so, in Rayleigh's estimation she was still the most gifted raw talent he'd ever encountered.
But during these days, Rayleigh was even more puzzled than she was. Training Haki was fastest through actual combat, obviously—but the little brat's bizarre ability, functioning as both active and passive defense simultaneously, excluded both attacks and any sense of danger. When drilling Observation Haki, she didn't so much as flinch.
One time, Rayleigh got genuinely frustrated and dialed up the intensity—only to find that even a serious strike couldn't budge that White Light in the slightest. He'd even swiped a lightweight Seastone handcuff set from the slave auction house, and it still couldn't suppress whatever this freakish ability was.
Somewhere far away, Spandam—that useless excuse for a commanding officer at Water 7—suffered a series of inexplicable compound fractures over the course of several days.
If this girl actually mastered Haki infusion, she might really become one of the Four Emperors when she grew up.
To say there'd been zero progress wasn't quite accurate either. Regarding Observation Haki: when her divinity was fully deployed, it already came with a degree of "precognition" as a built-in miracle—she didn't really need intensive training in that department.
Armament Haki had begun to show the faintest outlines of form, but perhaps because Yimi was still a physically undeveloped child, the power refused to condense to a single point. Its progress lagged far behind Conqueror's (which advanced every time she ate something).
What Yimi couldn't wrap her head around was this: Conqueror's Haki was essentially a controllable pressure field you projected outward. You couldn't sense through it and you couldn't hit anyone with it. Between her Stand—already a concrete manifestation of spiritual energy—and this Conqueror's Haki, what was the latter even for?
Rayleigh not teaching her Conqueror's Haki infusion made sense from his perspective—in the eyes of someone from this world, you had to learn to walk before you could run. Build the Armament foundation first, then unlock everything else in sequence.
What could seven days of training actually accomplish? Honestly, the fact that she'd gotten Conqueror's Haki under reliable control in that time already exceeded Rayleigh's expectations.
"Host need not doubt your own talent. The system only selects truly gifted individuals for binding," the system offered by way of encouragement.
"Are you really leaving today? Not going to say goodbye to Rayleigh first?"
"Nah." The kitten shook her head and trotted toward the door on her short legs.
"Is that really okay? Letting such a small child go off adventuring alone." Shakky lit another cigarette.
Rayleigh emerged from behind the bar counter, shaking his head ruefully. "She actually thought she could learn Haki in one week. But that strange Mythical Zoan ability of hers... there really might not be anyone on these seas who can hurt her. I've taught her the fundamentals—once she's older, she'll naturally develop proper Haki on her own. Who knows, maybe she's actually..."
Joy Boy?
A person from centuries ago who had left behind the Poneglyphs—stones recording the true history of the world.
Rayleigh sniffed the air. "Something smells delicious. Did you cook something?"
Shakky shook her head lightly. "Little Yimi came out of the kitchen just now. Maybe she left something behind?"
"Well then, I'd better see what we've got."
Rayleigh walked over and immediately spotted the bottle of liquor he'd secretly stashed away—his prized reserve, the one he couldn't bring himself to drink—lying on the floor with barely a mouthful left. His heart lurched.
...
There was one thing even Rayleigh had forgotten: when they'd first greeted each other, he'd warned her that Islands 1 through 29 weren't safe. And Yimi's little boat just happened to be moored in that vicinity.
This cluster of islands dealt primarily in illicit trade—including certain people's favorite pastime: human auctions.
Yes, right beneath the Holy Land, on the neighboring archipelago, sat all these lawless zones—and in a certain sense they even operated with official backing, because the rulers of this territory were the Celestial Dragons, divine descendants standing above even the government.
Nobody had bothered the little girl who'd dared to sail solo before, partly because Rayleigh had approached her the moment she docked, and partly because people had pegged her as a Warlord's daughter and weren't sure whether Mihawk was lurking nearby.
What were the odds of running into a Celestial Dragon out for a stroll here? Actually, not small at all.
"That's a..."
"Idiot! Get down on your knees, quick!"
How likely was it to encounter a Celestial Dragon on Sabaody? Quite likely, in fact—every time they ruined a slave, they came back to the auction house for a replacement.
He wore something resembling a spacesuit, a bubble helmet perched on his head—a declaration that he refused to breathe air polluted by commoners. His hair was styled in a grotesque garlic-bulb shape, and he wore the face of a man whose forebrain had failed to develop and whose hindbrain hadn't bothered trying.
And the Celestial Dragon's mode of transportation wasn't even some freshly tamed beast. The man crawling on the ground beneath Saint Charlos right now, serving as his mount, was the former captain of the very ship where Rayleigh had demonstrated Haki to Yimi.
"Hm?" Yimi looked around in confusion at all the people dropping to their knees, not understanding what they were doing. But she noticed someone coming down the middle of the road, so she politely stepped aside to make room.
"Whose kid is that? Why isn't she kneeling...?" Onlookers broke into a cold sweat for her.
"This commoner."
A Celestial Dragon raised in a bubble of total compliance naturally wouldn't tolerate such an affront. He pulled out a flintlock and fired at Yimi.
Now, the question: in a world with a population no smaller than Earth's—one that even included non-human species—what were the odds of misfortune being redirected onto the aggressor? Not zero, that much was certain.
"AAAGHHH!!"
Lucky for him, Celestial Dragons received zero combat training of any kind, so his aim was terrible. That was the only reason the bullet wound ended up in his thigh rather than somewhere more fatal, producing a shriek like a pig being slaughtered.
A rope of snot burst against the inside of his helmet. Having never experienced pain in his entire life, the Celestial Dragon couldn't begin to cope with this kind of indignity.
"Saint Charlos!"
"..."
Silence. The entire street went dead quiet, save for Saint Charlos's gut-wrenching screams—the kind that sounded like someone was being castrated. People didn't dare breathe too loudly.
Who the hell did that??
That was the collective, near-hysteria thought of every person present. Right now, the reason they couldn't stand up wasn't just the Celestial Dragon's presence. Their legs had simply given out.
Defying a Celestial Dragon was a capital offense—let alone injuring one. No matter how cute and innocent this girl looked, failing to kneel before a Celestial Dragon and getting shot was only natural. But injuring a Celestial Dragon? The consequence of that could very well be a Buster Call!
Some pirates who'd refused to kneel and ducked into alleyways instead had already sensed the coming disaster and were sprinting away.
"Whoever did this, step forward right now! Don't drag the rest of us into it—!"
The kitten stepped forward as requested. "You're really ugly."
The white outfit was ugly.
"..." Another wave of suffocating silence.
She... what did she say?
She just said out loud what everyone was too afraid to even think!
"You—who are you?!" The bodyguards, and even the slaves alongside them, scrambled to form a wall around Saint Charlos.
"You commoner... seize her! I'll make her wish she'd never been born!" More pig-slaughter screaming.
But Yimi had a good habit.
The Spear of Longinus leveled at Bubble-Man's head.