"What do you think you're doing, commoner? Stop her, you worthless trash! I'll have her skin made into curtains! Kneel! Dad—AAGHHH—"
Celestial Dragons. Descendants of the nineteen kings who, eight hundred years ago, formed the World Government (out of the original twenty, one kingdom declined). They styled themselves "descendants of the creators" and enjoyed privileges that superseded the law itself.
On top of that, the World Government's member nations were required to pay periodic Heavenly Tribute to sustain them. Failure to pay carried severe consequences—so severe that nations would sooner push their own people into famine than miss a payment.
Never mind that the burly pirate currently serving as Saint Charlos's living seat cushion had once been a fearsome man—if one day a Celestial Dragon took a fancy to some nation's princess, he'd collar her neck on the spot right in front of her father and king, and odds were they'd swallow their rage in silence. The generations of unbroken superiority had so thoroughly separated these people from every other race and species that they truly would do such things on a public whim.
Why did no one dare resist? Because every Celestial Dragon had the authority to summon a Marine Admiral for protection. The consequences of injuring one were a discussion for later—what mattered right now was that the situation had long since gone past mere "injury."
A girl who looked like she should still be throwing tantrums at her parents was holding a spear built for a full-grown adult. One casual sweep lopped the bubble-helmeted head clean off. The bodyguards and slaves meant to protect him had been paralyzed by something resembling Conqueror's Haki—and after the head came off, she drove the spear's point down into the eye socket of the fat skull lying on the ground.
With that persistent source of shrieking silenced, the street became as quiet as if it were deserted.
A full six seconds of dead silence before someone produced the first scream.
"What have you done?!"
"I recognize her—that's Mihawk's daughter!"
"Mommy, aren't the Celestial Dragons gods? That girl just killed one." There was even an out-of-town child who, bewildered by this level of gore, voiced the question everyone was too afraid to ask.
"Run! We're all going to die!"
No matter how badly their knees were shaking, survival instinct alone was enough to make them crawl away from this place. Without question, this stretch of Sabaody would likely cease to exist within a day...
A Buster Call!
The World Government's most brutal directive. Ten warships, each individually powerful enough to repel Sea Kings, accompanied by five Vice Admirals. Every ship carrying over a thousand soldiers. An indiscriminate bombardment of the target island with zero regard for civilian casualties, continuing until nothing remained—and anyone attempting to flee the designated zone would be killed without mercy.
Considering how absurdly elevated the Celestial Dragons' status was in the World Government's eyes, and the need to make an example of what happened when someone raised a hand against them, they would press that forbidden switch without a moment's hesitation.
Yimi couldn't understand these people. Nobody had said a word when that ugly freak shot at her, but the moment the cat struck back and killed him, it was all "what have you done?!"
And calling him a god? The Spear of Longinus hadn't so much as twitched in response.
She checked her quest progress. No update. Only then did Yimi accept that not everyone in this world was one of the Four Emperors, and she continued walking toward her moored boat.
"You think you can just kill a Celestial Dragon and walk away?"
"So young, and already doing something like this! She's worse than that Nico Robin..."
Adjacent to the Holy Land of Mary Geoise, Sabaody's military presence rivaled a G-class Marine fortress. Word of what had just happened reached the garrison instantly.
It was also the location where an Admiral could arrive fastest.
The lead captain-rank officer pushed through the crowd, sweat pouring down his face as he stared at Yimi. "You killed a Celestial Dragon and mutilated his remains... Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you want Hawk-Eye stripped of his Warlord title?!"
Yimi resummoned the spear. "He shot. At me. First."
The people in this world were so strange.
While she was busy being swarmed by Marines, the real threat had already dispatched forces to seal off most of the escape routes from Sabaody.
Massive in build. A coat emblazoned with "JUSTICE" draped over his shoulders—the hallmark of a Marine Admiral. A Marine cap bearing the word "MARINE" on his head.
Admiral Akainu. Real name Sakazuki. A magma-man who'd eaten the Logia-type Mag-Mag Fruit—terrifying destructive power across a devastating radius from his ability alone.
He raised a compact Den Den Mushi, irritation and impatience plainly visible on his face. "Dealing with a girl who isn't even ten. This is really the assignment I got?"
No fearsome veteran pirates. Not even a moderately troublesome Devil Fruit rookie.
Any captain-rank officer could handle this. What he really wanted to do was tell them off—but he also knew that his appearance was the World Government's way of driving home the gravity of the situation. They'd even told him outright to unleash full-scale destructive force on the incident site.
If they'd only sent some captain-rank Marine—one who was perfectly sufficient to handle her—it would give the world the impression that "killing a Celestial Dragon only warrants an officer." And that was unacceptable.
He took a last drag on his cigar, then carefully stubbed it out.
He wasn't sure if it was a mid-life crisis sapping his focus, but last month he'd seemingly burned himself on a cigar butt.
Compared to the other two Admirals on his level—Aokiji and Kizaru—he happened to be exactly the right man for wholesale destruction. Because he was the type who, in the name of "justice," would eradicate "evil" along with any civilians or even comrades who got in the way—
"Meteor Volcano."
Arriving at the island where his target was located, Akainu thrust both fists skyward and fired magma bullets like a pair of cannons.
"Is that..." A Marine who'd seen his firepower before went pale on the spot.
"Run!"
The encirclement of the little girl dissolved as soldiers scrambled in every direction.
"Cowards," Akainu observed, cold and flat.
Letting a Celestial Dragon die on their watch was already dereliction of duty.
The magma rounds he'd launched punched through the cloud layer, rising until they vanished from sight.
The wait wasn't long. A few seconds later, a vast constellation of fist-shaped meteors blazed across the sky and rained down, engulfing every island in visual range and beyond. Even from a considerable distance, one could feel the oppressive heat radiating from above.
Yimi didn't dodge. She didn't try to intercept them in the air, either. She planted the spear butt-first on the ground, vaulted off the surface, and in a sweeping aerial repositioning closed the distance to Akainu directly. Downward thrust into Flying Roundslash!
In the same moment, the first twenty-odd islands—the lawless zone in its entirety—were swallowed by fire. The towering mangrove trees that formed the islands' foundations lasted barely three seconds before the magma bored clean through them top to bottom.
The magma on the ground showed no sign of cooling. Mere proximity was enough to cook a person alive—yet the little girl charging at him hadn't been disrupted in the slightest.
Catching the Flying Roundslash one-handed, Akainu narrowed his eyes and tried to use Observation Haki to penetrate the white glow stinging his vision.
Naturally, he couldn't see a thing. He shifted his attention to the spear he was blocking.
"Pathetic Haki."
It couldn't even hold its shape. Reminded him of a green recruit about to be shipped out to the New World. And yet this pitiful Haki was wrapped in a layer of Conqueror's.
Impressive talent for a kid this age, no question. But she was a stain representing "evil"—and stains had to be broken off at the trunk before the sapling could grow.
His left hand turned to magma. Searing heat traveled from the spearhead down to the butt. The shaft—already stained red by holy blood—took on a fresh sheen from the temperature. Heat that could bore clean through an island couldn't so much as warp this spear.
The weapon wasn't the only anomaly—so was this brat. He'd roughly figured it out: the White Light functioned as a damage barrier.
"Hellhound!"
A magma fist backed by formidable Armament Haki hammered toward what should have been the little girl's face inside the white glow. He didn't care how young the child in there was.
In this world, Haki alone was the one truly inviolable power.
But the punch missed.
No—it hadn't missed. It was more like the trajectory had been forcibly twisted to a different location. He caught a faint hint of where the White Light's deflection pointed, but Akainu's Observation Haki was fully focused on Yimi herself, trying to see through her.
The kitten gripped the Spear of Longinus with both hands and tugged. Her strength, of course, was nowhere near enough to wrench it free from Akainu's grip. Before he'd even arrived, several captain-rank Marines had been able to stalemate her through brute force alone—even though she was technically more skilled, the Insect Glaive techniques designed for fighting giant monsters were impossible to execute in this kind of close-quarters standoff. Another reminder that she was only doing chip damage.
She recalled the spear into storage space to break free and hopped back two steps on the magma surface. "You must be one of the Four Emperors, right?"
Call him one first, ask questions later.
"Well. That's the greatest insult I've received all year." That seemed to infuriate him further.
"Insult?" The kitten nodded in understanding.
Fair point. Comparing this guy who could put on a spectacle like that to those scrubs called the Four Emperors was pretty insulting.
Yimi resummoned the Spear of Longinus, and at the same time drew the Doom-shroom—currently snoring away in broad daylight on its card—from her deck. This time, she didn't bite it awake.
"What's that?" Akainu's Observation Haki flagged the mushroom as dangerous.
The Insect Glaive was arguably one of Monster Hunter's most extensively buffed weapons. Beyond the three commonly used buffs—red extract, white extract, orange extract—there was one more enhancement Yimi had barely ever used: Power/Spirit Charge.
It consumed a single projectile item to imbue the Kinsect with a "power" or "spirit" charge. In the real world, different objects produced different effects when used as the charge medium. Yimi had once tried a roadside pebble, and the result was a marginal increase in the duration her Stand manifested externally—utterly useless for Famine, whose uptime was already excellent.
But...
Yimi slotted the Doom-shroom into the spear shaft. As she spun the weapon, her Stand—substituting for the Kinsect—spiraled along the spear's arc, and in that instant, the refinement was complete.