Then her foot slipped, and the scenery around her rapidly receded as she began a high-speed descent from ten thousand meters in the air.
“Aaaaaah!!!! Chloe! Why are you copying that rotten old man of mine?!”
Some unpleasant memories surfaced in Yamato’s mind. A few years ago… hadn’t Kaido thrown her out of the sky just like this?!
“Relax, relax. I promise it’ll be fun.”
Chloe did not remain among the clouds waving down at Yamato. Instead, she jumped as well, flying alongside Yamato as an escort.
“That backpack is a parachute. Just pull the cord once you reach the right altitude. Skydiving once in a while is pretty fun, isn’t it?”
“When you put it that way, I guess you have a point…”
After the initial panic passed, Yamato calmed down instead. Chloe was not Kaido, after all. Although their actions were similar, there was ultimately a difference between her and Kaido.
Yamato could not quite explain what that difference was, but her trauma regarding Kaido allowed her to selectively ignore that part.
At least Chloe had prepared a parachute for her and was right beside her…
“Wait! When did you prepare a parachute?”
Yamato suddenly realized that throughout their entire voyage, she had never seen Chloe take this thing out before.
Flying through the air was already rare in this world, and parachutes were used even less frequently.
“I made it from materials available on Skypiea. I tested it, and the materials are very sturdy. I heard opening the parachute too early makes it easy to drift off course.”
Yamato did not seem to take those words in. Still distrustful of Chloe’s homemade parachute, she immediately pulled the cord.
Bang!
The canopy opened, and a force traveled through the suspension lines into Yamato’s body, making her feel as though she had been yanked upward for a moment.
At the same time, Yamato noticed that quite a lot of cargo was also falling from above, bundled to parachutes and being airdropped. Amphitrite was controlling the direction in which they drifted.
“See? I told you it was sturdy enough.”
“Ahem. This is psychological trauma caused by that old man of mine, definitely not because I don’t trust you! How about we do it again? This actually seems pretty fun.”
Yamato’s happiness did not last long. Although there was nothing wrong with the parachute, Yamato had no skydiving experience whatsoever.
On top of that, she was not exactly the obedient type. During the descent, she accidentally tangled the suspension lines together, turning her skydive into another high-speed plunge.
“Looks like it’s still a little hard to use…”
“You were moving around too much! Still, this thing can only really serve as a toy. We need to have you learn a technique like Geppo, so you can at least remain airborne for a short time.”
Chloe was highly dissatisfied with Yamato’s “bad review.” As the safety officer who had escorted her throughout the entire descent, it was clearly user error and had absolutely nothing to do with the product’s quality.
In the end, the discussion extended to the areas in which Yamato needed to further strengthen learning.
For races and people capable of flight, Geppo was not particularly useful, but it was not completely useless either. Being able to push off the air could sometimes increase one’s short-distance movement speed.
The Geppo Chloe referred to did not specifically mean the Rokushiki technique Geppo, but rather techniques of that general kind that allowed one to remain airborne. Once someone reached a certain level of strength, they would usually possess some method of staying in the air.
Geppo simply had a more systematic training method and was the easiest one to teach.
“So, do you want Uncle Sebastian to teach you?”
“Of course I want Mr. Nereus! Back then, he said I needed to build my foundations first. After all these years, my foundations should be good enough now. It’s time for Mr. Nereus to teach me, right?!”
“Hmm… maybe. I’ll ask Dad when we get back. But you’d better not have any pleasant fantasies about Dad’s training. It’s not a gentle experience…”
The Nereus they saw in daily life and the Nereus who was in the middle of doing certain things were two completely different people.
The one thing that had remained unchanged about Yamato over the years was her resentment toward Kaido. But in terms of training intensity, Nereus was not much easier than Kaido. He was simply not as unreasonable.
“You don’t need to worry about that. I prepared myself for this years ago!”
“We’ll talk about it after we get back. If Dad thinks you’re qualified, then it’ll be time to begin. But judging by the usual procedure, he’ll probably have Alber assess you first.”
After Chloe and the others gathered up the cargo, they began their return journey. Since they had never gone ashore, they had not interacted with the pirates living in Mock Town.
…
The waves upon the sea never ceased, and neither did the slaughter between pirates.
This situation had persisted for a long time. It had not begun with the Great Pirate Era ushered in by Roger, nor with the era when Rocks sailed the seas. The tides had already begun to surge hundreds of years ago, when Joy Boy sailed as the first “pirate.”
The events in Alabasta had not become common knowledge, but certain interested parties had already learned about them.
Some time earlier, before Chloe and the others had even set out, the members of the Shichibukai had undergone another change.
Following Crocodile and Hawk Eyes, two more people had joined the Shichibukai: Gecko Moria and the King of Lizards, Hanafuda.
The reasons these two became Shichibukai were remarkably similar: they had fought Kaido and survived.
As Kaido grew increasingly powerful, these two men who had battled him also caught the World Government’s attention. Their reasons for joining the Shichibukai were different, however.
The World Government no longer cared whether they harbored ulterior motives. For the time being, it simply needed their strength.
Because of Crocodile’s previous battle, as well as the subsequent discussions with the World Government concerning the Lunarians, the World Government also held a small internal meeting with the Shichibukai.
The main point was that they should pay more attention to pirates and stop meddling in matters concerning Lunarians. The World Government had specialists responsible for handling such affairs.
Hawk Eyes and Moria did not care about such matters, but Hanafuda became interested. After all, the strange girl Crocodile had mentioned seemed to be the daughter Kaido had once said he had sent away.
Unlike Moria, whose companions had all died in battle, Hanafuda had instead been drawn in by Kaido’s charisma and had long since entered a cooperative relationship with him.
He had chosen to join the Shichibukai because he intended to use its channels to help Kaido collect more Zoan-type Devil Fruits.
Thus, he informed Kaido of the matter.
“Crocodile? Who’s that?”
“One of the Shichibukai?”
“What kind of skills could someone willing to become the government’s lapdog possibly have?”
Kaido himself held double standards. If a subordinate he valued lost, then the enemy had simply been too strong, and it did not matter.
If an ordinary collaborator lost, then they had simply been too weak and had no one else to blame.
Therefore, Kaido’s opinion of every Shichibukai other than Hanafuda was quite low. However, when he heard that Crocodile’s head had been wrapped in bandages at the time and bore wounds that appeared to have been left by a kanabo, he still burst into wild laughter on Onigashima…
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