Translator's Note:
This is a completely new edition of the translation. Every chapter has been retranslated from scratch, so the text will read differently from what you may remember. I'm publishing this new version starting today, and all previously posted chapters will be updated to the new edition over the coming period.
If you'd prefer to read the previous version, it's still available on my Patreon — both the old and new editions are free up to Chapter 206, with more free chapters being added daily.
All feedback, comments, and reviews are more than welcome — I genuinely appreciate hearing from readers.
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That day, Gild Tesoro was... unusually, terribly irritable.
Not just on stage but during his regular work as well, he was someone who never forgot to keep a smile on his face, always attentive to his staff. For him to be this openly displeased was something even the most senior staff members had rarely, if ever, witnessed.
Of course, those who knew Tesoro's character had no worry that he might take his frustrations out on them. But the fact that Tesoro had gotten into such a state was no trivial matter. It was only natural to feel anxious about what on earth could have happened.
The reason, of course, was that Sue had been lured into a trap set by bounty hunters or human traffickers through a job brokered by Gran Tesoro.
Fortunately, she'd apparently driven them off without much trouble. But knowing that he had nearly exposed Sue, the woman to whom he and Stella owed their very lives, to danger left him far from calm. As soon as he finished the work that needed wrapping up in the near term, he intended to launch a full-scale investigation and smoke out the culprits who had dared pull such an insolent stunt.
Still in that mood, Tesoro somehow managed to reach a stopping point with his work and headed back to his quarters for a break.
But what awaited him there was...
"Te... Tesoro..."
"...Stella...? What's wrong, did something happen?"
His most beloved woman, pale-faced, drenched in cold sweat, looking as though she might collapse at any moment.
No matter when, no matter what... even in times so painful she might have broken, even in times of sorrow... she never let her smile fade, carrying on with a heart stronger than his own. That was Stella. For her to be this shaken was no ordinary matter.
"Just now... I was in the middle of talking with Sue, and suddenly the Den Den Mushi cut out. Right at the end, I thought I heard something like an explosion... and then..." She swallowed hard. "Th-this..."
"...!?"
Stella held something out, her voice trembling. Resting in her small, quivering hands was something that made Tesoro's face go just as deathly pale as hers.
A single piece of paper. A fragment of the Vivre Card, the paper of life, that Sue had entrusted to them.
It had darkened as though singed by fire... and had shrunk to roughly half its original size.
***
"Didn't expect ye'd listen, but... seein' it in person just makes it all the more pitiful..."
"Hah... hah... hah...!"
I can't win.
There's no chance of winning.
"Hopeless" doesn't even begin to cover it. It's so far beyond hopeless it's almost funny. I thought I understood, but this is beyond anything I imagined.
Marine Admiral Akainu. Magma Human of the Magma-Magma Fruit. One of the Marine's greatest fighting forces, attacking with Magma that combines extreme heat and physical mass.
Needless to say, against a Paper Human like me... he's the worst possible opponent.
To put it bluntly... right now, I'm not even putting up a fight against him.
Akainu wound back a red-hot fist and thrust it toward me. I sensed it with Observation Haki and dodged wide, but...
"Hot...!!"
I hadn't been hit. Hadn't even been grazed. Yet searing pain tore through my body. I looked closely and saw thin wisps of smoke rising from my skin.
'Just getting near him does this? I can't even fight him in the first place! I mean, it's not like I didn't expect this, but come on!'
Paper apparently ignites at around 300 degrees. Magma, on the other hand, is close to 1,000 degrees or higher even when cooled near the surface. Underground, it's supposedly even hotter.
I'd read or seen that fact somewhere before, but now it was being shoved in my face as brutal reality.
And while I was busy thinking about that, here he came again.
"Ngh... Lion Paper War Cry!!"
I put distance between myself and Akainu as he swept at me with a hand of Magma, producing paper and reinforcing it with Haki. I launched it straight at his face, but it didn't even require him to block. The moment it got close, it burst into flames and burned away. Crumbled to soot without ever touching him, scattered by a casual sweep of his arm like he was brushing off an insect. Even with Haki, this was the result.
"Hellhound!!"
Again. So fast!? Right, he was traveling along the Magma on the ground surface. The same kind of high-speed movement Suzu once used, sliding along the Mud!
I barely managed to dodge, but he swung his arm the other way and swept at me again. No way to avoid this one! I poured every last bit of Haki into my blade (the umbrella part had long since burned away) and guarded. I caught the blow, but the next instant, both my arms caught fire.
"AAAAAAGH, HOT!!"
I threw myself back and rolled to extinguish the flames. Then I severed the burning sections of paper and repaired myself!
I managed to avoid becoming a human torch, but I couldn't come through completely unscathed.
My arms hurt like hell. Actually... the pain isn't fading!? The damage must have been that severe. Even repairing with my Powers couldn't fully erase it. This wasn't just "super effective." More like 40 times damage instead of four. Seriously.
At this rate, even gripping my sword was going to become impossible!
A clean hit meant instant death.
Blocking still meant the blow would punch through for massive damage.
Dodging still meant taking damage from the Shockwave of heat alone.
On top of that, even without doing anything, the surroundings were filling up with Magma scattered during the fight. One wrong step and I'd touch Magma and die. And even standing still, the ambient heat was basically terrain damage. The kind that slowly whittles your HP away. I could really use a cooling drink right about now.
What kind of unwinnable nightmare was this!?
"Scurryin' about like a rat... I'll give ye credit for dodgin' and stayin' alive, but... it's a sorry sight, 'Pirate Literary Master.' Ye know full well ye've got no chance of winnin'. Why keep up this pointless resistance?"
Akainu's eyes were filled with something like exasperation as he asked. Well, I couldn't exactly argue with the assessment, given the situation, but...
"Because it's obvious things will be awful for me if I get caught. Death row or Impel Down, I don't know which, but no thanks to either."
"Since when does a mere Pirate get to be choosy about how they die? This world ain't worth livin' in if it ain't righteous... Know that it was yer own past self, pickin' a fight with Justice, that was the fool...!"
I never picked a fight! You people... or rather, the Government was the one who forced the issue! More like you forced your way in... no, forced your way and took!
But I knew he wasn't the type to listen even if I said that.
Case in point, right now his arms were bubbling with Magma, swelling bigger and bigger. Isn't that a bit much!? Wait, hold on... that's the same thing he did at Marineford when he vaporized that massive block of ice...
"Resist if ye like, but... be prepared to lose an arm or a leg. If ye go ahead knowin' full well the matchup between my Powers and yers, I won't hear a single excuse...!! The Government won't complain as long as ye're still breathin'!"
Arms and legs would be the least of it! I'd straight-up die! My entire body would vaporize in an instant! And an attack of this scale would kill me even if I weren't a Paper Human... damn it!
I condensed a massive cloud of Paper Flakes and formed them into multiple Lion Paper Dances, enough to fill Akainu's entire field of vision. Just like before, they'd burn up the instant they got close, but that was fine.
What I needed was this single moment!
"Great Eruption!!"
...Okay, now!!
***
[Third-person perspective]
The enormous Magma fist that was unleashed vaporized the swarm of Paper Lions in an instant... and scored a direct hit on Sue beyond them. She tried to dodge, but the sheer size of the blast left her no escape. Her entire left side was blown away in an instant, and she burned and scattered like literal paper amid flames that swallowed even her death cry.
All that remained was a small amount of black soot, unrecognizable as what it had once been.
But watching the scene, Akainu frowned.
'...No. That didn't feel right. Even for a Paper Human, there was too little resistance. No defense, no Haki... something's off...'
"A fake... sneaky little tricks...!!"
As if converting his irritation directly into heat, Akainu's arms bubbled and swelled.
"Don't think ye can run from me... little girl...!!"
Even as he spoke, Akainu looked up at the sky.
***
[Sue's Perspective]
"Proxy Doll...!"
Well, that seemed to work, at least for the moment. A paper puppet made to look exactly like me, assembled by combining Shallow Lie, Origami, and several other abilities. A technique I'd designed for body-double use, similar to a certain 41-year-old's Black Knight.
But I doubted it actually fooled him. At best, it bought me a brief window to hide.
The conclusion was already obvious: my Powers had no chance against Akainu. My only option was to run, but whether I could actually escape even by flying was questionable. Paper Wings were slow to accelerate and their top speed was nothing to brag about either... they were paper, after all. Needs improvement.
The island was small enough to cross on foot, so no matter where I took off from, there was no way he'd miss it. And hiding spots were limited to begin with.
If he spotted me, I'd be shot down by volcanic bombs before I could fly out of range. His speed probably wasn't that extreme either, but his attack range was devastating, and my wings were paper. Even a careless shot passing nearby would be enough to set them ablaze and send me plummeting.
Another cruel reality staring me in the face.
"Running isn't going to work either... At the very least, I need to land one hit and create a situation where I won't be immediately pursued. Ha, and that's the problem, since my attacks don't even work on him..."
Once I understood that much... what I needed to do decided itself naturally. I used my precious few moments of concealment to take care of that.
Almost the very instant I finished, the sky above me suddenly grew blindingly bright... no, red.
I looked up with a start.
There, launched skyward, were countless volcanic bombs shaped like fists.
"Meteor Volcano!!"
AAAAAAAAGH! Seriously!?
That's absurd, you Magma Yakuza!!
***
[Third-person perspective]
As Sue had noted, this island was small. With Akainu's attack range, raining volcanic bombs across the entire island to carpet the whole area was child's play.
The island was engulfed in a rain of fire akin to a full-scale bombardment.
The bounty hunter-slash-human traffickers that Sue had defeated before Akainu arrived, or more precisely, the ones she had secretly maneuvered against as a stalling tactic until his arrival, were still on the island. Unconscious or unable to move, every last one of them was caught in the blast and reduced to cinders.
A sound from inside his coat caught Akainu's attention. He retrieved the Small Den Den Mushi stored there.
"What the hell are you doing, Sakazuki!?"
"Gion, what is it... I'm still in the middle of the operation."
"Your volcanic bombs nearly hit our warship, that's what! And do you even remember the mission parameters!? The Pirate Literary Master is to be captured alive... you're clearly shooting to kill here!"
"Better to kill than to let her escape. ...Though it seems that concern was unnecessary."
As Sakazuki spoke, his gaze was fixed on a figure taking flight through the billowing black smoke: Sue, with Paper Wings sprouted from her back. He immediately launched volcanic bombs at her. Sue dodged them with a nimble twist, but the Paper Wings ignited just from the proximity, flames racing across them and consuming Sue along with them.
But watching this, Akainu frowned again.
"Ye think the same trick'll work on me twice, little girl!?"
Even as the words left his mouth, he spun and swung an arm of Magma. Sue, who had been diving in from his blind spot and was almost upon him, deflected the backhand with her Haki-clad blade and rode the momentum to slash deep into Akainu's shoulder.
They passed each other and Sue leaped back to regain distance. Smoke was rising from her body, but unlike before, she hadn't actually caught fire.
As for the gash she'd inflicted, it sealed over with Magma almost immediately, but not completely. A very shallow wound, barely deep enough to draw blood, was unmistakably carved into Akainu's skin.
This surprised Akainu, but he didn't lose his composure.
He looked at Sue as she stood before him, peeling away the scorched sections of paper. No, he looked at the paper after she'd separated it. Though charred and reddened, it stubbornly refused to burn.
"...I see. Fireproof Paper. So ye did come with at least some countermeasure against Heat, then. Ye swallowed up a load of it and brought it to the surface as a shield."
"Ugh, figured out instantly... You sure know your stuff."
Paper made not from wood pulp but from stone and similar materials. Paper that doesn't burn. And apparently, the ability still recognized it as "paper," because Sue could absorb it. By stockpiling large amounts and pushing it to the surface of her body like armor, it served as protection against flame and Heat.
But...
"Paper's still paper... harder to burn don't mean it won't burn. If ye're smokin' without even bein' hit, ye can hardly claim ye've overcome that weakness. ...What surprised me more was that ye managed to wound me."
"Doesn't look like it did much, though..."
The wound that remained was visibly smaller than the gash she'd carved, so minor it would likely close within the day. But there was a difference between "possible" and "impossible." The gulf between one and zero was vast.
"I'd already heard from Bastille that ye use Haki, but... ye're definitely not someone I can afford to leave runnin' free...!"
"Getting such high praise from one of the Marine's Admirals... yeah, no, that doesn't make me happy at all. Also... mobilizing the Marine's top fighting force against one little girl? That's not very sporting. Are you that bored?"
"If a Vice Admiral can't stop ye, then an Admiral showin' up is only logical...! And whether ye're a little girl or an old codger, so long as ye're a Pirate, ye're Evil all the same... there's no point makin' distinctions!"
"...!"
The next instant, Akainu's arms swelled massively, Magma heat and light erupting forth.
The wave of heat reached where Sue stood, and she flinched from it, but she didn't release her sword. She raised her Haki and stood her ground without yielding a single step. ...Of course, if the opportunity to retreat presented itself, she fully intended to take it.
As if declaring even that defiance intolerable, Akainu's face twisted with fury. The ground beneath him glowed red-hot as he wound back his fist and took a great step forward...
...And then, several minutes later.
"Fleet Admiral Sengoku, I have a report. Transmission received from Admiral Akainu and Vice Admiral Gion. The operation target, the Pirate Literary Master, has been successfully captured. They will now escort the prisoner to Impel Down. Additionally, Admiral Akainu plans to contact you directly at a later time."
"I see... understood. Send the same message to Impel Down along with a request for prisoner intake. Also... this matter is classified. Take every precaution to ensure it doesn't leak. Move accordingly."
"Sir! I'll see to it immediately!"
To be continued...