"That was incredible! Karoo, you're amazing!" Vivi threw her arms around Karoo's neck, eyes wide with excitement as she took in the damage his psychokinesis had left behind. Karoo himself puffed up with pride.
"Not bad at all. Almost on par with Lily," Amon said with a nod, genuinely impressed. He hadn't expected a single Gene Pill to make such a dramatic difference, boosting Karoo's combat power to nearly twenty million in one go.
"Karoo, try the Petrification next!"
Psychokinesis was the most fundamental of attacks, the weakest move in the special-type repertoire. If he wanted a real read on Karoo's ceiling, he needed to see the other techniques in action.
"Quack, quack..."
Karoo gave a steady nod and fixed his gaze sharply on Bell and Igaram, who had been watching from the sidelines.
"Huh? What's going on?" The two observers suddenly found they couldn't move a muscle. Bell, who had activated his Devil Fruit ability, fared better, his speed just hampered a bit. But Igaram, the Royal Guard Captain, was not so fortunate. He was locked solid on the spot, frozen like a carved stone statue.
"This is fairly comparable to the Empress's Mero Mero ability," Amon remarked. Hancock's power could petrify anyone who met her gaze, and the Petrification technique worked on much the same principle. That said, Karoo still had a long way to go. Hancock could stone an entire crowd with a single glance, far more sweeping in its reach. Still, given that Karoo had only just taken the Gene Pill moments ago, the growth potential here was genuinely promising.
"Karoo, release it!"
The moment Amon called it off, the petrification lifted, and Igaram staggered back to life with a sharp gasp. Everyone exchanged glances, quietly marveling at what they had just witnessed.
"Now let's see what the next technique can do."
"Hydro Pump."
Hydro Pump was Karoo's most powerful technique, the strongest water-type move in the book, with a base power rating of 120. Amon was curious how high Karoo's bounty equivalent would read once this one landed. The rain was still falling steadily around them, and that should allow the move to fire at full strength.
"Karoo, use Hydro Pump! Aim it directly at me."
After a moment's thought, Amon stepped forward and offered himself as the target. There was simply no accurate way to gauge raw power without something to measure it against.
"Quack, quack, quack..."
"Master, the duck says it doesn't want to attack you," Lily translated. "It says the move is far too powerful, that even it can't fully control the output, and it's frightened of hurting you."
"Ha! Tell it not to worry and to let loose with everything it's got."
Amon's current strength was well beyond what a water cannon could put a dent in. Seeing Karoo hesitate out of concern for him actually drew a quiet, amused laugh.
"It says, in that case, please be careful."
"Tell it to relax and go full force."
"Quack, quack, quack!"
With Amon's repeated assurance, Karoo settled his nerves and began charging up. The bystanders scrambled back to a safe distance, none of them wanting to be caught in the crossfire.
As the water finished building, Karoo opened his bill wide. A massive pillar of water erupted skyward before bending and crashing toward Amon like a falling tower.
The column hadn't even reached him yet, and Amon already felt the sheer, oppressive force radiating off it.
"Now that's something."
It lived up to its reputation as a top-tier water-type move. The raw power was on a completely different level from the psychokinesis. In Amon's estimation, this was roughly in the same range as a serious blow from a Fishman Karate practitioner.
"Break."
The instant the torrent reached him, Amon raised one hand and cleaved straight through it. In front of every stunned pair of eyes, that terrifying pillar of water was split cleanly down the middle. The sword aura tore through it in an instant, and what remained scattered apart into cascading sheets, pouring down around them like an overturned barrel.
"Very good. That's about fifty million in combat power, I'd say."
It looked effortless, but the sword aura he had channeled into that single cut was absolutely no weaker than a full-force blow from a hundred-million bounty pirate. The fact that it only split the water rather than erasing it entirely spoke to just how much force the Hydro Pump was actually carrying.
"That's terrifying," Bell murmured, staring at the aftermath with wide eyes.
...
Far from where they stood, out beyond the shores of Alabasta, a Navy warship was cutting steadily through the waves toward the island.
Aboard it, a man lay sprawled out with a lazily, dressed in a yellow pinstripe suit with yellow-tinted glasses perched on his face. Amon would have recognized him in an instant. It was Kizaru, the very Admiral he had crossed paths with back in the East Blue.
After that encounter, Kizaru had gone into a period of secluded training. He had only emerged a few days ago, and Sengoku had wasted no time dispatching him straight to Alabasta.
"Honestly, Sengoku's really something," Kizaru muttered to himself in that slow, meandering tone of his. "It's just an escort job to the Reverie. Any Vice Admiral could handle something like this. Terribly dull."
He reached for the book he had picked up from Amon's Jar collection and settled back into it with a quiet sigh.
"This really is something else. Read it so many times and it still pulls me right in. Books like this don't come around often." He stared at the page for a long moment. "I'd very much like to get another one."
The thought brought Amon's words drifting back to him. According to Amon, his Jars held quite a few more titles of that particular kind, and the idea had been quietly nagging at Kizaru ever since. After finishing that book, every other piece of fiction he had picked up felt completely flat.
"Suppose I'll have to make a trip back to the East Blue once this assignment's wrapped up."
Kizaru had no idea that Amon had already made his way to the Grand Line. He still assumed Amon was somewhere out in the East Blue, and fully intended to stop by once this job was done.