Check out advanced chapters on P@treon: [email protected]/CosmicKaminari
----------
"I want you to give us a tour of your country's royal palace!"
"Huh?"
"Nani!!!"
"What?!"
Even Vivi looked thrown off. The whole room stared at him.
This man had clearly come in knowing things he shouldn't know. And that was his demand?
"Um... Mr. Kaito, are you sure that's really all you want?"
Kaito smiled.
"That's it. What did you all think I was going to say?"
He let that sit for a second, then continued.
"Of course, since it's a deal, we have to bring something to the table too. So I'll solve your country's drought problem. That's my end. One chance, take it or leave it."
Vivi was on her feet before she'd decided to stand.
"You can actually solve the drought?"
"Mr. Kaito, you might not understand. Our drought isn't natural. It's because..."
"Dance Powder. Crocodile's been using it."
Vivi went still.
"You know about that too?"
"Just who are you?"
Sakuya stepped forward before Kaito could answer, her expression composed.
"This is one of the founders of the Jura-Tempest Federation. Regent Kaito-sama."
"Jura-Tempest Federation?"
Luffy turned to Nami. Nami shook her head.
"I've never heard of it," Vivi said carefully. "I apologize if that's rude."
"Not at all. We haven't been around long. But we're not far from here."
"Not far from here?!"
Vivi had assumed, if anything, that it was some small country in the Four Seas. Not somewhere neighboring Alabasta.
"That's right. So, Princess Vivi, do we have a deal? It's not a bad one for your side."
Kaito leaned back into the sofa.
"...May I ask why you want to help us?"
It was a fair question. A tour of the palace was nothing. He was offering far more than he was asking for.
"No particular reason. Let's just say you make a good impression."
Color rose in Vivi's face before she could stop it.
"You're joking."
"I'm not. But maybe it'll make more sense once you understand what we're actually doing here."
Kaito explained it plainly: the training voyage, the two hundred and thirty students on board, the Academy, the Security Force escort.
Nami's expression through all of this was one of deep suspicion.
"So there are over two hundred children here right now. For a school trip."
Kaito nodded.
The room went quiet.
None of them had imagined a country that would dispatch its Regent personally to chaperon a student field trip. Whatever their ruler was like, he must be something else entirely.
If Kaito had known what they were thinking, he would have told them: the great Queen is asleep in a room not far from where you're sitting.
"Any more questions?"
"One more." Vivi steadied herself. "Aren't you worried about Crocodile? He's one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea."
Kaito laughed, a genuine full laugh.
"Crocodile? He's not worth me lifting a finger."
Luffy, who had personally been beaten into the ground by Crocodile, stared at him.
"You really mean that? He's not someone to take lightly."
Kaito didn't answer with words.
He raised his right index finger.
The air in the room changed. An aura pressed down on everyone like a physical weight, vast and suffocating and absolute. Every member of the Straw Hats was pinned where they sat, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
"This... how..."
"He's unreal..."
"Even Hawkeye didn't feel like this..."
Then, from somewhere under all of it, a voice.
"I'm going to be the Pirate King. I can't be flattened by something like this. I can't become the Pirate King like this! Ah ah ah ah!!!"
A different aura exploded out of Luffy, raw and wild, crashing against the pressure like a wave against a cliff.
It didn't win. But it pushed.
Kaito lowered his finger.
The weight vanished. Everyone sagged at once, gasping.
"Well, well." Kaito looked at Luffy with something like genuine interest. "That was Conqueror's Haki awakening."
"Conqueror's Haki?"
Several blank faces looked back at him. Kaito pressed a hand to his forehead.
Right. They hadn't gotten there yet.
He explained it from the beginning. The three types of Haki: Conqueror's, Armament, Observation. What each one did, what it could and couldn't do, what it meant to develop them.
"So that's why I couldn't land a hit on Crocodile," Luffy said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the expression of someone who had just had a long-standing mystery resolved. "You need Armament Haki to touch a Logia user."
Zoro was still watching Kaito carefully.
"What you used just now, that was Conqueror's Haki, right? It was something else."
Kaito paused. Then he smiled.
"Actually... no. I don't use Haki."
"...Huh???"
The room looked at him.
He had just explained in detail how extraordinary the three types of Haki were. He had demonstrated something that had every one of them pinned to their seats. And now he was saying he didn't use Haki.
"Is that so strange?"
To be honest, Kaito had looked into Haki when he first arrived in this world. He'd found it interesting for about ten minutes. Then he'd moved on.
The three types of Haki were simply redundant for anyone from the Jura-Tempest Federation. Demon Lord's Aura made Conqueror's look like a candle next to a bonfire. Armament and Observation were useful enough concepts, but they couldn't hold a candle to magic power and skills like [Thought Acceleration]. Kaito himself practiced a different discipline entirely, dimensional attacks being one example.
In the end, he'd written up the three types of Haki as reference material and handed it to Shizue to turn into proper lesson plans.
"Haki or no Haki, it doesn't really change anything for me. Nobody's beating me either way."
Zoro stared at him in silence for a long moment.
'So this is what a real powerhouse looks like.'