"Anyway! From this point on, the ship is completely yours!"
Garp gave Yasopp an utterly unreliable thumbs-up, half a donut still hanging from his mouth.
The moment he finished speaking, he launched himself high into the air, his iron fist wrapped in Haki as he charged straight toward Kaido's dragon head.
Seeing this, Yamato immediately relaxed.
'We've got this! This is the man who chased Roger all over the world! There's no way anything's happening to the grain now!'
Even Kyoshiro, who was cutting down Beasts Pirates foot soldiers below, faltered as he clearly felt the overwhelming pressure radiating from Garp.
'That presence! It's even greater than our lord's was back then…'
'No. They aren't even on the same level!'
Although Kyoshiro still deeply revered Kozuki Oden, the power Garp displayed forced him to admit that the Marine Hero was far stronger than his former lord had ever been.
His gaze shifted toward Yamato, and a thought rose in his mind.
'Could she also be one of the people foretold in Lady Toki's prophecy?'
'Wano may truly be saved.'
Kaido laughed furiously when he saw Garp approaching. Conqueror's Haki instantly wrapped around his horns as he prepared to meet the legendary iron fist with the hardest part of his body.
Even his dragon scales tensed in anticipation of the head-on collision.
But at the exact moment Garp's fist and Kaido's horns were about to meet, Yasopp began jumping frantically on the deck with his rifle in his arms.
"DON'T JUST DUMP THE SHIP ON ME!"
His voice cracked as he shouted,
"If you two clash this close to us, what happens if the shock wave destroys the grain?!"
"And most importantly—this is my first time in Wano too!"
Then he screamed the question that came straight from his soul.
"STOP THINKING ONLY ABOUT FIGHTING! YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO SAIL THE SHIP AWAY, BUT CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHERE THE FLOWER CAPITAL ACTUALLY IS?!"
"WHERE THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO STEER THIS THING?!"
"What?!"
Everyone's minds stopped working at once.
Garp's fist froze in midair.
Even the Conqueror's Haki wrapped around it scattered unevenly, while the donut dropped from his mouth.
Half the Haki surrounding Kaido's horns vanished, and he forgot to close his enormous jaws.
Below them, Yamato and King both forgot to attack each other, while Kyoshiro nearly cut down one of his own men.
During that collective tenth of a second of stunned silence, Kaido's open jaws reflexively snapped shut.
Chomp!
They closed directly around Garp, who was still suspended in the air and had yet to recover from the shock.
"H-he got eaten?!"
Yamato stared in utter disbelief.
She had been ready to witness the legendary power Garp had once used to chase Roger across the seas.
Instead, Kaido had swallowed him in a single bite.
She immediately began jumping in panic and screamed,
"Someone get up there and guide the ship!"
Of course, Garp had not truly been defeated so easily.
Just as Yasopp had warned, a direct collision here might damage the grain.
For now, he would let Kaido hold him in place while Yasopp moved the ship to safety.
Once they were far enough away, he could begin fighting properly.
…
Onigashima, Queen the Plague's laboratory.
"Hey, brat!"
Queen kicked the door open and brought out every virus sample he had developed. He glared at Koby, who was strapped to an operating table.
"I'm giving you a chance to leave this place!"
"You'd better treasure it. Whether you survive depends entirely on you! Hehehe!"
Koby had already been tortured beyond recognition.
The side effects of the SMILE Fruit prevented him from even crying.
Combined with prolonged malnutrition, he remained alive only because Queen repeatedly injected him with experimental viruses, unfinished vaccines, and barely enough nutritional fluid to keep his body functioning.
Koby had once naively believed that enduring one round of viral experiments after another until his body became numb meant he had grown stronger.
He had even imagined that he had developed immunity to every poison.
Queen had immediately crushed that fantasy.
There was no such thing as complete immunity.
The viruses had simply destroyed the nerves and senses throughout Koby's body until he could no longer feel the pain.
Naturally, Queen possessed plenty of methods to make him experience that hellish agony again.
High-frequency electric shocks, for instance, could precisely pierce his numbed nerves and force every tearing sensation back into his body.
Koby's life had become an endless cycle.
The viruses tortured him to the brink of death. An antidote with brutal side effects dragged him back just far enough to survive.
Then electric shocks forcibly awakened every deadened sense before plunging him into agony all over again.
For Queen, a specialist in modifying human bodies, controlling a brat like Koby required almost no effort.
By now, Koby's heart contained nothing but numbness and despair.
He no longer reacted to Queen's deranged rambling. He only wished to die as quickly as possible and escape the endless torment.
Queen had no intention of granting that wish.
He leaned over the operating table with a twisted grin.
"Hold on, brat! If you survive this round, I'll let you go back!"
"Oh, did I forget to tell you?"
"Your precious teacher Garp is in Wano right now! Maybe he came here specifically to save a coward like you!"
Koby's clouded pupils contracted sharply the moment he heard the words Garp and your teacher came to save you.
The desire to live, long since extinguished, caught fire inside his chest like dry grass struck by a spark.
What quality represented Koby better than anything else?
His cowardice.
Because he was timid, he felt fear. Because he felt fear, he desperately wanted to escape.
And now, the light of salvation was right before him.
His teacher had come!
The man Koby respected more than anyone in the world.
The legendary Marine Hero, Monkey D. Garp!
How could he possibly give up now?
Even though the cursed SMILE Fruit prevented him from expressing his emotions normally, overwhelming joy and excitement surged through his heart.
All his throat could produce was a stream of distorted, unnatural, uncontrollable laughter.
"Hahahahahahahahahaha!"
Seeing the will to survive reignite in Koby's eyes, Queen's fat face twisted into a satisfied grin.
This was exactly what he wanted.
Only a living test subject with an intense desire to survive could endure the ultimate plague virus he had recently developed.
Queen pulled open the instrument tray in front of Koby.
Scalpels and needles gleamed beneath the laboratory lights, lined up in perfect rows.
He then lifted several bubbling tubes of strangely colored viral fluid and waved them before Koby's face.
Under Koby's wide, terrified, helpless stare, Queen gripped a scalpel and sliced open his skin without hesitation.
"Mwahahaha! Third injection! Fourth injection… thirty-sixth injection!"
"Hold on, brat!"
"If you die now, you'll never see that beloved teacher of yours again!"
"Mwahahahahahahaha!"
Queen's crazed laughter intertwined with the twisted laughter forced from Koby by the SMILE Fruit's side effects.
The sounds echoed repeatedly through the cold, empty laboratory, sinister enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
Lying on the operating table, Koby could think only of Garp coming to rescue him.
He imagined finally escaping this hellish prison and returning to the familiar halls of Marine Headquarters.
What he could never have expected was that the man preparing to depart from Marine Headquarters would crush his hard-won hope completely, dragging him from that brief glimpse of light into an even deeper abyss of despair.
…
The New World, New Marine Headquarters, Fleet Admiral's office.
Sakazuki gripped the Den Den Mushi that had just been disconnected.
Magma-like fury nearly spilled from his eyes as he cursed at the empty office.
Sengoku, who was officially on vacation while secretly keeping watch over Caesar, had contacted him only moments earlier.
His entire message had consisted of one sentence:
"Garp ran off to Wano, and he's wandering around right under Kaido's nose."
Before Sakazuki could demand any details, Sengoku ended the call without giving him the slightest opportunity to vent his anger.
Only now did Sakazuki truly understand how much stress Sengoku had endured whenever Garp caused trouble every few days.
Without hesitating, he immediately initiated another encrypted call.
The man on the other end was currently undergoing a strength evaluation in the New World while eliminating pirates along the way.
He had been recruited through the World Military Draft, was the strongest candidate to assume the rank of Admiral, and was a devoted follower of Sakazuki's doctrine of Absolute Justice.
Aramaki.
The instant the connection opened, the Den Den Mushi adopted Aramaki's respectful expression.
Sakazuki wasted no time on greetings.
"Aramaki, abandon every task you're handling and proceed to Wano at full speed!"
"No matter what it takes, drag that old bastard Garp out of the country!"
Sakazuki could not allow Garp to escalate the conflict any further.
So he sent Aramaki—a man who possessed genuine Admiral-level strength—to represent the Marines and bring the situation under control.
At the same time, the mission would serve as another evaluation of whether Aramaki truly had what it took to become a Marine Admiral.
Sakazuki, meanwhile, still needed to find some way to explain this disaster to the World Government.
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