At that moment, Marco was flying toward Wano at full speed, his blue phoenix flames spread into a pair of enormous wings.
He had been uneasy about letting Garp escort the grain shipment from the beginning.
Still, Yasopp of the Red Hair Pirates was there to keep an eye on him, and Garp himself possessed legendary strength.
Surely the old man could not create too much of a disaster.
Then, just after Marco finished treating the companions left behind, he received a call from Ace.
As expected of that born troublemaker, Ace needed only one sentence to wake Marco up completely.
Memories of every member of the Monkey family and their long history of causing disasters flashed through his mind, and his heart immediately leaped into his throat.
If this incident caused another chaotic war between the Marines and pirates, they would be in serious trouble.
Worse still, no matter how many times he tried calling Yasopp or Yamato, neither answered.
An ominous feeling surged through him.
Just thinking about it gave Marco a headache.
"Old Man Garp! Please don't screw everything up!"
At that moment, another voice carried toward him.
"Some Marine Hero he is! All he does is create trouble when people can least afford it!"
Marco instinctively turned his head.
Not far away, a man with a strange, enormous flower growing from his back was flying through the air.
The man's brand-new Marine uniform stood out sharply against the ocean wind.
He was also frowning as he stared directly at the Whitebeard Pirates tattoo on Marco's chest.
"A pirate?"
"A Marine?"
"Did you just mention Garp?!" they both shouted at once.
A moment later, the two were fighting and chasing each other across the sky.
…
Meanwhile, the situation with Kaido was not quite as disastrous as Marco imagined.
From inside Kaido's mouth, Garp was relentlessly hammering his teeth.
A severe toothache could already ruin half a person's life.
And Garp was not simply punching at random. He was driving his iron fists directly into the branches of the trigeminal nerve beneath Kaido's gums.
The agony drilled straight into Kaido's skull, making every scale on his dragon body stand on end.
Whenever the pain became unbearable, Kaido tried to blast Garp out with Bolo Breath.
But Garp simply crawled down his throat and plunged into his stomach, where he proceeded to turn the entire organ upside down.
"Hah! You think that'll scare me?"
Kaido gathered a Bolo Breath inside his own body and used it to roast Garp from within. He trapped the flames in his throat, then forcibly swallowed the attack into his stomach.
A muffled explosion followed.
The Bolo Breath blasted straight out of his backside.
It was humiliating beyond words, but Kaido had no other choice.
Garp was simply too shameless.
Meanwhile, Yamato, who was still fighting King in midair, finally received a call from Yasopp and the samurai.
The ship had reached the Flower Capital safely.
She immediately shouted toward Garp inside Kaido's body,
"Everything's safe now! You don't have to keep fighting! Come out, Old Man Gar—uh, Grandpa!"
Remembering the two painful knocks Garp had given her earlier, Yamato instinctively corrected herself.
Hearing that, Garp immediately understood.
"Got it! I'm coming out now!"
The next instant, Kaido experienced a terror that sank straight into his bones.
Garp had taken an Internal Bolo Breath without suffering any apparent harm and genuinely intended to crawl out of Kaido's body.
That alone would have been bad enough.
But instead of returning through Kaido's mouth, he was trying to leave through the other end.
Terrified, Kaido hurriedly wrapped his long dragon body around his own lower abdomen and tied himself into a knot.
After violently writhing around, he finally forced Garp back toward his mouth.
Kaido's stomach churned like a raging sea.
Then he opened his jaws and vomited.
Garp was blasted out together with everything else and sent tumbling into Wano's cliffside waterfall.
The entire experience thoroughly disgusted him.
Holding his nose to avoid smelling whatever now covered his body, Garp failed to notice that he was falling and plunged headfirst into the water.
Kaido finally relaxed when the old man did not reappear.
Then the sensation returned.
Acidic liquid mixed with flames from his Bolo Breath began bubbling from his mouth.
While vomiting, flames continued bursting from his backside, creating what could only be described as the Great Vomiting Falls of Wano.
The stream landed directly on Yamato and King, who were still fighting below.
Both crashed onto the ice and immediately began retching, their vomiting echoing back and forth.
King wore a full-face mask, so the acidic filth covered him completely. Even his leather suit was soaked through.
He could only pull open the small section over his mouth and struggle to breathe while vomiting.
Yamato was in much better shape.
A layer of frozen Mirror Mountain armor covered her body. The moment Kaido's vomit touched it, the liquid froze solid and slid away without sticking to her.
She gagged several times, then pushed herself upright.
The instant she saw King's brief opening, she swung her kanabo at him.
King reacted quickly.
The flames on his back vanished, and he forced down his nausea as he retreated.
He immediately countered with his sword, shattering Yamato's Mirror Mountain armor.
His attack did not stop there.
The freezing blade continued straight toward her face, and Yamato swung her kanabo to meet it.
Just before the sword and club collided, Kaido's voice thundered from above.
"Enough, King. There's no longer any reason to continue fighting."
Kaido's enormous dragon body slowly coiled through the air.
He lowered his head and stared toward Wano's waterfall.
"Come with me. We're going to look for him."
The grain that had been delivered no longer mattered to Kaido.
The most important thing now was confirming Garp's location.
That old man absolutely could not be allowed to remain in Wano.
Kaido turned his head and finally looked back at Yamato, open contempt filling his deep voice.
"You think a few sacks of grain will make those fools support you, Yamato?"
"The human heart is a bottomless pit that can never be filled!"
"You'll never know whether trust or betrayal will strike you first!"
This was not the first time Kaido had said such things.
Ever since the Vodka Kingdom he had risked his life to protect sold him to the World Government as payment for the Heavenly Tribute, he had understood the rules of the world.
Kaido had never believed in the support of the weak.
If someone wished to survive without being trampled or sold away whenever others pleased, there was only one path.
Become stronger.
Only the strong deserved to possess anything.
The weak did not even have the right to choose how they died.
Nothing demonstrated that truth more clearly than war.
War was fair.
On a battlefield, status and birth meant nothing. Only strength determined a person's value and decided who remained standing at the end.
That was why Kaido looked down on everything Yamato was doing.
He could not understand his own "son."
Yamato had inherited his blood and possessed strength far beyond ordinary people.
With money, power, threats, or rewards, she could easily gather as many followers as she needed.
Kaido had even deliberately pushed another dragon into her camp, giving her a powerful ally and a symbol others could rally around.
Yet she insisted on giving away all her wealth, emptying her granaries, and saving fools who could not even control their own fate.
It was laughable.
Yamato did not argue with Kaido's declaration.
She simply tightened her grip on her kanabo and raised it high above her head.
She did not need to defend herself with words.
Through her actions and the path she had chosen, she would prove that everything this man believed was wrong.
Kaido merely snorted and looked away.
His massive dragon body swept through the air, dragging a roaring gale behind him as he plunged toward Wano's entrance waterfall.
King sheathed his sword and followed as a black blur.
They searched the entire area above and below the waterfall but found nothing.
The man who embodied the faith of countless Marines—the Marine Hero Garp—had vanished from the surrounding waters along with Kaido's vomit.
…
Meanwhile, on a beach in Kuri, Garp sat cross-legged in the sand.
He picked his nose while looking around in boredom.
Then he noticed a little girl with purple hair and shouted,
"Hey, kid! Where am I?"