Chapter 256
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With Kaido down, three Emperors have been taken down by Amon. This news and realisation threw the world into a chaotic state once again.
Amon's bounty was updated likewise, though the Sins' weren't since the Marines didn't know the details of the battle in Wano. Amon's bounty now sat at a whopping 5,500,000,000 berries. In other words, only 64 million 800 thousand berries less than Gol D. Roger, the Pirate King.
The people that were taking the destruction of Skypiea as a sign to eat out Sky Emperor's territory, stopped immediately. The few stupidly brave ones didn't do so, but it took a single week for Amon to make an example out of all of them.
However...
"They just wouldn't put the numbers above Roger until I take down all the Emperors, tsk."
At the Marines' try to devalue him, Amon was amused if anything. That was a decent time-pass challenge. He didn't care about bounties as much as before, but he could truly care less 100% when he's at the top.
That fulfilled Amon's desire too. He was planning to let things go unhurriedly and hunt the Emperors only years later, but what Imu did… That was like a warning to Amon from the world itself, telling him that he couldn't play around until he truly was the Absolute one on this planet—at the very least.
Meaning, after he's done with the Emperors, it'd be Imu-sama's turn. Amon wouldn't train for a few decades before freeing Imu—unlike he had initially planned—instead, he would kill that old voyeur as soon as possible.
So, he started looking for Shanks after calming down the pirates taking advantage of the destruction of his base.
It's been a month since then.
Yet there was no progress.
This planet was huge, bigger than Amon's previous world by a few folds. However, even with the satellites Amon had in the planet's orbit, even with his Godly Observation Haki that was further boosted by dozens of his clones, Amon couldn't locate Shanks at all.
Surprisingly, he couldn't locate Monkey D. Dragon as well, and so it clicked.
Rayleigh was dead, so the best teacher for Luffy would be either Dragon himself or Shanks if the red-headed Emperor had the time for it. The latter must be the case here since Shanks and Dragon—along with his entire Headquarters disappeared at the same time.
Dragon was rumoured for his spatial abilities amongst the stronger beings in this world, so Amon was pretty much sure he had either teleported his base underground in some part of the world, or he had gone into a separate dimension as a whole like the Door or Mirror dimension.
In either case—it meant Amon had no way to reach out to them until they decided to crawl out by themselves. Which was quite an annoying development since he just wanted to be done with Shanks.
'Should have killed him before…' Amon thought. 'Then again, I wasn't wasn't supposed to hunt the Emperors so early.'
Other than that, something a bit less annoying was happening around the world as well.
Nico Robin took a seat opposite the table with a poster-sized page in her hand as she stared at it while wearing glasses.
"You saw this? It's getting famous lately."
Amon nodded. "I did see it. It's quite funny, I'd say. They aren't even trying to hide the truth that they are basically trying to invite me there and kill me."
Robin nodded. "Yes. I don't see the smart in that thought, honestly. They are basically inviting you to their graves. I mean how do they plan to kill someone who can move at lightning speed?"
Amon shrugged his shoulders. "Oh well, they are people, and people are dumb."
Robin giggled. "Then you are calling me dumb too?" She shook her head softly. "Anyway, what are you going to do about it? The New Roger Pirates are the ones holding it, and they are calling it 'The Pirate Festival'. Thousands of pirates would gather there because of the Louge Pose to Laughtale. The New Roger Pirates are inviting you specifically as their 'VIP Guest', too. I am sure you know their motives more than my 'dumb' mind can understand. So, will you ignore it or still go?"
A glass of coffee teleported on Amon's hand, he took in a sip and then nodded. "Well, they are walking devil fruits. Along with the fact that the 'New' Roger Pirates have been a pain in the ass for a while, I don't see a reason not to go."
There should be dozens of devil fruits from those thousands of pirates. Some should be simply magnificent, such as Douglas Bullet's Clank-Clank Fruit, and the Worst Generation, Eustass Kid's Magnet-Magnet Fruit—which should theoretically complement his control over Electromagnetism.
'Speaking of Worst Generations, I am supposed to be considered one of them too because of the timeframe where I turned into a Pirate from Warlord.' Amon thought leisurely. 'Talk about funny.'
"Oh? I see." Robin nodded as she pushed her glasses back. "The festival is in seven days, so I suggest you be prepared."
"Okay, but…" Amon put his coffee down and leaned over to her face. "What's wrong with your eyes, darling? Are you having trouble with your sight? First time seeing you wear glasses."
Robin blinked. "O-hh, don't worry it's nothing." She said before sighing. "I… have been staying up late for a few weeks because of all the problems caused by Skypiea's destruction. Things weren't exactly smooth,you know. Guess my eyes are a bit strained from overworking."
"Oh." Amon put on a worried facade as he put his palm above her eyes, shoving the glasses upwards. "Why did you not tell me about it then? You do know I can heal it, right?"
Blazing white flame stirred up from Amon's palms as Robin smiled softly.
"You are a busy man now, I didn't think it'd be appropriate to disturb you with such a small matter."
Amon agreed to that one-hundred-percent.
Maintaining his worry, he drew back his hand. "Of course not, Robin. What do you mean 'small matter'? Your eyes are very important."
Amon's body vanished and then Robin's did so as well. Next, Amon appeared back on his chair with Robin on top of his lap, looking a bit surprised.
"Oh…" She blinked before a smile crept on her face. "Well, now I am fine, aren't I?" Then she leaned over to put her head on his chest. "If you are so worried, can I stay like this for 5 minutes? I am certain this would heal me more than your fruit did."
As her eyes were veiled by his chest, Amon's eyes turned a bit annoyed before he sighed in his mind, though he still nodded. "Of course, I am all for you."
Maybe creating dozens of mindless Robin clones would be more efficient... Then again, he liked this slight annoyance sometimes, it was at least distracting from fleeting boredom.
—★—
A week later, it was the time of The Pirate Festival.
Raki was humming to herself as the warm water from the shower fell on her face. She rubbed soap around her body, stopping to feel her breasts a few times, before continuing to move the soap around the body.
In simpler words, she was enjoying her time showering in the Palace of Alabasta. However, it didn't last long just as- Bzzt~ -Lightning crackled on the bathroom and the next instant she found herself being pulled by her arm in the sky, naked.
"What the—?!" Raki yelled out loud as the wind slapped on her face, wiping the soap-foam away. "W-what the fuck bro?! What are you doing?!"
The wind was repressing her voice and she sounded as if she was yelling from a far distance.
Hair wet slapped on her eyes and entered her mouth as her body whipped around while she could only see Amon's back.
"Bastard! Let me go!" She yelled. "Fuck you! Let me go-"
Her hand was freed the exact moment as her body simply started to drop down. Before she could fall too much though, her body enlarged and she turned into a massive Azure Dragon.
She looked almost like Kaido, except for some changes. The major one being she had two large wings on her back, large enough to cover a mansion. Next, she didn't have the scar of Oden, lacked a beard and also two horns. But she still had Kaido's scary face.
Her scary face rose up in the air as she glared at Amon.
"What the hell is wrong with you-"
Interrupting her, Amon teleported on her head, sitting casually with his hands grabbing her large horns.
"Shut your mouth and fly ahead." He said, as a rope made of white electricity wrapped around her jaw, stopping her from saying anything. "We are going to see the world burn!"
Raki groaned in her mouth incomprehensibly but a smack from Amon's fist got her rolling on the clouds before she started to crawl on the sky on her flame clouds.
—★—
Douglas Bullet was standing with his arms crossed as he looked down on the gathering of partying crowds, thousands of pirates, from the multi-story building in the middle of this island.
Buena Festa, captain of the Festival Pirates, was helping the Roger Pirates hold this festival. They were managing most of the stuff around while the Roger pirates sat still in wait for a certain someone to come.
The crowd below did not know who was going to come here, they were simply not notified of that news as they would surely run off just by the name of the man feared by almost every pirate.
Some might say, 'Why won't they flee after Amon comes?', and to answer that, Bullet could guarantee the tide would turn when all of the Roger pirates would jump at Amon at the same time.
After all, what is a single Emperor against the freakin Roger Pirates?
When the crowd would realise that, they'd turn their attention to the Sins, who Amon seemed to carry everywhere in his pockets. However, there were thousands of pirates here, those seven wouldn't last at all. They could use their Conqueror's Haki tactic here, but there were dozens of Conqueror's Haki users present in the crowd too, they'll match it.
In other words, this was a solid plan for Amon's inevitable death, his unavoidable fate that was sculpted on his forehead the moment Rayleigh died and he took Gaban hostage.
Bullet had left Roger Pirates only three years after joining. However, his relationship with them was deep. He didn't leave because he hated them, he simply left because he couldn't withstand Roger, the strongest man he knew, dying to a mere disease.
Later, when he was recently freed from the Impeldown Level-6 Prison, he wanted to meet some of his old comrades, especially Rayleigh who Bullet liked the most after Roger. Yet, this new brat Emperor who popped up out of nowhere, two of that kid's people had ganged up on the old and weakened Rayleigh and killed him brutally.
Bullet wanted Amon to die, along with the two, Yamato and Raki, who killed Rayleigh with their own hands. Especially Raki whose attack took Rayleigh's last breath.
Today was the day he would settle the score with the Einherjars.
Then, a hand fell on his shoulder. The hand of a young woman, looking to be in her 20s, clutched down on his shoulder as she muttered softly.
"I can sense a presence coming towards this island from the sky." She said in a soft voice that had an accent to it. "I am sure it's them."
A grin surfaced on Bullet's face at those words. This dark red-haired woman was the navigator of Roger Pirates, she was old and dying just months ago until that girl from Z's team had restored her to her prime.
She couldn't be wrong with that special Observation Haki of hers.
She continued. "They should be around 4 kilometres from here, and they are coming towards this place… fast. It would take around 2 minutes at most for them to reach here."
Bullet's grin enlarged as he nodded and then tapped on the earpiece on his right ear.
"Buena, tell your people to announce the 'game'. Reveal the Eternal Logpose and start the chaos. The Sky Emperor is here."
He only heard a shrewd chuckle from the other side as the call cut and a female's voice flooded the entire island from the speakers placed all around.
["Everyone~"] the voice spoke. ["The Roger Pirates have prepared a 'game' for you all to play~! They will throw the Log Pose to the ground and whoever catches it wins! The game starts in 10 seconds!"]
Bullet blurred the next words from his mind as his eyes focused on the sky instead. His Observation Haki was at the basic level, so he couldn't exactly sense their presence, but he could feel the danger stirring up in the clouds that were slowly darkening.
Seconds passed, and then minutes, and finally, as Bullet stood, now beside the other members of the Roger Pirates and the other few brave enough to join them—such as Catarina Devon, Avalo Pizzaro, Shiryu and some more from the level-6 of Impel Down who had joined them—something big and serpentine-shaped started to appear from the far sky.
The dark clouds had caught the attention of the people below too, but they were too busy trying to catch the fake Log Pose the Roger Pirates threw there. However, even they were alarmed as the sky suddenly crackled with unnatural purple lightning along with a distant shout.
"«THUNDER EMPEROR»"
Before the Roger Pirates could react, a huge bolt of purple lightning crashed into the spot where their gathering was standing as the whole building was devastated to the ground.
Every pirate's eyes widened as they stopped for a brief moment to look at the sky where a huge dragon coiled around with a lone Emperor of Sky sitting on its head with his right hand above his raised knee.
With muffled cries, the crowd simply started to run, uncaring of the Log Pose that was just lying on the ground.
—★—
Amongst the fleeing pirates, Eustass Kid's spirit was yelling danger as his eyes shook on his socket.
What the hell was this power?
He didn't know why, but he could for some reason feel a connection to Amon. As if Amon's mere existence was pulling his Devil Fruit powers towards him.
'Wait…' he realised. 'Lightning is highly magnetic.'
Shit. And here he was planning to take down the overrated Sky Emperor. Kid for some personal reasons couldn't watch the War of the Best, so he didn't believe the words printed in the newspaper nor the words spoken by even the kids around the world. They were clearly overevaluating Amon's strength.
But this…..
Via whatever connection his fruit had with Amon's, he could feel the seemingly nigh-infinite flow of energy within the Emperor's body.
He should run.
If he wants to live, he must run.
That was the logical thing to do.
It really was the logical thing to do…
'Then why…' Kid stared ahead. 'Why am I running at him?'
With a large grin on his red lips, Eustass Kid ran as metal from all around the island flew towards him to form a suit around his body.
"
With a yell, he rushed towards the man screaming danger.
Killer, his teammate, yelled at him to stop, but still followed suit nonetheless.
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Author's Note: New week, which is why I am once again asking for your financial support with some power stones 🤒