"That technique of yours—does it have a time limit? If you want to beat a Yonko, what you've got won't be enough."
Half of Akainu's terror came from his Devil Fruit's horrifying power. And while three of the four Yonko were also Devil Fruit users, not a single one had his particular type of Logia.
Setting aside whether the destructive might of Whitebeard or Shanks could hurt Ymi at all, Kaido and Big Mom's defensive power alone was enough to stall her through those two and a half hours. After that, without Haki, they could stand still and let her swing—she still might not break the skin.
Battles between the strong could easily drag on for three days straight. It wasn't unheard of.
"You really do need to learn Haki." Rayleigh kept pressuring the cat.
Nearly half of the Sabaody Archipelago was temporarily uninhabitable now, and the Marines would probably be cracking down on the area for a while.
A shame, really. Rayleigh had rather enjoyed the easy life here—wandering into the casino like any other old man for a round or two, and when he lost all his money, simply selling himself to the slave auction, then slipping away at the first opportunity.
Ymi lay draped across the bow with a look of disdain, flicking her ears as she dipped her water gun into the sea to reload.
She maintained that if the water gun hadn't run dry, the fight wouldn't have dragged on nearly as long.
Rayleigh rowed the small boat, following Shakky's directions toward Amazon Lily. It was just a hand-rowed dinghy, and sure, the old man was well past his prime, but even without a boat at all he could've swum the whole way without breaking a sweat.
As for why Ymi hadn't left yet—her boat had been sacrificed to Akainu's first Meteor Volcano barrage. She could technically swim there herself, but once past Fish-Man Island she'd still have no ship.
She'd been rather fond of that little boat, too. There'd been a picture book for kids inside that she hadn't finished reading.
"Don't lean on the bow. If you fall in, it'll be trouble." Shakky grabbed Ymi by the collar and tugged her back.
"Mmph."
Beyond not wanting to waste time, Ymi was genuinely excited about visiting Fish-Man Island. She'd heard there were fish everywhere.
"Thinking about something tasty? You're drooling." Shakky wiped her mouth with a sleeve and scooped her onto her lap in one smooth motion.
"Here it comes..." Rayleigh suddenly set down the oars and waved toward the sky.
The News Coo that had been tormenting the little feline's cravings for ages fluttered down, dropped the latest edition in Rayleigh's hands, and collected its fee.
"Papers weren't this expensive back when we were sailing... Got any bounty posters? Give me one." Grumbling about inflation, Rayleigh flipped through the wanted posters first.
"Straw Hat Luffy. Bounty: twelve million Berry. Crimes: assaulting Marines, and engaging in armed conflict with the Arlong Pirates. (Arlong drowned under mysterious circumstances; Luffy never got the chance to defeat him.)"
"That straw hat..." Rayleigh narrowed his eyes.
Wasn't that the hat Roger gave to Shanks? So this was Shanks' protégé. Better not let me run into the kid.
He flipped through a few more—all unfamiliar faces.
Green Hat. Crime: attacking a Marine outpost. Bounty: 20 million Berry...
Red Monkey. Crime: being too ugly. Bounty: 9 million Berry...
"Here we go."
...
"Brat: Dracule Ymi. Bounty: 2.03 billion Berry?" Far off in the New World, Smoothie—dispatched under orders to sail to the Grand Line and forcibly claim the girl as a daughter—twitched at the number and scrambled for the newspaper.
The Marines would never issue an exorbitant bounty based solely on someone's identity. Take Smoothie herself: she was a Yonko's biological daughter and one of the Four Sweet Commanders, yet her bounty was only 930-odd million Berry. Even Katakuri, the strongest among the Sweet Commanders, barely topped one billion.
The photo showed Ymi standing in the center of a magma field after the battle, spear in hand. Someone had snapped it at some point; Rayleigh's silhouette was faintly visible in the background.
Dracule was Hawk-Eye Mihawk's surname. As for the given name, it wasn't hard to find out—Rayleigh had been dropping the kid off at Shakky's place to sleep every night after training, and Shakky was ostensibly a bar owner, even if business was middling at best.
Crimes: publicly murdering Celestial Dragons. Repelling Admirals Akainu and Aokiji head-on. Destroying half of Sabaody Archipelago. Leaving the scene afterward without a scratch.
Because someone had spotted Aokiji arriving on the scene, the assumption was that he'd fought too. Bounty posters were mostly edited and published through Morgans' press, so naturally there'd be his fingerprints all over them.
The World Government had no intention of admitting that the Celestial Dragons at Mary Geoise had been slaughtered down to a handful of survivors.
The question was: what tier did 2 billion Berry represent? The current Yonko averaged around 4 billion each, and that was after years of holding their positions.
Paired with Morgans' reporting, the bounty practically spelled it out: if this little girl had a pirate crew, she would be the next Emperor of the Sea.
"Utter nonsense. A little girl repelling a Marine Admiral?" Smoothie tore the paper to shreds. Last time, the same paper had claimed Hawk-Eye's daughter was hers and Hawk-Eye's lovechild.
"Yeah, Big Sis Smoothie, look—isn't that Dark King Rayleigh in the background? Clearly something big happened and the World Government is pinning it on a child..."
"Something big?" Smoothie looked down at her little brother.
Almost every key officer in the Big Mom Pirates was one of Charlotte Linlin's biological children.
"Two billion... Even Nico Robin from Ohara only had an 80 million Berry bounty."
The Buster Call during the Ohara Incident had targeted the island's scholars for extermination. The island had housed texts for studying the ancient script, and the World Government would not allow anyone to learn the truth of the Void Century.
Coincidentally, Robin had been only eight years old when Aokiji deliberately let her escape twenty years ago—and yet the gap between the two bounties was staggering.
"They're practically announcing that this girl knows the truth about the Void Century!" Her brother's bombshell made Smoothie's breath catch.
Knowing the Void Century was practically synonymous with knowing where the One Piece lay, on that final island. Which essentially meant getting this brat could make you the Pirate King?
No, no, no—a little kid? Impossible.
But the more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. What other crime could possibly warrant slapping a 2 billion bounty on a child?
And if that were true, why would the World Government concoct such a ridiculous cover story about repelling two Admirals? Claiming she'd stormed Mary Geoise and gunned down a bunch of Celestial Dragons would've been more believable than that.
As for how a child this young could know the truth of history—well, that wasn't hard to guess either. The kid had a guardian, and that guardian happened to be the World's Strongest Swordsman, Hawk-Eye... Hawk-Eye wanted to be the Pirate King!
————————
"My, my." Shakky lifted Ymi under the arms and swung her left and right. "Our little Ymi is going to be the Fifth Emperor."
"Fifth Emperor?" The cat was confused.
Rayleigh smiled. "An unofficial fifth who sits alongside the four Yonko. That makes the Fifth Emperor."
The little cat's ears twitched as she sorted it out in her head.
Oh no. The cat had become a Yonko!
Ymi glanced at her main quest—only one Yonko slot left to fill—and clenched her small fists, shaking her head furiously. Thinking she was bothered by the cigarette smell again, Shakky set her down and wondered whether she should finally quit smoking.
"Quite a lot happened in this edition."
Most of it, though, was a chain reaction tied to the little girl right in front of them.
The still-young Fleet Admiral Sengoku had stepped down. Vice Admiral Garp, who'd been nominated, refused the position. The current Fleet Admiral was now the former Admiral Aokiji.
Admiral Akainu had been sentenced to Impel Down for harming civilians (the real charge: complicity in the Celestial Dragon massacre), but he refused to accept the verdict and was currently on the run.
"According to my sources, after he escaped, he stormed off toward Mary Geoise." Shakky, ever the intelligence broker, supplemented Rayleigh's reading.
Hawk-Eye Mihawk had naturally been stripped of his Warlord title. Meanwhile, Fire Fist Ace—who'd been dispatched to the East Blue to hunt Blackbeard—had been captured. Apparently, while fleeing pursuit, he and his ship had accidentally fallen into one of the massive craters blown into the ocean by god-knows-who. When he finally shot back out, he'd had the spectacular luck of running straight into Admiral Kizaru, who'd come to investigate the scene.
As for Blackbeard himself, nobody knew what had happened to him. He'd vanished into thin air after his brief moment in the spotlight. Rayleigh had been meaning to keep tabs on the man—they'd crossed paths a few times—to see what he was scheming.
"Fire Fist Ace, huh..." Rayleigh studied the face on the bounty poster. The longer he looked, the more familiar it seemed. And kind of punchable.
Pat, pat.
Ymi reached up and tapped his newspaper.
"What is it?"
"Row." The little cat pressed the oar into his hand.
"..."