One Piece: Rise - Romance Dawn 3

As it turned out, Carina, much like yourself, wasn't especially that talented when it came to crew positions. She like you knew a bit of everything to get by with, from navigating, to cooking and such. So she couldn't really fill any of those roles properly.

What she was though, was an exceptionally talented musician and singer. And as far as you were concerned, that was as good a role as any for her to have. There were a few singers on the Black Cat crew to help make things more enjoyable, but they sucked ass in comparison to Carina.

Especially when taken into account, in her own little ship that she'd been using to follow El Drago, she had a bunch of music instruments.

Much more pleasant to listen to.

The trip to Tequila Wolf would take a week in total. Which gave you plenty of time to get a read on the purple haired woman. You generally didn't like keeping your haki open twenty-four seven because of how draining it was, but you wanted an accurate read on her personality.

By the third morning though, you didn't need to. She was hesitant, and had brief flickers of intent about running away, was even quite scared to a degree, but there was a burning desire to see Graydle dead that crushed those thoughts and the hope that you could actually win.

You obviously could.

As such, by the third day you'd found a lovely pass time. Taking on the full form of a tiger and relaxing while listening to Carina sing.

And you had to admit. The ship you'd stolen, was pretty swanky. You'd claimed the captains room for yourself of course, and the massive bed frame was made of literal gold. All the furniture in every room, not just the captains was of really high quality. It seemed El Drago really was a fan of the finer things in life.

When you claimed your new room, you stashed the newly reincarnated Shout Shout Fruit in the chest at the bottom of the bed until you could decide on what to do with it.

It was an incredibly powerful fruit, and it showed how stupid El Drago actually was that he only got that far with it. Or well, it showed strong it was that it let that idiot get as far as he did.

"So this is Tequila Wolf huh?" you mused as the massive bridge came into sight. And you really did mean massive. It stretched on for miles on end, so far along you couldn't see the end even from far out, and the width of the bridge itself had to be at least four or five times that of your ship, which had a width of at least ten metres

As you approached it, you could sense the life force of thousands of people. Most of them were people full of despair and resignation. Very few stood out for being all that strong.

Even the marines who you could differentiate from the slaves due to their emotions didn't stand out much with their strength. They were all weaklings for the most part.

Two of them stood out noticeably. One, like that of a bonfire among candles, while the other even more powerful one was like that of a roaring inferno in comparison.

You supposed the strongest one was probably your target, and you had to admit, you were impressed. They didn't feel far off of your strength. You wondered idly who the second strongest one was though. You could feel the burning defiance within them even from thousands of feet away.

If you had to estimate, you would say they were stronger than Kuro by a decent margin. Which was saying something because you would give Kuro decent odds on taking down Arlong.

Well, you supposed you would find out. They were being kept within the immediate vicinity of the strongest aura.

"Yep, that's it." Carina nodded. Usually, the purple haired woman always had a smile on her face but right now, there was a cross between a grimace and a snarl in place of that bright smile of hers as she idly spun one of her weapons on her index finger, a bladed chakram.

Hmm. You preferred the smile.

"Alright, then let's get to it." you decided, crossing your arms from whee you sat on the golden throne on the deck. You could get a lot of money for this chair. But, you weren't going to sell it. You quite liked having a throne on your ship.

You weren't gonna get your old throne after all. Or well, your fathers since it'd never had the chance to be yours

"Just like that huh?" Carina smiled at the same words you spoke when you first agreed to this.

"It's not really something that needs thorough planning," you shrugged, "We'll go over, kick the crap out of the marines and then I'll kill this guy, then we'll set the slaves free and we're done."

"You make it sound so simple shishi." Carina laughed lightly.

"When you're strong, it simplifies a lot of things." you shrugged again. The difference showed exactly in how they both approached El Drago. She snuck in and avoided all the crew members. Where as, you just waltzed onto the ship and tore through them, no stealth or anything needed.

"I suppose it does." she shook her head.

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A chakram sliced through the air, burying in the forehead of a marine and as he fell Carina ran forward, jumping onto his corpse and tearing her weapon free before using his body as a platform to jump forward at another marine raising their rifle. The purple haired woman came down and spun, releasing her second chakram which sliced straight through the mans leg before he could fire, and as he cried in pain and stumbled, it left him defenseless against her when she fell the last of her drop and punched forward and down, burying her retrieved chakram in his throat.

"You're not bad." you complimented as you followed behind her, a marine corpse held aloft in your hand, your fingers wrapped around his crushed larynx.

If you had to estimate, you'd say she was around the level of one of the senior martial apprentices from back home. And she was really quite good with those chakram.

"I had a good teacher and a lot of practice." Carina replied, tearing her chakram free from the throat of the marine and letting his corpse fall limp and you felt the satisfaction in her. Like you, Carina it seemed, had a grudge against marines like these ones.

Which was understandable considering they kept her as a slave.

The voluptuous woman held her chakram up and pressed something on it and a moment later, the one that had bee tossed was magnetically dragged up into the air and back towards the one in her hand where she caught it easily with her free hand.

Quite the nifty little weapons.

"Looks like that's the last of them here." you said, taking a look around at the blood stained bridge with dozens of marine corpses. Instead of going head on, you'd decided to loop around and traveler down the completed parts of the bridge where there was nobody present. It let you dock the ship at a point where it wouldn't get barraged with cannon fire from the marine ships stationed at the active parts of the bridge.

You casually tossed the corpse in your hand over the railing of the bridge, down to the ocean below.

"Let's get moving then." Carina nodded at you.

You nodded back, and together, the pair of you made your way up the bridge running through the marines patrolling like hot knives through butter.

You could tell with your haki, that the Vice Admiral was none the wiser to your approach. There was no change in his emotions at all. Which told you, he most likely didn't have Observation Haki. Or if he did, it was at a very low level.

Which meant, since all Vice Admirals needed to know at least one Haki type, then he was most likely an Armament Haki user.

Which, excited you a lot. You'd never seen Armament Haki in use before, only heard tales of it from your father. And seeing an up close personal application of it, would be a good way for you to go about trying to learn some of it yourself.

Interestingly though. The second strongest aura, it was alert and anxious, they knew you were here. Unless they had some kind of Devil Fruit that broadened their awareness, then that most likely meant that they had Observation Haki themselves.

"So how should we do this?" Carina asked a you reached the point where the vast majority of people on the bridge were congregated, such as the two strongest auras, "Just like before? Going through the normal marines until we get to him?"

"Probably best not to," you mused as you the slaves in the middle of construction stopped to stare at the pair of you both, "You won't be wanting to get in the middle of this, so you should start evacuating the slaves around here to a safe distance, I'll punt him along the bridge and keep the fighting from them all."

Carina bit her lip, "Alright.." she agreed, nodding her head hesitantly, "Good luck."

You smirked, "It's appreciated, but trust me, I don't need luck," you assured her, "Just be ready to join me fully when I remove this guys head."

"I'll hold you to that shishi." she laughed lightly.

"As you should." you nodded, and continued on and then disappeared in a blur of speed with Soru, blitzing up the length of the bridge.

One hit was all it took to kill any of the marines. And for all intents and purposes, there weren't actually many of them, and each time you dropped one, you paused to let the slaves they were guarding know to head down towards Carina.

And before you knew it, you were approaching where the two strongest auras were located.

They were a bit away from the others, up the end of the bridge.

And you were quite surprised when you walked towards them and got an eyeful of both of them. Specifically, you were more interested in the weaker of the two for now.

It was, a beautiful voluptuous pink haired girl clad in nothing but a threadbare white robe that barely came down to her thighs. She had a massive thick chain wrapped around her neck, and two around her ankles and was heaving large and heavy cinder blocks towards the edge of the bridge.

She paused in place, a cinder block held over her shoulder and stared at you nervously, "It's you....the one I could sense." the pink haired beauty swallowed nervously.

It seemed like she was a slave. And under the purview of the man in charge himself. Your eyes strayed over to him, laying back in a reclining chair and relaxing. He was a very tall man with a thick white Vice Admiral coat hanging from his shoulders held together by a gleaming golden chain, while a gleaming golden mouth guard came up to his nose. Underneath it, he wore white uniform proudly displaying the marine cross element across his torso

"Who the hell are you?" Graydle demanded, eyes narrowing as he sat up from his relaxed position, the scar over his left eye stretching with his annoyance that you could clearly sense.