Scars (continued)

The counter-rotating transparent prism vanished, and Ruidio appeared out of thin air, holding the empress's hand.

Hancock stumbled into his arms.

"If you do that, I won't be able to control myself," Ruidio said with a laugh. "You smell so nice, and you're so soft."

"..."

Hancock blushed, biting her moist red lips. Her thick eyelashes fluttered as she lowered her head and stepped out of his arms.

She turned toward her pet snake throne, which was covered in question marks, then suddenly stopped in her red high heels.

"Aren't you going to look?"

The empress looked back, her cheeks flushed. "My back..."

What's there to look at?

Ruidio followed her, casually drawing the pink curtains shut on either side.

"..."

Hancock took off her emperor's cloak and draped it over the head of her pet snake, Salome.

Her slender fingers gently undid the Patterned Gold Brooch, and the waist of her red top immediately loosened.

Boing! A pair of national treasures sprang out. Her red top with its flower-patterned sleeves slid down around her high heels.

Hancock folded her arms across herself and looked up, utterly bashful. When she saw Ruidio's reaction, her expression abruptly changed. "You don't like them?" she asked in disbelief.

Wait, aren't you falling in love a little too fast?

Ruidio steadied himself and said sincerely, "I love them to death. But—" He reached out and pointed—No, don't poke that! Seriously, what kind of grand succubus aura is this?—at Hancock's arm.

Hancock looked down and only then noticed that her arm was wounded and bloody.

"That God's Knight gave me this wound..."

She exclaimed in surprise, "Did something from the dream carry over into reality?"

"So it seems, for now."

Ruidio spoke to himself and didn't correct her about whether it had been a dream.

After the empress entered the spacetime mission, she had entered her "past self," and the wounds she sustained in that state had been transferred directly to her present body. No wonder she had still been able to use the Love-Love Fruit's powers after becoming her past self, who clearly hadn't eaten a Devil Fruit yet.

It seemed that even though the two bodies had merged, the young empress of the past was merely a vessel, an anchor point, while the real empress was the one in control.

A few minutes later, inside the tightly closed pink curtains, Ruidio fetched the Palace Wound Medicine the empress had mentioned, squeezed out a little, and gently applied it to the open wound on her arm. The empress let out a soft moan.

Does it hurt that much?

Ruidio suspected she had ulterior motives and wanted to see him make a fool of himself.

Hancock reached behind her neck and moved aside her waist-length black hair. On her smooth, straight back was a large brand, a scar that looked like the print of a fat beast's hoof.

Ruidio reached out and touched it, and Hancock shuddered all over.

"May I feel it?" he asked.

"..." Hancock lowered her head and nodded gently. She swept all her hair over her front, exposing herself completely to his gaze.

She felt his fingers touch and trace the scar of the Celestial Dragons' Hoof branded on her back. Then he pressed his whole palm against it and caressed it gently. Hancock couldn't help shedding tears.

"Can't it be removed?" Ruidio asked. "The color seems a little strange."

"They used a special dye. Its color has seeped into the deepest parts of my flesh..." Hancock said softly. As she spoke, her body began to tremble gently again.

Swish!

Ruidio shook out the emperor's cloak draped over the pet snake's head and put it around Hancock.

He plopped down beside her, put an arm around her shoulders, and gave her a little shake. "So, what do you think? I'm not too bad as a therapist, am I?" he said with a smile. "I won't charge you, either. Just teach me how to train in Haki."

Chapter 57: ?

[Chapter cover serial: Executive vice president Miss All Sunday 7: "The next one"]

[The mother and daughter came without a sound and left without a sound. Once again, they rode the giant turtle with the Cowboy Hat away across the sea.]

Hearing this, the empress smiled gently. "You didn't use Haki yesterday. So you don't know how?"

How did you become such a soft girl?

I still prefer you proud and unruly. Sorry for the trouble, but could you go back to that?

Ruidio smiled. "What, you don't want to teach me?"

"Of course I do." Hancock shook her head gently, took Ruidio's hand and laced her fingers through his, then leaned against his shoulder, just as she had in the little boat in the recent "dream."

"But..." She looked up and asked pitifully, "I want to ask you for a favor too, all right?" Then she suddenly pressed a hand to Ruidio's chest and broke into a smile. "Your heart's beating so fast." The radiance of her beautiful face made the palace itself pale a little.

Swish... The emperor's cloak slipped quietly off.

"It's beating even faster," Hancock said with a blink. The blush on her cheeks spread down to her delicate neck. "Is it because I'm so beautiful?"

"You know perfectly well it is."

Ruidio pressed her burning cheeks between his hands, squeezing her luscious red lips into an O. She was certainly much less sexy, but her cuteness had shot up. A miscalculation!

"Put your clothes on first," he sighed. You snake demon.

Hancock blushed and smiled gently. Picking up her red top by its flower-patterned sleeves with her toes, she slowly slipped it on right in front of him, as though showing off her figure from every angle.

Elder Tang was one tough man to make it through Amazon Lily.

Ruidio said, "What is it? Go ahead."

Hancock grew a little more serious. "My two younger sisters really need your 'Psychological Therapy' too. Please help them as well..."

[Boa Hancock has commissioned you with a mission: My sisters]

[Mission requirement: Soothe the emotional trauma of the sisters Boa Sandersonia and Boa Marigold.]

[Client: Boa Hancock]

[Distance: Close]

[Estimated difficulty: ★]

Did the system judge it possible because the empress only asked me to give her two sisters Psychological Therapy, without specifying that I had to use that kind of "dream"?

Ruidio remembered that the last time Olvia and Robin had asked him to save the scholars of Ohara, the system hadn't reacted at all. It seemed that as long as a request didn't have to be completed through a spacetime mission, it could trigger a mission normally.

After all, in theory, he really could treat the two Boa sisters by talking to them to soothe their emotional trauma... But while he could, there was no need.

[Mission accepted]

"All right, I promise."

Ruidio smiled. "But I have a condition too."

"I agree," Hancock said without hesitation.

"..." Ruidio paused, then said, "I have a crew member. I want to bring him along to the lessons, so he can learn how to use Haki."

Hancock was surprised. "Are you a pirate captain too?"

The Kuja valued strength as beauty, and their emperor was chosen from the strongest warriors of the Kuja, automatically becoming captain of the Kuja Pirates as well.

Ruidio smiled. "I will be."

The empress put on her cloak and went out barefoot. When she returned, her two younger sisters were with her.

Sandersonia had noticed that her sister's steps were light and her face was radiant all along the way, as though she were in a very good mood. She couldn't help exchanging a look with their youngest sister, Marigold.

What's gotten into our sister? Is it because of that man?

The curtains in front of the empress's White Snake Throne had been drawn open, and Ruidio stood there waiting for them.

"Catch."

He flicked his fingers, sending two 100-Beli coins flying toward the two Boa sisters.

[You have hired Boa Sandersonia for approximately 1 hour]

[You have hired Boa Marigold for approximately 1 hour]

"Sister, what's this...?"

The two sisters held the coins and looked at Hancock in confusion.

"You'll know soon," Hancock said, nodding to Ruidio.

Ruidio held out both hands to them. "Come."

The empress was the first to place her hand in his palm. Her two sisters hesitated, then followed her example and took the hand of the man from overseas.

[You have selected deployment]

This time, Ruidio randomly appeared in a storage room on the lowest deck.

As for the three empress sisters, they should all have entered their "past selves" together.

Right now, Hancock was probably explaining the situation to her two shocked sisters while deftly using the Love-Love Fruit's powers to free herself, then heading up to the deck to petrify Saint Shepherd Sommers again...

Thinking this, Ruidio looked for a way up to the cabins above.

The last time he'd done this mission, only about ten minutes had passed after he'd taken the empress and her sisters away in the little boat before the system had announced the mission's failure.

Ten minutes!

That's how "immediate" it has to be?

Did the system believe it was theoretically possible to get the three sisters back to the Kuja Pirates or Amazon Lily within ten minutes, or...

Was it simply because the empress's wish that had generated the mission had been extreme from the start: "I wish I could get back to my safe home immediately after escaping hell"?

If it was the former, he could wait until his Satoru Gojo Transformation uses refreshed tomorrow and try again.

But if it was the latter, there might be no possibility of completing the mission at all. How was he supposed to make the unrealistic fantasy of a desperate little girl come true?

"..."

Ruidio was walking through the cabin when he suddenly stopped.

He went back. The iron bars of the cell where Hancock and her sisters had been held, along with the cabin door outside, had been petrified, and a large hole had been broken through them.

Beyond the hole, the cell was dimly lit. The other twenty little girls were still there, their hands and feet in chains. Pairs of frightened, numb, evasive eyes watched him in silence.

"..."

Ruidio stepped inside, crossing a small patch of moonlight on the floor. Chains clinked softly as the little girls around him shrank back, trying to get away from him.

"..."