Sea Circle Calendar 1509, East Sea.
In the training room aboard the Red Force, Louis wore the heaviest weights in the Red-Haired Pirates and braced his legs against the ship's largest dumbbells.
Bare-chested and upside down, he supported himself on just two fingers. As the ship swayed in the storm, he kept his balance and continued training.
With every movement, drops of murky sweat ran down his body and dripped from his face onto the floorboards.
Beside him, Yelena wore a black sports tank top as she did squats and frog jumps with a smaller dumbbell on her shoulder.
Thanks to Hongou's excellent medical care, Yelena no longer felt any pain. She had recovered enough to train again.
In the training room's lounge, Uta, her hair streaked with white and red, leaned against the sofa. She quietly watched the two train as she sipped tea and ate pastries.
Neither of them paid the slightest attention to Uta's antics.
Ever since the two had decided to stay aboard the Red Force for a while, Uta had gradually grown fond of tagging along after them. They weren't much older than she was.
At first, Shanks and the others had felt a little dejected, but they also thought it was good for Uta to spend more time with people around her age. At the very least, it might help her forget that terrible idea sooner.
So, lately, Shanks and the others had started having Uta exercise, and she didn't object to spending time with people her own age. She was quite cooperative.
But Uta wasn't very gifted when it came to physical training. Her training was nowhere near as intense as Yelena's.
She didn't do much, mostly practicing light one-handed sword swings and the stamina exercises Beckman and the others had designed for her.
Though she wasn't especially talented, the company of Louis and the others, along with her own determination, had helped her make clear progress.
According to Uta, she could now sing three or five songs in a row without getting tired.
Louis gave her an objective assessment.
"Goose power, third stage!"
For over a year, these three had more or less claimed the not-very-large training room for themselves. Every now and then, someone tried to enter, only to be mercilessly chased out by Uta.
She said this was the girls' territory, and grown-ups weren't allowed in.
Louis's response was, "??"
He figured that though he was already eleven and could be called beautiful, he had the kind of masculine beauty that made his gender obvious at a glance.
Louis didn't consider himself someone whose looks made it impossible to tell whether he was male or female. Even the person who'd called him a succubus had never said that.
"..."
After a long while, Louis stood up and gently set down the dumbbell. He gazed thoughtfully to the southeast.
He'd heard another interesting term.
"CP9?"
Louis's movement caught the attention of the other two.
Yelena stopped exercising too. Looking at Louis's face, which had gone from rounded to strikingly masculine, she tucked a strand of sweat-dampened white hair behind her ear.
She asked softly, "What is it?"
"A ship's course has crossed the Red Force's." Louis walked over to the lounge and picked up a towel, wiping the sweat from his body as he answered in a low voice.
"Pirates? Marines? Or a merchant ship?" Yelena pressed. She knew how formidable Louis's Observation Haki was: a few thousand meters away felt no farther than the next room.
"CP agents..." Louis set down the towel, his eyes glinting with an inscrutable light.
At that, Yelena's gaze instantly turned cold. She still remembered that CP agents had been involved in an incident targeting her before.
"Here, a towel."
Uta started when she heard the news. After handing a towel to Yelena, who had come over, she left the training room to notify Shanks.
After wiping the rain-pale skin she had recovered, Yelena's eyes gleamed with anticipation. "How long until we meet them?"
"Soon. They're two nautical miles away. They're sailing with the storm too, so it won't be long before we meet."
"Is that so?"
Yelena's expression softened again.
Elsewhere, in the ship's quarters, Uta pushed open Shanks's door. Panting, she looked at him as he finished hanging up the Den Den Mushi.
"Shanks, Louis says a ship carrying CP agents is coming!"
Shanks was taken aback, then smiled and reassured her. "Don't worry. We're strong!"
The storm raged, raising wave after wave across the sea. The sailing ship swayed and creaked.
Above the dark, shadowy sea, a powerful searchlight pierced the gloom, sweeping back and forth.
"Rumble..." With a roar like a trumpet announcing the end of the world, streaks of blazing white lightning crawled across the storm clouds, briefly illuminating the sea.
The flash revealed a three-masted sailing ship almost right beside the huge warship.
"That's... the Red-Haired Pirates' ship!" someone shouted from the warship. "Those vicious pirates who destroyed the Kingdom of Jacob a year ago!"
Meanwhile, on the Red Force, amid the wind and rain on deck—
"Looks like CP9 really is aboard!"
"This is trouble."
Beckman had a cigarette in his mouth, rain running down his face. Behind him, Lucky Roo tore a huge chunk of meat from the bone in his hand. As he chewed, a brazen grin spread across his face.
At the front of the group, Shanks wore the straw hat and smiled inscrutably. "It's fine. We're strong. Let's get ready!"
Then he looked at Louis, who stood expressionless, radiating a bone-chilling cold as he gripped his spear. With a smile, he said, "Louis, let us handle this one!"
Over the past year, Shanks and the others had learned how Louis fought. No ship connected to the World Government ever got away with its wreckage intact.
He was one of the more restrained Lunarians, at least.
But Shanks worried that Louis might accidentally send the ship flying along with his intended target.
"Fine!" Louis agreed after a moment's thought.
Louis had a rough idea of what was going on. But he didn't care about the Nika Fruit. It was enough to send every CP9 agent to the bottom of the sea here.
Nika would be a useless fruit in his hands. There was no need to take it.
He felt much the same way about Luffy, the future King.
He neither liked nor disliked him.
They had no conflict, so Louis had no reason to belittle him or go out of his way to kick him while he was down.
Louis looked at Yelena beside him, her figure no longer that of a girl. "You go too. I'll clean up afterward!"
"Okay!" Yelena nodded slowly, then took a deep breath.
In an instant, her aura changed. The wind and rain froze...
At the same time, aboard the warship—
The crew's orderly posts had fallen into disarray after the sudden incident. The deck was a cacophony.
A man with half-length pink hair and horns on his head stood in the wind, completely bewildered.
"What did you say?!"
"Shanks? What are they after?"
"There's no treasure on board!"
"Just one Devil Fruit!"
Then he looked at the small treasure chest casually placed beside a wooden crate, his face full of disbelief.
"This is the fruit that can turn you into rubber..."
"Right?!"
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