Are You Poisonous?

The next day, 9:00 a.m.

Sabaody Archipelago, 33rd Island, Soap Bubble Amusement Park.

After the six of them bought their tickets and entered the park, every amusement facility in sight was filled with bubble-themed elements: bubble roller coasters, bubble Ferris wheels, Bubble Elevators, Bubble Bicycles...

The dazzling array of attractions left them utterly overwhelmed.

The amusement park was bustling with people and filled with constant laughter. Shops selling snacks and toys attracted plenty of children as well.

"Come on! Let's have a blast today!"

Tokikake grinned and beckoned to everyone behind him. At his enthusiastic recommendation, the group was dragged along to try the Bubble Elevator.

Once everyone had taken their seats and fastened their seat belts, the elevator began to rise slowly.

With two cigars clenched between his teeth, Smoker muttered dismissively,

"What's so fun about this ride? It's so damn slow..."

However...

When the elevator reached its highest point, one hundred and fifty meters above the ground, it suddenly began plummeting at high speed!

"AAAAAHHH!!!"

"AAAAAHHH!!!"

The people seated in the elevator immediately screamed at the intense shift from complete stillness to violent motion.

Only when it was about to reach the ground did the elevator begin to decelerate, gradually coming to a stop.

Just then, the pink-haired girl Hina turned to look at the empty seat beside her. Her face immediately filled with surprise.

"Huh!? Hina finds this very strange. Where did Smoker go?"

Maynard lightly stroked his chin and muttered,

"Don't tell me he didn't fasten his seat belt and got flung out?"

As though they had thought of something, everyone looked up at once and discovered that Smoker had used his Logia transformation, turning himself into a cloud of white smoke.

He was slowly drifting down through the air, still wearing a terrified expression.

"Pfft!"

Gion was the first to lose control. Covering her lips, she chuckled softly, and the others immediately burst into laughter as well.

Before long, Smoker drifted down with a sour expression and re-formed on the ground.

Still, the group did not tease him for long before moving on to the next attraction.

After playing for a while, Sephiroth rented a large Bubble Bicycle. He lounged lazily against the bubble seat cushion, holding a five-scoop ice cream in his right hand and taking an occasional bite, looking thoroughly distracted.

A little while later, Gion came over with an ice cream in hand and sat beside him.

"Little brother Sephiroth, why aren't you joining them? What are you thinking about all alone over here?"

Hearing this, the silver-haired youth turned to look at the long-legged beauty beside him and replied blandly,

"Nothing. I'm just not interested."

"Oh my! You're still so young, yet you're already not interested in this sort of thing? What a pity."

As she spoke, Gion gave him a seductive look. She stuck out her moist red tongue and gently licked the ice cream in her hand, occasionally taking a lick or lightly circling the scoop with her tongue. Every movement was filled with blatant temptation.

Seeing this, Sephiroth's eye twitched. He bent forward slightly and muttered inwardly,

So dirty!

Come to think of it, she was a woman proficient in all kinds of sensual geisha arts. Expecting her to be as pure as a little white flower was basically a fool's dream...

At that thought, Sephiroth truly could not hold it in any longer and blurted out,

"Are you poisonous or something?"

Seeing him so flustered, Gion was delighted. She covered her mouth and giggled.

"Hehehe...! If you like big sister here, then maybe I'll reluctantly agree if you confess to me a hundred times!"

"Heh."

Sephiroth did not want to pay any more attention to this dirty woman. He jumped off the Bubble Bicycle floating in midair and walked hunched over toward the Haunted House nearby, intending to calm down and drive those messy thoughts from his mind.

The six of them played from morning until afternoon before preparing to take a ship back to Marineford. Sephiroth, however, said that he had other matters to attend to and bid them farewell before leaving alone.

Sabaody Archipelago, 52nd Island, inside a shipyard.

A burly man standing two meters tall, with long gray hair and a vicious scar across the left side of his face, entered the shipyard with over twenty pirates. Many of them carried bags and wooden crates, looking as though they were ready to set sail.

The scar-faced man first glanced at the three-masted sailing ship docked in the shipyard's inner harbor, then turned to the six shipwrights in the workshop.

"Hey! It's been two days already. Have you finished coating our ship?"

Among the six shipwrights, a burly man with short brown hair and a full beard nodded lightly.

"The coating has been completely finished. You can sail directly to Fish-Man Island now."

"I see..."

The scar-faced man grinned and pulled the Python Revolver from his waist, aiming it at the brown-haired man.

"Please cooperate... Gray Wolf Bello is robbing you now!

Hand over all your money!"

As the scar-faced man finished speaking, the more than twenty pirates behind him raised their guns, swords, and blades, all staring at the six men with vicious grins.

However...

What no one noticed was that a Black Bat hung upside down beneath the shipyard roof, silently watching everything below.

This bat was a creation Sephiroth had made using his Vampire Fruit ability.

Long before he went out to have fun with Gion and the others, he had already split off many such bats, sending them back and forth through the areas where shipyards and coating facilities were concentrated on Islands 50 through 59, searching for traces of pirates...

After developing his Devil Fruit, the bats he created with his ability not only possessed the echolocation of ordinary bats, but also vision very close to that of humans. He could also share both their sight and hearing.

A Devil Fruit ability would continuously grow stronger through its user's development and application.

Recently, he had even evolved the ultrasonic vocal organs that he could previously possess only during Bat Transformation, allowing him to use them while in his vampire form.

Sephiroth's current approach to developing his Devil Fruit was actually the same as that of other Zoan users. He was trying to integrate and complement the strengths of the beast form, human-beast form, and human form, making up for each form's weaknesses with the others' strengths.

Thus, some Zoan users who had developed their abilities to an extremely high level could even display beast-like organ traits while in human form. That was a partial bodily transformation meant to use the characteristics of beasts to compensate for the shortcomings of their human forms. Zoan users capable of reaching that level had basically touched the threshold of Devil Fruit awakening...

Under the pirates' threats, the shipwrights could only obediently raise their hands. The brown-haired man said with an ugly expression,

"Mr. Pirate... We just finished the work for you, and now you're turning on us? Isn't that a little too much?"

"Pah! You charged me five hundred thousand Belly just to coat a ship. You dead merchants!"

"Your ship is a medium-sized sailing vessel. That's the price for coating it anywhere..."

"Enough nonsense! Hand over all your money right now! Otherwise, every last one of you dies!"

"We only earn hard-earned money, and there isn't much cash stored in the shipyard..."

Before the brown-haired man could finish, Gray Wolf Bello pulled the trigger of his revolver. The bullet struck the former's thigh, instantly bursting into a spray of blood.

"AAAAAHHHH...!"

With a THUD!, the brown-haired man collapsed to the ground. He clutched the gunshot wound in his thigh with both hands, his body curling into itself.

"I'm a great pirate with a bounty of seventy-six million Belly. I don't have the patience to listen to you lot preach your big principles...

Let me give you some advice: if you don't want to die, hand over all your money!"

"Hahaha!"

"Hahaha! That's right! That's right!"

"These ungrateful shipwrights deserve it!"

The more than twenty pirates laughed wantonly, their faces exceptionally savage and terrifying, like evil ghosts crawling up from hell...