"Thundercloud!" came a furious roar.
Boom, boom, boom!
More than a dozen bolts of lightning struck from the sky toward Kaido.
Big Mom had made her move. A mass of dark blue thundercloud wrapped around her left hand.
The cloud enveloped her hand, and a crude face appeared on its surface: two black holes for eyes and a wide, smiling mouth. Though it was no more than three dark openings, it felt as if the cloud were truly alive—and smiling.
Big Mom, whose real name was Charlotte Linlin, was a Great Pirate of the New World, one of the Four Emperors, and a user of the Soul-Soul Fruit.
The thundercloud around her left hand was a product of her Devil Fruit power, developed to an extraordinary degree.
The Soul-Soul Fruit let Big Mom manipulate other people's souls at will, lodging them in all manner of things to give them human traits. Food, trees, and animals could all receive souls, but she could not put one into a corpse or another person's body.
The Soul-Soul Fruit had a terrifying ability. Anyone who faced Big Mom and felt even a trace of fear would fall under its influence. She could not simply rip out their soul, but she could steal their lifespan. How much she took depended on how afraid they were. Enough fear could cost them their entire lifespan in an instant, killing them on the spot. Big Mom would then eat the stolen years like a snack or use them for something else.
She called this ability Lifespan Treat.
The thundercloud around her hand was another power she had developed through the Soul-Soul Fruit. Big Mom had separated off part of her own soul and placed it inside a thundercloud, creating a living cloud.
The cloud could reside in Big