Mecha Girl Smoothie Plan Activated

Rektol stood before a cradle made of pig iron.

A thick wool blanket lined the bottom. He looked down at Smoothie, whose umbilical cord had just been cut.

The baby girl's legs were astonishingly long. Her kneecaps jutted high, propping the wool blanket up like a little tent. Her skin carried a healthy rosy pallor.

The smell of blood mingled with the scent of scorched flesh in the air, pouring in through the broken door.

Rektol shook his head. A cold chuckle escaped his throat.

The Squeeze-Squeeze Fruit.

It relied on wringing living people like towels to squeeze out enough moisture to bulk up one's body. In battle, its user could only swing a sword sluggishly, standing around as a living target.

What kind of Sweet Commander was that? It was practically a complete waste of those gifted long legs.

The potential of flesh and blood had limits. Especially for someone with such mediocre talent, someone who only knew how to wildly swing a longsword—once she reached the latter half of the New World, she would not even be enough to fill someone's teeth.

The stone house suddenly shook.

Linlin squeezed through the doorway. Her enormous body scraped away a layer of stone, and dust scattered across her polka-dot dress.

She clutched her belly, now deflated like a punctured ball, and panted heavily. Sweat had washed the lipstick on her lips into streaks.

"This girl's legs are too long. She nearly killed your mother." Linlin grabbed the copper kettle from the table, tipped back her head, and gulped down cold water.

Water ran down her chin and into her collar. She casually hurled the empty copper kettle into the corner.

Rektol ignored his mother's complaints.

He turned and looked at the pirate captains peeking in from outside.

After that sword strike at the harbor, those men had followed him like hyenas drawn by the scent of blood. Now, they all huddled outside the stone house, and none dared cross the threshold.

"Get paper and a pen." Rektol kicked a broken plank with the tip of his foot.

The plank slammed into the doorframe. A pirate with an eyepatch shuddered, hurriedly pulled out a charcoal pencil and parchment, then sprawled over the stone steps.

"Notify every broker in the underground black market."

Rektol's voice was not loud, yet it carried far through the silent camp.

"I want Wapometal, Seastone scraps, and frostproof steel from Baltimore."

The pirate froze. His charcoal pencil stopped over the parchment, its tip leaving a black dot.

"And ancient technology blueprints. Cannons, bearings, power furnaces—buy back everything with gears and pipes." Rektol stared at the one-eyed pirate. "Take the money from Rocks' war trophy vault. If anyone tries to stop you, give them my name."

Linlin let out a long water burp.

"What do you want all that junk for?" She leaned over to look at Smoothie in the cradle and poked the baby girl's cheek with a thick finger.

"The Squeeze-Squeeze Fruit route is useless." Rektol pointed at the infant in the cradle.

"Flesh is weak. Machinery ascends."

Rektol spread open his right hand.

Crackle!

A mass of blue-white electricity exploded in his palm. High-voltage arcs distorted the air around it with heat. The blue glow illuminated his three-year-old face, which radiated an oppressive presence.

"I will be her inexhaustible power furnace."

"I'll use lightning as the drive and turn her into a Mecha Girl capable of crossing the stars."

The pirate captains looked at one another. The sea wind made the parchment flutter noisily.

An old pirate pushed his way out of the crowd.

He wore a battered tricorn hat that had clearly seen many years, with two loaded flintlock pistols tucked at his waist. A sword scar ran across his left cheek, and half an ear was missing.

He was a seasoned hand Rocks had sent to keep watch over the Charlotte Family faction. Having spent several years aboard the flagship, he always put on airs around the island.

The old pirate tapped the brass pipe in his hand, scattering ash onto the stone slabs.

"Young Master Rektol, you may be strong, but your brain is still that of a nursing child."

He blew out a mouthful of pungent tobacco smoke. Yellow haze spread before the door.

"Putting iron plating on a newborn? She won't last three days before tetanus kills her. That goes against all common sense."

The old pirate pointed his pipe at the cradle.

"What the Charlotte Family needs is strong flesh. What Captain Rocks needs are beasts that can charge into battle, not a pile of scrap iron that cannot breathe. You're simply wasting resources. If the captain finds out—"

The old pirate had not finished speaking.

Rektol raised his right index finger.

He did not even spare the old man a proper glance. His finger tapped the air.

Boom!

A blue lightning pillar as thick as a water barrel shot from Rektol's fingertip.

It was so fast that there was no time to react.

The ground outside the stone house was forcibly plowed open into a half-meter-deep trench of scorched earth. The sand and stones along its edges turned directly into glowing red glass.

The place where the old pirate had stood was empty.

There was no scream. No blood.

The heat of two hundred million volts instantly carbonized and vaporized his entire body.

Only a few wisps of black ash drifted down from the air, along with a brass belt buckle melted into a flat iron disc.

The buckle struck the stone slab with a crisp ding.

Dead silence.

Several hundred pirates were like ducks with their throats clamped shut. Every sound of breathing stopped in that instant.

The one-eyed pirate holding the charcoal pencil lay sprawled on the stone steps, his teeth chattering. A large patch of his pants had gone wet, warm urine running down his thighs onto the parchment as the stench spread.

Rektol lowered his finger.

A wisp of green smoke rose from his fingertip.

He tilted his head and looked at the silent Linlin beside him.

"Mom, do you think it goes against common sense?"

Linlin looked at the ash on the ground, then at Rektol's finger, still crackling with static.

She split her wide mouth in a grin, exposing a mouthful of sharp, saw-like teeth. Laughing so hard she rocked back and forth, the fat on her chest shook violently.

"Strength is common sense!"

Linlin kicked the red-hot belt buckle into the sea. White vapor rose from the surface.

She turned and roared at the pirates outside. "Do as this brat says! Whoever dares talk nonsense, I'll chew up his bones right now!"

Absolute violence crushed all doubts.

The one-eyed pirate shakily scrambled to his feet and fled toward the harbor, rolling and crawling as he went, to issue the black market bounty order. The others quickly scattered as well, afraid that one step too slow would see them struck into ash by lightning.

Rektol turned around.

He continued looking at the sleeping Smoothie in the cradle.

The blueprint for the Mecha Girl had already unfolded in his mind. Memory bones forged from Wapometal, plasma cannons coated in Seastone, antigravity thrusters.

As long as the energy supply was sufficient, this girl would become the most brutal bulldozer on the battlefield.

Only the crackling of burning torches remained in the stone house.

Tap, tap.

A series of bare feet slapping against stone broke the silence.

Rektol turned his head.

A chubby child with purplish-red hair was supporting himself against the wall as he staggered inside.

It was the fourth child, Cracker, who had only recently learned to walk.

He wore a patched one-piece diaper cloth and held a half-eaten hard biscuit in his chubby little hand. Crumbs still clung to the corner of his mouth.

He raised his head and looked at his eldest brother by the cradle, wanting to run over. But his feet would not move fast enough.

His toes caught on a raised piece of broken stone.

Cracker pitched forward and landed hard at the edge of the carpet.

The hard biscuit in his hand hit the floor and shattered into several pieces.

His knee struck a stone and scraped open. A few drops of blood seeped out.

Cracker lay on the ground in a daze for two seconds.

Then his features scrunched together, his mouth opened wide, and tears and snot instantly smeared across his face.

"Waaah—"

Cracker wailed at the top of his lungs. Rolling onto his back, he clutched his bleeding knee tightly with both hands and rolled wildly across the floor.

"Big brother... it hurts!"