Turns Out I Was the Blond Biker Punk

"...Lord Moria... really?"

When she heard the news of Moria's death, Perona instinctively wanted to argue, but not a single zombie had appeared so far, let alone Moria himself.

Recalling the relentless lightning before she lost consciousness, reason told her that what he said was probably true.

Perona slid down and slumped onto the carpet with her legs folded out to either side, her back resting against the bed.

-My adoptive father's death is tragic, sure, but my own safety is a much bigger worry.

"..."

He hadn't expected Perona to be so worked up that even Sephiroth could read her surface thoughts fairly clearly.

While emotions and intentions could be sensed with reasonable accuracy, specific thoughts were much harder.

The general gist was mostly accurate, but putting it into actual words produced something entirely different.

It was like translating one Chinese dialect into English, then translating it back into another Chinese dialect.

After her thoughts went through the conversion and translation process in Sephiroth's mind, the result was this absurd.

...Miss, pardon me for asking, but is your surname Lü and your courtesy name Yunfei?

Sephiroth's main reason for coming to find Moria was to rescue Brook and, through him, win over Pirate King Roger's ship's doctor.

Like a chain of dominoes, the next steps would be to win over Kuma and eliminate the threat posed by Doflamingo.

Finally, through Rebecca, he would obtain a claim to the Dressrosa Kingdom, allowing his forces to establish a foothold in the New World with good justification, using it as a forward base for further expansion into the New World.

But once he had provoked someone as dangerous as Moria, Sephiroth believed his only option was to kill him for good.

Moria had earned a bounty of 320 million in an era before bounty inflation, which spoke volumes about how brutal he had once been. As for his supposed loyalty to his subordinates in his youth... that hardly contradicted his cruelty toward outsiders.

"W-wait!"

Seeing Sephiroth draw closer, Perona abruptly shrank into a corner of the bed, holding a pillow in front of herself. The girl's trembling fingertips betrayed her fear.

She even imagined her own gravestone bearing the inscription, "Here lies a poor soul who never got to eat enough cake."

"I surrender! Just spare my life, and I'll do anything! Cleaning, serving tea, warming your bed, folding your blankets-anything!"

When a Negative Hollow emerged from her sleeve, it actually raised a white flag on its own.

It was just like four years later in the original timeline, when Usopp frightened her into babbling nonsense. But perhaps because Sephiroth's current appearance suited her tastes, something extra had slipped into the mix quite naturally.

"...Are you serious?"

Things had gone slightly beyond Sephiroth's expectations. He had figured Perona would probably give in, and he wouldn't deny that he had intended to take her away.

Perona did genuinely respect Moria, who had found and adopted her when she was little.

But compared with her own life, that respect was something she could discard without hesitation to abandon Moria and flee.

Four years later, when Moria was losing his fight against Luffy, Perona had abandoned him and run off with the treasure. She had simply been intercepted by Kuma, who slapped her all the way to Hawk-Eye's home.

"Mm-hmm-"

Perona nodded rapidly, her pink pigtails bouncing up and down.

Several options seemed to appear before Sephiroth's eyes.

1. Become my daughter.

2. Then I won't bother pretending to be a gentleman anymore.

3. A family should all go together.

4. My blade does not slay the old or the young.

5. What a fine bike to ride.

...Some of these options seem to amount to the same thing. Is that just me?

And a daughter... despite how Perona looks, she's a year older than Sephiroth.

He banished these hallucinations, the product of being corrupted by all those bullet-comment sites in his previous life. It was perfectly normal for different people to offer completely opposite opinions on the same thing.

-Whatever I choose, someone's going to be unhappy.

"All right. Starting today, I'm your new boss. Just call me 'Shining.' We can discuss the rest later."

"...All right."

Perona actually had something of a princess complex, but faced with a genuine threat to her life, her condition had partially cured itself without treatment.

She obediently followed behind Sephiroth. Her Devil Fruit abilities hadn't yet developed to the point where she could make her physical body fly, as she would six years later.

Zombies stripped of their shadows lay everywhere along the castle corridors. Now they were nothing more than ordinary remains.

Whenever Perona needed to move her physical body over a long distance, she usually had her animal zombies carry her, especially her favorite stuffed bear, Kumashi.

She started to feel like crying, but held it back.

Knowing that her new boss had killed even Lord Moria, Perona couldn't shake the feeling that her life was far from secure.

"..."

Electricity flickered across Sephiroth's forehead. Then he stopped and turned to look at Perona.

Distracted, Perona worried about her future while restraining herself, afraid to let her usual willfulness show.

Since she wasn't watching where she was going, she walked straight into Sephiroth's chest. A fresh scent, like a forest after rain, washed over her. (Low-concentration ozone.)

With her soft, fragrant body against him, Sephiroth caught the scent of lily of the valley on Perona... then rather unromantically thought of lily of the valley growing in a graveyard.

"-I'm sorry!"

"Calm down. You're moving too slowly..."

"I-I'm sorry, Lord Shining."

Perona took half a step back and looked at Sephiroth cautiously.

"Like I said, calm down. I'll find you something to ride."

Sephiroth could certainly pick Perona up and fly using magnetic levitation, but that might upset her.

Still, Perona as she was now really brought out Sephiroth's protective instincts. To some extent, he admitted that his principles were following his eyes.

After all, Perona wasn't exactly the heinous-villain type. At least judging by the emotions Sephiroth picked up from her, she simply had a severe princess complex.

Perona had lived in the Florian Triangle since childhood, and all her underlings were animal zombies. Even by the legal standards of Blue Star in his previous life, her crimes most likely wouldn't warrant death.

Ever since Moria had hidden away in the Florian Triangle, he had also committed relatively fewer crimes than before. At the very least, to keep the shadows he stole from disappearing, he probably hadn't killed people outright very often.

So Perona, who was only nineteen this year, hadn't really had the opportunity to commit any serious crimes.

"Here he comes."

No sooner had Sephiroth spoken than pounding footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

"...Kumashi! Kumashi! Waaah-!"

Tears and snot streamed down Perona's face as she watched the familiar figure come running toward her. It was her favorite zombie stuffed bear, Kumashi.

This bandage-wrapped stuffed bear wasn't actually a zombie. He really was a stuffed toy; after all, cotton could spill out of him.

The Shadow-Shadow Fruit could control more than corpses through shadows-or rather, it didn't necessarily need complete corpses. In the original story, even a bearskin rug could become a so-called "zombie."

"Lord Shining! Thank you!"

Perona hugged Kumashi fiercely, crying as she shouted. She knew that since Lord Moria was dead, Kumashi could only be here because her new boss had done something.

In fact, Sephiroth had used the Satellite Support Module to launch a dormant Servo Angels and a Mechanical Skeleton Material Pack down to the surface.

The toy was currently being controlled by the Servo Angels, with the Mechanical Skeleton Material Pack packed inside it. The Servo Angels had intelligence roughly equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old human.

So from Perona's perspective, it was as though Kumashi had "come back to life."

"Mm. There's still work to do. Keep up."

Perona lay against Kumashi's back, and the toy hurried after Sephiroth as he floated forward.

"...Lord... Shining..."

Perona had already been infatuated with the appearance of his Satellite Shining form. What she felt now was like seeing a delinquent secretly feeding a cat with unexpected tenderness. A strange new affection spread through her heart.

Moria had looked after Perona since she was little. Although his way of caring for her certainly hadn't been normal, it had still come from kindness and concern.

Having barely interacted with normal humans since early childhood, Perona had always taken this for granted and felt nothing in particular about it.

Originally, she would have gradually realized what it meant after losing it all.

Like a spoiled princess pampered by her parents, who finally remembered their kindness after wandering alone and taking a beating from the real world. People like that weren't exactly rare in real life.

But before she could realize this, she had met Sephiroth, the blond biker punk who had suddenly barged into her heart.

"..."

Sephiroth couldn't shake the feeling that someone was talking smack about him.