Chapter 69: Fire Fist And Pluto
“Prince Elus, thank you.”
Major Tina hurried over.
She sincerely expressed her gratitude to Prince Elus, thanking him for saving those innocent children.
“Just a small effort.”
Prince Elus looked around and said, “Besides, I’m a prince at least! Protecting the people is my duty, though… this isn’t my territory yet.”
“Not yet?”
Tina blinked her eyes in confusion.
“Major Tina, what do you plan to do next?”
Prince Elus changed the topic.
Fortunately, Tina didn’t think too much about it; she wouldn’t assume that this Prince Elus was planning to annex the Sabaody Archipelago, right? That would be too crazy… probably just a slip of the tongue! She thought so, then began pondering Prince Elus’s question—what should she do next?
Cooperate with Vice Admiral Dolo to capture Fire Fist?
Or gather troops to put out the fire?
The blaze was still spreading wildly in all directions; if the fire wasn’t controlled, it would engulf the entire slum, causing unimaginable casualties and losses… The Navy Major fell silent for two seconds and made her choice.
“I’ll contact the troops stationed on the island to control the fire here, and as for capturing the pirates…” Under the glow of the firelight, Major Tina’s expression looked very unpleasant; she agreed with not tolerating pirates, but she couldn’t stand this reckless behavior that affected ordinary people.
Unfortunately, she was only a major.
Whether in status or strength, she had no way to stop Vice Admiral Dolo’s actions; as for contacting Navy Headquarters, she had already done that, but Navy Headquarters hadn’t given her the response she wanted and seemed to tacitly approve of Vice Admiral Dolo’s behavior.
“The task of capturing pirates has Vice Admiral Dolo in charge; there’s no room for me to intervene, and besides, Fire Fist is a Logia Ability User—even if I wanted to help, it probably wouldn’t be of much use.”
Navy Headquarters chose silence.
Tina couldn’t help feeling a bit disheartened, but unlike Smoker, who would directly curse his superior as an idiot fool when he got fired up, she understood that the Navy’s justice couldn’t be applied to every single person at every moment; sacrifices always had to be made for justice.
Although,
she really hated such disgusting words.
She had to admit that this was reality.
“Moreover, Prince Elus, you’re not here just to watch the show, are you?” Tina’s gaze shifted, looking at Prince Elus with meaningful eyes.
At the beginning,
she really hadn’t figured out why, with a Navy Vice Admiral already on the scene, they still arranged for a Seven Warlords member to accompany him.
Now she vaguely understood; the Black Prince’s accompaniment was probably for a mission she didn’t know about, like cooperating with Vice Admiral Dolo to capture this promising pirate prodigy if Fire Fist rejected the invitation? But even so, wasn’t that a bit exaggerated?
No matter how strong Fire Fist was, he was still just a pirate prodigy roaming in Paradise, relying on Logia elementalization and perhaps never having tasted defeat, but the problem was that Navy Vice Admirals all mastered dual Haki, and Armament Haki could already break elementalization.
“Didn’t you say it yourself? With Vice Admiral Dolo here, I can probably just watch the show!”
Prince Elus twirled the Moonlight Sword in his hand and said with a grin.
Tina said no more; she took out the Den Den Mushi and urged the garrison troops on the Sabaody Archipelago to dispatch firefighting units to support 26th Peninsula, while she herself took action, using the Cage-Cage Fruit’s ability to create firebreaks and clear flammable trash.
At this moment,
the battle in the fire had changed.
With the children saved by Prince Elus, Vice Admiral Dolo showed no reaction; his eyes were only on these cornered pirates, the spraying flames still ferocious, the scorching high temperature having evaporated all moisture from the nearby ground, cracking and hardening it—the soil glowing bright red under the firelight proved how astonishing the heat was here.
Ironically, Vice Admiral Dolo the Navy man showed no reaction to the children’s escape, while Ace, who had been suppressed by the fierce flames, breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ace, don’t worry about me—go all out!”
Deuce said so.
As Ace’s first partner after setting sail and the only crew member on the ship who knew the secret that Ace was Pirate King Roger’s son, he understood his captain well; though a pirate, he was actually gentler than anyone.
If not worried about the fire spreading and harming the children, how could the Flare-Flare Fruit ability user be suppressed by flames?
“Deuce, be careful!”
Amid the flames,
laughter came through.
Then,
Ace threw a punch—this was his signature move “Fire Fist”; surging wrath flames like a dragon emerging from an abyss charged forward against Vice Admiral Dolo’s Flamethrower flames until the fist wreathed in fire smashed hard into Vice Admiral Dolo’s face.
“Vice Admiral?”
Second Lieutenant Isca widened her eyes in worry.
Skillfully dodging burning buildings and trash piles, Deuce found a safe vantage point with difficulty; he watched Ace’s fist hit Vice Admiral Dolo’s face and was about to raise his hand to cheer, but in the next instant,
an arm pierced through the burning flames, precisely grabbing Ace’s neck and lifting the man turned to flames right up.
Vice Admiral Dolo patted out and dispersed the flames around him, his unscathed face reappearing in everyone’s view.
“This is… Haki?”
With his throat gripped, Ace’s expression twisted, his speech becoming labored.
Relying on the Flare-Flare Fruit’s power, he should have turned to flames to evade Vice Admiral Dolo’s iron clamp-like grip, but now no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t escape the hand clamping his throat—this reminded him of the special power called Haki he’d heard about before.
“Fire Fist Ace, being underestimated by a mere pirate brat is quite troubling! These little flames… can’t do anything to me!”
Vice Admiral Dolo’s hand clamped Ace’s neck like a vise, his eyes flashing with sadistic pleasure. “Your evil and cruel pirate life ends here; I’ll be the one to end your short and wicked existence—accept justice’s punishment obediently!”
“Cough cough, I don’t want to be… hurt by a guy who… huff huff… harmed the children—what… huff… justice are you talking about!”
Ace panted laboriously, his eyes filled with sincere contempt.
The five fingers tightened again.
The faint sound of bones creaking in agony could be heard.
Enraged by Ace, Vice Admiral Dolo growled lowly, “Don’t get it twisted! Pirate, it wasn’t me who dragged the children in—it was you damn pirates! It’s because of scum like you on the Sea that children suffer such misfortune!”
“So, you’re the trash scum at fault! I’m only setting fires everywhere to eliminate garbage like you—if there were no pirates like you, I wouldn’t need to set fires, right? If anyone dies in the blaze, it’s your fault!”
The barrage of accusations silenced Ace.
His struggling strength gradually weakened, a gloom tainting the light in his eyes.
‘Giving up?’
On the burning old rooftops, Prince Elus stood amid the flames, quietly watching the battle in the fire.
At this moment—
“Vice Admiral, you… you’re lying, right?”
The trembling voice carried a suppressed sob.
Second Lieutenant Isca cried.
“You clearly… clearly saved me back then… why? My parents, they, they were…”
“What are you saying, Second Lieutenant Isca? Paying a price for justice is very common! It was just a few civilians affected—what’s there to make a fuss about? Besides, I saved their children, didn’t I? Seeing you now, your parents must be very gratified!”
Vice Admiral Dolo said matter-of-factly.
Annoyed at the interruption of the execution, his words carried impatience.
Isca broke down.
Tears slid from her eyes like beaded curtains; she covered her mouth with her hand, suppressing her voice with all her might, her blurred vision falling on the hideous burn scar on her hand as overwhelming sorrow surged from her chest.
She had always trusted Vice Admiral Dolo, who saved her from the sea of fire.
Yet that trust now turned into the cruelest dagger, stabbing deep into her heart.
Memories of her hometown flickered like phantoms: her always gently smiling mother, her even-tempered father, the neighbor grandma who always gave her candy, and that not-rich but beautiful home… all of it incinerated by merciless flames.
The fire that devoured her too-beautiful memories was set by Vice Admiral Dolo, whom she saw as her lifesaver.
What were trivial civilians to Vice Admiral Dolo were her treasured family and friends.
She no longer knew how to trust the justice she had always believed in; the cruel truth plunged her completely into collapse.
“…Ahh! As expected, a thorough zealot… saying something like that so naturally…” Prince Elus confirmed once more that this Vice Admiral Dolo’s mind was indeed not quite right—at least his ‘justice’ had been twisted onto the wrong path.
Treating civilian sacrifices as a matter of course and saying it without hesitation in front of a survivor whose parents’ hometown was sacrificed.
That was far from normal no matter how you looked at it!
“Now… this will be a good show!”
Prince Elus pinched his chin, watching Ace whose aura suddenly changed, and laughed.
The flames
leaped and burned once more.
“As expected, I-I… huff huff… don’t want to die at the hands of a guy like you!”
Ace struggled to say.
He raised his hands, index fingers extended, posing as if aiming guns.
“On the brink of death and still talking big…” Vice Admiral Dolo’s words cut off as thin but high-impact flames shot from Ace’s index fingers, precisely hitting the connection between the fuel storage and the conduit; under a dozen instantaneous flame blasts, the conduit detached.
The final thin flame shot into the fuel storage.
“Damn it!!!”
Amid Vice Admiral Dolo’s roar,
the container holding refined high-density fuel exploded; with a massive “boom,” the scorching blast swept in all directions, destroying the already crumbling abandoned old houses around and even scraping off a layer of the ground.
“Hey, Second Lieutenant Isca, what are you standing there stunned for?”
Black iron bars pulled the brain-blank, emotionally shattered Isca back rapidly, dodging the explosion’s shockwave.
Tina grabbed Isca,
looking at the vacant-eyed, shell-shocked Second Lieutenant Isca; the words on the tip of her tongue were swallowed again—she had heard the conversation between Isca and Vice Admiral Dolo with her own ears, and the shock hadn’t subsided yet, even for her as a bystander.
Let alone Isca, the person involved!
Her lifesaver being the destroyer of her hometown, the enemy who sacrificed her parents and family… such conflicting emotions were scalp-numbing just to imagine!
“Really… damn it!”
Tina cursed bitterly,
unsure who exactly she was cursing.
The explosion’s center.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!!! You damn pirate, die obediently!”
Vice Admiral Dolo staggered to his feet.
It had to be said that though Vice Admiral Dolo had mental issues, his Haki mastery was exceptionally solid; the close-range explosion barely harmed him, merely shredding his upper clothes, with his pants just dusted.
Once steady,
Observation Haki immediately locked onto the flame-turned Ace.
One of the Rokushiki, ‘Shave,’ activated, and in an instant he rushed to Ace’s front; the fist wrapped in Armament Haki collided with the fist wreathed in scorching flames—with no surprise, Ace was sent flying.
However,
he actively elementalized to dodge Vice Admiral Dolo’s grab.
Then regrouped and punched again.
Fists clashed repeatedly; Ace was repelled time after time, the battlefield shifting constantly, soon moving to the slum’s central position—during this, the distance Ace was sent flying kept shortening.
Finally,
“Bang!!!”
Countless times, uncountable.
This time, Ace’s fist blocked Vice Admiral Dolo’s, standing firm without retreating—though flames jetted from his feet, providing forward thrust.
“Impossible… damn pirate, what exactly are you…”
Vice Admiral Dolo was shocked and furious.
“Hah hah! This is reality! So-called geniuses are these unreasonable guys—common sense and rules mean nothing before a true genius!” Prince Elus appeared at the battlefield’s center, helpfully explaining to Vice Admiral Dolo.
No one paid attention to the suddenly appearing Prince Elus.
Enraged Ace had only defeating Vice Admiral Dolo in his eyes; likewise, Vice Admiral Dolo, obsessed with exterminating pirates, had no time to consider Prince Elus’s nonsense—he swung his fists with all his might, blocking Ace’s scorching, hardened punches.
Yes,
the battle turned here,
Vice Admiral Dolo, who had firmly held the advantage, now suppressed by Fire Fist, his wretched posture hard to reconcile with his earlier invincible demeanor.
“Why… why…”
Vice Admiral Dolo growled lowly, his heaving breath and twisted face full of disbelief.
“Armament Haki… why can you use Armament Haki! Damn pirate!!!”
“After getting punched by you a few times, I pretty much got it… something like that?”
Ace said uncertainly.
The flaming fist didn’t pause for words; blazing flame tails erupted from his arm, in that instant pushing the fist’s speed to the limit, smashing hard into Vice Admiral Dolo’s forehead.
“Damn! Really… intolerable! Pirates should just die!!!”
Vice Admiral Dolo widened his eyes.
Letting out his final roar.
Then—
he crashed down; even unconscious, he strained to keep his eyes open, his lightless pupils still holding anger and unwillingness.
“Pirates should die? Maybe you’re right!”
Ace withdrew his fist.
His body swayed slightly; his swollen right fingers and forearm wouldn’t heal just from elementalization—after taking so many punches from Vice Admiral Dolo, honestly, without his tough body honed from youth and unyielding will, he’d have been floored long ago.
“But I really don’t want to get taken down by a bastard who hurts kids!”
He glanced at the unconscious Vice Admiral Dolo on the ground, turned crisply, and walked toward the rapidly approaching Deuce.
“Ace, even a Navy Vice Admiral beaten by you—not worthy of our captain!”
Deuce supported his captain.
“How could I lose to a guy like that… though, his fists were really hard!”
Ace laughed while controlling his disrupted breathing.
“Hurry back to the ship! I just contacted Teacher Mihal—the Navy’s about to surround our ship.” Deuce supported his captain, urging a quick retreat, but Ace hesitated, looking back at Second Lieutenant Isca under Major Tina’s protection in the distance.
He opened his mouth,
wanting to say something.
But—
“Yo, hello! Mister Portgas D. Ace, thanks for letting me see such a great fight. Though personally I don’t like taking advantage of others’ peril, this is my first mission arranged by those old men after joining the Seven Warlords—if I mess it up, it’ll be awkward face-wise…”
“So, uh… sorry about that! Please come with me!”
Prince Elus blocked Ace and Deuce’s path.
Moonlight Sword slashed down.
The sharp Sword Qi wouldn’t cleave Fire Fist in two but would surely inflict a debilitating heavy wound.
“Black Prince!!!”
Deuce roared in frustration.
He puffed out his chest, trying to block the sword edge rushing at Ace with his body.
“Clang!!!”
The metallic clash echoed.
Moonlight Sword was parried.
The cyan-white lightsaber was held mid-air, unable to advance another inch.
“Hey! True Chosen One…”
Prince Elus withdrew the Moonlight Sword, clicking his tongue at the unexpected intruder blocking him. “I thought you were just watching the show, old man! After hiding your identity for so many years, wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy a peaceful retirement? Respected Lord Pluto!”
Pluto?
Hearing that special title, Ace, nearly exhausted, suddenly squeezed out new strength; he widened his eyes, staring at the back just a bit taller than him guarding in front—a thousand words welled in his gut, but his open mouth uttered not a single one.
【Pluto】—
Silbaz Rayleigh, former Roger Pirates First Mate, the man called “Right Hand of the Pirate King.”
In other words,
this man before him was his father’s comrade.
“Ace, you okay?”
As Ace’s partner knowing his secret, Deuce gripped his captain’s arm, worriedly watching the dazed captain.
Truth be told, Deuce himself was baffled, the suddenly chaotic situation leaving him clueless.
New Seven Warlords 【Black Prince】 Prince Elus, former Roger Pirates First Mate 【Pluto】 Rayleigh.
The consecutive big shots intervening plunged the calming situation back into chaotic vortex.
Not just the Spade Pirates captain and ship doctor were shocked; Major Tina, directing firefighting units, froze upon recognizing the white-haired man’s identity, taking several seconds to snap back and fumbling for her Den Den Mushi to contact Navy Headquarters.
“Didn’t expect after so many years, someone still remembers an outdated old guy like me!”
The sword-bearing man smiled silently.
He stared straight at Prince Elus blocking his path, not turning to look at Ace behind him.
“How could I forget a monster like you! In a godforsaken place like the New World, without eyes good at spotting strong people, you can’t survive!” Prince Elus laughed in reply.
“Hahaha!”
Rayleigh laughed heartily. “Interesting! Haven’t seen such an amusing young man in ages, but bullying these little ones without sharpened claws with your skill is a bit… unbecoming!” Midway, his smile faded, leaving only sharp eyes piercing like they could see through illusions, fixed on Prince Elus.
“Fighting pirates, I don’t think manners or morals are necessary, right?”
Words fell,
Moonlight Sword’s blade rose.
“Boom!!”
Cyan-white lightsaber and plain longsword clashed again.
“You’re right about that! Guess I’m the muddled old fool.”
Rayleigh accepted Prince Elus’s reasoning.
Fighting pirates,
indeed had no airs.
If pirate-vs-pirate fights followed unwritten rules sometimes, Navy-vs-pirate had none—the Navy fighting pirates was the most natural thing.
“Ha! Look at you saying that—your skills don’t look muddled at all, old timer!”
Swift-as-wind sword lights entwined like two differently colored serpents.
Prince Elus’s attacks were flawlessly countered. The title “Right Hand of the Pirate King” wasn’t for show—this strength… terrifying! Without activating second-stage release form, he probably couldn’t touch this Lord Pluto.
“Hey, kid, not hurrying to take your captain and leave? Staying to eat prison food in the Undersea Great Prison?”
The flying shout snapped Deuce from his mental chaos.
Realizing now was the best escape chance, Deuce gripped his captain’s arm, skirted the monsters’ fierce clash, and swiftly dragged the reluctant but powerless captain into the nearby unburnt slum.
Luckily, from wandering with Ace recently, he knew the local routes by heart; they nimbly wove through spiderweb-like alleys, evading surrounding Navy pursuit.
Neuro-Scan precisely tracked Ace and Deuce’s positions.
However,
Entangled by the vigorous old monster, Prince Elus couldn’t free a hand to pursue the prey about to escape his Neuro-Scan range.
“Tch!”
Prince Elus clicked his tongue in annoyance.
Ace and Deuce’s auras fully exited his perception range.
He pulled back, looking at Rayleigh still blocking his path with sword in hand, and said, “Lord Pluto, the man’s gotten far! You planning a real fight to the finish with me?”
“Gotta let the kids get as far as possible!”
Rayleigh smiled.
“In that case, I’ll have to properly experience Lord Pluto’s prowess!” Prince Elus gripped Moonlight Sword tight; jet-black wings slowly unfurled from his back, casting a large shadow on the ground.
Then,
the battle escalated.
