Bang, bang, bang…
In the White Sea seven thousand meters up, the sounds of repeated collisions and roaring shockwaves echoed.
A little ways off from the Pegasus, two figures were trading blows in midair.
Zoom in: the two were Yami and Carina.
They were sparring in pure martial arts.
Strictly speaking, Yami kept feeding Carina openings—more attack than defense from her side.
Look closely and you'd see they were floating by different means.
Yami, by the Paramecia Float-Float Fruit, shed gravity and hovered freely.
Carina had taken her human-beast form—loli to lady—and stood on flame-clouds to stay aloft.
Since she, too, could command fire, lightning, wind, and cloud, flying came naturally.
She could ride flame-clouds or ride the wind itself.
Whoosh—
No one knew how long Yami and Carina had been dueling in the sky.
Carina suddenly broke back to open space; two of the nine tails swaying behind her lit up in white and red.
Then those two tails twisted together and fired an orange-red beam at Yami.
The beam carried terrifying heat—like a storm-fueled inferno compressed into a lance, melting anything it touched.
If Kaido saw it, he'd find it very familiar.
Another take on a dragon's breath, wasn't it?
Boom—!
Yami didn't dodge the searing beam; he met it with a single punch.
In an instant, a deafening blast rang out.
A wave of blistering heat burst from in front of Yami and rolled out in all directions.
The blast radius was huge; in a heartbeat it skimmed right over the Pegasus.
Nami barely felt a thing, but Robin and Perona both felt their mouths go dry, as if the moisture had been sucked from their bodies.
That was just the aftershock.
If that beam had hit dead-on, they'd likely have been reduced to ash.
"Nice move. It's right up there with Nami's Railgun."
Yami looked at his faintly reddened fist and smiled toward the airborne Carina.
"U-fufufu… really? I don't buy it."
Carina swished her tails and grinned. "Master has to use a black hole to swallow the little cat burglar's Railgun, and my Destructive Beam got blown away with one punch. I've got a long way to go."
"Only a few days into your Mythical Zoan, and you've already fused wind and fire into a combo move. This fruit really does suit you better than the Vampire—good thing I didn't steer you wrong."
Yami shifted the topic with praise, then asked, "Anything else besides that one?"
"That's it for now. Straight lightning and flame, or windstorms… they don't do anything to Master. Let's call it for today!"
Carina shook her head, looking quite satisfied. "My physique is skyrocketing every day now, and my appetite's not human anymore. Those 'beyond human' workouts everyone says people can't do? They're getting easier and easier."
"At this rate, it won't be long before I master the Rokushiki."
"U-fufufu… then my human-beast form will be so much more complete—no more swinging raw power around like now."
"Mm."
Yami nodded approval and cautioned, "Don't ever drop your Rokushiki training. Compared to Mythical Zoan brawn or supernatural powers it looks humble, sure—but that set of superhuman techniques is eight hundred years of the World Government and Marines boiled down. It's a shortcut people overlook."
"Ordinary folks can keep pushing their limits with it—and for those like us who grow stronger through external forces, it's how you stabilize your base so your fruit and Haki can climb higher."
"Marine hero Monkey D. Garp used that body art and overwhelming Haki to become a legend of the seas."
"Mm-hmm…"
Carina nodded over and over.
Done for the day, Yami and Carina returned to the Pegasus's deck.
The ship lifted and continued toward a certain destination.
To help Carina develop her fruit, Yami didn't use the Mo-Mo Fruit to accelerate—he flew a while, stopped to test, then flew again.
So another week passed before the Pegasus finally arrived.
The destination wasn't Dressrosa, but Apayado above Jaya.
Back on Apayado, they'd reclaim the City of Gold stored in the pocket dimension—and take their time vacationing.
Last time, in their rush to seize the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and the City of Gold, neither Yami nor the girls had gone over to Angel Island.
So this time Yami planned to make it up to them and enrich the adventure.
By the way, both the Skypieans and the hidden Shandia knew Enel and his four priests were dead.
Thus the Skypieans and the Shandia had gone back to war for Apayado.
A butterfly storm set off by Yami.
In the original tale the two sides laid down their grudges and lived in peace because the Straw Hats intervened—Luffy helped defeat the unbeatable Enel.
But now, with Enel and the priests abruptly dead, there'd been no shared ordeal, so of course they couldn't let go.
Fortunately, the fighting was confined to Apayado and didn't affect Yami's sightseeing.
More than that, on Angel Island the crew enjoyed life as "gods."
Blue Sea beri are insanely valuable in the sky.
As Blue Sea tycoons, Yami and company were downright divine spenders up there.
They quickly discovered that, and went on a buying spree—snapping up loads of dials that Enel hadn't collected.
If they weren't all Devil Fruit users, each of the girls would've had a Waver.
After five full days on the sky island, they finally departed.
The Pegasus crossed the Red Line and, in Sea Circle Calendar 1516, March, made landfall once more at Dressrosa's harbor.
News of their arrival reached Doflamingo at once.
As before, they barely had time to stroll Dressrosa before Diamante arrived with an invitation to the Royal Plateau.
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