Emperor's Influence and Fear

_________ POV Narration_________

Kaido didn't really know what to expect when he started flying towards Paradise.

He decided to follow King's Vivre Card, he didn't bother sailing on the sea, as he considered it more of a waste of time than anything. At least for that particular situation.

Still, as the Captain of the Beast Pirates, he had the duty to at least pretend to care about his subordinates.

Yeah, no that wasn't really the case. Kaido didn't have much affection for his subordinates. But he did need his men in order for his plans to be successful.

Kaido had always been an ambitious man. But more importantly, he took his beliefs very seriously, beliefs that shaped his ambition into what it was now.

To pull the World Nobles to their level, to create war so grand that it would encompass them. And only the strong would get to rule after that. Only those that proved themselves worthy in his eyes.

Now, Kaido considered the world to be shifting constantly, leading to him wanting to hurry up his plans.

The Marines had incurred many losses with their recent war. And Kaido was obviously going to try and take advantage of that.

The Revolutionaries possessing some powerful weapon was of no interest to him.

If anything, he was confident he'd be able to destroy anything in his path, as he was confident that nothing would get past his defences anyway.

Lately, things had been looking up for him, even though he still hadn't gotten his hands on Enel.

A newly appointed Warlord had started managed to reignite his hope somehow, managing to recreate and sell him SMILE Fruits once again.

'Buggy D. Clown...' The man didn't look like much to the Dragon Emperor. But his past certainly did validate his title.

A former member of Gol D. Roger's crew. Kaido had some respect for Roger, enough to acknowledge that he had only surrounded himself with talented/powerful people in the past.

It seemed that Buggy was one of said talented people. Not only that, he had managed to somehow gain an army of decently powerful pirates, all from the depths of Impel Down.

All in All, his crew was now slowly replacing Doflamingo completely in the underworld. Filling up the hole that the older Warlord had left.

Kaido was obviously suspicious about him at first. But it seemed that he was just shrewd.

He had somehow managed to make Caesar Clown work for him, which explained the SMILE Fruits. So Kaido decided to just observe him for a while longer as he continued to buy Fruits from him.

Now, he was set to let his army of Devil Fruit users grow more and more... At least until the World government lost most of its power.

'I want to start the war at the end of this year, get a few more Devil Fruit users under me before attacking the Holy Land with full force...'

But in order to do that, he needed King and Queen, they weren't the type of subordinates that he could simply replace.

Queen was a genius mechanic, and King was the strongest fighter that his pirate crew had, except Kaido himself of course.

Long was the flight, two days at the very least, but Kaido's stamina was great, and his speed far greater than any ship on the Grand Line.

The wheater didn't affect him at all, as lighting coiled around his body at times, only to leave it unaffected. The heat only briefly touched his skin before he put up a wall of willpower between him and the lightning.

Finally, he had reached King's position. At the very least he was in close proximity. He circled around a bit, looking at the sea below him without much emotion before he finally looked up.

A large black cloud was all he could see.

'With hindsight... It isn't that hard to tell that cloud isn't normal. Too thick for a normal cloud, but I guess it would be all the same for the people below.'

He found it a bit odd that the islands were no longer where King had reported them to be, but it wouldn't have been the first time he had heard of islands shifting locations.

Kaido flew upwards, finally reaching the adequate height to see above that large black cloud, at the very least 10 kilometres from the water.

And finally, he could see them. The Sky Islands.

One was made out of strange clouds from what Kaido could sense, the other was of earth. The one made of dirt was a bit higher in elevation and was connected with chains with the other, pulling it along.

Kaido could clearly see the gigantic rotors on the Dirt island, but he could also see that they weren't spinning. 'Ran out of power? Well, I guess powering an engine of that size would be difficult...'

He hovered over the islands, in full dragon form, his body coiling around a bit as his head rose and huffed some steam.

Kaido could sense the weaklings below cower at his presence, some even fainting at the sight of him.

'How did these worms capture King and Queen? How the hell did they kill Who's Who and Sasaki?!'

He instantly became mad when seeing them, he was angry, both at the people below him and at King for allowing himself to be captured by them.

His chest swelled up, as he prepared to spit out a Blast Breath, to cull the weaklings in that sky island for good.

But he was forced to stop himself when a figure jumped up to meet him. A person that he found extremely familiar.

"FUCK OFF!" An old man dressed in cargo shorts and wearing a floral-pattern t-shirt was the one to attack him.

The old man punched towards him, making Kaido scoff as he blocked the punch with his gigantic body, only to be pushed backwards, the flames in his throat getting launched well away from the island as he was sent flying in the distance.

Kaido immediately recovered, he hadn't received any wounds from that punch, but it helped him immediately recognise the old man that had attacked him.

"Former Marine Hero Garp?!"

"Good, you have eyes. Congratulations." Garp scoffed at his opponent as he hopped in the air.

Kaido stayed silent, judging the situation with narrowed eyes.

'I can somewhat understand King and Queen getting captured if he's here... But would he have been able to also kill Sasaki and Who's Who while fighting them?'

Kaido scoffed at the thought, Garp was no weakling, but he had fought the old man before. The Former Marine Hero was far from his prime, far from being able to kill him.

"Garp... I don't know what someone like you is doing here... But I can't forgive you for harming the strength of the Beast Pirates!"

Kaido's gigantic body quickly started moving, his tail flicking towards Garp like a whip.

The old marine hopped over the attack with ease, Kaido wasn't exactly hard to track when in his Dragon form, especially for someone with as much experience as Garp.

Kaido also scoffed, already realising that a fight with Garp would never end quickly.

He started whipping his tail towards Garp more and more. The old man dodged the hits easily, the shockwaves spreading from those whips seemed to affect the Skypea quite a bit though, as some houses even collapsed.

More and more tail whips flew around, as Garp dodged with a scowl on his face. He then noticed Kaido's throat bulging out, as flames started appearing at the tip of his nose.

'Shit... Kaido is always annoying to fight. But now I also have to take care of the people below...'

Garp immediately dashed towards Kaido once more, trying to stop him from releasing that blast breath towards the populated part of the Sky Islands.

"Blast Breath!"

Unfortunately, it seemed Kaido had predicted that move, as he turned his head slightly, engulfing Garp in a concentrated stream of fire.

The old marine was forced to take the hit head-on as he turned his body completely black and crossed his arms in front of him. He cursed inwardly for a bit, as he realised Kaido wasn't fucking around and had likely used Future Sight.

Despite his guard being up, Garp was still sent flying into Upper Yard's forests, breaking countless trees in the process, damaging a rotor and fragmenting the ground in the process.

The stream of fire continued for a few seconds, fragmenting the ground even more as steam started appearing from the patch of the Cloud Sea nearby.

Kaido huffed a bit of steam as his attack finished, he turned his head to the island, where everyone was looking at him with fear. Kaido huffed and decided to exert his will upon them.

'If I make them all surrender then my mission will be mostly over... Garp can't protect them all alone.'

Instantly, a gigantic aura extended from his draconic body. He roared to the sky as his presence seemed to make most of the people on the island faint... At least it would have.

But the second his Conquerer's Haki flared up, another one rose up to meet him.

A baleful aura filled with indignation, one frighteningly familiar to Kaido. That familiarity made him falter for a second, retracting his Conqueror's Haki into himself, running away from a clash subconsciously,

Kaido felt as if his skin was being punctured by countless small swords. The aura washed over him, from top to bottom, as the hair on the Dragon Emperor's back rose.

'No...'

"My, my... The dragon brat finally became a fully-fledged adult, I am oh so proud of you..."

Kaido's eyes immediately widened, as he now noticed a figure sitting on a cloud right beside him.

Another old mam. This time blind, with a body filled with scars.

But, even underneath all of those scars, Kaido could still recognize him. His aura hadn't changed one bit.

To that day, it was the sharpest willpower he had ever felt in his life. Far surpassing any other swordsman that he had ever met in that aspect.

Besides, there was only one person that had ever called him a 'dragon brat'.

"... You?" Kaido's gigantic spine shivered in fear at the sight of that old man. It was as if... No, he WAS looking at a ghost.

"You aren't real... You're supposed to be dead!" Kaido said to himself as his head reeled backwards taking a distance from the cloud that the old ghost was resting on.

"Now, now. That is a very rude thing to say to an elderly citizen... I thought I had taught you better manners than this." The old man's voice was calm, with no fear whatsoever in his tone as he faced the gigantic shivering dragon.

Kaido had never been the type to feel fear... In his life, very few people had ever been capable of injuring him.

Those were people that deserved his respect, and people whom he honoured the memory of...

But beyond that, stood another extreme. Of people that Kaido was simply unwilling to fight.

There were only two people on that list... One was his former captain, Rocks D. Xebec. And the other was the right hand of the strongest, Francisco D. Guzman.

Those two men had towered over entire generations of pirates. Not one single individual could ever hope to match them.

Even when they were taken down, they had to be fought by groups of other legendary pirates and marines.

Therefore, Kaido was unwilling to fight them. Fear or no fear, one thing was for sure. Even now, when he had grown so strong. Kaido was still unsure if he even stood a chance against Xebec or Francisco in their primes.

He knew very well that Francisco would've been able to gut him like a fish. His 'Unstoppable Blade' was not something that Kaido had ever wanted to feel on his own skin.

But that shouldn't even have been an issue! Kaido was sure they had died!

He had been there at God Valley!

Hell, he had somewhat helped Garp and Roger in taking out Xebec!

So what the hell was Francisco doing there?!

One thing was for sure though... Kaido now needed a stiff drink.

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Hope you liked the chapter!

A meeting that's been a long time coming, huh?

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