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1.
“So, what now?” says Kaidou to Linlin.
They’re floating in magma. It’s very hot, but unfortunately not hot enough to do substantial damage. Kaidou feels like nothing more than a particularly chewed-on stick of meat.
Linlin ignores him. She’s chewing on a lava shark, laid out starfish on her back as red-orange bubbles break around her. Her homies don’t seem to have survived whatever went on between her and whichever brats she fought. No great loss.
“I don’t really feel like moving,” he adds, irritated. Every part of his body aches. Whatever was up with Strawhat’s awakening has him intensely aware of every abused nerve ending, every bit of bruised and bent-up muscle, every stretched-snapped blood vessel.
He was defeated. He could have died. The knowledge is exhilarating.
He was defeated. He didn’t die. That’s not how it’s supposed to go at all.
“I need a drink,” he says.
Linlin spits out a bunch of shark skin. It hits him in the arm. “There’s lava,” she says. “Drink that.”
He honestly might. It’ll burn going down his throat, at least.
“You drink it first,” he says. “You fell down here first.”
“And what exactly are you trying to imply there, kid? Those brats had to work together to take me out. You lost to one of them. On his own.” She goes back to her lava shark.
“You didn’t see what Strawhat was doing with that awakening,” objects Kaidou. His head remembers it should be aching. “I doubt you’d have fared any better.”
Joyboy, he thinks, and feels half-delirious again. Joyboy. King, are you alive?
Linlin snorts derisively.
“You try being used as a jumprope by a giggling child,” he grumbles. His tendons still haven’t recovered. He feels distended. Wrung out.
Linlin takes another bite, then says, mouth full, “That wouldn’t happen to me.”
The entire world shudders.
Magma surges under Kaidou, frightened by something massive. An earthquake, maybe. Washes over Linlin. Kaidou is driven up and up and up by its momentum, up and up and up, soaring, until the sky is blue above him and he’s erupted, erupting, shifting frantically to full dragon form to stay in the air.
Well then.
Well then.
What’s he supposed to do now?
2.
His first thought, of course, is Wano, but as soon as he thinks it his entire body aches with phantom pain, from his eyeballs to the tip of his tail. He’s certainly still injured, which, while absolutely exhilarating, makes him uncertain, now, in a way he’d almost forgotten how to be.
He’s not invincible anymore. Somewhere out there in the world is the man who beat him senseless laughing, who could do it again. The thought is dizzying.
He wanders between the first few islands he finds. Concludes he’s somewhere in the New World, though not in his own territory- former territory, now, which is a startling thought. The first newspaper he finds proclaims Strawhat as an Emperor in his place, and the photo of him is blurred white, unreal, and laughing.
Kaidou isn’t an Emperor anymore. He’s not the strongest creature in the world anymore, either. He’s been beaten.
It’s liberating.
What a strange thought.
He can do whatever he wants, so for some time, he does nothing at all. He drinks a few taverns out of their entire (rather disappointing) stock, has a brush with a warship full of Marines who start fainting at the sight of him before he even needs to use his haki on them, and somehow becomes briefly employed at a winery when their mechanical presses break.
And then, eventually, midflight on an otherwise unremarkable evening, he catches sight of a certain jolly roger on the horizon.
3.
It's curiosity more than anything else that pulls him out of the sky, flicks him into human form, and wanders him over to sit beside the Supernova swordsman who'd wounded him on Onigashima’s roof.
The Strawhat Pirates are partying. The cook is turning roasts on a grill, Nico Robin and Knight of the Sea Jinbe are huddled over a folio of no doubt exceedingly sensitive information probably stolen from Kaidou's own castle, and Strawhat himself is whirling around the campfire with a motley assortment of crewmates to the same familiar rhythm that's been beating a hole in Kaidou's head since the fight, as rendered on skull and violin.
None of them have looked up from their festivities since Kaidou arrived except the swordsman, and him only to move a hand to his swords and shoot a glance towards Strawhat. It's insulting. More than that, it's a disgrace. This is what they're calling an Emperor's crew these days?
Kaidou reaches over the swordsman's head to snatch a bottle of some liquor or other from the pile between him and the Strawhats' apparent navigator. He downs it. It's good. In fact he thinks he recognizes it. Taken from the Flower Capital, most likely. His entire body aches.
"Not bad," he says.
The navigator shrieks.
Wine spills out of her glass and onto the swordsman next to her, who growls vaguely and makes to draw a sword. The dancers come to a stumbling halt, falling over each other, some of them shrieking too. The cook looks torn between tending his grill and running over.
"Ah," says Strawhat Luffy. He's standing up, brushing embers out of his hair. His namesake hat, hanging behind him, avoids by some miracle bursting into flame. "Kaidou."
"Strawhat," acknowledges Kaidou.
He doesn't look like an Emperor, dirt-scuffed and drunk on joy. He looks like the man who beat Kaidou, though. He fixes Kaidou with a long, indecipherable stare.
And then he shrugs and stretches an arm out to try to snatch something off the grill while the cook's back is turned.
"Luffy," the swordsman says, his one eye sliding between Kaidou and Strawhat, even though his posture has already relaxed in response to his captain's apparent disinterest.
"It's fine," Strawhat says, not even bothering to look away again from where the cook is fending off his grabs. "He's not here to fight."
It's correct, if deeply insulting. Kaidou's not still sure what he is here for, but it's not to fight. The fight has already happened, and he's already lost. Strawhat's near-immediate dismissal of him stings a little, but he can recognize that the more powerful pirate here is entitled to it.
The swordsman looks him over once more, and then shrugs, apparently accepting this judgement. "Okay," he says, and offers another bottle up towards Kaidou. Kaidou accepts it, pulls the cork out with his teeth and takes a long drink.
"'Okay?'" repeats the navigator, incredulous. "Zoro!"
"What? Luffy says it's fine," the swordsman says. "So it's fine."
This sake is better than the last bottle. "You have decent taste," Kaidou tells the swordsman.
The navigator's expression skips straight from terror to something that looks worryingly like resignation. "If you're here to join our crew," she says, and the idea that she finds the concept plausible enough to address is frankly horrifying, "please don't."
"Why would I want to join your crew," Kaidou says.
She shrugs, looking miserable, and refills her glass of wine until it's brimming. Downs fully half of it in one gulp before saying, "I don't know! It's happened before! It keeps happening!"
The swordsman nods.
"I am not here to join your crew," Kaidou feels the need to clarify. "I find you all pathetic. Besides Strawhat."
"Then why are you here?" the navigator asks, scooting sideways away from him a few inches. It does absolutely nothing meaningful to move her out of his range, but he doesn't point it out.
He almost doesn't answer her. The dancers, which include a fascinating little zoan-type thing, have dusted themselves off and mostly gone back to amusing themselves around the fire, although several of them keep sneaking glances at Kaidou. It's a sorry attempt at stealth. When he wonders how his crew lost to this disorderly band of ten, he just comes up embarrassed.
The musician's taken up his tune again, too, weaving the four-note rhythm that makes Kaidou's bones ache into whatever he's playing. Maybe that's why he says, "I don't actually know."
"Well, as long as you won't be sticking around," the navigator says. She drains her glass. "Zoro, pass me some of that fruity stuff from Dressrosa. I need to get drunker."
"Witch," grunts the swordsman. He passes her the bottle, though.
"You know you love me!" she chirps. Once she's poured herself a glass, she caps the bottle and tosses it to Kaidou. "Zoro thinks it's too sweet, but he's an idiot. Picked up a case after we took down Doflammingo." Her voice takes on a mean edge. "He was one of yours, wasn't he? Ever taste any?"
He should kill her. He downs the bottle, instead. It's good.
"It's too sweet," he tells her.
The swordsman snorts.
"Men," complains the navigator. The musician starts up another song, four-note rhythm still echoing through Kaidou's skull. The cook changes over the vegetables on the grill. Nico Robin and Knight of the Sea Jinbe turn a page in their folio.
"I thought I would die," says Kaidou. The swordsman turns his head slightly towards him. The navigator puts her face in her hands. Kaidou, wondering why he's saying any of this, uncorks another bottle from the Strawhats' pile. This one's worse. "If I was ever defeated. But I'm alive."
The swordsman has the gall to bark a laugh at him, reaching up to clink their bottles together. "Ha! Bet you thought you knew everything the world had to offer too, huh? But it's always bigger than you thought."
It's offensive, is what it is, these children who must be younger than his own son treating him so dismissively, but he feels so unmoored that he can't even muster up the appropriate anger. Maybe Strawhat really did break something in him permanently, far deeper down than his shattered horn.
"Why am I even surprised?" the navigator says, sounding weary.
Silhouetted by the roaring fire, Strawhat has the strange little zoan creature balanced on his shoulders, one hand accepting a handful of skewers from the cook, and there's that beat he can't shake from his chest, surrounding and permeating everything. Kaidou is honestly irritated with himself at how fascinated he is by it all. The man who beat him.
"I don't understand him," he says. He's not sure he means to say it out loud. "Strawhat."
"Oh, get in line," the navigator says, gesturing broadly with her cup.
The swordsman grins. "He's gonna be the king. What else do you need to know?"
That's a thought: things are in motion. Things are changing, really changing, for the first time in this age. Kaidou always assumed that if the stagnation of the New World ever truly broke, it would be when he was dead.
That does remind him, though. "You. Swordsman. You fought King."
"I did," the swordsman agrees, grin sharpening. "It was a hell of a fight."
"Did you kill him?" Kaidou asks. He doesn't think he wants to seek out any of his former crew, now. The thought of assuming leadership again feels odd, now that he's lost any purpose he might have had; he has nowhere to lead them to. Still, King had been with him longer than anyone. He'd like to know, at least.
"Nah," says the swordsman, offhand. Kaidou breathes out. Then the swordsman adds, "Don't know about now, though. Some Admiral came by and dragged your goons off to Impel Down, and he wasn't alive by much when I won."
Well, better Impel Down than another government laboratory. They rose together and they fell together. Maybe someday Kaidou'll have to break in and tell King they were both wrong.
"The government," he grumbles, "always interfering."
The navigator snorts. She glances at her log pose, then studies him curiously, glass held halfway to her lips. "You were working with them, weren't you? The government. Cipher Pol."
Kaidou scoffs. It’s unbecoming for an Emperor’s officer to be so naive. "And so will you, now that Strawhat's been acclaimed an Emperor of the Sea." He takes another long drink. The bottle hasn't improved in quality. "Some politicking is expected of a Great Power."
"You really don't know anything about our captain, do you?" says the swordsman.
The navigator's eyes are glittering, all suppressed mirth. "Luffy does what he wants. You'll get it eventually."
Kaidou thinks about boundless, all-consuming laughter, about that impossible awakening grabbing him, stretching his skin his flesh his bones out like taffy. His body still aches. He drains the bottle.
"I don't know why I'm here," he says again. Strawhat's piled himself and the zoan creature onto the (admittedly very impressive) robot's shoulders, singing along off-key. Nico Robin is looking directly at him, smiling. He glares at her.
"Then leave," says the navigator. But the cook is twirling over to them with food for three, and Kaidou stares at the plate of roasts he's been handed in bemusement.
It does look delicious.
"Eat it, shit-tyrant," says the cook. He's glaring, hands in his pockets. "Before Luffy starts stealing off plates. And don't go starving people ever again."
The swordsman laughs at that, and then the cook is kicking at him, and Kaidou is left staring at his plate.
I'm going to make a world, screams Strawhat, thunder in the sky, crackling with power, where my friends can eat as much as they want!
"Well?" says the navigator, laughing too. "Are you leaving?"
What the hell.
He eats.
4.
"Ah," says Devil Child Nico Robin, without looking up from the book in her hands. "You're back."
Kaidou scowls down at her, which is ineffective, because she's still not even deigning to look at him. The most valuable woman in the world, stretched out and sunning herself on the beach without a single care.
Only a few of the other Strawhats are in view at the moment, the rest probably on the ship or scattered further ashore on the neutral island where he’s stumbled across them. The Knight of the Sea is a few meters away, propped against a boulder, apparently asleep. Strawhat, somehow, doesn't appear to have any permanent sort of power base in the New World. Although his territories are few but valuable he never seems to visit them, instead bouncing between islands apparently at random.
"I didn't mean to be," he says, which is true. He didn't. He hasn't intended to cross paths with the Strawhats any of the times it’s happened. It just keeps happening. He sits down beside her, because the sun-warmed pink sand of this particular beach is admittedly quite nice, and adds, after a moment, "You would be very easy to steal, right now."
She laughs lightly, turns a page. "Is that a threat, or are you worried for me? Either way, I'm flattered."
"It's just an observation," Kaidou says, irritated. "The more prominent Strawhat becomes and the closer he draws to Laugh Tale, the more valuable you become to all the world's powers. I can't believe he allows you to just sit out here like this."
She looks up at him, a smile on her lips. "And if you were my captain," she says, "you would keep me in a cell, yes? Rigged with explosives, perhaps, so that if you couldn't have me then nobody could?"
The jab is obvious. Kaidou scowls down at her, and says nothing.
After a moment, she drops her gaze back to her book. "My captain would never think of constraining my liberty," she says simply. "That is why I am going to make him king."
It's tempting to snatch her up. Fly off with her just to prove he can, to prove her faith wrong, to break her of that obnoxious idealism the whole crew wears in their smiles. It's much too nice a day out to get turned into rubber and tied in a bow by an irate Strawhat, though, so he doesn't bother.
"You're a band of naive fools," he says instead.
"Perhaps," says Nico Robin. She smiles slightly. The but you're the one who lost hangs in the air unspoken.
Knight of the Sea Jinbe cracks an eye open. "Certainty and idealism are different things," he says. He doesn't move, except to turn his head. "Luffy will be King of the Pirates."
"I heard you said that to Linlin's face," says Kaidou. She's probably still floating in the world's mantle. There were a lot of sharks down there; it'll be awhile before she gets hungry enough to make a nuisance of herself on the surface. "She wanted to gut you almost as much as Strawhat."
The Knight of the Sea shrugs. "I'm a Strawhat Pirate."
Kaidou can almost understand him. A powerful man, a former Warlord and a captain in his own right, leaving his crew and falling in behind a slip of a rookie shouldn't make any sense, but Kaidou still feels Strawhat's strength in the stretched-out ache of his bones, in the pounding of his head and the directionless paths he makes across the sea. Kaidou remembers what King was like, after he freed him.
Power is power. The Strawhats may be fools, but they're powerful fools.
Or, their captain is, at least.
"What happened to Onigashima?" he asks, on a whim.
"Dropped into the sea," says Nico Robin, still not looking up. "I did get a look at your poneglyphs before Momo sunk it, though. Fascinating reads."
She's needling him deliberately, of course. He needs a drink. He leans back on his wrists, lets them sink into the sand. "My castle was already a wreck," he allows.
"I hear the rest of Wano is recovering well," she adds, after a moment, as though Kaidou has any reason to care. "Repairing the damage to the land will be a generational task, of course, but not impossible."
"I did see that Strawhat had claimed it as his territory," Kaidou says. "Does he have any intention of taking the rest of my islands? Or Linlin's, for that matter?"
At the moment, so far as he'd been able to tell from perusing the newspapers, nobody has staked any definitive claims on the vast swathes of the New World now up for grabs. If anyone is going to inherit his territory, it should rightly be the man who defeated him.
"Probably not," the Knight of the Sea says, sounding utterly unconcerned.
"Does he know I had more islands," Kaidou tries. Obviously Wano was his most prized, given the ancient weapon buried beneath its seawalls, so it does make sense that it would be the priority to seize, but it wasn't as though the rest of his territories had no strategic or financial value.
"It probably hasn't occurred to him," Nico Robin says, and turns a page in her book. "Our captain tends to focus on the immediate. I imagine he would find administrative decisionmaking lethally boring."
Kaidou wants a drink. "I want a drink," he declares, out loud. "Is your swordsman around? He has decent taste in liquor."
"Zoro? He's... somewhere on this island," Nico Robin says, before frowning faintly. "Hopefully."
The Knight of the Sea chuckles. "You can't expect Luffy to do anything in a reasonable way," he says, which is, from what Kaidou has seen, perhaps the most comical understatement he's ever heard. Nico Robin nods.
Kaidou contemplates this. Huffs. Makes mental plans to visit the winery where he was briefly employed and carry off their entire stock. Says, "Nico Robin. You read my poneglyphs."
"Oh, are you asking about Pluton?" says Nico Robin, far more blithe than the topic merits. "Luffy wasn't interested, so we left it in Wano."
Kaidou isn't stupid. He could have heard the and if you go back there to get it, we'll sic our captain on you from across the island. Not that he's got any intention of trying. He'll be content never seeing Wano Country again, as long as it's in Strawhat hands.
Speaking of Strawhat, though. "What."
"He didn't want it," says Nico Robin.
"He didn't want it," repeats Kaidou. The ancient weapon Pluton, which bears the name of a god, and could destroy the world. "The ancient weapon Pluton."
Nico Robin shrugs. "I asked, he wasn't interested. Besides," she adds, smug, delighted, "if he ever changes his mind, Franky can just build him another. Wouldn't be hard."
"That's our shipwright," says the Knight of the Sea, when Kaidou doesn't respond. "The cyborg," he amends, after another few seconds. "Round shoulders, blue hair. Burned the blueprints to Pluton two years back, or so I've heard."
Oh, the robot.
He can build an ancient weapon? He could have built an ancient weapon this whole time? Actually, Kaidou doesn't want to know. How does Strawhat find these people?
"If he's not interested in firepower or the rest of my territories," he wonders, "why did he bother with Wano?"
Nico Robin looks at him with something that might be pity, or might be amusement. He claws down the urge to murder her. "He likes the place," she says. "And they fed him."
Which does at least make some kind of sense, by Tottoland’s logic if not his own. An Emperor will have her whims.
"Does he remind you of Linlin?" he asks the Knight of the Sea, who just guffaws in answer.
The topic of conversation chooses that precise moment to make an appearance, catapulting out of the sky and sending a cloud of fine pink sand into the air when he impacts the beach. Strawhat Luffy, Emperor of the New World, shakes his head like a dog for a moment to clear it, and then blinks up at Kaidou, not bothering to stand.
"Oh," he says. "You're back."
"Luffy," Nico Robin says, folding her book shut in her lap and summoning a spare finger between the pages to hold her place. "Kaidou was asking if you have any intention of claiming the rest of his former territories."
Strawhat tilts his head. "You've got more islands?" he asks Kaidou, and then, not awaiting a response before shifting his attention back to Nico Robin, "Should we go there? Do they have food?"
"You could collect tribute from them in that form," Kaidou says. "If you wanted."
"Tribute?" Strawhat repeats.
"Taxes, Luffy," Nico Robin clarifies. When this nets her nothing more than a blank stare and a slow blink, she elaborates, "Money or other resources paid to, in this case, a larger pirate crew providing protection. You'll recall you ate the tribute Fishman Island was going to send to Big Mom, for example."
"You did what?" Kaidou asks, feeling somewhat incredulous. No wonder Linlin had been raring for Strawhat's blood practically since he'd entered the New World.
"Huh," Strawhat says. "Okay. I don't want your other islands, though. Unless they've got cool stuff, I guess. Do they?"
Kaidou has absolutely no idea what Strawhat would consider to be 'cool,' given that the ancient weapon Pluton apparently hadn't passed muster. He doesn't even want to think about what other trappings of power Strawhat may have ‘not wanted.’
"If you go claim them, you can find out," he equivocates. "Linlin's will definitely have food, at any rate."
"Linlin?" Strawhat says.
"Big Mom," says Nico Robin, to which Strawhat responds by planting his fist in his palm and saying ah.
"Besides," Kaidou continues. "If you don't stake your claim soon, one of the other Emperors will snatch them out from under you."
And if either of Roger's annoying cabin boys get their grubby little hands on anything of Kaidou's, he's going to strangle himself. He could tolerate that shadowy former cabin boy of Whitebeard's picking up his islands. He respects some good plotting and scheming. But even that would be embarrassing.
"So what?" says Strawhat, flopping onto his back. "They can have 'em, I guess. Unless there's meat there. Is there meat?"
"There might be," says Nico Robin, mildly. The Knight of the Sea chuckles.
"I'd rather," snarls Kaidou, "the man who defeated me be the one to claim my former territories."
The Knight of the Sea's eyes are on him, assessing. Kaidou resists the urge to bite his head off. Also the urge to throw himself in the ocean.
"Oh, okay!" chirps Strawhat. "You shoulda just said that to start with!"
"I did," says Kaidou. This is an undignified argument. Why is he having it? It's not his fault subtext bounces off Strawhat as well as blows do. He should leave.
Strawhat grins, sunny, grounding him to the beach, and Kaidou's bones ache in response. He says, "Well, if Kaidou wants me to protect his islands, I guess I can."
"That's not-" says Kaidou.
Nico Robin giggles. "Are you sure, Luffy?"
Strawhat tucks his arms back behind his head, aloof from worry. Something about the complete, beatific unconcern written across his face makes Kaidou half-expect him to kick his feet up in a whirl of white laughter, scatter sand into bouncy balls. He's almost disappointed when he just shuts his eyes.
"Sure," Strawhat says, casual as anything. He blinks one eye open up at Kaidou, and in the bright midafternoon sunlight the deep black-brown of it looks faintly red. "We just have to give them our flag, right?"
"Well, yes," Kaidou says. "You should also establish some other sort of program with the island's rulership regarding-"
Strawhat yawns tremendously, and appears to drop off to sleep on the spot. Kaidou grits his teeth and feels, despite the agreement, like he's somehow lost in this encounter.
"That was more successful than I expected," Nico Robin remarks mildly. "Oh, hello, Nami."
The navigator gives Kaidou a comically wide berth as she approaches them. "The log's reset," she says, idly prodding at the snoring Strawhat with the toe of her shoe. "We'll be setting off in the morning. I was going to ask the captain which route he wants to follow, but it looks like that'll have to wait."
"Follow the northernmost needle," Kaidou advises. "There's an undersea volcano range southwest of here."
The navigator's head snaps up at him, eyes sharpening. "You know this stretch of sea."
"Of course I do," Kaidou says, caught vaguely off guard by her interest. "It used to be mine."
The navigator is already pulling a roll of thick yellow paper and a pencil out of her backpack, her previous terror apparently vanished. "Alright. Southwest of here, you said? Do you know coordinates? Or an approximate distance? How many days' sailing it would be from here?"
Kaidou blinks. Looks over at Nico Robin, who is grinning unabashedly, plainly entertained. The navigator snaps her fingers irritably to pull his attention back, seating herself by his knee and unrolling her paper across her lap. "Come on! Do you have any idea how few decent navigational resources there are for the New World? You're giving me every detail you have!"
Kaidou clears his throat, jarred. "...Very well."
5.
The day Kaidou finds himself actively looking for the Strawhat flag on the horizon is the day he concludes their captain must have given him some form of irreparable brain damage.
He locates them easily enough. Strawhat's quick, bloodless takeover of one of Linlin's old territories—her supplier of gelatin, he thinks—had made page eleven of the previous week's World Economy Journal, so he'd stopped by, gotten an answer out of some frightened little rat of a man regarding which needle they'd followed, and chased down Thousand Sunny from there.
"Hi, Kaidou!" And there's Strawhat in the flesh, waving at him from the figurehead. By now, he’s so used to Strawhat’s utter dismissal of the threat he poses that he doesn't even bristle at the man’s wide smile.
"Strawhat," he acknowledges, landing by the bow with a thump. The Adam Wood deck takes his weight easily. Her crew may be of questionable quality, but Thousand Sunny is an undeniably incredible ship.
The robot shipwright barely looks up as Kaidou touches down; the Knight of the Sea, holding some boards down for him, and the swordsman, asleep, don't even do that. Strawhat grins at him. What has the world come to?
The navigator, at least, dignifies him with a visible startle reflex, although even she settles back down with her bright blue and presumably very alcoholic drink after a moment. And it's absurd that she's as consistently startled as she is, actually- She's a fairly skilled navigator, and Kaidou's seen her predict a cyclone at a distance of fifty leagues. Her observation haki can't be that bad.
"Hey, bro," says the robot, and Kaidou experiences a moment of absolute confusion before realizing he's the one being addressed. "What's the occasion?"
He considers refusing to respond on principle, but refusing to cooperate with the Strawhats' particular brand of disrespectful insanity tends to be consistently somehow more humiliating than just going along with it, and he is here for a reason.
"I want to talk to you about your administration of my former territories," he tells Strawhat.
"Okay," Strawhat says easily. "What about it?"
"You..." Kaidou gestures, briefly speechless. "Aren't you going to do anything with them?"
Strawhat blinks. "Like what? You asked me to protect them, right? But they all seem fine. I told them to call us if they needed help."
It's like talking to a child, though admittedly, he's not at all sure how old Strawhat actually is. "Protection is just one element of the arrangement," he says, aggrieved. "If you actually make proper use of their resources, they'll be much better assets."
"They gave us food," Strawhat says, matter-of-factly.
"Don't you have a fleet?" Kaidou asks. The Strawhat Grand Fleet has been making headlines quite consistently, though Strawhat himself never seems to be present. "You could at least use your islands as bases to dock and restock and crew your ships-"
Strawhat makes a face. "Ugh, those guys. They can do whatever they want. I don't care."
Baffling. "At least collect some consistent income from them," Kaidou says. "I will do it for you."
Strawhat's frown only deepens, but the navigator looks up sharply from her drink. "Income?" she says, and whacks Strawhat neatly in the back of the head with some sort of telescoping baton. "Luffy! You didn't tell me we could be getting paid by all those islands!"
"They were giving us food!" Strawhat says defensively, rubbing the back of his head. Kaidou makes a mental note that the navigator's armament must also be fairly respectable.
"That you devoured before we even made it out of the harbor!" huffs the navigator. "Do you realize how expensive you are to feed? I'm the closest thing to a quartermaster you've got, I make the grocery budget-"
She... understands the value of money? She understands that resources don't grow on trees? She actually has a sensible bone in her body? Strawhat is allowing her to whack him over the head as punctuation?
He nudges the swordsman with a foot until he blinks awake, then points. "You. Swordsman. What's her name?"
The swordsman frowns at him. "Oh, the witch?" he says. He gives Kaidou a sympathetic look. "That's Nami. She got you in debt too, or what?"
What?
"I just wanted to know," says Kaidou.
The swordsman huffs and shuts his eyes again. "Your funeral. Hope you brought better alcohol with you this time."
That's too far. "Better? I thought you had good taste. That was the best vintage Budouni Winery has to offer."
"It was too sweet," says the swordsman.
"You think everything's too sweet," argues Kaidou. "I'm beginning to think she does have better taste than you."
The swordsman's mouth drops open.
"Ha!" says Nami. She folds her baton back up and turns triumphantly. "See, he did like the fruity stuff from Dressrosa, I told you! My two hundred beri, please."
"I never said-"
"And where are you getting that from, then?" the swordsman argues, shooting to his feet. "I don't owe you anything. No proof."
"Interest is accruing, Zoro," Nami singsongs. "Two hundred ten. Two hundred twenty. Two hundred thirty-"
"Hell is too good for you-"
"Right!" declares Strawhat. His crewmembers, to their credit, shut up. "I got it!"
"Got what," Nami says, with a wariness that Kaidou relates to entirely.
"Kaidou can run the islands," Strawhat says. "But Nami gets to decide what we do with the money and stuff. So she's in charge."
"What," Kaidou says.
"What," Nami says.
"Also, you have to be nice," Strawhat tacks on after another second of thought. "Nami, you gotta make sure he's nice to them, 'cause they gave us food and everything."
"What," Nami says again.
"What does that even mean," Kaidou says, and then, more importantly, "I don't work for you!"
Strawhat tilts his head. "Ah? But you said you'd run the islands for me. You don't want to?"
He has underestimated Strawhat, possibly, Kaidou realizes. The other pirate has neatly put him in a position of either going back on his poorly-thought-out statement from a second ago and imperiling their semi-stable acquaintance, or agreeing to a formal subordination. Kaidou isn’t even sure he's done it on purpose.
"You're expecting me to manage Kaidou?" Nami says, voice pitched up in disbelief. "Luffy! I can't do that!"
"Sure you can," Strawhat says easily. "If he doesn't do what you say I'll just beat him up again."
"I have not agreed to this," Kaidou says. Strawhat doesn't even seem to hear him, instead staring expectantly at Nami, whose expression has shifted from horror to thoughtfulness.
"Kaidou," Nami says after a moment. "About how much would one of your islands generate in taxes, yearly?"
This feels like a trap. "Approximately ten million beri," Kaidou tells her. "Depending on population and exports." And then, slightly alarmed: "How did your eyes do that?"
"Alright!" Nami says decisively, nodding once. "I'll do it."
"Great!" says Strawhat. Kaidou opens his mouth to cut in, but Strawhat steamrolls right over him. "And Kaidou already said he wanted to admintirade- adminitrait- a dinner plate-" He frowns tremendously. "Run them. So that's good!"
The robot and the Knight of the Sea have paused their construction project to watch the show, Kaidou notes. The swordsman has slipped back down to the deck, but his eye is cracked open in amusement.
"You're putting words in my mouth," says Kaidou. "I said nothing of the-"
Strawhat looks at him, finally, and the still blank weight of his gaze snatches the words right out of Kaidou's mouth. He stares for a few long moments. Says, "But you'll do it, won't you?"
There's conqueror's haki in the air. Just static, a formality so light that if Strawhat were any less skilled a conqueror Kaidou would assume it to be unintentional. It crackles over Kaidou's skin, challenging, testing his commitment to his defeat, prodding at twisted-up nerve endings.
If Kaidou pushes back, that's their acquaintanceship gone. Kaidou has no doubt that should hostilities reignite, Strawhat would find a reason to fight- for all they've tolerated his company, he doubts any member of the Strawhat Pirates actually likes him, and they all seem rather protective over the people of Wano. He has no doubt, either, that he'd lose. Even if Strawhat's control over his haki and unusual awakening hasn't improved since their battle, which is unlikely, Kaidou is a defeated man. He doesn't want to fight Strawhat. For a number of reasons, actually.
If Kaidou doesn't push back, though, he's just made as good an admission of subservience as any child's cup. Which would be humiliating, first of all. And would establish a precedent of his obeying Strawhat's orders, second of all, that it would be twice as disruptive to break. And would, third of all, be absolutely ruinous for whatever dregs of his reputation have survived his defeat.
But he doesn't want to fight Strawhat. And he's not doing anything else with his life. And the swordsman and Nami aren't bad drinking buddies, per say.
You're a bastard, Strawhat, he thinks, not without admiration, and lets the man's haki settle, staticky, on top of his skin.
"Fine," he says brusquely, and a sunny grin breaks back over Strawhat's face instantly, all the tension dispersing like a thin layer of cloud.
He can't help marveling at the success of Strawhat's methods of recruitment, which seem so hopelessly naive and trusting on the surface. Kaidou used to use forced hard labor to less efficient results.
"I'm not joining your crew, though," he feels the need to clarify.
"That's fine," Strawhat says with a shrug, flopping backwards onto his ship's sun-gold figurehead. "I don't really like you anyways."
The swordsman laughs. Kaidou gapes for a second.
"Yeowtch," the robot comments sympathetically. Has it automated its hairstyle changes? Fascinating. "Brutal."
"I don't care what you think of me," Kaidou tells Strawhat. It sounds unconvincing even to him.
"Ugh, boys," Nami says. "More importantly, Kaidou. I need you to update me on the economic statuses of all my new islands."
"All of Strawhat's new islands," Kaidou corrects.
"That's what I said," Nami says. Is she a conqueror as well? She does seem to have the telltale impudence. "Well? Hop to it."
"Good luck with that," the swordsman says mildly, closing his eye again. "Hey, once you've escaped her grasp you can try some of the gin from the last island, it's not half bad straight."
"You're disgusting," Nami tells him. "That stuff is like paint thinner. I can't believe Kaidou has better taste than you."
"Of course I have good taste," Kaidou says, indignant. "I've been an alcoholic for longer than either of you have been alive."
Strawhat is giggling. The sun is bright. He has nowhere else to be.
Whatever. This will do.
6.
STRAWHAT LUFFY TAMES KING OF BEASTS?
Kaidou stares down at the newspaper in disbelief. He squints. He considers regretting every single life choice that's brought him to this point.
Half the article is wild speculation, of course. The other half is, unfortunately, a remarkably accurate account of his and Nami's recent visits to various corners of Strawhat territory, which tend to include such routine embarrassments as Nami knocking him over the head with her climatact to prove he's not a threat anymore. Which is ridiculous. If it weren't for Strawhat, he'd kill them all.
If he’s lucky, Linlin's still gorging herself on lava sharks in the center of the earth, because if she sees this, he won't hear the end of it until the old hag is rotting in the ground.
And she'll try to come harass him about it, and knowing Strawhat it's equally likely he beats her to a pulp or insists on some sort of ten day eating contest slash party, and Kaidou needs a drink.
"This island does a good vodka," he tells Nami.
She whacks the newspaper out of his fingers with her climatact. "Focus," she orders. "You can contemplate your descent into madness after tax negotiations."
Kaidou huffs. Nami frowns, looks more closely at the newspaper pages scattered across the cobblestone. Pauses. Knocks her own forehead with the climatact, this time. "And then vodka, yeah."
Well, it'll give Strawhat a laugh, at least. These things always do.