Chapter Text
Hachinisou is a den of vipers just as King remembered it.
And he had just survived an encounter with the fattest and nastiest of the bunch. Ochoku had been sickly courteous just like the last time he'd been here with his captain four years ago. That time, he tried to win his boss over with good-quality booze, this time he peddled stories that he and Kaido had always been best friends. Both times, he'd been after the bounty of Wano they'd just conquered: seastone weapons to bolster the defences of his Pirate Kingdom. In the end, he hadn't even bothered to keep the farce going, as soon as he'd realized that King wasn't going to bite it, he'd changed his tune and told the Lunarian to grab the kid and the get the hell out of his island.
The brothel wasn't that far from the docks, where his ship was docked. The cloying perfumes made a good job at hiding the salty tang of sweat, and other bodily fluids, but they couldn't hide the stench of cigar-smoke coming from the madam. She took a good look at him, as he craned to get inside.
"Second floor, third door to the left. Name's Sadicchan, the safe word's Sea-King Curry. The price is 10.000 berry at night, plus tipping. Money upfront, no service on board."
"I'm not here for pleasure." King replied. The Madam did a once-over, arched an eyebrow as if to ask, if he was serious. King sighted. "I'm here for the brat."
"Of course you are…" The woman groaned, standing from behind the reception desk. "Follow me, big guy. Feel free to take a look to merchandise, if you change your mind."
He didn't bother. Last time, he'd laid with a woman, he'd woke up in manacles and not of the fun kind. The seastone to be specific, followed a by a CP-0 agent contacting their superiors saying that the package was in on its way. It had been Queen that pulled out for him. The fat bastard didn't stop remember him of the fact ever since.
As if, the only reason he burst through the wall and turned the CP0 Agent into paste with his rotary cannon wasn't that he was jealous she'd "preferred" King over him.
They left the guest spaces behind and moved deeper into the building. The décor shifted from deliberate luxury to plain, lived-in comfort. The place was clean. It was a good brothel, the kind that treats its workers well, which is a rarity in a lawless place such Hachinosu. Then again, Pirates are fickle, sentimental creatures, and a whore can hit a soft-spot between the love of your life waiting for you on the shore, and the one-night fling for each port you visit. Intimate enough to care, transactional enough to not feel guilty about it…
"So, how's the kid?"
"Weird." The madam muttered, as they passed by a group of plainly dressed girls carrying large bundles of soiled pillowcases and bed-sheets. They winked at him, the leather mask had its charm, or so they said. "She's smart. Too smart. Found her sneaking around reading book. As soon as she could walk, I started to give her a few jobs. She always did what she was told. She doesn't complain, and I don't mean in "she never cries" way. That too. I mean it in a "we need to replace the mattresses on the third floor, their are in the storage room" and she did it all by herself. Not a word."
"Not what I was expecting, to be honest…" King asked warily.
"Yeah, you would think Kaido's bastard daughter would raid the cellar to get wasted, not try to file your taxes when most of Ochoku's lieutenants can't even read. Ah!" She chuckled. "I swear sometimes I feel that the girl is trying to butter me up like some kind of ambitious career-hound."
Again, that was as an opposite to his Captain as there ever was. Even Yamato, ignoring massive headache that her new Oden's phase caused him, was more like her father than either the two liked to admit. "Are you sure she is his?" King asked. "I'd like to interrogate her mother. Where I can find her?"
"Anya's dead. Those sharp horns your Captain put her in belly tore through her womb as she gave birth. Little monster came to the world soaked in her mother's blood, and she didn't even make a sound. Not wonder, she's fucked up in the head. Poor Anya," The madam shook her head. "Blonde hair like spun gold, eyes as blue as an ocean of sapphires, good tits and a fantastic ass too. Always a professional. Never afraid of taking any challenge, including your captain." She added after a pause. "She was from Rhine."
Rhine. King remembered Rhine, it had been one of the first territories the Beast Pirates claimed. Rich ore under lush verdant forests, scattered tribes ruled by a loosely elected king Kaido drank with once. The king died, and the prince tried to join the World Government behind their back. King always suspected foul-play from the Cipher Pol, but Kaido wiping out the prince, the royal family, and razing the entire island put an end to that all the same. Now Rhine is a dry wasteland, the mines built there feeding Wano's war-machine.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing is just ironic, isn't it? The father took her country, then the daughter takes her life." The madam spoke. "Anya said to the very last moment that she'd been careful, that she had taken precautions. Still had a kid. Almost as if it's an act of God…"
"Anyways," the madam brought her to a small room on the second floor. "If you have doubt about her parentage, why don't you take a look for yourself?" She pushed the door open.
King had to crane to enter inside the bedroom. She found the brat already awake, sitting on the bed like a cute little soldier, squinting her eyes, as the flames of his back illuminated the room. A little girl, no taller than five feet, with deep blue eyes and short blonde hair. Kaido snorted.
"Was Ochoku's or yours the idea of pass a nine year old as the child of my Captain?" King muttered, glaring to the matron that looked unfazed. "Kaido had never been at Hachinosu nine years ago." And he knew that well because it was the time, Kaido was looking for the lady who would become Yamato's mother.
"Nine? I told you, Tanya's four."
King's eyes twitched. He turned to the brat. "Can you speak?"
"Yes, sir." She replied crisply, unnervingly and dissonantly calm. King wasn't exactly the kind of figure that put children at ease, and yet the girl showed no discomfort whatsoever. "The madam isn't lying… I was born four years ago."
King stretched his haki. His observation tendrils wrapping around the bright, surprisingly strong soul-stuff of the kid. Either she wasn't lying, or she had already mastered Observation at such young age that would make her purchase a safe bet for entirely different reasons than her parentage. Four years old, and she was already taller than Yamato which was twice her age.
The little girl stood up from her bed and moved towards a corner of the room. She pointed to a wall, scribbles on the wall to be precise. Little black squiggly lines at regular vertical intervals.
"I've been measuring my height every month," Tanya said, and each month carried a considerable increase of height. "My father, is a tall person, he is?"
"Oni can usually calculate their height from the diameter of their horns." King stated the facts Kaido had drilled into his skull.
"Uh," The girl looked at the prongs of bone poking from the sides of her head. They were of a dirty white and much thicker than her half-brother, much more like her father.
"By the time you are an adult, you'll not fit through most doors." King answered the question on the little girl's mind. She mumbled something under her breath about "overshooting in the other direction." He elected to ignore it.
"She's clearly Kaido's daughter." The madam added.
Even if she wasn't, it wouldn't have changed much. The important had always been to make sure she was really a Oni and not another half-fishman that happened to have horns. Kaido always had this dream of reuniting the scattered Oni tribe into a single kingdom, possibly ruled by his son, and in that regard, had monopolised the human trafficking market with a combination of the carrot and the stick. It was probably one of the big reasons, Ochoku didn't pawn her off to the World Government.
The other, besides trying again to sweet out a trading deal on seastone weapons, was that the idea of the Marines having their own personal Kaido was incredibly more terrifying than the Strongest Creature in the World simply gaining another powerful subordinate.
Besides, the timelines did match. Kaido had been at Hachinosu four years ago. He had left Wano for Hanafuda's wedding with the Oni Woman he'd found for him. They had to make a fast retreat when that hoodlum of Gekko Moria raised hell in Ringo, but then Ochoku invited Kaido to stop at Hachinosu to recruit foot soldiers, reminisce about the good old days, and try to this barrel of mysterious booze from the Void Century whose very existence had been erased from history. Nobody knows if Ochoku was talking out of his ass with the booze, still Kaido the next morning was nowhere to be found.
They had to sail without him. He caught up with them with his dragon form before they made it to Wano. Could have Kaido sired a children during his drunken spree? King had been with him for years and had seen him angry drunk, sad drunk, happy drunk, flirty drunk…
Horny drunk? Absolutely a possibility. Honestly, it was surprising it hadn't happened sooner.
In the end, it came to the hagging, the madam and King mock fought for the price which had already been decided beforehand. They threw something in for Ochoku too, he was no Yonko but it made no good to have him on your bad side, especially when he'd rendered them a good service.
Tanya's pretty little head came down to a price of 250.000.000 berry now, 250.000.000 later if Kaido acknowledges Tanya as his daughter, and four casts of seastone guns as a tribute for the Pirate Guru.
Tanya said goodbye to the matron, and a few ladies there. But as King walked with the kid in tow, he couldn't help but feel something unnerving: the girl seemed utterly at ease with leaving what has been her home for the entire life to jump in the unknown. Perhaps, she didn't understand what kind of life was waiting for her among the Beast Pirates, but the kid seemed too smart for that.
As she skipped her step behind him, whistling a slow rendition of Binks' Sake, King had to agree with the Madam: this was one hell of a creepy kid.