Ch 53 - Capone & Sai

As I see this my mind goes blank, what's the chance of something like this happening just as I was thinking about it?

However, my question is seemingly about to be answered as not far away I can see a commotion begin to happen.

Loud shouts begin to be heard in what seems to be an argument.

We approach the commotion, like many others, to see what's happening and when we are finally able to see what's happening, we see a small army of differently colored men surrounding two figures in the center.

One is a stocky man wearing a classy suit and fedora smoking a Cuban cigar with his every finger encrusted with a precious stone. While the other is an 8-foot man with shaggy black hair and thick sideburns; this man also has his torso exposed and is wearing a green cape with a white frill collar, along with yellow and blue striped pants.

These two men are actually people I recognize! Capone Bege and Sai!

"Psst… Cade! That's Capone Bege! I don't know the other guy, but he seems important!" Carina's whisper comes from beside me, seemingly informing the ever so ignorant me of who everyone is.

"Right… let's just pay attention to what's going on," I whisper back.

"Bege! What's the meaning of this! Why has your team stopped!" Comes an angry shout from Sai.

"What of it? My team is simply tired! Can't they take a rest?!" Comes Capones rough voice, obviously lying.

"Rest? You expect me to believe your team is resting?! Bege! What are you trying to do! Are you trying to let us win so dishonorably?! You think I would take this lying down?!" Comes Sai's angry reply as he gets into the face of the much shorter Bege.

Bege's men seem to react to the hostility by drawing their firearms and the Happo soldiers then draw their weapons, seemingly creating a dangerous standoff.

"What are you blabbering on about?! Don't you want to win for once? What kind of moron are you?" Comes Bege's nonchalant and insulting reply.

"Remember where you stand Bege! This is Kano Country! You hold no power here!" threatens Sai as he looms over the smaller man.

"Hmph! I always hold power! If you want to make this a bloodbath, then so be it!" Bege replies as he opens his castle gate in his stomach allowing 20 horsemen with heavy machine guns to surround the Happo soldiers in the blink of an eye.

The soldiers react by activating the Hasshoken on their limbs, but barely even a few of them are able to pull it off with mediocre results; their Hasshoken appearing to be very weak.

Sai also coats his feet in Hasshoken, obvious from the loud vibrations produced and even coats them with a thin sheen of black Haki, but after seeing that his men are surrounded and would be immediately butchered if he started a confrontation, he stops what he was doing and turns around to slowly walk away.

"You win this time Bege, but if I see you again ill make you pay for your actions!"

Bege just stands there smoking his cigar and similarly turns around to walk away, surrounded by his many goons and those two unique followers of his.

"Wow! Did you see that! That guy just made 20 men appear from inside him!" Comes Carinas surprised voice.

"Oh, Capone Bege is known to have eaten the Castle-Castle fruit, how do you think he was able to survive for this long with all the chaos he's caused?" Chimes in Porche-chan as she hears what Carina said.

"Hmm… I guess you're right…still that has to be one of the strangest devil fruits out there!" Comes Carina's voice as they continue the conversation quietly as we walk away from the seemingly over commotion.

'I'm not too sure about that Carina, I'm pretty sure there are many many strange devil fruits in this world… still to think that I just ran across two named characters out of the blue like that…' I think to myself as I walk behind the talking girls.

'It was still dumb of Bege to do that here though, just like Big Mom Bege wouldn't be able to handle the strength of Chinjao at his current self… I do however think this fits his personality, he was always known to love causing chaos, and what's better for chaos then causing wars as an already stable country seeks to expand its influence?' I reminisce.

"Cade! Did you hear what we said?" comes Carina's voice as I look towards her and shake my head in response.

"Dang it Cade! You need to stop doing that! Stop being in your head all the time and focus on your environment!" Continues a clearly annoyed Carina.

"Right…Sorry ill try my best… anyways what was it you were asking me about?" I answer as we reach an empty and decorative bench just the right size for all three of us to sit down comfortably.

"Did you know who that man was and if it can affect our plans for tonight?" Comes Porche-chans question as she knows that I'm not as ignorant as I like to seem a lot of the time.

"Hmm…yeah, I know who he is, that man is called Sai, and he's the oldest grandson of the current Don, making him the heir and next leader of the Happo Navy," I nonchalantly reply.

They both gasp at this and seem to think back on the confrontation between the biggest man in the underworld of West Blue and this so-called heir of a powerful pirate army.

"Damn! That could have turned out bad! It still might! Cade are you sure we should act so soon?" comes Carina's worried voice after a few seconds.

"Hmm... we will act on the last day of this festival, lets make sure that this doesn't affect us in any negative way, we want to do this as smoothly as possible, if not we might really be in trouble." I seriously reply after a bit of contemplation.

"All right, well I'll go do my part now Cade-kun, see ya later Carina-san." Porche-chan replies as she stands up and moves away from us, intending on doing her part.

"Yeah, I'll go too, make sure you stay out of trouble Cade! Don't want you ruining your own plan after all!" Comes Carina's voice as she also stands up and walks away seemingly blending into the crowd as she walks.

"Heh," I chuckle and follow along by standing up and disappearing into the crowd, following my end of the plan.

We are all doing different things in order to make this heist as smooth as possible. Porche-chan is acting as a civilian and getting to know more about the culture and information about the island, including any details that the citizens may know, and random tourists may not.

Carina has the most important job which is to communicate with plants and animals in order to find where the Hasshoken manual is hidden, and if she can't find it, her job is to then find Chinjao, follow him, and record all his movements which, if necessary, will continue for a few days' time.

And lastly my job is to look into the more restricted information. Find a possible target that we can frame in order to get off Scott free after this. And all that this entails is simple… sneak into a few important places and try to overhear conversations or read over some documents of the happenings of the island.

It's all very ninja like, if not a bit amateurish, and I would be a lot more comfortable giving this task to Carina who is not only a pro at this sort of thing but also has a perfect fruit for it, but unfortunately, she needs to monitor Chinjao and hopefully find the Hasshoken manual, something that Chinjao likely has close to him when on the island.

The reason for her doing that and not me is simple… Observation Haki, if I were to do what Carina is tasked with doing, I would be discovered in seconds, but with her plants and birds its actually possible if still a little risky to follow him and spy on his every move.

'Hopefully this time nothing will go awry' I wryly smile as I see my first target in the distance, a beautiful Pagoda situated high up on a rocky outcrop.