Kairo was thoroughly enjoying his vacation. Shit was very nice.
He ate cotton candy, hopped on rides, and even hit up the spa for a full treatment. As for how the fuck he got the money to pay for all this? He didn't.
Genjutsu was a beautiful thing.
Besides, he only targeted the spots where the ultra-rich hung out, so it wasn't like he was scamming hard-working, regular folks. It was just a few wealthy snobs, and he was completely sure they wouldn't even notice the cash he handed them wasn't real currency. Oh well—life was too short to live with regrets. He practically maxed out everything the luxury resort had to offer.
{Host, do not forget your primary objective.}
The system suddenly chimed in. Kairo, who was halfway through shoving more cotton candy into his mouth, paused.
"How could I possibly forget?" he muttered aloud.
'I totally forgot,' he admitted to himself. He had literally been about to pack up and leave the island forever until the system rudely interrupted his vibes.
{Host, I am directly linked to your neural pathway.}
Kairo gritted his teeth, looking more annoyed than actually angry. "Stupid system," he mumbled under his breath. "Anyway, where the hell is Rayleigh to begin with?"
He kept his voice low so people wouldn't think he was some crazy person talking to himself. Technically he was, but still.
{Host, as your system, I am capable of scanning the biological data of every individual on this island. I can pinpoint Rayleigh's exact coordinates.}
"Yeah, go ahead and do that," he approved.
He watched in real-time as the system interface flooded his vision, running the automated scan.
{Host request acknowledged.}
{Initiating target search...}
{Target: Silvers Rayleigh}
{Accessing historical archives...}
{Cross-referencing aliases...}
{Alias Found: Dark King}
{Alias Found: Right Hand of the Pirate King}
{Alias Found: First Mate of Gol D. Roger}
{Establishing search parameters...}
{Searching Sabaody Archipelago...}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Lifeforms Detected: 2,381,772}
{Humans: 1,947,311}
{Fishmen: 112,409}
{Merfolk: 27,103}
{Longarm Tribe: 33,817}
{Longleg Tribe: 29,551}
{Minks: 4,092}
{Giants: 381}
{Other Species: 227,108}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Scanning Haki Signatures...}
{Observation Haki Signatures Found: 17,438}
{Armament Haki Signatures Found: 8,721}
{Conqueror's Haki Signatures Found: 4}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Filtering Results...} {
Eliminating False Positives...}
{Comparing Soul Resonance...}
{Comparing Historical Haki Patterns...}
{Comparing Biological Records...}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Potential Match #1}
{Name: Unknown} {
Probability: 11.3%}
{Rejected}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Potential Match #2}
{Name: Unknown}
{Probability: 24.7%}
{Rejected}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Potential Match #3}
{Name: Silvers Rayleigh}
{Probability: 99.997%}
{Match Confirmed}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Performing Deep Analysis...}
{Subject Age: 70}
{Physical Condition: Excellent}
{Combat Capability: Active}
{Armament Haki: Legendary-Class [Old Age Nerf]}
{Observation Haki: Legendary-Class [Old Age Nerf]}
{Conqueror's Haki: Low Legendary-Class [Old Age Nerf]}
{Threat Assessment: Extreme}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Tracing Current Location...}
{Tracking Movement Pattern...}
{Following Haki Signature...}
{Lock Acquired}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Location Confirmed}
{Sabaody Archipelago}
{Grove 13}
{Structure: Rip-Off Bar}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Additional Occupant Detected}
{Name: Shakuyaku}
{Alias: Shakky}
{Former Pirate}
{Threat Assessment: High}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
{Target Located}
{Silvers Rayleigh is currently present in Grove 13 alongside Shakuyaku.}
{Search Complete.}
Kairo hadn't expected to find quite so many Haki signatures on the island. But then again, while technically everyone possessed Haki, he had specifically configured his system settings to only flag people with above-average mastery or those who had actively awakened it. It looked like Sabaody was currently packed with plenty of high-level rookies getting ready to cross over into the Grand Line.
And four people with Conqueror's Haki.
Well, the system counted Kairo himself, so that was one. Rayleigh made two. That meant there were two other wild cards walking around the island with the disposition of a king.
He was halfway tempted to snoop around and find out who they were, but he had a specific mission to attend to. It was time to go meet the man who piped the legend that half the internet back in his day wanted to pipe.
With a definitive pep in his step, Kairo made his way over to Shakky's Rip-Off Bar.
[Time Skip]
"Finally here," Kairo said with a satisfied smile.
The bar loomed right in front of him. Sensing the area, he confirmed that aside from Shakky, only Rayleigh was hanging out inside.
'Well, that saves me a ton of trouble,' he thought. He walked right up and decided to just use the front door.
Stepping inside, it looked like the two veterans were right in the middle of an intimate conversation.
"One of these days, you've got to stop selling yourself into slavery," Shakky said calmly.
Rayleigh had apparently just pulled his favorite financial scam again.
"Hey, it gets the job done," Rayleigh chuckled. He had been sold God knows how many times at this point, but it always brought in easy bread.
"Who was the victim this time?" she asked, genuinely curious about who her husband had fleeced. Yes, husband—they laid together, skipped the formal marriage license, and called it a day.
"A Celestial Dragon," Rayleigh laughed, remembering the look on the noble's face. "The bastard was so giddy about purchasing the Dark King right up until I broke out."
Conqueror's Haki really was a cheat code for a fun time.
"Well, I know one thing you definitely aren't escaping tonight," Shakky purred.
Oh, shit was escalating fast. Who said old heads couldn't get it up?
"Oh? Show me then," Rayleigh responded smoothly.
Kairo, who was absolutely not about to stand there and watch two senior citizens get down to business, cleared his throat incredibly loudly.
Ahem.
The sudden noise made both of the old-school powerhouses freeze instantly.
"Yo," Kairo greeted casually.
Rayleigh's entire demeanor shifted as a look of intense seriousness crossed his face. 'I didn't sense him at all...'
Shakky looked equally severe. She wasn't embarrassed about getting caught in a moment; rather, it was pure instinct kicking in. You had to understand, both of them were legendary figures who possessed top-tier Observation Haki. Their awareness of their surroundings was normally absolute.
And yet... neither of them had sensed a literal child entering the room. To make matters worse, the front door had a bell attached to it, and they hadn't heard a single ring.
They could have been assassinated a hundred times over before they even realized they were under attack. Rayleigh, in particular, was a heartbeat away from dropping into a defensive stance. He was the Haki master, and his Observation skills hadn't picked up a single shred of a presence.
If this kid wanted to, he could have completely wiped them off the map right then and there.
A/N Chapter out late since i fell asleep, was writing this, and deadass snooze off,