One Piece: The Salted Fish Fruit

"Oh!"

A water fist formed from flowing water appeared above Luffy's head and slammed down to stop her actions. Maureen's sinister voice rang in Luffy's ears.

"It's been a long time, Sister Maureen." Mia waved and greeted her, reminding Luffy of the other's identity.

"Ah! Maureen! You're that woman who ate a lot on Skypiea!" Guided by Mia, Luffy suddenly realized and pointed out the most memorable characteristic.

Upon hearing Luffy mention his embarrassing struggle for food after being rescued, Maureen frowned and used her hand to block his mouth with water.

"Speak up."

"Waaah! Waaah!" Bound by the water, Luffy tried his best to pull it off, but found that it was stuck to his mouth like glue, and no matter how he pulled, part of it would stick to it.

"Oh my! Maureen, stop messing around with Captain Luffy! What are you doing here?" Seeing Luffy being given a little lesson, Mia stepped forward, hugged Maureen, whispered a soft voice in her ear, and poked her waist, causing her skin to itch so much that she had to give up controlling Luffy.

"Fine, fine, fine! I'm scared of you. You guys are really having a headache following a captain who's making a mess of things like this."

"Well, Luffy is the captain, so naturally we have to be tolerant of him." Mia, having let go of Maureen, shrugged helplessly and then reached out again to pull her along to catch up with Nami and the others.

"Cough! Cough! How fierce!" Luffy, spitting out the remaining water from his mouth, complained as he looked at Maureen jumping off the vines.

"Luffy, say less and come down with us. They want to discuss something with you." Maggie said, putting her arms around Law and Luffy's shoulders, and then landed next to them.

"What is it, Traman?" Luffy, who had just parked, turned to look at Traman and asked in confusion.

"It's about the power structure of the New World." Looking into Luffy's confident and clear eyes, Law slowly stated his decision, along with the rules and conditions that must be followed when entering the New World.

"So, Traman, you and the older sister who plays in the water want to form an alliance with me?" Luffy said, one arm across his body, the other stroking his chin in thought, after hearing Law's explanation of the New World.

“Yes! If we don’t want to be subservient to others, we can only expand our influence and power to carve out a place for ourselves in the new world,” Luo affirmed.

"What do you guys think?" Luffy asked, turning to his companions who were tending to a group of children.

"Luffy, your decision is my decision. Don't let external factors interfere with your judgment." Maggie smiled as she reached out and touched the sleeping baby in the cradle without turning her head.

"Uh! An alliance? That's a pretty good option. Although Luffy is usually quite unreliable, I'll follow his decisions when it comes to important matters," Sanji agreed, taking some ingredients from the warehouse in the distance.

"I'm just a swordsman of the sea, I won't contradict Luffy's opinion," Zoro nodded.

"Hehe! Luffy is the captain, and I will always follow his decisions." Robin covered her mouth and chuckled.

"I will follow Luffy's advice." Merry's voice echoed in everyone's hearts.

"no problem!"

"No objection!"

"agree!"

···

Upon hearing Luffy's question, everyone smiled and answered in turn, showing no objection to his decision.

"Haha! Traman, my crewmates all agree! I agree to form an alliance with you." Luffy laughed heartily as he saw his smiling crewmates.

"Phew!" Luo let out a heavy breath. The Straw Hat leader had a very high prestige in the group, and no one objected to his decisions.

"Since there are no objections, then our three pirate crews will now form an alliance and advance and retreat together, to bring down one of the Four Emperors and seize a new territory." Seeing their two allies, Maureen stepped forward and nodded, adding her own pirate crew to the alliance.

Then, as if remembering something, he said, "Since we've formed an alliance, how about we go to the nearest island, the Kingdom of Dressrosa, to find a newspaper to report to the world?"

"It's fun, I don't mind," Luffy said happily.

"Announcing it to the world? Caesar is holding a meeting with underground arms dealers all over the world. We can just barge in and start a live stream together," Maggie reminded them, seeing their decision. They couldn't waste such a great opportunity to broadcast live.

Since the three of you want to use the newspaper to inform the world, why don't you start a live broadcast now and announce your power to them?

Upon hearing Maggie's suggestion, Maureen nodded and said that live broadcasts were far more authentic than newspapers, and those underground kings naturally wouldn't mind watching them.

"A live stream of the underground king? Perfect opportunity to take advantage of that."

“I’ll go find Caesar to retrieve some things,” Luo said in a low voice, clutching his empty heart.

"What's a live stream?" Luffy tilted his head, puzzled.

···

Law and Maureen were speechless. Was this pirate alliance really the right thing to do?

"One way to announce your existence to the world is to follow us."

"it is good!"

Just as the three were preparing to use the interdimensional projection to directly select Caesar's location and enter.

A furious roar abruptly interrupted their actions. Looking back, they saw that the children, who had been unharmed before, now had bloodshot eyes and were wildly waving their huge fists.

"Ah! Ah! Ah! Candy, I want candy that smokes."

"We want to eat sugar because of our sugar."

"What's wrong with them? Why did they suddenly go berserk?!" Chopper wondered why the children, who had been perfectly fine just moments before, had suddenly gone mad.

Right, it's blood. They collected blood earlier to check the body for genetic influences, so it hasn't been analyzed yet. Thinking of this, Chopper hurriedly went to find Angelia, who was receiving the blood test tubes.

"Get out of the way! Let me put them to sleep." Mabi yelled at the children who were making a ruckus, and suddenly appeared in front of them.

"Yes!" Upon hearing Mabi's shout, everyone retreated in unison.

They've experienced Mabe's Devil Fruit power firsthand; it renders all living things unconscious and unable to do anything.

"Salted Fish Thrust." The palm struck a child directly, and a colorless mental shock was instantly generated, rushing towards the children in front of him. Their mental slumber left them with no strength left and they collapsed to the ground.

"Damn it! It's a special drug used by certain doctors at certain times, and someone actually injected it into children in large quantities." Chopper held the test tube and looked at the sediment inside, his face immediately turning ugly. Sure enough, the giant children in front of him were all experimental subjects whose genes were modified with highly toxic drugs to make them grow bigger.

"Luffy, I'm going too! I want to find the data in his lab to make inferences and find a way to cure the children."

"Okay!" Luffy nodded.

Seeing what the four of them were doing, Maggie sensed the change at the gate through her Observation Haki and shouted to Zoro, "Zoro, your little sweetheart seems to be in trouble at the entrance of the research institute."

"Who?" Zoro raised an eyebrow, a flash of cold light appearing in his hand.

"Tashigi! She's in danger."

"It's that damn imposter!" The familiar scene flashed before Zoro's eyes, and he took off running.

"That idiot ran the wrong way! How can he get out without even Little Green? I'll go watch him." Mia watched Zoro's actions, a black snake tail appearing from under her skirt as she grabbed a vine and chased after him.

Chapter 249 The windmill creaks and groans as it turns.

They said there was nothing wrong, but as soon as they heard she had a problem, they rushed over!

Maggie shook her head as she looked in the direction Zoro had left, then dragged one of Little Green's vines toward the secret hut she sensed, which was also Caesar's base.

He was currently there promoting his weapon to the Den Den Mushi (a type of electric telephone snail), but he sensed that his soul was in an unstable state, not as stable as it appeared. He was afraid that even the smallest thing could break it.

After all, his and Zoro's actions had directly created a large hole in his research lab for ventilation, forcing him to stay in Vegapunk's original lab and control external information.

"We're here. This is it. The secret cabin is up there." Under Luo's leadership, the group entered a research room with a diameter of several tens of meters and pointed to an iron gate in the distance.

"Water Dragon! Luo!"

"ROOM: Slaughterhouse!"

With a soft shout, a water dragon materialized in front of her, its body twisting and contorting in the air. Then, under Luo's command, it instantly transformed into a spatial projection, while the real entity, suspended outside without anyone's command, shattered and fell to the ground, turning into a pool of water.

"No problem, it's possible to switch from this secondary space to the main space, but conversely, I haven't discovered the existence of this secondary space, so it's difficult to switch." Law said, feeling the sensation transmitted by the fruit's power.

Hearing Luo's explanation, Maureen smiled with relief and replied, "That's good. I don't have to worry about getting trapped in someone else's spatial domain again. These special Paramecia-type Devil Fruits are troublesome; they can't be broken just by having power."

Ever since I got together with Law two years ago, I've wanted to find the Straw Hat to test whether the power of the Op-Op Fruit can break through space. Today, two years later, it has finally come true.

"Straw Hat Master, I'll lead you there, then through the stairs to the secret..."

As Law was about to speak, his tone gradually turned cold. He looked behind him and saw that apart from Maureen standing with him, the entire Straw Hat Pirates had disappeared.

"Hey, you two have had enough of showing off your love, haven't you? All that's missing are you two Shichibukai." Maggie's head popped out from the secret hut and shouted down.

A staircase formed by white clouds stretched from Maggie's feet all the way down to the solid ground below. Clearly, while the two of them were studying it, the Straw Hat crew had already used the cloud ladder to enter the projection location of the secret hut and were watching Caesar's performance from there.

Maureen and Luo suddenly felt a flock of crows fly overhead, making it difficult for them to speak.

The top of the ladder.

Maggie watched as Chopper and Angelia examined various devices in the projected world, searching for usable medicines. Once they found one, they could retrieve it directly when the portal opened, since the projection of an interdimensional object was an influence of the main world's entity, identical except for the inability to physically touch it.

"Chopper, did you find it?" Maggie asked.

"No, gene therapy is not a fixed formula; it needs to adapt to changes in the human body. We need more research data and drugs."

"No problem, we'll take them all with us after we dismantle them." Mabi glanced at Caesar, who was showing off in front of the video den Den Mushi, but lost interest after just one look. He'd be in for a world of trouble if he tried to show off now.

It's more comfortable looking at these devices, since they'll be unclaimed items soon, and using them to strengthen my team is the best option.

"Frankie, is there a problem with taking these devices away? After all, it's one of Vegapunk's experimental bases, and it might be of some help to us."

"Leave it to me, I guarantee I won't give up a single screw."

“Alright, then I’ll leave it to you.” Maby nodded. Of all the guards in the secret cabin, only Monet and Caesar were a bit of a problem; the others were no match for them.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh! Fellow agents, what you see now is a potion that can freeze people into stone in an instant. It is the new type of poison gas I have improved over the past four years, 'Death Kingdom'."

"Just a tiny bit of the virus strain, plus the feed I've prepared, is enough to create a large-scale poison gas that will rewrite the entire battlefield." Caesar, half-reclining in his chair, chuckled as he looked at the video Den Den Mushi in front of him.

Perfectly transmitted the images of his men suffering in the poison gas on the screen behind him to the entire world via video telephony. Countless businessmen who received the signal smiled, for the weapon that would rewrite the entire battlefield was exactly what these weapons dealers needed.

"Excellent! Excellent! I will dispatch a business negotiator as soon as possible."

“Unlike before, when poisoning could be survived, this gas can freeze through the skin and clothing. If it is blown downwind, it can easily destroy a country.”

"Caesar! I've reserved it!"

"It's only useful for ordinary people. What if it's something beyond ordinary humans? A strong being could change a war?" Someone raised a different opinion through the Den Den Mushi, instantly silencing the previously busy public channel.

"Whoosh! Everyone, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. My poison gas is an adhesive poison; once it comes into contact with the skin, it spreads along the skin until it solidifies. The Straw Hat crew, who are said to have made a comeback, are our test subjects." Caesar laughed loudly when someone questioned his poison gas, showing his unwavering confidence in his product.

"Then let's get them to conduct experiments as soon as possible." Another voice, full of doubt, came through the public channel of the Den Den Mushi.

The words had barely left his mouth when several gasps filled the channel: "The Straw Hat Crew!"

Hearing the gasps from the agents only fueled Caesar's confidence, and he burst into wild laughter.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Everyone, don't panic. The entire island is covered with poison gas and cameras. As soon as Straw Hat Luffy and his crew show up, I'll capture them and let them taste the poison gas."