Seaside System - Chapter 7.1 (Patreon)

Marine Headquarters was in an uproar.

A cacophony of emotions ranging from disbelief, betrayal, rage, hatred, disgust and more were liberally expressed in the raised voices of all attending marines.

Commodore Brannew, a tall well built man with tanned skin and curly dark green hair currently donning a pair of sunglasses and sporting a blue shirt and pink pants slammed his hand atop the board he was standing beside, hard.

The mayhem unfolding in front of him ground to a halt immediately. Marines of varying ranks hurriedly sat down at their stations once more while Brannew cleared his throat. His authority was not to be underestimated. He was far from the highest ranked marine in attendance, but nonetheless, he commanded respect regardless from all.

Every eye was on him. "Yes, I understand your feelings on this matter, but level heads must be kept my friends," He calmly spoke, face mostly impassive. but the deep frown on his face was enough evidence of his own feelings over the current matter, "This as you know, isn't a meeting to discuss your typical pirate after all."

He smacked his palm atop a wanted poster situated atop the board, drawing every eye in the room to the depicted image. The image was of a young man, really little more than a boy, tall and broad of build for his age, with bright spiky golden blond hair and gleaming sapphire blue eyes. A handsome youth that only promised to become even more handsome with age.

The image depicted on the wanted poster though did not show off the typical image of such a young boy. No rather, it was the opposite. covered from head to toe in the blood of slain marine's, the young teenager within the image had a fierce snarl and savage glare in his eyes as he held up the now deceased Vice Admiral Graydle with one hand, while the other, a blood soaked weapon in it, was pierced directly through the former Vice Admiral's throat.

"Commander Kaden D. Freeman, Age 14," Brannew spoke the boys name aloud, "Quite a few have had their eyes on him. Few after all go through the marine academy and speed through it within a year, never mind one so young. A prodigy of the highest order, capable of combat within the New World straight from graduation and he only grew more powerful at a rapid pace. Information gathered from the G5 marine base where he was stationed until just yesterday tells us that he is proficient in at least four of the six powers and has roads into the other two, and has begun training in both Observation and Armament Haki according to Vice Admiral Vergo."

The shock was palpable in the air at the revelation. Only the bet of the best could use any of the six powers after all, to even use one of them, one had to be completely superhuman in physical ability. On top of that, very few marines below the Vice Admiral rank had much training at all in any of the haki disciplines.

"Tch, I was one of them," Vice Admiral Onigumu clicked his tongue over the cigarette hanging from his mouth, a blazing anger in his eyes, "I'd hoped to have him gain a bit more experience in dealing with New World pirates before offering to take him as my apprentice. His brutal tendencies focused on pirates alone and his skill would have made him a force in the future they would fear to cross."

Instead, for some inexplicable reason, the boy had went rogue. Which made no sense. Each and every single one of them had a sheet of paper laid out in front of them detailing what they knew of the boy, his history, his time in the marines and even his psyche profile.

His sheer hatred of pirates, made it make no sense that he would go rogue and become one.

"What his reasons are, we are completely unaware of," Brannew spoke up, shaking his head, "And as of right now, they do not matter, what does matter is his actions. Upon abandoning his post at the G5 marine base in the New World, he stole every beri they had, nearly two hundred million in total, before appearing at the marine base at Risky Red Island mere hours later and assaulting the base. He slaughtered every marine in the base, killing well over a hundred of our men, before clashing with Vice Admiral Graydle and taking his life."

Uncomfortable looks were abound in the gathered marines within the briefing room. Vice Admiral Graydle was not well liked. It was nepotism that saw his rise through the ranks to the Vice Admiral rank, and none could deny that when it came to martial prowess and physical prowess, the man simply was not on the level of the other Vice Admirals.

The only thing that allowed him to stay somewhat at their level, was his powerful logia devil fruit. Even so, to come out the victor in one on one combat against him, was no small feat.

"Of course the boy was not done there though, he proceeded to re-enact his actions at the G5 marine base and stole every single beri they had within their coffers," Brannew continued, "In the span of a single night, Kaden D. Freeman killed over one hundred New World marine officers, a vice admiral with a logia devil fruit and stole over three hundred million beri. It has been a long, long time since we've had a traitor of this magnitude, his actions make Gasparde's look like that of a child throwing a tantrum. Because of his actions, alongside his known abilities and sheer potential, we have no choice but to give him a starting bounty most would balk at, but it is necessary, for justice to prevail and stomp out evil acts like this!"

As he finished, Brannew who's hand had been covered the bottom of the wanted poster with his hand since posting it upon the board, brought it down displaying the full amount of the traitorous young marines first bounty.

Crimson Kaden - Wanted Dead Or Alive: 185,000,000 Beri!

The gathered marines were shocked silent at the revelation of the young boys debut bounty as a criminal.

It was a massive bounty to start off with, no matter what sea. But for the boys sheer ability, potential and actions? It could be no less!

_________________

To be honest.

For Kaden, there really wasn't a whole lot of places he could go in the New World where he could either live out comfortably without being bothered, or actually just stay and get peace to himself.

The New World, was a crazy place like that. What wasn't controlled by marines, was pirate territory, either that controlled by a Yonkou or lawless pirate infested areas.

It was actually bad enough that he considered heading to Dressrosa. The place might have been controlled by Doflamingo and his 'family', but their security wasn't all that thorough. He could just fly over to the Green Bit and drop in.

And getting to meet Rebecca and maybe Viola was mighty tempting. The problem was that he needed time to get full control over his devil fruit abilities. While the echoes of Kaido's skill due to his Lineage Factor being contained within the fruit and now him, was making learning how to use them much easier than it should have been by far, it would still take him time to master his abilities.

And quite frankly, he could be discreet all he wanted, but he turned into a massive crimson scaled dragon with golden horns and golden blonde hair.

There was no way he could stay out of sight for long.

And he simply did not have the haki ability right now, to be able to resist Doflamingo's strings if he tried to control him.

So instead of staying in the New World, Kaden headed in the completely opposite direction.

The thing about the world he was in, was that it was absolutely massive. Way, way bigger than Earth, his previous world before he ended up here.

Usually traversing such a world at any good pace, was simply unfeasible. But, logic like that went right out of the window when one could turn into a massive dragon and stride through the air.

A massive dragon that ran through the air through creating platforms of brilliant glowing orange clouds. That he could kick off of and use Soru with.

It was exhausting, but with the ability to move faster than a speeding bullet even in his immense size as a dragon.

It meant Kaden could clear vast distances that would usually take others weeks worth of sailing, in mere hours.

And since he was near the very beginning of the New World half of the Grand Line, it meant that Kaden wasn't very far at all from the Red Line.

He could have flown straight over it and headed back into Paradise. But, he had a better idea.

He headed diagonally over the Red Line.

Straight into the East Blue and came out on the other side, not that far off from Reverse Mountain, in fact.

Nobody in their right mind would be thinking a guy who just slaughtered a New World marine base, would turn up a day later in the East Blue.

It was the perfect plan to get a little time to himself to work on his abilities before deciding fully what he wanted to do with this life going forward.

Besides, there were quite a few gems he could get his hands on within the East Blue, and he wasn't talking just about the likes of Nami.

She was more a diamond in the rough as opposed to an already formed emerald or ruby.

Two of which could be found on the island he could see now off in the distance. Logue Town.

It didn't take Kaden long before he was directly above the port of Logue Town. His massive serpentine form shrunk down as he transformed back into his human form and dropped from several hundred feet in the sky.

He bled off the momentum of his fall with a few quick uses of Geppou, before touching down not long later.

'Man I'm fucking hungry.' the boy mused, running a hand through his hair. Eleven apples hadn't filled him up at all and all the effort he'd put in to get here had just made him hungrier.

Thankfully, he could now just hit up a restaurant in Logue Town and eat to his hearts content with all the money he had.

"First though…" Kaden shifted the massive sack he held over his shoulder and eyed a few people working on the dock. He needed directions.

There were two fully fledged gems he wanted in Logue Town after all, once he went and grabbed them, he could drop off something he'd picked up after his fight with Graydle at the clothing store and then go fill his belly.

After asking for directions, it didn't take long for Kaden to find his first destination.

The Arms Shop.

A weapon shop that had been in business for over two hundred years now, and was home to two very special swords.

Stopping in front of the weapon store, Kaden spread his senses out with Observation Haki and focused upon the shop itself.

He felt four presences almost immediately.

Two were of rather weak people.

The other two though, were a completely different story. And vastly different from each other.

One of them gave off the feeling of a calm resoluteness, yet there was a long to it, as if it were waiting for something.

The other on the other hand, Kaden could feel a seething bloodlust and desire for battle. Yet, it was similar to the first as well. There was a longing too it, yet tinged with bitter disappointment.

Kaden found a smirk stretching across his face. He hadn't been sure he'd be able to feel it at all, but he could.

He entered the shop itself to find rows upon rows of different weapons and armour from katana's to straight swords, from flintlocks to riffles, from chain mail to full on plate.

And in the corner, out of the way, sat multiple barrels of dust covered swords. Where he could feeling the bloodlust fuelled presence coming from.

Just as expected.