Dim firelight, the gentle rocking of the boat, and the hard feel of the wooden boards.
"Sister, he seems to be awake."
"Really? Let me have a look."
Karl D. Sephiroth felt someone pinch his cheek a few times.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a cute long - black - haired girl with a white cape on her shoulders, wearing only a red top and a short skirt.
Beside her stood two other equally beautiful girls in tops and short skirts. One had orange hair and the other had green hair.
Karl D. Sephiroth raised his right hand with metal shackles and shouted in a weak voice:
"Water -!"
Hearing this, the long - black - haired girl quickly fetched a wooden bowl and carefully fed the soup in it to the silver - haired boy little by little while supporting his body.
Karl D. Sephiroth judged from the taste that it was a bowl of fish soup, but there wasn't a single piece of meat or bone in it.
Gurgle!
As the fish soup went down, the hunger in the boy's stomach was instantly awakened, making an embarrassing sound.
"You must be very hungry! ... Here!"
The long - black - haired girl covered her mouth and giggled, then handed over a piece of black bread.
"Thank you!"
The dry and hard texture of the black bread made Karl D. Sephiroth frown slightly, but now that he was hungry, he had no other choice.
The boy swallowed the black bread bit by bit with the remaining fish soup.
After finishing the food, he finally regained a little strength and then looked at the three girls.
"My name is Karl D. Sephiroth. What are your names?"
"My name is Boa Sandersonia."
"My name is Boa Marigold."
"My name is Boa Hancock. I'm their older sister."
"Boa Hancock...!?"
Karl D. Sephiroth only thought the names of the first two girls sounded familiar and couldn't recall anything, until he heard the long - black - haired girl introduce herself.
He looked at the cute girl in surprise, carefully sizing her up.
"Ugh~! Why are you staring at me like that?"
At this time, Boa Hancock didn't have the arrogance and willfulness of the future pirate empress at all.
When being stared at by the boy, she would shyly turn her face away and dare not meet his eyes.
"Cough~! I just think your name is very special...
Well! You're gonna be a real beauty in the future."
Karl D. Sephiroth noticed the strange looks in Sandersonia and Marigold's eyes and then awkwardly shifted his gaze.
After all, the number one beauty in the previous life's One Piece was right in front of him, and he couldn't help but feel quite surprised.
As a long - time One Piece fan, Karl D. Sephiroth's affection for the long - black - haired girl instantly skyrocketed, and his sense of vigilance also decreased a lot.
"Humph! Even if you praise me like this...
I won't be happy!"
Boa Hancock raised her head haughtily, but the slightly upturned corner of her mouth betrayed her true feelings.
Currently, Boa Hancock hasn't experienced the dark life as a slave, and her personality hasn't been distorted. It's her first time leaving Amazon Lily, and she's still a bit innocent. In nature, she's just an ordinary girl.
"Is this ship... a slave ship?"
Sephiroth tugged at the metal shackles on his wrists, and a hint of gloom flashed across his eyes.
The three young girls also wore the same metal shackles on their hands.
The cabin where the four of them were located was sealed by a metal fence. The kerosene lamp in the corridor was the only source of light in the cabin.
Inside the cabin, apart from the chamber pot for excrement, there were only four wooden bowls. There was nothing that could serve as a weapon...
Hearing this, a look of sadness also appeared on Boa Hancock's pretty face.
"Yes, this is a slave ship..."
She never expected that when patrolling on the ship of the Kuja Pirates with her two sisters, they would be captured by human traffickers emerging from the sea.
When the three girls woke up, they were locked in this cabin.
If only she hadn't been so conceited back then, thinking that she was already a qualified Amazon warrior and thus rejecting the company of other crew members, this wouldn't have happened...
Boa Hancock didn't dare to think about what their fate would be next.
Sephiroth tugged hard at the chains of the shackles, and a look of helplessness appeared on his face.
Although, after eating the Vampire Fruit, he could clearly feel that his strength, vision, and hearing had all improved.
But...
With his current strength, he still couldn't break the chains on the shackles.
If only the fruit he ate was a Logia - type fruit... He could directly turn into an element and break free from these shackles.
As Sephiroth was thinking like this, he felt a strange sensation in his body. His hands seemed to have an urge to split off on their own.
Creak! Creak! Creak! ...
In the surprised and delighted gaze of the silver - haired teenager, his hands actually split into dark - red bats that flew into the air, flapping their wings continuously. The shackles then fell onto the ship's deck with a "clank!" sound.
"Is this... the power of a Devil Fruit?"
Boa Hancock exclaimed softly, and a glimmer of joy flashed in her eyes.
They had a chance to escape!
Boa Sandersonia scratched her green locks and said with a puzzled look on her face:
"Why didn't those people use Seastone handcuffs when they captured you?"
"Seastone is a rare mineral. Apart from the Navy, few people have it," Boa Marigold explained.
Under Sephiroth's mental command, he found that he could command these bats as easily as if they were his own arms.
"Sephiroth, can you control those bats to fetch the bunch of keys over there?"
Boa Hancock lay on the iron railing. She pointed to the end of the corridor, about three meters away, where a bunch of keys was hanging on the wall.
"No need to control the bats. I can just go get 'em myself..."
As the silver - haired boy said this, his body transformed into a large swarm of bats. He squeezed through the iron railing as a swarm of bats and reassembled into a human form in the corridor.
The silver - haired boy (assuming "Sephiroth" is a wrong name here and it should be the silver - haired boy mentioned before) stood in the corridor and glanced sideways. He noticed there were three other cabins on this floor of the ship, apart from the one they were in. One of them was empty.
In the other two cabins, there was a rare and exotic beast locked up in each. One was a small elephant with tiger fur, and the other was a dog with a goat's horns and tail.
The silver - haired boy didn't even know what these two animals were. They were way beyond his common sense.
In the end, he could only sigh that in the world of the Pirate King, there were indeed all kinds of strange things.
The idea of finding helpers had completely failed, which made the silver - haired boy a little disappointed. But he quickly got the keychain and unlocked the iron railing door of the cabin where the three women were, setting them free.
To the silver - haired boy's surprise, he actually found the keys to the shackles on the keychain.
After unlocking the shackles for the three women, he finally spoke:
"Do you have any info on the enemy?"
Boa Hancock folded her arms across her chest and said in a deep voice:
"When we were captured and brought onto the ship, we saw nine of 'em. They all had long knives and guns on 'em..."