Gojo jabbed, his left fist snapped forward, a lightning strike aimed at Vane's temple. Vane countered as he parried with his forearm, the haki-coated bone ringing like a bell, and answered with a straight right to the sternum.
Gojo deflected the blow with an open palm, redirecting the force into the ground, which exploded behind him. Jab, jab, cross. Three strikes from Vane in rapid succession—each one weighing twenty kilos, each one fast enough to break the sound barrier. Gojo evaded all three with millimeters to spare, his laughter never ceasing.
"You're not bad!" Gojo admitted, stepping inside Vane's guard and driving a knee toward the latter's midsection.
"And you're not trying!" Vane retorted, catching the knee with both hands and shoving Gojo backwards. "Fight me seriously, you clown!"
"Seriously?" Gojo tilted his head, rain streaming down his face. "But I am being serious. This is me trying. A little." He chuckled.
Vane roared and charged again. His fists became a blur—a relentless storm of jabs, hooks, uppercuts, and crosses, each one augmented by both armament haki and devil fruit weight manipulation. The air itself seemed to solidify around his knuckles. Gojo's head snapped back, but he was already moving. Gojo twisted, the blow grazing his side. Gojo caught the hook on his elbow, cursed energy flaring relentlessly.
Throughout the exchange, both men laughed—not the hysterical laughter of the deranged, but the genuine, joyful laughter of warriors who had found exactly what they had been seeking. Vane laughed because the fight was cleansing his saddened soul. Gojo laughed because he was, simply and utterly, having fun.
"You're faster than you look!" Vane admitted, stepping back momentarily to reassess.
"You're stronger than you look!" Gojo replied. "And you look pretty strong, so that's saying something."
Vane's eyes narrowed. He had landed glancing blows—perhaps three, perhaps four—but not a single solid, fight-ending strike. Gojo, despite deactivating Infinity, moved like water around stone, like smoke through fingers. Every jab was evaded or parried. Every counter was answered. It was a chess match played at the speed of a bar fight.
Vane's fist shot toward his opponent's nose. Gojo countered, his fist intercepting knuckle-to-knuckle, the shockwave shattered a nearby pillar. Gojo smiled and tilted his head, slamming Vane's forehead into the ground.
"How?" Vane hissed, genuinely frustrated for the first time as blood streamed down his brows.
Gojo's smile softened into something almost pitiful. "This is just… reading, prediction, the slight twitch of your shoulder before the jab. The shift of your weight before the kick. The micro-expansion of your pupils before you commit to a punch." He shrugged. "I've been doing this a long time."
Vane snarled and came forward again, abandoning all pretense of defense. He threw everything—a hurricane of weighted, haki-coated strikes. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut, overhand right, spinning backfist, rising knee, stomping kick. Each blow was intended to end the fight. Each blow was met by empty air or a precisely angled deflection.
Gojo, still laughing, still chatting, stepped through the storm untouched. "You've got heart, Vane. Real heart. And your fruit is terrifying. Twenty kilos? No, you've been increasing it. That last punch was closer to fifty. Your control is exceptional."
"Then why aren't you bleeding?!" Vane roared, throwing another wild hook.
Gojo caught the hook. Just… caught it. His bare hand wrapped around Vane's haki-coated fist, and the impact did nothing. No skid. No flinch. No crack of bone.
"Because," Gojo said quietly, "you've been so focused on punching that you forgot to watch your feet."
Vane looked down. His boots were frozen in place—not by ice, but by a thin, shimmering layer of cursed energy that had seeped into the cracks of the stone, anchoring him to the ground.
"What—?"
Before Vane could finish, Gojo twisted his wrist, redirected Vane's trapped arm downward, and drove the heel of his free palm directly into Vane's exposed solar plexus. There was no named technique. No flashy release of repulsive force. Just a single, devastating palm strike delivered with absolute precision—targeting the exact millisecond when Vane's haki flickered from exhaustion and confusion.
The air evacuated Vane's lungs in a single, violent cough. His armament haki shattered as it dissipated from fatigue. His devil fruit dissolved, his body returning to normal mass mid-stagger. His knees buckled, his balance, already compromised by the anchored feet, unraveled completely. He stumbled backward—one step, two, three—before his heels caught on a cracked slab of stone, and he crashed onto the rain-soaked ground.
He landed hard. His back splashed into a shallow puddle. His haki flickered once, twice, then died entirely. His chest heaved as he gasped for air that seemed to have forgotten how to enter his lungs.
Gojo stood over him, not even breathing hard. His clothes were damp but not torn. His hair was wet but perfectly in place. There was not a single bruise, not a single drop of blood, not a single indication that he had been in a fight at all. He hadn't even raised his heartbeat.
"You lost," Gojo said, not cruelly, but as a simple statement of fact. "About four minutes ago, actually. But you were having so much fun, I didn't want to interrupt."
Vane lay on his back, rain falling into his open eyes. He stared up at the gray, weeping sky and then at the smiling face of the man who had just dismantled his every attack without breaking a sweat. He laughed—a broken, bewildered, genuinely amazed laugh that bubbled up from somewhere deeper than his bruised ribs.
"Not a single solid hit," Vane whispered. His voice was hoarse, stripped of its earlier arrogance. "I threw… I threw everything. Every jab. Every counter. Every trick I know. Every ounce of haki. Every kilo of weight and gravity. And you…"
"Didn't even need Infinity," Gojo chuckled to himself. He crouched down, bringing his face level with Vane's. Rain dripped from the tips of Gojo's white lashes. "Yeah. That's the difference between a bounty and a legend, Vane. You fight to prove you're strong. I fight because I already know I am." He extended a hand, palm open, fingers relaxed. "Now. About that joining-my-crew thing I was thinking about earlier…"
Vane stared at the offered hand. His own hands still tingled from the shattered haki. His chest ached with every shallow breath. Every instinct he had developed over years of brutal independence screamed at him to refuse, to curse, to swear vengeance and limp away into the rain.
But those instincts had just lost a fight. Decisively. Humiliatingly. Without Gojo even trying.
Slowly, almost against his own will, Vane reached up and took Gojo's hand.
Gojo pulled him to his feet effortlessly, as if Vane weighed nothing—which, without his devil fruit active, was almost true. He brushed a piece of gravel from Vane's shoulder, flicked a wet strand of hair from Vane's forehead, and smiled. Warm. Genuine. Terrifying in its casual supremacy.
"Welcome to the Blue-Eyed Pirates," Gojo said. He turned and began walking toward the cliff path. Over his shoulder, he added, "Try not to enslave anyone else. That's, like, rule number three. Rule one is 'Don't betray the crew.' Rule two is 'Bring snacks on long voyages.' Very important stuff."
"I haven't even given you my answer." Vane felt embarrassed, whispering to himself in silence, still stunned, still disbelieving, and could only nod in approval. He stood there for a long moment, rain soaking through his clothes, his body screaming from a dozen near-misses and one perfectly placed palm strike. Then, because he had nowhere else to go and nothing left to prove, he took a step forward.
Then another.
Then he fell into step behind Gojo Satoru, the man who had beaten him without a sweat, and walked toward a future he had never imagined.
The rain continued to fall. The upper yard lay in ruins. And Gojo, without a single bead of sweat on his brow, turned and walked toward the horizon, his newest crew member trailing behind him in bewildered silence.
Gojo halted in his tracks, sliding his signature blindfold on, "remember, I'm the man who'll be the king of the pirates."
Vane could only smirk, "the king, huh?" He laughed, "I swear on my life I'll support you until you achieve your dreams, captain!"
"That's good to hear, Vane."
Vane trailed behind Gojo, his grin never fading away from his lips, "you really fascinate me, Gojo Satoru."
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