Roger, mouth wide like a carp, caught the falling red liquor straight from the cup. He swished, clicked his tongue, and sighed with pure satisfaction.
"Delicious! That's a proper vintage!"
For a heartbeat the world stayed blank—minds buffering after too many shocks in a row. A rumor had just become reality, and it had happened in front of everyone.
A shadow cut through the air from a balcony near the square. Steel flashed—ignoring the cross-legged Roger and lunging straight for Dimon.
Dimon lifted a single finger.
Conqueror's Haki wrapped that fingertip and met the oncoming blade mid-air. At the contact point a bead of crimson lightning bloomed, then burst—the clash of kings exploding into a gale. Black-red bolts spidered outward; rings of pressure knocked spectators out row by row until the plaza around the scaffold was scoured empty.
On the rooftop, Gringu Saint—Commander of the God Knights—glared, voice iced with murder. "Shrinking yourself into a child fools the crowd, not me. Aging-Aging Fruit."
He would know—he'd once delivered that fruit with his own hands. That delivery had sown the grudge.
Dimon smiled. "Long time no see, Gringu. How's little Shamrock these days?"
The mention of his son froze Gringu's eyes. "So you devoured a second fruit… and chose that garbage? Hah. Misplayed your hand, didn't you?"
Dimon's grin tilted. His Conqueror's spiked—sudden, suffocating.
Gringu's face twitched. Two years had remade this man. The shockwave hurled the commander off his footing; he skidded backward across tiles, boots grinding sparks before he could recover.
He looked up—
—and blinked.
Distorted Future: Nika-Dio.
White washed up Dimon's limbs from his soles; a ring of pale cloud curled round his waist. In a breath his whole body turned sun-white, hair a lick of breeze, presence impossible to pin down—like laughter given shape.
At Mariejois, in the Room of Authority, five old men lurched to their feet, faces storm-dark.
"Impossible—the Gum-Gum shouldn't have a host in this era—"
"The prior user is dead; there's been no successor—"
"Wrong. That's the Aging-Aging Fruit's 'distorted future.'"
"How can he mimic Nika? Did he see it with his own eyes—!?"
Saturn raged hardest of all; he'd personally branded the fruit "worthless." On the screen, Nika-Dio slapped that label out of his mouth.
"Enough," the Gold Star snapped. "Get Morgans off the air. The name Nika must not roll across the world."
In the Flower Chamber, birdsong under glass, Im watched through Gringu's eyes, expression calm where the elders' shattered. Fake or not, the boy's certainty intrigued her. If he could mimic the white—he'd likely seen it. Lived long enough to have watched Joy Boy dance.
"Dimon. Immortality. …So you, too."
Back in Loguetown, Gringu only had time for one stunned heartbeat before the fist arrived.
"Gum-Gum… White Star Gun!"
"Just a paint job!"
He slashed to intercept—only to feel the world go soft. The rubber absorbed his blade, then punched through his Haki, bent the steel, and flattened his face. The commander's features caved; the fist seemed to pass through him and bulge out the back of his skull before pile-driving him—and the building—straight into the ground. Masonry atomized. A crater yawned.
The white burned off Dimon in a wisp; he floated back to his usual ten-year-old self, deadpan.
"'King of God Valley,' was it? That's the best you've got?"
"Hey, Dimon—my shackles!" Roger yelled from the scaffold.
"You owe me ten fruits."
"Understood! I'll start collecting right after this!"
"One year." Dimon flickered toward him, offering a deadline like a death sentence.
"No problem!"
Two new auras surged from the eaves—Conqueror's colliding with Dimon's mid-air. The sky grumbled; black lightning forked over the square.
Sengoku and Zephyr landed at Roger's flanks.
"Careless of me," Sengoku said, eyes locked on the boy. "But if you thought you alone could pry Roger loose, you've underestimated the Navy."
Zephyr's gaze cut to the goblet shards, to the tremor in Roger's flesh knitting back. "He's swallowed the Immortality Wine. A public execution is no longer feasible." He noticed the snails still broadcasting and grimaced.
The plaza had thinned to a handful of hardy souls; most lay slumped where the kings' will had swept. Dimon hovered, serene. "No Garp? Then just you two won't be enough."
"How do you expect to spirit him away while facing two admirals?" Zephyr asked.
"Don't talk like I'm already a corpse!" Roger barked, laughing. "It's my execution. I'm the headliner!"
He seized the execution spear and hacked off both ankles. Blood surged—then reversed, feet knitting back as metal fell away.
Sengoku's eyes flashed. His fist shot, golden and brutal—but Roger dipped his brow into it, answering king for king. Haki slammed; the scaffold detonated, timbers flung wide.
"Hah! So this is the undying body? Marvelous stuff! Cheers, Dimon!"
When the dust ebbed, Roger stood on the wreckage, shoulder shackles snapped, new legs stamping the planks. He faced two towering figures—and grinned.
Then he tipped his chin to the boy in the sky and bellowed:
"Come on, brother—let's turn this town upside-down!"
…And above the square, the lenses of a dozen hidden cameras whirred as a killing aura colder than steel crept in from the alley shadows—aimed not at Roger… but at the kid.
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