Chapter 86: Hollow Victory
Zephyr's explanation hung in the air. "Because Satoru's ability is unique. Unless the attack carries Advanced Conqueror's Haki infusion, he can nullify any physical strike at will."
The three Admirals and Tsuru processed this. A defense that could only be bypassed by the pinnacle application of the rarest form of Haki? It sounded like a cheat, a bug in the world's logic.
The CP0 Captain initially refused to believe it. But the evidence was irrefutable. On the island, his subordinate, White Fox, was a whirlwind of fury—launching kicks, claw strikes, tail swipes, all coated in top-tier Armament Haki. Each attack stopped dead an inch from the unmoving, white-haired boy. Satoru merely stood with his hands in a loose seal, watching with cold, bored eyes.
We miscalculated. The thought was a bitter poison in the Captain's mind. They had been so arrogantly confident, so sure of inserting their agent into the Admiralty, they hadn't done their due diligence. A basic intelligence report would have flagged this impossibility.
I should have gone myself, he thought, a surge of frustration mixing with alarm.
"Don't even think about intervening," a voice rumbled beside him. Garp's eyes were locked onto him, no longer the boisterous fool but a predator assessing prey. "Or this old man will have to get involved."
When the Captain met that gaze, a cold sweat broke out under his mask. For a moment, he wasn't looking at a man, but at a primal force. His previous dismissal of Garp as a mere figurehead evaporated. Few beings in the world could inspire such instinctive fear with a look.
Zephyr's own threatening aura joined Garp's, pinning the Captain in place. He desperately wanted to flee this suddenly hostile ship, but he couldn't abandon his agent. Leaving White Fox alone with these enraged Marines would be a death sentence. For figures like Garp and the Admirals, the taboo against striking a Government agent was a paper shield.
On the island, White Fox was descending into frantic madness. "Why?! WHY CAN'T I HIT YOU?!" he screamed, his attacks growing wilder, less precise. The psychological toll and wasted energy were draining him far faster than any normal battle would.
"Had enough, little fox?" Satoru's voice was a calm taunt.
White Fox stood panting, his suit disheveled. The sheer frustration was consuming his stamina.
"My turn."
In the space of White Fox's blink, Satoru was there, inside his guard, less than a fist's distance away.
"Armament Black Flash."
A fist clad in crackling black Haki and cursed energy drove into White Fox's midsection. There was no fancy technique, just condensed, overwhelming power.
THUD!
The air blasted outward. White Fox was catapulted off his feet, sailing backward before crashing onto the rocky ground, his ornate mask shattering on impact.
He staggered up, revealing a surprisingly handsome, now-twisted face contorted with rage and humiliation. "What… what IS that ability?!" he spat, blood on his lips. The physical blow was secondary. The utter impotence was what truly wounded him.
"Who knows?" Satoru replied with a faint smile. "And even if I did, why would I tell my opponent? You came in so confident. Looks uncomfortable."
"You…!" White Fox trembled. Then, his body began to change. He expanded, fur erupting across his skin. Nine luxurious, white tails fanned out behind him. His face elongated into a snout, his form transforming completely into a massive, nine-tailed white fox.
"A Mythical Zoan?" Satoru mused, genuinely intrigued. Only the second he'd seen, after Kaido's. The World Government's resources were indeed staggering.
On the ship, the Marines murmured in shock. "A Mythical Zoan… they really went all out," Tsuru noted. "Without Satoru, none of our other candidates would have stood a chance."
The colossal fox snarled, its voice a deep rumble. "DIE, YOU WRETCHED MARINE!" It opened its maw, and a concentrated beam of searing white energy lanced out, striking Satoru's position dead-on.
BOOOOOOM!
The explosion dwarfed the earlier ones, carving a new crater into the island's heart. The beam's power was immense, rivaling a battleship's main cannon.
"Could you do that?" Aokiji asked Kizaru.
"A different sort of laser, yes" Kizaru mused. "If I got serious, mine would be stronger"
The giant fox laughed, its tails waving arrogantly. "Reduced to atoms!"
The CP0 Captain allowed himself a sliver of hope—until he saw Garp and Zephyr's unchanged, relaxed stances.
As the smoke cleared, there stood Satoru in the center of the crater, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder. "Whew. That was a close one. I almost thought you'd gotten through. But you're still… just a little bit short." He held his thumb and forefinger a hair's breadth apart.
The fox's eyes burned crimson with insane rage. Its nine tails became blurs, hammering the ground around Satoru in a frenzied barrage. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Stone shattered, dust plumed, but Satoru walked forward calmly, untouched, navigating the storm of tails until he stood directly beneath the beast's towering chest.
"Up you go."
He lifted a foot and, with a casual-looking but impossibly powerful flick, hoisted the multi-ton mythical creature into the air.
"A big body just makes you a bigger target."
Satoru flashed above the soaring fox.
"Reversal Technique: Red."
A tiny, crimson orb of repulsive energy, no larger than a droplet, appeared on his fingertip. He tapped it against the fox's flank.
The effect was catastrophic.
The minuscule point erupted with the force of a volcanic detonation. The repulsive blast wasn't an explosion outward, but a concentrated rejection of space itself. The fox's ascent reversed instantly into a meteoric descent.
BOOM-CRACK!
It hit the island like a falling star. The impact tremor split the bedrock of the entire island with a thunderous crack. A new, fox-shaped crater, hundreds of feet wide, was born. In its center, the magnificent white fox lay broken, fur matted with dirt and blood, its form shrinking back to its human shape—a battered, unconscious man in a torn white suit.
"Is his repulsion… always that strong?" Zephyr asked, aghast.
"It means he was holding back a lot against you, old friend," Garp chuckled.
Satoru floated down, landing at the crater's edge. He looked at the stirring, groaning form of White Fox. The man' Mythical Zoan resilience was trying to force consciousness.
"Tough, like all Zoans," Satoru noted. "But if you won't stay down…"
He raised both hands. On his left, a swirling, gravitational vortex of blue energy coalesced—Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue. On his right, a chaotic, repulsive sphere of red energy manifested—Reversal Technique: Red.
The very climate around the island seemed to warp. The air grew heavy, charged with opposing, annihilating forces.
"What is he doing now?!" Zephyr exclaimed. No one had an answer. They just felt the mounting, dreadful pressure.
The two orbs began to vibrate, then drift toward each other. As they neared, space itself seemed to scream in protest, warping and distorting.
"Imaginary Technique…" Satoru's voice was calm amidst the gathering storm.
The blue and red spheres touched, merged, and dissolved into a new, unstable mass of chaotic, violet-and-black energy. It hummed with a sound that felt wrong to the soul.
"Purple."
A hollow, featureless sphere of void-like energy now hovered before Satoru.
On the warship, every instinct screamed. Vice Admiral Tsuru's eyes went wide. "He's not trying to win… he's going to erase him!"
The CP0 Captain's blood ran cold. Garp's grin vanished.
With a negligent flick of Satoru's wrist, the sphere of Hollow Purple descended silently toward the crater.
"STOP!"
Multiple voices roared as one. In a blur of movement, six figures—Garp, the CP0 Captain, Zephyr, Akainu, Aokiji, and Kizaru—vanished from the ship and reappeared in the air between the falling technique and its target.
They moved in unison, a wall of the world's strongest defenses.
Garp and the CP0 Captain threw simultaneous punches, fists wreathed in crackling Advanced Conqueror's Haki.
Zephyr, shrouded in his ghostly aura and supreme Armament, crossed his arms.
Akainu formed a blazing magma wall.
Aokiji erected a towering, multi-layered ice barrier.
Kizaru conjured a solid shield of prismatic light.
VVVVVVRRRROOOOOOMMMM—
Hollow Purple met the combined defense. There was no sound of impact, but a deep, vacuum-like hum that sucked at the air. Light bent around it. The ice vaporized, the magma was negated, the light diffracted, the Haki-infused strikes ground against the nothingness.
For several heartbeats, it was a stalemate of absolute power versus absolute negation.
Finally, with a sound like a sigh, the Hollow Purple sphere dissipated, its energy spent against the combined might of two legends, a CP0 leader, and three Admirals.
The aftermath was a ringing silence. The island was scarred, the air still crackled with residual energy, and White Fox lay unconscious in his crater, spared by the narrowest of margins.
Garp let out a long breath, then turned his head, a fierce pride in his eyes as he looked at Satoru, who now stood calmly on the ground. "The battle is over, kid. You've won."
The message was sent, and received. The Navy had its Fourth Admiral, and the World Government's arrogance had been met with an impossible defense and an attack that required the combined effort of the world's elite to contain.
The balance of power had just shifted.
(End of Chapter)
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