The air on Hachinosu did not just vibrate; it groaned under the weight of two opposing infinities.
Marshall D. Teach, the man known as Blackbeard, stood atop a pile of pulverized masonry, his silhouette a jagged tear against the burning sky. He looked down at Monkey D. Luffy, and for a moment, the chaos of the surrounding war—the clashing swords of the revolutionaries, the screams of the dying, the freezing winds of Kuzan—simply faded into a dull hum.
Teach did not wait for a challenge. He did not offer a villainous monologue. He acted with the predatory instinct of a man who had spent decades lurking in the shadows of giants.
"BLACK HOLE!"
Teach slammed his left palm into the ground. A literal tide of absolute darkness erupted from his skin, spreading across the shattered plaza like spilled ink. It wasn't just shadows; it was a gravitational anomaly that hungered for existence itself. The stones, the discarded weapons, and even the light from the nearby fires were sucked into the void.
Luffy's eyes widened as the darkness raced toward his feet. He felt the nullifying power of the Yami Yami no Mi reaching for his soul, threatening to drag the Sun God into a pit where no light could follow.
But Luffy was no longer the boy who had fought at Marineford.
The Awakening: White Heat in the Dark
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The sound began low, then surged—a rhythmic, musical beat that seemed to synchronize with the spinning of the stars. The Drums of Liberation.
Luffy threw his head back and laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy that cut through Teach's oppressive gloom. His hair turned a brilliant, ethereal white, billowing like clouds in a storm. His clothes transformed, glowing with a divine radiance, and his eyes became rings of golden fire.
Gear 5.
As the darkness reached him, Luffy didn't retreat. He slammed his hands into the ground—but the ground was no longer stone. Under the touch of the Sun God, the very earth of Pirate Island became rubber.
"GOMU GOMU NO... TRAMPOLINE WALL!"
With a heave that should have been physically impossible, Luffy pulled the entire section of the plaza upward. The earth stretched like a massive sheet of latex. The tidal wave of darkness hit the rubberized land and, instead of swallowing it, was forced upward, following the curve of the distorted terrain.
Luffy grabbed the edge of the rubberized "land-curtain," spun in a circle, and snapped it forward.
"WHITE PISTOL!"
He didn't just punch the air; he punched the physical fabric of the environment he had just created. His fist distended into a massive, cartoonish mallet of white Haki. The impact didn't just hit the darkness—it compressed it. The gravitational pull of the Black Hole was reversed by the sheer kinetic absurdity of Nika's power. The darkness was hurled back at Teach with twice its original velocity.
Teach's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "What is this madness?! The ground is... laughing?!"
He quickly raised his right hand, the air around his fist cracking like shattered glass.
"GURA GURA NO... KAISHIN!"
The Tremor-Tremor power unleashed a shockwave designed to shatter continents. It hit Luffy's rubberized environment head-on. In any other battle, the vibration would have disintegrated the target's internal organs.
But Luffy just wobbled.
As the tremor hit him, his entire body rippled like a reflection in a disturbed pond. He absorbed the vibration, his chest expanding to ten times its size, and then he simply bounced the tremor back. He caught the shockwave with his hands, turned it into a physical ball of vibrating energy, and began to dribble it like a basketball.
"Hey, Teach!" Luffy shouted, his voice echoing with a thousand playful echoes. "This stuff is bouncy!"
With a final, hysterical giggle, Luffy slammed the "tremor-ball" back at the ground. The resulting explosion sent Teach flying backward, his dark cloak singed and his legendary confidence momentarily shaken.
However, as Teach tumbled through the air, he didn't scream in fear. He wiped a streak of blood from his lip and let out a low, guttural chuckle.
Zehahahaha... yes... use it all, brat, Teach thought, his eyes gleaming with a hidden, secondary agenda. The more you shine, the easier it is for the shadow to find the center.
The Rearguard: Blood and Breath
While the gods clashed in the center of the island, the logistics of survival played out in the periphery.
Deep within the hull of the Wind Granma, the atmosphere was one of clinical desperation. Monkey D. Garp lay on a reinforced surgical table, surrounded by the Revolutionary Army's top medical team. His chest was open, and the rhythmic hiss of an oxygen bellows was the only sound in the room.
"His heart rate is stabilizing," a head medic whispered, wiping sweat from her brow. "But the internal damage... he's taken enough Haki-infused strikes to kill a Sea King ten times over."
Garp's eyes flickered open for a fraction of a second. He saw the IV drips and the white ceiling. He felt the absence of the heavy chains. "Luffy..." he wheezed, before the sedatives dragged him back into the dark.
On the deck above, Dragon and Kuzan stood like twin pillars of judgment.
Dragon's gaze was fixed on the white glow emanating from the plaza. He could feel the atmospheric pressure dropping; the clouds were swirling into a massive cyclone, centered directly over his son.
"Teach isn't fighting to win yet," Dragon said, his voice a low rumble that mimicked the thunder. "He's measuring. He's looking for the 'gap' in Nika's armor."
Kuzan leaned against the railing, his ice-leg leaving a frost-pattern on the wood. "I know how he thinks. He's a scholar of the 'D.' history. He knows that even the Sun has an eclipse. We need to get there before he pulls the trigger on whatever trap he's laid."
"Then we don't walk," Dragon said.
Hurry! we have to save the luffy and make the blackbeard plan has to be fail, otherwise the world has to suffered by him.
In an instant, the wind around the ship surged to gale force. Dragon didn't fly; he became the air itself, a green-cloaked streak of atmospheric fury. Kuzan followed, a path of frozen moisture forming in the air behind him like a bridge of diamonds. They were racing toward the center of the storm, two legends hurrying to prevent the extinction of the next generation.
The Duel of the Unseen: Zoro vs. Shiryu
Away from the god-tier explosions of the central plaza, in the mist-shrouded ruins of the Western Docks, a different kind of nightmare was unfolding.
Roronoa Zoro stood in a clearing of broken masts and shattered crates. His three blades were drawn, their edges shimmering with a dark, metallic sheen. But he was bleeding. A shallow cut had appeared on his shoulder, and another on his thigh, yet there was no enemy in sight.
"Show yourself, coward," Zoro spat, his breath hitching as he centered his focus.
A cold, mocking laugh echoed from the fog. "Cowardice is a word used by the dead, Roronoa. In the Blackbeard Pirates, we call it efficiency."
Shiryu of the Rain, the wielder of the Suke Suke no Mi (Clear-Clear Fruit), was not just invisible; he was a void in reality. Having mastered the fruit to an awakened level, he didn't just turn his body transparent—he erased his scent, his sound, and even the "intent" that most masters of Observation Haki used to track an opponent.
Slice.
A sudden arc of blood sprayed from Zoro's forearm. He swung Wado Ichimonji in a wide arc, but the steel met nothing but salty mist.
Zoro closed his eyes. Don't look with your eyes. Don't even look with your mind. Feel the rhythm of the raindrops.
He stood perfectly still. The battle around him—the distant booms of Luffy's Gear 5—became a background hum. He focused on the way the fog swirled. If Shiryu moved, he had to displace the air.
There.
A microscopic ripple in the mist, six feet to his left.
Zoro lunged, his blades crossing in a lethal "X" formation. "TWO SWORD STYLE: RHINO RAMPAGE!"
The impact was solid. A spark of blue steel clashing against steel illuminated the air for a fraction of a second. Shiryu's visible form flickered—a glimpse of a long coat and a sadistic grin—before he vanished again.
"Not bad," Shiryu's voice drifted from the right now. "But you're fighting a ghost. Can you cut what you cannot conceive?"
Zoro's jaw tightened. He could feel the blood loss starting to affect his vision. This wasn't like King or Mihawk. This was a puzzle of the senses. He realized that Shiryu wasn't just hiding; he was using the environment to create echoes of his presence.
"I've cut stone. I've cut fire. I've cut steel," Zoro muttered to himself, his Haki beginning to flow into his blades with a rhythmic, pulsing intensity. "If I have to cut the nothingness itself to reach you... then so be it."
Zoro took a low stance, the tip of Enma touching the ground. The cursed blade began to glow with a violent, purple aura. He wasn't just using Haki to harden his swords anymore; he was projecting it outward, creating a "field" of awareness that extended twenty feet in every direction.
Shiryu, sensing the shift in the air, hesitated. He moved with the silence of a shadow, circling Zoro, looking for the one opening that would end the "Pirate Hunter's" life.
The two masters of the blade stood in a silent deadlock. Neither had won. Neither had lost. They were two predators in a dark room, each waiting for the other to take a breath that was just a millisecond too long.
The Plaza: The Trap Within the Laugh
Back at the epicenter, the world had become a cartoonish hellscape.
Luffy was currently bouncing off the sides of two buildings as if they were pinball bumpers, gathering momentum before launching himself at Teach like a human rocket.
"GOMU GOMU NO... DAWN ROCKET!"
Luffy hit Teach square in the chest. The impact was so great that it sent a shockwave through the entire island, causing the sea to retreat by a hundred yards. Teach was driven deep into the bedrock, his bones groaning under the pressure of Nika's impossible strength.
Luffy landed on his feet, his chest heaving with laughter, his white hair glowing brighter than ever. "Give up, Teach! Your darkness can't catch me!"
Teach slowly climbed out of the crater. He was coughing blood, and his clothes were in tatters, but the grin on his face had grown wider. He looked at the sky—at the cyclone Dragon was bringing, and the ice bridge Kuzan was building.
"You think this is about winning a fight, Straw Hat?" Teach croaked, his voice thick with a dark, oily triumph. "You're so bright... so full of life. You're the perfect sun."
Teach raised his hands, and for the first time, the darkness didn't flow outward. It flowed inward, coating Teach's own body until he looked like a silhouette carved out of the night sky.
"The sun always sets," Teach whispered. "And I've spent my whole life studying the horizon."
Luffy paused, his laughter dying down for a brief second as a chill ran down his rubbery spine. He didn't see a trap. He didn't see an army. But for the first time since awakening Gear 5, he felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Doubt.
What!
What!
Far off in the distance, Dragon and Kuzan broke through the final line of Blackbeard's defense, their eyes locked on the two captains.
"LUFFY! GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Dragon's voice roared over the wind, a desperate warning from a father who knew exactly what the "Darkness" was capable of.
But the distance was still too great.
Teach's laughter erupted again, louder and more confident than before, echoing across the ruins of Hachinosu.
"The stage is set!" Teach bellowed. "Zehahahaha! Let the real show begin!"
To be continued...