A transport ship sliced through the black waves off Dressrosa, the island aglow with fires like a distant inferno. On board, the atmosphere
A transport ship sliced through the black waves off Dressrosa, the island aglow with fires like a distant inferno. On board, the atmosphere was a volatile mix of panic, grief, and suppressed anger.
Sugar, tiny in her stained schoolgirl outfit, pounded her small fists against Senior Pink's massive, impassive chest. Her eyes brimmed with hot tears.
"WHY?! WHY DID WE ABANDON HIM, PINK?! THE BOSS NEEDED US! YOU'RE A COWARD! A COWARD!"
Each blow was a pinprick on Pink's shell of flesh and resignation. He took it, eyes hidden behind tinted shades, his bowler hat firmly in place. He didn't push her away. He said nothing.
"Sugar, enough!" Monet's cold, calm voice cut through the hysterical sobs. The bird-woman with snowy wings placed a hand on her trembling sister's shoulder. "It wasn't Pink's decision. It was the Boss's order. You, Sugar, are the most valuable."
"What are you talking about? We're running like rats!" Dellinger snarled, spinning sharply. His youthful voice aimed for scorn, but a faint tremor betrayed him. "And this Mihawk? He'll just settle for Dressrosa? You believe that?"
Senior Pink finally spoke. He lifted Sugar, who had collapsed against him in silent sobs, and gently set her on a pile of ropes, keeping a protective hand on her shoulder.
"The Boss… has a plan. Always. He'll handle Mihawk. Kaido… Kaido won't let his main supplier fall without a fight. The Hawk will have a Yonko on his tail before he can sip his tea."
He was lying.
He knew it. The look in Doffy's eyes when he ordered them to flee… Pink had seen that glint only once before, on Minion Island. It was the look of a man who saw the end coming. But Sugar didn't need that truth. No one on this ship, except perhaps Monet, could bear it.
"Where are we going, then?" Jora asked in a hollow voice, her paintbrushes limp in her plump hands.
"Punk Hazard," Pink replied without hesitation. "Vergo's there. With Caesar's facilities. We can regroup, reorganize. Build strength. And wait." He looked at Sugar, who stared at him with red but dry eyes, desperately seeking hope in his words. "The Boss will call us back. Once Kaido deals with the Hawk problem. He'll call us."
Dellinger scoffed, but it lacked conviction. "The world's greatest swordsman… Even for the Boss, that's a tough one. But he's clever, the Boss. He's always pulled through."
Then the Wave hit.
Not a wave of water. A wave of pure, overwhelming, primal will. A tsunami of Conqueror's Haki swept the ship from bow to stern, passing through the hull as if it didn't exist.
The air thickened suddenly, heavy, electric. An immense pressure crashed onto their shoulders, threatening to crush them against the deck. Jora let out a stifled whimper and collapsed to her knees. Dellinger growled, his knees buckling, eyes wide with shock and strain. Pink gritted his teeth, feeling his muscles quake under the assault. Monet instinctively spread a wing to steady herself, her breath cut short.
But Sugar snapped her head up. Her red-rimmed eyes lit with wild, pure joy.
"THE BOSS!" she screamed, a radiant smile splitting her childish face. "IT'S HIM! I KNOW IT! HE'S WINNING! HE'S GOING TO CRUSH THAT OLD HAWK!"
Her mad, contagious hope flickered on the deck for a moment. Even Dellinger flashed a fierce grin. Pink felt a tiny, irrational spark ignite in his chest. What if…?
But Monet wasn't smiling. Her yellow eyes narrowed into worried slits. She stared at Dressrosa's fiery horizon.
"No…" she whispered, so low only Pink, nearby, heard her. Her voice was taut, trembling with dawning horror. "It's not… It's not just the Boss…"
She didn't need to finish. The titanic pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come.
The silence that followed was worse than the Haki's roar. A chilling, absolute void. Sugar's radiant hope died in a gasp of shock. Her smile froze, then slowly crumbled into an expression of abyssal emptiness.
"…he's gone," Sugar whispered, her hand convulsively gripping the railing. "The Haki… it just… vanished. Suddenly."
Pink closed his eyes behind his shades.
---
In the smoking ruins of the SMILE Factory, silence reigned, broken only by the distant crackle of fires and the groan of cooling, twisted metal. The metallic snow of the pulverized strings from Mu no Sekai blanketed the ground like a gray shroud.
Mihawk, his long black coat pristine in this desolate landscape, stood near the tangle of strings where Doflamingo's shredded body slumped against the concrete, empty eyes fixed on an indifferent sky. He spared it only a fleeting glance.
His gaze shifted to the two trembling shadows huddled against a crushed machine's wreckage. Baby 5, reverted to human form, her wide eyes brimming with silent tears. Buffalo, his massive frame reduced to a quivering heap, tried futilely to shrink behind her, his bulging eyes locked on Mihawk with animal terror.
Yoru rested carelessly on Mihawk's shoulder. He took a single step toward them.
Baby 5 flinched violently, stifling a cry. Buffalo whimpered, a dark puddle slowly forming around him on the floor.
Mihawk stopped a few meters away. His gaze swept the scene: the ruins, the corpse, the pitiful survivors, and above all, the intact cargo of the Number Five, loaded earlier in the panic. Crates of SAD, SMILE prototypes.
"Your captain is dead," he stated. "His reign is over."
He let the words linger, weighing on their already bowed shoulders.
"Will you resist?"
Whatever atom of courage remained shattered. Baby 5 shook her head frantically, tears glinting in the firelight. "N-no! No, Master Mihawk! W-We won't resist! We surrender! We surrender!"
Buffalo, unable to speak, nodded with desperate energy, sniffling loudly.
Mihawk tilted his head slightly, a minimal but effective acknowledgment. "Wise decision." His eyes lingered briefly on Doflamingo's body, then returned to the survivors. "Where are the others?"
Baby 5 opened her mouth, a flood of words ready to spill in her compulsive need to obey and be useful. But Buffalo, in a sudden burst of panicked clarity, grabbed her arm. "The… the ship…" he stammered, eyes wild. "They… they left… on a ship… the boss… I mean Doflamingo… he wanted to buy time for Sugar to escape, one of his key assets."
Mihawk raised an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly.
"I see."
His gaze turned to the ravaged bay. Far off, at the extreme edge of his superhuman perception, honed by unparalleled Observation Haki, he sensed the faint life signature of a ship.
"Gather all survivors at the central plaza."
Mihawk's voice was calm.
Baby 5 nodded so fast she seemed dizzy. "Yes, right away, Master Mihawk!"
Buffalo forced himself upright, still trembling. He stumbled over his own legs, knees wobbling.
As the two subordinates hurried off through the smoking ruins, tripping over debris, Mihawk remained still.
His gaze stayed fixed on the horizon. There, tiny in the evening mist, a black speck cut through the waves.
He narrowed his eyes.
'Let's try this…'
He closed his eyes. Slowly.
A deep breath. The night breeze lifted his coat, its black folds dancing around him. He focused. His senses withdrew from the world around him, zeroing in on that distant speck, the faint ship he'd detected.
Then he opened his eyes.
And the world shuddered.
A cataclysmic surge of Conqueror's Haki, focused with terrifying precision, erupted from Mihawk like an invisible spear forged of pure will. It crossed the distance between Dressrosa and the sea in a nanosecond, silent, relentless.
---
On the ship's deck, the silence after Doflamingo's Haki was heavy with unspeakable horror. Sugar stared at Pink, her eyes desperately seeking an explanation, a comforting lie she no longer believed.
Pink couldn't tear his gaze from the receding Dressrosa. Monet sensed the danger before the others, her feathers bristling, a warning cry forming in her throat.
"Pink, something…!"
Too late.
The air exploded.
A burst of pure will, made tangible by its monstrous focus. The very space around the ship tore under the pressure. The solid wooden deck disintegrated instantly, not into splinters but into fine dust. The masts, ropes, deep hull… all ceased to exist in a perfect circle of nothingness a hundred meters wide.
There was no deafening sound. Just an immense rush, a titanic displacement of air that carved a momentary hollow in the sea's surface before the waves closed over the void with a muffled roar.
Senior Pink didn't even have time to pull Sugar close. One moment, he saw her childish eyes, filled with ultimate terror and incomprehension. The next, there were no eyes, no child, no Pink, no ship. Only a churning expanse of water where a few insignificant debris and a thin gray film of ash mixed with distant metallic snow floated.
Then nothing.
The Donquixote Family was erased from the face of the sea.