The dust slowly settled. The bone-chilling wind returned to the snowfield, howling as it whipped up scorched earth and shredded ice.
That bottomless crater gouged into the land looked like a savage scar stamped onto the face of Wano.
Queen the Plague lay sprawled on the ground. His proud mechanical arm had been twisted into scrap by the earlier shockwave and sparked fitfully with stray electric arcs.
His jaw hung slack. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth and he did not even notice. His eyes were fixed on the lone figure at the edge of the crater, staring as if at some kind of monster.
King the Wildfire was in slightly better shape. He was down on one knee, supporting himself with his blade. Harsh, ragged breathing hissed from behind his mask.
The black wings on his back drooped. His flames had long since gone out. For the first time, those sharp eyes held something that could only be called fear.
Their captain, the man who would one day be hailed as the "strongest creature alive," Kaido of the Beasts, had been swatted out of the sky and beaten back into his base form with a single blow. One blow, and knocked unconscious.
This was already beyond anything they could comprehend.
Farther away, Gecko Moria was still kneeling. His mind remained blank.
He looked at Kaido's broken form at the bottom of the crater, then at the man whose coat snapped in the wind at the rim. His lips quivered, but no sound came out.
Hatred? Joy?
No. There was nothing left. Only a primal, bone-deep awe and dread in the face of absolute power.
"Well, if I killed him now, the future would be way too boring."
Kael spoke softly, almost to himself. His voice was not loud, but every conscious soul on the field heard him clearly.
The future. Boring.
King and Queen both felt their hearts seize up.
This man… he had not even considered defeating Kaido a big deal. His thoughts were already on what would happen years from now.
Kael no longer spared the two "Calamities" a glance. Their fighting spirit was gone. Instead, his gaze swept past the devastated battlefield and settled on Moria.
He did not walk over.
He simply flicked his hand.
A gentle wave spread outward and turned into invisible wind.
The wind slipped between shattered gravestones and drifting snow, lifting Moria and the handful of survivors who had been scared witless beside him.
Even the corpses scattered across the snow, already stiff and cold, were picked up by that wind. It cradled them, as if an unseen hand were setting them down with care.
The wind bore them all upward, carrying them slowly toward the coast.
Moria finally came back to himself midair.
He lowered his head and looked down at the hellscape below. Then he looked toward the figure by the crater, already beginning to blur as the storm swallowed him up again. A tangle of emotions surged in his chest that he could not name.
At that moment, Kael's lazy voice rang out once more, this time clearly addressed to King and Queen.
"Tell Kaido this."
His tone was flat, yet carried a weight that crushed the two veteran pirates until they could hardly breathe.
"Next time he dares breathe his little 'hot breath' at me, he dies on the spot."
Breathe? What?
King and Queen both flinched violently.
Was that "breath" supposed to mean Kaido's proud Bolo Breath?
That terrifying move, in this man's mouth, sounded no more than a brat throwing a tantrum.
The two of them nodded frantically like pecking chickens, terrified they would be a heartbeat too slow.
Kael seemed satisfied with their reaction. He turned to leave, then paused as if something had just come to mind.
"Oh, right. One more thing."
His profile blurred in the snow and wind. Within that hazy outline, his golden eyes glinted with a strange, unfathomable light.
"Kozuki Oden, that guy, I do not really care how he ends up. But…"
"His son has to die."
Why? Why Oden's son?
They could not make sense of it, and they did not dare ask.
"Y, yes. We will… we will pass the message on."
Queen scrambled to answer, his voice cracking.
Kael said nothing more.
He did not look at them again. He simply started walking, his pace unhurried, as if strolling through a park.
Like that, the man who had overturned the entire balance of the battlefield walked away like a wandering traveler. His figure gradually vanished into the swirling snow, as if he had never been there at all.
Only when that suffocating pressure completely vanished did Queen finally collapse with a heavy thud, gulping air in huge ragged breaths, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.
King slowly loosened his grip on his sword. He stared at the direction where Kael had disappeared, his gaze full of a confusion he had never known before.
This world was going to change.
On the other side, the wind carried Moria and the others to the coast and gently set them down beside his ship.
Moria staggered as he found his footing. He turned back to look toward Ringo.
Wind and snow already veiled the land. The battlefield had been erased from sight, as if it were nothing but a nightmare fading at dawn.
"Aaron Kael…"
The ship of the Gecko Pirates drifted like a ghost vessel on the waters off Wano.
On the deck, the survivors sat or lay scattered around, as if a part of their souls had been left behind on that frozen battlefield.
No one spoke.
No one wept.
Beyond the great wave of sorrow came a deeper, deader numbness.
They had laid the bodies of their fallen comrades side by side in the center of the deck and covered them with freshly washed sailcloth. The faint metallic tang of blood that still hung in the air was a constant reminder of the total slaughter they had just survived.
Moria stood at the prow. His towering frame was like an ancient, weather-worn statue as he stared at the moonlit sea.
The surface of the water reflected his face.
The face that had once always worn that "shi shi shi" crooked grin, full of arrogant confidence, now looked washed-out and gray.
In his mind, scenes replayed again and again.
Not Kaido's devastating swings of the kanabo.
Not that island-melting Bolo Breath.
But the look of stunned disbelief on the helmsman's face as a wind blade sliced him neatly in half.
The navigator screaming "Captain, run!" at the top of his lungs as thunder reduced him to cinders.
The coward, the one who always hid in the back and took potshots from safety, turned into chunks of flesh scattered across the snow…
He could not even remember all of their names clearly anymore.
He only knew they were all dead.
"Captain…"
A high-ranking officer swaddled in bandages shuffled up behind him and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
"We… we should leave these waters first. Once we recover, we can still…"
"Can still what?" Moria finally spoke.
"We can still… rise again. Take revenge for the brothers!"
The man forced his courage up and raised his voice.
"Revenge?"
Moria turned around slowly. Under the moonlight, his shadow swallowed the man whole.
His lips stretched into a grin that looked more like a grimace than a smile.
"Shi shi shi shi shi… Revenge? With what? Your life, or mine?"
He raised one massive hand and pointed at the row of shrouded bodies on the deck.
"Go tell them that. Tell them you are going to take revenge. Ask them if they are willing to let you go throw your life away."
"I…"
The officer choked. His face flushed red with shame.
"We were helpless…"
Moria's voice dropped.
"I watched you all die, one after another, and I could not do a damned thing. That is what you got from having me as your captain."
In his mind, another figure rose unbidden.
That black-haired, golden-eyed man.
In front of that man, Kaido's island-crushing blows looked like a child swinging a toy club and were brushed aside as an afterthought.
In front of that man, Kaido's proud dragon form looked like a pathetic mudfish, snatched from the sky and slammed into the ground.
That was power.
The kind of absolute power that sets the rules and rewrites endings.
"Captain, we are not afraid of dying."
"Yeah. As long as we can follow you!"
The surviving crew members gathered around, all talking at once. There was still fire in their eyes. That was their unshakable loyalty to Moria.
Seeing those familiar faces. Seeing the trust in their eyes that had never once wavered.
Moria could not hold himself up anymore.
His huge body trembled. Then that nearly seven-meter-tall man slowly crouched down like a child and covered his face with both hands.
Broken sobs leaked out through his fingers.
"Stop following me…"
"Please… stop following me…"
…
A few days later.
Moria personally buried the last of the dead.
He dismissed everyone.
He split all the treasure on the ship evenly among the survivors and used a tone that brooked no argument to order them to leave. To go somewhere safe, find wives and raise children, or live out their lives as rich men.
Anything.
As long as they forgot the identity of "pirate," and forgot him, their useless captain, and lived well.
The crew wept and refused to go.
In the end, Moria used his shadow powers to forcibly dump them, one by one, onto the little boats he had already made ready.
"From today on, the Gecko Pirates are disbanded."
Those were the last words he spoke to them.
Now, only he remained.
He stood before a field of graves. The cold wind tossed ice crystals against his face, but he felt nothing at all.
Moria swore that he would never again experience that helplessness of watching his comrades die and being unable to do anything.
He would become stronger.
Not for some stupid title like King of the Pirates. Not for endless treasure.
He just… did not want to lose anything ever again.
…
Night fell.
Moria moved like a giant shadow toward Ryuma's grave.
He felt no hesitation and no reverence.
He tore open the frozen earth with brute force and pried open the ancient stone coffin.
Inside, a long-dead samurai's corpse lay quietly. Beside it was a black katana whose blade bore a flame-like hamon pattern, dark as ink.
Moria reached in and grasped the hilt.
A cold, powerful aura surged up through his arm and flooded his body.
"A Great Grade sword. Shusui…"
He whispered the blade's name, then hefted Ryuma's corpse and the sword together.
"Shi shi shi… From today on, you are my comrade."
Just as he turned to leave that cursed place, a faint sound pricked his ears. A soft, broken sobbing, so weak it was almost swallowed by the wind and snow.
Hm?
Moria stopped and tilted his head, listening.
The crying came from an abandoned village nearby.
He frowned.
His first instinct was not to care, but that thin, intermittent sobbing was like a stray kitten's mewl. Somehow, it tugged at a nerve in his chest that had long since gone numb.
Shouldering Ryuma's corpse, he followed the sound.
In a ruined house in that deserted village, in one dark corner, he found the source.
A little girl.
She looked three or four at most. Pink hair tied into two small pigtails, a tattered dress hanging off her thin frame. She was curled up with her arms around her legs, shivering.
When she saw the looming, twisted figure that was Moria, her crying cut off at once. Her big dark eyes brimmed with terror.
Moria looked down at her from above, gaze cold.
A burden.
The thought surfaced immediately. He turned to leave.
He took one step.
Then stopped.
He thought of his dead crew. Of his helplessness.
If he left this little brat here, there was only one fate waiting for her. She would freeze to death or starve.
How was that any different from watching his comrades die and doing nothing?
"Hey, brat."
His harsh voice made the girl flinch. Tears welled up in her eyes again.
Moria sighed. It might have been the first time in his life he had ever done so.
He set Ryuma's body down and extended one huge finger to poke the girl lightly on the forehead.
"Want to come with me?"
The girl froze.
She looked at the terrifying monster in front of her, then at the even more terrifying dried corpse behind him. Strangely, the fear in her eyes faded a little.
She sniffled and, very carefully, reached out her tiny hand to wrap around Moria's finger, which was thicker than her arm.
"Shi shi shi…"
Moria let out his trademark laugh. This time, though, there was less arrogance in it, and a hint of something complicated he himself could not name.
"What a troublesome little brat."
He picked her up and set her on his broad shoulder, then once more slung Ryuma's corpse and the black blade Shusui over his other shoulder.
"What is your name?"
"…Perona."
The answer on his shoulder was little more than a mosquito's buzz.
"Perona, huh? Shi shi shi. From today on, we are comrades."
Under the moonlight, a huge, strange silhouette walked slowly away from Wano.
On his shoulder sat a tiny pink-haired girl.
In his hands, he carried the corpse of a legendary samurai and his famed blade.
Their shadows stretched long across the ground, fading into the silver glow of the sea.
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