The mountain of pulverized stone and shattered architecture groaned, the heavy silence of the wasteland lingering for only a moment before a sharp, metallic sound echoed through the dust. A single, leather-booted foot kicked away a massive fragment of a collapsed spire.
From the heart of the wreckage, Shanks slowly stepped out into the morning sunlight.
His loose white shirt was soaked in dark crimson at the shoulder, and a thick, steady stream of blood leaked from the left corner of his mouth, dripping down his jaw and staining the collar of his shirt.
He was hunched over slightly, his left hand pressed tightly against his right flank, his fingers digging into his ribs to force the fractured bones into temporary alignment. Each breath he took was shallow, raspy, and visibly agonizing, forcing his chest to heave in irregular rhythms. Yet, his right hand still held the hilt of his own sabre, Gryphon, with an unyielding, white-knuckled grip.
Kizaru tilted his head, his amber-tinted sunglasses catching the reflections of the shifting dust clouds. He looked down at the sea-stone alloy case in his hand, then looked back at the young pirate, his face twisting into an expression of exaggerated, lazy astonishment.
"Oh my..." Kizaru drawled, his voice carrying that infuriatingly slow, nasal cadence. "You're actually standing up after that? That is quite surprising. I was completely certain that I snapped at least three or four of those ribs of yours. The youth from the Roger Pirates really are built like unnatural freaks."
Shanks spat a thick glob of blood onto the fractured earth, his eyes narrowing into two razor-sharp slits of pure, lethal focus. A sudden, violent surge of Conqueror's Haki flared around his body, the pressure so intense that the surrounding gravel began to float into the air before disintegrating into fine powder.
"You did break them," Shanks said, his voice dropping into a gritty, resonant register that completely lacked his usual cheerful warmth. "And right now, Admiral... I am quite pissed."
The lazy smirk on Kizaru's face didn't entirely vanish, but his posture stiffened by a fraction of an inch.
The ambient temperature around the plain seemed to drop, and the air grew so thick with Shanks' spiritual intent that Kizaru could feel the faint, prickling sensation of the red-and-black Haki lightning dancing near his skin.
Kizaru thought to himself, 'What a terrifying look. The air is practically screaming. I really had hoped to put him down completely in that single attack. If this kid is already radiating this much malice with shattered bones, leaving him alive is going to be incredibly troublesome.'
Kizaru didn't wait for Shanks to recover. In a microsecond, his entire physical form dissolved into a brilliant, blinding cluster of golden photons.
A linear beam of solid light shot across the cratered plain. Before the human eye could even register the flash, Kizaru materialized directly in front of Shanks, his right leg already raised high, crackling with a highly volatile, spinning vortex of laser energy.
"Die quietly~" Kizaru murmured.
But Shanks' mind was already three seconds into the future.
Even before Kizaru had fully reformed from the light beam, Shanks had already spun his body to the left, pivoting on his heel. He swung Gryphon upward in a sweeping, diagonal arc, coating the steel in a dense, shimmering layer of Armament Haki.
The edge of the blade collided perfectly with Kizaru's light-infused shin. The impact generated a deafening, metallic shockwave that tore a localized trench into the bedrock beneath their feet. Sparks of golden light and black static erupted from the point of contact, illuminating the raw strain on Shanks' face.
The sheer kinetic force of blocking an Admiral's strike traveled straight up Shanks' arms and radiated directly into his torso. A sharp, white-hot flash of agony ripped through his broken ribs. Shanks winced, his teeth grinding together so hard they threatened to shatter, and his footing slipped by a few inches.
Kizaru instantly noticed the momentary lag. Exploiting the opening with terrifying efficiency, Kizaru shifted his weight mid-air, his right hand flashing outward as he manifested his long, glowing blade of solid light, the Ama no Murakumo. He unleashed a blistering, high-speed barrage of thrusts, the energy sword turning into a dozen golden blurs aimed at Shanks' exposed throat and chest.
Shanks was forced entirely onto the defensive. Because of the agonizing pain tearing through his side with every sudden movement, he couldn't utilize his standard, high-mobility footwork.
He was completely grounded. Yet, his swordsmanship remained flawless. Relying entirely on his three-second Future Sight, Shanks executed an incredibly precise, minimalist defense.
Parry. Deflect. Block. Parry.
With micro-movements of his wrist, Shanks redirected every single one of Kizaru's light-speed thrusts. The air between them became a blinding cage of gold and silver sparks. To Marco and King, who were watching helplessly from the edges of the crater, the exchange looked like a blur of cosmic energy.
Shanks knew he was at an incredible disadvantage. His reaction time was perfect because of his advanced Haki, but his physical body was constantly betraying him, trailing a millisecond behind his vision due to the severe internal trauma.
Every block sent fresh jolts of agony through his lungs, forcing him to bleed further from his mouth. Yet, despite the overwhelming pressure, he wasn't completely hopeless. His blade control was so fierce that Kizaru couldn't find a single clean path to pierce his flesh.
Kizaru realized, 'If this kid wasn't already half-dead from his previous battles, his counter-attacks would be completely overwhelming my pacing. What a ridiculous monster.'
Finding a brief pocket of space between Kizaru's rapid thrusts, Shanks planted his back foot firmly into the dirt, ignoring the scream of his fractured bones. He gripped Gryphon's hilt with both hands and swung a massive, horizontal crescent of pure Conqueror's Haki directly at Kizaru's waist.
The black lightning cutting through the atmosphere was so dense that Kizaru didn't dare try to let it pass through his standard Logia elemental form. Sensing the lethal threat of the advanced Haki, Kizaru was forced to completely abort his offensive, dissolving into a stream of light particles and teleporting twenty feet into the air to avoid being cleanly bisected.
Hovering in the sky, Kizaru crossed his arms, preparing to unleash another devastating torrential barrage of his Sacred Jewel lasers to finish the crippled pirate once and for all. Light began to pool at his fingertips, illuminating the entire sky above Dressrosa.
A solitary, earth-shattering gunshot tore through the high-altitude gale from a distant, shadowed ridge half a mile away.
It wasn't a normal bullet. The projectile was a heavy-caliber lead slug, but it was coated in an incredibly dense, swirling shroud of Armament Haki, completely masking its sound and presence until it was already within Kizaru's immediate personal space.
Kizaru's Observation Haki flared a fraction of a second before impact. He frantically jerked his head backward, his body attempting to turn into weightless light.
The Haki-clad bullet was too fast, cutting cleanly through his elemental defenses. It grazed Kizaru's left cheek, tearing a neat, horizontal line across his skin. A spray of bright, crimson blood erupted from the wound, a few droplets landing directly onto the pristine fabric of his yellow pinstriped shoulder.
Kizaru's light particles flickered and died. He hovered in the air for a brief second, his lazy expression completely vanishing, replaced by a cold, sharp, and deeply venomous stare. He raised a gloved hand, gently touching his cheek. His fingers came away wet with his own blood.
"A sniper...?" Kizaru muttered, his voice losing every ounce of its playful cadence. "And he actually managed to bypass my perception to draw blood. How incredibly annoying."
In an absolute flash of pure rage, Kizaru transformed into a massive, linear beam of golden light. He shot across the Dressrosa skyline in a single microsecond, tracking the exact trajectory of the bullet back to a distant, half-destroyed stone tower on the edge of the plateau.
Perched on the top of the tower was Yasopp, the sharpshooter of the Red Hair Pirates. He was already in the middle of cycling the bolt of his rifle, a cool, confident smirk on his face.
Before Yasopp could even chamber the next round, a blinding explosion of gold materialized right in front of his eyes.
"Found you~" Kizaru's voice echoed like a death knell.
Kizaru manifested his physical leg, heavy with the full kinetic weight of light-speed travel, and delivered a brutal, merciless kick straight into Yasopp's chest.
The entire stone tower instantly disintegrated into a cloud of flying brick and mortar from the sheer pressure of the impact.
Yasopp let out a choked gasp as the wind was entirely blasted from his body. The concussive force sent the sniper rocketing backward like a human missile. He tore straight through the brick walls of a nearby residential building, then through another, and another, leaving a massive, straight line of collapsing architecture and billowing dust in his wake before finally being buried under a mountain of debris several hundred meters away.
A microsecond later, Kizaru flashed right back to the center of the crater, materializing smoothly in front of Shanks. He adjusted his sunglasses, his left cheek still trickling blood down his jaw.
"Now then, Red Hair..." Kizaru began, his voice returning to its slow drawl, though the underlying malice was palpable. "Where were we—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Shanks was staring at him, and the aura surrounding the young captain had completely shifted from managed anger to an absolute, unbridled fury.
The Conqueror's Haki leaking from Shanks was no longer just crackling; it was actively tearing the surface of the earth apart. Deep, jagged fractures began to split the stone floor of the crater, spreading outward like a spider's web. The clouds above the island were being forcefully pushed back, forming a massive, swirling vortex that blocked out the stars.
"Yasopp..." Shanks whispered, his knuckles turning completely white as his grip on Gryphon's hilt tightened to a dangerous degree.
Kizaru felt a cold drop of sweat form at the back of his neck. He looked at the sheer, suffocating intensity of the spiritual pressure rolling off the twenty-year-old pirate. Despite his immense confidence as an Admiral of the Navy, he knew that a cornered, furious animal with the potential of a king was the most dangerous thing on the seas.
Kizaru thought to himself, 'Tch... this is getting absurdly heavy. When the hell is Lord Saturn going to get here with the fleet? If I have to push this brat to a mutual destruction scenario, it's going to be far too much work for a simple mission.'
Another massive gunshot shattered the tense atmosphere, echoing from the thick dust clouds to Kizaru's right.
This time, Kizaru was fully prepared. Without a moment's hesitation, he slid his head exactly three inches to the left, his body turning into a weightless cluster of photons.
A heavy, black-clad rifle bullet ripped through the empty air where his nose had been a millisecond prior, the sheer friction of the shot singeing the edge of his marine coat.
The bullet struck a distant boulder, completely pulverizing the massive rock into sand.
From the rolling curtain of gray smoke and dust, two towering figures stepped forward, their paces steady and unhurried.
Benn Beckman walked in the lead, his face expressionless and cold. He held a long-barreled flintlock rifle loosely across his chest, a thin wisp of gray smoke still curling out from the barrel. His eyes were locked onto Kizaru with a quiet, lethal intensity that completely matched his captain's fury.
Beside him walked Lucky Roux, his massive frame shifting easily over the uneven rocks. He was casually tearing off a massive chunk of meat from a bone held in his left hand, his jaws working methodically, but his round sunglasses reflected the golden light of the Admiral with absolute, icy hatred.
The two high commanders of the Red Hair Pirates stepped up, flanking their bleeding captain, their presences instantly stabilizing the volatile battlefield.
Kizaru's lazy smirk finally decayed into a genuine, irritated frown. He looked at the smoking rifle in Beckman's hand, then at the massive, imposing form of Lucky Roux, his teeth grinding slightly behind his lips.
Kizaru thought to himself, 'Curse it... More troublesome guests have arrived. The Red Hair Pirates really don't know how to let a Marine do his job quietly.'
---
Find early chapters on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]