Year 1516 - North Blue, Frozen Waters
The sea screamed.
Not the usual roar of waves against wood, but something higher, sharper—the sound of water crystallizing mid-motion, of temperature plummeting so fast that moisture in the air became daggers of ice before hitting the deck.
Danzo Aiko stood at the bow of the Marine battleship Absolute Justice, his white coat billowing in winds that carried the bite of winter despite the summer sun overhead. His breath didn't fog. The cold came from him, after all.
Twenty-three years old, and already the pirates called him a demon.
"Captain Danzo!" A young Marine lieutenant rushed across the frozen deck, his boots crunching on the layer of frost that perpetually surrounded Aiko. "The pirate ship is trying to break through the ice barrier! Captain 'Crimson Blade' Varek is on deck—bounty of 85 million berries!"
Aiko didn't turn. His dark eyes remained fixed on the massive galleon trapped in a prison of his own making—a circle of jagged ice walls fifty feet high, grown from the ocean itself in mere seconds. Snow drifted lazily downward from a cloudless sky, falling only within the perimeter of his power.
"How many crew members?" His voice was calm, almost gentle. It made the lieutenant nervous.
"S-Sensors indicate forty-three pirates aboard, sir. All armed. Varek himself has a bounty for massacring a village in the South Blue. Women and children included."
Now Aiko turned.
The lieutenant took an involuntary step back. Captain Danzo's eyes held something that made veteran Marines uneasy—not cruelty, but an absolute certainty that was somehow worse. They were the eyes of someone who had already decided, who had weighed souls on scales invisible to others and found them wanting.
"No survivors?" Aiko asked quietly.
"The village? No sir. All two hundred and seventeen civilians were—"
"I meant among his crew." Aiko's hand moved to the katana at his hip—a blade named Yukikaze, its hilt wrapped in white silk, its scabbard decorated with snowflake patterns. "Are there any pressed sailors? Hostages? Anyone forced into service?"
The lieutenant checked his notes, surprised by the question. Most Marine captains didn't care about such distinctions.
"Intelligence suggests his entire crew are volunteers, sir. Many have their own bounties. They... they celebrate their atrocities. Call themselves the 'Red Feast Pirates.'"
Aiko nodded once. "Then we proceed."
He stepped off the ship.
The young lieutenant gasped—they were still a hundred yards from the ice barrier. But Aiko didn't fall. Snow materialized beneath his feet with each step, forming a staircase of compressed ice that descended toward the trapped pirate vessel. His white coat didn't flutter now. It moved like living snow, its edges dissolving and reforming with each movement.
Yuki Yuki no Mi, the Snow-Snow Fruit. A Logia-type Devil Fruit that made him one with winter itself.
Behind him, the Marines watched in awed silence. Even after six months serving under Captain Danzo, the sight never became ordinary.
On the deck of the Blood Reaper, Captain Varek snarled at his crew. He was a mountain of a man, eight feet tall, muscles like coiled steel, two massive cutlasses strapped to his back. His red coat was allegedly dyed with the blood of his victims—a claim Aiko's intelligence suggested was literally true.
"That Marine bastard thinks he can cage me?!" Varek roared, his breath visible in the unnatural cold. "I've killed a hundred of those government dogs! One more won't—"
He stopped.
The temperature had dropped another ten degrees in an instant. Frost crawled across the deck, up the masts, spreading like a living thing. The pirates' weapons became painful to hold as metal turned ice-cold.
Danzo Aiko stood on the railing of their ship, having crossed the distance in silence. Snow drifted around him in a gentle spiral, beautiful and terrifying.
"Captain Varek," Aiko said, his voice carrying across the frozen deck despite its softness. "You are charged with the murder of two hundred and seventeen civilians, including sixty-three children under the age of ten. The village of Hoarfrost Bay in the South Blue. Do you deny these charges?"
Varek stared for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed—a wet, ugly sound.
"Deny? Why the hell would I deny my greatest feast? The screams, Marine! The way they begged! The way the mothers tried to—"
He never finished the sentence.
Aiko moved.
To the untrained eye, he simply vanished from the railing and reappeared behind Varek. But the pirate captain, despite his cruelty, had survived in the North Blue for five years. His Haki-enhanced instincts screamed danger, and he threw himself forward, both cutlasses drawn in a desperate cross-slash behind him.
His blades cut through empty air and snow.
"Too slow," Aiko whispered from Varek's left.
The pirate captain spun, and this time his Observation Haki activated fully—he could see it, the path of Aiko's blade, could predict where it would—
His precognition shattered like glass.
Advanced Conqueror's Haki crashed over the ship like an avalanche of pure willpower. Thirty-seven pirates collapsed instantly, foam at their mouths, their consciousness snuffed out like candles in a hurricane. The remaining six—Varek's officers—dropped to their knees, gasping, their own Haki crumbling under the weight of Aiko's presence.
Only Varek remained standing, and even he swayed.
"W-What... what are you?!" The infamous captain's voice cracked. "That's... that's the Haki of a King! You're just a Marine Captain! That's impossible!"
Aiko's expression didn't change. "Nothing is impossible. Only improbable."
His blade left its sheath—Yukikaze singing a crystalline note as it cut the frozen air.
Varek roared and attacked, both massive cutlasses coming down in strikes that could cleave boulders. His Armament Haki turned the blades black, adding the force of his will to already devastating strength.
Yukikaze met both blades with a single parry.
The clash should have been deafening. Instead, there was only a soft crackle—the sound of ice forming at the point of contact. Varek's Haki shattered on impact, his cutlasses developing spider-web cracks, frost crawling up the steel.
"This is... Advanced Armament?!" Varek stumbled back. "Emission and... and internal destruction?! That's—"
"Excessive for dealing with you," Aiko agreed. "But I don't take chances with child-killers."
He attacked in earnest now, and it was beautiful.
Yukikaze became a blizzard—each strike leaving trails of snow and ice, each movement flowing into the next like a winter dance. Aiko's Observation Haki read Varek's desperate defenses seconds before they happened, his blade always arriving at the gaps in guard that hadn't opened yet.
Varek tried to counter. His six officers tried to help, attacking from all sides despite their terror.
It didn't matter.
Aiko's body became snow itself—the Logia intangibility making their Haki-less strikes pass through him harmlessly. When they tried to infuse Armament into their attacks, his own superior Haki simply overpowered theirs, the black coating of their weapons evaporating like morning mist.
"Yuki no Mai: Hyōga Kiri!" Aiko's technique name was almost conversational. "Snow Dance: Glacial Slash."
Yukikaze moved in a horizontal arc. The blade didn't touch any of the six officers, passing two feet in front of them.
They froze mid-attack—literally. Ice bloomed from within their bodies, their blood crystallizing in their veins, their hearts stopping in an instant. They collapsed like statues, dead before they hit the deck, their expressions locked in final terror.
Internal destruction. Armament Haki channeled through ice, destroying from the inside out.
Only Varek remained, and now the mighty pirate captain was trembling.
"Please," he whispered, a word that had probably never crossed his lips before. "Please, I'll surrender. I'll—"
"Did they beg?" Aiko asked quietly.
Varek's face went white.
"The children in Hoarfrost Bay. Did they beg you to stop?"
"I... I..."
"Answer me, Varek."
The pirate captain's mouth worked silently. Then, in a voice barely audible: "...Yes."
Aiko nodded. "Did you?"
Silence.
"I thought not."
Yukikaze moved one final time—a thrust so precise it seemed to cut through the very concept of distance. The blade pierced Varek's heart, and the pirate captain gasped, not in pain but in shock at how little pain there was.
Ice spread from the wound, gentle as a caress, cold as absolute zero.
"May you find in death the mercy you denied in life," Aiko said, and pulled his blade free.
Captain Varek, the Crimson Blade, bounty 85 million berries, fell backward and shattered into a thousand frozen pieces before he hit the deck.
Thirty minutes later, the Marine battleship Absolute Justice was underway again, the pirate vessel in tow, its deck now a prison of ice for the thirty-seven surviving pirates—witnesses for trial, if they ever woke from the Conqueror's Haki-induced unconsciousness.
Lieutenant Ramos found Captain Danzo in his quarters, standing before the window, watching the setting sun paint the frozen sea in shades of orange and gold.
"Sir?" Ramos ventured. "Headquarters is calling. Vice Admiral Doberman wants your report."
"Tell him the mission was successful. All targets neutralized or captured."
"Already did, sir. He... he also said you're being summoned to Marine HQ. Fleet Admiral Sengoku wants to see you personally."
That made Aiko turn. "Personally?"
"Yes sir. Apparently, word of your Conqueror's Haki has reached the Fleet Admiral. They're saying..." Ramos hesitated. "They're saying you might be promoted to Commodore. Maybe even Rear Admiral."
Aiko looked back at the sea. Somewhere out there, in the Grand Line, the truly powerful pirates sailed—the Yonko, the Warlords, monsters who made Varek look like a child playing pirate. And beyond them, the World Government itself, the Celestial Dragons, the secrets that even most Marines never learned.
He thought of Varek's final moments, of the children of Hoarfrost Bay who would never see another sunset, of the word "justice" painted on the sail of every Marine ship.
"Justice," he murmured.
"Sir?"
"Nothing, Lieutenant." Aiko turned from the window. "Prepare the ship. If the Fleet Admiral summons me, then to headquarters we go."
"Yes sir!"
When Ramos left, Aiko remained standing in his quarters, one hand on Yukikaze's hilt. In the reflection of the window, his eyes looked older than twenty-three—older and sadder, as if they'd seen too much already and knew they'd see far more before the end.
Snow began to fall outside, despite the clear sky.
It always did around Danzo Aiko.
The Marines called him the White Death.
The pirates called him the Snow Demon.
But Aiko himself? He was just beginning to wonder what justice truly meant—and whether the organization he served actually understood it.
That wondering, that small seed of doubt, would eventually grow into something that would shake the very foundations of the world.
But that was a story for another chapter.
END OF CHAPTER 1
Next Chapter: "Marine Headquarters - The Fleet Admiral's Offer"