A/N: Welcome @Eduardo Regalado (awesome name fr)! Cheers to our new Patreon bro! I'm very glad you liked the story!!! Happy+1!
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Suspended in the freezing air, his Armament-coated arms pushing violently against the colossal, golden palms of the Fleet Admiral, time seemed to dilate for Light Yagami.
The physical strain was immense, the golden light threatening to blind him, but through the calm, detached lens of his Observation Haki, he looked upward.
SHINE.
Light had recognized the profound complexity of this man from the very first day he had set foot on the ground of Marineford.
Sengoku had done an astronomical amount of good for the world. That Green Karma was the highest Light had ever seen since his arrival in this universe.
It meant that the global military force known as the "Marines," which this man stood at the very top of, giving orders and maintaining global structure, had slowly but surely accumulated into an unimaginably large pool of salvation.
By hunting vicious pirates, by stopping civil wars, by maintaining supply lines to starving, unaffiliated nations—Sengoku's tactical command had saved millions of innocent lives.
But Karma was a weird, paradoxical thing.
Come to think of it, "Karma" was a word that had originated from Sanskrit- the oldest language in the world itself, back in the world Light had left behind.
ZAP.
In the fraction of a second while their powers violently clashed, shaking the very bedrock of the island, Light's hyper-accelerated mind drifted backward.
He remembered a debate he had participated in from his past life.
A quiet room, the smell of old paper, the distant hum of a Tokyo street, and a philosophical argument that possessed no correct answer.
Thousands of years ago.
It was an era when spoken vows were held more sacred than truths, heavier and more binding than the existence of life.
In the ancient, Sanskrit-written epic, the Mahabharata, the character of 'Bhishma Pitamah' was a profoundly complicated one.
He was a warrior of unmatched prowess, born to King Shantanu and the Goddess Ganga.
He possessed the divine boon of "Icchha Mrityu" (Death by Will)—the power to be completely immortal unless he himself willed his own death.
In this time of righteousness and prosperity, to ensure the peace and stability of the kingdom, Bhishma Pitamah, who was born not of a 'queen' but a goddess, only to avoid bad sentiments-forsook his inherent right to the throne.
To show he had no designs upon the throne, he swore a vow.
A vow of lifelong loyalty to the throne itself.
This vow ensured that he would always be loyal to the throne and never entertain any thoughts of vying for power.
He was a warrior who adhered by 'duty', revered by all and hated by none.
Decades passed.
And the throne eventually fell to the unjust, the corrupt, the wicked- the Kauravas.
And the Kauravas waged a brutal war against their cousins, the Pandavas—the just, the righteous.
Both sides were family. Both sides bled the same blood.
Yet Bhishma Pitamah was bound by the heavy chains of the vow he had made to himself, to the throne, decades ago.
And so, the cataclysmic Kurukshetra War happened.
Bound, he assisted the unjust.
Bhishma, tormenting himself, his heart weeping for the righteous men he was forced to fight, stood firmly on the side of the unjust and attacked the righteous family!
He slaughtered thousands of good men because his duty demanded it!
A saint-like person, forced to commit evil because he was bound by duty.
Good or evil, that was the question.
It was highly debatable among scholars. There was no right or wrong answer in the ancient texts. It was the ultimate, agonizing paradox of duty versus morality.
ZOOM!
Somehow, amidst the screaming winds, the flashing Haki, and the shattering ice of Marineford, Light had remembered this epic.
It was the perfect mirror for the golden giant he was currently attempting to crush.
Sengoku was a righteous man by heart.
Everyone knew it.
If he could help it, he would let the world become a better place.
But he served the corrupt World Government, and hoped the world remained stable as he tried his best.
Light still managed to find something new about this 'system' of his.
If something was your 'duty', then even if you were standing on the wrong side of history, and even if you killed the right side's men, your personal, spiritual karma wouldn't increase as rapidly as a man who killed out of pure malice.
Even so.
Sengoku did the best he could, but he wasn't Bhishma.
The System showed the truth.
The crimes the Navy had committed under Sengoku's watch were astronomical.
The Buster Calls that erased entire islands and their histories from the map.
The heavy, militarized protection of the vile, slaving Celestial Dragons.
The blind eyes purposefully turned to atrocities in the Four Blues just to maintain global political stability.
Those sins, even when the majority of the deed fell to the actual doers, the orders had still trickled upward through the chain of command, resulting in-
[Fleet Admiral, Sengoku The Buddha]
[Green: 8,460,000 | Red: 1,418,040 ]
Because Sengoku wore the highest coat, because he gave the final, agonizing nod to deploy the fleets, Sengoku The Buddha had accumulated the massive bad karma of 1,418,040 points.
He also carried the colossal 8.4 million good karma- the highest he had ever seen.
To his lament, Light's Level 5 Observation Haki also didn't help him untangle this moral knot.
After all, the Fleet Admiral had never hidden his true nature.
Sengoku was not a coward masquerading as a hero. He was a man utterly bound by his uniform, carrying the agonizing weight of the world's peace on his shoulders, making terrible, blood-soaked sacrifices for what he genuinely believed was the greater good.
There was no secret malice to read in Sengoku's soul. There was only the tragic, crushing reality of his position.
Light made up his mind.
He had come to this war with the singular mindset of killing the criminal top of the Marines.
To throw the world order apart.
To build a new one.
Today, right now, he would drive himself to the possible limit.
To kill Sengoku The Buddha.
He would do his best to tear down the Golden Buddha and shatter the symbol of the World Government's 'Justice.'
If he was successful in killing him, all the well.
If not... if, if Sengoku survived, then after today, he would let Sengoku be.
He would accept the 8.4 million Green Karma as a valid, impenetrable shield for the man's complex soul.
That was his judgment.
That was God's judgment.
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A/N: That's right. Even with all the gifts and abilities, since when was deciding who dies and who lives easy? It never was!
P.S. What do you think of the history lesson in between? I put it there because I thought it'd be a breath of fresh air, mm!
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