"Who the hell are you?!"
Aramaki stared blankly at Koby, who had suddenly flown into the path of his attack.
But the technique had already been unleashed. There was no stopping it now.
The wooden branches meant to drain every last nutrient from Marco had pierced Koby's body and were already extracting everything inside him.
Then Aramaki absorbed the toxins in Koby's blood.
"Eeeugh! Guh! Ohohohoho!"
A bizarre, agonizing pain flooded his mind.
His face turned blue, his legs gave way, and he toppled stiffly to the ground.
(Note: The toxins inside Koby's body remained in a delicate balance, which was the only reason he was still alive. Absorbing only a portion disrupted that balance and caused the remaining viruses to multiply uncontrollably.)
Koby also crashed heavily onto the ground.
The toxins clogging his airway had suddenly been removed, allowing his lungs to expand properly at last.
The suffocating pressure that had tormented him for so long vanished in an instant.
His body even felt lighter, as though an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The dizziness and terrible pain disappeared without a trace.
Koby greedily inhaled a huge breath.
The air smelled of gunpowder and blood, yet nothing had ever tasted sweeter.
'I survived?'
'I really… survived?'
As his thoughts cleared, Koby nearly burst into tears.
He remembered Helmeppo's perpetually careless face.
He remembered Vice Admiral Garp's thunderous snoring and iron fists.
He remembered all his comrades at Marine Headquarters.
He wanted to laugh.
He wanted to shout and use every ounce of strength to tell them that he had survived—that he had endured this damned darkness that had seemed endless.
He turned toward the unfamiliar Marine before him, ready to offer his heartfelt thanks.
Then, in the very next instant, a bone-chilling cold mixed with the agony of burning flames swept through his body.
The toxins that had barely maintained equilibrium inside him had fallen completely out of balance.
The remaining viruses erupted throughout his body.
First came a swollen numbness in his arms.
Koby looked down.
His skin was tightening at a visible rate, becoming almost transparent.
Beneath it, countless tiny shapes writhed like serpents, frantically tearing, biting, and tangling around one another.
They slowly distorted his arm from the inside. Dark blue and purple veins bulged grotesquely, looking ready to burst at any moment.
His heart clenched.
A terrible chill raced from his spine to the top of his skull.
'Why is this happening?'
'Wasn't I better?'
'Wasn't I saved?'
Koby stared in disbelief at his twisting arm.
Streams of poisonous gas were forming inside him, but the strange coating Queen had sprayed over his skin prevented them from escaping.
With nowhere else to go, they began flowing backward.
They poured into his organs, forced themselves between his bones, and tore through his muscle fibers. His flesh was slowly separating from his skeleton.
The pain felt like someone was using a dull knife to carve through him from within, cutting and gouging one inch at a time.
It nearly drove him unconscious.
But the damned viruses continued stimulating his nerves, forcing him to remain perfectly awake through every moment of agony.
Even unconsciousness had become an unreachable luxury.
His entire body rapidly began to swell.
This was no ordinary bloating.
He expanded like a balloon being pumped full of air, his skin stretched nearly transparent. Dark blood and warped tissue churned desperately beneath its surface.
Within only a few breaths, Koby had become an enormous, barely human mass. Nothing remained of his original appearance.
Panic completely overwhelmed him.
Hope. Despair. Hope. Despair.
The two words alternated before him like the cruelest form of torture.
Every time he thought he had finally grasped the light, deeper darkness dragged him back into the abyss.
Only moments ago, he had already imagined smiling at Vice Admiral Garp and saying, 'I'm back.'
And now?
Why would fate play such a cruel joke on him?
Why drag him back beneath the waves just as his fingertips were about to reach the shore?
His eyes burned painfully, but not a single tear emerged.
It seemed every drop of moisture in his body had been consumed by the viruses, leaving behind nothing but dryness and despair.
Koby truly did not know what to do anymore.
Using the last of his strength, he forced several broken sounds through his horribly swollen throat.
"H-help… me…"
The toxins continued spreading wildly throughout his body.
His stomach, thighs, calves—every part of him was being forced outward.
His skin stretched tighter and tighter, producing waves of dull, tearing pain.
He could clearly feel his ligaments snapping one after another and his muscle fibers being violently ripped apart.
His vision blurred.
The sky above him warped like an oil painting melting in the heat.
The frenzied viruses devoured the last traces of his life, inch by inch.
His mind remained conscious, but his body no longer obeyed him.
He tried to raise a hand and grasp something—anything—even a single straw.
But his fingers had swollen to the size of radishes and could no longer bend. Their tips were so numb they felt as though they belonged to someone else.
Boundless darkness and despair rose like the tide, slowly swallowing him whole.
He had fought so desperately to survive until now.
Was he still never going to become a Marine Admiral whose name was known across the seas?
Then a flame of hope suddenly appeared.
Warm, flickering blue fire wrapped around his swollen, distorted body.
Marco's blue flames.
In an instant, Koby's nearly extinguished desire to live roared back to life.
'Someone came to save me!'
The dancing blue light reflected in his unfocused pupils.
He felt no heat from the flames, only a strange and gentle warmth, as though someone had softly taken hold of his sinking hand.
'Survive…'
'Maybe… there's still a chance…'
Marco was the one who had acted.
He had immediately recognized that everything leaking from Koby's body consisted of deadly viruses.
Of course, Marco had not intervened specifically to save Koby. He simply could not allow the toxins to spread any farther.
His Flames of Regeneration could repair injuries, but that applied mainly to physical damage. Against toxins like these, they could do little more than temporarily slow their progress.
Earlier, when only a small section of his forearm had become contaminated by the poisonous gas, Marco had not hesitated.
He cut away the infected flesh and then used his blue flames to regenerate it.
Now, the flames enveloping Koby were merely delaying his body's collapse.
They treated the symptoms, not the cause.
At that moment, numerous vines erupted beneath Marco's feet.
Fortunately, he reacted quickly and shot into the air.
He looked back and saw Aramaki standing again.
Marco's heart tightened.
'He absorbed that much poison and still didn't die?'
"Damn it! What bastard came out of nowhere and ruined my fight?"
Aramaki held his forehead as he rose.
"I nearly died because of you. Oh… so you're a pirate."
He looked toward the overturned boat near the shore.
The emblem of the Beasts Pirates had been painted across its hull.
Combined with the Beasts Pirates clothing Koby now wore, Aramaki immediately believed he understood everything.
(Queen had changed Koby's clothes because he had nothing else available. Koby's original uniform had already been thrown away.)
Aramaki touched the strange fruit that had grown from the top of his head.
He had created it with his Devil Fruit power to serve as a container for the viruses.
A forest represented the vitality of nature, and plants naturally possessed the ability to store toxins. Containing these diseases was no great challenge for him.
He had also discovered Marco's weakness.
Viruses.
Physical attacks might not work against Marco, but poison could injure him easily.
With that thought, the five branches still embedded inside Koby suddenly drew harder.
The true purpose of the technique had never been to extract poison. It drained nutrients.
The toxins merely happened to be carried along with them.
But Aramaki no longer cared.
This brat had interrupted his fight and was apparently a pirate.
Besides, Aramaki was currently removing poison from his body.
Wasn't that the same as saving his life?
What reason did he have to hesitate?
Saving someone naturally meant taking a little something in return.
Aramaki increased the force of the extraction.
What he did not realize was that Koby's body had already been stretched like a rope on the verge of snapping.
Every last scrap of "nutrition" inside him had been purchased by sacrificing what little life force remained.
Without it sustaining him, Koby would have died long ago.
And now Aramaki was personally draining away the final thread keeping him alive.
Koby's eyes, already squeezed almost shut by the swelling around them, suddenly opened wide.
He could feel it with perfect clarity.
The branches were like five ravenous straws buried in the deepest parts of his body, violently sucking away the few nutrients and fragments of life he had left.
Marco's blue flames continued dancing around him, desperately attempting to repair the wounds the viruses had torn open.
But the healing was far slower than the rate at which his life was being drained.
Warm flames tried to pull him back.
A cold emptiness pushed him away.
He was torn repeatedly between fire and ice.
'No… please…'
He screamed desperately inside his mind.
'Why?'
'Why now, of all times?'
Koby had heard Aramaki's angry complaints.
Regret overwhelmed him.
He wanted to beg the Marine standing before him to stop, but his mouth could no longer produce any sound.
All he could do was scream silently.
'Stop! Please stop! I'm not a pirate! I'm a Marine who believes in justice too!'
'I wasn't trying to interfere! I didn't mean to interrupt your battle!'
'I'm sorry for getting in your way! I only… I only wanted to live!'
'Please… stop…'
'I really… truly only wanted to survive…'
'I've never hurt anyone.'
'I risked everything to become stronger.'
'I risked everything because I wanted to protect people.'
'Why?'
'Why are you doing this to me?'
'I'm not a pirate! I'm not a pirate!'
His consciousness began to scatter.
The flames before his eyes grew increasingly blurred, their comforting blue slowly swallowed by lifeless gray.
Within Marco's flickering blue fire, Koby's swollen and distorted body finally lost all support.
The first tiny crack appeared across the surface of his skin.
It was faint and shallow, like the first fracture opening in parched earth.
Then came a second.
A third.
Countless more.
The cracks spread wildly across his body like a spiderweb.
There was no spray of blood.
No explosion of flesh.
Only a dull noise like rotten wood snapping.
Crack.
Then—Nothing remained.
Before Marco and Aramaki, Koby's body silently burst apart into countless dry, crumbling fragments.
Aramaki stared at the remains.
The toxins had now been completely absorbed, producing several more strange fruits across his body.
He could not help sighing.
"Ah, he died."
"Oh well. He was only a pirate, so it doesn't matter."
"The toxins he left behind might still prove useful."
And so Koby, who had dreamed with all his heart of becoming a Marine Admiral, died.
He died branded as a pirate.
There could have been no greater insult.
He had not died beneath an enemy's blade.
He had been killed by one of his own and mistaken for the very thing he hated.
In his final moments, he had wanted so badly to scream:
'I'm a Marine!'
'I'm the disciple of Marine Hero Garp!'
He had spent his entire life fighting to overcome the coward he once was, desperately trying to become worthy of wearing that uniform.
But in the end, no one knew he was a Marine.
No one cared to find out.
He died carrying the name he hated most.
He was unwilling to accept it.
But there was nothing left he could do.
After all, the man who had just died was nothing more than a nameless little pirate.