The air on Kuraigana was thick with a symphony of destruction. The buzzing shrieks of insectoid humanoids clashed with the enraged roars of Humandrills and the percussive crump of Ember's explosions. Outside the shattered lab, Perona zipped through the chaos, her frilly dress streaked with grime. "Get back here, you little menace! Not that one! That's a load-bearing wall!" she shrieked, chasing a gleeful Ember who danced through the fray, her slingshot rifle barking as she blasted anything that moved, friend or foe, with equal, manic joy.
Inside the laboratory-turned-abattoir, the battle reached a fever pitch. Mihawk moved with a terrifying grace, Yoru a black blur that carved through the smaller invaders. But the giant spider-humanoid hybrid was a different challenge. Its multifaceted eyes tracked his every feint, and it spat globs of thick, silvery webbing that, even infused with his immense Haki, merely stretched and sagged against Yoru's edge instead of snapping. Mihawk's smirk only widened; a challenge was a rare and welcome commodity.
Aurélie fought nearby, a silver guardian. Her movements were economical and brutal, Anathema a humming extension of her will as she protected the flustered scholars. Her focus was split between decapitating skittering horrors and the increasingly frantic argument behind her.
"The manual clearly indicates a phased energy dampening field initiated through the tertiary crystal array!" Charlie yelled, his voice cracking as he dodged a flying chunk of chitin.
"The manual is wrong!" Bianca retorted, her hands a blur inside a console, yanking out fistfuls of glowing wiring. "The tertiary array is fused to the primary ignition coil! It's like they wired a firecracker to a powder keg! It's a miracle this place didn't vaporize centuries ago!" A makeshift nest of scavenged parts and sparking wires surrounded her, all feeding into the main panel.
Mihawk ducked under a scything talon from the spider-creature, the wind of its passage ruffling his hair. He could see its exoskeleton, barely scratched by his attacks, already knitting itself back together around a previous wound. Yoru hummed in his hands, eager to be truly unleashed.
Kuro and Souta held the line against the endless stream of smaller creatures pouring from the now-stable rift. Kuro's seastone claws moved with calculated precision, disabling limbs and creating obstacles, while Souta's ink wolves harried and distracted, their dark forms blending with the shadows and gore.
Aurélie, her patience worn thin by the scholarly debate, snapped without looking back. "Enough theory! Make something happen!"
Bianca was about to fire back a retort when Charlie, desperate, read a passage aloud. "—perhaps the inverse polarity could be achieved by rerouting the ambient dimensional resonance through the facility's structural lattice, using it as a giant capacitor—"
Bianca froze. Her head slowly turned toward Charlie, a wild, brilliant light dawning in her eyes. "That's it…!"
"It is?" Charlie asked, bewildered. He tried to reread the dense passage, but the physics jargon was a language even his linguistic skills couldn't parse.
Bianca didn't explain. She launched herself across the room, skidding under a swipe from a scorpion-man and ripping a massive, humming power cylinder from a dead console. She scrambled back to her nest of wires, splicing it in with frantic, sure movements.
Across the room, Mihawk's eyes flashed with the deep crimson of advanced Kenbunshoku Haki. The world slowed to a crawl. He saw the spider-creature' every twitch, every minute shift of its weight. He moved. It wasn't a blur; it was an absence of movement, a teleportation of force. He kicked off a half-crumbled wall, using the angle to put himself directly above the creature's core.
Bianca connected the last wire. The air in the lab suddenly grew heavy, charged with a static that made everyone's hair float and stand on end. Small arcs of blue lightning crawled over the consoles.
"Okay, here goes nothing…!" Bianca yelled, and slammed her palm down on a large, jury-rigged button.
The console she was connected to exploded.
At the same exact moment, Mihawk swung Yoru across with the full force of his will and armament, a blow that could cleave a mountain. The blade met the creature's neck, and sheared through it, spitting down through the torso, and out the other side in a single, flawless motion. The two halves of the beast seemed to hang in the air for a heartbeat before erupting in a geyser of green viscera that coated the entire chamber. The severed boulder-sized head of the creature rolled across the floor, the many ocelli fixed on him as the light of life faded.
Mihawk landed lightly, his eyes narrowing as he watched the bisected creature. He let out a short, amused chuckle as the twitching halves began to sizzle and bubble, a new head already beginning to push its way out of the ruin of the old. "A more direct approach, then," he murmured, adjusting his grip on Yoru.
"The damn power source is too unstable!" Bianca cursed, kicking a flickering cylinder that was sputtering dying light. She ripped it from her network and hurled it across the room in frustration. She stood amidst the sparks and smoke, her mind racing.
"Ahem!" Charlie interjected, ducking a stray leg. "Might not the facility itself possess a stable—"
Bianca cut him off, a second epiphany striking. "That's it! The building! It's still standing! There's gotta be a stable main power line!" She scrambled to a secondary wall panel, ignoring the shock that jolted up her arms as she tore the cover off, revealing a thick bundle of ancient, still-gleaming copper cables.
High above, Mihawk saw the spider-creature's new head almost fully formed. He knew he had mere seconds. He took a running start, leaping into the air higher than seemed possible, gripping Yoru in both hands overhead for a final, annihilating strike.
Sparks flew like angry fireflies as Bianca spliced the live main power into her chaotic web of wires. The hum in the air intensified into a teeth-rattling whine. She glanced at her comrades—Kuro and Souta holding the line, Aurélie standing firm, Charlie looking terrified—and then at Mihawk, poised for his killing blow. The resemblance to Marya in that moment of focused, absolute power was uncanny.
"Ms. Clark!" Charlie yelled, breaking her reverie.
"Right!" Bianca shouted. She stood over the central console, now pulsing with a terrifying, steady blue light. The static charge was so strong it felt like their skin was crawling. She took a deep breath and punched the button.
The air warped, the space around them distorting and swirling, then the world turned white and silent.
Bianca and Charlie were thrown backwards by a concussive force that carried no sound. Every light in the lab—the consoles, the glowing minerals, the rift itself—flared with incandescent fury and then died all at once.
Simultaneously, Mihawk's downward strike landed. A wave of pure Haki-infused force erupted from Yoru, not just cutting but unmaking the spider-creature at a molecular level. It didn't just die; it ceased to be, vaporized in a final, silent burst of green.
The deafening silence held for three full heartbeats.
Then, reality snapped back with a gut-wrenching lurch. The shimmering scar of the rift in the center of the room winked out of existence as if it had never been.
The effect on the remaining insectoid humanoids was instantaneous. They froze mid-scuttle, their chittering cries cutting off. They seemed disoriented, lost, as if a constant signal in their minds had suddenly gone dead.
In the new, profound quiet, Aurélie, Mihawk, and Kuro shared a single, knowing glance. The immediate threat was over. The cleanup began. Without a word, the three most dangerous people in the room moved as one, a whirlwind of black and silver steel that began methodically exterminating the stunned remnants of the invasion.
Souta was at Bianca and Charlie's side in an instant, helping them to their feet. "Are you alright?"
Bianca coughed, waving smoke from her face. "Like, I think so. Everything hurts."
Charlie pushed his cracked spectacles up his nose, staring in awe at the space where the rift had been. "Did it… did it work?
Souta's gaze swept the room, taking in the still, confused insectoids being efficiently dispatched. "It appears the rift is closed. We just have to clear the remnants." The battle was won, but the air still stank of blood, ozone, and the sweet, rotten sugar of another world.
*****
The first sliver of dawn painted the peaks of the Drum Rockies in pale gold, but in the shadowed canyon of the main entrance, the air was still a knife-edge of cold. The two Whitebeard pirates stationed there stamped their feet, their breath pluming in the still air. They never saw the attack coming.
It was a coordinated blur of motion. A blue, wobbling form—Jelly—slammed into the first guard with a comical yet effective splat, enveloping him in a sticky, gelatinous hug that muffled his shouts. Simultaneously, Galit's Vipera Whips snaked out from the shadows of the castle's great doors, not to cut, but to entangle. The sinuous weapons wrapped around the second guard's legs and the den den mushi he'd just snatched from his coat, yanking them both into a tangled heap. The snail's eyes bulged in alarm as it clattered to the stone, and a panicked voice crackled from the receiver, "—status report! What's happening out there?" before Galit's boot came down gently but firmly, and the connection died with a pathetic clunk.
"The ropeway! Go, go, go!" Galit hissed, his long neck swiveling to scan for more threats.
They moved as one, a desperate sprint across the courtyard toward the cliff's edge where the massive Trani sled waited. From a high window, a familiar rasp cut through the morning quiet. "Try not to get yourselves killed before you've finished the antibiotics!" Dr. Kureha bellowed, a bottle of wine raised in a sardonic toast.
Beside her, Natalie clutched the windowsill, her face a mask of professional concern warring with fond exasperation. "The medication, Atlas! A full course! And for heaven's sake, be careful!" she shouted, her voice carrying on the thin mountain air.
They piled onto the large sled. With a single, sharp motion from Marya's kogatana, the thick mooring ropes snapped. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then gravity took hold.
The Trani dropped like a stone, accelerating down the steep cable with a terrifying, shuddering whine. The world became a blinding white blur. Wind tore at their clothes and stole the breath from their lungs. Jelly, caught in the exhilaration, let out a joyous, wobbling cry. "Wheeeee—bloop!" The final sound was a soft plink as the sudden, intense cold flash-froze him solid mid-bounce, transforming him into a delighted-looking azure popsicle. Marya, her black coat whipping around her, couldn't help a short, genuine chuckle. With a deft motion, she caught the frozen Jelly and slid him into her large pocket, a temporary deep-freeze for their cheerful companion.
They hit the cable's end at the tree-line with a jarring, splintering CRASH that shook the entire sled. "Polar! Now, girl, now!" Chessa screamed, her voice high with panic.
As if summoned by her call, two forces erupted into the clearing simultaneously. From the woods, Chessa's massive husky, Polar, bounded out, a white streak of protective fury. And from the opposite treeline, something else emerged. It was a creature of living myth, a giant of bark-like skin, twisted antlers, and eyes that glowed with ancient, forest-deep intelligence. The Leshy. It took a ground-shaking step forward, its low growl vibrating in their chests.
"What in the seven seas is that?" Atlas cursed, his rust-red fur bristling, blue Electro already sparking across his knuckles.
Before anyone could answer, new voices rang out. "I'd say the party's getting started," drawled Vista, emerging from the tree line with his twin blades already drawn, followed closely by Haruta and a full contingent of their crews. The Whitebeard pirates fanned out, effectively surrounding them.
Vista's eyes locked on Marya, a glint of recognition and challenge in them. "I've crossed blades with your father, girl. I know the weight of that legacy."
Marya's smirk was a subtle, infuriating thing. "How cute. Another one of my father's fanboys."
Vista's affable demeanor hardened, a flicker of insult crossing his features. "Let's see if you've inherited his skill," he said, launching forward with a speed that belied his size, his blades a swirling vortex of steel.
Haruta, agile and grinning, targeted Galit. "It's a shame, you know? Pops would've liked you. Probably would've tried to recruit you himself."
Galit's emerald eyes tracked Haruta's every move, his neck held in a loose, observant curve. His whips lashed out, not to kill, but to deflect and confound. "I don't know this 'Pops,' but I can assure you, he would lack the aptitude to maintain my interest."
Haruta ducked under a whistling strike, his grin widening. "That's exactly the type of thing he would've liked!"
Atlas moved to stand guard over Chessa, but the ground beneath them answered the Leshy's presence. It quaked violently, and from the frozen earth erupted a nightmare thicket of black, thorned vines that seemed to thirst for warmth and life. They lashed out indiscriminately, entangling Whitebeard pirates and creating a chaotic buffer zone.
Atlas grinned, a savage, feral expression. "Okay, monster thing. Let's see how healed I am." He became a crackling crimson blur, a lynx made of lightning, zipping through the thorns to deliver a shattering blow to the Leshy's leg. The creature roared, more in annoyance than pain, the electricity grounding harmlessly into the earth through its wooden form.
In the middle of her blistering exchange with Vista—a dance of mist and steel where she fluidly dissolved around his swings only to reform with a counter-strike—Marya called out, "Atlas! Protect Chessa! If that is what I think it is, this could get messy!"
"What do you think it is?" Atlas yelled back, dodging a swipe of a vine thick as his torso.
Vista, parrying a strike from Marya that numbed his arm, glanced toward the chaos. "Getting distracted?"
"Not at all," Marya said, her voice dropping into a colder register. As Vista pressed his attack, she dissolved into mist directly in his path. His powerful lunge met no resistance, and his own momentum carried him stumbling forward awkwardly through the cold vapor. He caught himself, his boots digging furrows in the snow, and spun to re-engage, petals swirling around his blades.
"There's a subtle difference between your style and your father's," Vista commented, his tone that of a seasoned critic. "But you're still his shadow."
Marya's smirk returned. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"Galit! Marya! The sled!" Chessa cried out. She had managed to hook a snarling frantic husky to the waiting sled.
Marya disengaged from Vista with a final, ringing parry. "Playtime is over." Vista's brow furrowed. Then he saw it. Her eyes… changed. One shifted to a milky, sightless white, the other to a void so absolute it seemed to eat the light around it. A faint, ethereal symbol, like a scarab beetle etched from light, glowed on her forehead.
"I will do my best to hold back," she said, her voice echoing with an unnatural resonance.
Vista's jaw tightened at the sheer audacity of the insult, but he had no time to retort. Marya vanished. Not in a puff of mist, but in a blur of motion that was simply… unseen. The air cracked where she'd been standing. An instant later, Vista was hurled backwards as if struck by a cannonball, crashing through a thicket of thorny vines and slamming into the trunk of an ancient fir tree with a sickening thud.
The vines, acting as a chaotic third party, now thrashed with renewed vigor, subduing the disoriented Whitebeard crews and buying precious seconds. Galit, seeing his opening, wrapped his whips around a startled Haruta and used the man's own momentum to fling him bodily into a snowdrift.
They converged on the sled where Atlas was holding off the Leshy, his electrified blows doing little but charring its hide. "Electricity has little effect!" he grunted, leaping back from a stomp that cratered the ground.
Marya landed beside him, Eternal Eclipse already in her hand, its obsidian blade severing the attacking vines with contemptuous ease. "You two, get the sled moving. I'll fend this thing off."
Atlas and Galit shared a hesitant, worried look. This was no mere beast.
"Now!" Marya snapped, her dual-toned eyes flashing with impatience and a hint of something far older.
They didn't argue again, rushing to help Chessa. Marya turned to face the towering Leshy alone, allowing her transformed state to recede, her eyes returning to their normal gold. The ancient guardian paused, its massive head tilting. It sniffed the air, and a low, rumbling sound emanated from its chest.
"Yeah. Remember me?" Marya said, her voice calm, almost conversational. The Leshy panted, great clouds of steam billowing in the cold air. "I'm the one who gave you that scar," she added, gesturing with her chin towards a faint, silvery line on its woody forearm.
The Leshy blinked its luminous eyes slowly, a gesture that seemed less beastial and more… considering. It was a standoff between a force of nature and a daughter of legends.
"We're ready!" Galit called.
"Let us leave," Marya said to the creature, her tone leaving no room for negotiation.
The Leshy blinked again, as if weighing the command against its primal duty to protect. Then, with a world-shaking roar that seemed to make the very mountains tremble, it charged.
"Mush! Mush! Mush!" Chessa screamed. Polar bolted, digging his paws into the snow and straining against the harness. The sled jerked forward just as the Leshy's massive hand swiped through the space they'd occupied.
In an absence of instant motion, Marya stood poised in the fleeing sled, her sword ready, watching the colossal guardian give chase. But after a dozen thunderous steps, its pace began to slow. The sacred ground of its forest was its domain; the open, trampled snow before the sea was not. The distance grew. The Leshy finally halted at the tree line, its triumphant roar fading into a low, echoing rumble that was part warning, part farewell.
As their sled raced toward the frozen coast and the hidden sub, the sound was swallowed by the wind and the frantic panting of a heroic husky. They had escaped Drum Island, but they had left a storm of trouble—and two very irritated and injured Whitebeard commanders—in their wake.