The crunch of foliage under Marya's boots was the only sound as she emerged from the green-black shadow of the ruins onto the narrow beach. The wind had picked up, whipping in from the sea and carrying the taste of salt and imminent rain. Sanza, a wriggling bundle of outrage and white fur trussed in azure gelatin, bounced against her back with each step. Jelly hummed a quiet, tuneless song of accomplishment.
A voice, calm and deep as a well, cut through the wind's noise. It was the sound of a throat being cleared, not for attention, but as a precursor to an immutable fact.
Marya stopped. Her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. "Damn it," she cursed, the words soft, swallowed by the breeze.
She turned. There, standing between her and the skiff as if he had grown from the stones of the beach itself, was the blind Admiral. Issho, known to the world as Fujitora. He rested both hands on the simple walking cane that housed his sword, his scarred face tilted toward her, a picture of weary authority. The late afternoon sun glinted off the purple yukata.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice carrying without effort. "But I believe it would be in both our interests for you to turn over the young dragon to me."
Marya shifted her weight, turning her full body to face him, her expression a mask of cool appraisal. Sanza, hearing the new voice, began to struggle with renewed vigor, producing a series of furious, muffled grunts. Jelly, sensing the shift in mood, tightened his coils with a soft squish. "Is that so," Marya stated, her tone flat. "And you presume to know what is in my best interest."
Fujitora offered a slight, polite nod. "You have a formidable aura about you. Like a sheathed blade resting in a still room. It speaks of… considerable training."
A corner of Marya's mouth twitched. She raised a brow. "Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment."
From behind the Admiral, movement. A squad of a dozen Marines emerged from behind rocky outcroppings, taking positions along the beach. Their faces were set, hands on their weapons, but their eyes darted between their Admiral and the lone woman with the legendary sword. They formed a loose, nervous semicircle.
Fujitora's head tilted slightly, as if listening to the rhythm of the waves. "Would you do me the courtesy," he asked, his tone still congenial, "of telling me your name?"
Marya let out a short sigh, the sound of someone dealing with a persistent, formal obstacle. "I would rather not share that bit of information."
Fujitora's grip on his cane-sword shifted. The friendly air began to harden. "Young lady, I must insist—"
Thump.
Marya dropped Sanza. The boy hit the sand with a soft gasp, then bounced slightly, still cocooned in Jelly, who gave a surprised "Bloop?" Marya's right hand reached behind her in a motion so fluid it was barely there. Her fingers wrapped around the worn leather of Nisshoku's hilt. The sound of the obsidian blade clearing its sheath was a dry, cold whisper that lower the temperature on the beach.
Sanza lay still, his eyes, the only part of his face not covered by Jelly, bulging with a mix of terror and awe. He was watching two goliaths square up, and for once, his own monumental ego was silent.
One of the Marine officers, a lieutenant with sharp eyes, gasped. He stared at the sword—its impossible darkness, the faint, malevolent glow of its crimson runes. He rushed forward, leaning close to Fujitora's ear, his whisper frantic and hushed.
Fujitora's head tilted as he listened. A low, thoughtful hum rumbled in his chest. "Dracule…" he muttered. Then, louder, his scarred face turning back toward Marya, a new layer of understanding smoothing his features. "The daughter of the great Dracule Mihawk. To think our paths would cross here." He announced it not as a question, but as a confirmed fact. "Your existence is classified. Not to be mentioned outside of Headquarters. No doubt a condition of your father's service."
Marya sighed, a sound of profound irritation. "For a blind man, you see a hell of a lot."
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Fujitora's lips. "I must insist you hand over the Celestial Dragon. This need not escalate."
Marya cocked her head, her golden eyes narrowing. Her grip on Nisshoku tightened, the black void-veins on her arm darkening. "I decline."
Fujitora nodded slowly, a man accepting an inevitable outcome. "So be it."
He moved. There was no grand flourish, no shouted technique. He simply drew the blade from his cane and made a single, swift, upward cut into the empty air before him. The space in front of his sword rippled, like heat haze over a desert.
Marya raised a brow, watching the seemingly innocuous gesture. Fujitora's voice was calm. "There is still time to reconsider."
Marya smirked. "A little dra—"
Her words died in her throat. A deep, sub-audible groan vibrated through the very air, a sound felt in the teeth and bones rather than heard. The sky above the island, previously a clear late-afternoon blue, began to darken at a single point. A dot of angry red appeared, swelling with impossible speed. The wind died, and the sea itself hushed. The dot became a sphere, then a mountain of burning rock, wreathed in a halo of superheated air and trailing a tail of furious orange flame. It filled the vision, a second, catastrophic sun falling to earth, its light painting the beach, the ruins, and the terrified faces of the Marines in hellish shades of crimson.
"A little dramatic, don't you think?" Marya finished, her voice drier than the desert sand, though her eyes were fixed on the descending cataclysm.
Fujitora stood unruffled, his coat-tails unmoving in the unnatural stillness. "If the rumors of your lineage are true," he said, "it may not be dramatic enough. Let us see how much he has passed on to you."
Marya's jaw flexed. The calm of her many years of focused training rose within her—the mountain does not fear the storm, her father's voice echoes in her memory. She adjusted her stance, settling her weight evenly, becoming an unmovable anchor point in the world. The meteor grew, its details becoming horrifically clear: craggy continents of molten rock, canyons of fire. The heat hit first, a blistering wall that dried the sweat on her skin and made the air crackle. The Marines behind Fujitora broke, panic shredding their discipline. They cried out, some falling to their knees, others scrambling backward.
"Remain calm!" Fujitora's command cut through the chaos, a pillar of stone in a river of fear.
Marya blocked it all out. The heat, the light, the screaming, the immense, world-ending shadow. She saw only the meteor. She drew a breath, deep and centering, and her Haki responded. A dark, purple-black aura, shot through with threads of void-like black, erupted around her. It didn't flare wildly; it condensed, flowing down her arm and into Nisshoku with focused intent. The sword's obsidian blade twisted the light around it, becoming a slash of absolute nothingness edged in crackling, dark energy.
The meteor was upon them. It filled the entire sky, a continent of annihilation mere heartbeats from impact.
Marya moved. It was not a desperate swing, but the execution of a single, perfect principle: the one cut that severs the problem. She brought Nisshoku around in a soaring, horizontal arc. There was no contact with the rock. Instead, a crescent wave of concentrated Armament and Conqueror's Haki, a slice of solidified will and negation, shot from the blade. It was a thin, black-purple line against the overwhelming red.
It struck the heart of the meteor.
For a suspended moment, nothing happened. The mountain of fire continued its descent.
Then, a network of black lines, like cracks in reality, spiderwebbed from the point of impact across the entire meteoric surface. A sound like the shattering of a world echoed across the lagoon—not a boom, but a vast, crystalline CRACK-MMMM.
The meteor disintegrated. It did not explode in a fiery ball; it burst into a billion fragments of harmless, dark-red dust and gravel-sized pebbles. A great cloud of pulverized rock bloomed overhead, blotting out the sun, before raining down on the beach and the surrounding sea with a gentle, pattering hiss. It was less a destruction and more an unraveling of the concept of the attack itself.
Silence returned, deeper than before, broken only by the soft pitter-patter of celestial debris.
Fujitora chuckled, a genuine sound of appreciation. "It appears," he said, sheathing his own blade, "that you are indeed his daughter."
Marya gave a single, curt nod, allowing herself a small exhalation. The dark aura around her sword faded. "Now that's settled," she said, turning back toward the skiff, "I'll be—"
The word froze in her throat. An immense, invisible force slammed down on her, driving the air from her lungs. It was as if the gravity of the entire island had decided to focus on the space she occupied. Her boots sank three inches into the wet sand. Every muscle in her body screamed, locking up as she fought to remain upright. The sheer, crushing weight was beyond anything physical; it was the pressure of the planet itself insisting she kneel. Fujitora stood before her, blade drawn and extended downward.
"You will be staying," the Admiral said, his voice still polite, but now carrying the absolute finality of natural law. "The test is over. The lesson begins."
The crushing weight was absolute. It was not the feeling of being pinned by a great hand, but of the very air around Marya turning to liquid stone, as if the island itself deciding she was an anchor and pulling her down into its heart. Her bones groaned. The leather of her jacket creaked under the pressure. Beside her, Jelly gave a strained bloop and flattened into a quivering blue puddle, and Sanza, still bound, could only let out a choked squeak as he was pressed into the sand.
Marya's vision swam. Her muscles burned with the effort of simply keeping her spine straight, or refusing the knee that gravity demanded. Her eyes, narrowed to golden slits, slid toward Fujitora. The Admiral stood with terrible patience, his blade outstretched, his blind gaze fixed on her as if watching the very atoms of her body strain.
She swallowed hard, the motion an agony against the pressure on her throat. Then, she glared.
It began as a heat in her chest, a spark of pure, defiant will that refused to be crushed. It was the same will that had walked away from her father, that had chased her mother's ghost through ancient texts, that now refused to be detained when a brother's name hung in the air like a promise. It erupted from her not as a shout, but as a silent, expanding wave.
Conqueror's Haki.
The air rippled, visible as a distortion racing outward from her body. It hit the ring of Marines first. Their eyes rolled back in their heads. One by one, like puppets with cut strings, they crumpled, falling to the sand in an undignified heap of white uniforms and clattering weapons. Only the lieutenant who had recognized her blade managed a gurgle of shock before joining his comrades in unconsciousness.
Fujitora's long coat billowed out behind him as the wave of spiritual pressure washed over him, but his feet did not shift an inch. His expression, however, shifted from patient authority to one of deep, solemn interest. The crushing gravity bearing down on Marya lessened by a fraction—not from weakness, but from a conscious adjustment of focus.
With a gasp of air that felt like fire in her lungs, Marya straightened fully. The sand around her boots was compacted into deep, perfect prints. She turned to face Fujitora, Nisshoku held in a firm, two-handed grip before her. The obsidian blade demanding recompense for the assault.
"Trust me," she said, her voice raspy but clear, "when I tell you I have had many lessons from better men far than you."
A slow, genuine smirk spread across Fujitora's scarred face. He drew his blade from its cane sheath with a soft shick. "Indeed," he rumbled. "It appears you have."
The words still hung in the air when Marya moved. There was no blur of speed in the traditional sense; it was a dismissal of the space between them. One moment she was ten paces away, the next she was inside his guard, Nisshoku descending in a vertical slash that aimed to split him from crown to cane. The principle was pure, the initial strike is the final strike.
CLANG!
The sound was not the sharp ring of common steel, but a deep, resonant gong that shook the air. Fujitora's blade, held in a one-handed, seemingly casual parry, met the obsidian edge. The ground beneath their feet cracked, a spiderweb of fissures shooting through the wet sand. The shockwave kicked up a ring of dust and debris.
"You best tell your men to fall back," Marya grunted, her face inches from his, her golden eyes locked on his sightless ones as she pressed her weight into the locked blades, "or I will be forced to end them."
Fujitora's arm trembled minutely under the surprising, focused strength. He raised his voice, calm but commanding. "All remaining personnel! Fall back to the treeline! Do not engage!"
A few Marines who had been at the periphery and avoided her Haki blast cried out. "Admiral!"
"That is an order!" Fujitora barked, and they scrambled backward.
Marya disengaged, leaping back as Fujitora's blade swept horizontally through the space she'd occupied. What followed was a duel that painted the beach with violence. They were not a whirlwind of slashes, but two masters of applied force. Marya was a needle, her attacks terrifyingly direct, her footwork minimal and efficient, each step a rooted pivot. Fujitora was a landslide, his swings broader, heavier, each one altering the very landscape around them—craters appearing in the sand where his blade pointed, the air growing thick and heavy in patches to slow her advance.
Sparks, white and fierce, flew every time their blades met, each clash a small thunderclap. The steel song of their battle rang across the water.
"I get the sense," Fujitora said, deflecting a thrust that would have pierced rock and redirecting it into the sand with a earth-shaking thoom, "that you are holding back."
Marya flipped backward over a low, crushing sweep, landing in a crouch. "I was taught focus and control," she replied, her breath even despite the exertion. "Brute force is a blunt instrument. Ideal if you swing a club like a neanderthal." She lunged again, her blade not aiming for him, but for the ground at his feet. A wave of dark Haki shot forth, not to cut, but to destabilize. Fujitora shifted his weight, avoiding the crumbling sand.
They broke apart again, circling on the cracked battlefield. Both were panting now, fine sheens of sweat on their skin. The air crackled with their combined will.
"I have no intention," Fujitora stated, his blade held at the ready, "of letting you leave with the young dragon."
Marya smirked, wiping a trickle of blood from a shallow cut on her cheek—a gift from a flying shard of rock. "I have no interest in your intentions. I am in a hurry, though, so I need to wrap this up."
She didn't give him time to respond. She settled into a lower stance, the calm of the mountain before the avalanche. She focused everything—the frustration of her discovery, the weight of her lineage, the urgent need to get answers—into the next moment. This would not be a wild, powerful swing. It would be a conclusion.
With a final, explosive push from her legs, she propelled herself forward. It was not the blinding speed of before, but a committed, unstoppable charge. Nisshoku drew back, and as she brought it around in a supreme horizontal arc, she did not simply swing the sword. She unleashed the coiled principle of her style: the cut that meets force not with opposing force, but with perfect, redirected finality. A crescent of black-purple Haki, so dense it looked like a tear in the world, flew from the blade.
Fujitora's blind eyes widened. He sensed it—not just power, but perfected idea. He crossed his arms, his blade held vertically before him, and braced. "Raging… Tiger!" he intoned, summoning a formidable barrier of Armament Haki.
The black crescent met the glowing barrier.
For a heartbeat, there was a silent struggle. Then, with a sound like a thousand sheets of glass breaking, Fujitora's defensive Haki shattered. The force of Marya's strike did not cut him; it transferred. It took all the momentum, all the gravitational potential he had wielded, and flung it back at him, amplified by her own impeccable will.
His grunt of shock was cut short as the impact lifted him off his feet. The mighty Admiral, the gravity man, became a projectile. He flew backward across the beach, a purple-clad blur, over the heads of the stunned Marines at the treeline, and out over the lagoon. He hit the water with a colossal splash that sent a geyser high into the air. The Marines closest to the impact were bowled over by the concussive spray, tumbling into the surf after him.
The beach was silent, save for the gentle hiss of settling sand and the lap of disturbed water.
Marya caught her breath, her arms trembling from the release. She didn't waste a second. She sprinted to where Sanza and a re-forming Jelly lay. Scooping the bound boy under one arm, she dashed for the skiff. She dumped him unceremoniously into the hull, where he landed with a pained "Oof!" and a furious, muffled scream.
Jelly bounced in after him. "Fast-fast adventure!"
Marya shoved the skiff off the sand, leaped aboard, and grabbed the tiller. With a snap of the sheet, the sail caught the wind. The small craft shot away from the ruins, slicing through the calm lagoon waters toward the open sea.
As the distance grew, she looked back. On the shore, Marines were wading into the water, hauling their soaked, coughing Admiral back onto the sand. Fujitora sat up, water streaming from his hair and coat, his head tilted as if listening to the fading sound of her sail. He did not look defeated. He looked profoundly, thoughtfully intrigued.
Marya turned her face to the horizon, her jaw set. The immediate obstacle was cleared. But the Admiral's words echoed in her mind: The test is over. The lesson begins. She had a feeling the real weight of this encounter was only just beginning to settle.
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