Yasopp's feelings were easy to read.
It was the same impulse that would one day send Zoro charging at Mihawk. No matter the gap, if you do not even dare to draw, you have no business on the higher stage.
The world's greatest sniper.
Yasopp could guess how it would go. He might not be a match. He might lose badly. He still shouldered the rifle and touched the trigger. A marksman who will not even level his barrel is an embarrassment to the craft.
A little down the rail, Mihawk stood with Benn Beckman, sea wind riffling the tails of their coats. He had come to his decision as well. He ran a cloth once more along the curve of Yoru, the black blade dull with oil, and the air around him cooled. The aura of a sword about to clear the scabbard.
Beckman felt the shift and paused with his cigarette. He turned his head and measured the swordsman from the corner of his eye.
What now.
"You are…"
Mihawk glanced over, his voice quiet and unhesitating. "I hear Red-Haired Shanks has excellent swordsmanship. I am a swordsman. I have sworn to cross blades with every strong swordsman I find. For years I have kept that vow through storm and calm, for the sake of my ambition. To possess the strongest swordsmanship in the world, defeat every swordsman who stands before me, and claim the title of the greatest."
He did not try to hide his aim. Pride is part of a swordsman's steel. This was Dracule Mihawk.
Beckman understood. A challenge for Shanks. His brows drew together anyway.
Hawk-Eye was Ozz's right hand. If Ozz himself wanted to spar, that was one thing. A lieutenant stepping up to test their captain was something else. If Shanks won, fine. If he lost, the rumor would write itself. Shanks could not beat even Ozz's first mate. Shanks had set his sights on catching up to Ozz. Beckman knew that better than anyone.
Mihawk read the hesitation and folded his arms. "Do not misunderstand. Swordsmanship only. Leave Haki out of it."
That thought had been Ozz's, voiced earlier. The world's greatest swordsman is not identical to the world's strongest man. If your sword is peerless, it deserves the crown even if your Haki and physique are not.
Beckman's grip on his gun eased. Considered like that, it was not a clash of kings and generals. It was a clean match between swordsmen.
He stepped aside. Mihawk lifted the long black blade and walked toward Shanks.
No one expected the twin shouts that rang out at exactly the same moment.
"Accept my challenge, Black Emperor." "Accept my challenge, Red Hair."
Shanks and Ozz both froze mid-tease, Uta's rattle hovering between them as they turned their heads in the same slow beat.
One man carried a gun. One man carried a sword.
They blinked at each other, both momentarily thrown. Then each looked past the other to the prey he had chosen.
"Red Hair," Mihawk said, raising Yoru with a tiny twist of his wrist. "Draw. Let me see your sword."
Shanks came back to himself in a breath. He was a swordsman too. Griffon had tasted enough strong blood to make that clear. He had never feared Ozz. Why fear Mihawk.
"Gladly," he said. "Any man who has crossed blades with Rayleigh is worth my time."
On the other side, Yasopp propped the rifle on his shoulder and fixed Ozz with a steady stare. His mouth had gone a little dry, yet his voice carried. "Face me, Black Emperor. I want to know what weight the words world's greatest sniper really carry."
If Shanks' acceptance was a calm nod, Ozz's was the shine of a child handed a new toy.
He had not been formally challenged by a sniper in eight hundred years. Or that was how it felt. He could count on one hand the number of proper marksmen he had met since he went to sea. His title had no stack of skulls behind it, no hall of names he had taken. Mihawk's crown had been beaten into shape by many duels. Whitebeard's by battles that shook islands. Kaido's by dying again and again and coming back grinning. Ozz's had been offered by his people. The world's greatest sniper, stapled onto the larger thing that was one of the strongest men alive.
Among those stronger than him, none had chosen the path of the rifle. Among those weaker than him, the ones who had talent with Observation Haki and the gun decided that challenging the Black Emperor was a good way to die anonymously.
So he went years, then more years, with no chance to test himself against a marksman who could push him. It was nice that the lane was not crowded. It was not so nice that it was empty.
Everyone seemed to say the same thing in their hearts. You are too strong. Keep the title. We will not compete. If it makes you happy, keep it.
Where was the fun in that.
A duel with Yasopp would put something real behind the name. He liked the sound of that.
"All right," Ozz said, smiling. "I accept, sniper Yasopp."
He did not bother to raise his hand. He did not need to. The Red Force shuddered. The world blurred. The ship leaped. In one heartbeat they sat beneath a cloudbank. In the next they sat between two pillars of rock. In the next there was nothing in sight but a wedge of blue and a scrap of bare green. The deck crew stumbled, steadied, and then shouted.
"Black Emperor's Devil Fruit."
"Feels like the whole world is shuffling every second."
Shanks watched Ozz move an entire ship like a pebble flicked across a pond and his eyes sparkled. "If you do not have your own crew, join us. This way of traveling is too useful."
He did not often stop to weigh the odds before he spoke. Around them, the Red-Haired Pirates flinched. Only Shanks would ask that out loud. Only Shanks would pray for the yes.
He looked at Ozz and held his breath. The deck did the same.
"I cannot," Ozz said, exactly as Beckman expected he would. "I am a remnant of the old era. There is no ship in the new era that can carry me."
For a moment no one spoke. The bare island shouldered up out of the sea ahead of them, an unmarked fleck of land with a ragged beach and a spine of black stone down its back. Gulls wheeled and complained. The light had the thin gold of late afternoon.
Shanks smiled, a little crooked, as if he had known that answer all along and had asked anyway. "Then we will sail alongside while we can."
The Red Force kissed the shallows and settled. The crew lowered skiffs. Men jumped into knee-deep water and dragged boats up onto sand. The island had no name. It would not have one when they left. Years later, a fisherman would tell a boy that his grandfather had found a branch snapped clean in two and a line of footprints like punctuation along the south shore, as if a giant had taken long thoughtful steps and then disappeared.
There was no audience but the wind and the surf.
Mihawk and Shanks faced each other in the lee of a rock face, sandals biting into grit, Yoru black as a moonless night and Griffon bright enough to catch the sun. Beckman and Lucky Roux and Hongo stood at a respectful distance, hands easy, eyes sharp. Rayleigh's name passed unspoken between them like a blessing. The rules were simple. No Haki. Sword alone.
On the other end of the beach Yasopp set his feet on a low rise and let his breath run out to the end of the tide. Ozz walked down the wet sand until his boots darkened, then turned and stood with the horizon at his back.
"How far," Yasopp called.
"As far as the sea allows," Ozz said.
They did not count paces. They counted beats between waves. Yasopp shouldered the rifle and went still. His world narrowed to the thin circle of the front sight and the slower circle of his own breath. He had wanted this for years without knowing it. He had told himself stories about this moment and mocked himself for doing it. Now that it had arrived, he discovered he was not afraid.
"Benn," Shanks said under his breath.
Beckman took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked the ash with the side of his thumb. "He will be fine."
Shanks nodded. "And Yasopp."
Beckman almost smiled. "If he misses, it will not be because he could not see."
On one beach, steel lifted.
On the other, a finger curved inside a guard.
The island held its breath.
Ozz tipped his chin the tiniest fraction. "Start when you like."
Yasopp did not answer.
He fired.
Ozz did not dodge.
In the same instant, far downshore, Yoru and Griffon met with a clear sound like glass touched by a fingertip. Mihawk did not blink. Shanks did not smile. They pushed and released and struck again.
Back where the water ran cool, Ozz reached up and pinched the bullet between index and middle finger. He looked down at the metal glinting in his grasp and then up at the man who had shot it. His grin showed teeth.
"Again."
Yasopp's heart leapt like a fish. He reloaded without looking. He did not hear the Red Hair crew shout. He did not hear the gulls. He saw a line, and he sent another round along it.
"Good," Ozz murmured.
On the sword side, a third ring sang out, then a fourth. Griffon skimmed along Yoru's edge and sparked. Mihawk's shoulders loosened a fraction as the rhythm took him. Shanks' eyes warmed with the heady knowledge that this was what he had been searching the seas for. A sword that pushed his own to climb.
From the rise, Beckman watched both duels at once, the way a man peers down two barrels and sees two futures.
They would not decide anything today. The point was not the final strike. It was the step. Yasopp would miss until he did not. Shanks would cross the threshold only when the door was ready to open. Mihawk would be there when it did.
The sand scarred under Ozz's heels. The empty cases made a small neat pile at Yasopp's feet. The sun slid down its rail in the sky.
When they called a halt, it was not because anyone had broken. It was because the day had.
Ozz shook his hand once and let the last bullet drop back into Yasopp's palm. "Keep it," he said. "The first shot you ever took at the top."
Yasopp closed his fist around the warm metal and swallowed hard. "Thank you."
Shanks and Mihawk lowered their blades at the same moment, both breathing a little faster than before. "Tomorrow," Mihawk said.
"Tomorrow," Shanks agreed.
They walked back across the beach together, swords over their shoulders, as if they had not tried to split each other open minutes ago. The skiffs bumped against the sand. The gulls argued, then settled. The island went back to being itself.
On the way up the gangplank, Shanks glanced sideways at Ozz. "You sure you do not want to join."
Ozz laughed. "I meant what I said. The old era made me. There is no ship in this age built to carry me."
Shanks grinned back. "Then sail alongside."
Ozz lifted a hand in easy assent. "For a while."
Night came down as the Red Force turned her bow. The new era breathed somewhere ahead of them. The old one did not let go easily.
Ozz stood with his back against the rail and listened to the creak of lines and the tired laughter of men who had done what they were made to do. For one heartbeat he felt the deck of another ship under his feet, and a captain's laugh that the sea had swallowed long ago.
He closed his eyes and opened them. The stars were the same.
"Set sail," Shanks said.
They did.