The air split under the full force of Whitebeard's quake. The atmosphere itself cracked like old glass as the shock ran through it. Caught point blank, Dotor Ozz rocketed skyward at supersonic speed, his body spinning end over end until he pierced the cloud layer.
At the apex of that brutal launch, blood glinted on his lip. Then the corner of his mouth hooked upward. A savage smile.
He twisted in midair and let himself fall.
"That one hurt, Whitebeard," he murmured, voice cold as space. "So I will return the favor."
Down on the shattered island, Whitebeard planted Murakumogiri in the ground and drew in a ragged breath. The old titan's lungs burned, but his eyes remained clear. Danger pressed in on his senses like a storm front.
"Damn brat," he growled.
He looked up. His scalp prickled. That pressure, that feeling, dragged up the memory of one iron-fisted monster from the past.
A second sun rose through the clouds.
Cross-shaped, blinding, it formed slowly in the hands of the descending youth. Space around that false daystar began to dent inward, layer by layer, as if the heavens themselves were being folded.
"The times have changed," Ozz shouted, pupils burning scarlet. "Whitebeard."
"This era has a name. Black Emperor."
Time rolls on. New kings ascend. Old rulers step down.
Boom.
The cross sun pressed down. Space collapsed in rings, a never-setting day descending toward the earth.
"Fistbone, Galactic Skyfall."
Whitebeard barked a laugh through his teeth, a short harsh sound, then clenched his jaw. Muscles surged. His right fist drew back as white tremor energy sheathed the knuckles.
"Save the speeches," he thundered. "My era is not finished."
Conqueror's Haki roared up from his core and coiled with the quake power. He drove his fist to the sky.
A deep hum. A chorus of cracks. The world reeled.
"Stop joking around."
"Secure the ships."
"At this rate the whole island is going under."
Light swallowed the center of the island. Fragments of cliffs and petrified trees spun outward like meteors. The shockwave struck both the Oro Jackson and the Moby Dick hard enough to nearly flip them.
A green arc lanced from the Jackson. A single colossal slash split the rain of boulders to gravel. On the other side, a giant phoenix spread luminous wings, body-first blocking slabs of rock and uprooted trunks, stone shattering to dust against blazing feathers.
Sea poured in. The uninhabited island gave up its shape at last and collapsed, the land subsiding as the ocean swallowed everything but the very center. There, the energy was so intense that incoming seawater flashed to steam and vanished.
On the Oro Jackson's prow, Dracule Mihawk pressed the brim of his hat down with two fingers and stared at the core of the battlefield, eyes like honed blades.
It was not over. He could feel it in the way his sword vibrated, in the breath of the world.
High above, the bowtie-wearing seagull dodged left, banked right, using every bit of its inborn talent to weave through the storm of debris while keeping the lens locked dead center.
In the newsroom, no one blinked. No one breathed.
The dust thinned. Two figures stood in the clearing.
Morgans leaned so far across his desk it creaked. His avian eyes fixed on the screen. When the silhouettes cleared, he sucked in air so sharply that a web of red veins bloomed in his pupils. His beak stretched into a feral grin.
He seized a staffer by the collar.
"Now. Right now. Broadcast it to the world."
"Title it," he shouted, voice cracking, "The Strongest Man Alive Decides the Era, Black Emperor vs Whitebeard."
"Yes sir."
Lines opened. Plaza snails, emergency news snails, private subscribers across the globe. Light screens bloomed without warning from East Blue to West Blue, Paradise to the New World. Fish-Man Island. Even Mary Geoise.
In taverns and palaces, slums and academies, the same words ricocheted from mouth to mouth.
"Look. Look look look."
"Breaking bulletin. What happened, is it war?"
"It is a duel. Two monsters."
In a soundproofed chamber, a CP0 agent tuned a set of broadcast snails with careful hands while the Five Elders sat on a couch and stared at the image the way men watch an oncoming meteor.
"Morgans is airing this," one of them said softly. "That bird has lost his mind."
"Unless," another murmured, "he knows how it ends."
The smoke cleared.
Dotor Ozz stood on the right, long hair streaming, breathing steady. His chest was bare and unmarked. He looked like he had just strolled in from a swim.
On the left, Whitebeard bled from chest and back, wounds crossing and reopening, his iconic mustache shorn to a jagged half.
The world boiled.
"No way. That is Black Emperor vs Whitebeard. How can the gap be so big."
"Come on, that is Whitebeard. How can he be untouched."
"After this, who dares call themselves a monster in front of Black Emperor."
Gulps clicked like clockwork in throats around the globe. Even hardened captains felt sweat bead in their palms.
Maybe the era really does have his name stamped across it.
Public opinion detonated.
Once, some scoffed at the idea that Black Emperor stood above the Emperors. Some insisted that Kaido and Big Mom were not comparable to Whitebeard. That argument turned to ash as the broadcast burned across the sky.
If he had not already been in a class of his own, he was now.
In Golden City, fireworks went off in daylight. "Celebrate the glorious victory of my dear friend Ozz," Tesoro roared from a balcony. "Open bar, open tables, open everything."
In a certain office, a woman dabbed away tears and smiled. "That brat, to batter Whitebeard's captain like this, how far you have come."
All over the archipelago, entertainment halls flipped signs to free entry. Musicians struck up tunes. Girls waltzed. No one noticed that the man at the center of it all had gone a shade too pale.
The truth was simple. Ozz had paid dearly in stamina to look untouchable. In raw terms, their injuries were not so different. He simply spent energy to erase the marks.
He could win by fighting dirty. He knew that. His eyes tracked Whitebeard and weighed the old man's will, his pragmatism, his honor. In straight power he still trailed by a hair. Not much, but enough to matter. In cunning, in technique, in the reach of his devil fruit, he could flip the scales.
Across the broken arena, Whitebeard labored to stand straight, fingers tight on Murakumogiri's haft. Blood ran down his shirt in red ropes, yet his spirit did not dip. He had realized a few exchanges ago that he would not be taking this boy today.
Not without killing half the sea along with him.
Ozz lifted a hand. The ocean surged forward like a wall, then stopped as if it had slammed into invisible glass. He held the flood back with a thought. Watching that, Whitebeard's jaw worked. Victory gained with your opponent's mind divided was not victory at all.
"Looks like we do not settle this today, Whitebeard," Ozz said, voice low. He exhaled and felt the ache in his bones, the emptiness in his core, the sharp drag of fatigue along the ribs Whitebeard had rattled. "These islands are not built to last."
Silence stretched. Both men stared at the curtain of seawater hanging beyond the crater, at the steam boiling off the rim.
Then their gazes returned to each other.
Whitebeard rolled his shoulders once.
Ozz twirled Ace in one lazy circle.
They spoke at the same time.
"Then we end it here."
The words fell, simple and heavy. The tension bled from the air like heat from cooling iron.
On the Moby Dick, Marco let out a breath he had not noticed he was holding. His phoenix wings folded away in a cascade of sparks. Jozu flexed stone into fists then released it. Vista adjusted his brim and hid a grateful smile behind his mustache. Somewhere in the ranks a black-haired man with missing teeth lowered his gaze and hid a trembling grin, hands tucked deep inside his coat.
On the Oro Jackson, Mihawk's eyes dimmed from white hot to steady gold. He tipped his hat back up, then glanced toward the hanging sea and gave the faintest nod. The gap between him and the summit had never felt more real, or more enticing.
Up above, the bowtie seagull circled twice, lenses whirring, then climbed to a safer height. In the newsroom Morgans snapped his claws for silence and barked orders to cut the feed on his signal. He could smell new headlines ripening already, but he would not get greedy. Not today.
Ozz released his hold on the flood. Water thundered in, quenching steam and filling the crater. Foam boiled around the men's ankles, then subsided.
Whitebeard lifted Murakumogiri to one shoulder.
Ozz slid Ace back to its sheath with a soft click.
Their eyes met across the water.
"Fish-Man Island," Whitebeard said. "We will talk."
Ozz smiled, small and knowing. "We will."
He turned away first and walked toward the shore where the Oro Jackson's battered hull waited. Whitebeard watched him go, then faced the Moby Dick and began the slow, steady pace back to his sons.
Across the world, in plazas and dens and royal halls, screens winked to black.
The uproar did not fade for hours. It shook governments, rattled outlaw crews, sent bounty hunters into long spirals of thought. It lit hope in some and dread in others.
On that scarred sea, two eras had looked each other in the eye.
For now, that was enough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The tides are shifting, and secrets linger in the dark... Step into the shadows early on P@treon, where the next chapter awaits before the world sees it.
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"