It felt like the tiger had fallen and the wolves would rule.
Marineford, the New World, the Sabaody Archipelago, and beyond reeled beneath the shockwaves. Waves towered. Disasters piled upon disasters.
The world tipped into frenzy.
The Marines, meanwhile, were thrown into fear and misery.
Rakuya stood in the air with Peach Rabbit at his side.
"Rakuya, are they all dead?" For some reason she used only his name, and it sounded oddly cool on her tongue.
"Dead?" Rakuya murmured. He could not read the ground below. He had no Observation Haki. In the sea he could sense everything, but on land he was a blind man.
He tried to read the air's vibrations, but the meteor's aftermath drowned out every whisper. That method would not work this time.
All he had felt was the faintest wrinkle in space, like a teleportation.
Peach Rabbit hesitated, unsettled by his uncertainty.
To live through a strike like that, what kind of power would it take?
"Are they all dead?" Her face had gone pale, her spirit dim.
"All?" The word caught him. If all were dead, then the slaves, the servants, the stewards, the Celestial Dragons, the Five Elders, everyone would be buried here. Good and evil alike.
How would that make him any different from those blood-hungry nobles?
It was the knot in Peach Rabbit's chest. Her justice could not square with slaughter without distinction.
"Easy. I will bring them back," Rakuya said at last. "For now, they are only gone for a while. To kill every last Celestial Dragon, there was no other way."
He could not give the Five Elders time to react. Letting them breathe meant courting some trick. Better to risk a wrong kill than leave the rot alive.
But he had a way to restore those who did not deserve to die.
The key lay in the Samsara Rebirth technique.
"Really? You are not lying to me? How do you bring back the dead?" Peach Rabbit's cheeks were white with grief and a kind of helpless anger.
"Do I look like I am lying?" His gaze was steady. She searched it, then lowered her eyes.
He was no longer someone you could measure as a man. He could walk the sky and the deep, call wind and wave, dive into the seas that Devil Fruit users feared. He had stepped past the human line.
"Okay." Rarely for her, she wiped her tears and chose to believe him.
"Rakuya, what about the Celestial Dragons and the Five Elders?"
"I do not know," he said. "Something feels off. At the moment of impact I sensed a spatial ripple. Someone was transported out. If not the Five Elders, then the Celestial Dragons. Or neither died and only the slaves and servants did."
Even if all had perished, he was not afraid. He believed he could save the innocent later. Killing the Celestial Dragons and the Five Elders would be worth it.
Still, a clean death felt too easy for those five ancients. Better to break them first.
He had come to the Holy Land for two reasons.
First, to shock the world, to carve the name Flowing Cloud into the heavens so no one would dare touch Fish-Man Island.
Second, to test the Five Elders and plan accordingly. They could not kill him. He could kill them. His lone worry was a rumor from his previous life, when he had been a devoted One Piece fan scouring every theory he could find. There had never been an official answer on what fruits the Five Elders had eaten or what hid inside the Void Century. But the loudest rumor was that they had divided the greatest fruit borne by the Devil Tree, the so-called Fruit of Life. Eat it and gain an undying body, twisted and strengthened beyond reason. Even if killed, they could revive through the fruit's power. Rakuya's Planetary Devastation should have erased them.
If the five showed themselves again, it would all but confirm the Fruit of Life. If they did not, then their strength simply fell short.
"Come." Rakuya's eyes were calm. Live or die, the Five Elders were no loss to him.
The Government had fallen. The Holy Land was gone. If they lived, it was only to be broken by his hands. If they did not die, then he would find a countermeasure, or draw the Fruit of Life out of their bodies and give it to his women. That would end them for good.
With enough points to exchange for power, nothing was impossible. Points were the bottleneck now.
Then his wives could live as long as he did. Without the Fruit of Life, the five ancients would finally meet death.
It was another knot he worried at. He would one day rule this world. He could live on, but Boa Hancock, Peach Rabbit, Nico Robin, and the others would wither with time. He would not accept that.
Rakuya took Peach Rabbit's hand. The two vanished into the sky, then plunged toward the sea, diving straight for Ryugu Palace.
Down in the palace, no word had reached them. They had only the tremors to fear. The meteor's shock reached even ten thousand meters below, but its force had bled away. The result was an earthquake and nothing worse.
"Your Majesty, what happened?" a minister asked, shaken.
"I do not know. It came from above."
"Terrifying. Since Ryugu Palace was built, we have never felt a tremor like that."
"It will not kill anyone. Go calm the people. Do not let them panic. Something must have happened up there. The news will reach us soon enough."
In the deep and distant halls, information always came slow. Few pirates reached ten thousand meters beneath the sea. Rumors took time to sink.
None of them knew the truth.
Their guardian, Flowing Cloud, had shaken the world for them.
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