The former seat of the World Government lay in ruins.
The Holy Land Mary Geoise, once a place of teeming pomp and peerless splendor, was gone. What remained was the glaring bulk of a red-clouded meteor, half-buried in the Red Line.
The shock had long since ebbed, yet a gray veil still smothered the land for kilometers around. Dust and grit hung thick in the air.
Marines worked in a frantic, methodical sweep.
The highest authorities of the world had been erased by a single man before the eyes of the world. For Marine Headquarters, it was a mortal wound, and a merciless one.
Ten days of searching had picked over every flank of the meteor. They had even dug meters deep into the Red Line's bedrock. Nothing.
At last, under Steel Bone Kong's order, teams pushed into the lowest reaches beneath the meteor. The slopes were sheer, the wind howled. For many marines it was deadly work.
Even after ten days the heat radiating off the rock had not faded. Standing beneath the meteor was like facing a furnace. Sweat poured, breath shortened, and tempers frayed.
"Fleet Admiral."
A marine in a Justice cloak strode up to Steel Bone Kong, head bowed. "Sir, our sector's been cleared. No sign of the Five Elders."
"And the Celestial Dragons? Any trace?" Kong's face was stone.
"N n no, sir."
"Keep searching. Alive or dead, we find them."
"Yes, sir."
Tens of thousands from Marine HQ and its branches combed the circumference in a carpet search.
"The tenth day… already the tenth," Kong murmured. His once unshakable will had been ground down. Ten days with no word, no clue. The holy city had yielded nothing but the wreckage of disaster. No breath of life remained.
With each hour, even Steel Bone Kong's eyes dimmed. If not for the men still straining at their orders, he might have called the retreat.
"Fleet Admiral." Garp came to his side, his expression no better.
"Garp. Anything?" Kong asked on reflex, hope already hollow.
"Nothing." Garp lowered his head.
Marine HQ stood at the edge of an abyss, trapped between advance and withdrawal. Stop searching and there was no chance. Keep searching and the chance was a ghost.
"One more day," Kong said at last. "If we still find nothing, we pull out."
"Understood."
The vice admirals nodded.
At that moment, a thunderclap boomed from deep within the red-cloud meteor.
The earth shook. Dust geysered skyward from the meteor's flank.
Marines nearest the blast were flung like dolls, some skidding over the edge into ravines.
Kong's face blanched. "Report."
"Sir. Fleet Admiral, sir. Massive detonation inside the meteor. Smoke column rising. Heavy casualties among our men," a soldier gasped, scrambling up on hands and knees.
"An explosion? After ten days? From where?" Kong snapped. "All personnel fall back to a safe perimeter. Vice admirals, rear admirals, admirals, anyone with the strength, move to rescue the fallen."
"Yes, sir."
Garp led the charge, moon-stepping across the chasms to haul up the stunned and the slipping. Even so, many died.
Kong watched men go still in the dust and his jaw knotted. No bones of the Five Elders found, and now thousands more of his soldiers paid instead. The blast alone had killed more than some battles.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
A final, world-splitting crack. The meteor's rim burst open into a rough-hewn maw.
Kong fixed his eyes on the breach, searching for the cause.
Five silhouettes stepped slowly out through the gap. Dust roiled so thick their faces were a blur.
When they emerged into the light, Kong's eyes went wide, his features twisting.
"Th the Five Elders…"
Around him, marines from HQ and every branch froze. Soldiers, staff officers, rear admirals, vice admirals, even the admirals themselves sucked in sharp breaths, thunderstruck.
"The Five Elders…"
"They are alive?"
"How is that possible? I saw them with my own eyes, crushed beneath the meteor."
"They survived a calamity like that?"
Murmurs swelled into a stunned roar.
Under thousands of stares, the five old men walked out as if from a stroll, faces unreadable.
They had returned.
Eight hundred years ago, the five had shared the greatest Devil Fruit borne by the Devil Fruit tree, the so called Life Fruit, and had not died since. That record ended ten days ago, when a single, nameless storm of a man called "Ryuyun" struck them down together.
They had nowhere to run and no way to hide. Before Ryuyun, they were fragile.
Yet they did not fear. The Life Fruit granted undying life. Even killed, they would revive.
Ordinarily, when a Devil Fruit user dies, the fruit they had eaten reappears on the Devil Fruit tree, completing the cycle. The Life Fruit is a bug in that system. You eat it, you die, and the fruit should return to the tree, but because it governs life itself, it revives you instead. You live again, and the fruit remains within you. The tree bears no new Life Fruit.
Thus an endless loop of immortality.
Only one method could end them.
Destroy the Devil Fruit tree itself. Cut the root, and Devil Fruit powers vanish. With no fruit to sustain them, they would wither and die of old age.
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