Chapter 4: The Unseen Armor
The concussive force of the thunder remained Arata's greatest obstacle. His Logia body was useless against it, and his Zoan durability could only take so much. He was constantly bruised, his body a tapestry of aches from the relentless shockwaves. He needed a defense that existed between intangibility and brute toughness.
It happened during a particularly violent tempest. A series of rapid-fire strikes hit all around him, the resulting thunderclaps merging into a single, continuous wall of sound that felt like it was crushing him. Desperate, he crossed his arms over his face, and he willed himself to be hard. Unbreakable. He poured all his frustration, all his defiance, all his raw survival instinct into a single thought: "Stop."
A faint, black shimmer flickered over his skin, so brief he thought it was a trick of the light. But the next thunderclap that hit him felt… duller. The force was dispersed, spread across his body instead of concentrating in his chest. It still knocked the wind out of him, but it didn't send him flying.
'What was that?'
He focused again, trying to replicate the feeling. It was like flexing a muscle he never knew he had. He remembered the stories—the invisible armor, the power that could hit Logia users. Busoshoku Haki. Armament.
He practiced relentlessly. He would stand in the path of the storm's fury, not to absorb the lightning, but to endure the thunder. He focused on hardening his skin, his arms, his legs. The black tint became more consistent, lasting for a second, then two. It was crude, exhausting, and burned through his stamina at an alarming rate, but it worked.
Weeks turned into a month. His control improved. He could now coat his fists in a stable layer of Haki. He tested it by punching the island's bedrock. His fist, reinforced by both Haki and his Zoan strength, sank into the stone up to his wrist, the rock cracking around the impact point.
But he hit another wall. The thunder was a pressure wave. It didn't just strike the surface; it passed through objects. His hardened skin could block a punch, but the vibrations of the thunder still rattled his organs. He needed a defense that existed beyond his skin.
The breakthrough came when he was trying to protect a small, sheltered fire he had managed to light. A nearby strike sent a powerful shockwave towards his cave. Instinctively, he threw out a hand, not to block the air, but to stop the force itself. He pushed his Haki outward.
A transparent, barely visible barrier of energy shimmered into existence a foot in front of his palm. The shockwave hit it and dissipated with a low thump, the air inside the cave barely stirring.
Emission. Internal Destruction.
He had done it. He had projected his Haki. The principle of Internal Destruction came naturally after that; if he could project his will to create a barrier, he could also project it inside an object to break it apart. He practiced on rocks, focusing his Haki past their hard exterior to shatter them from within. It was the ultimate defense against the thunder—he could now create a shield that stopped the force before it ever reached him.
Now, when he stood in the storm, he was a bastion. Lightning fed him. Thunder broke against the invisible shields he could now maintain for minutes at a time. He was no longer just enduring the storm; he was mastering it.
He was ready for the final step. The power that separated kings from commoners. The power he had felt a flicker of when he first defied the island.