"Sharn! Wake up!"
Fireblossom's floral snake coiled Sharn and pulled him to the side.
Buckin, crouched in a corner, wore a mischievous grin. She set her flintlock pistol onto her leather belt, slipped off her little aristocratic hat, and pulled a small vial from her pocket.
Long before Vegapunk rose to infamy, Buckin would become a master of bloodline-factor modification—later a creator of Whitebeard's clones and, eventually, a member of CP0. At this time she was already a scientist-in-the-making: clever, curious, and compulsively experimenting to probe the nature of life.
"In this era," she murmured, "Ohara's scholarship is still alive, the Calm Belt is untraversable, and technology and knowledge remain chained. People who will tear open the Void Century and rebuild ancient science are still in their cradle."
Her voice brimmed with the same hunger that would one day drive the brightest madmen of the future.
"Sharn — your body should take this," Buckin said, excited.
"Kaido and Whitebeard never let me experiment on them. But I did snag a strand of Whitebeard's hair… so this will work. Everything needs a start — you can be that start."
The potion was pale purple. Fireblossom rolled her eyes. "Can you hurry up? Or just poison him and be done with it."
Buckin poured the draught onto Sharn's wounds.
The serum entered his bloodstream at once. For a monster like Sharn, there was little chance of another perfect opportunity for experimentation. He kept his eyes open even while dazed; his mind fought through the fog and tried to return to focus.
The wounds healed with shocking speed. The purple reagent wove itself into his flesh, seeding new black dragon scales. Broken fingers righted and knit themselves together. His whole body trembled as life surged back.
"I've always wondered where human potential truly ends," Buckin muttered as she watched. "To find eternal youth, to find the limit, I joined the Rocks crew. Linlin, Kaido — they're anomalies, fragments of fruit traits in living bodies. I experiment to find the pattern between humans and Devil Fruit. My formula is an extreme stimulant plus a super-antibiotic: if the subject endures, hormones spike, toxins are blocked, healing accelerates. The cost? Constant fighting."
Her eyes shone. Sharn's wounds steamed with white breath—cells fiercely at work—and his bone-clacks returned a new cadence. He rose. The restored body roared: a black-scaled dragon stretching into the sky. A hunger to fight burned in him.
"Purple-Voltage Heatstorm!" Sharn unleashed — a towering column of flame, hot enough to split mountains, braided with purple lightning and a violent wind.
Saturn Saint emerged from the canyon; the six-pointed magic circle had vanished from the rubble. He stood with Glengus Saint at the battlefield's center, just in time to meet Sharn's blast.
"How does he still have the strength?" Kaido asked from atop Zeus, stunned. Linlin, too, stared up, surprised at how much potential this kid had.
"Go see," Linlin said. "He's young and defiant — maybe he could make my right hand."
Kaido pictured Sharn as his vice-captain; Linlin fantasized about controlling both him and Kaido. Neither realized the two young monsters were already planning their own paths.
Sharn's flames lit the canyon's ruins and the corpses of people hunted in the Celestial Dragons' game. The bodies of once-families lay everywhere—former neighbors, lovers, kin. The very ground smelled of injustice. The Celestial Drag ons scrubbed such traces of history away, but change was seeding elsewhere: fledgling newspapers, whispers of public truth. A young Morganse — a future information king — would rise; information networks and rival intelligence agencies would render the Dragons' secrecy fragile. Rocks' raid itself would be one such crack.
"Saturn Saint!!" Sharn's roar cut through the smoke. He'd become a remnant of the old rebellion, a newborn tyrant-in-the-making. His fire hammered Saturn's arms hard; Saturn had not expected such fierce vitality from a fresh fruit-wielder. The sensation recalled another hated name — Joy Boy — and it made Saturn sick.
Flame after flame slammed into the canyon. The illuminated gorge displayed severed limbs and stumps. Before the Dragons trampled them, these people had been living lives. The heat rose; in a perverse way, the pirates' assault gave the dead a last light.
"Divine Cut!" Glengus Saint spat and swung his western blade. The sword lifted and slashed through the air.
"You should change that blade," someone snapped—then stilled. The steel's surface turned to stone; the incoming strike shattered it. Who could be so audacious as to tell the world's king what to do?
Rocks' hair streamed in the wind. Darkness clung to his fists—was it haki or something else?—and his punch struck Glengus' face. "Get out of my way!" he bellowed.
The name "Rocks" rang out from everyone — the Five Elders, the Holy Knights, the Navy, even the Roger pirates. The most reckless captain turned his head and looked to the sky. "Light up this canyon. It's too dark!" he cried. "Why call it 'God's Valley' — gods aren't noble!" The blackness he exhaled spread like a wound. He pulled at the gorge and tore mercilessly at its guts.
Sharn stared at Rocks' back and felt a madness seed in his heart: not merely to oppose the Celestial Dragons, but to be more wicked than the Celestial Dragons themselves.
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