Sea Circle Calendar, Year 1471 – Open Waters, South Blue.
The Tempest's Fury didn't so much sail as it screamed.
Every time the massive young giant, Oars, shifted his weight on the reinforced stern, the iron-wood timbers emitted a sound like a dying whale. The brigantine sat dangerously low, the South Blue brine licking at the gunwales, pregnant with the weight of Sinbad's ambition.
Sinbad stood at the center of the deck, his bare feet—calloused and stained with dried salt—gripping the slick wood. He was sixteen now, his frame having shed the last of its adolescent soft edges. His shoulders had broadened into a heavy, functional V-shape, the kind of muscle earned from hauling lines in a hurricane rather than lifting weights in a gym. His purple hair was a wild mane tied back with a fraying leather cord, though that one stubborn lock of hair—his ahoge—remained a jagged needle pointing north, as if defying the very wind.
He lunged. The air hissed, cleaved by the silver edge of Maelstrom.
He reached for the "Flow"—the Ryuo that existed in his meta-memories as a concept but felt like a stubborn knot of wire in his veins. He tried to project his spirit into the steel, to make the sword an extension of his will. For a heartbeat, the blade flickered with a dull, oil-slick blackness, a greasy sheen of Haki that promised to shatter mountains. Then, it sputtered and died, leaving only the smell of ozone and his own frustration.
"You're overthinking it, eggplant! You look like you're trying to pass a kidney stone, not swing a sword!"
Zeff stood by the galley door, the scent of garlic and rendered fat clinging to his apron. He was fifteen, already sporting a blonde peach-fuzz mustache and a scowl that could sour fresh milk. He had both legs—a reality Sinbad had authored by plucking him from the orbit of the Cook Pirates years early—but he moved with a restless, predatory energy, his heavy boots clicking a rhythmic clack-thud against the deck.
"The 'Flow' isn't a faucet, Zeff," Sinbad panted, wiping a mixture of sweat and sea spray from his brow. "It's a river. I can feel the current, but I can't catch the fish."
"Then stop trying to catch them with your bare hands and use a net, you idiot," Zeff retorted. He stepped onto the deck, squinting against the harsh glare of the midday sun. "Speaking of fish—if you bring back another Bottom-Feeder Sea King with that muddy, shit-filled aftertaste, I'm throwing the Captain overboard. Oars needs protein that doesn't taste like a swamp's colon."
Sinbad grinned, though the "Singularity" in his chest—that strange, pulsing core of Observation Haki and soul-memory—felt like a lead weight. "The Peach-Fleshed Kings are three days north. I'll get you your ingredients, Chef. Just keep the stove hot."
"See that you do. A crew is only as strong as its stomach. And right now, Oars' stomach is sounding louder than the hull."
That afternoon, the Singularity flared.
It wasn't a vision; it was a resonance. Sinbad felt a massive, thrumming heat signature deep below the hull—a biological furnace moving through the dark.
"Oars! Hold the line!" Sinbad barked.
The young giant, sitting cross-legged at the bow and looking like a mountain in a vest, gave a toothy, terrifyingly wide grin. "Got it, Captain! Don't let him bite you!"
Sinbad dived. The transition from the humid air to the South Blue's icy depths was a physical blow. Underneath the surface, the world turned a bruised purple. His Observation Haki mapped the abyss in wireframe—cold currents, schools of panicked silverfish, and the predator.
It was a Peach-Fleshed Sea King, forty feet of shimmering, iridescent scales and prehistoric muscle. In his past life, Yami Hirotoshi would have been paralyzed, a spectator to his own consumption. Sinbad just saw a butcher's bill.
He didn't draw Maelstrom. He needed to feel the impact. He met the beast head-on, the water rushing past his ears like a freight train. He coated his fist not in the black armor of Hardening, but in that translucent shimmer he'd been chasing.
Don't hit the skin, he told himself. Hit the soul.
He struck the creature's snout. There was no massive spray of blood, no shattered bone. Instead, a ripple of pure Will projected through the beast's nervous system. The Sea King's eyes rolled back, its massive heart simply forgetting how to beat.
When he surfaced, dragging the forty-foot carcass by its tail, Zeff was waiting with a rusted butcher's hook and a look of mild approval.
"Better," Zeff begrudged, though his eyes lit up at the quality of the marbleized fat. "Now, get to the galley. If you want to learn how to manipulate energy, you can start by controlling the heat on the stove. Searing this requires precision, not just a fucking blowtorch."
For three hours, the Captain of the Tempest's Fury didn't train with a sword. He trained with a cast-iron pan. Zeff was a tyrant, a dervish of kicks and barks, shouting corrections every time Sinbad let the blue flame of the burner flicker.
"Passion is just heat, Sinbad!" Zeff hissed, his own boots beginning to smoke as he demonstrated a kick-based cooking technique, the friction of his movements turning his leg into a glowing brand. "If you can't control the fire in your heart to cook a steak, you'll never control the black steel on your hip to cut a god!"
It was a primitive, raw version of the Diable Jambe—born not from a lonely rock in the middle of the ocean, but from Sinbad's relentless "overclocking" of his crew's potential.
By Spring 1472, the Fury reached "Dead-Man's Reef."
The town was a festering scab of shipwrecks turned into taverns, anchored to a jagged coral spine. The air tasted of cheap grog, unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of hidden daggers. As Sinbad walked the docks, his gold earrings catching the sun, he felt the heavy, predatory weight of the stares. 28 million berries. In the South Blue, that was a king's ransom.
He walked into The Gilded Hook, leaving Oars to guard the ship—a task the giant performed by leaning against the hull and eating a barrel of pickled cabbage. Zeff followed, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes scanning the spice racks of the market stalls with the intensity of a sniper.
A woman sat at the back of the tavern. She had dark, raven hair and eyes like polished obsidian, cold and sharp. Behind her stood four men in heavy, polished plate armor—out of place in a pirate den.
"The Purple-Haired Demon," she said, her voice a sultry rasp that didn't quite hide the edge of a blade. "You're smaller than the posters suggest."
"And you're Isolde," Sinbad replied, sliding into the booth. He could smell her perfume—sandalwood and something sharper, like gun oil. "The Pirate Queen of the Iron Currents. I heard you were looking for a navigator."
"I was looking for a partner," Isolde corrected, leaning forward. Her charisma was a physical force, a calculated lure. But Sinbad's Singularity absorbed it, stripping away the charm to see the tension in her jaw. "I have a map to a Sky Island current. But my ship isn't strong enough to break the cloud line. You have a giant. He can row through the updraft."
Sinbad felt a warning tremor in his Haki. A Red Herring. She wasn't looking for the sky; she was looking at the door.
"A tempting offer," Sinbad said, his charismatic mask settling into place. "But my crew is picky about who they bleed with. And my giant doesn't like heights."
"Is that so?" Isolde reached out, her fingers—cool and slender—brushing Sinbad's hand. For a second, the crushing loneliness of Yami Hirotoshi flared—the ghost of a man who just wanted a connection that wasn't a tactical maneuver. He let her hand linger, feeling the pulse in her wrist. It was racing.
"Tonight," she whispered, leaning close enough that he could feel the heat of her breath. "My cabin. We talk terms. Without the peanut gallery."
That night, as Sinbad stood on the deck of the Fury, he looked at Zeff and Oars.
Zeff was sharpening a set of knives with obsessive care, the rhythmic shing-shing of the stone echoing in the quiet. Oars was snoring, a sound like a low-frequency earthquake.
They were becoming strong. Too strong. He was "overclocking" their lives, stripping away the years of struggle and failure that had defined them in the original timeline.
If I give them everything now, Sinbad thought, a cold knot forming in his gut, if I make them legends before they've even bled, what will they have left to fight for when the real storms come?
He realized his charisma wasn't just a leadership trait; it was a gravity well. He was pulling these people into his orbit, but he wasn't giving them a choice. He was building a kingdom out of stolen futures and meta-knowledge.
He didn't go to Isolde's cabin. Instead, he reached out with his Observation Haki, expanding his awareness until the entire reef was a map of glowing heat-trails. He caught a specific frequency—a rhythmic clicking coming from the "Iron Maiden," Isolde's ship.
A Den-Den Mushi.
"Director," a voice whispered from the darkness of the wharf, carried by the wind. "The target is distracted. The 'Iron Maiden' is in position. Signal the fleet. The 'Singularity' is ours."
Sinbad's eyes went wide. This woman perhaps a pirate/queen (Pfft). Or She was a lure for Cipher Pol.
"Zeff! Oars!" Sinbad roared.
He didn't just shout; he let his Conqueror's Haki explode outward. It wasn't the refined blast of a Yonko just yet, but a raw, jagged wave of intimidation. The windows of the Gilded Hook shattered. The drunks on the pier collapsed into the harbor.
"Battle stations! We're being sold out!"
Across the bay, the fog didn't lift—it was torn apart by the prows of three massive Marine warships. Their cannons weren't the standard iron-sluggers; they were the long-range, heavy-caliber guns of a Buster Call vanguard, already glowing with the orange heat of a synchronized volley.
"Oars! Move the ship! Now!" Sinbad yelled, jumping to the rigging.
Zeff came sprinting out of the galley, two knives in his hands and his boots already beginning to smoke. "I told you that bitch was trouble! You were too busy looking at her chest to notice the handcuffs!"
"Less talking, more sailing!" Sinbad countered, his eyes locked on the lead warship.
A figure stood on the prow of the center Marine vessel—a man in a crisp white suit, adjusting his glasses. Beside him, Isolde stood, her "Pirate Queen" persona discarded like a dirty rag.
"Target confirmed," the man in white said, his voice amplified by a megaphone. "Sinbad, the Singularity. By order of the World Government, your existence is a Tier-1 Chronological Threat. Commencing termination."
The first volley fired. Twelve shells, each the size of a barrel, streaked through the moonlight.
"Oars! Shield!" Sinbad screamed.
The young giant let out a roar that shook the reef. He didn't grab a shield; he grabbed a spare mast of a nearby shipwreck and swung it like a baseball bat, the sheer displacement of air meeting the incoming shells.
BOOM.
The explosion lit up the night like a second sun. The Tempest's Fury rocked violently, the shockwave nearly tossing Zeff overboard.
"Sinbad!" Zeff yelled, kicking a piece of flaming debris off the deck. "We can't outrun three of them in this tub! We're trapped in the reef!"
Sinbad looked at the warships, then at his hands. The "Flow" he had been struggling with... the fear of the future... the guilt of "stolen lives." It all burned away in the heat of the incoming fire.
"We aren't outrunning them, Zeff," Sinbad said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. His purple hair whipped in the wind of the explosions. "We're going through them. Oars! Full speed ahead! I'll open the door!"
He drew Maelstrom. This time, he didn't try to force the Haki. He simply accepted the 'Singularity'—the convergence of who he was and who he had to be.
The blade didn't just flicker. It ignited in a shroud of pure, crushing blackness.
"Zeff, cover the port side!" Sinbad commanded, his eyes glowing with an unnatural light. "If a single Marine sets foot on this deck, I'm deducting it from your spice budget!"
"Bastard!" Zeff spat, but a manic, hungry grin spread across his face. "Just don't die before dessert!"
As the Tempest's Fury surged forward, a limping, screaming predator charging three giants, Sinbad felt the first drop of rain. The storm wasn't coming.
He was the storm.