The silence following Mihawk's declaration weighed heavier than the meteor he'd just shattered. The roar of the sea filling the craters felt distant, muffled by the metaphysical shock that struck everyone present. Perona, Kiku, and Korran stood frozen, wide-eyed, locked on their captain's impassive silhouette.
Issho's fingers tightened around his cracked bamboo cane, knuckles whitening. His usual stoic calm was fractured, revealing deep astonishment tinged with resigned sorrow. Through his unparalleled Observation Haki, he'd "seen" the absolute truth in Mihawk's words. This wasn't bravado or empty provocation—it was a fact stated with the certainty of a sunrise.
"Pirate King…" Issho murmured, voice hoarse, rusted by effort and disbelief. He shook his head slowly, a gesture heavy with sudden weariness. "Dracule Mihawk. The Lone Wolf. And now… aspiring to Gol D. Roger's throne." He stepped forward, sandals scraping the battered deck. "Your power… is undeniable. Your Haki mastery defies reason. But your ambition…" He paused, grappling with the titanic absurdity of it all. "…is a cataclysm in the making."
Mihawk didn't stir, his gaze as piercing as the hawk he was named for. "Power demands responsibility, Admiral," he replied, voice a thread of icy steel. "Or ambition. I don't fight for chaos. I carve my path."
Issho let out a low grunt, not angry but steeped in profound dismay. "Your path, Mihawk, leads to Sabaody—a powder keg teeming with ambitious pirates, slavers, World Nobles, and the seeds of a new era of madness. Do you realize what your presence there, with that declaration, will unleash?" He pointed his cane at the ship, at a trembling Perona, a pale Kiku, Korran masking his shakes with bravado. "You're going to recruit, aren't you? To grow this crew sailing with you."
Mihawk tilted his head slightly, an acknowledgment. "Precisely. A captain needs a crew worthy of his vision. Sabaody's a crossroads." His hand brushed Yoru's hilt. "I'm not there to torch the Archipelago. Only to find what I need."
A short, joyless laugh escaped Issho's lips. "'Only' recruit… Mihawk, your naivety is as terrifying as your strength." His voice hardened to steel. "A man of your caliber, proclaiming such ambition, seeking to build a crew… at Sabaody? That's worse than provocation. It's a detonator on a barrel of gunpowder. Your 'simple recruitment' will ignite greed, forge monstrous alliances, unleash forces even the Marines might struggle to contain. You're tossing a spark into a sea of explosives."
Mihawk's gaze sharpened, as if reassessing the man before him. "Then, Admiral Issho," he asked, voice low but carrying to the ship's edges, making his crew flinch, "what do you intend to do?" He released a sliver of his Haki, a subtle but crushing pressure that cracked the wood beneath his feet. "We both know where this fight leads if we continue. One of us dies here, today." He paused deliberately, yellow eyes locked on Issho's white sockets. "And it won't be me."
Issho didn't retreat. A strange smile, steeped in bitter wisdom and infinite weariness, curved his lips. "No, Mihawk," he admitted, voice oddly soft, almost soothing. "I don't think it'll be you. Not today." He tilted his head, as if to better "see" his opponent. "I sense it. In your Haki's flow. A faint fluctuation. You're not at full strength, are you?"
A fraction of a second. A minuscule twitch in Mihawk's left eye.
'He's figured it out, huh…'
Issho was right. Mihawk hadn't shown his true power—not even the baseline strength of the canonical Mihawk. Why? Simple. He wasn't just fighting Issho; he was protecting his ship and crew. That triple burden kept him from going all out.
'But you're holding back too…'
Issho hadn't fought at full strength either. In his past life, Mihawk always knew this Admiral was dangerous. Now, facing him, he could confirm it.
'?!'
A sudden dread hit Mihawk like a punch.
"Admiral Issho!" he roared, dropping all pretense of calm. His body tensed like a drawn bow, Yoru flashing from its sheath with a deadly hiss. Too late, he grasped the true intent behind Issho's resigned smile.
The blind Admiral raised his left hand, palm open toward Mihawk's ship, while his cracked cane briefly pointed downward. "Too late, Hawkeye," he murmured, voice tinged with strange melancholy. "You chose your crew. Protect them… elsewhere."
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
It wasn't a sound—it was the end of sound. The air tore apart, not from a blade but from an absolute warping of reality. Issho didn't strike the ship. He struck the space around it. A wave of pure, concentrated gravitational force, wielded with diabolical precision, enveloped the ship in a monstrous bubble. Not to crush it, but to displace it. Brutally. Instantly.
Mihawk, mid-lunge, felt the world tilt—not himself, but everything around him. The deck vanished beneath his feet, replaced by abyssal vertigo. For a nanosecond, he saw Issho standing on a vast, smooth circle of water where the sea had been violently repelled by spatial dislocation. Then came the scream of wind—no, of space itself ripping apart.
Perona's shrill cry cut off abruptly. Kiku clawed at the mast, but her hands passed through as if it were a mirage. Korran's curse morphed into a choked gurgle. Even Mihawk felt his muscles lock—not from fear, but from a fundamental violation of physics. His Conqueror's Haki erupted instinctively, a frantic black aura enveloping the ship like a desperate spiderweb trying to hold together an object being shredded by an insane current.
The sensation was horrific. It wasn't travel—it was expulsion. A wrenching. The ship, crew, and Mihawk were hurled through a tunnel of clashing forces—compressed, stretched, reality blurring into a kaleidoscopic nightmare of distorted lights and unbearable pressures. Time lost meaning.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
---
On the vast circle of calm, deep water where the titanic battle had raged, Issho stood alone. His left hand fell slowly. A thin trickle of blood ran from his left nostril, another from the corner of his lip.
Using gravitational power with such precision and scale—not to destroy but to instantly displace a massive object imbued with resistant Conqueror's Haki—had drained him beyond comprehension. His legs quivered slightly, and he leaned heavily on his damaged cane.
Silence returned, but it was different—empty, oppressive. Only the soft lapping of water filling the giant crater broke the stillness.
Issho turned his face toward the distant horizon, no longer toward Sabaody. Toward where, hundreds or perhaps thousands of kilometers away, a gothic ship must have crashed back into reality, like a fruit torn by a storm.
"Dracule Mihawk…" he murmured, voice rough from exertion but heavy with reflection. "You've chosen your crew. You protect them with… unexpected ferocity." He fell silent for a long moment. A breath escaped his lips, almost a sigh. "Perhaps… not all pirates are as bad as they seem."
Issho straightened slowly. He turned, his torn coat trailing like a shroud, and began walking across the water, leaving behind an empty liquid battlefield and the distant rumble of a sea regaining its balance.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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