A suffocating hush gripped Fish-Man Island; even the air felt frozen. The sky dimmed, washing all color from the world.
Crimson-black lightning flooded the heavens before Darren's eyes. Space itself shuddered beneath the crushing pressure, warping into wavering ripples.
Bolts of that lightning flickered in and out of being—roaring as celestial dragons one instant, hardening into iron chains the next—coiling tight and pinning the Marine Vice Admiral in place.
Darren's brow knit. Shock slammed through him.
He couldn't move.
The Dragon's Breath he'd been about to unleash—the blast that would have pulped Kozuki Oden's skull—was driven back down by that colossal will.
His right hand, still clamped around Oden, went numb. Strength drained out of it.
Is this what Green Bull felt in the Wano story? he wondered.
The sense of doom was suffocating.
It was the aura of the man who would be Pirate King.
With a heavy thud, Oden slipped from Darren's loosening grip and collapsed, gulping for air, eyes still wide from brushing past death, face drained to paper white.
Darren didn't look back. A cold smile tugged at his mouth as, stiff with resistance, he turned his head.
"So you couldn't help yourself after all, Roger?"
His gaze, sharp with mockery, fixed on the man whose Conqueror's Haki raged like a storm, crimson-black lightning crackling around him.
"I thought everyone had their moment to shine?"
Facing that oppressive presence, every pore on Darren's body prickled. He spared no thought for Oden.
Roger's hand had already half-drawn his blade. Wind tore at his black hair and blood-red captain's cloak while lightning crawled across him, making him look like a war god come to earth.
"Indeed," he said, his voice resonant with Conqueror's Haki. "Now it's my turn."
Either missing or ignoring the mockery, Roger grinned wide. "Oden's a seedling of the new era. I can't just let you rip him out."
Darren snorted. "Isn't he a few years older than me?"
Roger's smile twitched; awkwardness flashed across his face. He had no retort. This terrifying Marine kid was barely twenty-two or twenty-three—by Roger's own standards, clearly part of the "new era."
A seedling? Power, body, resolve—this boy was a towering tree, branches thrust into the sky.
"Brat Darren," Roger admitted, battle lust burning into his eyes, "you've grown too fast. Even I have to admit you're already beyond Oden. There's no point letting him fight you."
He drew his famed blade in full, its dark-red sheen sparking with force.
One of the Twelve Supreme Grade swords—Ace.
"Fight me instead."
Darren's lip curled. "So you still don't want Kozuki Oden to die by my hand? What was that lecture for?"
"When you're winning, you preach about 'letting everyone walk their path.' When you aren't, you start babbling about 'protecting new-era seedlings.' What a hypocrite you are, Gol D. Roger."
Roger's face darkened. Words failed him for a beat.
Color rose to his cheeks; his teeth clicked. "Shut it, brat! I haven't forgotten how you yanked my pants down last time!"
He blasted forward like a cannon shot, fury made flesh.
"Now that's more like it—spare me the lofty ideals."
Feeling that crushing pressure bear down, Darren's grin turned feral.
"The sea's law is simple—the strong eat the weak."
He spread his arms, laughter rolling over the waves as his cloak snapped behind him.
"Same old rule—victory is justice!"
The instant the words left him, a sinister, crimson-black surge burst from his brow and ripped through his body like molten metal. A hellish aura, fused to his monstrous vitality, detonated outward.
BOOM!
A crimson torrent of Conqueror's Haki erupted, spiraling into a vortex around him, ramming straight into Roger's overwhelming will.
"This… is Demon Form?!"
"Impossible!"
"That's Bullet's signature—tempered by sheer brutality!"
"…"
The Roger Pirates recoiled, faces bleaching as Darren's demonic pressure fell. They could barely believe it.
Demon Form: a technique that wrenched open reservoirs of Haki, ramping strength, speed, and explosive power to murderous extremes. Use it, and you became a living demon that tore through anything in its path.
Bullet had forged it himself. Mastery demanded a superhuman body and a will hard enough to endure the strain of that flood of Haki.
Even Rayleigh—the "teacher" who had guided Bullet—had never mastered it. And yet a Marine had? Darren had?
"Hahahaha! So you've crossed blades with that punk Bullet already? Good!" Roger roared, springing high. He set both hands to the hilt and brought the blade down in a thunderous arc.
Lightning seemed to gather in the stroke, blowing back everything before it as the air buckled and twisted into warped waves. A strike to make demons flee.
Darren answered with a savage laugh, blowing past Roger's pressure as his own will surged. An eerie crimson ringed his pupils.
Observation Haki: Magnetic Field Sensing.
Armament Haki: Demon Form.
Indestructible physique, Soru's godspeed, a giant's raw power—every skill he possessed fused under a fully focused mind.
"Come on," he snarled, baring his teeth.
Force crackled around his clenched fist.
The memory of that first meeting—the near-fatal stroke that had almost cut him in half when he left the North Blue—vanished.
"Today, I, Rogers Darren… finally have the right to stand before you!"
Two men, drunk on battle, locked eyes. Lightning leapt and hissed in the space between them.
A blade flashed down.
A fist drove up to meet it.
"Divine Departure!"
"Demon Form: Undersea Descent!"
The heavens buckled.
Every eye went wide.
For an instant, the world held its breath.
BOOM!!
A storm detonated—thunder and lightning tearing the sky to pieces.
Fish-Man Island heaved, buildings pitching as if in an earthquake.
Ryugu Palace guards spun like ragdolls. Structures ripped free. The ground split, vomiting up towering walls of water.
And then—
The Marine Vice Admiral's blood-smeared form shot out of the storm's core, hurtled a few hundred meters, and cratered into the ground. He hit on one knee and one hand, gouging a long furrow through the earth.
Blood streamed from his right arm, pattering the ground—proof of the ruin carved there by Roger's blade.
Yet under the Roger Pirates' horrified stares, the Marine ignored the wound. Eyes shot with red, a wild, near-mad laughter tore out of him.
Conqueror's Haki: +1.04!
To be continued...