The streets of Aleria had become a river of panicked citizens, flowing in contradictory currents. The air, usually filled with the scent of cloud-berries and high-altitude winds, was now thick with the smell of sweat and fear. Vesta and Atlas fought against the tide, the Mink's muscular form carving a path while the musician clung to his arm.
A sudden surge of the crowd nearly swept Vesta away, her rainbow hair a lost banner in the sea of distressed faces. A strong, furred hand closed around her wrist, tugging her firmly back into his wake. "Don't get separated, songbird," Atlas grunted, his voice a low rumble against the din.
Vesta blinked, sucking in a sharp gasp of air as she refocused, her heart hammering against her ribs. They finally reached the Aerie Guard command post, a structure built into the base of a central spire, but the doorway was a choked bottleneck of frantic guards and incoming reports.
Forcing their way inside was like stepping into a storm. The large, open room was a cacophony of shouting voices, the clatter of weaponry, and the frantic scratching of styli on slates. Messengers darted between desks, their faces grim. Vesta and Atlas stood for a moment, trying to wave someone down, but their voices were tiny, lost squeaks in a hurricane of noise.
Atlas's ears twitched, his head snapping up. "—reinforce the western cloud-ways! Now!" The voice, sharp and commanding, cut through the chaos. It was Altair Toschi, standing on a raised platform, his Kestrel Cloak dusty and his face set in hard lines as he barked orders.
"Altair!" Atlas bellowed, but his voice was swallowed by the bedlam. He tried again, his frustration mounting. "I am so over this!" he growled, his nubby tail lashing. He glanced down at Vesta, his eyes beginning to crackle with suppressed Electro. "Stay close. I'm about to—"
"NO!" Vesta yelled, grabbing his arm. "You can't! You can't do what you did to the apothecary!" She gestured wildly at the organized chaos around them. "They're all needed! They're all doing important things! If you knock them out, then what?"
Atlas's brow furrowed, his fists clenching. "Then what do you suggest? We can't even get through this mess!"
Vesta's face scrunched up in concentration, her bottom lip stuck out. Then, her guitar, Mikasi, bounced against her back with a soft thrum, as if offering a suggestion. Her eyes flew wide open, a brilliant, mischievous idea sparking within them. She punched her palm, a wide grin spreading across her face. "I have an idea."
Atlas crossed his arms, his skepticism evident. "Okay. Out with it."
Vesta's grin turned feral. She slung the guitar in front of her, her fingers finding the strings. "You may want to cover your ears."
"Wha—?" Atlas began, but it was too late.
Vesta struck the strings.
It wasn't a chord. It was a physical force. A wave of pure, concussive sound erupted from Mikasi, so loud it seemed to suck the air from the room. The glass in the windows vibrated in their frames, and a cloud of dust shook loose from the stone ceiling. Every single person in the command post flinched, hands flying to their ears, their shouts dying in their throats. All activity ceased.
In the ringing silence, Vesta struck the strings again, then leaned into the instrument, belting out a single, sustained note that rattled the furniture and made the very walls hum. Atlas, who had only managed to get one hand over an ear, cringed, his whole body tensing against the auditory assault.
Vesta continued, lost in the performance, a diva commanding a captive audience of stunned guards.
Finally, a figure maneuvered through the frozen crowd. Altair Toschi reached them, his expression a mixture of annoyance and disbelief. He placed a firm hand on Vesta's shoulder.
She snapped from her trance, the note cutting off abruptly. She cocked her head, smiling, and let out a giggle. "It worked! We finally got your attention."
Atlas slowly straightened from his crouch, his ears still ringing. He rounded on Vesta, his voice a roar. "NEXT TIME WARN ME! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?"
Vesta just giggled again, utterly pleased with herself.
Altair pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, weary sigh. "Why," he asked, the word heavy with exhaustion, "are you here?"
Atlas, still glowering at a unrepentant Vesta, caught his breath. "We know where the Storm-Callers are. Marya is on her way there now."
Altair's eyes bulged. Across the room, Zeke Fairbairn, who had been leaning over a tactical map, perked up, his head lifting like a hound catching a scent.
"Come with me," Altair said, his voice low and urgent. He and Zeke quickly ushered the two of them away from the gawking guards and into a quieter conference room, the door shutting on the slowly resuming chaos.
---
The western cloud-ways of Aleria opened up into a breathtaking, and now terrifying, expanse. The Cloud-Kelp fields were not a field in any earthly sense, but a vast, floating forest of rubbery, golden-brown seaweed, each frond as wide as a ship's sail and longer than three men. They rose from the misty floor of the White-White Sea in great, undulating groves, their surfaces slick with moisture and giving off a faint, salty-sweet odor that was the very breath of Aleria. The air hummed with the sound of the kelp shifting, a low, rustling chorus that was usually peaceful, but now sounded like a nervous whisper.
Tiny, glowing Luminous Moss clung to the kelp fronds in patches, casting a soft, blue-green light that danced and flickered across the scene, illuminating the panic. Between the massive stalks, herds of panicked cloud-sheep bleated, their thick, woolly coats snagging on the rubbery vegetation as Aerie Guard recruits tried to herd them to safety. High above, the shadowy forms of eagle riders circled against the bruised sky, their sharp cries cutting through the din.
It was controlled chaos, and at the center of it was Glen Tuul, her posture as sharp and poised as the bird she rode. She was barking orders to a group of guards when her keen eyes, accustomed to spotting minute movements from a thousand feet up, caught on two figures whose sheer size made them stand out like boulders in a stream. She held up a hand, stopping her subordinate mid-sentence, and strode toward them, her gaze fixed on Aokiji and Galit.
"You two," she called out, her voice cutting through the frantic bleating and shouted commands. "What are you doing here?"
Aokiji didn't answer immediately. His eyes, shadowed beneath his brow, scanned the scene—the frightened civilians being ushered along narrow pathways of packed cloud, the young guards searching with desperate hope, the vast, vulnerable ecosystem that was an island's larder. For a moment, he wasn't on a sky island; he was on a winterized sea, on a besieged continent, in a hundred other places where he'd been the one tasked with standing between order and annihilation. The weight of it was a familiar, cold cloak on his shoulders.
Galit's rapid-fire speech broke the former Admiral's trance. "We are here to help. We saw the message. We know where the Storm-Caller's base of operation is, and—"
"What!" Glen scrambled for the communication device on her belt, her cool composure cracking.
"—and we have already sent word to the Command Post," Galit continued, his long neck swiveling as he analytically assessed the terrain, the crowd flow, the structural density of the kelp forest. "Marya is on her way to their location now." His emerald eyes snapped back to Glen. "Any ideas on where the device may be located?"
Glen frowned, a sigh of frustration hissing through her teeth. "No. We're searching everywhere. It could be tucked under any frond, buried in any cloud-mound. It's like finding a single bad nut in a year's harvest."
While she spoke, Aokiji had begun to move, his large frame cutting a silent path through the chaos. He didn't rush; he meandered with a purpose, his head tilted as if listening to the landscape itself.
"If it were me," he murmured, his voice so low it was almost lost in the kelp's rustle, "I wouldn't hide it in a corner. I'd find a location that would cause the most collateral damage. Not just destroy the kelp, but break the island's will."
Galit, intrigued, fell into step beside him. "You're thinking of a support structure? A foundational cloud-mass?"
Glen watched them go for a second, then scrambled to keep up, the rhythm of her usual aerial command replaced by the uncertain pace of a ground-level crisis. "Where are you going?" she asked, her voice tight.
Aokiji didn't look back. He was heading toward the grove's gnarled, ancient heart, where the oldest and thickest kelp fronds intertwined with the very cloud-stone of the spire that anchored the fields, a place where the destruction wouldn't just burn a crop, but would tear out the very roots. Above them, the kelp seemed to sigh, its usual, gentle song now a dirge.
---
The Drift-feather Dock was a ghost of its former self, a skeleton of rotting cloud-wood and rusting iron clinging to the edge of the island. The air hung thick and stagnant, carrying the sour tang of decayed kelp and the musky breath of neglect. Marya's boots crunched on grit and broken shell, the only sharp sound in a place dominated by the soft, lazy lap of water against crumbling pillars. Jelly bounced beside her, a cheerful azure blob in the gloom.
"Bloop, Gloomy."
They rounded a corner, and there it was: a vast, sagging structure with the words 'DRIFT-FEATHER' painted in faded, peeling letters over a door large enough to admit a small ship. Marya's golden-ringed eyes scanned the entrance. "Stay close," she said, her voice low.
"Rescue time!" Jelly chirped, wobbling ahead with enthusiastic, if misguided, bravery.
The massive door groaned open before they reached it, and a handful of men and women filed out, their faces hard and eyes narrow. One of them, a burly man with a scar across his cheek, cursed. "You! Stop right there!"
Marya ignored him. A low, cool mist began to coil from the damp ground at her feet, slithering between the potholes and licking at the foundations of the broken-down warehouses. It thickened with every step she took, swallowing the scant light and casting the scene in a monochrome haze.
"I said stop!" another yelled, his voice rising with agitation.
But she was a specter now, a figure of straight-backed silence and a dead-eyed stare gliding through the conjured fog. She disappeared into the white-gray wall she had created.
"Someone tell Castor—" a voice shouted from within the mist, only to be cut short by a soft thud. Then another. And another. Bodies hit the ground like sacks of grain as Marya walked past, a wave of unconsciousness rolling out from her in an invisible tide. She didn't raise a hand; her will alone was a weapon that felled them where they stood.
Inside her cell, Jannali was sweating, her wrists raw from working against the rough cords. A familiar, cool dampness began to seep under the door, tendrils of mist curling into the room like seeking fingers. A slow, relieved smirk spread across her face. "About bloody damn time," she muttered to the empty air.
In the main warehouse space, chaos erupted around the calm, walking epicenter that was Marya. Figures charged from the shadows, weapons raised, only to crumple into unconscious heaps before they got within ten feet of her. From a shadowed corner, Castor Sabbah watched, his gaunt face twisting into a scowl. His plans, his prophecy, were being unraveled by a single, implacable woman.
"Marya!" Eliane's voice cried out from a makeshift platform.
"Rescue time!" Jelly echoed, bouncing happily through the fallen forms.
With a snarl of fury, Castor flexed his arms. A volley of sharp, durable quills shot from his body, whistling through the mist toward Marya. She didn't even break stride. With a subtle shift of her weight, she flowed around them, the projectiles embedding themselves harmlessly in the wall behind her with a series of solid thunks.
Cursing, Castor lunged for Eliane, his fingers closing like a vice around her arm. She screeched in pain and surprise. He was about to drag her toward a rear exit when the mist directly in front of him coalesced into Marya's form. Her foot, empowered by a surge of invisible Haki, snapped forward into his stomach.
The air left his lungs in a pained whoosh. He flew backward as if launched from a cannon, slamming into the far wall with a crunch of splintering wood and a gasp of agony. He slid to the floor, coughing, struggling to push himself up. He glared at Marya, who simply stood there, blinking once in silent challenge. His jaw flexed. Defeated, he scrambled on all fours, then lunged for the door. "Enel will…!" he began to shout.
But Marya had already turned her back on him. She took a half-step back as Eliane surged forward, wrapping her small arms around Marya's waist and burying her face in her leather jacket, sobbing.
"I was so scared," the girl whimpered.
Marya crouched down, bringing herself to Eliane's level. A rare, genuine smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Is this going to be a regular occurrence with you?" she asked, her tone dry but not unkind. "We may need to teach you how to defend yourself. You up for that?"
Eliane rubbed her tears away with the heel of her palm, sniffling, and gave a determined nod.
Marya gestured with her head. "Want to go get Jannali?"
"Yeah," Eliane said, her voice firmer. She snatched her headscarf from a nearby table and, taking Marya's hand, began leading the way, a little guide through the mist-shrouded warehouse.
They found Jannali in the back room, still cursing inventively at her bindings. The door creaked open. Eliane bounded in, and Marya stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
"Took you long enough," Jannali grumbled, though the relief in her eyes was plain.
Marya raised a single eyebrow. She unsheathed her kogatana, the small blade glinting. Kneeling, she sawed through the ropes with a single, smooth pull. She helped Jannali to her feet, her gaze holding the Three-Eyed tribeswoman's. Jannali looked away, the unspoken disappointment hanging between them.
"This can't happen again," Marya said, her voice quiet but firm. "You need to improve."
Jannali nodded, her usual bravado gone. "I know."
"If you like," Marya offered, "I can help you."
A little embarrassed, Jannali nodded again. "I think I'd like that."
Eliane tugged on Jannali's shirt. She looked down, and the little Lunarian handed her the missing headscarf. "Thanks, mate," Jannali said, quickly tying it back into place, the familiar fabric a shield restored.
Marya looked between them. "Do you know where your weapons are?"
Eliane bounced on the balls of her feet, pointing excitedly. "Oh, I know! They put them in a crate near the big winch!"
---
Castor Sabbah burst from the warehouse exit like a rat fleeing a flooding hold, the damp, rancid air of the Drift-feather Dock filling his lungs. His heart hammered against his ribs, not from exertion, but from a furious, burning humiliation. With a trembling hand, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a small, black device, his thumb finding the single, prominent button on its surface.
A shadow, vast and swift, swept over him. The beating of powerful wings stirred the foul air.
"Castor!"
He looked up, his pale eyes wide with a mixture of rage and terror. Zeke Fairbairn stood perched on a crumbling ledge, his eagle Kaya circling high above. With a grunt of effort, Zeke leaped down, landing in a crouch that sent cracks spiderwebbing through the weathered cloud-stone at his feet. He rose, blocking the alley's end, his stance solid and unyielding.
Castor skidded to a stop, his back hitting a slimy wall. He thrust the button forward like a holy talisman. "I swear I will do it! Don't come any closer!"
"It's over!" Zeke's voice was a low, steady rumble, cutting through the panic. "It's—"
A disturbing, cackling laugh tore from Castor's throat, a sound of pure, unhinged fervor. "Enel provides for the faithful! He clears the unworthy!" And with a shriek of triumph, he slammed his thumb down on the button.
A deep, rolling whump echoed from the distant western cloud-ways, a sound that was felt more than heard. A faint orange glow bloomed on the horizon, followed by a rising plume of dark smoke that stained the sky.
Zeke's face fell. "You insane bastard…"
Castor threw the device aside; it clattered across the stones, useless now. "It is done! As the great Enel would have decreed! A purification! A sacrifice for the new Birka!"
"You call starving children 'purification'?!" Zeke roared, his usual gruff demeanor incinerated by fury. "You're not a prophet, you're a bloody pest!"
They lunged at each other simultaneously.
Castor's body rippled, his skin hardening into a patchwork of mottled grey and brown chitin. Sharp quills, each the length of a man's hand, sprouted from his forearms and the back of his neck with a sickening, rasping sound. He was a walking pincushion of zealotry.
Zeke didn't transform fully. Hybrid form was enough. His frame bulked up, his skin taking on a tougher, segmented texture, and a potent, eye-watering odor began to waft from him, a smell like rotting onions and chemical waste.
"The divine thunder scours the weak!" Castor shrieked, swiping at Zeke with a quill-covered arm.
Zeke ducked under the swing, the sharp tips whistling past his ear. "The only thing getting scoured here is this dock, thanks to you!" He retaliated by releasing a focused burst of foul vapor from his palm—Stink Jet. The concussive blast of odor hit Castor in the chest, not cutting him, but making him gag and stagger back, his eyes watering.
"The False Gods cling to their earthly power!" Castor snarled, shaking off the disorientation. He flexed his entire body, and a cloud of quills fired toward Zeke like a volley of arrows. Zabaniya: Heretical Reminiscence!
Zeke couldn't dodge them all. He crossed his arms, his hybrid hide deflecting most, but a few found their mark, embedding in his shoulder and leg with sharp, burning pricks. He grunted, the irritating secretion on their tips making the wounds itch and throb. "You talk too much for a bloke who's about to take a nap!" Zeke charged through the pain, closing the distance.
He didn't throw a clean punch. This was gutter fighting. He grabbed Castor's extended arm, used his own weight to twist it, and drove a knee into his side. Castor wheezed, his chitinous armor cracking under the impact.
"We… we build in the shadows… so we may rise in the light!" Castor gasped, trying to bring his other arm around.
"You build nothing!" Zeke headbutted him, the impact making a solid thock. "You just break things! We're trying to build a home for everyone! Even stinky bug-men like me!"
Enraged, Castor released his Delusional Heartbeat, vibrating his quills to create a disorienting, rasping drone that scrambled the senses. Zeke flinched, his balance wavering for a critical second. Castor saw his opening and lunged, aiming a hardened, quill-covered fist at Zeke's throat.
It was a killing blow. But Zeke had trained for dirty fights. He didn't try to block it. Instead, he leaned into the strike, taking the hit on his already-injured shoulder. The quills dug deep, and he roared in pain, but his other hand shot out, clamping over Castor's mouth and nose.
"Breathe deep, you fanatic," Zeke growled, and let loose his ultimate technique point-blank.
Stink Cloud.
It wasn't a jet this time. It was a thick, visible, greenish-yellow fog that erupted from his pores, enveloping Castor's head. The smell was beyond description, a physical force that assaulted every sense. Castor's eyes rolled back in his head. He choked, his body convulsing, his pious proclamations turning into strangled gags. The rasping of his quills died instantly.
He collapsed to his knees, then onto his side, twitching, overcome by the sheer, uncompromising foulness of Zeke's power.
Zeke stood over him, panting, pulling the embedded quills from his flesh with winces. The distant fire in the kelp fields still burned. The sound of booted feet rushing toward them echoed in the alley. Other Aerie Guards arrived, securing the area, their faces grim as they looked from the captured fanatic to the smoke on the horizon.
Zeke looked down at the unconscious Castor. "Your god lives on the moon," he muttered, wiping a trickle of blood from his brow. "Maybe you should've booked a ticket instead of burning down the bakery." He gestured to the guards. "Get him locked up. And someone find me a gallon of soap. I think I got some of his crazy on me."
---
The air in the Cloud-Kelp fields was thick with the sweet, salty smell of the giant fronds and the sharp tang of panic. Aokiji, Glen, and Galit moved through the towering grove, their eyes scanning the shifting blue-green shadows cast by the Luminous Moss. The distant, frantic bleating of cloud-sheep and the shouts of evacuating guards created a dissonant symphony of dread.
Then, the world shook.
It wasn't a sound first, but a feeling—a deep, groaning tremor that ran up through the soles of their feet and vibrated in their bones. The massive, rubbery kelp fronds swayed violently, slapping against each other with wet, meaty thuds. A split second later, the sound arrived: a deep, rolling WHUMP that seemed to come from the very heart of the fields.
From the oldest, most densely packed part of the grove, where the kelp intertwined with the island's foundational cloud-stone, a sun was born. A raging sphere of orange and yellow fire vomited upwards, tearing through the golden-brown fronds, turning them to blackened ash in an instant. The concussion of the blast hit them like a physical wall, followed by a wave of scorching heat that stole the breath from their lungs. Chunks of burning kelp and superheated rock were hurled into the air, arcing like meteors toward the untouched parts of the field and the fleeing civilians.
Time seemed to slow. Glen's hand flew to her mouth, a pilot watching her world ignite. Galit's long neck stiffened, his rapid-fire mind calculating the inevitable path of destruction and finding no solution.
Aokiji moved.
He didn't startle. He simply turned, a deep sigh seeming to leave his body as he faced the cataclysm. His hands came up, not in a frantic gesture, but with a weary, practiced motion, as if he'd performed this thankless task a thousand times before.
"Ice Time."
The words were quiet, almost lost in the roar, but the effect was anything but. A wave of pure, crystalline cold shot from his palms, not toward the explosion's core, but at its consequences. The air itself seemed to freeze, pulling the moisture from the misty sky and the damp kelp. The billowing flames, reaching for the sky, were suddenly sheathed in a roaring funnel of solid ice, a glittering, frozen tornado that captured the fire mid-consumption. The flying debris—chunks of rock and burning vegetation—were caught in this sudden glacial gallery, suspended in beautiful, deadly tableaus.
He wasn't stopping the explosion; he was sculpting it. He funneled the entire, furious energy of the blast upward, channeling it into a single, frozen column that directed the flames harmlessly into the empty sky above the White-White Sea. The heat against their faces vanished, replaced by a sudden, shocking chill. The roaring fire was now a silent, captured spectacle inside a mountain of ice.
The silence that fell was deeper than before the explosion. The only sound was the gentle crackle of settling ice and the distant, confused bleating of a cloud-sheep.
Glen, her slate forgotten in her hand, stared slack-jawed at the frozen cataclysm. "This..." she whispered, her voice full of awe, "this is the power of an Admiral."
Aokiji shoved his hands back into his pockets, his shoulders slumping slightly as he became acutely aware of every staring eye. "Ah," he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck and looking at the ground. "Former Admiral."
The spell broke. A single cheer went up from a young guard, then another, and then the entire field—evacuees, guards, shepherds—erupted into a thunderous wave of applause and relieved cries. The Cloud-Kelp fields, the lifeblood of Aleria, were saved. The towering, frozen monument to Aokiji's power stood in the center, already beginning to weep in the warmer air, a temporary, melting miracle. Glen Tuul let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, her pilot's eyes seeing not just a saved crop, but the sheer, unimaginable scale of the power that had just casually preserved her home.
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