The hull of the Dreadnought Thalassa had become a battlefield of angles and uncertainty.
The submarine climbed Reverse Mountain at a forty-five-degree pitch, its dark metal skin slick with spray and condensation. Every wave that crashed against it sent tremors through the frame, every falling chunk of debris from the cliffs above threatened to crush anything in its path. Overhead, Ember's Sparkler rounds burst in constant flowers of orange light as she picked off cannonballs from Shamrock's ship. Stray arcs of Haki from the duel above sliced through the air, close enough to scorch the metal and leave glowing trails in their wake.
And on that impossible surface, two women circled each other like cats preparing to spring.
Jannali Bandler moved with the practiced grace of a huntress, her sandaled somehow finding purchase on the slick metal where anyone else would have slipped. Her off-the-shoulder crop top was soaked through, clinging to her skin, and her skort allowed full range of motion for the fight to come. The stylish headscarf that concealed her third eye remained firmly in place, despite the chaos. In her right hand, Anhur's Whisper extended to its full length, the dark sea-stone tip gleaming. Her left hand rested on the strap that held her Echo Boomerangs, ready to deploy them at a moment's notice.
Twenty feet away, Alisa Copperfield stood with an ease that defied physics. Her dark navy Victorian pinafore dress should have been ridiculous on a warship's hull—instead, she made it look natural, as if she'd been born to fight on vertical, slippery surfaces. Her cobalt bob stirred in a wind that touched no one else, the white streak at her front a stark slash against the blue. Her grin—that wide, unnerving, permanent grin—stretched across her face, and her large, dreamy eyes watched Jannali with the curiosity of a child examining an insect.
But there was something else in those eyes now. Something that hadn't been there when they'd faced each other before at Ohara.
Hunger.
"Well, well, well," Alisa said, her voice carrying that melodic, distant quality. "The little huntress who whispers truths. I've thought about you, you know. Dreamed about you. Wondered what it would feel like to finally wipe that confident look off your face."
Jannali's brown eyes narrowed. She adjusted her grip on her spear, testing the footing beneath her. "Bloody hell. You again." Her drawl cut through the chaos like a familiar song. "I'd say it's good to see you, but I'd be lying through my teeth. Last time we danced, you ended up crying on the ground while I walked away."
Alisa's grin didn't waver, but something flickered in her eyes. Something cold.
"That was then. This is now." She pulled a pocket watch from somewhere in her dress—a beautiful antique thing that gleamed gold even in the grey light—and consulted it. "I'm not late anymore, you see. I've had time to practice. Time to learn. Time to become something you can't whisper away."
She pocketed the watch and drew her Vorpal Blade. The weapon looked deceptively delicate, almost like a toy, but Jannali knew better. She'd seen what that blade could do.
Jannali shifted into a combat stance, her spear angled forward. "Time for practice, eh? That's cute. I've spent time hunting things that would make your Wonderland nightmares look like fairy tales. Let's see if your practice paid off."
A cannonball screamed toward them from Shamrock's ship. Ember's Sparkler round met it mid-flight, the explosion close enough to rock the hull and send both women staggering. They recovered instantly, neither taking their eyes off the other.
Alisa moved first.
She vanished—not with speed, but with her Devil Fruit's power, her body simply ceasing to exist in the visible spectrum. Jannali didn't panic. She closed her eyes and listened.
The Voice of All Things whispered to her.
There, the wind said. Behind you. Left. Moving.
Jannali spun, her spear lashing out in a horizontal arc. It should have caught Alisa in the ribs—instead, it passed through empty air as Alisa's form flickered, part of her becoming intangible at the last instant. The cobalt-haired woman reappeared five feet away, her grin wider than ever.
"Close," Alisa said. "But close only counts in horseshoes and—"
Jannali's boomerang caught her in the back of the head.
The Echo Boomerang had curved around in a wide arc while Alisa was focused on the spear, striking her right between the shoulder blades. It wasn't a killing blow—the boomerang wasn't designed for that—but it was enough to stagger her, to make her stumble on the slick surface.
Alisa caught herself, her eyes flashing from sky-blue to glowing amber. "You hit me."
"You were monologuing." Jannali caught the returning boomerang without looking. "Happens every time."
Alisa's grin became something sharper, more dangerous. She launched herself forward, Vorpal Blade leading, her body flickering in and out of visibility with each step. One moment she was there, the next she wasn't, appearing and disappearing in a pattern designed to disorient.
Jannali closed her eyes again.
There. There. There.
The Voice guided her. She moved without thinking, her spear blocking strikes she couldn't see, deflecting attacks that came from nowhere. The clang of metal on metal rang out across the hull, mixing with the explosions and the roar of the mountain.
Alisa appeared directly in front of her, blade thrusting for her throat. Jannali swayed aside, the Vorpal Blade passing inches from her skin, and brought her spear around in a counter that forced Alisa to phase through it.
They broke apart, circling.
"You've gotten better," Jannali admitted. "Still telegraphing, though."
Alisa's amber eyes blazed. "And you're still relying on that third eye trick. I've been training for that, you know. Learning to fight in the spaces between what you can hear."
She raised her hand, and suddenly the world twisted.
Jannali felt it—a shift in reality, a bending of perception. The hull beneath her feet stretched, to warp, to become something other than metal. The cliffs around them rippled like water. The sounds of battle became distant, muffled.
Wonderland Mirage.
Alisa's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "Welcome to my world, huntress. Let's see how well your Voice works when nothing is where it should be."
Jannali opened her eyes. The world had become a nightmare of impossible geometry—the hull now curved in directions that shouldn't exist, the cliffs now hung upside down, the water now flowed sideways. Alisa's form flickered in and out of existence, sometimes whole, sometimes just her grin, sometimes nothing at all.
Jannali smiled.
"Nice trick," she said. "But you forgot something."
She reached up and touched her headscarf.
The third eye opened.
The world snapped back into focus—not the focus of normal vision, but the focus of truth. The Wonderland Mirage didn't vanish, but Jannali could see it now, could see the threads of illusion woven through reality, could see the real hull beneath the impossible geometry, could see Alisa's true position behind the veil of lies.
She threw another boomerang.
Alisa yelped as it caught her shoulder, phasing through at the last second but still delivering enough force to send her spinning. She reappeared fully, her eyes wide with shock.
"That's not possible. No one can see through my—"
"Your illusions are pretty, I'll give you that." Jannali advanced, her spear ready. "But they're still just stories. And I hear stories differently than most."
Alisa's shock became something else—fury, yes, but also something deeper. Respect. And beneath that, a hunger for something more than victory.
"You hear stories?" Alisa's grin returned, but it was different now. More genuine. "So do I. Tell me, huntress—what story do you hear when you look at me?"
Jannali paused. The Voice whispered.
Loneliness. Rejection. A girl who was told she was too strange, too chaotic, too much. A girl who built a world of nonsense because the real world didn't want her.
Jannali's expression softened, just for a moment.
"I hear someone who's been hurt," she said quietly. "Someone who's been told she doesn't belong. Someone who's desperate to prove she matters."
Alisa's grin froze. Her amber eyes flickered, uncertainty creeping in.
"That's—that's not—"
"It's the truth, mate." Jannali lowered her spear slightly. "I won our last fight by whispering your secrets. I could do it again. But you want to know something? I don't want to."
Alisa stared at her. The Wonderland Mirage flickered, unstable.
"Why not?"
"Because winning that way doesn't prove anything." Jannali raised her spear again, but her stance had shifted—still combat-ready, but less aggressive. "You've trained. You've grown. You deserve a real fight, not a psychological breakdown. So let's fight. Really fight. No tricks, no whispers, no mind games. Just you and me, on this stupid slippery boat, until one of us can't get up."
For a long moment, Alisa just stared at her. The chaos of the battle continued around them—explosions overhead, debris falling, the mountain roaring—but in that moment, it all seemed distant.
Then Alisa laughed.
It wasn't her usual cackle, the broken-glass sound of someone who had forgotten how to feel. This was something else—genuine surprise, genuine delight.
"You're weird," she said. "I like it."
She vanished her Wonderland Mirage, letting the world return to normal. The hull became a hull again. The cliffs stopped rippling. And Alisa Copperfield, for the first time in years, faced an opponent without her illusions between them.
"Let's dance, huntress."
They came together like opposing storms.
Jannali's spear became a blur—thrust, sweep, spin, each movement flowing into the next with the fluid grace of someone who had trained her whole life for moments like this. She used the slick surface to her advantage, sliding when she needed to, planting her feet when she didn't.
Alisa met her blow for blow. Her Vorpal Blade was faster than it had any right to be, slipping past Jannali's guard more than once, drawing thin lines of blood across her arms and shoulders. Her intangibility made her nearly impossible to pin down—she would phase through attacks at the last second, reappearing in a different position, always moving, always flowing.
But Jannali's Voice kept her in the fight. Every time Alisa vanished, the wind told Jannali where she would reappear. Every time she tried to flank, the water whispered her trajectory. It wasn't cheating—it was using every tool at her disposal.
A stray Haki arc sliced through the space between them, close enough to singe hair. Neither flinched.
A chunk of cliff the size of a cart crashed into the water nearby, sending a wave across the hull. Both women rode it out, adjusting their stances without breaking their rhythm.
A cannonball screamed toward them. Ember's shot met it inches from Jannali's face, the explosion rattling teeth and shaking bones. Jannali blinked away the afterimages and kept fighting.
Alisa's blade came in low, aiming for her thigh. Jannali's spear caught it, redirected it, and she brought her knee up into Alisa's stomach. The impact should have been solid—instead, Alisa phased at the last second, and Jannali's knee passed through empty air.
But Jannali had expected that. Her boomerang, thrown moments before, curved around and caught Alisa in the back as she reappeared.
Alisa grunted, stumbling, and Jannali pressed her advantage. Her spear became a relentless assault—thrust, thrust, sweep, thrust—each strike forcing Alisa to phase or block, giving her no time to recover, no time to breathe.
Alisa's eyes widened. She was losing. She could feel it.
But she wasn't done yet.
She vanished completely, not just her body but her presence, her sound, her everything. Vanishing Act. For one terrifying moment, Jannali's Voice went silent—not because it had stopped working, but because there was nothing to hear.
Then Alisa appeared directly behind her, blade raised for a killing strike.
Jannali spun—
Too slow. The blade was already descending.
But at the last instant, Jannali's third eye flared, and she pushed.
The world dissolved.
They fell into the space between heartbeats, the space between thoughts, the space where minds touched and truths were laid bare. Jannali had brought them into the mindscape—not to whisper secrets, not to win cheaply, but to survive.
Alisa found herself standing in a vast emptiness, silver and grey, stretching in all directions. Jannali stood before her, solid and real, her third eye blazing with inner light.
"What is this?" Alisa whispered.
"This is where I win my fights," Jannali said. "Or where I lose them. Depends on what happens next."
Alisa looked around, her dreamy eyes wide with wonder. "It's beautiful. Empty, but beautiful."
"It's my mind. Or part of it." Jannali gestured, and suddenly the emptiness filled—with memories, with emotions, with the weight of a life lived in hiding. Alisa saw flashes of Jannali's tribe, of the sanctuary island, of the deal she'd made with the Syndicate. She saw the fear, the hope, the desperate need for freedom.
She saw Jannali's truth.
And in that moment, she understood.
"You're just as lost as I am," Alisa breathed. "You're just better at hiding it."
Jannali's expression softened. "Maybe. But I've got people now. People who need me. People who make the hiding worth it."
She reached out and touched Alisa's forehead.
Not to attack. Not to wound. Just to touch.
"You could have that too, you know. If you stopped trying to prove yourself to people who don't matter."
Alisa's eyes went wide. Her lip trembled. For one terrifying, beautiful moment, she was just a girl—a girl who had been rejected, who had been told she was too strange, who had built a world of nonsense because the real world didn't want her.
Then the moment passed.
She pulled back, her expression hardening. "You're trying to mess with my head."
"No." Jannali lowered her hand. "I'm trying to give you a choice. The same choice someone gave me, once. You can keep fighting for people who see you as a tool. Or you can find something real."
The mindscape flickered. Outside, their bodies were still locked in combat, frozen in that single moment. But inside, everything hung in the balance.
Alisa stared at her for a long, long moment.
Then she grinned—that wide, unnerving, permanent grin—but there was something different in it now. Something almost... warm.
"You're still weird," she said. "But I'm not ready to stop fighting yet. Some things have to be earned."
Jannali nodded, accepting. "Then let's finish this. Outside. The right way."
The mindscape dissolved.
They snapped back to reality, their bodies completing the motion that had been frozen in time. Alisa's blade came down—and Jannali's spear met it, catching it, holding it.
They stood there, locked together, panting, bleeding, exhausted.
Neither had won. Neither had lost.
But something had changed.
Alisa pulled back, somersaulting away to land twenty feet down the hull. Her amber eyes watched Jannali with something new—respect, yes, but also curiosity.
"You're different," she called out. "From the stories, I mean."
Jannali raised her spear in salute. "So are you."
Above them, the mountain continued its endless climb. The battle raged on. But for one moment, two warriors acknowledged each other as something more than enemies.
Then Alisa vanished, and the fight continued.
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