Time, which had been frozen in a grayscale tableau, crashed back into motion. The world snapped back into vibrant, terrifying color.
The Cipher Pol agent, whose cruel sneer had been aimed at a helpless child, found himself staring up at a towering figure of righteous fury. The two men who had been holding Riven's small arms found themselves gripping nothing but air. They stumbled back, their minds refusing to process the impossible sight before them. One of them, who had been wearing sunglasses, ripped them from his face as if they were blinding him.
"What… what in the hell?!" one stammered, his professional composure shattering into a million pieces.
"My gods…" the other gasped, scrambling backward on the ground like a crab, his eyes wide with primal terror. "It was a kid! A second ago, it was just a little kid!"
"A demon! It has to be a demon!" a third agent shrieked, his voice cracking with panic. He fumbled for his rifle, his training warring with the instinct to simply turn and run. "Shoot it! For the love of the World Government, open fire!"
The command broke the spell of their shock. A volley of rifle fire erupted, a cacophony of bangs and cracks that ripped through the quiet air of Ohara. The nearby townsfolk, who had been watching the scene unfold in horror, squeezed their eyes shut, certain they were about to witness the strange man be torn to shreds.
But this was not the body of a boy named Riven. This was the body of a living legend.
<
The System's voice was a whisper of encouragement in the back of his mind. But Riven didn't need it. He could feel it. The world had slowed to a crawl. The bullets, arcing toward him with lethal intent, seemed to drift through the air like lazy fireflies. He could see the spin on each projectile, calculate their trajectories, and plot a hundred different ways to avoid them before the first one had even crossed half the distance. It was a level of situational awareness that felt almost like a nascent form of Observation Haki.
"I can see them all," he breathed, a grim smile touching his lips.
He moved.
It wasn't a panicked scramble; it was a dance. A fluid, economic masterpiece of motion. With an ease that was almost insulting, he weaved his body through the storm of lead. A slight tilt of his head here, a subtle shift of his torso there. Each movement was precise, minimal, and perfect. The bullets zipped past, tearing through the space where he had been fractions of a second before, harmlessly peppering the trees and earth behind him.
To the terrified agents, he was a blur, a phantom moving between the raindrops of a hurricane. He hadn't just dodged their attack; he had made a mockery of it.
Of course, even if he hadn't moved an inch, it wouldn't have mattered. He could feel the dense, coiled power in his new muscles, the sheer resilience of a body enhanced to the absolute peak of human potential. These standard-issue marine rifles, with firepower barely above the weapons of his old world's second great war, would have felt like little more than irritating pebbles against his skin.
"He… he dodged them?" one agent choked out, his voice trembling. "All of them?"
"Impossible! No one can move that fast!"
"It really is a monster! Report! Report to Lord Spandine! Now!"
The agents fell back, a wave of pure terror breaking their disciplined ranks. One of them, fumbling with his Den Den Mushi, finally managed to make the call.
Spandine's voice crackled through the receiver, sharp and impatient. "What is it? Have you secured the scholars?"
"L-Lord Spandine! We have a situation! A monster! It was a child, but it transformed into a man! A giant! He dodged all of our bullets!"
There was a pause, then a string of furious curses. "Idiots! You sniveling, cowardly fools! Are you wasting my time with fairy tales?! A child turned into a man? He dodged bullets? It's a simple explanation, you morons! He's a Devil Fruit user!"
Spandine's voice became a conspiratorial whisper, his own cowardice thinly veiled by bluster. "Just… deal with him! Use your best techniques! I, uh… have to coordinate the fleet! Yes, that's it. A very important task. Spandine out!" The line went dead.
A cold, humorless chuckle escaped Riven's lips. Spandine. As pathetic and craven in person as he was in the story. Some things never change.
His moment of reflection was cut short as two agents, having regained a sliver of their courage, decided to press the attack. They dropped into low stances, their muscles coiling.
"Soru!"
In a blink, they vanished. They didn't just run; they exploded forward, kicking off the air itself ten times in a single instant, becoming invisible blurs of motion aimed straight at him. The Rokushiki, the Six Powers. The signature martial art of the World Government's elite.
To a normal man, it would have been an inescapable, fatal assault.
To Captain America, it was a crawl.
"Hmph." Riven didn't even bother to raise his shield. He saw them coming. He saw the flicker of displaced air, the subtle distortion of their high-speed paths. He saw every feint, every shift in momentum. Their movements, which they believed to be god-like in their speed, were broadcast to his enhanced senses as clearly as if they'd sent him a written invitation.
He opened his arms wide, a gesture of absolute, contemptuous confidence. As the two blurs materialized, one aiming a devastating kick at his head and the other a chop at his neck, his hands shot out. Not with blinding speed, but with perfect, calculated timing. His fingers, now like steel clamps, wrapped around their throats, halting their momentum with a sickening jolt.
He held them there, dangling a foot off the ground, their legs kicking uselessly.
"Impossible…" one of them choked, his eyes bulging.
"He caught us… How did he even see us?" the other rasped.
Their terrified, disbelieving faces were inches from his. Riven's eyes, cold and filled with the righteous fury of a man avenging a world not yet dead, bored into them.
"You call that speed?" he said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "You, the so-called elite dogs of the World Government, who haven't even mastered the basics of your own techniques? You dare come to my home and threaten my family?"
He tightened his grip, a clear threat that sent a new wave of panic through them.
"To me," Riven declared, his voice dropping to a whisper that was more terrifying than any shout, "your 'Soru' is nothing. Your attack pattern was obvious from the first step. In my eyes, you move like turtles wading through mud."
"W-what are you?!"
He didn't answer. He simply acted. With a roar that was part rage and part catharsis, Riven slammed them down into the earth.
BOOM!
The impact was like a cannon blast. The ground shuddered, and two perfect, man-shaped craters formed where the agents had landed, dust and shattered rock exploding into the air. They lay at the bottom, broken and unconscious, a testament to the arrival of a new, impossible power on the shores of Ohara.