"Rocks Pirates must be wiped out — thrown into the depths of Impel Down forever!"
Zephyr's cloak whipped like a banner. He stood in his prime, purple hair striking against the battlefield. The confidence in his stance, the body unburdened by later asthma and age, made him someone very different from the forlorn figure he would become.
At his peak he had mastered the Navy's Six Forms and wielded two types of Haki with effortless skill — a general-level brawler and strategist who could, years later, still hold his own against Admirals. Now he faced Kaido.
"Kaido!" Zephyr called.
"Zephyr!" Kaido answered. The youth was no pushover — his natural monstrous strength and raw power meant he already matched what would later be called the Three Disasters. But Kaido faced an Admiral whose Haki had suffered least from Rocks's darkness — a standing-tier general, Zephyr himself.
"Do you know what lies beneath the fifth stratum of Impel Down?" Zephyr asked, dropping his glove and stepping forward. Haki swirled over his fists, then vanished into motion. In Kaido's eyes, the purple gleam disappeared and thunder cracked. Zephyr's rare General Punch met Kaido blow for blow, and the gulf in their strength became plain. Still — animal-type vitality and strength let Kaido hang on.
"You look like you're done for," Sharn teased Kaido. He watched Kaido with a grin — Sharn himself was fighting non-stop, combining the Navy Six and his clan's electric energy. He'd mixed the Blue Dragon fruit's properties into his body: speed, power, and electricity braided into motions that looked like sword slashes even though they were punches. Sharn's ferocity drew Kaido's ire — and Kaido's temper rose.
"You talk a lot," Kaido roared. "You crazy kid! All offense and you'll be cut to shreds!"
"I'm fine — watch out for the purple-haired man's fist!" Sharn clamored, and Bogard struck.
Bogard had been engaging Sharn at range with sword-waves; now he cut close. Where Sharn's attacks paired raw speed and electric-laced Haki, Bogard's blade flashed as if to sever the world in two.
"You have you heard of the name 'Black-Sword'?" Bogard said as he slashed. The blade was wrapped in Armament Haki, black as night. The sword's presence itself felt keen enough to cleave everything.
When fighting at range, Sharn relied on speed, slip, and slashing sword-aura — but Bogard erupted into a swordwave strong enough to shatter bone. The kind of intimidation that comes not solely from Conqueror's Haki, but from a practiced, terrifying focus. Many ace swordsmen cultivate that stare; a blade tempered by life, battle and resolve hones an eye that freezes ordinary men. Behind Bogard's goggles was that same razor focus: years with Garp had polished him into this edge.
"Kid, don't underestimate my swordcraft." Bogard warned. He hadn't yet forged a black blade, but this momentary black-honed sword proved he'd climbed to another level. Live long enough, sharpen your Haki, and the day would come when a true black blade could be cast.
"Black-Sword Bogard?" Sharn heard the name and felt a pang. Even thirty-eight years later, Bogard would never possess a famed black blade. What had the years taken from him? What trials had carved out the man he'd later become — quiet, restrained, no longer openly blazing? Sharn watched the era's tide of choices play out in real time: why some men fell into obscurity while others rose to legend.
"You hear me?" Sharn demanded. "Your sword — will it always just cut? Will it become a black blade? Have you ever doubted your justice so much you stopped moving forward?" Sharn's words were rhetorical — the sea is littered with losers who sink without their names being remembered. Failure outnumbers triumph.
Bogard's short answer came with steel: "Do you know what you're talking about? I am Black-Sword Bogard — I swore to be the Navy's first swordmaster Admiral!" His black blade slashed out, sword aura cutting a rift for hundreds of meters. Sharn crossed both arms as a counter, forming a varnished wall of Haki and purple electricity.
"Armament: Iron Block!" he roared; dragon-scale in his human-beast form rose and armored his forearms. Sharn stared at Bogard. In hindsight, he thought that this Bogard was not the withdrawn veteran of later years. This Bogard still blazed with righteous rage and lacked the muted restraint that would later shadow him.
"Your resolve is weak," Sharn barked. "Bogard, I can't see the future you imagine! If your sword is only this level, my fists will build to match it." Bogard's aura crashed on Sharn's defense — the clash shot shockwaves outward. Sharn's Haki concentrated to form a thin, black glaze as he poured electricity and form into the strike.
"My sword will cut through all!" Bogard's voice thundered from behind dark goggles. In this moment he was not yet the man who would bury his ambition — he was raw and fierce. Sharn used a flurry of punches, invisible Haki riding them. "Black-Sword One-Character Slash!" Bogard vanished into a single perfect line of light. Sharn's dozens of punches spat back — a collision rocked the valley.
Fueled by Buckin's stimulant, Sharn's hunger to fight was tireless. He moved like a creature whose health bar refused to drop. With no high-level Armament yet, Sharn's dragon-scales remained impervious to Bogard's blade — but Bogard stared at him like an artist measuring his metal against a living anvil.
After another titanic exchange, Sharn erupted into his dragon form and breathed heat-laden shockwaves at Bogard. The battlefield around Rocks split into sectors. At the harbor's edge, a teenaged recruit named Dragon delivered a punch that sent a pirate flying — and even then, a forty-year-old Garp paid Dragon's youthful meddling little mind.
That boy, Dragon, was the Navy's rising star — Garp's son, trained early for duty. The Navy had intended Zephyr to form a special training cadre. A young Dragon fought because he believed in the right cause; but witnessing God Valley's carnage, doubt gnawed at him. On the field he saw Sharn in monstrous dragon shape and thought, "Is that a Rocks newbie?" Bogard lunged at Dragon, cutting arcs through the air to warn the recruit.
"Slice his head off, that bastard!" a sailor jeered. Dragon's first impression of Sharn was explosive disdain. Sharn, for his part, declared: "I'm immortal!" — lunging as a human-beast with purple electricity in his claws. Dragon squinted up at the brash rookie — he was younger than Dragon himself.
As the shockwaves rolled, reporters who had come to record the slaughter were intercepted and rounded up. Sharn strode from the ruins to the harbor and watched the ever-growing fleet of warships and pirate vessels piling in.
"Is my fist strong enough?" Sharn thought — a black sheen crawled over his knuckles. Haki was hardening through relentless combat. Bogard's gaze was unblinking; he watched the blood-splattered, still-smiling new pirate before him and wondered why, in the midst of doom, they all had the gall to grin.
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