The atmosphere over Hachinosu had reached a physical breaking point. The black pillars of Marshall D. Teach's "Tartarus Gate" had encased the central plaza in a tomb of absolute darkness, a monolithic structure of Haki and void that seemed to delete the very concept of light. Within this cage, the laws of physics were suggestions, and the "D" was being tested against its own antithesis. Teach believed he had finally isolated the Storm, but he had forgotten one fundamental truth: the "D" did not just carry the darkness; it commanded the dawn.
The Union of Storm and Sun
Inside the suffocating cage of shadows, Teach roared, his voice layered with the three discordant tones of his internal shadows. His three-headed shadow flickered against the obsidian walls with a manic, purple intensity.
"Zehahaha! Look at you, Dragon! The great Revolutionary, suffocating in the dark! Die in the void! Let the history of the world end here, and let the era of the 'True Dark' begin!"
But Dragon didn't flinch. He stood in the center of the void, his eyes closed. He wasn't looking with his sight; he was feeling the pressure. High above the black canopy of the gate, the sky—the real sky—answered his call.
Dragon, using his absolute atmospheric control, had pulled a massive, concentrated cell of ionized lightning directly over the plaza. It was a weather system compressed into a single point of catastrophic potential. At that same moment, Luffy—bouncing in his Gear 5 form atop the very roof of the dark cage—reached up into the churning silver clouds.
Luffy's white hair lashed like solar flares. His hands expanded to the size of giants' shields, reaching into the heart of the storm and grabbing the massive, jagged lightning bolts as if they were solid gold ropes. The lightning didn't burn him; it became rubberized, bending to the will of the Sun God.
"Sabo! Move! Get the others back!" Luffy yelled, his body glowing with a blinding, divine light that began to leak through the cracks of Teach's darkness.
Luffy didn't just throw the lightning. He infused it with the "Freedom" of Nika—the ability to make the impossible real—and the crushing atmospheric pressure provided by his father from below. He merged the scattered bolts into one singular, colossal javelin of white-and-gold thunder.
"GUM-GUM: DRAGON'S JUDGMENT BOLT!"
The strike didn't just hit the gate; it pierced the top of the Tartarus Gate like a needle through silk. The divine lightning collided with Teach's darkness at the epicenter. For a heartbeat, the island of Hachinosu—and the sea for fifty miles around—turned pure, blinding white. The concussive force was so great that it shattered the bedrock of the island, sending tremors that would be recorded by Seismographs in the West Blue.
The thunderbolt struck Teach directly in his massive chest. The "Darkness" of the Yami Yami no Mi could not swallow it fast enough; the sheer volume of energy exceeded the fruit's capacity to absorb. Teach's multiple heartbeats skipped in a chaotic, arhythmic staccato. His eyes rolled back as the electricity fried his atypical nervous system, the lightning dancing between his three souls. He was on the absolute brink of losing consciousness, the "They" inside him screaming in a chorus of agony.
The Narrow Escape
As Teach's body began to slump, the black pillars of the Tartarus Gate flickered and vanished. They didn't just break; they dissolved into wisps of blue petals—a strange, poetic side effect of Dragon's atmospheric cleansing, turning the dark energy into harmless atmospheric dust.
But the Blackbeard Pirates were not yet defeated. They were scavengers and survivors.
Avalo Pizarro, sensing the collapse from within the very stone of the island, realized the battle was lost. Using his final reserves of the Shima Shima no Mi, he ignored his own shattered ribs and tilted the earth itself. He opened a jagged, toothy maw in the ground directly beneath Teach.
Simultaneously, Van Augur, bleeding from a dozen cuts but his hands still steady on his rifle, warped to his captain's side in a flash of spatial distortion. He caught Teach's massive frame before it could hit the dirt.
"We leave! Now!" Pizarro's voice rumbled from the stones, sounding like a mountain cracking.
In a fraction of a second, the core of the Blackbeard Pirates vanished. They didn't flee to the docks; they dropped into a hidden sub-sector of the island—a deep, subterranean bunker Pizarro had constructed miles beneath the surface, lined with Sea Prism Stone to mask their Haki signatures.
As they dragged a convulsing Teach into the gloom of the bunker, the man who never slept wheezed. A trickle of dark, viscous blood escaped his lips, and his voice was a mere shadow of its former roar.
"I... I will win... I will kill every... Monkey D... for my father..."
His eyes finally closed—a rare, terrifying sight for anyone who knew his legend. The darkness of the deep earth swallowed the defeated Emperor.
The Exhaustion of a Revolutionary
Back in the plaza, the smoke cleared to reveal a landscape of white ash and melted stone. Dragon appeared through the haze, his iconic green cloak tattered and scorched, standing in the center of the hollow where the cage had been. He walked slowly toward Luffy and Sabo, his steps heavy with the weight of a man who had just moved a mountain.
For the first time in his public life—away from the posters and the propaganda—the most wanted man in the world sat down. He slumped onto a pile of rubble, his breath coming in long, ragged pulls. Then, he let out a long, weary laugh. It wasn't the laugh of a victor; it was the laugh of a man who had survived a haunting.
"You did it, Pops!" Luffy cheered, his Gear 5 form deflating like a spent balloon as he landed beside Dragon. He looked exhausted but wore a grin that could outshine the sun.
Dragon looked up at his son, then at Sabo, who was extinguishing the blue flames on his arms. His eyes, usually sharp enough to cut glass, were filled with an uncharacteristic, heartbreaking softness.
"I am proud," Dragon whispered, his voice barely audible over the settling dust. "I saved my father. I protected my child. And... I kept a promise to a woman who is no longer here."
The Marines, led by a recovering Sengoku and a weeping Koby, and the remaining Straw Hats began a frantic search of the ruins. But the Haki signatures of the Blackbeard Pirates had completely vanished, erased by the depths of the island. They assumed the victory was absolute, unaware of the serpent nesting in the roots of the fortress. Slowly, the group began to move toward the Wind Granma, where Garp was finally stable.
Flashback: The Legend of the Rocks
As Teach drifted into the deep, forced sleep of the unconscious—the first time his three souls had all been silent at once—his mind retreated forty years into the past.
The scene opens not on a battlefield, but on a jagged, obsidian-shored island in a forgotten corner of the New World. Standing on the shore was a man whose very silhouette commanded the horizon—Rocks D. Xebec. He was a titan of power, his hair wild and his presence so heavy that the local wildlife bowed as he passed.
But in this memory, the "Terror of the Seas" was pacing. He was sweating. He was human.
Inside a modest, stone-walled cottage overlooking the sea, his wife, Eris—a woman of the "Davy D." clan—was in the final, agonizing throes of labor. Rocks gripped the doorframe of the cottage, his Haki leaking out in ripples of anxiety that cracked the nearby cliffs. When a sharp, healthy cry finally broke the silence, the man who wanted to be King of the World burst into the room, his knees nearly buckling.
The midwife, a weathered woman from the local village, handed him a small, pink bundle. Rocks took the baby boy into his massive, scarred hands—hands that had crushed the skulls of kings. The child didn't cry after that first breath; instead, he stared up at his father with wide, dark eyes that seemed to contain a strange, calm void.
"Teach," Rocks whispered, a giant, genuine grin breaking across his face. "His name is Marshall D. Teach. A child of the Davy D. lineage. The line the gods tried to forget."
For months, the most dangerous man on the ocean lived a life of impossible, fragile peace. Rocks told the infant stories of the sea, of the "Throne of the World" that sat empty, and of the true freedom that belonged only to those who dared to dream. He was, for a brief window in time, just a father and a husband upto the 5 years.
One morning, the call of the "Toronto Expedition"—a secret voyage to a hidden island in the north—became too loud to ignore. Rocks had to secure the resources for his grand plan to topple the Celestial Dragons. He kissed Eris and the young Teach, promising to return with a world to give them.
"I'll be back before the moon fulls again," Rocks promised, his eyes bright with hope.
He spent weeks at sea, fighting the Marines and rival fleets, but his mind was never on the loot. He wondered if Teach was eating and sleeping properly. He wondered if Eris was still singing those old songs about the sea.
Finally, his ship returned to the island. He carried three massive king-fishes, a gift for a celebration he had been planning in his head for weeks. But as he stepped onto the sand, the air didn't smell of sea salt. It smelled of ash, iron, and the cold scent of World Government "Order."
The village was a graveyard. The homes were scorched wood; the trees were stripped of leaves. Old men sat in the dirt, their eyes hollow and staring at nothing.
"They came," one elder wheezed, pointing toward the horizon where the white sails of the World Government were disappearing into the mist. "The Government... the God Knights. They said we were harboring a 'Great Sin.' They took the women. They took the children. For the 'Celestial Slave' tribute. They said... they said the lineage of the Dark had to be purged."
Rocks dropped the fish. He didn't speak. He sprinted to his cottage, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The door was hanging by one hinge. The cradle—the one he had carved himself from cedar—was overturned. The sheets were stained with the dirt of a struggle. Eris was gone. Teach was gone. His world had been harvested by the "Gods" he intended to overthrow.
Rocks D. Xebec stood in the center of the wreckage of his life. He didn't cry. He didn't scream. He slowly kneeled down, his fingers digging into the floorboards until they bled. When he finally looked up, his eyes were no longer those of a father. They were twin stars of absolute, world-ending fury.
He didn't want to be King to rule; he wanted to be King so he could burn the Heavens to the ground. The war for the family had started, and forty years later, the son was still carrying the torch of that fire.
To be continued...