Restaurant
"So, Captain… what's the next step?"
The silence lasted two seconds. Then the world broke.
The restaurant's windows rattled.
A low snap coursed through the walls. Glasses vibrated on the tables. A nearby customer dropped his fork. Another spilled wine on his clothes. No one understood why. But eyes widened. Bodies stiffened. Words vanished from every mouth.
The floor seemed to breathe.
Kalifa's eyes turned slowly. She felt it first on her skin—the invisible pressure of something ancient and wild. As if the air had recalled a time when kings ruled with their souls, not laws.
A glass slipped from an older man's hand in the back.
He fell to his knees, uncomprehending. His hand still clutched a spoon.
Riser remained motionless.
His eyes were open, symmetrical, and merciless. The left, alive, Mangekyō spinning slowly like a living gear. The right, glowing with golden intensity, devoid of compassion.
The Conqueror's Haki erupted.
Silent as a tidal wave that swallows without warning.
Customers slumped over their tables.
Waiters collapsed before they could run.
The sound of bodies crumpling mingled with the creaking of beams, protesting against the invisible pressure.
Kalifa kept her eyes on him.
Her throat dried.
Her skin prickled.
'This… this isn't ordinary strength.'
She braced herself against the table with one hand. Her wrist trembled. The floor seemed to give way beneath her feet.
"You're… testing me…"
Her words faltered. There was no air.
Riser raised a hand.
The energy retracted slowly, as if coiling the atmosphere around his fingers.
Kalifa's hair rippled like leaves pulled by a gravitational force that didn't belong to this world.
"You're testing me…?"
Her mouth formed the question. But the sound came out as an unrecognizable whisper.
Riser didn't answer.
The Sharingan spun with greater intensity now, and the space around his chair began to waver slightly—as if reality were about to peel away.
Kalifa tried to stand, but her knees buckled.
She gripped the chair. A second later, she fell sideways, her shoulder hitting the floor. The wood was cold. Her breathing, shallow.
'No…'
She pressed her palm against the floor. Blood pounded in her temples.
'I'm… fainting? But why?'
The sounds around her grew distant. The noise of the sea had vanished. The ache in her muscles felt like it belonged to a body no longer hers.
'He's… dominating me… with his will.'
'With his presence.'
She felt control slip away.
Her last thought came blurred, lost between memory and realization:
'Spandam… could never understand what this is.'
Her eyes closed.
Her consciousness slipped through her fingers.
Her body lay still on the wooden floor—surrounded by toppled chairs, untouched plates, and a silence broken only by the faint breaths of those not entirely extinguished.
Riser remained motionless.
No hurry. No reaction.
He watched for three seconds. Long enough to be certain.
Then he stood.
His boot touched the floor lightly. Without sound.
His coat swayed in the sea breeze, which now entered through the windows as if granted permission. The pressure had lifted, but the room still remembered.
He walked to Kalifa.
Stopped beside her.
His shadow enveloped her entirely.
His eyes spun again.
Kamui.
The distortion appeared without sound.
The air folded like melting glass. A black circle opened beneath her unconscious body.
Dark particles enveloped Kalifa with care.
Nothing forced. No trauma. No violence. Just transition.
Her body vanished into the dimensional fold.
The wood met the breeze again.
The Sharingan dimmed.
Riser turned slowly toward the restaurant's door.
He passed the unconscious bodies.
Some still breathed. Others groaned faintly.
But no one stopped him.
No one could.
The waiter collapsed near the entrance seemed to have tears in his eyes, even unconscious.
The bell rang as the door opened.
And rang again as it closed.
---
Sabaody Archipelago
The bubbles no longer rose.
The sky, once clear, now seemed sickly—a grayish-white brushing against the eternal branches of the giant trees. The main plaza was littered with bodies. Some smoldered. Others simply existed, motionless, staring into nothingness with glassy eyes.
Kizaru walked slowly, hands in his pockets, as if the weight of light were heavier that day.
"Oooh…"
The sound escaped his throat like a bored comment on a bad painting.
"…not one of them knew what happened."
His boot touched a pool of blood. The light around him wavered like molten glass. A piece of fabric caught on a trident trembled in the corner, stirred by a breeze that blew only for the dead.
"This is getting weirder by the minute…"
He stopped in the center of the plaza.
A headless body lay beside him. The head had rolled to the step of a fallen stall. One eye still reflected the sky.
"…but I can't say it surprises me."
The Den Den Mushi at his waist began to vibrate.
Purururu. Purururu.
The sound was urgent, repetitive, irritated.
He picked up the snail with the same calm as someone grabbing a fruit at the market.
"Hellooo…"
Sengoku's voice exploded from the other side.
"KIZARU. REPORT. NOW."
The light around him intensified. Tiny energy particles crackled like sparks on his fingers.
"Oooh… you're not gonna like it."
"Speak."
"Didn't find anyone."
"Anyone?"
"I mean… no one alive enough to confess anything useful."
Kizaru spun on his heels.
Bodies.
Kid pirates. Veterans. Desperate people who thought they could hide from a shadow by killing nobility.
"Not much left, to be honest. The attack was clean. Precise. No one saw anything. No Den Den Mushi recordings. No residual magic. No trace."
"AND YOU SENT AN ENTIRE EXTERMINATION SQUAD."
"Of course I did."
He nudged a pirate's arm with the tip of his boot.
"What's left is here. They didn't know anything. And even if they did… they're not in any condition to talk."
"You killed everyone?"
"Oooh… more or less."
Silence on the other end.
Kizaru continued.
"I'm the light. If I can't see who did this, then it's the fault of the shadows. And shadows, as you know… we erase."
"Kizaru, the Government wants culprits."
"I gave them bodies."
The Den Den Mushi crackled.
"Marineford's on the brink of war. Whitebeard is coming. And now we have three dead Tenryuubito—no trace. If the world finds out, the balance collapses. If we lose control, the world sinks with it."
Kizaru rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. The sun above was weak, as if it, too, avoided looking at Sabaody.
"What do you want me to say, Sengoku?"
"Say you have a name. A culprit."
"I don't."
"Say you're coming back."
Kizaru paused.
The air around him was thick. The bubbles frozen on the ground reflected the corpses like shattered mirrors. Some popped on their own, as if the place rejected any form of life, even the frailest.
"I'm coming back."
"Immediately."
"I'm… oooh… boarding a beam now."
He hung up.
The Den Den Mushi closed its eyes, as if relieved.
Kizaru stood still in the center of the plaza, among the dead. His reflection flickered in the scattered glass shards. The light surrounding him wasn't gentle. It was harsh, like the glare of crime scene spotlights.
He looked around one last time.
The plaza was empty.
But the weight was there.
He wasn't a man who felt guilt. But he felt exhaustion.
"Things… used to be simpler."
His hands clenched in his pockets. His body glowed.
The light swallowed his outline. His form dissolved into golden particles that rose like inverted solar dust.
BOOM.
The flash left a shadow cast by the bodies on the ground—as if their ghosts were still watching.
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