The New World.
A deserted island.
A figure tore down through the clouds like a jet and speared toward the earth. At the last instant he bled off speed, boots kissing sand as a hard wind rolled out around him.
"This should be the place," Darren murmured, folding away the Eternal Pose and looking up at the tropical mass ahead.
Beyond the beach, rainforest ran unbroken, humid air hanging heavy as wet cloth. Trees rose in pillars dozens of meters high, and somewhere deep within, beasts called to one another in throaty roars.
"Truly worthy of Zephyr-sensei," he said, scanning the terrain. "Even after years away from the front, his eye for a battlefield is still sharp."
Their "withdrawal" from Marineford had been inevitable. In this climate, only a leader with foresight and judgment could find a viable sanctuary.
Zephyr hadn't declared himself an enemy of the World Government—but his choices, especially stepping in to shield Toki from CP0, had already put him beyond reconciliation.
Not only him; every officer who chose to follow him at that moment had crossed the same line.
And with the wife of Rogers Darren—now the world's most wanted man—under his protection, the danger around Zephyr had doubled.
This island, though, was perfect.
Treacherous currents knotted themselves into a natural cordon. Without flight, ordinary ships would never reach the shore.
Unlike winter islands or blasted deserts, the rainforest's climate meant food and fresh water in abundance.
And the canopy itself functioned as a cloak, swallowing smoke and footprints, denying the Government's informants even a whisper of human life.
Reliable, through and through—the old general had not failed him.
That was why Darren had entrusted Toki to him without hesitation.
If he'd left her with Garp, she would have gone missing in a day.
He smiled at the thought and let his Observation Haki stretch—
—and dropped his head without warning.
Tch.
A razor-bright golden slash shaved hairs from his scalp and sailed on to bite the distant sea, carving a trench a hundred meters long across the water.
"Straight for the head, huh? Tsk."
He eased back with a wry smile as a tall figure stepped out from the green gloom.
Gion emerged from the jungle still in uniform, boots caked with mud and dirt smudged across her jacket. She carried her golden Meito in one hand, fatigue plain in the set of her mouth.
Darren went speechless.
She leveled a bloodshot glare. "Couldn't you have come even later?"
He blinked—then his Haki spread and what it found wiped the humor from his face. His body blurred, a black streak cutting inward through the trees.
A minute later he halted at a rough clearing.
Up ahead stood a mansion in stark Wano style, jarringly out of place amid the jungle.
Sensing him, figures vaulted from the courtyard, tense for a heartbeat—then joy broke across their faces.
"It's Darren!"
"He made it!"
"Thank the seas!"
Yamakaji, Shuzo, Dalmatian—grimy, exhausted, but faces alight—surged forward, then faltered as a shared realization burned behind their eyes.
"Darren…"
He didn't seem to hear them. "How is Zephyr-sensei?" he asked hoarsely.
His Haki had already found two familiar flares in the mansion.
Toki—weakened, but stable.
And Zephyr—
The purple-haired old general who had once burned like a furnace, vast as the sea, now guttered like a lamp in a gale, clinging on with stubborn scraps of life.
"His injuries are grave," Gion said behind him, her voice scraped raw. "And he has asthma. These past days he's forced himself to keep the mansion aloft to shield us. He pushed his body far past its limits…"
Darren stiffened, then moved. He crossed the threshold at a run.
He found the old man in a guest room.
Compared to Marineford only days ago, Zephyr had withered. The severed arm had been wrapped in a crude dressing that could not hold back the slow seep of blood. He lay with short purple hair in disarray, breath ragged, fever staining his pale cheeks a harsh, unhealthy red.
A high fever was chewing through him.
"Two days like this," Yamakaji said, eyes rimmed red as he followed Darren in. "Barely conscious… There's no medicine on this island."
Darren clenched his jaw.
"Why didn't you go to sea to find a doctor—"
He cut himself off.
Idiot. How would they sail? They had no airship, no battleship, no way to break those currents.
"We tried to lash a raft," Dalmatian said, sinking to the floor with his head in his hands. "Zephyr-sensei woke up once. He forbade it. He was afraid we'd give away the location."
Damn it.
Darren leaned in and worked fast, checking heat, breath, the wound. His face darkened.
The fever was unrelenting, and a strange taint had threaded itself through the muscle around the severed arm—something corrosive that crawled deeper with time.
Severe trauma, relentless exertion—the immune system had broken under the load, and the toxin had found easy purchase.
Darren wasn't a master physician. But he had lived too long and too hard with battlefield medicine, with infections and poisons and wounds that didn't forgive mistakes.
His conclusion came cold and quick: this was beyond an ordinary doctor.
Only one of the world's finest—top of the entire Grand Line—could hope to pull Zephyr back.
To be continued...