Jozu knew with a certainty that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that he had reached his physical limit.
To continue pushing further might cause irreversible damage to his body, to the very diamond that was his essence.
At that moment, Whitebeard's voice cut through his concentration, not with a command to stop, but with a booming, proud laugh.
"Gurararara! Jozu, you've done well!"
The praise, coming from the man he respected most in the world, it made him feel really happy.
A wide, exhausted grin split Jozu's face.
"Ron," he gasped, his voice raspy, "What should I call this move? I haven't thought of a name yet."
Ron tilted his head, a look of intense, almost manic inspiration in his eyes.
"If ten thousand beams is a 'Nuclear Blast'," he mused.
"Then two hundred thousand... that has to be a 'Super-Nuclear Blast: World-Ending Exorcism!'"
"Hahaha, a great name!" Jozu roared, no longer restraining himself.
"No matter who the enemy is, with this move, we'll exorcise them all!"
With a final, triumphant shout, he thrust his hands forward.
The two miniature suns shot out instantly.
An inch from his palms, they collided and merged, not with a bang, but with a silent, terrifying explosion of light.
The resulting sphere was no longer just bright; it was a hole in reality, a pure, white singularity that seemed to devour the very light around it.
It tore through the skies, trailing a long, golden meteor tail and in the blink of an eye, it plunged into the distant White-White Sea.
And then... nothing.
The sphere vanished beneath the clouds without a sound, without a splash, without even a single ripple.
The scene fell into a dead, eerie silence, broken only by Jozu's labored, ragged breath as he collapsed to his knees, his body having reached its absolute limit.
"What just happened?" one of the commanders finally muttered, his voice a confused whisper.
"Such a powerful attack... and there wasn't even an explosion?"
Ron, too, was filled with a confusion.
He had braced himself ready to slice through a world-ending shockwave.
But the surroundings were unnaturally, impossibly calm.
******
Far below, on the Blue Sea, the Straw Hat crew stared up at the "shooting star."
It streaked across the sky, a dazzling meteor trailing a brilliant tail, and then, with incredible speed, it plummeted straight into the ocean before them.
For a moment, there was only a beautiful, silent splash.
Then, the world exploded.
A deafening BOOM, a sound so immense it felt like the planet itself was cracking open, shattered the silence.
The ocean erupted in a colossal, churning pillar of steam and water, as if the entire sea had suddenly come to a boil.
The shockwave radiated outward, hurling a solid wall of seawater high into the air, a breathtaking curtain that stretched between the sky and the sea.
"Wh-what... was that...?" Usopp's voice trembled, his eyes wide with a terror that was shared by every member of the crew.
About ten seconds later, as the initial shock wore off, the sea itself began to tremble.
The Going Merry rocked violently.
"It's a seaquake!" Nami screamed, her navigator's mind struggling to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
"No—it's a tsunami! A massive one! RUN!"
But there was nowhere to run.
The sky abruptly darkened as the displaced water began to rain back down, a torrential downpour of saltwater and... fish.
Hundreds of fish that had been blasted from the depths, instantly cooked by the blast, began to fall onto the deck with sickening, wet splatters.
Then, the true shockwave hit them, a gale of such impossible force that it felt like the fist of a giant.
The Going merry groaned, the wood screaming in protest as the entire ship was lifted and tilted at an impossible angle, teetering on the very brink of capsizing.
"Everyone, to the other side—NOW!" Nami shrieked, her voice barely audible over the roar of the wind and waves.
"The ship's about to capsize!" Nami screamed, her voice piercing sharply through the storm of wind and waves.
At her warning, everyone who could still think sprang into action.
The Going merry groaned, the timbers screaming in protest as it listed precariously, its deck angled at a horrifying forty-five degrees.
"Got it! Gum-Gum—!" Luffy reacted instantly, his arm shooting out like a whip to grab the railing on the opposite, rising side of the ship.
With a powerful, straining yank, he threw his entire rubbery weight against the tilt.
Zoro and Sanji followed suit, digging their heels into the tilting deck, their muscles straining as they threw their combined, monstrous strength in the opposite direction to prevent the ship from flipping completely.
After a desperate, heart-stopping struggle, the Going merry finally stabilized amidst the violent rocking, narrowly avoiding disaster.
It was Zoro who noticed it first, his brow furrowed as he glared at the towering, sky-rending tsunami forming on the horizon.
His gaze dropped to the sea around them, and his frown deepened.
The water level was dropping at an unnatural, alarming rate.
Slowly, horribly, the strange, dead island began to rise from the sea, its barren, crater-riddled surface slick with water and exuding an oppressive, tomb-like aura.
"Everyone," Zoro said, his voice a low, urgent calm in the midst of the chaos.
"If we don't move now, we're all dead. That strange island has surfaced."
"What?!" Nami gasped and rushed to the other side of the ship.
There it was, a massive, barren island now fully exposed, a horrifying landscape of death.
"The water..." her voice trembled, her face turning pale with a navigator's dread.
"The water is receding!"
She understood better than anyone what this meant: the faster the sea level dropped, the larger and more powerful the incoming tsunami would be.
"Ten meters!" Usopp shrieked, his voice cracking with despair as he pointed at the newly exposed, jagged rocks at the island's base.
"The sea level has dropped at least ten meters! We're done for! We're done for—we're going to die!" he wailed, tears and snot mixing together as he ran frantically around the deck.
"We're doomed! We're all going to die!" Chopper cried hysterically, running in panicked circles right behind him.
Sanji sighed, calmly lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag.
"Instead of wasting energy screaming," he said, turning to Zoro.
"Moss-head, if you don't want to die, get over here and help."
Zoro scoffed, but sheathed his swords and moved to the helm.
With a grimace of pure determination, he spun the wheel, turning the Merry's bow to face the towering, oncoming wall of water.
"Zoro, what are you doing?!" Usopp screamed, his eyes wide with terror.
"Are you trying to get us all killed?!"
At that critical moment, Nami's voice cut through the panic like a knife.
"USOPPPP, shut the hell up!" Her tone was so sharp, so filled with absolute authority, that even Luffy flinched.
With all eyes on her, she quickly steadied herself, her navigator's mind taking over.
"The best way to survive a tsunami is to head for deeper water," she explained, her voice a calm, steady anchor in the storm.
"We're in the suction zone. The wave is pulling the ocean towards it. Our only chance is to use that pull, to let it drag us out to sea where we can ride over the crest."
Usopp was stunned into silence, the logic of her terrifying plan cutting through his fear.
Deeply ashamed, he immediately sprang into action, tightening sails and beginning emergency repairs.
Chopper, still wailing, looked up at the now-dark sky.
"What's happening?" his voice was filled with a child's terror and confusion.
"We were just quietly watching a shooting star—how did the entire sky turn pitch black after one flash?"
-----------------------------
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