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"Dead… are you, Roger?"
Whitebeard exhaled slowly as he watched the Den Den Mushi's live feed.
"Farewell… for the last time, my old friend," he murmured, raising his drink—then froze halfway.
"This is—"
Across the execution platform, a sheet of black shadow spread, swallowing everything in darkness.
"Has the situation changed again? Is this Roger's contingency… the Marines' doing… or…"
…
"Captain…"
Shanks clenched the straw hat in his hands, staring at Roger's lifeless body and silently setting his own course in life.
"Hey! Shanks, look!"
Buggy's shout snapped him out of his thoughts. Shanks lifted his head—and his eyes widened.
"What… the hell just happened…?"
At that same moment, Mihawk, Doflamingo, and every person watching across the world saw it.
The impossible.
"What's going on?!" Sengoku roared, breaking from cover and sprinting toward the execution stand.
Garp's face hardened. In a blur, he was on the platform—
—but too late.
In mere seconds, the shadow vanished… and with it, Roger, the executioners—gone.
Standing where they had been was a single figure, its entire body cloaked in writhing, blood-red shadow.
"That's… Marine Hero Garp!"
"Yeah… but what in the world just happened?!"
Smoker swallowed hard. The crowd had thought everything was over, but in the blink of an eye, the execution had spiraled into chaos.
"Who are you?" Garp's voice was ice.
Roger might have been his enemy, but he had also been his friend.
"…Not talking?"
Garp's fist clenched, and he lunged. "Then die—!"
BANG!
The red shadow leapt upward, dodging the blow, and dropped toward the plaza below.
"Don't run! I'm not letting you leave!"
Another figure moved to intercept—
"That's… Admiral Sengoku!"
"Fufufufufu…" Doflamingo chuckled from his seat. "Things just got even more interesting… But that red figure—what is it?"
"Shockwave—!"
Sengoku transformed in an instant, his golden Buddha form unleashing a wave of force.
Had the crowd not already begun retreating when Roger's Seastone cuffs were removed, dozens would have been killed by the blast. Even so, the air trembled.
But no one noticed the other thing—the moment the red figure appeared, a sliver of black shadow had quietly slipped off the platform, sank into the ground, and vanished.
In a narrow alley, Alucard emerged in the guise of a resident he had consumed the day before, blending effortlessly into the crowd, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
The blood-red figure had been nothing more than a familiar, crafted from the souls of three beings he had devoured.
It had no attack power, no defense, and only triple the speed of an average man. It could dodge, but its intelligence was pitifully low. Yet unless its heart was ripped out, it would never die—it would simply regenerate, and it had three hearts to give. Only by destroying all three could it be slain.
Garp's punches could hurt it, but Sengoku's shockwave was like striking water—useless except to make it ripple.
That was the point. The familiar existed only to draw every eye, giving Alucard the perfect cover to escape.
He hadn't expected it to work so perfectly. He'd been ready to lose a few "lives" from the familiar to get away, but now that he was among the townsfolk, his disguise was flawless. No one could tell who he really was.
"…This is the place, then?"
A voice spoke from behind him.
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