What is he trying to pull?
Leave the rest to him? Can he even do it?
He's weaker than me—what could he possibly…
Lucci stared, stunned, at Kai's back. With this many pirates—and a human wall of hostages inching forward—what "way out" could there be? He racked his brain and came up empty.
He's lost it… he has to be.
Kai kept walking until he stood less than five meters from the trembling hostages. They shuffled to a halt, eyes wet, voices shaking.
"P-please don't hurt us."
"We don't want to die…"
"Relax," Kai said softly. "You won't."
That calmed them a little. It piqued someone else even more.
Across the cordon, Sword-Lion Gart barked a laugh. "They live or die when I say so, brat. What are you guaranteeing with that tiny body of yours? I lift a finger and every last one of them—" he snapped— "drops."
A faint crimson spark flickered in Kai's eyes, then dimmed as he smoothed his breath. He smiled. "You're wrong. Right now, you can't decide anything about them. I can."
"Putting on a show?" Gart's smile thinned. "You get two choices."
He raised a hand, counting them off.
"First: butcher the hostages, cut your way through a few men, and die by my hand.
Second: surrender now and die quickly—then they walk away."
Around him, pirates jeered.
"You heard the boss!"
"Pick one!"
"Will the 'rescuers' slit their own charges to live? I'd pay to see it!"
In the shadows, two figures in pure white—tall, thin, faces masked like pale beasts—watched unseen. CP0's Joelff and Ress had been there the whole time, erased by Joelff's presence-shrouding Devil Fruit.
"Intervene?" Ress murmured.
"Not yet," Joelff said. "I want to see what Lucci chooses. Kill the hostages— or be killed behind them? We grade him after he decides."
Ress's gaze slid to Kai. "And the little one? He hasn't flinched once. You think he actually has a way out?"
"Be serious," Joelff said. "Four years old. Even if he's competent, there's no 'way out' here without outside help. He'll pay for that arrogance in blood."
Back in the open, Kai lifted his chin toward Gart. "There's a third option."
Gart snorted. "Can't pick, so you made one up? Fine. Humor me."
Every eye—pirates, hostages, CP0, Lucci—fixed on Kai.
"The third option is…" Kai's voice dropped, clear as a bell. "Put everyone to sleep. Pirates, plants, and pawns—all of them. When they're down, the crisis ends."
Before anyone could laugh—
Kai closed his eyes, then snapped them open.
"Watch closely," he said. "This is my answer."
Power surged.
Something vast and invisible coiled out from him, pressure stacking, tightening—then detonated.
BOOM.
Conqueror's Haki erupted from Kai like a volcanic shockwave, his will flooding the warehouse in a widening circle. Air buckled. Torches guttered. Knees hit stone.
Bodies toppled like wheat before a scythe—pirates and the hostages both crumpling into harmless, dreamless sleep. Blades clanged from limp fingers. The tide of killing intent evaporated, smothered beneath a single, overwhelming will.
The wave kept rolling—fifty meters, eighty, a full hundred—until the whole killing ground fell silent.
Dust drifted. Someone's helmet rang once on the floor and went still.
And then—amid the field of collapsed bodies—a few shapes resisted the pressure. A vein stood in Gart's temple as he ground his teeth, boots gouging furrows.
He forced his head up, eyes bloodshot, and grinned at Kai through the weight.
"…So you're that kind," he rasped.
Behind him, a handful of hardened auras still stood—four officers, Lucci steady as a blade, and somewhere unseen, two white masks watching.
Kai took one step forward, the air humming around him.
"Round two," he said. "No more shields."
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