Chapter 29: Zephyr vs. Garon
At three in the afternoon, outside the Marineford Marine Academy.
Garon stood at the entrance to the training ground, completely stunned by the sight. Training Ground One was packed.
The entire perimeter was surrounded by Marines, from common soldiers to high-ranking officers. He could even see a few figures with the rank of Vice Admiral watching from a distance.
And in the very front row, he recognized a few familiar faces: Momonga, Onigumo, Doberman... These future Marine Vice Admirals all still had the look of students about them.
"Garon! Go for it! Show him the same spirit you used against Whitebeard! You gotta go all out!!" Garp's booming voice was impossible to miss.
"I didn't expect... so many people," Garon muttered to himself.
"What? Scared?" Zephyr's voice came from behind him.
Garon turned to see Zephyr had already changed into a training uniform, his signature purple hair standing out starkly in the sun.
"I just didn't realize you were so popular, Vice Admiral Zephyr," Garon said with a dry laugh.
"Heh." Zephyr snorted. "They're not here to see me."
With that, he strode toward the center of the training ground. "Come on. Show me what you've got."
As the two entered the field, the crowd erupted in a roar of cheers.
Garon took a deep breath, unslung Eight Desolations from his back, and handed it to a guard at the edge of the field. He then walked slowly onto the dirt, standing opposite Zephyr.
On the vast, wide training ground, the sun beat down on the sand, reflecting a blinding light.
Standing on the field, Garon could clearly feel countless eyes focused on him, a few of which felt particularly intense.
Kuzan was leaning against a tree in the distance, looking nonchalant, but his gaze was sharp. Dragon stood at the edge of the crowd, his expression unreadable. And in the windows of the Academy building, a few other familiar young heads were faintly visible...
"Don't get distracted." Zephyr's voice pulled Garon back to reality. "You don't need to worry about me today. You don't even have to hold back. You can show me the full extent of your fruit. After all... I'm curious about a Logia-type 'tremor'."
"In that case..." Hearing Zephyr's words, Garon nodded. He raised his left hand, palm open. "It's okay if I call you Teacher Zephyr, right?"
As he spoke, vibration particles condensed in an instant, forming a white orb of energy that pulsed in his palm, causing the air to tremble.
"You should have been calling me that from the start, you stupid disciple." Zephyr didn't move an inch, simply raising his right fist. Pitch-black Armament Haki, thick as steel, coated his entire arm.
"Remember, Garon." Zephyr's voice, enhanced by Haki, boomed across the entire field. "Haki! It comes from ambition, will, and spiritual power! You must experience it to sense your own potential! You've already experienced peak Conqueror's Haki from Whitebeard. Now, I will let you see, with your own eyes, the peak of Armament and the application of Observation!"
Before his words had even faded, Zephyr vanished from the spot.
"So fast!" Garon's pupils shrank. He instinctively tried to dodge to his left, but it was too late.
A simple, unadorned, straight punch hit him directly in the abdomen.
BANG!
With the sound of a small sonic boom, Garon's body was sent flying backward like a cannonball, slamming heavily into the training ground's retaining wall. The entire wall instantly spiderwebbed with cracks as stone fragments exploded outward.
The crowd fell deathly silent.
Garon slid out of the crater in the wall, landing on one knee. A trickle of blood escaped his lips. He looked up at Zephyr, his eyes wide with shock.
That punch hadn't just struck his physical body—it had directly dispersed his elementalized state!
"This is... peak Armament Haki?" Garon wiped the blood from his mouth and slowly stood up. "It's on a completely different level from that amateur Lugart!"
"Do you understand now?" Zephyr stood in his original spot, his fist still in a follow-through. "In the New World, people who can injure Logia users are everywhere. Without Haki, you're nothing but a paper tiger."
"And..." Zephyr's lip suddenly curled, and he shouted, "At this level... I find it very hard to believe you could have fought Whitebeard, Garon!!"
"Heh." Hearing Zephyr's roar, Garon smiled. This time, it was a genuine, heartfelt smile.
He rolled his shoulders, and the vibration in the air around him became visibly more intense.
"In that case..." Eight white orbs of pure vibration particles suddenly condensed around Garon. "...You'd better get ready, Teacher Zephyr!!!"
"Sky-Tremor: Eight Extremities Jade!"
The eight orbs shot forward, exploding in front of Zephyr. The spatially-distorting shockwave rippled outward, and the ground instantly collapsed into a spiderweb of cracks.
But Zephyr merely crossed his arms, his pitch-black Armament Haki forming an indestructible armor. He tore the shockwave apart with his body alone!
BOOM!
The concussive blast kicked up a cloud of dust, forcing the Marines in the crowd to retreat.
"As expected of Vice Admiral Zephyr! He blocked that terrifying vibration directly!"
"Quake-Step: Rail-Slide!" Garon's gaze sharpened, and his figure blurred.
The particles beneath his feet compressed into a high-density track. His body shot forward in a straight line, his speed approaching the sound barrier. At the same time, a white vortex of power began to gather in his left foot, coiling for a strike.
"And now... it's time to... execute... 'Quake' Justice!"
"A good choice. But..." Zephyr barked, his Observation Haki having already predicted the trajectory. "A straight-line side-kick... just like Borsalino, far too naive!"
As he spoke, Zephyr dodged to the side, his left fist, wreathed in Armament Haki, swinging in a devastating uppercut aimed straight at Garon's chin.
BANG!
The fist passed through an afterimage.
At the last possible second, Garon had used a 'Quake-Flash', elementalizing to evade and instantly repositioning himself behind Zephyr.
"I'm not an idiot, Teacher Zephyr!!" Garon's fists, now vibrating at a terrifying frequency, slammed into Zephyr's back. "Sky-Tremor: Star-Shattering Fist!"
In an instant, the air around his fists cracked like glass. Each blow was powerful enough to pulverize steel.
"You've only had this for a year, and you're already this good!" Zephyr, without even turning, threw a back-elbow. Armament Haki and vibration energy collided.
"KRA-BOOM!!!"
The moment the two forces met, a spherical shockwave detonated, and the training ground's floor completely collapsed!
Onigumo, watching from the sidelines, was forced to stab his sword into the ground to stay upright. Momonga's eyes were wide. "He's destroying the whole terrain!"
"Not bad at all!" In the smoke, Zephyr slid back half a step. He ripped off his tattered sleeve and looked up at the sky.
Garon, who had been thrown into the air by the recoil, righted himself and swung his arms down. "Sky-Tremor: Thousand Light Wheels!"
Hundreds of small, white, disc-like wheels of vibration rained down. Zephyr crossed his arms, coated his entire body in Armament, and took the entire barrage head-on!
The moment the wheels hit, the high-frequency vibrations raged, pulverizing the ground layer by layer. But Zephyr stood unmoving, like a reef in a storm, only sinking into a deepening crater!
"In that case!" Garon used 'Air-Tread' to leap even higher, spreading his arms wide. In an instant, the sky above the training ground filled with countless, condensing particles.
"Sky-Calamity: Tremor Star Rain!"
Countless basketball-sized, compressed tremor-orbs began to fall like a meteor shower, covering the entire battlefield.
"Get back, now!!" Garp roared, warning the crowd. The spectators scrambled backward in a panic.
The next second: "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!"
A continuous, rolling series of explosions turned the entire training ground into a boiling cauldron of destruction. The shockwaves and ear-splitting noise raged, and the glass in the distant Academy buildings shattered from the force!
"Frozen Capsule!" Kuzan raised a hand, instantly freezing all the flying debris that came his way.
"Can a Devil Fruit power like this... really exist...?" Dragon, on the other hand, was completely stunned as he watched the space over the training ground itself seem to crackle and shatter from the vibrations. His lips parted as he muttered:
"This is... more terrifying than Whitebeard's Gura Gura no Mi."
"It's... a 'Calamity' that can destroy the world at will... with no side effects."