Loguetown did not explode into chaos after Alpha's disappearance.
It simmered.
Within Marine headquarters, voices were lowered, reports rewritten twice, then locked away. Smoker stood alone in his office, rain streaking down the window behind him as he stared at the cracked jitte resting against the wall. The impact mark was still there—a shallow deformation near the sea-stone tip.
"That shouldn't be possible," Tashigi said quietly from the doorway.
Smoker exhaled smoke through his nose. "Yet it happened."
He turned, eyes sharp. "No Devil Fruit registered. No pirate flag. No crew."
"A civilian?"
Smoker snorted. "If that's a civilian, the Grand Line's about to get interesting."
He knew better than to file a bounty immediately. Not yet. Something like Alpha didn't announce itself for fame. It tested, measured, and moved on. Smoker recognized that kind of predator.
Outside the city, far from Marine eyes, Alpha stood on a rocky bluff overlooking the converging seas. Reverse Mountain loomed in the distance, its impossible incline cutting into the sky like a challenge issued by the world itself.
The wind was violent here, currents colliding, waves smashing against stone in erratic rhythms. Alpha closed his eyes and let his Haki spread—not to sense people, but the sea itself. Pressure. Flow. Resistance.
The Grand Line isn't chaos, he concluded. It's discipline enforced by violence.
Iron reinforcement tightened around his core as he trained.
He ran cliff edges at full speed, letting crosswinds shove against his balance. He struck stone repeatedly, not to break it, but to refine force transfer—how much iron, how much Haki, how much restraint. Each failure was corrected immediately.
System Update:
Maritime Stability +7%
Force Distribution Optimization +5%
Observation Range Expanded
At night, he meditated beneath the open sky, replaying the clash with Smoker frame by frame. The timing of dispersion. The delay between smoke reformations. The moment authority bled into overconfidence.
Logia users rely on inevitability, Alpha thought. Remove certainty, and they hesitate.
He boarded a weathered vessel at dawn—small, sturdy, crewed by traders too desperate to ask questions. Alpha paid with labor, reinforcing hull seams with raw strength, stabilizing rigging against unpredictable currents. The crew noticed his competence, not his danger.
As Reverse Mountain drew closer, the sea grew violent. Waves slammed into the bow, wind howled like a living thing. Sailors shouted prayers.
Alpha stood at the prow.
Iron locked his stance. Haki read the sea's intent, anticipating surges before they struck. When the ship was flung upward along the impossible current, Alpha braced, muscles burning, jaw clenched as gravity fought him.
The ship crested the peak.
Then plunged.
Water exploded around them as they shot down into the Grand Line.
The sea calmed.
The air changed.
Alpha inhaled slowly.
System Notification:
Region Transition Complete — Grand Line
He opened his eyes.
The world felt… tighter.
Every movement mattered more. Every mistake would be punished faster.
Alpha smiled faintly.
"Good," he murmured.
Far behind him, in Loguetown, a Marine captain stared at the horizon, smoke curling upward.
"Don't die out there," Smoker said quietly. "I want answers."
Ahead lay islands of impossible weather, monsters, legends, and collisions with fate.
Alpha stepped fully into the Grand Line.
And the shadow followed.