"Come back to Headquarters with me. You won't need to go the long way through Reverse Mountain. I have the authority to mobilize a warship to cross the Calm Belt directly and scale the Red Line. In three or four days, we can reach Marineford."
He paused, then spoke with even more weight.
"There, you'll find true monsters, and systematic Haki training there, a beast like you, born for battle, can only truly live on that great sea."
Zaraki raised a brow and idly spun the empty rum bottle between his fingers.
'Marineford?'
The first things that came to mind were that old man probably stuffing his face with senbei behind a desk, and that magma-obsessed bastard who yelled about Absolute Justice all day.
'What would I even do in a place like that?'
'Get told when to wake up and when to fold my blanket?'
'Or sit through meetings and listen to a bunch of old men lecture me about morality?'
Most importantly, the Kenpachi Template in the System demanded unrestrained slaughter, the exhilaration of laughing on the edge between life and death.
'If I go to Marine Headquarters and receive official ranks, I'd probably need to file a request just to kill a pirate!'
'Just thinking about that kind of life is enough to make me sick!'
"No."
Zaraki's answer was short and clean.
He casually tossed the empty bottle into the sea, where it splashed up a small burst of water, a lazy smile still hanging on his lips.
"If I go to Headquarters, would I still be allowed to cut down whoever I want, the same way I did today?"
Onigumo paused, instinctively wanting to say that the Marines also fought for justice.
But when he looked into the boy's eyes—eyes so clean they reflected nothing except the desire for battle—those words died in his throat.
The kid was right...
A place as strictly regulated as Marine Headquarters truly had no room for a beast that had not yet learned how to hide its claws.
"And besides..." Zaraki stretched lazily, his joints cracking one after another as he looked toward the place where sea and sky touched in the distance.
"The ocean's huge. I want to see it for myself. Find a few people I don't mind keeping around, cut down whoever pisses me off... that's the kind of life a man ought to live, isn't it?"
Instead of choosing the smooth path already laid out for him, the young man chose the one that was uncertain and free.
Onigumo fell silent for a while, and the regret in his eyes deepened, but he did not try to persuade him again.
As a veteran who had survived decades at sea, he could already see it clearly.
Pride had been carved into this young man's bones.
There was no chance that a few words would ever bend something like that.
"If you've already made up your mind, then I won't force you."
Onigumo slowly let out a long breath, then braced himself against the shattered railing and straightened.
The stern integrity belonging to a soldier surfaced again on his face.
"Even if you refused, I'll still report today's battle truthfully to Fleet Admiral Sengoku. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the record of defeating a Marine Vice Admiral will help you later."
That much was true.
Zaraki did not dislike straightforward men like this.
The bastard had played dirty in the fight, sure, but after losing he accepted it cleanly, without excuses and without lying.
That alone made him decent enough in Zaraki's eyes.
"Heh, thanks." Zaraki grinned.
"You made a decent stepping stone."
If anyone else had said that, Onigumo would probably have drawn his sword again on the spot, but now he could only shake his head in weary resignation.
"I'm going."
Without another word, Zaraki pushed off with the front of his foot and leapt through the air like a large bird, landing lightly on the small drifting ship below.
The boat rocked with the waves.
Zaraki glanced at the progress bar frozen at 13.9% in the corner of his vision and was already thinking about his next target.
Since a Marine Vice Admiral had only pushed him this far, then the next "boss" in East Blue should probably worth a little right?
That fish-man bastard who was said to be the strongest in these waters...
'You'd better be enough to fill in that damned 0.1%.'
Zaraki muttered to himself as he untied the mooring rope.
The small boat, pushed onward by the sea breeze, gradually sailed away in the opposite direction from the warship, leaving nothing for Onigumo except the receding silhouette of a young man growing smaller by the second.
The sun had already sunk to the west, and orange-red twilight spread across East Blue, painting the sea with a copper glow.
....
Unlike the desolate calm settling over the ocean now that the smoke of battle had cleared, Cocoyashi Village, dozens of nautical miles away, was wrapped in a suffocating heat.
Cicadas screamed desperately in the orange groves, their shrill cries scraping against the nerves.
Nami dragged her heavy steps along the dirt path that led back to her small house.
The straps of her backpack had left red marks on her shoulders, and the sweat slipping from her orange hair vanished the instant it hit the parched earth.
The backpack was heavy.
Heavy enough to feel like a mountain.
Inside it was one hundred million Berries.
Eight years of dignity, blood, and sweat had bought that amount.
For the sake of this money, she had lived at sea like a rat, surviving only through theft and deception.
"Nami?"
Hearing the gate creak open, Nojiko, who had been drying orange peels, turned around in surprise.
The moment she saw Nami covered in dust, with her eyes shining with an intensity she had not seen in years, the basket in her hands almost slipped.
"Y-you're back?" Nojiko hurried forward, intending to help her take the impossibly heavy backpack, but Nami shifted lightly and avoided her hand.
Nami carefully lowered the pack onto the wooden floor, and a dull thud came from inside.
It was the sound of tightly packed coins, and to her ears it was the most wonderful sound in the world.
Straightening, she wiped the sweat and grime from her face with one hand, revealing a smile she had not worn in eight years.
Her whole body loosened with that breath.
"It's all here, Nojiko."
Nami's voice trembled slightly as she pointed at the backpack on the floor, and her eyes had already reddened.
"This is exactly one hundred million Berries. Not a single coin missing!"
Nojiko froze.
She looked at the bulging backpack, then at her sister's exhausted yet hopeful face, and her heart clenched hard.
Could it really be enough?
Had the nightmare that had crushed the two of them and hovered over this whole village for years finally reached its end?
"I'm going to find Arlong now."
Nami drew in a deep breath.
She did not even bother to drink water, nor did she tend the scrape on her arm from some branch she had run past on the way back.
Instead, she grabbed the backpack straps again, her eyes steady and resolute.
"As long as I hand over the money, then according to our original agreement, he'll leave Cocoyashi Village and return the village... and everyone's freedom... to us."
But as Nojiko watched Nami's retreating back, a flicker of worry she could not hide passed through her eyes.
Would that greedy, cruel fish-man—that monster who treated humans as lesser creatures—really keep his word?
"Nami..." Nojiko called out on instinct.
Nami stopped and turned her head.
The setting sun fell across her left arm, where the mark of the Arlong Pirates was tattooed, making it stand out even more sharply.