The green torrent swallowed the stone platform and buried Zaraki beneath enough force to tear through the harbor behind him.
For an instant, the entire waterfront disappeared inside the attack.
Compressed air screamed through the ruined streets, broken stone lifted from the ground, and the shallow sea below the platform split into a deep trench beneath the descending pressure.
From the Polar Tang's upper deck, Ain could no longer see Zaraki at all. T
here was only the vast green arc, the dark outline of the town behind it, and the lifeboats crowded with wounded Marines directly in its path.
Then the dark-gold light inside the destruction sharpened.
The skeletal shape looming behind Zaraki became clearer as the pressure around Nozarashi gathered, but it remained an impression rather than a separate creature—a savage outline traced through smoke, spray, and the violent arcs crawling along the released blade.
Its hollow jaws seemed to open when Zaraki laughed, though the sound came from the man standing at the center of the storm.
He did not raise an enormous hand to catch Weevil's attack. He tightened both hands around Nozarashi and swung.
The chipped cleaver moved upward through the green torrent, carrying a narrow line of concentrated force instead of the reckless flood Zaraki would once have released.
The difference was almost impossible to see from the harbor, yet everyone felt it when the two attacks met.
There was no uncontrolled explosion and no wave of destruction thrown back toward the wounded.
Zaraki's slash entered the center of Weevil's attack and opened it cleanly from within.
The hundred-meter arc split into two halves.
One was forced high and to the east, where it crossed the empty sea before dispersing among the clouds.
The other veered west and carved through an abandoned section of cliff far beyond the captured ships.
Neither half touched the Polar Tang, the lifeboats, the crippled Z-1, or the civilians being pulled from the pirate vessels.
Law watched the two paths through the infirmary window and released a breath he had not realized he was holding.
Zephyr noticed.
"You really did trust him."
"No," Law replied while keeping one hand over the former Admiral's open shoulder wound. "I trusted that Mihawk had insulted him thoroughly enough to make the lesson stick."
On the ruined platform, Nozarashi's slash continued after dividing the attack, but Zaraki had spent most of its force controlling the split.
What remained crossed the square as a narrow dark-gold line and struck Weevil through the already damaged bisento.
The weapon finally broke.
Its blade spun away and buried itself in the road, while the remaining shaft flew from Weevil's hands.
The same cut opened across his chest and hurled him backward through the ruins of the stone tower he had only just escaped.
The giant crashed into the central square and lay still beneath falling debris.
For several seconds, the harbor heard nothing except the settling rubble and the wounded crying out aboard the ships.
The monstrous pressure around Zaraki receded from its highest point, and the skeletal impression faded with it until only Nozarashi's enormous chipped shape remained in his hands.
His breathing had grown heavier.
The bandages beneath his coat were wet again, and his forearms still trembled faintly from meeting Weevil's last attack. Nozarashi had demanded everything.
Zaraki had refused, not because he lacked the strength to give more, but because the people behind him would have paid for the excess.
The realization left him grinning despite the pain.
'You could have crushed it faster.'
'And sent half the harbor with it?'
'They were in the way.'
'That's why I aimed.'
Nozarashi answered with a dissatisfied growl, though the hunger pulling through the blade had eased.
On the small boat near the outer pier, Miss Buckin stared from the divided clouds to the square where Weevil had fallen.
Her face had lost every trace of smugness.
The pipe slipped from her mouth and struck the deck between her feet.
"We accept!" she screamed, grabbing the railing with both hands. "Do you hear me? We accept the World Government's offer! Edward Weevil will become one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, and this entire matter can be settled as part of the evaluation!"
Ain's hands tightened around the Polar Tang's railing.
Around her, Marines who had survived Weevil's attack stared toward Buckin with open hatred. Some had lost friends only minutes earlier.
Others could still see the bodies lying across Z-1's broken deck.
The idea that the title they had been sent to offer could now be used as protection made anger rise through the survivors faster than relief.
Zaraki stepped down from the shattered platform and walked into the square.
"Offer?" he asked, his voice carrying easily over the harbor. "You attacked the team sent to evaluate him, tried to murder the witnesses, kidnapped an entire town, and ordered those ships to sink everyone when the fight turned against you. What offer do you think is still waiting?"
Buckin's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before her desperation found another lie.
"You don't have the authority to decide that! The Five Elders want strength, and my son has already proven he possesses it. If you kill him now, you'll be destroying a valuable asset of the World Government!"
Zaraki rested Nozarashi against his shoulder.
"I came here to see whether the candidate was worth recommending. He gave me a very clear answer."
Weevil moved beneath the rubble.
A broken groan rose from the square as one enormous hand pushed through the stones.
His chest had been opened from shoulder to ribs, and blood darkened the remains of his clothing, yet Buckin's voice still reached him.
"Weevil!" she shrieked. "Get up and run! That Marine is injured, but he's trying to frighten you. Reach the far side of the island and I'll find another way to make them recognize you!"
The giant turned his head toward her.
"Mama... said I'm the strongest."
"You are! Now move!"
Weevil forced himself upright.
His legs nearly failed beneath him, but fear of disappointing Buckin drove him forward where pain and instinct could not.
He staggered away from Zaraki, then broke into an uneven run toward the inland road.
Zaraki watched him for several steps.
There was no pleasure in chasing him now.
The strength that had made the fight interesting remained, but the will behind it had collapsed back into the same blind obedience that controlled every movement he made.
"That's enough," Zaraki said.
Weevil kept running.
Zaraki lowered Nozarashi from his shoulder and chose the line before he moved.
The cut would pass through Weevil alone, end against the empty hillside beyond him, and go nowhere near the harbor.
The chipped cleaver swept once across his body.
A thin dark-gold slash crossed the square.
It reached Weevil before Buckin could scream another command. The giant stopped in the middle of his next step, his body rigid as the line passed diagonally through his torso.
For a heartbeat, he remained standing.
Then his knees struck the road.
Weevil fell forward and did not rise again.
The attack continued only far enough to score a clean line through the unoccupied hillside beyond the town before fading.
No canyon split the island.
No molten stone poured from the earth.
The sea remained where it belonged.
The battle was over!
Buckin stared at Weevil's body, and something inside her face seemed to collapse.
"You killed him," she whispered. "You killed my perfect son."
Zaraki gave her no answer.
The old woman's grief lasted only a moment before fear and calculation returned.
She dropped behind the side of her boat and snatched up a black Den Den Mushi connected to the two crippled pirate ships.
"Burn the holds!" she screamed into the receiver. "If the Government wants evidence, give them ashes. Sink the prisoners and blow the ships before the Marines board them!"
The order reached the pirate crews.
It also reached Law.
A blue sphere expanded across the harbor.
Buckin's Den Den Mushi vanished from her hand and reappeared beside Law inside the Polar Tang, exchanged with an empty medical tray.
At the same instant, Shachi and Penguin led the Heart Pirates into the lower holds of the nearer pirate ship, where armed men were already running toward stacked powder barrels.
Buckin stared at her empty fingers.
"You—"
She reached beneath her coat and pulled out a small pistol, turning it toward Ain and the Marines crowded on the submarine's deck.
Zaraki moved Nozarashi by less than an inch.
A narrow slash crossed the water.
The pistol split first.
The same line continued through Buckin before she could pull the trigger.
Her body fell backward into the boat rather than disappearing beneath the sea, leaving her satchel, papers, and personal Den Den Mushi intact for the investigation that would follow.
Law glanced through the infirmary window at the motionless figure.
"You could have left her alive for questioning."
Zaraki looked toward the pirate ships, where the Heart Pirates and surviving Marines were securing the powder stores.
"She was about to kill the witnesses and burn the evidence. Ask the men in the holds whatever you want."
"That was not an apology."
"I wasn't apologizing."
Law clicked his tongue and returned his attention to Zephyr's wound.
Outside, Zaraki tightened his grip on Nozarashi and deliberately closed the flow feeding the released blade.
The enormous cleaver shuddered with one last pulse of hunger before contracting into its rough sealed form.
The change left his arms suddenly heavy.
He slid the sword into its sheath and looked across the harbor. The skeletal impression was gone, Weevil was dead, Buckin's crew had been captured, and the townspeople were being brought into the open air one group at a time.
Nozarashi's voice followed him as he walked back toward the Polar Tang.
'The large one was disappointing.'
Zaraki's grin returned faintly.
'Then we find someone better.'
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