The heavy snow blanketing Drum Island raged for three consecutive days.
During this time, the drifts of Big Horn Village hosted a grand banquet. To mark the death of the tyrant Wapol, the civilians emptied their winter storehouses, bringing out the last of their dried meats and fermented spirits to light a massive bonfire in the center of the village square, celebrating the outlaws who had broken their chains.
The officers of the Eclipse Pirates took a rare moment to let their guards down.
In the clearing, Urouge and Shark sparred in Taijutsu, their fists cutting through the air with enough force to shake the heavy snow from the surrounding pines. Buggy bickered openly with the local children over the prime cuts of roast meat by the fire, while Jeno remained buried in the ruins of the royal palace. The mechanic spent his hours devouring the heavy iron cannons, left-behind flintlocks, and even the gilded brass fixtures of Wapol's throne room; his modular metal skin underwent visible changes by the hour.
Meanwhile, up in the treehouse clinic, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of tension.
Chopper was furiously packing his massive blue rucksack, stuffing it with bundles of rare dried roots, surgical steel instruments, and the thick, weathered medical journals left behind by Dr. Hiriluk. As he jammed the items inside, large tears spilled from his eyes, soaking the thick fur on his chest.
"What's with the waterworks? I'm heading down to a pirate feast, not a execution," Dr. Kureha said roughly, bringing the flat of a plum wine bottle down onto the reindeer's pink top hat. Though her voice held its usual biting edge, her eyes behind her dark shades were fixed on the floorboards, shadowed by a rare, heavy stillness.
"Doctorine... I... I will become the Panacea!" Chopper bowed so low his nose nearly brushed the wood, the weight of the massive pack shifting on his small shoulders. "I will cure every plague on this ocean! I won't let your name be shamed!"
"Hmph. Stop shouting big words in my room." Kureha turned her back to him, her fingers tightening around her bottle. "Now get out of here! That pack of outlaws won't sit in the bay forever! If you end up killing a patient out there, don't tell them I taught you how to stitch."
Chopper wiped his face with a hoof, hefted the heavy straps, and shifted into his heavy Hybrid Form. He stepped out into the blizzard, his boots leaving deep, lonely tracks in the fresh snow as he moved toward the docks where the Eclipse sat waiting. Every dozen paces, his frame would freeze, his head turning back toward the high treehouse clinic that had sheltered him for five years, as if trying to memorize the exact shape of the wood against the frost.
Down at the harbor, the black warship stood out against the drifts.
"Captain, the little doctor is on his way down," Sabo noted, leaning over the brass railing as he tracked the slow progression through the snow.
Ace nodded, his gaze moving toward Jeno, who was adjusting the settings on a pristine, dark silver metal forearm. "Is the shell prepared?"
"Don't worry, Captain," Jeno bared his teeth. "For an alteration this basic, the forge in my gut didn't even need a minute to run the schematics."
With a sequence of heavy, rhythmic clicks, Jeno's right arm reconfigured, the alloy plates sliding back to expose the wide, dark barrel of a high-caliber mortar. He strode to the edge of the bow, angling the weapon toward the heavy, lead-gray cloud cover hanging over the island. The chamber wasn't loaded with a concussive explosive, but with a massive silk satchel of pink compound Ace had quietly requested from Kureha the previous afternoon.
It was the Miracle Dust—the culmination of Dr. Hiriluk's life's work, designed to alter the reflective index of freezing vapor.
"Discharge."
Boom!
The artillery piece on Jeno's arm roared, launching the dense pink payload thousands of meters into the stratosphere, punching a clean hole through the localized blizzard.
"Enel."
"Hmph. You really enjoy treating me like a common signalman." Though the lightning sovereign sneered, a precise arc of high-voltage static ignited at his fingertips. The bolt shot upward, striking the center of the expanding pink cloud and using the sudden heat of the electricity to instantly scatter the particles across the jet stream.
Chopper froze in the middle of the path, his small hooves sinking into the drift. He looked up, his round eyes expanding with a shock that drove the breath from his throat.
The lead-gray sky had vanished, replaced by an immense, shimmering canopy of brilliant pink. The cold flakes falling through the upper air were dyed by the dust, transforming into a storm of delicate, rose-colored petals that danced across the valley, turning the harsh chimneys of the snow mountains into something legendary.
Across an island that had known only frost and absolute despair, a miracle sakura snow was falling.
"Doctor... do you see it?"
Staring at the pink sky, the silhouette of the old quack doctor laughing in the drifts surfaced in Chopper's mind. The tears returned, but he didn't look back again. Letting out a long, resonant reindeer cry that echoed through the valley, he threw his weight forward and sprinted toward the gangway of the Eclipse.
As his hooves hit the steel deck, he was met by the steady laughter of the crew and the firm, warm hand of his captain.
"Welcome to the ship, Chopper," Ace said, pulling him over the threshold.
"Gah! The little raccoon is on board! Gah!" Berries fluttered down from the mast, its wings crossing in a deliberately provocative defensive gesture.
"I am a reindeer, you overgrown pest!" Chopper wailed through his tears, his tiny hooves shaking in a furious counter-protest.
Amidst the noise, the lower engines of the Eclipse let out a deep, industrial rumble. The black warship lifted into the sky, its bow cutting through the pink flakes as it cleared the peaks and vanished into the open sea.
Three days later, the Situation Room.
"Ace, look at this. We intercepted this log from the Marine East Blue communication grid through our scanners," Carina said, her voice dropping into a serious register as she slid a sheet of parchment across the table. "The charts are changing. Within the last month, two major islands in the East Blue have vanished completely."
"Vanished?" Sabo set his tea down, his brow furrowing. "Was it a coordinated bombardment? A Buster Call profile?"
"No," Carina shook her head, a trace of cold surprise in her eyes. "The Marine scouting vessels reported that there are no silent reefs left behind. No rubble. No stone. Even the deep ocean currents have smoothed over the gap, as if the entire landmass was cut from the seabed and dragged straight into the clouds."
The room grew perfectly still as the implications settled. Moving an entire island into the upper atmosphere was a feat that transcended standard piracy; it belonged to the realm of myth.
But at the head of the long table, Ace's black eyes flared with an intense, sudden focus.
"Finally crawled out of the gutter, you old relic," Ace murmured, his lips thinning into a cold, predatory smile.
As a transmigrator, he knew exactly whose hand held the strings of those floating islands. It was the user of the Paramecia Float-Float Fruit—a legendary powerhouse from the era of Roger and Whitebeard, a madman who had once broken into Marineford alone and nearly dragged half the fortress into the sea.
The "Flying Pirate," Golden Lion Shiki. The man who had spent twenty years hiding in the upper air, breeding mutant beasts to enact his vengeance upon the East Blue.
"Captain, you recognize the signature?" Leona asked, her hand tightening over the hilt of White Night as she sensed the sudden shift in Ace's aura.
"I know him well," Ace stood up, his fist coming down onto the East Blue quadrant of the sea chart with a heavy thud. "And that old lion happens to be holding two assets I need."
He looked at Leona and then down at Chopper.
"First: the Float-Float Fruit itself. It's the perfect engine for your blade craft. Second: his cellular enhancement research, though his current formulas are garbage." Ace's gaze was bright with an absolute, unyielding ambition.
"Little Eclipse. Realign the navigation matrix."
"Target: the East Blue. It's time we hunt a lion."
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