The salt wind, a restless spirit of the open sea, clawed at my coat as King Bekori's gaudy excuse for a warship sliced through the South Blue. Forty-eight hours. Two days bled into the wake, each marked by the silent hum of my own anticipation, the ghost-echo of my clone's arrival a subtle vibration in the back of my skull. Bekori's ostentatious display was a stroke of grim luck, a perfect, oblivious vessel to mask my true trajectory.
A ripple in the air, a faint disharmony that spoke of unwanted awareness, ghosted across the deck. One of Bekori's slaves, cursed with a sensitivity I found distasteful, had scented our presence. A minor detour in the grand design. Time for a carefully constructed performance. I stepped into the brutal glare of the midday sun, the fabricated insignia pinned to my coat catching the light with a convincing, official gleam. "Lieutenant Lazarus, Marine Headquarters," I announced, my voice a honed edge cutting through the mundane creak of timbers and rigging, a practiced blend of authority and weary disinterest. "We had reason to believe this vessel was engaged in acts of piracy." A convenient truth, twisted into a sharp instrument.
Bekori, a man whose ambition consistently outweighed his capacity, puffed out his chest like a strutting rooster. Instead of the predictable outrage, a glint of avarice, sharp and calculating, flickered in his eyes. "Lieutenant!" he boomed, his hand thrust forward in a gesture so transparently false it was almost endearing in its ineptitude. "A twist of fate! Join my righteous endeavor to reclaim my kingdom, the Sorbet Kingdom and make Celestial Dragon happy!" He gestured expansively, encompassing the entirety of his pathetic little power grab. "And this time, I come bearing… significant assets."
Five figures, cloaked and bound in the dull gleam of sea-stone, were shoved forward like unwanted baggage. "Slaves," Bekori declared with a flourish that bordered on the absurd, his voice thick with a perverse sense of triumph, "belonging to the very Celestial Dragons themselves! Each one a festering wound on the world, their individual bounties exceeding the coffers of most kingdoms! That lumbering brute Kuma will shatter against their combined might. And with a distinguished Marine officer such as yourself as witness to my divine right… victory is practically a foregone conclusion!"
Fools, the thought was a silent sneer that tightened the corners of my lips. They saw a uniform, a symbol to legitimize their petty squabble. They couldn't begin to fathom the intricate machinery turning within my mind, the grand design that rendered their ambitions utterly insignificant.
The journey was a swift descent into Bekori's self-delusion. The Sorbet Kingdom bloomed on the horizon, a vibrant tapestry soon to be stained by the clumsy, brutal strokes of his tyranny. We disembarked in Castle Town, his arrogance a suffocating shroud in the otherwise clean air.
The "liberation" commenced with a chilling, almost clinical efficiency. Bekori's soldiers, their faces etched with years of simmering resentment and petty grievances, moved through the streets like a creeping shadow. Screams, raw and desperate, tore through the fragile peace, a grotesque symphony accompanying Bekori's vision of justice: a systematic purging of the "undesirables," a horrifying ballet of steel and the sickeningly sweet smell of burning flesh.
Crude, I observed, the chaos a detached study in the predictable nature of violence. Bekori mistook the hammer for the scalpel, brutality for true power, blind to the subtle currents that truly shaped the course of the world.
But even in this forgotten corner of the world, whispers carried on the wind. Kuma arrived as a silent behemoth, his massive form a stark, almost spectral silhouette against the raging inferno. His eyes, usually veiled in a profound, almost unbearable sorrow, now held a cold, unwavering resolve that even I found… momentarily arresting.
Bekori, drunk on the intoxicating fumes of his perceived authority and the bitter taste of revenge, sneered at the imposing figure. "You cannot stop me, Kuma! This kingdom will finally bow before its rightful ruler! The parasites will be excised!" He gestured dismissively towards his shackled pawns. "And if you dare to interfere… well, these are not mere criminals. They are the cherished possessions of the Celestial Dragons. Their wrath is a tempest that will drown even a Devil Fruit user such as yourself." He turned to me, a triumphant, almost conspiratorial glint in his eyes. "Lieutenant, show this… revolutionary… the unyielding authority of the World Government!"
I regarded Kuma, my own emotions leashed behind a carefully constructed mask of professional detachment. "Surrender, Bartholomew Kuma," I stated, my voice a flat, emotionless plane. "Resist, and the Marines will have no recourse but to designate you a pirate, a cancer upon the order of the world."
Bekori's laughter, a harsh, grating sound, ripped through the tense square. "Magnificent, Lieutenant! A Marine endorsing my divine right! This is far more gratifying than I could have possibly conceived!"
Kuma, however, remained unmoved by the hollow threats and petty pronouncements. His gaze, sharp and unwavering, pierced through my carefully constructed facade, as if seeking the rot beneath the polished surface. "Why?" he asked, his voice a low, resonant rumble that carried the weight of untold suffering. "Why do the Marines, the supposed guardians of justice, debase themselves before the celestial vermin instead of fighting for true liberation?"
"Kuhahaha…" The sound erupted from me, a dry, rasping laugh that held no humor, only a chilling amusement at his naivete. I turned to Bekori, a predatory grin stretching my lips, the carefully maintained composure finally fracturing. "Tell me, King," I began, my voice a silken whisper laced with a dangerous amusement, "were the bounties on these… exquisite acquisitions… frozen upon their be slave?"
Before Bekori could even stammer out the first syllable of his undoubtedly ignorant reply, I made a sharp, distinct "Bang!" sound with my mouth. The sudden, unexpected noise cracked through the tense silence like a physical blow.
Then, the very air above Castle Town seemed to shimmer and tear, not with rain, but with a silent, invisible deluge of unimaginable force. Thousands, no, tens of thousands of hyper-dense, microscopic projectiles ripped through the atmosphere with impossible velocity and surgical precision.
Bekori's soldiers, their faces frozen in expressions of utter bewilderment and dawning horror, crumpled like puppets with severed strings. The Celestial Dragon's slaves, their arrogant sneers dissolving into silent screams of pure, unadulterated terror, were ripped apart, their expensive sea-stone cuffs offering no more resistance than cobwebs against a hurricane. Bekori himself, his brow still furrowed in confusion from my abrupt vocalization, suddenly blossomed with a dozen invisible wounds, his eyes widening in a final, silent question before he collapsed into the crimson-stained dust, a broken, insignificant thing. The downpour of death was swift, absolute, leaving behind a scene of utter, incomprehensible annihilation.
When the invisible storm finally abated, the air hung thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid scent of ozone. I stood amidst the carnage, my coat untouched, my heart a cold, still stone. A grim satisfaction settled within me, a perverse sense of order restored.
Kuma stared at me, his massive form frozen in a tableau of shock and dawning comprehension. His eyes, wide with disbelief and a horror that mirrored the devastation around him, tracked my every movement.
I met his gaze, a strange, almost serene light illuminating my own. "This," I stated, my voice a quiet pronouncement in the echoing silence, "is the only justice worth believing in."