The Uta clone's voice climbs from a tinkling music-box whisper into something vast and terrible. Beneath it, Tot Musica's second voice bleeds through, a guttural undertow that shudders in Luffy's ribs.
🎵 "Everybody's got something shiny, and I've got a microphone..." 🎵
The sand beneath Luffy's feet turns to glass. He looks down. His reflection stares back—except it isn't his. The boy in the glass has hollow eyes and a smile that stops dead at the corners of his mouth.
🎵 "A sea at his back and a crew at his side and a ship he can call his own..." 🎵
The beach cracks. The sky splits open. And Luffy drops—not through air, but through memory, through dream, through something older than both.
🎵 "I pressed my face to every window with my best and brightest grin..." 🎵
His sandals strike stone. No beach. No sky. Only a castle built of shadow and echo, and from somewhere distant, his crew calling his name.
🎵 "Counting all the lives that I can't live in..." 🎵
The voices—Uta's, Tot Musica's, every clone's on the beach—braid together and climb into a scream.
🎵
"Don't ask politely, little one—"
"(Take it.)"
"The wanting's only wanting till it's done—"
"(Take it.)"
"There's a page that's been asleep, humming low and humming deep—"
"You only have to sing it open!"
🎵
The chorus slams into him.
🎵
"MINE! MINE! (Not yours.)"
"MINE! MINE! (Take it.)"
"Every light that wasn't lit for me—I'll sing it into a room I can keep!"
"MINE! MINE! (Not yours.)"
"MINE! MINE! (Take it.)"
"Open, open, wake the king of every song I'm scared to sing!"
🎵
The dream world splinters. Luffy lurches down shadowed corridors, sandals slapping on stone that gives like wet clay. His crew's voices drift to him from somewhere past the dark.
He runs toward them.
The song chases him.
🎵
"They told me you can't keep the ones who walk out—"
"So I'll keep the ones who can't walk out at all!"
🎵
Luffy bursts through a door onto an empty beach. Surf laps in and draws back. The sky is a soft, hazy blue, the sand sun-warm under his soles.
Atlas, Ember, Shachi, Lucky Roux, Bonk Punch, and Monster are already there—sprawled across the sand, blinking like they've woken from a nap they never took.
🎵
"Eyes shut, mouths open, a beautiful crowd—"
"Every hand a marionette, every heartbeat on call!"
🎵
Atlas's head whips side to side, ears twitching, nose wrinkling at a smell that isn't there.
"What the hell?"
Shachi and Ember scramble upright. Shachi's hand drifts to his weapon. Ember's gaze darts in every direction.
Shachi asks, "Where are we?"
Bonk Punch replies, his voice low. "I think we are in the dream world."
Lucky Roux asks, "Where is—"
Their heads snap around.
Luffy is already sprinting, kicking up sprays of sand, his shout ringing across the empty shore.
"UTA!"
Ahead, a castle claws its way out of the mist—black, crooked, throbbing with the same sickly glow that burned in the clones' eyes.
Shachi asks, "Where the hell is he going?"
Atlas shrugs. His nub swishes. "Don't know. But we better keep up!"
They take off after him.
Behind them, the song plays on, stitched into every grain of sand and every breath of wind, holding them fast.
🎵
"Hey, Luffy, you got the whole wide sea—"
"I got a stage, so I'm borrowing the sky!"
"Hey, Papa, you kept the crew and the flag—"
"I got the quiet, so I'll take the rest, and I won't ask why!"
🎵
---
Marya steps onto the beach.
Jelly rides her shoulder, jiggling with every stride. Howling Gab and Rockstar flank her, jaws set, hands resting on their weapons. Galit and Penguin wade out of the surf, clothes streaming seawater, already sizing up the battlefield.
BĹŤ-Zak drops down beside Marya, pipe still smoldering, smirk firmly in place.
Tot Musica hangs over the shoreline, its bulk swallowing what little daylight remains. Its lightless eyes peer down at the newcomers still on their feet.
In its shadow, clones haul Luffy, Atlas, Ember, Shachi, Lucky Roux, Bonk Punch, and Monster across the sand by their arms and ankles. Limbs dangle. Eyelids stay shut. Their chests rise and fall in the slow, even rhythm of deep sleep.
The song lingers, faint and eerie, coiling around the island and refusing to let go.
🎵
"Don't ask politely, little one—"
"(Take it.)"
"It was never gonna love you, so be the one—"
"(Take it.)"
"Sing it open, sing it open!"
🎵
Jelly blinks. "Bloop! Scary!"
Marya cocks a hip and props a hand on it, surveying the scene without a flicker of alarm. She has stood in far uglier places than this.
"Well, at least they got that part right."
BĹŤ-Zak comments, "Kind of hard to mess up sleeping, though."
Galit adds, "The new guy makes me wonder, though."
Howling Gab chuckles. "Should we get this party started?"
Marya nods, her hand inching toward her sword.
"They should notice us just about... now."
Tot Musica's head turns.
Its gaze settles on Marya's crew. Every clone freezes mid-step, then pivots as one, their voices fusing into a single booming cry.
"THE DREAM AWAITS!"
The song surges into its final chorus, pitching toward the breaking point.
🎵
"MINE! MINE! (Yours.)"
"MINE! MINE! (All yours.)"
"Turn the page, let the ink run free—"
"Every want I've ever fed—"
"Wake up, wake up, Demon King of every song I'm scared to sing!"
"Sing me out of me!"
🎵
Marya glances at her crew. "You know what to do."
They nod and scatter—Howling Gab peeling left, Rockstar right, Galit and Penguin swinging wide. Bō-Zak launches skyward mid-transformation, feathers bursting from his skin, a condor's shadow spilling across the sand.
Marya reaches over her shoulder.
Her fingers close around Nisshoku's hilt. The cursed sword hisses free of its sheath, a cold, thin sound like frost spreading across glass. Along its obsidian edge, the gray light thins to a thread, then vanishes.
She levels it at Tot Musica.
"I am not leaving unless I have what I came for."
Tot Musica roars.
It hits less like sound than like a shove: a wall of pressure packed with countless shrieking voices. The sand ripples around Marya's boots. Her eardrums throb.
The levitating Uta clone opens her mouth to sing—
Marya moves.
Her arm sweeps forward, and a crescent of Haki—emerald-black, razor-thin—shears across the beach. The clone's head parts from her shoulders. She crumbles into drifting ash.
Tot Musica screams.
The blow carries through. The demon's form shudders, dark vapor leaking from the wound in thick, oily wisps.
Then the wound knits shut, as it always does.
More Uta clones drift upward, lips parting.
Howling Gab's beams rake the shoreline, and three Gordon clones caught in the glare burn away to dust. Rockstar cuts into another cluster, every slice bursting a clone into glittering flakes of dream-stuff. Penguin and Galit carve through the ranks, each strike clean and economical. Galit's neck lashes forward, his whips cracking in its wake, shredding a row of Gordon clones before they can lift a hand.
Bō-Zak dives in his Devil Fruit form—an enormous condor, jet-feathered, eyes burning amber. Gravity thickens beneath him. The clones below stagger, then buckle, then flatten into the sand, pinned by a weight no one can see.
Another Uta clone draws breath to sing.
Marya cuts her down.
The clones' numbers dwindle. Ash and dust drift across the sand, along with flickering scraps of dream that wink out one by one.
Tot Musica's frustration crackles through the air like static. Its form convulses again. Its hollow gaze fastens on Marya, burning with what could be hatred—or the first stirrings of fear.
Marya lowers Nisshoku. Her golden-ringed eyes hold steady, and when she speaks, her voice barely rises above the surf.
"One way or another," she says, "this ends today."
The demon bellows.
The battle continues.