Chapter 542: The Bombardment
Fish-Man Island was quiet.
After the destruction of the Sunlight Tree Eve, a certain seriousness had settled over the whole island. Everyone understood that the war was close now. You couldn't live here and not feel it. But Bureau Chief Brett had told them to leave this to him - that the coming fight wasn't something most of the island's people needed to carry, and that he intended to keep the battle away from Fish-Man Island as much as he possibly could.
People wanted to help. When they sat with it honestly, though, they couldn't figure out exactly how. Fish-Man Island's military was well-trained and running at full strength. With experienced warriors already filling every role, there wasn't much room for ordinary civilians on a battlefield. And if things ever got desperate enough that Fish-Man Island's general population was the last line of defense - well, by that point things would have gone so badly wrong that their efforts probably wouldn't turn the tide.
So the people of Fish-Man Island understood their contribution. They did their work. They kept the island running, kept it prosperous, made sure the fighters preparing to go to the front had everything they needed behind them. That was not a small thing.
The island was calm because of it. Calm in a way that didn't match what was coming - a battle that would decide who held power over the entire world. But that calm was real, and it was earned.
The military trained. Brett continued his own preparation, working steadily through the next phase of his technique. The theory was right and the approach was clear; it was just a matter of refining the execution.
And while all of this moved forward at its measured pace, something else was already in motion far above them.
At Mariejois.
The World Government officials of Pangaea Castle and the Celestial Dragons of the White Town had packed everything they intended to keep and were leaving. All of them. Moving deeper into the Red Line, toward temporary settlements the military had prepared well in advance.
The numbers weren't large. The evacuation went smoothly.
And then, once the last of them had gone - once Mariejois sat empty, that white city at the top of the world standing silent and deserted - something descended from the sky.
A tall figure wrapped in dark robes stood at the rim of the flying vessel. Below, the empty white city.
"Time to light the signal fire."
Imu raised one hand. The enormous craft hanging in the sky began to move.
The flying saucer drifted to the side of the Red Line and held position there, looking down at the colossal red wall that had encircled the world for longer than anyone could remember.
"A surprise for you, Brett."
Light gathered beneath the vessel.
Then:
A beam of searing brilliance tore down from the sky and struck the lower section of the Red Line, exactly where the wall met the sea.
The explosion that followed was like a second sun blooming above the water. Enormous volumes of seawater evaporated instantly. Superheated steam billowed outward across the surrounding ocean, turning the air white, before the winds swept it apart in seconds. Waves rose over a hundred meters and radiated outward in every direction with enough force to swallow anything in their path. At this distance, Sabaody Archipelago would be consumed entirely.
The bombardment didn't stop. Shot after shot fell, hammering the Red Line in rapid succession. The ancient rock face - which had stood in this sea for longer than any civilization had records of - cracked. Fractured. The explosions were so fast that chunks of stone the size of islands didn't even reach the water before the next blast vaporized them.
The section of Red Line above was gone. Mariejois itself was gone. Not rubble, not ruins - vaporized completely, not a fragment remaining.
Even the Red Line, the single immovable constant in the geography of the entire world, could not withstand a continuous bombardment from the Lunarian weapon. The wall crumbled from the top down, and as the surface disintegrated, so did everything beneath it, all the way to the seafloor.
From top to bottom, the Red Line was being blown open.
And in the Red Line, at the point directly below where Mariejois had stood, several thousand meters below sea level, carved into that red rock - was an island.
Fish-Man Island.
Back to a moment earlier.
Somewhere in the Sea Forest of Fish-Man Island, Brett and Shanks were in the middle of a training session.
Shanks was using Observation Killing at full intensity, sealing his presence away completely. Brett was working to track him through it - trying to isolate the specific thread of Shanks's Observation Haki from the interference it produced, following it back through the noise to the source.
They had been at it for a while. Brett had gone from completely unable to make it work to something approaching familiarity. The breakthrough was close.
And then Brett's head came up.
He stopped moving. Something crossed his face - a moment of blankness, then a rapid shift.
"Brett?" Shanks watched him. "Something wrong?"
The reaction was wrong. Brett's reactions were never wrong.
Something had happened.
Boom.
Before Brett could say a word, the sound reached them - deep, massive, clear even through thousands of meters of ocean above their heads.
Then the tremor hit.
The entire deep sea shook. Sediment billowed up from the seafloor in enormous clouds, turning the water murky in every direction. Above Fish-Man Island, the rock ceiling cracked. Large fragments of stone began to fall.
"What is that--"
Shanks's eyes were wide.
"Training's done."
Brett was already in dragon hybrid form, already moving, already a bolt of lightning cutting upward through the dark water.
His Observation Haki was traveling with him - riding the turbulence all the way to the surface, letting him hear what was happening above.
Imu had actually done it.
Mariejois was already ash.
But the price of that was now bearing down on everything below it.
The Red Line was coming apart, and Fish-Man Island was directly underneath.
Something had to be done right now. Because if it wasn't, the island wouldn't be destroyed by the weapon - it would be crushed under the weight of everything collapsing on top of it.