Chapter 547: The End of a Song
Sabaody Archipelago.
The island that marked the true end of the Grand Line's first half met its end today.
Or rather, from today it simply ceased to exist.
The initial bombardment had struck without warning, sending violent tremors through the archipelago. The tsunamis that followed carried enough force to level everything in their path. And then, just as the island was still reeling from the waves, the worst of it arrived.
The Red Line had been blown open.
For Sabaody Archipelago, this was a death sentence.
Sabaody was not, strictly speaking, an island in the conventional sense. It had formed over countless centuries from the sap of its enormous mangrove trees - sticky resin accumulating debris drifting through the sea, layer by layer, until something solid enough to stand on had taken shape. The mangroves' roots were anchored in the Red Line itself. When that section of Red Line was destroyed, Sabaody lost the only foundation it had ever had.
The great trees collapsed. The archipelago broke apart in moments.
A handful of people survived.
Strangely, they had the mangroves themselves to thank for it - the same trees that had built the island over millennia now served as rafts. Their enormous trunks were buoyant enough to float, and the survivors who managed to grab hold of them rode out wave after wave while the rest of the island disappeared around them.
But that luck was running out.
"What is that thing?"
Someone screamed it from the floating wreckage - pointing at the shape that hung against the distant sky, visible even from this far away. The flying saucer, enormous and unmistakable, sat against the horizon.
Everyone who was still alive had seen it. Everyone understood that the thing in the sky had done this. Their families, their friends, their homes - everything lost because of what was up there.
What none of them knew was that the true end hadn't arrived yet.
Even from this distance, it was visible: two beams of light colliding, one from above and one from below. A sun appeared in midair, expanding until it filled the sky and then, slowly, faded.
Then the wind came.
The sound reached them afterward - a crack like the sky splitting in two, arriving long after the light had already gone. And with the sound came the shockwave, racing outward at the edge of the blast, piling the sea into walls of water that rose over a hundred meters high.
No one on those floating trees had any chance.
The tsunami swept through everything.
The last words most of them managed were curses. Helpless, furious, unheard.
Then silence.
Brett had no attention to spare for what was happening to Sabaody. Every part of him was committed to what was directly in front of him.
Pluton carried its own Bircan-designed energy shield system. The explosion from the exchange of main cannon fire had sent the warship tumbling across the surface of the sea - nearly capsizing it, nearly driving it under - but hadn't caused any meaningful structural damage. The shields had held.
"The most dangerous thing about that weapon is not its firepower," Pluton said from beside Brett as they steadied themselves. "Although it represents the peak of Bircan weapons technology, this ship was originally built as a transport vessel."
"The Bircans built it to carry their entire civilization from the moon to the Blue Sea."
"Safety was the paramount design priority. To withstand anything the void of space or the open sea could throw at it, they built the strongest defensive system they had ever designed."
Pluton's voice dropped slightly.
"My own shield system is far inferior to it. In terms of firepower, the gap between us is small. But in that war eight hundred years ago, even Uranus and I together could only barely hold it at bay. Because piercing through those shields to cause any real damage was nearly impossible."
Brett gave a slow nod.
So the real problem wasn't breaking through its attacks. It was breaking through its defense.
That also explained why his own attacks had only produced those rippling distortions in the barrier rather than punching through. If even Pluton and Uranus combined had struggled to breach it, the fact that Brett had made it flex at all was more remarkable than he'd given himself credit for.
"There is one way to penetrate those shields," Pluton said. "Sustained fire on the same point. If we can concentrate enough shots on a single location, the barrier will eventually fail there."
That would be difficult to manage.
The saucer was enormous - maneuvering it was slow, which made it hard to avoid fire altogether. But it had more gun barrels than Pluton did, and its targeting was precise enough that landing clean hits on a specific location repeatedly would be a serious challenge.
Unless, Brett thought, there were two of Pluton doing the firing.
He was still turning that over when Imu's voice came down from above.
"You said our next meeting would be the final battlefield, Brett." The words carried a light, almost pleasant quality. "Then die here."
If Brett died here, this encounter would indeed be their last.
Below the flying saucer, clusters of light were already gathering at every gun port.
"Can you hold, Pluton?"
Brett kept his eyes forward. Breaking his word here was going to be unavoidable.
"Of course." Pluton's voice was steady as stone. "This is nowhere near enough to stop us."
Every gun barrel on Pluton's hull elevated in unison. The same gathering light bloomed across the warship's sides.
The barrage erupted from both directions simultaneously.
Shot met shot. Explosions bloomed in layers across the sky, each one birthing the next in a chain that turned the horizon white. The shockwaves hit the sea hard enough to drive the water outward in every direction, raising waves that rolled across the ocean in every direction.
Brett worked his flame clouds to keep Pluton from being blown under, absorbing each concussive wave and stabilizing the ship's position. Pluton in turn held its shields up around Brett, keeping him from being shredded by the blasts.
"How nostalgic," Imu said from above, almost to himself. "Facing Pluton again. It really does feel like eight hundred years ago. Like being enemies with Joy Boy once more."
The exchange continued.
Pluton had not been overstating its capabilities. The firepower was genuinely comparable, the gap small enough that neither side was gaining decisive ground. The flying saucer's advantage in sheer number of gun barrels was real - more beams were coming down than going up - but Brett was using his flame clouds to pull Pluton sideways and forward and back in patterns that made clean targeting difficult. The warship's bulk and weight were irrelevant to him in his awakened state; he could drag it across the sea surface as easily as anything smaller.
"We really do work remarkably well together," Pluton remarked, with what sounded like genuine appreciation.
Brett's mouth curved slightly.
The saucer had the edge in firepower and defensive strength. Brett and Pluton had the edge in mobility. The two advantages were roughly canceling each other out.
The standoff didn't last much longer.
"Brett." Pluton's voice shifted to something more focused. "Incoming transmission from Dr. Vegapunk. All residents have completed boarding. The Sea Kings have begun moving Noah away from Fish-Man Island."
"Good."
Brett nodded once.
Their objective here was complete. Time to leave.