Chapter 548: Dispersal
The exchange of fire was still going.
Enormous explosions rolled across the sea one after another, churning the water into a continuous boil. The beams were flying too fast and too thick for a clean break - this was no longer a situation where either side could simply decide to disengage and walk away.
The flying saucer above had the advantage of size and sheer gun count, and it was using both, saturating the sky with fire. Pluton matched it shot for shot in terms of power, but volume was a different matter - the gap in barrel count was real, which was presumably why Uranus had been needed eight hundred years ago to make the fight workable.
What changed the equation now was Brett. He kept Pluton moving, pulling it sideways and back and sideways again, letting the warship return fire aft while he drove it forward through the wreckage of the sea. Between his mobility support and Pluton's firepower, they were holding even.
But holding even was the ceiling. The time for the final war had not arrived. One Pluton was not enough to defeat what Imu was flying - that would require its counterpart to be finished first.
The evacuation was done. It was time to go.
Getting clear, Brett suspected, was not going to be as simple as turning around.
He took a breath.
"Pluton. Stop conserving. Everything you have."
"Understood. Full retreat mode."
Pluton's acknowledgment was quiet and precise.
Then every gun barrel on the warship rose simultaneously. The light that bloomed across the hull was dense enough to look like the sky had come alive below the waterline - hundreds of points of gathered energy opening at once, like stars pulled down to sea level.
Every single one fired.
The beams rose in a solid wall of light, packed so tightly together that the gaps between them were barely visible. An upward barrage of such density that it looked less like cannon fire and more like a second ocean rising to meet the first.
What came down to meet it was heavier still.
The collision blew the sea apart. The shockwave didn't just push the water back - it drove the surface downward, punching a massive depression into the ocean that the surrounding sea immediately rushed to fill. The erupting light rendered the whole sky colorless for a moment, everything bleached to white.
In the instant of the explosion, Brett hit his maximum speed. Flame clouds seized Pluton and he pulled the warship toward the gap in the Red Line - the enormous breach Imu had torn through the rock - aiming for the New World on the other side.
Imu noticed the moment Brett broke for the opening.
"Running again, Brett."
The irritation in Imu's voice was something rarely heard. How many times had this happened now? Brett slipping away when he should have been finished? Every confrontation ending with that man intact and moving further out of reach?
"Not this time."
The flying saucer's enormous bulk lurched into motion, accelerating after Brett with every gun port already hot, raining fire down on the retreating Pluton.
Brett responded by flipping the warship entirely - spinning it so its bow faced backward, letting Pluton return fire in full while he drove it forward. The barrage from above and the counter-barrage from below kept the space between them constantly explosive.
Brett and Pluton punched through the gap in the Red Line and broke into New World waters.
The saucer was still coming.
But the distance was growing.
Brett's speed advantage - the same thing that had let him escape Imu's pursuit with Uranus, the same thing Imu had admitted he couldn't overcome - was asserting itself again. Even towing a several-hundred-meter warship, Brett pulled away.
When Imu's shots kept coming, Pluton answered each one at equal intensity. The exchange continued even in full retreat.
"This is why I called us the perfect partnership," Pluton said with evident satisfaction. "If I'd had this kind of speed eight hundred years ago, that war would have been a different story."
"You have it now." Brett smiled. "And you said it yourself - looking backward is pointless. The future is what matters."
"Indeed it is."
The conversation was relaxed. The retreat was working.
Behind them, the mood was not.
"Damn it all."
Imu's voice, lost inside the enormous sound of the exchange, was something only Brett's Observation Haki could pick out clearly. Low, barely controlled.
The distance kept growing.
Again.
Every single time, this man found a way out.
He was becoming genuinely troublesome. The combination of Brett's speed and Pluton's firepower was a pairing that Imu had not fully accounted for.
And that wasn't even the complete picture. The warship the Fish-Men were currently building would be Pluton's counterpart - the second ship. When it was finished, Imu would be facing four ancient weapons in total.
"You really are a headache, Brett."
The words drifted into the fading glow of the last explosion, with no one nearby to hear them.
At the same moment, Brett had cleared the blast zone entirely and taken Pluton under the surface, descending back toward Fish-Man Island.
The next time they met would be the final war. He was certain of it now.
There were still things at Fish-Man Island that only he could carry away. Vegapunk's laboratory. The second Pluton, still under construction. Neither of those could be moved without his flame clouds - nothing else in the world could lift them from the seafloor.
He would need to think, too, about where to bring his people. The Sea Kings were carrying Noah somewhere right now, but somewhere needed to become a specific destination.
There was a great deal left to figure out.
But they were alive. Noah was moving. Pluton was intact.
For now, that was enough.