Chapter 555: The Moment to Spread Wings
A cloud drifted in the sky above the island.
Not an ordinary cloud. A constructed one, dense enough to stand on, shaped and held in place by the will of the person who had made it.
Brett's flame clouds.
Something capable of lifting an entire island off the seafloor could hold a few people on its surface without effort.
Two figures moved across that artificial cloud in quick, shifting patterns.
A one-armed man with red hair held his sword in a loose, practiced grip and pressed forward with attack after attack. The blade traced brilliant crescent arcs through the air, every slash carrying the kind of speed and precision that made its power obvious at a glance.
His opponent had his eyes closed.
The dragon-man, scales burning red across every surface, slipped each strike as it came. His frame was enormous, his proportions far beyond what an ordinary body could achieve, but his reflexes were sharper than his size suggested. Precise, fast slashes kept finding nothing.
That said, he could not avoid everything. Occasionally one landed, the blade biting into his scales, splitting them, leaving a shallow line across his body.
Then the scales grew back before the next hit could fall.
"Hey, hey, hey. Aside from not using Haki, I'm basically going all out here, and you're just absurdly durable." The swordsman complained freely as he worked. "Hitting you is like hitting a Seastone wall. My hand's going numb."
The dragon-man, Brett, opened his eyes. "Use your full strength then."
Shanks raised an eyebrow. "You're serious?"
"Even with that body of yours, taking my full output without any defensive effort is going to end badly for you, you know."
Brett knew that perfectly well.
His awakening had multiplied his strength, defense, endurance, and speed by a staggering degree. But that didn't mean his physical body alone was invincible. Shanks might not be the most powerful fighter in raw physical terms, but his Haki was in a class of its own. At full power he could break through Brett's defenses without much difficulty, and Brett was fully aware of that.
Even so.
"That's exactly why it works."
The corner of Brett's mouth pulled up. "The only way to make real progress is to be pushed to the edge."
He let a quiet laugh through. "Besides, Shanks. The way I am right now, even without trying to defend myself, killing me isn't going to be easy."
The man known as an Emperor of the Sea worked his jaw in clear offense. "Is that right? Let me see you prove it."
What an outrageous thing to say, Brett.
You're strong, fine, I'll admit I can't match you anymore, I'll admit that freely. But standing there and telling me I couldn't kill you even if I hacked away without stopping? That's something else entirely.
Shanks had decided. He would give this everything.
He would respect Brett's wishes.
The blade began to carry two colors of Haki at once.
Brett closed his eyes again.
This was not a session to practice taking hits. This was a session to practice breaking through Observation Killing. There was no reason to stand there and absorb punishment. The goal was to dodge.
His Observation Haki came to full force.
He focused outward, searching for the particular quality in Shanks's presence that signaled the Observation Killing technique at work, the slight inward folding of the aura, the way it turned on itself to scramble what others could read. He was looking for the seam. Find the seam, and he could see past it. See past it, and he could look directly into Shanks's thoughts, read what was coming before it arrived.
The approach had already been shown to work. It wasn't reliable yet. Not close to one hundred percent. But the ability was there. He could find it. He could slip past the interference and catch the faint undercurrent of intent beneath it. He was already beginning to catch glimpses of Shanks's near future.
And that percentage was climbing. Steadily, with each repetition, with each hour of this work, it was becoming more natural. More automatic.
A few more days, probably. A few more days and he would be able to bypass Shanks's Observation Killing entirely, reading his thoughts and future without effort.
Shanks and Imu were separated by a vast distance in overall power, and that gap would extend to the strength of their Observation Killing as well. But at least he would no longer be fighting blind when the time came to face Imu again.
Time continued to pass.
New Fish-Man Island steadily found its footing. The first round of temporary housing had gone up quickly. Rough timber frames and stone-cut rooms were not difficult work for people born with the physical gifts Fish-Men possessed. The supply lines from the logistics teams were running reliably. With enough food and materials coming in, the residual anxiety that had lingered in the population finally dissolved.
The island felt alive. Fully, properly alive.
Tesoro organized concerts from time to time, putting his company's performers to use, making sure people had something to enjoy beyond the work of building.
The rest of the world remained locked in a strange stillness. The two sides that had seemed moments from open war had both, simultaneously, gone quiet. The propaganda exchanges continued, but in terms of actual activity, both factions might as well have ceased to exist. Nobody could find them. Nobody knew where either side had gone.
It was the kind of quiet that made people across the seas more anxious, not less.
While that stillness held, not far from New Fish-Man Island, resting on the seafloor in the deep water offshore, sat the cluster of structures that had once been anchored to the floor of the old Fish-Man Island. Vegapunk's laboratory complex, lifted intact and relocated here. And inside it today, in front of a row of sealed glass cylinders, Brett stood very still.
The figures inside the cylinders were tall. Heavily built. Black hair, dense and full. Bold horns curving from their heads.
"Each one has a different ability. But all of them inherited Kaido's extraordinary physical constitution."
Shakka, the Vegapunk satellite, stood at his side.
Brett looked at them carefully.
The Seraphim. The moment to spread their wings had finally arrived.