The sea stretched endlessly, dark and glittering beneath the pale sky. Three pirate ships cut through the waves in formation, their sails billowing under a steady wind. A month had passed since Teach and his crew departed from the Bocaboca Kingdom and the Marines still refused to leave them alone.
"Haha! Those Marines are nothing if not stubborn," Wallace said with a wide grin, watching another Marine warship sink beneath the crimson-stained waves. "That makes fifteen of their ships we've sent to the bottom, and they're still chasing us!"
For the past month, the East Blue had been thrown into chaos. Every Marine division was hunting for the Nightfall Pirates, abandoning other targets just to track them down. Yet every time they thought they'd cornered Teach, the result was the same, another smoking wreckage, another lost fleet.
Eighteen warships destroyed in a single month.
Not once had the Marines managed to engage the Nightfall Pirates directly. Vice Admiral Brom, who led the pursuit, always arrived just in time to see drifting debris and blood in the water.
After so many humiliations, the East Blue Marines had become the laughingstock of the seas. Their failures were the talk of every tavern, burning through manpower, money, and ships, with nothing to show for it but sunken pride.
The Nightfall Pirates, meanwhile, had mastered the art of disappearance. They no longer flaunted their presence. Whenever they spotted a Marine patrol, they struck fast, sank the ship, and vanished before reinforcements could arrive.
Their rests and resupplies were done in silence, on uninhabited islands, or by sending disguised crew members ashore to buy supplies. Most of their time was spent at sea, moving under the Marines' noses yet always one step ahead.
That uncanny luck came down to two things: Teach's Observation Haki and Baccarat's Lucky-Lucky Fruit. Between his sharp intuition and her divine sense for fortune, they always found the right path and avoided Brom's fleet entirely.
Teach had no interest in showing his full strength yet. There was no need to expose his cards so early.
Now, after weeks of evasion, they finally neared their next great passage: Reverse Mountain. Teach had been here before and this time, he would be leaving from it.
Their course was set for the West Blue.
"Let's move," Teach said with a grin, standing at the helm. "The Marines haven't guessed our destination yet. Straight to the West Blue."
"Even if Brom hears we're leaving the East Blue, he won't get here in time," Nelson chuckled. "He's been dancing to our tune for a month."
The crew roared with laughter, the sound carrying over the waves before they returned to their posts, steering toward the towering silhouette of Reverse Mountain.
Over the past month, the Nightfall Pirates' wanted posters had been updated with staggering new figures:
Captain, 'Demon Claw' Marshall D. Teach: Former member of the Whitebeard Pirates. Crimes: Atrocities across multiple seas.
Bounty: 187,000,000 Berries; Dead or Alive.
Officer, Mink Tribe 'Hunter' Gar – 98,000,000 Berries
Officer, 'Cat woman' Pito (Zoan: Cat-Cat Fruit) – 72,000,000 Berries
Officer, Steel Wallace (Paramecia: Steel-Steel Fruit) – 83,000,000 Berries
Officer, 'Transfer' Nelson (Paramecia: Transfer-Transfer Fruit) – 76,000,000 Berries
Officer, 'White-Haired Devil' Kaguya (Paramecia: Bone-Bone Fruit) – 45,000,000 Berries
Officer, Gunner 'Instant Roar' Van Augur – 86,000,000 Berries
Officer, 'Lucky Girl' Baccarat – 45,000,000 Berries
Officer, 'Enchanting Butterfly' Pouf (Zoan: Powder Butterfly Fruit) – 74,000,000 Berries
Even among the Four Seas, the total bounty of the Night Pirates had broken records, surpassing most crews in the first half of the Grand Line.
Teach himself had stopped taking direct action after his bounty hit 137 million, but once the Marines uncovered his past as a former member of Whitebeard's crew, the number soared by another fifty million.
Once the investigation started, it was only a matter of time. Teach had left footprints across every sea, the East Blue, the Grand Line, even the New World. His history couldn't stay buried.
The revelation sent shockwaves through the world.
A sixteen-year-old pirate, once part of Whitebeard's family, now carving his own legend. A new Supernova was born, rising alongside the likes of Crocodile and Moria.
Meanwhile, far behind them, Vice Admiral Brom stood on the deck of his flagship, veins bulging on his temples as he stared at yet another burning patch of sea.
"Those damned pirates!" he roared, slamming his fist into the railing hard enough to splinter the wood. A month of failure had aged him a decade. Every report from the World Government, every mocking message from rival officers, was salt in the wound.
Without Marine patrols keeping order, the East Blue had plunged into lawlessness. New pirate flags sprouted on every horizon, sacking islands, attacking merchant fleets, even raiding World Government territories.
And all because Brom couldn't stop one crew.
His desk was littered with photos, Teach, Gar, Wallace, Nelson, Baccarat, all stabbed through with knife points. Rumors of Marine incompetence spread like wildfire, his name at the center of every sneer.
He needed to capture the Nightfall Pirates.
He needed a victory to survive the disgrace.
"Keep searching!" he barked. "They're still in this region. I don't care how tired you are, we're not letting them slip away again!"
The weary Marines below saluted, but their movements were sluggish. A month of sleepless patrols had drained even the most loyal men.
That night, Reverse Mountain loomed ahead beneath a moonlit sky, its slopes black and gleaming like an ancient beast lying dormant in the sea.
Teach planned to pass through under cover of darkness, through the mountain's waterways and into the West Blue.
At the entrance, three Marine warships maintained routine patrols, guarding against pirates who tried to enter the Grand Line. But no sane pirate would attempt the climb at night. The raging currents were lethal in darkness, so the patrols were lax.
Until one lookout broke the silence.
"Enemy sighted! Three ships approaching, just two hundred meters out!"
"What? Impossible! No pirate would sail up Reverse Mountain at night!" the officer stammered, but when he snatched the binoculars from the trembling lookout, his blood ran cold.
Three ships. Black sails. The flag, three skulls behind crossed bones.
The Nightfall Pirates.
The officer's face drained of color. Around him, every Marine froze. The name alone was enough to spread dread through the East Blue. The men who had sunk eighteen warships in a month had come straight for them.
"What... what do we do?"
"Call Vice Admiral Brom! Request immediate backup!" the officer barked, trying to mask his own panic. "Open fire and hold position! We're near Loguetown, he'll reach us in time!"
He didn't believe it himself, but it was all he could say. The Marines readied the cannons, hands shaking, while the other two warships began to close in from the distance.
The Nightfall Pirates' firepower was legendary. Everyone on board was a marksman, and they had never lost a naval battle, not once. To the Marines, that was the cruelest irony of all.
Teach watched the warships through his telescope and smiled faintly. "Three ships, three targets. Nelson, Gar, Wallace, take one each. Prepare the cannons."
"Understood," Nelson said, rolling his shoulders. "Not a single one will get away."
Then his figure vanished.
One blink, and he was gone, reappearing a hundred meters ahead, then another hundred, flickering through the air like a ghost as he swapped positions with pockets of empty space.
In seconds, Nelson was a thousand meters away, dropping from the sky toward a Marine warship. A grin curved his lips as he lifted his hand.
The sea rippled. An invisible force surged outward, wrapping around the ship.
Then, with a thunderous crack, the entire warship disappeared.
The full power of the Transfer-Transfer Fruit revealed itself, a single gesture, and an entire warship was pulled into Nelson's spatial dimension.
But the feat came at a cost. The moment the ship vanished, blood streamed down Nelson's chin. His body trembled violently, muscles and veins straining under invisible weight. It felt like the pressure of a mountain crushing his chest.
Three seconds felt like an eternity.
Then he released it. The warship reappeared high above the water and crashed back down with a roar that sent a towering wave across the sea. The impact shattered the vessel and every Marine aboard was dead before it even hit the surface.
Nelson exhaled shakily, the blood on his lips still fresh. The space inside his dimension was too unstable; ordinary people couldn't survive in it. Anyone weaker than him would be crushed the moment they were pulled inside.
Teach knew that well. He'd tested Nelson's dimension himself—and while it couldn't harm someone of his caliber, it was devastating against ordinary soldiers.
Nelson reappeared on deck, panting heavily.
"Nelson," Teach said with a calm smile, "don't use that move again. Just grab the people, not the ship. The weight's too much for you right now. You'll wreck your body before the enemy."
Nelson scratched his head, wincing. "Yeah… guess that was pretty stupid, huh?"
He laughed weakly, wiping the blood from his chin.