"Captain, that should be Dovi Island up ahead. Looks like pirates are raiding it."
Three pirate ships cut through the West Blue toward the little isle. The Lucky Goddess led the formation, the other two vessels shadowing on either side.
Van Augur peered through his monocle and smiled. Even where the island's outline blurred at the horizon, his sight found details Teach could not. Van Augur had an eye made for long distances; it was part of why he was feared as a marksman.
Teach let his Observation Haki sweep the island. In minutes he knew what had happened there. A temple on the mountain was smoking and collapsing; the place had been burned and ransacked.
"Good," Teach said with a flat tone. "We'll handle them. We need supplies, and those scum deserve no mercy."
The Great Pirate Era had churned out countless monsters. Plenty of self-styled pirates used the sea as an excuse to kill and plunder. Innocent civilians paid the price, and Teach felt none of the sentimental patience many islanders expected. If a crew burned a temple and slaughtered villagers, they were finished in his book.
On Dovi, the mountain temple smoldered. Clemons' fists trembled as he stared at the ruined roof and smoke curling into the sky. The boy's eyes were wet with rage.
"Don't rush," Bones warned. He kept his voice low but firm. "We'll have our chance. Master told us to survive. That's what he wanted."
Bones' hands stayed steady despite the trembling of his chest. He remembered the old man's last words. "Under the Buddha statue."
Clemons ground his teeth. "What could that mean? What did he hide down there?"
They would find out.
Below, the Ghost Face Pirates had been looting, piles of bundles and overturned chests marking their rampage. Fossman, their captain, barked orders when a lookout cried that other ships were approaching.
"Which crew dares this?" he raged. "If they try to steal our spoils, we kill them."
Then someone pointed up. Two black specks fell from the sky, growing fast.
"No—get clear!" Fossman warned, but it was too late. Two impacts hit the sand like small detonations, throwing men and debris into the air. Two craters opened on the shore. Dust and shredded timber hung in the heat-blurred light.
From the ruined temple, the two boys watched the island's chaos and then saw what the pirates had left behind: the Buddha statue had been hacked down, half of its body hewn away. Prayer cushions lay scattered, singed. The temple's roof was gone. The sacred space was now an open ruin.
Bones and Clemons kept their heads down while the pirates crowded the temple interior, searching for valuables. Bonnis, Bones' name in full, circled the great wooden figure until he found what he suspected: a loose plank. The floor gave under his billhook with a single strike, splinters flying. Beneath the Buddha's base the boys found a hollow.
They pried and chopped until the base came free. When the statue toppled it hit the ground with a heavy thud. For a moment the air tasted of dust and old incense. And then they saw them: two fruits tucked in the hollow, one silver-gray with strange veining, the other flesh-colored and mottled.
"Master said… this," Clemons whispered.
They already knew what a Devil Fruit meant. The two boys exchanged a look that was part dread and part fierce hope. If the old man had left them power, it was not for themselves alone but for a debt, vengeance, protection, survival.
"Together?" Clemons asked.
"Together," Bonnis answered.
They bit in at the same time. The nauseating taste filled their mouths; they swallowed, and the fruit's core slid down like a pebble of heat. A hush fell over them. Then the world shifted.
Clemons felt his flesh tightening, strength blooming under his skin. Muscles rippled up his arms like ropes swelling after a storm. He laughed, incredulous, and punched the air. His fist thudded and left a ringing echo.
Bonnis flexed his fingers. The tips sharpened into blades that glinted even in the smoke-darkened temple. The truth of the Devil Fruits revealed itself: a name, an ability—instantly understood, as if some buried voice spoke the words.
"I ate the Dice-Dice Fruit. My hands turn into blades," Bonnis said, testing the edge of his fingers against a fallen plank.
"I ate the Muscle-Muscle Fruit. My body's strength is amplified," Clemons replied. He felt raw, sudden power in every fiber. He grinned like a child with a new toy.
Power inflates courage. The two boys surged from the temple carrying the memory of their master and the taste of vengeance.
On the beach the Ghost Face Pirates stared at the two figures who had left the craters. Their jaws dropped. The first thought among the looters was wrong by a single syllable—these were not ordinary arrivals.
"Is that… Iron Wallace and Hunter Gar?" one of them muttered, voice thin with fear.
They were. The Nightfall Pirates' presence in the West Blue had become rumor and myth in a matter of weeks. Word travels fast when warships sink and whole villages burn.
Wallace and Gar did not wait for Teach's signal. For them, the island's violence was a problem that needed solving now. Wallace's voice was flat. "Take what you need and step aside."
Fossman tried bargaining. "We'll give you supplies. Keep your hands off—"
The pirate who spoke next never finished. Wallace vanished from his post and reappeared at Fossman's flank before the man could turn. The punch that landed sounded like a log being split; Fossman spat blood and folded inward as ribs snapped.
Gar was already moving with the same merciless efficiency. His hunting knives flashed and tore through two of Fossman's men who had thought themselves brave. Their bodies broke and caved in a wash of red. Screams cut short, boots skidded in blood-slick sand.
The remaining looters stammered and fled, their earlier bravado evaporating where the Nightfall Pirates' auras pressed like cold iron. The boys who had eaten their fruit did not yet understand the full scope of their new strengths, but their resolve had swelled to match.
Between temple ruin and retreating pirates, the island held its breath. Teach's ships bore down, the Nightfall flag snapping in the wind. On the mountain the two boys steadied themselves beneath the shattered Buddha and swore to make their master's last gift mean something more than a secret buried under wood and ash.
The sea moved on and, with it, the Nightfall Pirates' shadow. Islands would burn, markets would buzz, and more names would be written in the rough ledger of the Great Pirate Era. But on Dovi, a small temple's secret had been uncovered, two new choices cast into the world, and the night that followed would change a few lives forever.