The two of them jumped straight off Upper Yard—ten thousand meters up—into open air!
A crushing sense of weightlessness swallowed them instantly.
The howling wind was like countless knives tearing across their bodies. Clouds streaked past at terrifying speed, and the whole world spun wildly.
"Rain, you idiot!! We're going to die!!" Smoker screamed himself hoarse into the gale. He instinctively tried to turn intangible, but under that monstrous wind pressure, any smoke that formed was ripped apart immediately.
"Don't panic!"
Rain's voice came through—unnervingly calm.
In the midst of that insane freefall, his Observation Haki exploded outward.
His perception pierced the clouds, pierced the ten-thousand-meter drop, scanning the vast sea below like the most precise radar.
He "saw" countless islands of different sizes, countless presences—
Then he locked onto their target: Jaya—Mock Town.
Rain's eyes snapped open, lightning flashing in his pupils.
"Found it."
He roared at the still-screaming Smoker, "Smoker! Elementalize! Follow me!!"
"ZZZRRRRT—!!!!"
Rain's body burst apart in midair—no longer human-shaped—becoming a massive, blinding blue bolt of lightning several meters thick!
The lightning tore through the clouds, adjusted its angle, and fell like a blue meteor on a slanted trajectory toward Mock Town.
"…Bastard!" Smoker cursed, staring at the retreating lightning. He could only grit his teeth and turn fully into dense white smoke, like a white comet, chasing after the bolt.
…
Jaya, Mock Town.
As always, it was chaotic, filthy, and soaked in crime.
"Big Axe" Mills—a one-eyed pirate with a bounty of 38 million—kicked open a tavern door and tossed out a pirate who owed him gambling debts.
"Damn it, bunch of trash!" Mills spat and took an irritated swig.
He'd been in a foul mood lately.
A few days ago, some cursed bell sound had come from nowhere, and the idiots in town started spreading rumors about "Sky Island" and a "Golden Bell," making everyone restless—fewer people were paying him tribute.
"Sky Island? Golden Bell?" Mills sneered at his men. "All bullshit! I only believe in Berries I rob with this gun! You remember that too—those airy-fairy legends are for tricking morons!"
"Yes, boss! Boss is right!" his men hurriedly agreed.
Just then, a pirate drinking in the corner pointed at the sky. His bottle dropped with a clatter.
"H-hey… look at the sky!"
"Look at what? Idiot, it's broad day—" Mills raised his head impatiently—and his words died in his throat.
In the bright blue sky, two enormous points of light were dragging long tails, rapidly swelling as they came down at terrifying speed.
"M-meteors?!"
"No! What the hell are those?! They're going to hit!!"
"Wait… wait—is it real?! Treasure falling from Sky Island?!"
In an instant, greed crushed fear.
Mills' one eye bulged wide, trembling with pure avarice.
Bang! He fired a flare gun into the sky, the shriek cutting the air.
"It's mine! Nobody touch it!" he roared in giddy excitement. "All of you—get your asses over here!!"
Pirates poured out from every corner of town. Led by Mills, they howled and surged toward the "meteor" impact point.
And in the middle of their frenzy… the meteors landed.
BOOOOM—!!!!!!!!!!
A deafening blast detonated in one corner of Mock Town, accompanied by blinding blue light and a shockwave!
The ground shook violently.
A terrifying blast wind swept like a typhoon, ripping roofs off houses within hundreds of meters. Pirates were thrown like rag dolls.
Mock Town looked like it had just been hit by an earthquake.
Dust and lightning filled the air, obscuring everything.
Pirates crawled out of wreckage, staring in terror at the explosion's center. Mills climbed up too, covered in grime, his eye fixed on the crater.
The dust slowly cleared.
In the center of a huge, charred crater dozens of meters wide, two tall figures stood up.
Rain stood at the bottom, thin arcs of electricity still dancing over him.
The pirates finally saw what was in the crater—and went completely blank.
No treasure.
Just… two people?!
Mills narrowed his one eye, studying them.
One was white-haired, clearly dangerous, but he was hunched over coughing violently, looking unwell.
The other—Mills blinked—was a harmless-looking, clean-faced youth, maybe twenty at most, calmly brushing dust off his clothes, utterly out of sync with the devastation around him.
"…Just two brats?"
He'd killed brats like that more times than he could count.
The moment Mills saw how young they were, his earlier caution was swallowed by greed again. Falling from the sky? These two had to carry Sky Island secrets—very likely gold.
"Hey! You two!" Mills worked up courage, gripping his flintlock and barking, "Where'd you come from?! Were you… from Sky Island?!"
Rain's face remained calm. He patted at nonexistent dust, then looked up at Mills.
"Yeah."
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to everyone.
"I even rang the Golden Bell a few days ago. You all heard it, right?"
The words "Golden Bell" were like a fuse to a powder keg.
Every pirate's breathing grew heavy. Greed turned their eyes red.
"H-he admitted it!"
"They really came from Sky Island!!"
"Golden Bell! He said Golden Bell!"
"Gold!! They must have gold on them!!"
Mills' brain overheated with greed. Seeing over a hundred of his men arriving, his confidence surged.
He grinned viciously and stepped forward, the black mouth of his gun aimed at Rain.
"Kid! I don't care what kind of freak you are—hand over all the gold you brought down from Sky Island! Or don't blame me for what happens next!!"
His men raised guns too, aiming into the crater at Rain and Smoker.
Other pirate crews nearby were equally hungry for gold, but seeing Mills and his hundred-plus men surround the place, they could only swallow their envy and back off.
Yet faced with a hundred guns, Rain acted as if he hadn't noticed.
He even turned leisurely to look at Smoker.
Smoker was still coughing hard, hacking out dust and dirt he'd inhaled.
"You okay?" Rain asked calmly.
"Cough… cough… damn you, Rain!" Smoker wiped his face and growled, teeth clenched. "Do this again and I'll… I'll fight you for real…"
"HEY!!! Are you two deaf?!"
Chatting like this under gunpoint was such blatant indifference that Mills felt deeply humiliated.
His one remaining eye went bloodshot.
"Bastards… you dare ignore me?!"
Mills trembled with rage, his grin turning into pure fury.
"Then you don't want to live!" He stopped talking and chopped his arm down.
"Fire!! Turn them into meat paste!!"
~~~
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