Devouring activated.
"Urrrraaaah!"
Hank felt a bizarre suction dragging through his iron hammers. His stamina, his Haki, even the steel his Devil Fruit had created were being ripped away from him.
He tried to yank his arms back, but the dragon claw held fast around them like the strongest shackles in the world.
Three seconds later, the hammer on his right arm collapsed.
The steel crumbled and receded, turning back into flesh and blood... but that arm was already shriveled and dry, like it had aged decades in an instant.
"M... monster..."
Hank staggered backward, his face the color of chalk.
Bullet looked down at his dragon claw.
The metal he had just devoured was already converted into pure energy and absorbed. The dark gold sheen on the scales there had grown just a bit brighter.
"So that is it."
He muttered under his breath.
"Devouring metal types can harden and toughen the scales."
"The efficiency is low, but it works."
Hank's four crewmates saw this and rushed him together.
Each of them swung a blade, the edges wrapped in a faint coating of Armament.
Anyone who had made it into the New World knew at least a little Haki.
Bullet did not even turn around.
His left arm shifted, scales racing across it as it dragonized. He swung it back in a casual sweep.
Five black air blades snapped into existence behind him, slicing through the weapons in their hands and carving deep, bone showing gashes across their chests.
All four men screamed and hit the deck, blood spilling across the planks.
A chorus of sharp intakes of breath rose from the pier.
"I... is it over already?"
Someone whispered.
Bullet did not think so.
He looked back at Hank just in time to see the man, shaking, yank a Den Den Mushi from his coat.
"F... fire all cannons!"
Hank roared hoarsely.
"Target this ship!"
"Open fire!"
There were still over thirty crewmembers aboard the Anvil.
Fear clawed at them, but they moved anyway, following the order.
Gunports opened. A dozen cannons swung around and locked onto their own deck.
They did not care if their captain got caught in it.
"Foolish."
Bullet shook his head.
He let the full beast form take him.
When a three hundred meter black dragon appeared above the Anvil, the pier fell utterly silent.
Hank collapsed where he stood, a spreading wet patch soaking through his pants.
He lifted his head and stared up at the black giant that blotted out the sky, mind completely blank.
The dragon did not strike immediately.
He circled once in the air above the ship, as if studying, as if building something up.
Bullet was feeling the flow of power within him.
Nidhogg, the dragon said to gnaw at the roots of the World Tree and end worlds, did not breathe common flame.
Its breath was black fire that corroded, devoured, and annihilated all things.
He opened his jaws.
Black energy gathered in his throat. The air around him grew colder instead of hotter, as if even heat was being consumed.
The energy compressed and coiled tighter and tighter until it became a thick, liquid like stream of black fire.
Black Flame Dragon Breath.
A devouring flame that could disassemble both matter and energy.
When he exhaled, time felt like it slowed.
The pillar of black fire was over twenty meters thick, and wherever it passed, the air twisted, light itself seemed to be swallowed.
There was none of the searing heat of ordinary fire. Instead, it radiated a chill that made hearts tremble.
It was the kind of destructive power that felt like it could freeze even souls.
The first blast of black flame struck the Anvil's prow.
The metal armor did not melt.
It simply began to come apart the instant it touched the fire, its structure breaking down as the material was reduced to its most basic particles and consumed by the black flame itself.
The bow vanished, as if a gigantic invisible mouth had bitten a chunk clean out of the ship.
The second blast swept across the deck.
Cannons, masts, crew...
Anything that met the black flames disintegrated.
Screams rang out for a heartbeat, then faded away one by one.
For the third, Bullet aimed at the middle of the hull.
He wanted to test the upper limit of the flame's devouring power.
The beam of black fire tore through the ship's center, opening a thirty meter wide hole in the armor.
Through it, the interior decks were fully exposed.
The edge of the crater was not charred, but smooth, as if sliced clean.
Everything there had been perfectly broken down and swallowed.
Bullet could feel the metal and life force the black fire had consumed pouring back into him as pure energy.
The conversion rate was not high, but the sheer volume was enormous.
The Anvil began to list.
Its structure was far too compromised. Sea water gushed in through the gaping wounds.
A minute later, the armored warship sank completely, leaving only a scattering of wooden scraps and a few flailing survivors in the waves.
Bullet dropped the beast form and landed back on the pier.
He looked down at his hands.
The scales were gone, but faint dark gold patterns flashed and vanished across his skin.
The metal energy he had devoured was still at work, subtly reinforcing his body.
The dock was utterly silent.
Hundreds of pirates and townsfolk stared at Bullet, then out at the dying whirlpools on the surface.
That was where the Anvil had gone down.
"O... one man... sank an armored warship..."
"That black fire... was that a Devil Fruit?"
"Mythical Zoan... has to be a Mythical Zoan..."
Whispers slowly rose, every eye filled with fear and a heavy kind of awe.
Shanks stepped up beside him.
"How was it?"
"New ability tested."
Bullet nodded.
"Results were good."
"Then let us go."
Shanks turned back toward town.
"We did not finish that drink."
They walked back to the tavern, the crowd parting wordlessly before them.
No one dared look at them with a hint of provocation now.
Inside the Old Sea Dog, the one eyed barkeep silently slid two fresh glasses of rum across the counter.
He did not say a word, but there was a new weight in his gaze.
...
High above the harbor, several thousand meters up, a News Coo happened to be flying past.
The image Den Den Mushi hanging at its neck had caught the last moment of the black flames swallowing the warship.
The bird cocked its head, as if deciding this looked like a decent headline, then banked and changed course toward the nearest branch office.
Three days later, an emergency extra edition from the World Economy News Paper spread through parts of the New World.
"Shocking! Roger Crew Rookie Suspected of Mythical Zoan Ability!"
"Black Dragon Form Uses Black Flame to Sink Armored Ship, Iron Hammer Pirates Annihilated!"
The picture was a blurry shot of Bullet in dragon form spewing black fire.
It was not clear, but it was more than spectacular enough.
For the first time, the factions of the New World seriously took note of the boy named Douglas Bullet.
At that moment, Bullet himself was sitting on the bow of the Oro Jackson, looking at the fresh news sheet in his hands, expressionless.
"Famous now?"
Shanks came over and sat beside him.
"This is just the start."
Bullet crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it into the sea.
"My name will not truly be 'famous' until it has reached every corner of this world."
He looked out toward the distant line of the horizon, silent flames burning in his eyes.