The Tarai Current was not a natural ocean flow; it was a man-made, inescapable whirlpool of terrifying proportions.
The stolen Marine patrol cruiser pitched and violently rolled as it caught the outer edge of the massive vortex. The sky above them had turned a heavy, bruised purple, devoid of the bright afternoon sun they had just left behind at the Sabaody Archipelago. The air was thick, carrying the salty, oppressive scent of the Calm Belt.
"Trim the starboard sail!" Zoro yelled over the roaring water, hauling on a thick, coarse rope with his bare hands.
"Don't give me orders, moss-head!" Sanji snapped back, though he was already vaulting across the deck to secure the rigging. "Just keep the rudder steady before this current rips the hull apart!"
Luffy stood at the very prow of the ship, the salty spray whipping against his face. He didn't blink. He didn't laugh. His dark eyes were locked dead ahead, staring into the swirling abyss of the current, his mind entirely focused on a single, burning objective.
Sitting casually on a wooden crate near the helm, Light Yagami calmly flattened the crumpled newspaper against his knee. He ignored the frantic shouting of the swordsman and the cook, his dark eyes scanning the finer print of the article he had shown them back at Shakky's bar.
Bonney, still in her pink-haired toddler form, was sitting on the deck beside him, aggressively trying to open a jar of pickled sea-king meat she had found in the cruiser's pantry.
"Hey," Bonney whined, holding the jar up. "Open this. The chef guy is too busy yelling at the green guy to make a real meal."
Light took the jar, effortlessly popping the vacuum-sealed lid off with a fraction of his physical strength, and handed it back. He looked over the newspaper one last time, his calculating mind running the timelines.
"Straw Hat," Light called out. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a resonant, absolute authority that effortlessly pierced through the roaring wind and crashing waves.
Luffy turned around, his expression hardened. Zoro and Sanji paused their bickering, looking back at the False Deity.
"The information broker's intelligence was sound, but she forgot to tell you one thing," Light stated, tossing the crumpled newspaper over his shoulder. The wind caught it, sweeping the paper into the violent ocean. "This newspaper was printed four days ago."
The color drained from Luffy's face.
"Four days..." Sanji muttered, doing the math in his head. His visible eye widened in horror. "Wait. If the execution was scheduled in six days, and the paper is four days old..."
"We don't have six days," Light confirmed, his tone entirely devoid of panic or sympathy. "We have forty-eight hours. Ace will be escorted out of the lowest level of Impel Down and transferred to Marineford the day after tomorrow."
"Forty-eight hours," Zoro repeated, a heavy bead of sweat rolling down his temple. "That means we have to breach the greatest prison in the world, fight our way down to the absolute bottom, grab your brother, and fight our way back up to the surface in less than forty-eight hours."
Luffy's jaw clenched so tightly his teeth audibly ground together. He turned back toward the prow of the ship. "Then we go faster. I don't care who gets in my way. I'm going to smash through all of them."
"A highly inefficient, but appreciated sentiment," Light noted dryly.
"Speaking of getting in the way," Zoro pointed toward the horizon. "How exactly are we supposed to smash through that?!"
Looming out of the dark, bruised fog of the Calm Belt was a structure that defied human comprehension.
The Gates of Justice.
They were colossal, impossible walls of solid steel that stretched hundreds of feet into the sky, disappearing into the heavy clouds. They formed a perfect, impenetrable barricade across the Tarai Current. There were no handles. There were no visible mechanisms. They were designed to only open from the inside, responding exclusively to the encrypted clearance codes of Marine Headquarters.
"We're heading right for them!" Sanji yelled, dropping from the rigging. "Turn the ship! If we hit those doors at this speed, the cruiser will be crushed like a tin can!"
"Maintain course," Light ordered, slowly standing up from his crate.
"Are you insane?!" Usopp wasn't there to panic, so Sanji took the mantle, pointing frantically at the towering steel wall rapidly approaching. "We can't bust through that! It's solid steel!"
"I did not say we were going to bust through it," Light replied, stepping smoothly past the panicked cook. He walked to the very center of the wooden deck, planting his boots firmly against the planks.
He closed his eyes.
The exhaustion from his fight with Admiral Sakazuki had faded, his Level 10 Life Force having completely restored his stamina during his two-week slumber in the Florian Triangle. His reserves of Karma Points were critically low, but his physical and spiritual energy were fully replenished.
Light reached deep into his core, expanding his Force Authority outward. The invisible, hyper-dense spatial energy bled from his body, expanding in a massive, pulsating dome that completely enveloped the Marine cruiser, the masts, the hull, and everyone on board.
"Hold onto something bolted down," Light advised casually.
Luffy grabbed the railing. Zoro and Sanji instinctively braced themselves, recognizing the terrifying shift in the air pressure. Bonney just shoved another piece of pickled meat into her mouth, completely unfazed.
Force: Ascension.
The water immediately beneath the cruiser violently depressed, creating a massive, momentary crater in the ocean.
With a deafening groan of buckling timber, the entire naval warship was violently ripped out of the Tarai Current. It didn't sail; it launched. Propelled by the absolute maximum output of Light's telekinetic grasp, the massive ship shot straight up into the dark sky, defying gravity with terrifying violence.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Sanji screamed as the G-forces slammed him into the deck, his cigarette flying out of his mouth.
Zoro drove the hilts of his swords into the wood to keep from sliding backward, his eyes wide with sheer disbelief.
They soared hundreds of feet into the air, the wind screaming past their ears. The colossal steel wall of the Gates of Justice rushed beneath them as Light steered the flying warship directly over the impenetrable barricade. For a brief, terrifying second, they were suspended in the clouds, looking down at the absolute peak of the Navy's greatest defense mechanism.
Then, they crested the wall, and the spatial barrier dissolved.
Gravity reasserted its iron grip. The cruiser plummeted down the other side of the gates, falling toward the eerily calm, completely still waters of the Calm Belt.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Zoro roared.
The ship hit the water with a monumental, thunderous CRASH. A tidal wave of displaced water exploded outward, soaking the deck and everyone on it. The hull groaned in agonizing protest, a few minor cracks splintering along the deck boards, but the thick, reinforced armor of the Marine cruiser held together.
The ship violently bobbed and rocked before finally settling into the stagnant, silent ocean.
Luffy coughed, shaking the water from his hair like a wet dog. He rushed back to the prow and looked ahead.
There it was.
Rising from the center of the dark, motionless sea was a massive, imposing fortress of gray stone. It looked like the peak of a submerged tower, heavily guarded by Marine battleships anchored in a perfect defensive perimeter.
Impel Down. The Great Underwater Prison.
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A/N: We are back! Been some time but let's go. Regular updates again!