Chapter 11: The Azure Sun
The world had become a crushing, silent tomb. Submerged in Kisame's Water Prison Dome, Escanor was a defiant star being drowned in an endless, icy sea. The pressure was immense, a physical weight that sought to pulverize his bones, but it was the siphoning effect that was truly damning. He could feel the water, saturated with Kisame's chakra and fused with Samehada's hunger, leaching the very power of Sunshine from his skin.
His golden aura, once a raging inferno, was now a flickering candle. Kisame, in his monstrous fused form, was the undisputed god of this domain. He circled Escanor like a leviathan, his movements fluid and predatory, his grin a rictus of sharp teeth and victory.
"The ocean's judgment is absolute, Escanor ," Kisame's voice echoed through the water, a distorted, gurgling sound. "Your pride, your fire... it all means nothing down here. The depths extinguish all light." He lunged, his claws raking across Escanor's chest, drawing blood that was instantly diluted and swept away by the current.
Escanor grunted, the blow forcing the air from his lungs. He was weakening. The sun outside the dome was past its zenith, and his power was naturally beginning to wane. Trapped here, it was fading even faster.
Is this it? he thought, his limbs feeling heavy as lead. Is my power truly so fickle? A gift granted and rescinded by the whims of a distant star? To be defeated not by a greater power, but by a mere disadvantage of environment?
Kisame moved in for the final blow, his monstrous form a blur of speed. "It is over. You will drown in the dark."
A low, rumbling chuckle echoed from Escanor, a sound that defied the suffocating pressure of the water. Kisame paused, confused. Escanor's head slowly lifted. His eyes, which had been dimming, suddenly ignited—not with gold, but with a blinding, piercing white.
"You speak of the sun as if it is something out there," Escanor's voice boomed, no longer muffled by the water but clear, vibrating through the liquid medium like a sonar blast. "You believe I borrow my strength from the sky."
He closed his eyes, and the water around his skin began to hiss.
"But you are mistaken, fish. The sun does not grant me strength." He opened his eyes, and the golden irises had vanished, replaced by voids of pure, electric blue energy. "I am the sun."
He didn't expand. He didn't grow larger. Instead, he did the opposite. He reached deep into the core of his magical power and compressed it. He forced the boundless energy of Sunshine inward, condensing the heat of a star into the confines of his mortal frame. The golden aura collapsed, turning a terrifying, incandescent blue.
"Secret Art: Stellar Compression. Azure Noon."
The reaction was instantaneous.
There was no explosion. There was no struggle. The water simply ceased to exist.
In a microsecond, the millions of gallons of water making up the Giant Water Prison didn't boil—they underwent flash ionization. The dome vanished, replaced by a shockwave of superheated plasma that blasted outward, stripping the bark from trees miles away and turning the ground beneath them into molten glass.
Kisame was thrown back, screaming as his skin blistered and cracked, the moisture instantly ripped from his body. He crashed into the scorched earth, gasping for air that felt like inhaling fire. He looked up, his predatory gaze replaced by primal terror.
Escanor stood in the center of the crater. He wasn't the hulking giant of his "The One" form. He was compact, his muscles dense and defined, his body wreathed in calm, silent flames of deep azure. The heat he emitted wasn't wild; it was focused, absolute, and far hotter than any natural fire. He was a blue star brought down to earth.
"This... this heat..." Kisame choked out, his regeneration factor failing as his cells were incinerated faster than they could heal. "My water... my ocean... it's gone."
Escanor walked toward him. He didn't stomp; he glided, the ground vitrifying beneath his footsteps.
"You tried to drown me in a puddle," Escanor said, his voice carrying a strange, harmonious resonance. "So I evaporated your world."
He raised a hand. The air around it warped, light bending around the gravity of the energy he was channeling. A sphere of blue plasma, small and dangerously unstable, formed on his fingertip.
"Cruel Star."
He didn't throw it. He simply let it drop.
The sphere floated down, drifting gently toward the prone Akatsuki member. Kisame tried to move, to summon water, to do anything, but he was dry. He was a creature of the sea stranded on the face of the sun.
"Wait—"
The sphere touched Kisame's chest.
It was silent. A column of blue light, thin and precise, pierced the heavens, drilling through Kisame and deep into the earth's crust. It didn't explode outward; it erased what was within its radius.
When the light faded, Escanor stood alone. The blue flames flickered and died, his body steaming as the immense strain of the form took its toll. He reverted to his standard muscular form, heaving breaths, his skin red and raw from containing such heat.
Before him lay a perfectly circular, bottomless pit. There was no sign of Kisame. No body, no sword, no blood. He had been atomized.
Escanor adjusted his glasses, which had miraculously survived the heat, though the frames were warped. He looked up at the afternoon sun, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
"Apology accepted."