I charged into the thermite cloud—blinded, burning, smiling.
The fire met my skin with open arms. It peeled it back, layer by layer, as if it had waited all this time to greet me properly. Pain flared bright and hot, but I didn't flinch. I didn't stop. Somewhere beyond the flames, the fishman stood in the cloud screaming in pain.
I reached him. My own bayonet—near-liquid, dripping fire from the thermite cloud—drove into his chest. The blade didn't cut so much as sink into him, sliding through scale and bone like paper in oil.
He tried to scream.
No time.
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet exploded on impact, not with lead, but with hellfire. Thermite burst outward in a violent cloud, coating everything. My hands melted. His face liquefied. The gun in my grip deformed and curled like a dead leaf in a furnace.
His body sagged, melted, dissolved—reduced to sludge and heat and bubbling flesh.
And then, the world shifted.
A sound—a thud in the water, not a splash.
A pulse.
A wave of pressure hit the battlefield, clean and deliberate. The cloud vanished, pushed away by sheer force. I stumbled back, smoke clinging to the raw, bleeding stumps of my arms. My nerves screamed. The heat hadn't faded. The pain hadn't faded.
But the thermite cloud was gone.
Standing in its place were two figures.
The water steamed around them, their presence as sharp as blades.
One was tall, broad-shouldered, with a long, pointed snout and jagged teeth that could tear a man in half. Arlong. His stance radiated fury. Controlled, precise fury—until he saw what I'd done.
Beside him stood the octopus—a fishman with long, flexible arms and a mouth twitching in grief. His eyes lingered on the dissolving mess of flesh that had once been one of their own. I didn't remember his name. Just that he was more decent than the others—like a pirate who tips a whore instead of killing her.
Still much much better than the other Fishmen. Beside he was important to the plot later on.
If I had to guess from the sound the octopus made, the one I melted was Chew.
Looks like I made quite the damage to the Arlong pirates roster.
I laughed.
It just bubbled out—low and warm. The kind of laugh that comes when you realize you've struck something deeper than a wound. When you hurt the enemy in ways they didn't expect you could.
A second water pulse hit me hard.
Harder than the first.
I was airborne before I could blink, tossed like driftwood across the blackened battlefield. The force crushed the air from my lungs. Something cracked—ribs, sternum, maybe both. I hit the stone wall of the courtyard and dropped, half of me numb, the rest aching.
Another pulse followed.
And another.
Each one precise.
Each one aimed to kill.
Arlong didn't stop. His rage had become mechanical. Water carved the air, smashing me into the ground, into walls, into broken bodies already lying in pieces. Each blast slammed through me like a hammer. My organs compressed, my spine bent, my vision danced between black and red.
The blood healed me with every damage I took.
Still, I smiled.
Because angry prey are the easiest to predict. Rage narrows their thinking. You just had to endure until their patterns formed.
So I let Arlong hit me.
Again and again.
I counted the impacts. Each one told a story. Each one whispered about his fury, about his pride, about how deep I'd cut.
I'd killed one of his men.
Nineteen, actually.
But Chew mattered. Chew was a fighter. One of the few who could hold his own with Fishman Karate.
And I'd melted him.
Arlong couldn't ignore that.
He hit me again.
The air trembled from the force. My body broke. My limbs went numb. My lungs filled with blood. But I still breathed. Barely.
And I smiled again.
That's when Arlong paused.
He stood still, mouth open slightly, as if confused by the fact that I wasn't dead. Or maybe it was because the octopus had stopped him. Or maybe annoyed that I wouldn't die.
Either way, I had his attention.
Good.
I stood—shaking, slow.
Bones mending.
Organs reforming.
My spine rethreading itself one vertebra at a time. My muscles crawling back into place like worms.
When I looked up at him, blood running from my ears, I gave him something else.
A grin.
"Watashi wa anata no kurū o tabeta." I said.
I ate your crew.
The words were broken, rough, slurred by damaged lips and missing teeth.
But he understood.
His eyes went wide. Not in shock.
In rage.
I pointed to the mangled body of the fishman I'd torn apart, his skull half-missing, my bite marks still raw on the remains.
Arlong's control snapped.
He launched another water pulse—larger, faster. It split the air like a cannonball.
I didn't move.
The wave struck me full-on, and everything vanished.
Sound.
Light.
Feeling.
My body shattered. I felt it—each part disconnecting, separating like pieces of a broken statue. Limbs. Organs. Spine. All scattered.
I was still aware. Somehow. In that quiet space between death and whatever lay beyond it.
Then the blood brought me back.
Slowly.
The core deep in my chest pulsed. Heat spread outward, and the pieces started finding each other again.
Veins reformed. Nerves stitched into place. My ribcage closed like a blooming flower. Skin stretched over muscle, pink and new. I blinked. Once. Twice.
I stood again.
And I laughed.
Louder this time. With my whole chest.
The kind of laugh that echoes.
The kind of laugh you hear in dreams that become nightmares.
"OI, Gyo!" I shouted. "Anata no aibō o tabemashita!"
Oi, Fish! I ate your mate!
Arlong didn't move.
He stared.
I licked my lips—slowly, exaggerated—and grinned again.
"Kare wa oishikatta."
He was delicious.
And that did it.
Even the other fishmen—the ones standing at the park's open edge, freshly arrived—stepped back. The octopus looked shocked and at a loss of words.
But Arlong didn't care.
He moved.
Fast.
The ground shattered beneath his feet as he launched forward.
Not a water pulse this time.
A physical blow.
His fist, jagged with scale and hate, hit me square in the chest. The impact cracked my sternum again, and I flew backward. But it wasn't a killing blow.
It was personal now.
He wanted to beat me.
He wanted to feel it. To feel my body break in his hands. To erase me with force, not technique.
That was fine.
I landed, slid across the mud, rolled, and came up laughing.
Blood poured from my mouth.
My hands shook.
But my feet were steady.
The blood still healed. Still obeyed.
I raised my fist—scarred, smoking—and curled it into a tight, perfect punch.
Then I charged him.
---------
Arlong lunged.
His hand found my throat with the ease. His strength was absurd—inhuman, absolute. There was no time to brace, no room to counter. One second I was on solid ground. The next, the world was blue and pressure.
He hurled me into the sea like a discarded toy.
Water swallowed me whole.
Before I could kick, he was on me again, dragging me deeper. His grip on my neck was iron-wrought. I felt his fingers press against the vertebrae, ready to snap, yet he didn't.
No panic.
I looked into his eyes.
That must have irritated him.
He wanted me to squirm. Wanted the fear. Wanted to see it bloom in my gaze like so many others he'd drowned before.
He wanted me to see that Fishmen were the superior species. He wanted to see Humans were nothing but ants to the Son of the Seas.
But all I gave him was calm. Not false bravado. Just a look that said: I know what you are. And I'm not impressed.
Even in the dark, even in the heavy stillness of the deep, he saw it—my smirk.
That did it.
He surged upward, dragging me with him. He broke the surface in a wave of violence and sent me flying through the air. I crashed onto land with a sound that shouldn't have come from anything living.
Bones cracked. Muscles tore. My body flattened like wet cloth.
For a moment, I couldn't move.
Just pain. Heat. Numbness.
Then the blood worked its way forward.
It snaked through the fractures, crawling through veins, rebuilding what had broken. Bone reknit. Muscle filled in. Nerves sparked to life.
I stood again, body still wet, limbs trembling with adrenaline. The courtyard burned behind me. Rain fell. Fire hissed in defiance. Smoke danced along the edges of ruin.
The fishmen stood in a wide arc.
Arlong's crew. Warriors of the sea. Superior species, they called themselves.
But they were watching me now. Not in arrogance, but in something approaching unease.
I licked my lips. Slowly.
The blood on my tongue was mine, but I made a show of enjoying it.
Their anger didn't disappear. No. That was still there—raw, waiting. But beneath it, I saw something sprouting.
A seed of doubt.
Fear, in its first trembling breath.
All I needed was to water the seed.
I turned away from them, facing the storm, my back exposed. Waiting.
Daring.
The splash behind me came sharp and sudden. Then the heavy thud of impact—Arlong, rising from the water like some twisted messiah. His landing cracked the stone beneath him. Rain rolled off his fins like war paint. His teeth gleamed under the firelight.
He charged.
Halfway across the courtyard, I moved too. Rushed forward to meet him.
At the last second, I leapt.
My foot landed squarely on his chest. For a moment, it held.
Then his hands closed around my leg—and crushed it.
Skin tore like paper. Tendon snapped. But that was the plan.
I had manipulated the healing just enough to keep the skin loose—fragile at the seams. When he gripped me, it peeled clean.
Before he could register the deception, I twisted free, springing off his body and into the crowd.
Fishmen shouted. They raised weapons. But I was already airborne, already moving. My torn leg reformed mid-air, reknitting with that terrible, crawling sensation I'd grown used to. I landed among them, blood and ash spraying like paint.
Behind me, Arlong roared, slamming his own men aside to get to me.
He reached me just as my boots hit the ground. Grabbed me again—by the throat, of course—and lifted me like a flag of failure.
His voice came next. No bark. Just venom.
"Anata wa watashi no kyōdai o tabeta." he hissed.
You ate my brothers.
His teeth clenched. Jaw muscles rippling like coiled snakes.
"Ima kara anata o taberu yo."
Now I'm going to eat you.
He opened his maw—wider than seemed possible. The rows of jagged, shark teeth gleamed. Then he bit.
Right into my thigh.
Agony shot through me, white and full.
He didn't just tear flesh—he chewed, slowly, as if trying to savor it.
I didn't scream.
I smiled.
The leg regrew.
He bit again—through the calf, through tendon. Another bite. Another loss. I laughed anyway. The blood remembered the shape of my body.
He didn't stop. He bit through legs, then arms. Tore through organs. Bit out my lung. My liver. My heart. And every time, he passed the pieces to his crew.
They accepted.
Not all of them.
The octopus—Hachi—hesitated. Backed away. His eyes were wide, unsure.
But the others? The others fed. They passed bits of me like sacred meat, like I was some cursed offering they hadn't earned.
And I laughed.
A horrible, echoing sound—wet and full of madness.
The kind that cuts through bravado and touches something primal.
They looked at me again, mid-feast.
Something was wrong.
I shouldn't be laughing.
I shouldn't still be conscious.
My organs were exposed. My blood drenched the ground. My skin was torn into ribbons. And yet—I smiled wider.
I had them right where I wanted them.
All close. All greedy. All too focused on the meal to notice my hand.
My fingers moved toward my throat.
Slipped under the skin near the collarbone.
Gripped something cold and smooth.
Pulled.
The metal pin popped loose, dropped from my hand.
It bounced once on the stone floor amidst the surprised glance of the fishmen.
Clink.
It bounced a few times.
One of them chuckled.
Another picked up the pin to gloat.
The thunder hissed behind me. The rain fell. The world held its breath.
Then—
The grenade exploded.