The underground merchant ship was cutting across the sea at full speed.
The Knight of God, Arabo, had been resting with his eyes closed, but his lids snapped open without warning. A suffocating pressure rolled over the waves, and the lookout's screams followed right after.
Hell Pirates.
Arabo lunged onto the deck at once. In the distance, a golden ship was already closing in, its shadow devouring the horizon.
"Assemble. Abort the mission. Retreat, now!"
He did not waste a second. White gloves came off.
The hands beneath them were no longer human. They had turned into fleshy, round pads like paws. Arabo did not explain anything. He simply began slapping CP0 members one after another.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Five or six agents vanished in a blink, launched away by invisible bear paw shockwaves that streaked across the sky in different directions.
If Brook had seen it a moment earlier, he would have shouted, "Isn't that Kuma's Paw Paw Fruit?"
But Brook was already watching from the golden ship, and he saw those transparent paw shaped blasts carrying people off like bullets fired from a cannon.
His eyes widened.
Then his face twisted hard.
"Damn it. It's the Paw Fruit."
His voice echoed across the deck, raw with disbelief. The World Government actually had that broken Paramecia. The one that could fling people across the world like toys.
He had miscalculated. His sea land air dragnet was not fully locked yet, and those rats were about to scatter.
"Stop them," Brook barked. "Especially that ability user. Do not let him get away."
The second generation beside him froze. Brook had been calm and in control a breath ago. Now he looked like someone had stabbed his pride.
Because this fruit mattered more than the CP0 fodder.
Brook's excitement burned through the irritation. A fruit like that slipping away was unthinkable.
He stepped onto the Seven Star Demon Sword and shot forward.
Redfield and Linlin moved at the same instant. Lightning and shockwaves tore into the fleeing paw blasts. The fallen angels, Abefu and the others, also lunged to intercept.
But the paw shockwaves were too fast.
Redfield's thunder knocked down two unlucky agents. Linlin blasted another pair out of the air. Borsalino's laser pierced two more. Kaido's heat breath and wind blades shattered another. Hiruba's shot clipped one cleanly.
That was all.
Most of the paw blasts had already become specks on the horizon, outrunning even Newgate's space cracking reach.
The five CP0 agents who fell were swallowed immediately by the Hell Pirates' formation. They had no chance to breathe before chains and blades closed in.
Arabo stayed on the merchant ship just long enough to slap away the last of his men.
Fifteen CP0 agents, scattered like seeds.
Then, without hesitation, he launched himself.
Compressed air kicked beneath him, and his body blurred into a paw propelled streak.
"Don't even think about running."
Brook's speed climbed into something monstrous. His Conqueror's Haki surged like a hurricane, warping the air ahead of him. The army of ghosts he commanded poured outward, forming a black tide to block Arabo's path.
For the first time in his life, Arabo felt real regret.
If he had abandoned the CP0 immediately, he would have escaped cleanly. Instead, he had wasted precious seconds saving trash that meant nothing compared to his own noble life.
Now Brook was on top of him.
"Bear Paw Pressure Cannon!"
Arabo fired frantic paw shaped air shells backward. Dense explosions of compressed force hammered at Brook, trying to slow him, trying to carve a hole through the ghost wall.
The ghosts around him wore familiar faces.
Fellow Knights of God, Gabriel and Raphael. Admirals Kukulkan, Coss Dave, Hoss.
Dead men turned soldiers.
Arabo's blood went cold.
He did not want to join them.
"Soul Slash, Desolation Cut."
Brook's blade flashed.
His killing intent exploded. For an instant, his aura even eclipsed the bald Elder, Ethanbaron.
Arabo's mind screamed.
He remembered the mark Lord Imu had planted in him.
"No!"
The moment Brook's soul attack touched him, Arabo detonated.
A horrifying blast erupted from his body. Ghost generals were erased into ash in a blink. The shockwave swallowed Brook whole, swallowing sky and sea in a violent white storm.
On the golden ship, every cadre felt it.
"No! Father!"
A small, broken cry tore through the air.
Kanna, who had been staring at Brook's fight the whole time, saw the explosion bloom, and her world shattered. Tears burst out, and so did something else, a towering will that poured from her like fire.
Hades and Osiris were rooted beside her. For a heartbeat they could not move.
Then rage detonated in their chests.
The three siblings awakened Conqueror's Haki together.
A roar of dominance surged from them at the same moment, shaking their younger brothers, sisters, and friends. Some gawped in shock, some clenched their teeth, but almost all of them stared toward the explosion with grief twisting their faces.
Linlin, Shakky, and the others charged in without thinking.
They did not believe Brook could die like that.
The light faded.
The blood mist cleared.
A bloody skeleton stood on the Seven Star Demon Sword.
Still standing.
Still breathing.
But terrifying to look at.
"Ahhh. Imu, I'll remember this!"
Brook roared at the sky. Underworld ghost energy and hellish chill surged from his body. Flesh and blood knitted back together at high speed.
His pale skin reformed, but his breath had weakened sharply. He was badly hurt.
Imu had planted a trap inside Arabo. Once Arabo was struck by a soul level attack, all of his energy would self destruct, along with a hidden bomb implanted within him.
Brook stared at what remained.
He was furious.
Not just because he was injured.
Because the Paw Paw Fruit had escaped.
Elsewhere, far across the seas, in a royal chamber of the South Blue Sorbet Kingdom, a fruit on a silver platter swirled with strange devil patterns. Its surface took on a faint bear paw look.
Bartholomew Kuma, the eight year old prince, was reading while idly biting into it.
"Blegh."
"What kind of fruit is this? It tastes awful. Whatever. It must have gone bad."
He tossed it into the trash without scolding the maids.
Then he froze.
Pink bear paw pads were blooming on his hands.
His eyes went huge. He sprinted off in terror to find his parents, screaming for a doctor.
Back on the golden ship, Kanna clung to Brook like she would never breathe again if she let go. Her arms locked around the father she had just lost and found.
Hades and Osiris stood close, their faces stiff with lingering anger. Satan, Anubis, Mephisto, Hera, Shana, Otohime, and the rest crowded around as well, trapping Brook in a wall of anxious bodies.
He did not know whether to laugh or cry.
"Your dad isn't dying, you little idiots."
His voice was soft, relieved, and a little hoarse.
He never expected that getting blown up would help all three children awaken Conqueror's Haki at once. In a twisted way, that made the pain feel less like a loss.
He patted their heads gently. His students watched with helpless envy.
Brook lifted his gaze toward the South Blue.
He would find that Paw Paw Fruit.
No matter what it took.
-------------
Even with the Hell Pirates' overwhelming intelligence network, ten CP0 agents still managed to escape the New World thanks to the Divine Knight Arabo's Fruit.
Still, Brook's side had taken a Divine Knight's life and wiped out five CP0 agents. That counted as a clean cut to the World Government's wings. They did not capture Arabo, and they did not seize his Devil Fruit power, but the three young princes and princesses awakening Conqueror's Haki was a surprise no one expected.
After today, the World Government would probably never dare send top level operatives into the New World in secret again. The Hell Pirates' grip over these seas was terrifying, and their intelligence web felt practically unsolvable.
The Five Elders even began to suspect that more than half of their spies had already been exposed. Either Brook was not ready to move on them yet, or he was deliberately leaving them in place to muddy the waters.
Once the assassination force was driven off, the golden ship returned to Doragonzo Island to await the Roger Pirates' return after they conquered the final island.
The CP0 agents who escaped fled back to the Holy Land one by one, reporting the disaster and the mission's total failure. They had not even laid eyes on the Roger Pirates before the Hell Pirates hunted them down.
Back in Mary Geoise, the palace chambers erupted.
"We lost another Divine Knight!"
"Our Divine Knights are already short handed, and the quality is dropping!"
"Five Divine Knights have died to Brook and Rocks!"
"There's no choice left. We have to train replacements inside CP0!"
Ever since the rise of the two pirate overlords, Rocks and Brook, the World Government's Divine Knights, the Marine Headquarters, and the CP organization had taken brutal losses. Even Impel Down had been erased from the map.
And in its place, a monster was born.
Brook's Hell Pirates expanded into a behemoth, especially the Hell Legion itself. Brook's ghost army, Abefu's zombie army, the prisoner army liberated from Impel Down, the samurai armies from Wano, all of them had fused into a single nightmare force.
By now, the Hell Pirates' cadres and legions completely overshadowed the Rocks Pirates.
If the World Government and the Navy were not watching like hawks, Brook would have already launched the New World Unification War the moment his contract ended. He would crush Rocks, absorb his territory and manpower, twist every pirate force in the New World into one war fist, and march on the World Government with everything he had.
The first pirate empire of the New World was no longer a fantasy. It was a plan waiting for its trigger.
After Imu and the Five Elders learned that Brook and Rocks seemed to possess the tech and methods to restore Devil Fruit powers, they began collecting every scrap of information on it.
At the same time, the immortal Imu quietly planted self destruct measures into Devil Fruit users among the Divine Knights and CP0 elites. He would never give Brook or Rocks the chance to strip their abilities away and recycle them.
If their agents could not win, then they would explode and drag the enemy down with them. Even failure would be weaponized.
Only Divine Knights and CP operatives who were utterly loyal to Imu would agree to host that kind of suicidal device. The Navy would never accept it. Try to force it, and you would spark resistance or outright rebellion.
Once Arabo's death was confirmed, the World Government ordered every branch in the Four Seas and the Grand Line to search for the Paw Fruit that had reappeared.
Brook's command was even more precise. He ordered underground forces and intelligence networks in the South Blue to scour the waters near the Sorbet Kingdom, and to keep a close eye on the Bartholomew royal family.
In some City, between the flowers.
Wearing a tall crown like a shadow among blossoms, Imu stared at his treasured giant straw hat, then calmly shredded the bounty posters of Brook, Rocks D. Xebec, and Gol D. Roger.
"I did not expect that even before his reincarnation, he would already gather such stubborn little monsters," Imu murmured without emotion. "Two carriers of D blood, plus another human I cannot read."
Was this the vanguard before the Sun God Nika and the Sea King Poseidon returned, sent to grind down his strength first?
Once the World Government and the great powers of this era exhausted each other, would Nika and Poseidon reincarnate into a weakened world and rise again to defeat him?
"Could Brook be one of Joy Boy's backups? That should not be possible."
Imu could see Brook's ambition clearly. In eight hundred years of war, he had never seen so many Conqueror's Haki users gather under a single banner. Brook was not aiming for survival. He was aiming to rule the world.
Imu also remembered a user of the Time Fruit from eight hundred fifty years ago, someone who had teleported something precious into the future, then died of exhaustion. Since then, Imu, the second user of that fruit, had received fragments of news about a girl from the Amatsuki family who escaped to the future. Eight hundred years had passed, and she had still not been found.
Whatever she carried from Joy Boy into this era had yet to surface.
Imu could feel it though. That girl should appear in this time. And when she did, the world would change again.
"Hmph. Nika, Joy Boy, Poseidon. You were not my match eight hundred years ago, and you will not be my match now. I will wipe out the entire D clan."
His voice was quiet, but it froze the air.
Rocks D. Xebec and Gol D. Roger had to die. They would never be allowed to live long enough to see Nika's return.
He had already folded the Monkey family into the Navy's command structure. In the future, he would use D blood against the remnants of the giant kingdom itself.
As for Brook, Imu admitted he was a rare figure of this age. If Brook could be subdued, even placed among the highest powers, that would be useful.
But the odds were slim.
Brook controlled O'Hara Scholar Island, meaning he likely knew pieces of the void century. He held Pluton, and his ambition had long since outgrown the horizon.
Imu's lips curled into a faint smile.
When Joy Boy reincarnated, would he fight Brook for Pluton's control?
If so, then Imu could sit among the flowers and enjoy the show.
Brook was the same breed as him. He would chase his goals without Joy Boy's soft heart or hypocritical mercy. Even with the upper hand back then, Joy Boy and the giant kingdom had been dragged down by their own purity, and by the weaklings they protected.
Imu valued Brook as a growing third force. He had played with the D clan and the giant kingdom's remnants for centuries. A new opponent made the game richer.
Better yet, this third enemy was not aligned with the others. Imu wanted them to clash. He loved nothing more than watching his enemies tear each other apart.
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