The world was a storm of force and intent. Marya moved, and the air around her shimmered. It wasn't just speed. It was foresight given physical form. Her golden eyes saw not just Pier's movements, but the ghost-images of the moves he was about to make—the lunges he abandoned halfway, the feints he considered and dismissed. Her Observation Haki painted the future in shifting, translucent layers.
And her will, her Conqueror's Haki, was no longer a raw burst. It was a focused pressure, a crushing weight that clung to Nisshoku's obsidian edge, making the very space around the blade warp and darken.
Pier, in his full Genbu hybrid form, was a fortress of black shell-plate and swirling serpentine shadow. But for the first time, the fortress was under siege from within and without. Saigen met Nisshoku in a series of screeching parries, but each block cost him more. He wasn't just stopping a sword; he was fighting the inevitable trajectory Marya was forcing upon the fight. She flowed around his defensive stances like water finding a new path down a mountainside, her strikes landing not as hammer-blows, but as precise, eroding cuts on his armor, on his weapon, on his confidence.
A horizontal slash from him, meant to cleave her in two, met empty air as she flowed under it, her boot connecting with his armored knee. A grunt escaped him. He took a step back to brace.
She pressed. A thrust he saw coming, but her Conqueror's Haki pushed against his own nullification, creating a split-second of hesitation. The tip of Nisshoku scored a deep, black line across his chest plate. Another step back
A roar built in his throat—frustration, fury, a dawning, unwelcome respect. He swung Saigen in a desperate, wide arc to clear space. She didn't retreat. She stepped into the swing, Nisshoku held vertical, deflecting the massive blade upwards. The shockwave blew her hair back, but her feet didn't move. She shoved, and the mountain took a third step back.
His leg buckled. Not from a wound, but from the cumulative strain, the psychic weight, the sheer disbelief. Grutte Pier Dorian, the Black Bastion, crashed to one knee on the cracked earth. The impact sent a tremor through the plateau. His violet eyes, wide with a rage that was starting to curdle into something else, glared up at her.
"I will not… lose… to Dracule's brat," he snarled, the words grinding out between clenched teeth.
Marya said nothing. Her face was a mask of calm exhaustion, her breaths even but deep. She raised Nisshoku for the next press.
Then Pier noticed. His eyes, flickering past her for a millisecond, caught on the horizon. He blinked. The rage vanished, replaced by pure, uncomprehending stillness.
The sound. The deep, eternal CRUNCH-GRIND that was the heartbeat of Kamaten… was gone.
His head turned, slow, like a man in a nightmare. He stared at the distant, towering silhouette of the Grand Chrono-Anchor. It was motionless. A silent, stark obelisk against the grey sky. The forest of smaller clock gears around its base had stilled, their judgmental chiku-taku silenced.
Panic, raw and cold, flushed the fury from his face. He pushed himself up, a new, frantic strength in his limbs. With a wild, deflective swing of Saigen, he caught Marya's next strike and shoved, not to attack, but to be rid of her. The force sent her skidding back, her boots carving furrows in the stone.
He ignored her. He took three shaky steps toward the silent screw, his hybrid form seeming to shrink. "What is this?" he whispered, then louder, "What is—"
His gaze dropped, searching the battlefield for his forces, for the reason. The truth dawned with the cruelty of a landslide. He saw the Robben brothers, two heaps of pale and indigo scales, motionless in the dirt. He saw Paula Cupcake Pope, high in the air, trapped in a whirling cage of locusts and silver sword strokes, unable to break free. He saw Ekkoo Ara Hyakushu, his centipede tail and multiple arms wrapped into a tight, struggling cocoon of shimmering spider-silk, Juni Vexwell sitting on top of him like a king on a troublesome throne.
A curse, vile and guttural, tore from Pier's throat. Then a raw scream that cracked across the island. "NOON!"
He forgot Marya. He forgot strategy. He became pure, desperate motion, charging for the Anchor, for the heart of the disaster.
Marya was faster. A blur of black leather and dark intent, she planted herself in his path. She didn't speak. She just stood, Nisshoku held ready, her body the only barrier between him and his purpose.
Pier skidded to a halt, his form trembling with apocalyptic rage. He bellowed, raising Saigen overhead with both hands, the Genbu's serpent shadow coiling in wrath around him. "OUT OF MY WAY, GIRL!"
Marya didn't move. She saw his desperation, his broken focus. She saw her opening. In the calm eye of her eternal ebbed state, she gathered everything. The fatigue in her muscles, the sharp ache of her ribs, the ghost of her past defeat, the newfound sight in her eyes, and the will to prove she was more than her father's shadow. She focused it all not around her, but into Nisshoku. The blade didn't just darken; it became a slit in the world, a line of absolute void.
She didn't swing for him. She swung for the space between them, for the concept of his path.
The motion was simple. A single, devastating vertical arc.
The effect was not. A crescent of pure black and crackling violet Haki, ten times the height of a man, tore from Nisshoku's edge. It didn't fly; it ignited the reality in front of it. The air rippled like hot asphalt, then shattered. The shockwave was silent for a heartbeat, then hit with the sound of the world tearing in half.
Pier, still in his charge, met the wave head-on. His chest flared, fought, and splintered. The concussive force did not cut him. It passed through him. He stopped in his tracks, his charge frozen. His eyes lost their focus. He staggered, his massive hybrid form swaying like a great tree in a hurricane no one else could see. Then his legs gave out. He crashed to his knees, a deep, spider-webbing crack now running across the center of his chest plate, from which leaked not blood, but a slow, shimmering vapor—the essence of his fractured power.
In the distance, a sound answered Marya's strike. A deep, groaning CREEEEEAK. At the very top of the Grand Chrono-Anchor, right where its silent tip met the hellish sky, a black fissure identical to the one on Pier's chest appeared. With a sound of shearing continents, the top third of the colossal screw disintegrated. It didn't fall; it dissolved into dust and dark fragments that rained down the spiral groove.
At the base of the structure, Noon Scort Reveil, in his Raiju form, stood with the last unconscious Ogre slung over his back. His head snapped around, his electric-blue eyes locking onto the source of the devastating Haki wave, his muzzle pulling back in a snarl of shock.
Then, from the mountain where the Anchor was planted, a deep, sub-sonic BOOM erupted. The peak of the Hitotsume's "crown" exploded outward in a shower of rock and ancient fossil. A visible ripple, like a stone dropped in a pond but made of pure force, expanded across the entire island. It reached the shore.
The sea obeyed. The water… receded. It pulled back from the grey beaches, sucking away for hundreds of yards, leaving bare, dripping rock and stranded sea creatures. A wall of water, taller than the highest gear tower, gathered its strength in the sudden bay.
On the docked ferry, the world tilted. Roco, Maki, Amira, and the others scrambled for handholds as the vessel rocked and swayed violently, timbers groaning.
On the plateau, Marya stood. She swallowed hard, her arms hanging limp at her sides, Nisshoku's point resting on the ground. Every ounce of energy was gone, drained by that single, world-altering strike. She glared at Pier, who remained on his knees, one hand clutching the cracked ruin of his chest.
Pier's head lifted. He didn't look at her. He looked toward the gathering tsunami. His voice was a broken thing, full of a terrible, knowing grief. "You have no idea… what you have done."
From the sky, a scream. Paula Pope, seeing Pier fall, broke her own defensive focus. She took a slice from Aurélie across her back to dive, streaking down in a trail of emerald light to crash to her knees beside him, catching him before he could topple forward. "Pier!"
Aurélie landed next to Marya a moment later, her locust wings folding. She placed a steadying hand on Marya's shoulder. The silver-haired swordswoman gave the swaying girl an appraising look. "Truly impressive."
Marya turned her head, her expression blank, eyes hollow with exhaustion.
From his silk-wrapped throne atop Ekkoo, Juni Vexwell called out in his spider form, his voice full of theatrical awe. "Damn, girl! Save some spotlight for the rest of us!"
Then, the sky to the north, over the open sea, lit up. Not with lightning, but with a chain of colossal, blooming flowers of orange fire. Concussion booms rolled across the water a second later—WHOOM… WHOOM… WHOOM—the sound of the offshore refineries meeting their promised distraction.
Paula's head swiveled. Her face, cradling Pier's, crumpled. "NO!" she screamed at the horizon, then her burning eyes found the Raiju standing at the base of the Anchor. She screamed at him, her voice shredding with fury and despair. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!"
Noon, in his full beastly form, met her glare. His eyes narrowed, a silent, unyielding challenge. This was the price. This was the revolution.
Then, it started.
The ground beneath them did not shake. It convulsed. A deep, rolling quake that did not come and go, but settled in, a constant, rising tremor as if the very earth was about to break in half. The sound was a low, groaning roar from the depths of the world.
Aurélie, Noon, and Juni—all three—snapped their heads toward each other across the chaotic field. A single, understanding look passed between them. No words. Just the shared, chilling knowledge of awakened geology.
Marya's legs finally gave out. She started to crumple.
Juni skittered across the quaking ground, his spider legs a blur. "Get on! I'll carry you!" he yelled, his flamboyance gone, replaced by urgent command.
Without hesitation, Aurélie scooped the nearly unconscious Marya onto Juni's broad spider-back. Noon, still in his Raiju form, gave a sharp bark and became a streak of light, not attacking, but leading—a blazing path toward the docks. Aurélie took to the air, and Juni scrambled after the lightning, carrying their most devastating weapon away from the epicenter.
Pier, supported by Paula, watched them flee. His breath was ragged, his power leaking from the crack in his shell. Paula looked at him, her face streaked with soot and fury, the ground heaving beneath them. "You can't!" she yelled over the growing roar.
Pier looked at her, then at the trembling island, at the silent, broken Anchor. His eyes held a profound, weary resolve. "I must."
He shoved her back, a gesture of startling gentleness amidst the violence. Then Grutte Pier Dorian closed his eyes. The hybrid form dissolved, not back to human, but outward. The Mythical Zoan power swelled, not for battle, but for burden.
His form expanded. The black shell-plates grew, multiplied, spread. His limbs retracted, his body broadening, lowering, becoming something primordial. The serpent of shadow merged with his form, adding its mythic weight. He grew larger than the largest gear-tower, larger than the ferry in the dock. He became the colossal, living image of the Black Tortoise, the Genbu, in its full, beastial form. Not a creature of attack, but of absolute, immovable foundation.
With a final, grinding effort that shook more stones loose, the Genbu settled its incredible, mythic mass down onto the trembling scalp of the Hitotsume. It did not fight the quake. It became a lid. A living, breathing paperweight on a world that was trying to wake up and vomit them all into the sea. The ground still trembled, but the cataclysmic splitting… held. For now.
The race was on.
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