Kael strolled the cobbled lanes of the harbor town.
Far from the Grand Line's center, with no Marine base and no infamous crews nesting here, the air held an easy calm.
Sea salt and the char of grilled fish mingled in the breeze. Hawkers barked their prices, children chased one another, and the noise braided into a lively street-side symphony.
The long-missed peace finally let his taut nerves slacken.
He had a skewer of fresh-grilled fish in hand. The skin was blistered and crisp, dusted with spice, the flesh inside tender and juicy.
Burnt at the edges, sure, but the more you chew the better it gets. Good stuff.
He ate as he walked, unhurried as any tourist, eyes drifting from shopfront to passerby.
He liked this feeling.
No thunder of cannon, no enemies to weigh and measure, no course he needed to conquer.
Just a traveler tasting a place's weather and food, the most honest flavors on the street.
"Boss, another one," he called to the vendor and flicked a few beli through the air.
The second skewer hit his palm with a puff of steam. He was about to wander on when his step paused, almost imperceptibly.
Something was off.
A faint gaze clung to his back like burrs on cloth.
It was a peculiar look. Not the idle curiosity of a passerby, not the naked greed or malice of pirates and bounty men.
Ordinary peeping never slipped past his Observation Haki.
This time, though, whoever it was hid well, their presence cinched down to almost nothing. If not for the "magnet-sense" he had developed through his fruit, a way to feel the tiny warps in living magnetic fields, he might have missed it.
A tall man in a deep green hooded cloak stood by a stall of cheap baubles, face sunk in shadow, only a firm chin showing.
He was pretending to choose a shell necklace. His attention, clearly, was elsewhere.
"Tch. Trouble."
Kael grumbled inside, face still the picture of bored tourist as he nibbled his fish.
His mind raced through possibilities.
A World Government hound, CP elite. Unlikely.
They preferred surgical kills, not this measured shadowing. This felt like a probe, an appraisal.
Bounty hunter. Even less likely.
He almost laughed.
The last fool who tried that had grass three feet tall on his grave.
He glanced at children sprinting past the corner and frowned.
Whoever this was, a fight here would be wrong.
He finished the fish in three bites. The bare bamboo pick spun idly between his fingers, whispering at the air.
He turned aside and wandered toward the edge of town where the crowds thinned.
He ambled through the packed square, past the last sparse homes, and the cobbles surrendered to a rutted dirt path.
Voices and clatter faded into wind and birds in the trees. The world quieted.
Behind him, the hooded man hesitated, just a hair. Kael felt it, the nearly absent presence that had been locked on him stuttering for a breath.
Not a killer. Killers do not waver. Not a hothead either. A hothead would have charged in for three hundred rounds by now.
A cautious tail, the thoughtful sort.
Wavering, or waiting for his perfect opening.
Not running and coming to me instead. All right then, be ready for a lion's bite.
At a clearing ringed by cliffs he stopped.
The view was wide open, his back to a sheer drop and surf bellowing below. A good place for a "talk."
Kael turned.
At that instant the man beneath the hood felt his pupils needle.
The figure in front of him unraveled like smoke in a gust and vanished.
No afterimage, no blur of speed, simply gone, as if erased from sight.
The hooded man's scalp prickled. Instinct roared. He did not think. His body broke into a gale and blasted backward.
His reaction was as fast as humanly possible, almost in the same heartbeat Kael disappeared.
Kael was faster.
A faint hum trembled in the air.
The fleeing wind snagged and stalled, seized by an unseen hand and forced back into a stumbling human shape.
Something sharp slid from nothingness and came to rest against his Adam's apple with perfect precision.
Not a sword. Not a knife.
A bamboo pick.
The same skewer that had held grilled fish a moment ago, now black as ink and hard as steel.
Haki, polished to a razor-thin coat, lacquered the skewer from tip to butt. A gentle nudge would punch it through a throat.
Cold killing intent climbed the slender shaft and set every hair on the hooded man's body on end.
Cloth snapped in the wind and a young, weather-toughened face came clear in the sunset. On his left cheek, the square red tattoo blazed.
The man before him was the one who would set the world on fire.
Monkey D. Dragon.
Kael studied the familiar yet strange face and arched a brow.
That square tattoo looks like a sandal sole. Relax, old man, I am one of yours.
"Well now. It is you," Kael said, letting the Haki seep off the bamboo and tossing it away as if the last second had not balanced life and death. "Former Marine, Monkey D. Dragon."
He smiled, amused. "What do you want with me?"
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