Story Quote: "Even the Grand Line keeps its graves, and sometimes the dead are the ones collecting bounties."
-The Grand Line-
Word of the Gas Chamber Pirates had spread faster than their ship could sail.Tales of the Mist Demon Kairo D. Veil, the pirate who slew a Sea King with his own blade, had reached every den of thieves and tavern on the first half of the Grand Line.Where most stories exaggerated men into monsters, Kairo's legend needed no help.
Among those listening was a man known as Reed Lockjaw, a bounty hunter with a reputation as cold as his iron jaw plate. He'd earned it after surviving a Sea King bite that had crushed half his skull; now the gleaming metal of his prosthetic covered his mouth and jaw like a predator's grin.
He sat at a dockside tavern, studying a wanted poster:
Kairo D. Veil — "Mist Demon" — 83 Million Berries.
"East Blue brat makes it to the Grand Line and kills a Sea King?" he muttered, flicking ash from his cigar. "Let's see if he can breathe when the fog fights back."
-The Island that Swallows Ships-
Two days later, the Fumigator neared a stretch of ocean blanketed in perpetual mist. The Log Pose needle spun erratically before locking toward the thickest patch of fog.
"That's… comforting," Jett said dryly."Looks like the sea's holding its breath," Aria murmured.
Rumi adjusted her goggles.
"No birds, no wind. Just fog."
Kairo stood at the bow, eyes narrowed.
"It's not fog. It's smoke. Salt, decay, and something else… oil maybe."
He didn't say what he already suspected — this wasn't weather. This was death lingering.
They sailed closer, and the silhouettes appeared first: ships, dozens of them, half-sunk and tangled together in the mist.
"A graveyard," Kino whispered.
The crew fell silent as they passed through towering wrecks — masts broken, flags torn, hulls split. Some ships were so ancient their wood had petrified.
Mira crossed herself out of habit.
"Who could sink this many ships in one place?""No one," Kairo said softly. "The sea did."
Far behind them, a smaller vessel coasted silently into the same fog.Reed Lockjaw stood at its prow, coat whipping behind him, his harpoon rifle gleaming in the mist light. His small crew of bounty men followed at a distance — silent, trained, dangerous.
"He's here," Reed said quietly. "The currents lead straight to the demon."
He loaded a cartridge into his weapon — a harpoon forged from sea stone, engraved with sigils meant to trap Logia users.
"Don't bother trying to take the ship," he told his men. "Bring me the captain's head. That's the only part that pays."
On the Fumigator, Kairo felt it before he saw it — a pulse in the air, faint but familiar. Killing intent.
"Someone's out there," he said."Marines?" Aria asked, hand going to her rifle."No. Quieter. Smarter. A hunter."
Then came the sound — a faint click carried through the fog.
The harpoon struck seconds later, a flash of steel and light. It tore through the mist, slicing across the deck. Kairo barely twisted aside, the tip grazing his coat before embedding into the mast, sizzling with sea stone energy.
Jett cursed.
"Who the hell—"
Before he could finish, another harpoon struck, shattering one of the railings.
Kairo stepped forward, eyes narrowing. Through the fog, he saw the faint glint of metal — the outline of a man with an iron jaw.
"Captain," Kino said tensely, "orders?""Hold position," Kairo said. "He came for me."
Reed's voice carried through the fog, deep and metallic.
"Kairo D. Veil! You've been breathing my air for too long! The World Government wants your lungs emptied!"
Kairo smiled faintly.
"You came all this way for a bounty?"
"For the challenge," Reed replied, stepping into view. "I don't hunt for money — I hunt for stories worth telling."
His boots clanged as he walked along the wreckage of an old Marine ship. Behind him, lightning flared briefly, illuminating rows of rusted cannons and skeletal masts.
"Then I'll give you one," Kairo said, unsheathing Kusanagi. "But you'll be too dead to tell it."
The Battle Begins
Reed fired again. The sea stone harpoon screamed through the air, splitting the fog in half. Kairo spun aside, turning into mist at the last second — but Reed anticipated it, detonating a small charge mid-air that scattered Kairo's vapor.
"Got you," Reed muttered, firing a second harpoon straight through the cloud.
Kairo rematerialized behind him, blade raised — but the bounty hunter was fast. His metal jaw split open, revealing a hidden launcher that fired a compressed burst of sound. The shockwave sent Kairo skidding backward across the wreck's deck.
"You've hunted Logia's before," Kairo said, smiling despite the pain."A few," Reed growled. "You'll just be another whisper in the fog."
Back on the Fumigator, the others were fighting to keep position as the currents twisted.
"The storm's coming back!" Kino warned."It's not a storm," Rumi said, looking pale. "The air pressure's dropping—something huge is moving below us!"
Aria scanned the fog, catching faint glimpses of serpentine shadows.
"More Sea Kings?""No," Mira said softly. "Bones."
They realized with horror that the "island" they'd anchored near was not land at all — it was the fused hulls of hundreds of sunken ships resting atop the skeleton of a colossal Sea King long dead.
The sea itself was a graveyard, and they were trespassers.
Back amid the wrecks, Kairo and Reed's duel tore through the fog like thunder.Steel met steel; Haki met sea stone. Each clash sent waves rippling across the shattered ships.
Kairo's strikes were swift and deliberate, his blade wrapped in Armament Haki, but Reed's reflexes were monstrous. The man's body was augmented — metal veins glowing faintly beneath his skin.
"You fight like someone who's already died once," Reed snarled, clamping his metal jaw shut with a hiss."Maybe I have," Kairo said, eyes flashing. "And death was boring."
They collided again, Kairo's blade cutting deep into Reed's shoulder before the hunter countered with a spinning kick that dented Kairo's chest plate.
Just as Kairo was about to land the finishing blow, the sea below them groaned — a deep, mournful sound that made both men freeze.
A tremor ran through the wreck beneath their feet. The fog turned crimson as the water began to glow from below.
Kairo turned slowly toward the horizon.
"You hear that?"
Reed's metal jaw clicked once.
"Yeah. The sea's hungry."
The ocean exploded upward, a geyser of light and bones. A massive shape rose from beneath — not alive, but moving.
A ship fused to a Sea King's skeleton, animated by something ancient within the mist.
Kairo stepped back, blade ready.
"Looks like we're both prey now."
Reed smiled through his blood.
"Then let's see who the sea spares."
The fog swallowed them whole.