Logia Devil Fruits.
They had always been the rarest, most valuable, and most game-changing of the three types.
They were the absolute jackpot.
Even the mighty Marines didn't have a stockpile of these top-tier Logia Fruits.
Over all these years of dominating the seas, they had only managed to secure one in their vaults: the Ice-Ice Fruit that Aokiji would one day eat.
Raleigh knew this for a fact.
Sakazuki's Magma-Magma Fruit? He found that himself, a stroke of dark, volcanic luck.
And his own brother, Borsalino? He accidentally ate the Glint-Glint Fruit while wandering in the North Blue, probably mistaking it for a weirdly-shaped lemon.
It could be said that a top-tier fruit like this, the one sitting in his hand, could create an absolute powerhouse no matter who consumed it.
It was a golden ticket to the top tier of the world.
This... this Storm Fruit... was no less impressive than the Rumble-Rumble Fruit that Enel would one day find on Skypiea.
In fact, it might be better.
Raleigh knew that if one delved deeply into the powers of a volcano, an earthquake, or a storm, they could all possess world-ending, catastrophic destructive force.
And he had just been given one. For slacking off.
"Well... let's eat it first," Raleigh said to the empty room.
He wasn't the type to pick an auspicious day, light some incense, or create a ceremonial atmosphere.
That was too much work.
He directly shoved the strange, swirling, turquoise fruit into his mouth and took a big, confident bite.
"Blergh—!" He choked.
It wasn't just bad. It was awful.
After just one small bite, the taste—if you could even call it that—violently assaulted every single cell on his tongue.
It was, without question, the single most disgusting thing he had ever experienced.
'No wonder Luffy could still remember that disgusting taste even years later,' he gagged, forcing himself to swallow the small piece.
The "one bite" rule wasn't just a mechanic; it was a mercy, because no one on earth could possibly survive a second.
But the power... the power of a Logia Devil Fruit was indeed formidable.
The instant he swallowed it, the foul taste was forgotten.
Raleigh could feel something extraordinary happen.
The whispers of the wind... a background noise he had never paid much attention to before... suddenly snapped into focus.
They weren't just whispers; they were talking.
They conveyed information to him in ways he could now, instinctively, understand.
Even while sitting in his locked, windowless office in the belly of the ship, the echoes of the wind reached him.
He could feel the sound of the ship's keel cutting through the waves.
He could feel the rhythmic grunting of the Marines soldiers training on the deck, dozens of yards away.
He could feel the flapping of a bird's wings high in the sky, a mile from the ship.
He could feel the rustle of Gion's hair as she shifted in the sun lounger.
'Is this... is this the enhancement of Observation Haki by a Logia?'
The Rumble-Rumble Fruit was so formidable not just because it was a destructive powerhouse, but because it could synergize with Haki, allowing Enel's "Mantra" to cover all of Skypiea.
Yet, guided by the wind, Raleigh had just achieved the exact same effect.
In fact... his range might be even greater than Enel's.
Because the wind is everywhere.
"So incredible," he whispered, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Truly worthy of being a calamity-level Devil Fruit."
Raleigh looked at his right hand.
He attempted to elementalize his body. He willed it to change.
It didn't burst into wind. It unraveled.
His flesh and blood slowly, smoothly, transformed into wisps of gentle, turquoise-tinged breeze, swirling in place before reforming.
He could turn his body into a breeze anytime, anywhere.
With this, he could appear anywhere within the range of his newly-boosted Observation Haki.
The effect was no less impressive, and perhaps more versatile, than Borsalino's Glint-Glint Fruit.
"No wonder..." he breathed, clenching his now-solid fist. "No wonder a top-tier Devil Fruit is pursued by so many. No wonder a cunning, patient bastard like Blackbeard could endure for twenty years in Whitebeard's shadow, all for the Dark-Dark Fruit."
Raleigh found himself somewhat addicted to this feeling of potential, this sheer power, already.
The boost from the Storm Fruit was so immense, so reality-altering, that Raleigh felt as though he were dreaming.
SMACK.
He slapped himself hard across the face.
The stinging pain was real.
The excitement in Raleigh's eyes still hadn't faded. He was vibrating.
The world's landscape was about to undergo a drastic, violent change.
Roger would find Laugh Tale, become the true Pirate King, and die.
The New World would descend into a bloody, chaotic storm before finally settling into the era of the Four Emperors.
He yearned to grow stronger, faster.
He wanted to leave a profound, indelible mark on this era.
He wanted to be a top-tier powerhouse, so he could truly slack off without anyone bothering him.
"Let me witness... the true power..."
Raleigh's figure gradually blurred.
With a gust of wind that ruffled the papers on his desk, the office was left empty.
In less than a breath, he was back.
In the sky, twenty nautical miles away from the warship, wisps of turquoise breeze gathered, coalescing in the open air, forming a human silhouette.
Raleigh opened his eyes.
He was standing on nothing, thousands of feet above the ocean.
"Is this the speed of the wind?" he whispered, awestruck.
He extended his right hand, grasping at the air.
He willed it.
Under the power of the Devil Fruit, the formless, intangible wind of nature became tangible in his grip.
It swirled around his palm like a living thing.
Raleigh could use these winds to gather information, to listen in on his enemies... or to propel himself forward at incredible, impossible speeds.
With the Devil Fruit's power fully unleashed, Raleigh felt a fundamental transformation in his very being.
Certain ingrained, human beliefs were shattered in an instant.
For instance, the heart, the brain, and the throat.
They were considered vital points—deadly weaknesses that must be protected in combat to avoid instant death.
But... what was a "vital point" to a storm? With his abilities fully activated, Raleigh could instantly transform these vulnerable areas into intangible wind.
Against any opponent without Armament Haki, he was, quite literally, invincible.
He was a god.
And even against those with Armament Haki, he could now evade their attacks in advance using his wind-enhanced Observation Haki.
Borsalino and Sakazuki were both well-versed in this synergy.
It's what made them monsters.
Take Borsalino—whenever Raleigh (fruitlessly) sparred with him, he could never land a clean hit.
Now, he understood.
His perception had improved tenfold, and his potential combat techniques had just been enhanced to a ridiculous degree.
As for destructive power... while Logias might not match some powerful Paramecia or Zoan types in a pure, one-on-one brawl, they were absolutely, terrifyingly unrivaled in large-scale attacks.
Like Sakazuki's Meteor Volcano or Borsalino's Yasakani no Magatama.
Without a top-tier powerhouse to stop them, they could destroy a royal capital of a hundred thousand people with a mere wave of their hand.
And now, Raleigh possessed this kind of immense, world-changing power as well. It was truly... exhilarating.
Looking down, his new senses picked up something.
A ship. A... pirate ship.
A slow, "nuclear-friendly" smile spread across Raleigh's face.
"Well," he said to the empty sky. "You're lucky. You get to witness the first recorded use of this fruit in the world."
...
Meanwhile, the pirates below remained completely unaware that death itself had just descended upon them.
They were still celebrating their recent plunder of a merchant ship.
"Captain! We've stolen so much Belly this time! I've never seen this much Belly in my life!"
"Hahaha! Too bad the merchant ship was full of men," another, uglier pirate slurred.
"Captain, let's go raid a village! I wanna snatch a few women!"
The captain, a large man with a tangled beard, was equally thrilled.
"Let's head forward! I remember there's a small village up ahead... just a few hundred people. We'll go there, stock up, and grab some young women!"
...
High above them, Raleigh just sighed.
"How... unoriginal." He didn't bother with a fancy pose or shouting an attack name. He simply raised his palms.
"Let's call this... Storm Fruit: Great Pressure Disaster." He squeezed.
Several spheres of wind, compressed by Raleigh into terrifyingly high-density projectiles, materialized before his palms.
He carefully maintained their delicate, unstable balance.
They looked like marbles of solid, swirling glass.
"Go," he whispered. "Let me see if you possess the power to sweep away the world's obstacles."
The high-density wind clusters shot from Raleigh's hands.
They didn't fly; they teleported, moving faster than cannonballs, heading straight for the pirate ship below.
Upon descending to a certain altitude, the wind clusters split, turning into five distinct high-pressure wind spheres.
The pirates heard it first—a roaring, shrieking sound, like the sky itself was screaming.
They exchanged confused glances, looking left and right, but couldn't locate its source.
Only the captain, drawing from some long-forgotten, primal experience, abruptly looked up.
He saw them.
Five small, swirling spheres of distortion, descending on them.
"ENEMY ATTACK—!"
Before the captain could finish his warning, the five wind spheres pierced through the pirate ship's thick wooden deck as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.
They didn't stop.
They went through the deck, through the cargo hold, through the keel.
And then, once they were deep inside the ship, Raleigh clenched his fist.
He provided his own sound effect for the technique, just for fun.
"Boom."
The outcome unfolded exactly as he envisioned.
After piercing the ship, the five high-pressure spheres exploded.
But it wasn't a fire explosion. It was an explosion of force.
They detonated into five terrifying, whirlwind-like storms inside the ship.
The previously calm sea surface was torn apart.
A massive, churning waterspout, connecting the sky and the ocean, erupted where the ship had been.
The pirate ship, caught in the maelstrom, didn't just break
. It disintegrated.
It was instantly shredded into the tiniest fragments by the razor-sharp wind blades within the tornado.
The pirates, their stolen Belly, their weapons, their dreams of plunder—all were reduced to the finest, wet debris, which was then sucked high into the air.
A few seconds later, it rained down as a bloody, coppery mist.
Raleigh floated, watching the waterspout slowly die down, leaving nothing but an angry, swirling patch of sea.
He stroked his chin.
"'Great Pressure Disaster' is a bit clunky," he mused. "That... looked more like a cannon."
"Yeah. 'Storm Cannon.' That's better."