A drill that could pierce everything.
A skull hardened to split mountains and glaciers.
Armament Haki honed ten thousand times.
Why, then, did he repeatedly find himself bested by something that looked so easy — a fruit-based trick?
Chinjao's head buzzed. Blow after blow of compressed air battered him; Haki held it back but could not negate the pain. He gritted his teeth and endured. Around him, the Happo Navy crews watched with worried faces, but Chinjao made no move to yield.
He would not be mocked. He was the eighteenth head of the Happo Navy, Flower Country's honored spear. He had trained his skull and fists until they could punch through ships. He had deliberately forged his Haki until it seared. He would not be stopped by some green-haired upstart.
Still, the compressed strikes kept coming. Lightning licked over him; lightning heared by the attack danced along his skin. Chinjao even snatched one of the purple arcs between his fingers — refusing to look weak before his men. To be laughed at for failing to match a Devil Fruit? Unthinkable.
He turned his glare on Sharn. Pride burned in his chest. He had sworn, back when he first sailed, to protect all he held dear. He would not be broken now.
"Brat!" he roared. "You truly think you can beat me?"
"I am Chinjao of the Happo Navy!"
"I will take the Ice Treasure and make Flower Country dominate the West Blue!"
His body was cloaked in a faintly green Armament Haki. With a thunderous roar he smashed out of the last pressure blast's ring — clothes torn, lip split, blood flecking his beard.
"Don't underestimate Haki, punk!" Chinjao's eyes flamed red. He had had enough of passive counters. He would grow stronger until his foe was crushed.
Sharn watched, impassive. The pale-green Haki on Chinjao was something else: not a mere hardness but a doctrine, the true essence of Hasshoken—what the founder had intended, born of endless repetition and life-or-death will. Whitebeard commented coolly from his place of observation, "Chinjao has awakened the higher principle of Haki. His Hasshoken will rise again in his hands."
Even as Chinjao's aura spread and threatened to knock bystanders unconscious, Whitebeard's presence held the field steadier. He divided the harbor into three: Whitebeard at the center, the Happo Navy to one side, and the Sharn Pirates to the other.
"Sharn!" Chinjao bellowed, eyes like knives. He believed he could split the Ice Continent with this strike. For generations the Happo Navy had chased the legend of that treasure; now, at last, his Haki's threshold had been broken. Perhaps, without these encounters with Whitebeard and Sharn, the breakthrough would only have taken another year — but the timing had come now.
Sharn stepped in front of him. The paw-shaped compression on his palm burned in Chinjao's sight.
"If you could pick one random place to travel to—where would you go?" Sharn asked softly.
Why random? Because once marked by the Paw-Paw lineage, places become part of the ability's map. The simplest application was to randomly bounce someone. Sharn's first mark had been Flower Country — why not send Chinjao somewhere else for a moment?
Chinjao laughed, furious. "You think a fruit works on me?"
"You ignorant child. You will soon learn the truth of the Hasshoken's essence!"
His drill skull and fists glowed with the green Haki of the Hasshoken's true principle — a rare, Wano-like refinement. Yet Chinjao's good fortune in discovering this art was marred by fate; he'd been felled by Garp once long ago. Age had eroded the apex he once owned, and now, despite the new awakening, he could not reclaim his past peak.
"Eight-Strike — True Essence! Cone-Skull Prism!" he roared, thrusting forward the culmination of his art. Fighters of old knew the technique: the Haki becomes a pattern, a living edge. "So many kings trained themselves into forms like this a few centuries back," Sharn observed. "How fortunate to witness such near-lost arts born again."
Bone and scale shifted in Sharn's frame. His body reassembled — dragon claws became fists, bear-paws formed the striking surface. Haki cloaked his hands; his tail swept dust and splinters aside. Now, beyond the purple lightning and dense Armament Haki, his palms contained the bear-paw pressure born of the Paw-Paw lineage. A single strike unleashed it.
Every Sharn blink-step — every Shave technique — was now amplified by the paw's repulsive power.
"Let me taste your strength, Chinjao," Sharn said. "Don't disappoint me. I'll use this battle to master my Observation Haki fully."
The Paw-Paw's speed whistled through the air. Chinjao expected to overwhelm him at last with the new threshold he'd attained. Instead, the boy was no pushover.
"Eight-Strike — True Essence — Skull Prism!" Chinjao unleashed his head. At the instant their blows met, Sharn channeled violet discharges to counter the Hasshoken's thrust and braced his tail to steady himself against the drill. It was needle tip versus blade edge — Haki and concussion rippled through the port, throwing up waves in layers. Sea and sand scattered; townsfolk blacked out; buildings crumbled.
The Happo Navy still had men with presence, and they cheered their chief. "Chinjao! Crush the monster brat!"
On the Sharn side, the scene was almost festive in contrast. Wolf was lugging food: "Food! Wine! From Marine Berries—Sharn got it!" Moly hugged her shovel like a pom-pom. "Captain Sharn is so manly!" she squealed, blushing. The giant man on the supplies tossed an iron bar aside.
"Are there ranks among Mythical Zoan fruits?" Kaido muttered, baffled by the feeling of living in Sharn's shadow. If not for Kaido's own body arts and Haki, he might have questioned existence on the spot.
"Whoa—this is amazing!" Moria gasped. Watching Sharn and Chinjao fight lit something within him.
Chinjao surged, fearless in his assault. Sharn's paw-power answered in kind; red flares flickered in his eyes. When either side showed signs of collapse or breakthrough, that moment would decide the fallen.
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