A week in the Shells Town brig was a study in sensory deprivation and tactical boredom. The cell was a cube of dank stone, the only light a sliver from a high, barred grate. The meals were a bowl of thin gruel and a cup of brackish water slid through a slot twice a day. The silence was absolute, broken only by the distant echoes of the yard and the scuttling of unseen things in the corners.
For Travis, it was not a punishment, but an unexpected opportunity.
The Anchor of Resolve provided by the Avalon fragment proved its worth. The despair that should have clung to the damp walls found no purchase on him. The gnawing hunger and stiffening cold were present, but held at a manageable distance, as if observed through a pane of thick glass. More importantly, the solitude was perfect.
He used the time. He practiced the breathing techniques implied by the kingly legacy—long, deep breaths that centered him, that seemed to stir the dormant golden energy within his core. He ran through rudimentary muscle-isolation exercises, feeling the new, firmer resilience in his body, the "Enhanced Durability" allowing him to push past the point where his old self would have collapsed. He visualized the sealed gates in his mind, not trying to force them, but studying their structure, feeling the immense, patient power sleeping behind them.
Most of all, he planned.
He mentally mapped the known hierarchy of the Shells Town base: the indolent Captain who was rarely seen, the scheming Lieutenants, the corrupt Petty Officers like the one at the front desk, the brutes like Hackett, and the vast, faceless mass of recruits. He identified the small, subtle currents of resentment, the petty alliances, the few who, like the mousy Lin, might be capable of something other than fear or greed.
His stand in the yard had changed his status. He was no longer a ghost. He was a marked man. To Hackett and the corrupt, he was a problem to be crushed. To the recruits, he was a curiosity, a potential lightning rod. He needed to convert that curiosity into something more, but carefully. A single spark could be extinguished; he needed to build a slow-burning fuse.
On the seventh day, the cell door clanked open. Chief Hackett stood silhouetted in the doorway, his expression unreadable.
"Out, Pendragon. Your vacation's over. Captain wants to see the 'justice philosopher.' Look smart, if you even know how."
Travis rose, his movements stiff but controlled. He followed Hackett through the maze of corridors to the one part of the base he hadn't seen: the Captain's office on the second floor.
It was a stark contrast to the squalor below. Polished oak floors, shelves with unread books, a large mahogany desk. Behind it sat Captain Rourke, a man in his late fifties whose uniform was impeccably tailored to accommodate a significant paunch. He had the weary eyes of a man who had long ago chosen the path of least resistance and found it lined with comfortable padding. He was examining a report, a glass of amber liquid at his elbow.
"Recruit Travis Pendragon, sir," Hackett announced, his voice uncharacteristically formal.
Captain Rourke looked up, his gaze assessing. It wasn't the active malice of Hackett, but a passive, bureaucratic disinterest. "The one who quoted regulation on punishment efficiency," Rourke said, his voice a dry rustle of paper. "Stand at ease."
Travis did so. Hackett remained rigid by the door, a silent watchdog.
"I have reports," Rourke continued, tapping the paper. "You work hard. You don't complain. You also don't know your place. Which is it? Are you an idealist or a troublemaker?"
"A recruit, sir," Travis answered neutrally. "Trying to learn."
"Learning involves following orders, not interpreting them." Rourke took a sip from his glass. "Your little speech caused… ripples. It made my Chief Petty Officer look impulsive. It made the recruits think. Neither is desirable in a smoothly running base. Do you understand?"
"I understand that discipline must be maintained, sir."
"Good." Rourke set his glass down. "So, we have a solution. A test. A chance for you to prove your practical worth, not just your philosophical leanings. There's a problem. A pirate crew—small-time, the 'Riptide Scum'—has been preying on fishing trawlers off Coffin Cove, two days' sail southeast. Nuisance raids, but bad for local morale and tax collection. Normally, I'd send a proper patrol. But we're stretched thin with the upcoming inspection from Loguetown."
He leaned forward, a cold smile touching his lips. "You seem to believe in fairness, in shouldering burdens. So you will shoulder this one. You, Recruit Pendragon, will lead a fireteam. A punishment detail. You will take a sloop, the Sea Sparrow, and three other recruits of my choosing. You will sail to Coffin Cove, locate this pirate nuisance, and… deal with it. Bring back proof. Or don't come back at all."
It was a death sentence thinly veiled as an opportunity. Send the troublemaker and a few other expendables on a suicide mission. If they succeeded, the pirate problem was solved and the troublemaker might be useful. If they died, two problems were erased with no cost to the base's real forces.
Hackett's smirk was barely concealed.
Travis's mind raced, analyzing the trap from every angle. Refusal was insubordination, punishable by the brig or discharge—which on these streets would lead to his scripted death. Acceptance was likely a fight he couldn't win with three green, probably deliberately incompetent recruits.
But within the trap, he saw a sliver of something else. A mission. A chance to operate outside Hackett's immediate shadow. A location he had never signed in at. Coffin Cove.
"I accept the mission, sir," Travis said, his voice flat.
Rourke looked mildly surprised, then nodded. "Sensible. You sail at dawn. Dismissed."
Back in the yard, under a grey, drizzling sky, Hackett assembled his "fireteam." It was worse than Travis expected.
First was Groff, the beefy, cynical recruit from the cellar detail. He stared at Travis with open hostility. Hackett's enforcer in the group.
Second was Pell, the lanky one. He looked terrified, his eyes darting around as if seeking escape. Weak-willed, easily panicked.
The third was Lin, the mousy boy whose broken rifle had started it all. He looked at Travis with a confusing mix of fear and something like desperate hope. A liability, but perhaps a malleable one.
"A fine command for a philosopher," Hackett sneered. "The Sea Sparrow is provisioned. Maps are in the cabin. Try not to sink her on the way out of the harbor. I expect a report in one week. Or I'll report you all as deserters." He turned and left them in the chilling rain.
The voyage was a tense, miserable two days. The Sea Sparrow was a worn, single-mast sloop that smelled of rotten fish. Groff grumbled constantly, doing the bare minimum. Pell was seasick and clumsy. Only Lin tried to help Travis with the sailing, his movements timid but earnest. Travis navigated using the crude charts and his own half-remembered knowledge of East Blue geography from Grand Voyage. Coffin Cove was a bleak, rocky inlet, shrouded in perpetual mist.
They anchored in a hidden crevice a mile from the marked pirate location. The plan was simple reconnaissance first. They took the small rowboat to shore, the silence oppressive.
"Alright, philosopher," Groff muttered as they pulled the boat onto the shingle beach. "What's the grand strategy? Ask them nicely to surrender?"
"We scout," Travis said, ignoring the jab. "Find their ship, their numbers. We move at dusk. Pell, you stay with the rowboat as our retreat. Lin, with me. Groff, take the northern cliff path."
Splitting up was a risk, but keeping Groff close was a greater one. As they moved into the thick, dripping pine forest, Travis felt the now-familiar pull. Stronger here. The Sign-In system. This place had significance.
They found the pirate camp by mid-afternoon. It was exactly as described: a nuisance operation. A single, filthy brigantine, the Sea Vulture, was anchored in the cove. About fifteen pirates were visible on the beach around a fire, drinking and arguing loudly. They were poorly armed, undisciplined. In a straight fight, four Marine recruits would be slaughtered. But they weren't looking for a straight fight.
Travis memorized the layout: the ship, the tide, the single guarded path up from the beach. As he did, the system prompt appeared, superimposed over the dismal scene.
[Location Reached: Coffin Cove - Pirate Nest.]
[Sign-In Available. Historical Significance: Low (Site of repeated skirmishes). Ambient Significance: High (Accumulated Aura of Violence, Greed, & Finality).]
[Special Condition: User possesses 'Destruction-Destruction Fruit' (Unconsumed). Location's ambient aura is compatible.]
[Sign-In to claim reward? Y/N]
His breath caught. Destruction-Destruction Fruit? He didn't have it. Then he remembered—the legacy. The kingly instincts. The sealed power. Could the system be referring to a potential within the legacy? Or was this a future reward, dangled before him? The "ambient aura of violence and finality" was palpable in this grim place.
He selected Y.
There was no gentle warmth, no grounding vibration. Instead, a sharp, metallic taste filled his mouth. The air around him seemed to grow heavy and still, as if the forest was holding its breath. The image in his mind was not of Avalon's gates, but of the brilliant, locked-away Excalibur. For a fraction of a second, he saw not the sword, but a swirling, vortex-like fruit of deepest grey and black, etched with spiral patterns, superimposed over the blade.
[Sign-In Successful.]
[Reward: Insight into 'Oblivion's Edge' - Conceptual Fragment.]
[Effect: Grants momentary, instinctive understanding of the principle of 'Unmaking.' One-time use.]
[Note: This is not a permanent skill. It is a glimpse into a power path. To walk it, a catalyst is required.]
The insight was terrifying and exhilarating. It was the knowledge of how to apply force not to break, but to erase. To make a strike not just lethal, but annihilating. It was a single, loaded bullet for a gun he did not own.
He stored the chilling knowledge away. They retreated to the rendezvous point. Groff was already there, looking agitated. "Saw 'em. Too many. This is suicide, Pendragon. We should radio for extraction."
"The radio only has the base's frequency," Travis said calmly. "They'd just tell us to proceed. We proceed."
As dusk fell, Travis laid out his plan. It relied on misdirection, the pirates' overconfidence, and the terrain. They would use the rowboat to get close to the Sea Vulture under cover of darkness. Lin, the smallest, would sneak aboard and sabotage the rudder chain. Groff and Travis would create a diversion on the beach using stolen liquor and a fire, drawing the bulk of the pirates away. It was thin. It was desperate.
It went wrong immediately.
Pell, left with the rowboat, panicked at the sound of a distant animal cry. He fumbled with the lantern, accidentally igniting it and casting a glaring beam across the water toward the pirate ship.
A shout went up from the Sea Vulture. They'd been made.
"Abort! Back to the treeline!" Travis hissed.
But it was too late. A dozen pirates, now alert and angry, were piling into their own boats, heading for shore. Groff was already running, crashing through the undergrowth away from them. Pell was sobbing, frozen. Lin looked to Travis, his face a mask of terror.
They were cut off from the rowboat, from their escape. They were three untrained boys against a tide of cutthroats.
"Run! Deeper in! Split up!" Travis commanded, shoving Lin toward one path and darting down another himself.
The chase was a nightmare of snapping branches, ragged breath, and triumphant shouts closing in. Travis ran, his enhanced durability allowing him to push harder, but he was cornering himself against a steep, rocky outcrop overlooking a jagged part of the cove.
Two pirates, burly men with cutlasses and cruel grins, cut off his retreat.
"Well, look what the tide brought in. A little Marine puppy," one chuckled.
"Lost your pack, puppy? Gonna cry for your mama?"
They advanced. Travis had no weapon but a standard-issue knife. The kingly instincts screamed of stances, openings, but his body was untrained, his strength insufficient. The Insight into Oblivion's Edge pulsed in his mind, a siren song of ultimate violence, but it was a one-time, conceptual thing—useless without a weapon or power to channel it.
He backed up, his heel hitting the edge of the outcrop. Below, sharp rocks waited in the surging foam.
The first pirate lunged, a sloppy but powerful overhead chop. Travis dodged, feeling the wind of the blade, and slashed with his knife. It scored a line on the pirate's arm, drawing a roar of pain and rage.
"Little bastard!"
The second pirate came from the side. Travis twisted, but a fist caught him on the temple. Stars exploded in his vision. He stumbled, the world tilting. He was going to die here. On a stupid, punitive mission. The script playing out anyway.
As he fell to his knees, his hand landed on something smooth and hard half-buried in the moss at the cliff's edge. His fingers closed around it instinctively.
It was a fruit. Grey as a storm cloud, black as a depthless pit, covered in tight, swirling spiral patterns. It hummed with a deep, terrifying resonance that vibrated up his arm.
The Destruction-Destruction Fruit.
It had been here all along, drawn to this place of violence and finality, waiting. The Sign-In had not given him the fruit. It had given him the insight to recognize it, to understand the catalyst he needed.
The second pirate raised his cutlass for the killing blow. "Say goodnight, Marine."
There was no time for thought. No time for hesitation. Travis, on his knees, brought the grotesque fruit to his mouth and took a massive, desperate bite.
The taste was indescribable. It was the essence of ash, of rust, of silence after an explosion. It was the vilest thing he had ever experienced. He gagged, his body convulsing, but he forced himself to swallow.
Power, raw and catastrophic, erupted inside him.
It was not the ordered, golden might of the king's legacy. It was a wild, grey tsunami, a force that screamed of endings. It tore through his veins, burning, rewriting. He felt his connection to the sea sever in a moment of profound, existential loss, replaced by this roaring, hungry void within.
The pirate's cutlass descended.
Travis didn't think. He acted on the Insight. He raised his empty hand, not to block, but to meet the blade.
He didn't catch it. He didn't deflect it.
Where his palm met the descending steel, a tiny, localized point of absolute negation erupted. A sphere of silent, grey annihilation, the size of a marble.
The cutlass didn't break. The section that touched the sphere simply… ceased to exist. Vanished into non-matter. The pirate stared, dumbfounded, at the now-blunt, perfectly truncated end of his weapon.
Travis surged to his feet, the wild power coursing through him. He looked at his hand. A wisp of grey smoke, smelling of ozone and nothingness, curled from his palm.
The two pirates stumbled back, their bravado replaced by primal fear. "D-Devil Fruit!"
Travis took a step forward. His voice, when it came, was not his own. It was calm, flat, and carried the echo of absolute finality. "Leave."
They didn't need telling twice. They turned and fled, crashing back into the woods.
Alone on the cliff edge, the adrenaline fading, Travis looked at his hands. The power raged within him, terrifying and sublime. He had his catalyst. The Destruction-Destruction Fruit was his.
He was no longer just a recruit with a king's legacy. He was a man who held oblivion in his hands. The path of the Destroyer had begun.
And in the woods below, he heard Lin's terrified cry, and the triumphant shouts of pirates who had found easier prey. The mission was not over. His first command was in tatters, and his first test with his new, dreadful power was about to begin.