The Tempest's Fury didn't sail; it struggled.
The stolen brigantine groaned under the South Blue sun, which hung in the sky like a molten coin. Sinbad's hands were no longer skin and bone; they were a roadmap of weeping fissures and yellowed calluses. The air was a humid soup of salt and the iron-scent of his own blood. His purple hair, once vibrant, was now a salt-crusted mat, though his singular ahoge remained upright—a defiant lightning rod catching the static of the world.
Fourteen years old. Alone on a ship built for twenty. The ocean was not a path; it was a throat, and he was currently sliding down it.
He had named the ship in a fit of arrogance. But as the days bled into weeks of blue-on-blue isolation, "Fury" felt like a lie. Fury required an audience. Here, there was only the mocking cry of gulls and the rhythmic thrum-thrum of his own pulse, echoing the "Singularity" in his chest.
Nights were the cruelest.
When the stars wheeled overhead—vibrant, cold, and indifferent—the "other life" bled through.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sterile smell of a Tokyo hospital ward would suddenly drown out the salt air. He'd see the flickering fluorescent lights of a cubicle, the soul-crushing weight of a necktie that felt more like a noose than his current exhaustion ever did. Yami Hirotoshi had died a ghost—unseen, unremarked, a cog that stopped turning.
Sinbad gripped the mahogany rail until it splintered. His golden eyes flared, reflecting the moonlight with a predatory, unnatural glint.
"Not again," he rasped, his voice cracking from disuse. "I will not be a footnote."
The Islet of Bone
His Observation Haki—his Singularity—screamed a warning three hours before the storm hit. It wasn't just a sense of wind; it was a psychic pressure, a dissonant chord in the music of the sea. He steered the Fury toward a jagged ring of coral.
He spent three weeks on that nameless rock. He hunted wild goats, his movements becoming less like a boy and more like a landslide. The kills were visceral; the hot blood on his hands felt more "real" than any memory of Tokyo.
One night, the fever took him.
In the delirium, he didn't just see his mother's grave in Baterilla. He saw a Giant Tree with roots that drank the ocean. He saw a silhouette with a straw hat standing against a rising sun, and a letter—a "D"—that felt like a hole in the universe. He woke up screaming, his Conqueror's Haki erupting in a silent, golden shockwave. The palm trees around him didn't just bend; their trunks crystallized and shattered under the pressure of his soul.
Sea Circle Calendar, Year 1470 brought him to the "Scared Coast."
The smell hit him first—the cloying, sweet rot of a massacre. This wasn't pirate work; it was too clean.
Among the ruins of a longhouse built for titans, he found him. Little Oars Jr. wasn't the mountain of a man Sinbad remembered from the Marineford war-logs of his past life. He was a teenager in giant terms—thirty feet of bruised, red skin and weeping eyes. He sat in a cage of Sea-Prism stone, his massive hands shackled with chains thick as Sinbad's torso.
Six men in black suits stood guard. They moved with the rhythmic, terrifying grace of the Rokushiki styles.
"Target is secured," one agent said, adjusting his dark glasses. "The Director wants the specimen delivered to Enies Lobby for the 'Ancient Bloodline' project."
Sinbad didn't deliberate. He didn't plan. His Singularity hummed—a high-pitched frequency that turned the world monochrome.
He struck at dusk.
Maelstrom cleared its sheath with a sound like a winter wind. The first agent's head hit the sand before his heart realized it was beating.
"Intruder!"
The leader blurred—Soru. He appeared above Sinbad, his leg a black streak of Rankyaku. Sinbad met it with the flat of his blade. The impact shattered the ground beneath his feet, but he didn't buckle.
"A brat?" the agent hissed, landing gracefully. "You have the eyes of a king, boy. A shame they'll be closed forever. Shigan!"
The finger-pistol lanced toward Sinbad's throat. Sinbad didn't dodge. He leaned into the pain, letting the finger pierce his shoulder. He needed the anchor. With a manic grin, Sinbad's forearm turned a glossy, ink-black—his first true manifestation of Armament Haki.
He grabbed the agent's wrist. "My turn."
He swung Maelstrom in a horizontal arc. The agent tried to use Tekkai, his body hardening like iron. But Sinbad's Will was a tidal wave. The blade sheared through the "Iron Body" and the man's ribs alike.
The remaining agents charged. Sinbad let the Conqueror's Haki leak out—not as a blast, but as a heavy, suffocating fog. The air grew thick. The agents stumbled, their lungs refusing to draw breath in the presence of a superior predator.
He butchered them. It wasn't a duel; it was an exorcism of his Tokyo ghosts.
When the last agent fled into the treeline, Sinbad didn't follow. He stood before the cage, blood dripping from his chin, his golden eyes burning. He looked at the young Oars.
"You're small," the giant rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "Why bleed for a monster?"
Sinbad raised Maelstrom. He poured every ounce of his exhaustion, his ambition, and his "Singularity" into the steel. The blade turned pitch black. With a roar that shook the island, he cleaved the Sea-Prism lock in two.
"I'm not bleeding for a monster," Sinbad panted, offering a hand that was dwarfed by the giant's fingernail. "I'm recruiting a brother. I'm building a kingdom called Sindria. A place where the world can't touch us."
Oars looked at the boy—small, broken, yet radiating a light that rivaled the sun. He reached out a finger, gently touching Sinbad's palm.
"I have no home left, Sinbad," Oars whispered. "If you provide the dream... I will provide the walls."
That night, as they sailed away—Oars sitting on the deck of the Fury, nearly capsizing it with his weight—Sinbad realized a terrifying truth. The "Singularity" wasn't just a radar. It was a magnet. He wasn't just finding these people; he was pulling them into his orbit, dragging them toward a destiny that ended in fire.
He looked at his reflection in the dark water. The boy was gone. A Captain remained.
Next destination: The 'Red-Leg' Cook