The sea stretched flat and glassy beneath a sky the color of old pewter. Marya stood at the railing of the Dreadnought Thalassa, her raven hair whipping across her face as the submarine cut through the swells. Behind her, the massive hull of Pluton kept pace, its black alloy surface looking like a hole cut into reality itself.
On the deck behind her, Eliane Anđel gripped a bamboo practice sword with both hands, her silver hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the cool ocean breeze.
"Concentrate," Marya called over her shoulder without turning. "You're thinking too hard."
Eliane's face scrunched with effort. She thrust her palm forward, focusing every scrap of willpower on summoning the flames that should answer her Lunarian blood. A single spark flickered between her fingers—orange, brief, pathetic—then died with a soft pfft.
"Ugh!" Eliane shook her hand as if it had bitten her. "I don't understand! Yesterday I set a training dummy on fire by accident!"
"Accident being the key word," Sanza Kaplan Figarland said from across the deck. The eight-year-old stood with his feet planted wide, his red hair a chaotic explosion above his scowling face. He held his own practice sword in a two-handed grip that looked both absurdly formal and comically oversized for his small frame. "You can't control what you can't command."
Eliane shot him a glare. "You're one to talk! I saw you fall off the rigging three times this morning."
"That was tactical repositioning." Sanza's heavy Gallagher eyebrows drew down. "I was testing the structural integrity of the... of the..." He faltered, clearly making it up as he went. "Of the lower observatory."
"There is no lower observatory."
"There is now. I created it. With my face."
Marya's lips twitched. She turned from the railing, her combat boots scuffing against the deck plating. The leather jacket with the Heart Pirates insignia creaked as she moved—she'd had it for years now, and it fit like a second skin. Denim shorts, a simple white shirt underneath, and tall black boots that had seen more than their share of battle.
She remembered another training session, years ago. Another reluctant student.
---
The courtyard stretched wide beneath a gray sky. Rain pattered against the stones, but the training never stopped for weather. Not in this house.
Ten-year-old Marya Zaleska gripped her practice sword with white-knuckled intensity. Her raven hair—already too long, already tangling in her eyes—plastered against her cheeks in the damp. Across from her stood her father, Dracule Mihawk, looking utterly unbothered by the rain soaking through his shirt.
He held his own practice blade loosely at his side, his hawk-like eyes fixed on her with an expression of mild interest. Like a man watching a particularly slow insect crawl across a window.
"Again," he said.
Marya lunged.
She'd practiced this strike a hundred times. A thousand. She knew the footwork, the angle of the wrist, the snap of the hips. She'd drilled it until her muscles screamed and her palms blistered. She was going to hit him this time. She was going to—
THWACK.
The practice sword tapped against her ribs, light but stinging. Marya stumbled, her own strike going wide, and Mihawk stood exactly where he'd been standing. He hadn't moved more than six inches.
"You telegraphed your weight shift." His voice was calm, almost bored. "I could see the decision in your shoulders a full second before you committed. Try again."
Marya's jaw tightened. She reset her stance, breathing hard. Her pride stung worse than the tap.
She attacked again. Faster this time. More aggressive.
THWACK. Her shoulder.
THWACK. Her thigh.
THWACK. Her back as she over-rotated on a follow-through.
Each tap landed with surgical precision, never hard enough to bruise, always hard enough to make her flinch. Mihawk moved through her assault like smoke, his practice blade flicking out to meet her at exactly the wrong moment, exactly the worst angle.
Marya screamed in frustration and swung wildly—
THWACK. Her forearm.
She dropped her sword. It clattered against the wet stones.
"I hate this!" She was crying now, tears mixing with rain, her voice cracking. "I hate training! I hate that you never let me win! I hate—"
Mihawk lowered his blade. For a long moment, he just looked at her, his golden eyes unreadable. Then he crouched down to her level—a rare thing, him lowering himself.
"Do you know why I keep tapping you?"
"Because you're mean!"
His lips curved. Just barely. "Because you aren't watching me. You're watching your own sword."
Marya sniffled, confused.
He reached out and gently tapped her forehead with two fingers. "You're thinking about what you want to do. How you want to move. Where you want to strike. But you aren't watching what I'm doing in response." He leaned back, his expression shifting into something softer. Fonder. "A duel isn't about your plan, Marya. It's about your opponent's reaction. You have to read them. Anticipate them. Become so familiar with their patterns that you know what they'll do before they do it."
"How do I do that?"
He picked up her practice sword and held it out to her hilt-first. "You watch. You learn. You pay attention to everything—their breathing, their posture, the way their eyes move. And when you've seen enough..." He tapped her forehead again, this time gently. "You move before they do."
Marya took the sword, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Will I ever be as good as you?"
Mihawk straightened, looking down at her with an expression that might have been pride. Might have been something deeper.
"No," he said simply. "But you might become something else. Something better suited to who you are."
He turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the rain with her practice sword and a complicated knot in her chest.
"Your eyes are your greatest weapon," he called back without turning. "Use them."
---
Marya blinked, and the memory dissolved like morning fog.
Eliane was still glaring at her palm, muttering curses under her breath. Sanza had resumed his practice swings, though he kept glancing over with poorly concealed curiosity.
Marya picked up the practice sword Eliane had discarded, weighing it in her hand. The bamboo felt familiar, comfortable. She walked toward the younger girl, her footsteps measured.
"What are you doing?" Eliane asked, suspicious.
Marya answered by tapping her—not hard, just a flick against the shoulder.
"Ow!" Eliane rubbed the spot, glaring. "What was that for?"
Marya cocked her head, expression unchanged. "What are you going to do about it?"
Eliane's eyes narrowed. "You—"
Marya moved to tap her again, faster this time, aiming for the same shoulder.
Eliane leaped back, instincts overriding thought. Her hand snapped forward in a panicked block—and from her palm erupted a stream of golden-white flame, roaring across the deck before dissipating into the sea breeze.
The flame's heat washed over Marya's face. She didn't flinch, just cocked one hip and looked at Eliane with something that might have been approval.
Eliane stared at her own hand, eyes wide. Her jaw hung open. "It... it worked?"
Sanza's practice sword clattered to the deck. He'd frozen mid-swing, his head swiveling toward the lingering wisps of smoke. "You have fire powers now?"
Eliane looked over her shoulder at him, a slow grin spreading across her face. "Yeah!" She held up her palm, examining it like it held the secrets of the universe. "You want to see?"
Sanza nodded vigorously, dropping into a ready stance. "Show me, then!"
Eliane thrust her hand forward again, brow furrowed with concentration.
A spark. Weak, orange, pathetic. Pfft. Gone.
She shook her hand, frustrated. "What?! Why won't it—"
"Does it only work when you're scared?" Sanza asked, tilting his head. "Like, being attacked?"
Eliane shook her head, her silver hair whipping around her face. "I don't know? It worked when—"
"It's your focus." Marya's voice cut through their bickering. She tossed the practice sword back to Eliane, who caught it awkwardly. "The flame on your back. You don't realize it, but when you get upset, it flares. Your powers are tied to your emotions. You have to focus them."
Eliane looked down at her palm, nose wrinkled. "My emotions?"
Sanza nodded sagely, puffing out his chest. "I have to do the same thing when I'm jumping through the air with my disks. If I lose concentration, they disappear and I fall." He shuddered, clearly remembering a few unpleasant landings. "Took me four broken noses to figure that out."
Eliane stared at her hand. "Focus my emotions," she murmured.
---
The submarine cut through the waves with mechanical grace, its hull displacing water in smooth, almost silent arcs. Trafalgar Law leaned against Bepo's sleeping form on Pluton's deck, his fingers laced behind his head, eyes closed. The polar bear mink snored softly, his white fur puffing slightly with each exhale, an air bubble growing and shrinking.
Penguin and Shachi leaned over the railing of the neighboring submarine—well, technically they were leaning over the railing of their own ship, watching the other vessel with barely concealed curiosity. The Dreadnought Thalassa and Pluton sailed in formation, two ancient weapons of the Void Century moving toward an equally ancient destination.
"Hey, you need some help over there?" Penguin called out, cupping his hands around his mouth.
Shachi grinned beside him. "Yeah, we know how to scare people! We're very good at it!"
Eliane's head snapped toward them, her cheeks flushing. "We are training over here! Do not distract us!"
Sanza marched to the edge of the deck, planting his small hands on his hips. His red hair billowed in the wind like a battle standard. "We are engaged in important combat preparation! Your unnecessary commentary is not wanted!"
Penguin opened his mouth to deliver what was surely another brilliant retort—
And then Bianca Clark burst through the hatch of the Dreadnought Thalassa.
She moved like a woman possessed, her grease-stained overalls flapping around her floral-print blouse, magnifying goggles bouncing against her forehead. Her waist-length black hair had escaped its messy bun and streamed behind her like a banner of chaos.
"Like, we're here!" she shrieked, skidding to a halt at the railing. "We're like, here!"
Everyone froze.
Law's eyes snapped open.
Selene-Clast (Facility 38-14), the atoll sprawled across the ocean in a massive V-shape—a horseshoe of jagged coral and exposed reef, its outer edges petrified into something that looked more like bone than stone. The lagoon within was a perfect turquoise mirror, impossibly still despite the open ocean's churn beyond the reef. Twelve miles across, the inner harbor looked like a giant's swimming pool, unnaturally calm, unnaturally deep.
Three small islets guarded the northern mouth of the lagoon—West, Middle, and East. Even from this distance, Marya could see the rusted turrets perched atop them, cannons that hadn't fired in centuries but still looked ready to speak. The channels between them were narrow, treacherous, clearly designed to funnel ships into kill zones.
"Goddamn," Sachi muttered, turning his attention at Bianca's scream. He rested a foot on the railing, leaning on a bent knee, peering at the atoll. "That's... that's really big."
Law rose to his feet, his coat billowing around him. His eyes swept across the structure with the calculating gaze of a man who saw tactical opportunities in everything.
The Spine Highway ran the length of both atoll arms—a cracked, multi-lane artery of reinforced asphalt, its surface split by centuries of weather and neglect. Bridges spanned the gaps, massive draw-bridges designed to retract high into the air, now frozen in their open positions like mouths forever mid-yawn.
Beyond the highway, the skeletal remains of military-industrial buildings rose from the jungle. Barracks. Depots. Pre-positioning staging yards. Their concrete shells were salt-encrusted and vine-choked, their windows dark sockets staring at nothing. Bioluminescent glowing moss crawled across their surfaces, pulsing with a soft, eerie light.
And at the southern apex of the atoll, a 300-meter-tall crane loomed against the sky, its titanium frame shaped like a stylized whale's tail frozen mid-flick. The Anchor-Spire.
"Well," Penguin's voice cracked. "That's not ominous at all."
On Pluton's deck, Penguin and Shachi exchanged a look.
"Looks like someone left the lights on," Shachi said.
"Lights? Those look like emergency backup power at best," Penguin replied, squinting. "Or maybe ghosts. Could be ghosts."
"Knowing our luck, probably ghosts."
Ikkaku and Jean Bart emerged from Pluton's interior, the ship's engineer wiping her hands on a rag. She squinted up at the facility, then let out a low whistle.
"Whoa, looks like someone's excited," Shachi said, thumbing toward her.
Ikkaku's face reddened. "Of course I'm excited! This ship hasn't had maintenance in eight centuries! It needs work! Real work! The kind of work I was born to—" She caught herself, coughed. "Never mind."
Law joined his crew at the railing, his expression unreadable. The wind tugged at his coat, whipping the fabric around his legs.
Penguin pointed a thumb at the two. "What do you think, Captain? They're acting like our ship's about to fall apart."
Law's lips curved into a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Considering it was built during the Void Century and spent the last few hundred years buried under a mountain, I'd say they're being optimistic."
A crackle from the comms. Hakugen's voice, sharp with warning: "Captain, you better get in here. Something's happening."
Law straightened, all trace of amusement vanishing. "Lets go." He turned, striding toward the hatch. "Bepo! Wake up!"
Bepo jolted, stumbling to his feet. "Sorry! What—"
"Need to go in." Jean Bart clapped the polar bear on the shoulder. "Facility time."
"Oh! Right." Bepo nodded quickly. "Sorry!"
"Stop apologizing!" Shachi snapped, but the edge was gone from his voice.
---
Across the water, Galit's voice echoed through the Dreadnought Thalassa's speaker system. "Marya, you got a copy?"
Marya walked to the nearest comm panel, pressing the button with her thumb. "Yeah, go."
"We need to submerge to enter. You better come in."
She nodded, though he couldn't see it. "Copy. Be right there." She looked to Sanza and Eliane, who were both watching her with wide eyes. "Come on. Let's go."
They moved below deck as the submarine began its descent.
The transition from open water to submerged was always strange. The sound changed first—the slap of waves against hull becoming a muffled, liquid groan. The light followed, dimming through the portholes from grey to deep blue to something close to black. Pressure built against the hull, a constant low hum that vibrated through the deck plates.
Then the sky was gone, and they were swimming through the cold dark.
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