New World — Totto Land, Cacao Island
The moment Pudding whispered for him to hide, Tenjin moved.
Not quickly enough for his liking.
Pain dragged behind every motion now, sharp and ugly, settling into his ribs and shoulder like punishment that refused to leave. Still, he forced himself up and slipped out of direct sight, moving behind a tall storage partition stacked with wrapped cocoa bricks and metal trays. It was not ideal cover. Nothing in this room was ideal. But it was enough for the moment.
A second later, the door slid open.
Pekoms stepped inside.
The Mink warrior filled the doorway with his broad frame, sunglasses in place, coat hanging heavy around his shoulders. His lion-like features, turtle-shell back, and habitual seriousness made him look like the sort of man who could tolerate nonsense from absolutely no one.
Pudding turned so fast it almost looked practiced.
"Pekoms!" she said brightly. "What are you doing here?"
Too brightly.
Pekoms noticed immediately.
He stepped into the room slowly, the floorboards creaking beneath him.
"Mama wants to see you," he said.
Pudding's smile faltered.
Only for a second.
But Tenjin, hidden and silent, saw it.
Saw the flicker of fear in her face.
It came and went quickly, covered over by a softer expression, but it had been real.
Tenjin's eyes narrowed.
Pekoms noticed something too.
His head tilted slightly.
"Pudding," he said, voice low, "you're acting strange."
Pudding laughed awkwardly and waved one hand.
"No, no, I'm not! I was just working too hard in the factory, that's all."
Pekoms didn't move.
His nose twitched once.
The room still smelled of chocolate.
But under it—
There was something else.
A stranger's scent.
Pudding stepped forward too quickly.
"Anyway!" she said, almost pushing the words out before he could think further. "If Mama wants to see me, then we should go right away, don't you think?"
Pekoms' expression didn't change.
He looked around the room once.
Then his gaze shifted.
Toward the place Tenjin was hiding.
Pudding's heart nearly stopped.
"Pekoms—"
Too late.
Pekoms moved with sudden speed, one arm shooting toward the partition and tearing it aside.
Wood cracked.
Trays crashed.
Cocoa bricks hit the floor and split open in a mess of brown powder.
And there—
Still standing despite his injuries, coat half-open, eyes already sharp—
Was Tenjin.
For one frozen instant, no one spoke.
Then Pekoms' expression hardened.
"A Marine," he said.
Pudding stepped back.
Tenjin straightened as much as his injuries allowed and said, flatly, "A pirate."
Pekoms' arm tensed.
Pudding felt the room tilt.
Everything had gone wrong too quickly.
She had wanted to keep them apart for at least a little longer. Just long enough to think. Just long enough to decide what to do with him.
Now there was no deciding left.
Pekoms stepped in front of Pudding at once, broad shoulders squared protectively.
"Get behind me," he said without looking back.
Pudding obeyed on instinct, but her eyes stayed fixed on Tenjin.
He was hurt.
Badly.
Even standing still, he looked like someone stitched together by stubbornness and spite.
And yet—
His expression held no fear.
Not even now.
Pekoms glanced sideways at him.
"You're not leaving this room alive."
Tenjin clicked his tongue.
"Then stop talking and try it."
Pekoms vanished forward.
He moved with the kind of explosive burst that made clear immediately why he served in Big Mom's ranks. Even injured, Tenjin saw it late. A haki-coated fist came tearing toward his face with enough force to crush bone.
Tenjin's body shifted.
Leaves and bark burst outward as his head split apart and reformed around the punch, the blow barely missing what little flesh still remained in that spot.
Pekoms' eyes narrowed.
'Logia.'
He didn't stop.
His second strike came lower, black Armament Haki flowing over his forearm and fist as he drove forward again.
Tenjin planted one foot.
Roots exploded from the floor.
Three thick roots snapped up between them like spears, forcing Pekoms to break stride and hammer through them instead of pressing the attack. The moment he did, Tenjin moved back, not forward.
Distance.
That was the key.
In his current state, getting close to someone who could use Haki was stupidity.
So Tenjin didn't.
The floor of the room burst apart beneath Pekoms.
"Wood Bind."
Roots surged up around Pekoms' ankles and waist, twisting fast and hard as they tried to pin him in place. Pekoms roared and flexed, Haki hardening along his arms as he ripped through two of them and tore free from the third.
Then Tenjin's hand came up.
The wall behind Pekoms split open.
A heavy trunk-like mass of wood burst from it and slammed into his side like a battering ram.
Pekoms crossed his arms just in time.
The hit still drove him sideways through a stack of metal molds, sending them crashing across the room.
Pudding covered her mouth.
The room was becoming a battlefield.
Chocolate spilled. Shelves collapsed. Powder and splinters filled the air.
Pekoms came out of the wreckage immediately, far tougher than that one hit could put down. Haki was already spreading thicker over his fists and forearms now.
"Smart," he muttered. "Keeping your distance."
Tenjin's breathing had worsened slightly already.
"Thanks."
Pekoms charged again.
Tenjin answered with the room itself.
Roots burst from beneath the floorboards, from the wall frames, from broken beams, from every scrap of wood in reach. They came in waves now, not single lines, twisting, branching, changing angles to force Pekoms to keep breaking, keep blocking, keep spending motion.
Pekoms smashed through one, then another, then three at once, his haki-coated hands turning the nearest roots to splinters. But every time he gained ground, Tenjin stepped back and made the room longer than it was supposed to be.
Another root snapped for his throat.
Pekoms ducked.
Another for his knee.
He jumped.
A wall of bark thickened around Tenjin's arm and shot outward in a giant wooden fist.
Pekoms blocked with crossed forearms and was sent skidding backward across the floor.
Pudding watched in stunned silence.
Tenjin was hurt. That much was obvious.
And yet he was still winning the flow of the fight.
Not by overpowering Pekoms directly.
By controlling everything between them.
Pekoms realized it too.
If he let Tenjin dictate range, this would drag on until the room itself swallowed him.
So he changed tactics.
He bent his knees.
Then rocketed forward with full force, haki blazing dark over both fists.
"RAAAAH!"
He tore through the roots instead of batting them away now, taking splinters and bruises across his body just to get in close. One root wrapped around his leg. He ripped it apart. A bark fist came in from the side. He took it on the shoulder and kept coming.
Tenjin's eyes sharpened.
'Too fast.'
Pekoms was suddenly right there.
His fist drove into Tenjin's guard.
Haki met wood.
The impact made the whole room shudder.
Tenjin was thrown backward into the far wall, coughing hard as bark armor shattered across his chest. Before he could reset, Pekoms was on him again, another punch coming straight through the opening.
Tenjin's body shifted into wood and leaf matter at the last instant, but Haki still brushed through enough of him to send sharp pain screaming down his side.
He grimaced.
Pekoms saw it.
"There!"
Tenjin's body was not untouchable to him.
That gave Pekoms confidence.
He pressed again, claws and fists both moving now, the room reduced to close-quarters brutality as Tenjin was forced to keep peeling himself apart and reforming around blows that threatened to actually hurt him.
Pudding's fingers tightened against her dress.
'He's going to lose…'
And then another thought came, quieter and uglier.
'Maybe that's better.'
Her eyes dropped for half a second.
'He saw my eye.'
The hidden one.
The third eye she always covered.
The thing that had earned her stares, whispers, rejection, mockery, even within her own family. A defect. A burden. Something strange and unwanted sitting in the middle of her face.
He had seen it.
He must be disgusted.
He must hate it.
Maybe he was only being quiet about it because he hadn't had time yet.
Maybe once this was over, he'd look at her like everyone else did.
Maybe—
Maybe it was better if Mama killed him before he ever said it out loud.
The thought struck hard enough to shame her.
Pudding clenched her fists.
'No…'
But she could not stop it from existing.
Across the room, Pekoms' fist tore through one of Tenjin's shoulders again, Haki scattering bark and leaves as Tenjin staggered to one side.
Pekoms stepped in for the finish.
Tenjin's back hit the cracked wall.
He was breathing hard now.
One arm was slower.
His side screamed every time he twisted too sharply.
And Pekoms had finally forced him into close range.
Pekoms drew back one haki-blackened fist.
"This is over."
Tenjin looked at him.
Then at the floor.
And smiled.
Pekoms noticed too late.
The entire room beneath him shifted.
Not just roots this time.
The floor itself.
Every broken beam, every wooden support, every cracked length of timber and fallen shelf—all of it answered at once.
"Forest Coffin."
The room erupted.
Wood came at Pekoms from every direction with crushing force. Floorboards split upward around his legs. Broken beams snapped around his arms. The collapsed shelving behind him surged forward and hardened into thick bark restraints while roots speared in from both sides and locked around his torso.
Pekoms roared and flexed, Haki bursting across his body as he tried to tear free—
But Tenjin had not used one layer.
He had used all of them.
The entire room had become a trap.
The walls bent inward.
The floor rose.
The wood compacted around Pekoms like the jaws of a living thing.
And then Tenjin, wincing visibly, lifted one hand and drove a final root-coated strike straight into Pekoms' chest.
The force hit through the layers of restraint and blasted the breath from him.
Pekoms' eyes widened.
Then rolled.
His body slackened.
The haki faded.
And he went unconscious inside the collapsed mass of wood and roots.
Silence fell.
Only Tenjin's breathing remained.
He stood there for a second, swaying very slightly before catching himself against the wall. The pain in his side had become almost nauseating now, and every movement after that finishing strike felt worse than the last.
Pudding stared at the unconscious Pekoms.
Then at Tenjin.
He had won.
Even like this.
Even injured.
Tenjin exhaled slowly and let the roots withdraw, leaving Pekoms crumpled on the ruined floor amid broken chocolate molds, shattered shelves, and split timber.
Then he turned.
Looked at Pudding.
And asked, in a voice much quieter than before—
"Why do you hide your eye?"
Pudding froze.
Her chest tightened instantly.
Of all the things he could have said after that fight, after all this chaos, he had asked that.
Pudding's lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
Tenjin pushed himself away from the wall, one hand pressing at his side.
"You shouldn't," he said.
Pudding blinked.
Tenjin met her eyes directly.
"It suits you."
She stared.
He went on, as if the answer were obvious.
"You look beautiful with it."
And for one suspended second, Pudding forgot how to breathe.
Shock hit first.
Then warmth.
Then confusion.
Then something far more dangerous than any of them.
Because there was no mockery in his face.
No pity.
No disgust.
No lie she could easily dismiss to protect herself.
He had said it simply.
Like truth.
Pudding's fingers tightened helplessly at her chest.
Her heart beat once.
Then harder.
And when she looked at Tenjin again, still wounded, still standing in the wreckage of the room, still looking at her as if what he had said should not have been difficult at all—
She felt something inside her shake.
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