The aftermath of the banquet was a scene of peaceful carnage.
Zoro was snoring loudly, sprawled out with one leg draped over a barrel of empty sake. Bartolomeo was curled up in a fetal position on one of his own golden benches, mumbling in his sleep about "the Captain's glory."
Kuro was perched improbably in the branches of a mangrove, asleep while standing upright.
The four women, Nami, Robin, Nojiko, and Isabella along with Bonney, had been spared this rustic slumber, having retired to the comfort and safety of Ragnar's Heaven's Dimension for the night.
As the crew began to stir, groaning and stretching out the stiffness from sleeping on the ground, Ragnar emerged from a shimmering portal in the air, the women and a still-sleepy Bonney following behind him, looking refreshed and clean.
He surveyed his scattered crew with an amused smirk before his gaze landed on Wyper.
The Shandian warrior was already awake, sharpening his Burn Blade with a practiced, meditative rhythm.
He had spent the night under the stars, his pride not allowing him to accept the same comfort as the others, viewing it as a test of his endurance.
"Wyper," Ragnar called out, his voice cutting through the morning quiet. "A moment of your time. In here."
Wyper looked up, his expression neutral but his eyes curious. He nodded, sheathing his blade and walking towards Ragnar, who had reopened the portal to Heaven's Dimension.
The rest of the crew watched with interest, knowing what was about to happen.
They had all undergone this transformation, this ascension that bound them irrevocably to their captain and unlocked a power that transcended the mundane.
The interior of Heaven's Dimension was, as always, a place of impossible serenity and grandeur. The sky was a perpetual twilight of blue, and the ground was a seamless, polished surface that reflected the celestial bodies above.
"Sit there Wyper," Ragnar said, his voice taking on a resonant, divine timber that echoed in the vast space.
Wyper complied, but he didn't sit, instead, he dropped to one knee, his head bowed. He was a warrior of immense pride, but he understood the magnitude of this offering.
This was a power that could help him achieve his goals, protect his people, and fulfill the debt he owed for his resurrection.
Ragnar placed a hand on Wyper's head.
"You have proven your strength, your resolve, and your loyalty. Your rage is a weapon, but untempered, it is a danger to yourself and others. I will forge that rage into a divine instrument."
"You shall become my Angel of Divine Wrath. Let your fury be the thunder that heralds my judgment."
A torrent of blinding, golden-white light erupted from Ragnar's hand, engulfing Wyper completely.
The Shandian warrior gritted his teeth, a loud roar tearing from his throat as the energy flooded his being. It wasn't a gentle process; it was a violent, glorious rewriting of his very essence.
The tribal markings on his skin began to glow with a fierce, white-hot intensity, spreading and morphing into intricate, pulsing patterns that crawled across his musculature like living lightning.
Two massive wings erupted from his back. They were not the pristine white of Nami's or the shadowy feathers of Kuro's.
These were wings of storm and fury: a base of deepest, volcanic black, shot through with veins of brilliant, crackling gold.
Each individual feather seemed to be a contained Tesla coil, humming and spitting arcs of raw electricity into the air.
Above his head, a halo flickered into existence. It was not a stable ring of light, but a chaotic, spinning band of pure lightning arcs, constantly collapsing and reforming, a visible manifestation of his unstable, explosive power.
When Wyper opened his eyes, they glowed with the white-hot intensity of plasma, all traces of their original brown scorched away by divine energy.
The transformation complete, Wyper rose to his feet. He felt… different. The constant, simmering anger that had been his companion since Skypiea was still there, but it was no longer a chaotic fire in his gut.
It was a focused, humming reactor in his chest. He could feel the power coursing through his veins, not as blood, but as liquid lightning. He flexed his fingers, and tiny arcs of electricity jumped between them.
He turned to Ragnar, a new, terrifying gravity in his presence. "Captain. My abilities… they feel… absolute."
"Show me," Ragnar said, his arms crossed, his expression one of interest.
Wyper took a deep breath, the ozone smell intensifying.
"Thunderblood Overdrive," he intoned, his voice gaining a reverberating, electrical echo.
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying. The lightning veins on his skin blazed with incandescent light.
His muscles swelled, rippling with power that seemed to strain against his very logia nature, amplifying him beyond the normal limits of an electricity user.
A visible aura of distorted air and crackling energy surrounded him.
He vanished from sight, reappearing on the far side of the pocket dimension in the time it took to blink, the air cracking with the sound of a thunderclap where he'd been standing.
He threw a casual punch at a distant, floating crystalline structure that served as a training dummy, and the air itself detonated, shattering the crystal into dust without his fist ever making contact.
A faint wisp of smoke rose from his knuckles; any minor wound from the backlash had cauterized instantly from the internal heat.
Ragnar watched, his mind cataloging everything.
'Impressive speed and raw destructive power. A berserker state that enhances his base logia attributes significantly.'
Next, Wyper held out his hand. "Raijin Spear."
A spear of condensed, divine lightning materialized in his grip. It was a solid, humming shaft of pure energy, crackling with barely restrained power.
With a grunt, he hurled it. It didn't fly; it teleported, appearing instantly embedded in another distant crystal formation miles away.
The crystal didn't just break; it vaporized in a flash of light, and the spear continued its path, piercing through several more formations before the shockwave it left in its wake finally caught up, creating a chain of massive, smoldering craters.
The spear then dissolved into motes of light and reformed instantly in Wyper's waiting hand.
Light-speed projectile with infinite range and recall function. Excellent for long-range assassination and siege warfare.
"Skyburn Charge." Wyper's body dissolved into a stream of pure, white-hot electricity. He became a living thunderbolt, streaking across the dimension in a straight, unavoidable line. He rematerialized with a cataclysmic BOOM.
A crater fifty feet wide was blasted into the indestructible-seeming floor of the dimension.
A ring of superheated plasma exploded outward from the point of impact, and the air itself ionized, filled with a web of lingering, deadly electricity.
Any foe caught in that area would be simultaneously electrocuted, concussed, and incinerated.
*A perfect blitz attack. Near-impossible to dodge and devastating on impact. Logia intangibility is used for pure, aggressive momentum.*
Finally, Wyper took a deep breath, his chest swelling with power. "STORMBREAKER ROAR!"
The sound that came out was not a human shout. It was the primal scream of the storm itself. A massive, hemispherical dome of concentrated lightning erupted from him, expanding outwards for nearly a mile.
Within the dome, the very air became a lethal field of intersecting lightning arcs, the ground below turning to molten glass.
It was a technique of pure, unadulterated area denial and devastation, capable of wiping out entire armies and destroying any incoming projectiles before they could even get close.
As the display concluded and Wyper allowed his Overdrive state to recede, his wings folding behind him, he stood panting slightly, a look of profound, savage satisfaction on his face.
"This power… Captain, it is everything I could have wanted. My rage… it finally has a purpose. It has a form."
Internally, Ragnar felt a flicker of disappointment. The abilities were powerful, undeniably so. They were flashy, destructive, and perfectly suited to Wyper's personality.
But at their core, they were simply a divine augmentation of his pre-existing Goro Goro no mi, Logia abilities. He had hoped for something more… esoteric. (Didn't know what to really give him….)
Something that broke the established rules of the world, like Kuro's powers or Bartolomeo's conceptual barrier creation. This was just a better, angrier version of Enel.
But he was a master of masks, like a king who knew how to inspire his subjects. He let none of his internal assessment show on his face.
Instead, he strode forward and clapped a hand on Wyper's shoulder, feeling the residual static electricity tingle against his palm.
"Magnificent, Wyper," Ragnar said, his voice full of genuine-sounding praise.
"The Angel of Divine Wrath is a title you wear well. This is a massive boost to your capabilities. You are no longer just a warrior of the Shandia; you are a force of nature, a herald of my will. With this power, our enemies will learn to fear the storm."
Wyper's eyes shone with a happiness that was rare for the dour warrior. The approval of the man who had given him this power, who saw his rage not as a flaw but as a weapon to be honed, meant more to him than he could express.
He had been granted a massive boost, and he was eager to test it against the strongest the world had to offer.
The two of them exited Heaven's Dimension, stepping back onto the humid island.