Inside a grimy tavern in Mock Town, Marshall D. Teach slammed his fork down, choking slightly on a massive slice of cherry pie before tossing back a mug of cheap rum. Letting out a long, satisfied belch, his jovial expression instantly curdled into a scowl as he glared at the bartender.
"Hey, old man! The cherry pie is absolute perfection, but why the hell does your rum taste like pure sewer water?!" Teach bellowed, his missing teeth on full display.
The bartender wiped a glass nervously, cold sweat pouring down his forehead as he looked at the menacing pirate surrounded by his armed crew. Before the confrontation could escalate, Laffitte—dressed in his spotless white suit, top hat, and pale face paint—offered a polite, eerie bow with his cane.
"Captain Teach, there is no need to trouble the barkeep," Laffitte murmured smoothly. "We ought to gather the others soon. Time waits for no man, and the world is eagerly anticipating your rise."
Teach wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Where the hell did Augur, Burgess, and Doc Q wander off to this time?"
"Augur is testing his long-range marksmanship from the clocktower, Burgess is picking street fights, and Doc Q is distributing his explosive apples to unsuspecting travelers," Laffitte replied with a calm, gentlemanly smile.
"Gahahaha! Can't those idiots behave themselves for even five minutes?!" Teach threw his head back, his booming laughter echoing through the bar. "Then again, a proper crew ought to be wild, ruthless, and completely uncontrollable! Only true villains are qualified to sail under my banner! Zehahahaha—"
BOOM!
A deafening, apocalyptic thunderclap violently shattered Teach's laughter, rattling the entire island of Jaya to its bedrock. A massive, blinding pillar of pure white lightning erupted directly out of the sky, completely vaporizing the clocktower several streets away in a terrifying display of divine retribution.
Tapping into his 30x power amplification and manipulating the iron sand from the deck into a pair of sleek, electromagnetic wings, Darian had unleashed a 300-million-volt strike directly on the sniper's position. Van Augur's Armament Haki was completely overwhelmed; the raw, superheated plasma engulfed his body before his brain could even process the threat.
Miles out at sea, Darian hovered above the Little Fish, his Great Sword Kiyotsuki unsheathed. "There's a sniper on the island targeting us," he instructed his crew, his voice cold and uncompromising. "Keep the ship back. I'll be back in two minutes."
Activating his frictionless skin, Darian exploded forward, shattering the sound barrier in a fraction of a second. Within thirty seconds, he crossed the open ocean and touched down on the charred, smoking ruins of Mock Town.
Scanning the glassed crater with his Observation Haki, Darian detected a faint, lingering heartbeat from the charred silhouette lying in the ash.
"Still breathing?" Darian scoffed, raising Kiyotsuki as lightning crackled along the steel. "Let me fix that."
"Stop right there!" a voice called out from above.
Laffitte, his white-feathered Zoan wings fully sprouted, descended from the clouds with his cane drawn. But he was a second too late. Darian brought Kiyotsuki down, driving a concentrated bolt of electricity straight through Van Augur's skull, instantly terminating his life force.
Laffitte's eyes widened behind his pale makeup as he recognized the tall, dark-haired intruder. "White Emperor Darian...!"
Darian didn't waste a single breath on conversation. Having killed Blackbeard's sniper, there was zero room for diplomacy. Darian blurred forward, unleashing a 30x amplified supersonic slash.
CLANG! SPLURT!
Laffitte barely had time to raise his wooden cane in a frantic parry before Kiyotsuki sheared cleanly through the wood, the flesh, and the bone. In a single, effortless flash of steel, Laffitte was bisected diagonally from his left shoulder down to his right hip.
Blood and organs spilled across the cobblestones as Laffitte's body split in two, his wings collapsing as his pupils dilated in sheer, disbelief-filled horror. He had spent time carefully grooming Teach to reach the pinnacle of the pirate world, only to die before the grand plan could even begin.
"LAFFITTE!"
A roaring, grief-stricken bellow tore through the smoke as Marshall D. Teach burst onto the street, his face contorted in absolute, furious agony as he stared at the bisected remains of his chief strategist. In a single minute, two of his core officers had been completely erased, shattering his master plan to claim a Warlord title before it ever took root.