Chapter 189: The Sought-After Item Appears
T-Bone's actions instantly frightened everyone around him, including the other Marines.
"Hey! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!"
Someone shouted after him, but T-Bone was already faster than their words. He had jumped down before anyone could stop him.
The moment his feet landed, he wasted no time.
The tsunami was about to swallow this area. His task was simple: get Spandam out before that happened.
In a flash, he appeared in front of Spandam, who was still running for his life.
When Spandam saw who had arrived, his miserable face nearly broke into tears.
"Captain T-Bone! You have to save me!"
"That is exactly why I came. Hurry! We have no time to waste!"
Seeing Spandam relax, T-Bone immediately barked at him. He himself did not dare loosen his focus for even a second.
Spandam looked back.
The enormous wave behind him was terrifyingly close now, like a vast blue curtain about to wrap around an ant.
"The tsunami is here! It's here!" Spandam screamed. "Hurry! Hurry!"
T-Bone saw it too, but he was far calmer than Spandam.
It looked close, but in truth, there were still several kilometers between them and the wave. They still had a little time.
He immediately found a nearby wooden house.
First, he broke off a piece of wood from one corner. Then, with the wooden stick in hand, he faced the wall and unleashed his signature technique.
"Right Angle Flash!"
The wooden stick cut through the air, drawing a perfectly square blue line. With one swing, the line struck the wall.
"What are you doing?!" Spandam shouted anxiously. "The tsunami is coming! Why are you cutting planks now? Don't tell me you're planning to build a boat!"
A moment ago, T-Bone had looked like his savior.
Now, Spandam's body had gone weak from relief. The exhaustion he had accumulated throughout the day, along with the injuries from his desperate run, surged up all at once.
He no longer had the strength to keep running.
Otherwise, he would have abandoned T-Bone and fled upward already.
"Something like that," T-Bone replied.
As his words fell, a plank cut with perfect precision dropped from the wall with a thud.
T-Bone stepped forward, pulled out the rectangular plank, and said to Spandam, "Hold on to it."
Spandam had no idea what T-Bone was planning, but he could not afford to hesitate. He rushed forward and grabbed the front edge of the plank.
T-Bone seized the rear edge.
With the arm strength he had trained as a swordsman, he lifted both the plank and Spandam together.
Finding himself suddenly floating in midair, Spandam immediately guessed what T-Bone intended to do.
He did not stop him.
Instead, he shouted, "Adjust the angle! Adjust the angle!"
T-Bone spun in place and threw with all his strength.
The plank shot upward like a cannonball.
Seeing it fly toward them, the people waiting above hurriedly scattered aside.
The plank successfully reached the upper level.
However, its momentum was too fierce to stop there. It kept flying forward, rising more than ten meters into the air before its speed finally began to slow.
Spandam stared blankly at the scenery below him.
If I fall from this height, it's going to hurt, isn't it?
No.
It's absolutely going to hurt!
His thoughts did nothing to change reality.
The moment the plank lost its upward momentum, it plunged toward the ground.
With a heavy crash, it smashed into the floor and shattered apart.
Spandam rolled several times before finally coming to a stop.
"Cough! Cough, cough!"
"Are you all right?" a kind passerby asked as he approached.
"Damn that T-Bone," Spandam wheezed. "Who saves someone like that?"
Below, T-Bone did not dare linger.
The tsunami was now only one or two kilometers away. The huge curtain of water almost filled his entire field of vision.
Without delay, he leaped onto a nearby building and began climbing toward the top, using protrusions on the walls as footholds.
When Spandam saw him making his way up, he walked over and complained irritably, "You all came up here to take shelter without even looking for me? And that brat is truly sinister. He must have calculated the timing long ago. He wanted to use the tsunami to get rid of me!"
The residents of Water 7 had initially thought Spandam was going over to thank T-Bone.
They had not expected blame instead.
Their expressions immediately turned unpleasant.
Someone who treated his rescuer like that could not possibly be a good person.
T-Bone had no intention of arguing with him.
The Marines' mission was to guard Enies Lobby. Spandam belonged to another organization, so they could not truly control him. On top of that, Spandam had slandered the swordsman T-Bone recognized and respected.
Seeing that T-Bone had no intention of answering, Spandam finally stopped complaining.
Then he looked toward the approaching tsunami and froze.
The massive wave crossed Water 7's outermost wall, swallowing and submerging the outer sections of the city in an instant. Its momentum carried it onward, but the walls slowed its force. It no longer posed a direct threat to those gathered above.
But what stunned Spandam was not the tsunami.
It was what rode upon it.
"What is that?!"
"A ship!"
"A ship is sailing on the Water Gods!"
"It even has the World Government's emblem! Is that a World Government vessel? As expected of the World Government. Their shipbuilding technology is something the rest of us can only look up to."
Compared with the shocked residents of Water 7, Spandam was even more shaken.
If he remembered correctly, that ship's shape...
"Plu... Plu... Pluton?"
Only the legendary battleship Pluton could advance through such a tsunami without being swallowed.
The Enies Lobby Marines were just as astonished.
The flag on that ship was the very marker they had given Axel's group for the hidden item.
In other words, that ship was the item they were supposed to find.
And now that the target had appeared only after being washed out by the tsunami, even if they identified it, it could not be counted as something they had located through their own efforts.
At this point, they had only two possible outcomes.
A draw or a loss.
The result depended on how the San Faldo Marines were doing.
They wanted to ask, but in this dense crowd of civilians, with both sides wearing plain clothes, how were they supposed to find them?
T-Bone recalled the clues and looked toward the place where the ship had appeared.
The Aqua Laguna gate elevator.
So that was it.
[Hidden beneath the haze] referred to the ship being concealed in darkness after the water gate closed.
[Appearing and vanishing between the ebb and flow of the tides] referred to the Aqua Laguna gate elevator, which rose and fell by water pressure.
[A shape as brilliant as a meteor, yet also a common object] was easier to understand now.
The ship was undoubtedly a commonly used item.
They did not know exactly what kind of ship it was, but its ability to sail across the tsunami, along with its striking appearance, was more than enough to call it brilliant.
When Aqua Laguna appeared and the gate elevator opened, the ship would be washed out by the tsunami and reveal its true form.
"So that's how it is," T-Bone said, realization dawning on him.
He could not help feeling admiration.
The target had been hidden in such an obvious place.
When they had taken the Aqua Laguna gate elevator up to the Inner City, they had passed right by it.
And because the place was crowded, ordinary, and far too easy to overlook, none of them had imagined that the target of their mission would be concealed there.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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