The spacious steel deck of the Eclipse now resembled a massive, open-air industrial kitchen.
To provide the immense, high-density caloric energy needed for the Limit Breaker serum to repair and regenerate cells at a rapid velocity, Leona had donned a dark brown leather apron. Utilizing the gravity-defying authority of the Float-Float Fruit, she suspended several colossal Sea King carcasses in the mid-air space above the deck, her White Night blade transforming into an unreadable curtain of silver-white arcs that precisely dismembered the massive predators into perfect, uniform bone-in steaks.
Standing adjacent to the workstation, Jeno deployed his modified robotic arm, utilizing a high-temperature thermal nozzle to function as a fully automated, super-frequency convection oven.
"Are the centers ready?"
Ace sat anchored at the head of the long iron table, looking over the literal mountain of sizzling, roasted meat piled before his chest while his right fingers unsealed a dark blue vial of the Limit Breaker serum. To his left and right, Sabo, Enel, and Urouge each held a matching glass tube, their expressions sober at the prospect of the unknown physical trauma, yet burning with an intense anticipation of shattering their biological ceilings.
"Yahahaha! Step aside! The sovereign will log the baseline first to see exactly how much friction this formula can bring to my nerves!"
Without a heartbeat of hesitation, Enel popped the cork and downed the dark blue fluid in a single swallow. Sabo and Urouge followed the motion, draining their vials into their throats without a backward glance.
Ace smiled, tilting his chin back to ingest his own dose. Though his baseline talent was already so pristine that the direct improvements might yield a smaller percentage, as the commander of this vanguard, he refused to remain a passive spectator while his officers bled.
For the initial seconds following the ingestion, the clearing remained perfectly still, the liquid sliding smoothly into their systems.
"Why are the parameters completely flat? Is it a dud?" Buggy muttered from the edge of the bulkhead, his hands resting on his hips.
The words had barely left his lips when Sabo's complexion turned a graphic, deathly pale. He clamped both hands over his ribcage, thick, dark blue veins erupting violently across his temples and neck. He felt as if thousands of microscopic scalpels had been introduced directly into his bloodstream, cold-bloodedly slicing through every blood vessel, unknitting his muscle fibers, and scoring the marrow of his bones from the inside out.
"Aaaaaaah!"
Even Enel, who carried himself with the unyielding vanity of a lightning sovereign, unleashed a shrill, ragged scream. Arcs of uncompressed blue electricity spilled violently and uncontrollably from his skin, his massive frame drop-kicking the deck as his limbs convulsed in the ironwood dust.
"The friction... it's magnificent! It's perfect! Tear this monk down to the bedrock!"
Urouge's five-meter-tall bulk slammed heavily against the iron deck plating. He ground his teeth together until the enamel cracked, enduring the excruciating trauma of the genetic reshaping while a twisted, manic laughter escaped his lips.
Even Ace's forehead developed a tight cluster of fine sweat beads; the cold, tearing agony penetrating to the absolute center of his bone matrix was a load that would have snuffed out the nervous system of an ordinary pirate in seconds.
"Consume! Do not let the digestive tract stall!"
Suppressing the burning feedback in his core, Ace locked his fingers around a massive slab of roasted game, shoving the meat roughly past his teeth as he growled, "Force it down!"
Hearing their captain's muffled roar, Sabo and his two companions reacted with the primitive urgency of starving wolves seizing a lifeline. While enduring the blinding agony that felt like their internal architecture was being dismantled, they reached out with bloodshot eyes, grabbing the scalding, grease-laden steaks before them to devour the meat with frantic, ravenous speed.
Thud! Crack!
Accompanied by a heavy, exaggerated cadence of tearing cartilage and rapid swallowing, the caloric mountain was systematically demolished. Chunks of roasted game, each half the dimension of a common youth, were instantly disintegrated by their hyper-accelerated digestive tracts the moment the tissue cleared the stomach valves. Torrents of immense vital energy erupted from their midsections, racing along their bloodlines to greedily patch and reforge the cellular matrices that had been torn open by the compound.
"Sublime! Agh! The agony... it's absolute perfection!"
Caught within a violent cycle of excruciating pain and boundless, surging energy, the four gluttons transformed into bottomless black holes. Leona's draw speed on the suspended carcasses could barely keep pace with the velocity of their consumption.
This hellish, ravenous evolution continued without intermission for more than two hours. When the chemical reaction finally reached its baseline conclusion, the four figures collapsed flat against the iron plating, their skin thoroughly drenched in sweat.
"Phew..."
Sabo exhaled a long plume of warm, white vapor, slowly pulling his spine straight as he rose from the deck. He closed his right hand into a fist, a crisp, rapid-fire succession of joint pops vibrating through the air.
"This state..." Sabo's azure eyes filled with a sudden, profound shock. "The liberation is absolute. It's as if the heavy structural shackles my body used to carry have been completely broken from the marrow."
He could feel his bone density tightening, the latent kinetic reserves within his muscle tissue turning deep and bottomless. Had he encountered Garp's iron uppercut in this state, the internal explosion wouldn't have managed to fracture his arm bones.
"Yahahaha! The lightning path through my channels has cleared completely! The velocity is seamless!" Enel stared down at his bare palms, unable to contain the manic excitement in his voice. Not only had his physical chassis added massive density, but his already sharp Observation Haki, multiplied by the complete liberation of his five senses, had unrolled into a far broader, crystalline radar field.
Ace silently monitored the internal adjustments within his own biology. Although the percentage of change was modest due to his already pristine talent profile, his internal organs had acquired an immense increase in structural threshold. This would significantly mitigate the physical strain on his core when sustaining the high-pressure output of his Suzaku Ryuo: Flame Prison Shura form.
"The yield is stable. Prepare the secondary rotation," Ace instructed with a satisfied nod, turning back toward the conference table. "Chopper, monitor the cellular limits for the remaining block."
For the subsequent forty-eight hours, the Eclipse glided smoothly along the calm, sunlit surface of the East Blue. Bypassing only the blind child Bonney, every officer on the roster underwent the Limit Breaker's chemical baptism, their transitions defined by a volatile mixture of blinding trauma and absolute excitement. Across the board, the developmental ceilings of the crew had been lifted to a terrifying index.
The sun occupied the dead center of the sky at noon.
Having completed their physical overhauls and feeling entirely refreshed, the officers sat gathered in loose clusters across the main deck, enjoying the rare peace. The Eclipse had deactivated its high-altitude vector thrusters, choosing instead to drift smoothly with the sea currents.
Ace, clad in a pair of loud floral shorts, lay completely relaxed across a canvas deck chair near the bow. He held a long graphite fishing rod over the rail, his eyes closed as he leaned back into the sea breeze.
Just then, a monolithic coastal structure distinguished by an incredibly ostentatious architectural profile broke through the morning mist ahead. It was a sprawling amusement park constructed directly over the water, its primary peak sculpted into the image of a ferocious, blue-nosed saw shark. Anchored in the immediate bay before the park was a heavy brigantine flying a pirate emblem marked by a stylized red sun.
Shark, who had been leaning against the brass rail to catch the breeze, went entirely still the moment his eyes registered the crimson icon and the familiar framework of the amusement park, his triangular, usually blank eyes widening into an intense stare. A cold, unmitigated rage began to seep silently from his grey skin.
"Hey! Clear the approach, you black iron monster! You've entered the sovereign waters of the Arlong Pirates! Drop your anchors immediately and prepare your treasure for extraction!"
Several longboats flying Arlong's variant flag came cutting through the shallows from the park's docks. A handful of bizarrely configured Fish-Man henchmen stood at the prows, brandishing flintlock muskets as they shouted arrogantly toward the Eclipse.
But as the longboats closed within a few cable lengths and their scouts isolated Shark's towering silhouette leaning over the rail, the arrogance died instantly within their throats.
"A Fish-Man? What's a brother doing standing on a deck with these lower, hairless humans?!"
The vanguard scout stared up in complete disbelief before his features twisted into a furious scowl. "You've actually lowered your lineage to function as a human's lapdog? You're a structural disgrace to the entire race! Brother Arlong will have your head for this betrayal!"
"Disgrace?"
Hearing the term, Shark's grey face remained completely expressionless, but the vertical pupils of his eyes flared with a heat that seemed to turn the surrounding water volatile.
"You pack of small-time trash... using Tiger's ancient sun symbol to screen your cowardice while you hide in the weakest sea to plunder civilians."
Shark turned his head slightly, his gaze dropping toward Ace, who remained motionless on the deck chair.
"Captain," Shark murmured, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly resonant bass. "An old account is waiting inside that park ahead. Requesting permission to clear the house. Outlaws who degrade Tiger's legacy and drag his text through the mud don't possess the right to draw breath, let alone soil the water near this hull."
Ace didn't bother to unseal his eyes, merely twitching his wrist to adjust the line of his fishing rod.
"Clear the ledger," Ace said lazily into the wind. "Since it's an old debt, settle it according to your own metrics. The game in this sector is far too small; the sooner you clear the shallows, the sooner we can steer the ship toward the Grand Line."
"Understood, Captain."
Shark turned his boots toward the rail. His massive, muscled frame cut cleanly through the air, plunging into the turbulent sea below without a sound. Beneath the surface, his shape transformed into a terrifying, high-velocity undercurrent, driving straight toward the foundation of Arlong Park.
Sheng.
The primary structure of Arlong Park was built like a localized fortress, its stone walls reinforced with heavy iron bars to hold the local human populations of the Conomi Islands in a permanent state of economic subjugation. For eight years, the Saw-Shark Fish-Man Arlong had ruled these shallows with an iron fist, extorting millions of berries from the surrounding villages while his crew caroused in the sunlit pavilions.
Within the central open-air lounge, Arlong sat slouched across a massive stone throne, a gold-rimmed chalice of wine balanced in his webbed fingers. He was a massive, blue-skinned shark Fish-Man, his most prominent feature being a serrated, razor-sharp nose blade that had severed the steel of countless pirate crews. Across his broad chest was stamped the red sun tattoo—the mark he had carried since his days with the legendary Sun Pirates.
"Brother Arlong! Brother Arlong!"
A frantic, high-pitched shout broke the peace of the lounge. A puddle-fish henchman burst through the beaded curtain, his webbed hands shaking so violently he dropped his flintlock rifle onto the marble floor tiles.
"What's with the panic, you idiot?!" Arlong snarled, his triangular eyes narrowing as he set his chalice down with a heavy thud. "Did the humans in Cocoyasi Village fail to produce the monthly tribute? If they're short by even a single berry, take a squad and reduce their houses to kindling!"
"No... it's not the tribute!" The henchman gasped for air, his gills pumping erratically. "The scout detail we sent to intercept the incoming black ship... they're all dead! Their longboats were found split cleanly in half down at the sandbar!"
"What?!" Arlong stood up, his towering, three-meter frame throwing a long shadow across the marble. "Some lower human scum dares to splinter my wood inside the East Blue? Who is the captain of that hull?!"
"It wasn't a human weapon that split the boats," a cold, resonant bass voice echoed from the central courtyard pool, cutting through the morning air like a block of ice.
Splash.
The water in the architectural fountain ruptured cleanly, and a massive, dark-grey Fish-Man emerged from the depths, stepping smoothly onto the paved marble tiles. His tall, imposing frame was completely soaked, his skin gleaming like polished iron under the sun, his vertical pupils locked onto Arlong's face with a lethal, absolute focus.
Arlong's jaw went slack, his hand instinctively moving toward his serrated nose blade before his eyes registered the physical reality of the intruder.
"Shark...?" Arlong's voice dropped its volume, a mixture of intense shock and sudden, defensive anger tightening his features. "You... you vanished into the Grand Line years ago after Jinbe accepted the government's collar! What are you doing scaling the walls of my park?!"
Shark didn't offer a rapid reply. He walked slowly across the terrace, his heavy boots leaving a trail of wet prints along the stone. His eyes tracked across the opulent, gold-leaf decorations of the park, and then settled onto the red sun tattoo stamped over Arlong's heart.
"I crossed the water to see what had become of the vanguard," Shark said, his voice entirely flat, destitute of any human warmth. "And I find you hiding in the weakest corner of the world, building a toy castle out of the blood of hairless civilians while you wear Tiger's mark like a piece of jewelry."
"Shut your mouth!" Arlong roared, his face turning an aggressive shade of dark purple as his template flared with rage. "Tiger was murdered by those lower human vermin! Jinbe sold our pride to become a slave for the Marines! I am the only one who stayed true to the dream! I built an empire here! The Fish-Man race is the supreme lineage of this ocean, and these humans are nothing but cattle meant to finance our supremacy!"
Shark stopped his advance exactly ten paces from the throne. A dense, ink-black coat of Armament Haki slid smoothly over his massive right forearm, the energy coiling around his skin with a visible, fluid density.
"Tiger spent his life trying to break the chains of the world, refusing to let his hands become corrupted by the same malice that forged the Celestial Dragons," Shark whispered, his eyes narrowing into slits of absolute execution. "You didn't stay true to the dream, Arlong. You simply took the chains that used to bind our ankles and fastened them around the necks of those who couldn't fight back."
He raised his hand, dropping into the absolute foundational stance of Fish-Man Karate.
"The legend of the Sun Pirates is too clean to be handled by a common bandit. I'm clearing the ledger for the old crew today."
"Arrogant bastard!" Arlong grinned hideously, his jaws snapping open as a secondary set of razor-sharp teeth slid into place, his hand reaching for his massive, multi-bladed sword, the Kiribachi. "You think spending a few winters in the Grand Line means you can match my jaws? I'll tear your throat out and feed your meat to the reef!"
A single relevant question to guide the narrative forward:
Does Shark intend to execute the entire Arlong Pirates vanguard cleanly through martial superiority, or will the intervention of the island's desperate human civilians alter the tactical flow of his purge?
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