The First Half of the Grand Line, The Airspace Over Asuka Island.
Since Brook had permanently subdued the Shichiseiken, the eerie green mist that had blanketed the island for a century had completely dissipated into the atmosphere. Having cleanly regained his cognitive autonomy, the Marine instructor Saga was out of immediate danger under Maya's close care.
To the island's native populations, the black-hulled outlaws were saving spirits sent by the heavens; but to the crew of the Eclipse, the entire engagement was merely a trivial interlude during their transit across the Grand Line.
After replenishing their freshwater casks and harvesting a few near-shore predators for the galley, the Eclipse silently cleared the anchorage. Under the automated navigation protocols handled by Little Eclipse, the warship stepped smoothly through the wind currents, continuing its trajectory deeper into the sea lanes.
Aided by Leona's Float-Float Fruit interface, maintaining the vessel's high-altitude cruise required a remarkably small expenditure of energy while yielding an exceptional propulsion velocity.
"Next coordinate: The Florian Triangle."
Ace sat reclined across his deck chair near the bow, his eyes half-closed as he tracked the bite of the high-altitude draft against his shirt. "Calculating the days since our last checkpoint, that oversized shut-in Moriah should have shed a significant portion of his bulk. Let's drop in and audit his Haki recovery—and while we're matching the metrics, we'll deliver his allocation of the Limit Breaker serum."
"Gah! Audit the onion head! Gah!"
Berries stood perched atop Chopper's primary pharmaceutical trunk, flapping its white wings with an arrogant, territorial snap. Having fully integrated the properties of the Barrier-Barrier Fruit, the avian had assumed the role of an absolute gatekeeper along the main deck.
"You stubborn bird! Remove your talons from my diagnostic case this instant!"
Chopper transitioned into his compact, high-velocity transformation wavelength, chasing the bird across the ironwood planks in a flurry of dust.
In the long shadows near the laboratory bulkheads, the matte-black mechanical spider moved with fluid, high-speed agility. Bonney, sealed securely within the life-support cockpit, laughed behind the display screens, occasionally utilizing the spider's hydraulic arms to block the bird's flight path as Chopper closed the distance.
While the main deck maintained its standard, boisterous baseline:
"Captain. A signature has breached our grid."
Shark, who had been leaning against the stern rail with his eyelids lowered to anchor his Armament Hardening drills, suddenly opened his triangular, unblinking eyes. He stepped to the lip of the deck, his gaze tracking down into the turbulent, deep blue water rolling far below the keel, his brow ridge furrowing into a tight line.
"Define the displacement," Ace said without opening his eyelids, though his perception could catch a rare tremor of urgency moving through Shark's otherwise motionless aura.
"In the deep water below, two separate entities are locked in a lethal selection. One of those signatures..." Shark clenched his dark grey fist, his knuckles producing a sharp crack against the steel. "...belongs to an old companion from my Grand Line years. The life force is slipping away."
"An old companion?"
Sabo, who had been running internal forms with his new Flame Dragon staff, arrested his rotation, the dark red alloy leaving a fading trail of blue plasma sparks in the air. He looked toward the stern with a genuine expression of curiosity.
Within Shark's aquatic perception, that familiar tracking pulse was degrading rapidly, indicating it had been cornered by a predatory cephalopod whose lethal mass far outstripped its own.
"Captain." Shark turned his head toward the deck chair. "Requesting exit permission. A soft-bodied deep-water entity I navigated with years ago is on the verge of consumption. I'm going into the swells to pull its mass from the reef."
"Clear the deck," Ace waved his fingers lazily into the draft. "Let's see what's hunting in the dark. If the mass is substantive enough, we'll run it through Jeno's ovens for lunch; the crew is losing their appetite for yesterday's catch."
"Understood, Captain."
Shark nodded, a razor-sharp killing intent flaring within his pupils. Tracking to the absolute edge of the guardrail, his massive frame launched off the hull, dropping through the clouds to hit the ocean surface below like a heavy depth charge.
Ten minutes slipped past in silence.
Boom—!
With a thunderous, concussive roar, the sea surface beneath the Eclipse ruptured violently. Shark's massive bulk broke through the white foam, his boots hitting the iron deck plating with a solid thud.
Dragged along by his right arm was a three-meter-long, anomalously configured deep-sea invertebrate. The cephalopod's lower abdomen was lined with clusters of high-density suction tentacles, but the thick, calcified spiky carapace it naturally relied upon for defensive protection had been thoroughly shredded. Large volumes of blue-tinted blood were pumping from deep lacerations along its back, and its internal organ matrices were vaguely visible behind the torn tissue.
"The structural damage is significant," Ace remarked, stepping off his canvas lounger to look down at the dying sea monster. Without expanding his posture, he opened his right hand, allowing a dense, vibrant sphere of the Vermilion Bird Divine Fire to cascade across the creature's battered spine.
Nourished by the intense vital properties of the Zoan flames, the torn flesh and leaking internal organs arrested their bleeding, the deep wounds knitting together at a visible, clinical velocity as its shallow respiration stabilized.
"The life force is anchored. But..." Ace cut the flame, inspecting the bald, unprotected skin where the shell had once rested, his brow lifting slightly.
The divine fire could reconfigure damaged flesh, but it lacked the biochemical properties to synthesize complex, mineralized armor out of empty air. The sea monster's back was completely bare, stripped of its single asset for environmental defense.
"Even if the original calcification remained whole, a common shell is equivalent to wet paper inside the selections of the Grand Line."
Jeno, who had been reviewing the diagnostics from the margin, walked over, casually scratching his chin. He had removed his heavy mechanical combat gear, dressed only in his standard denim work coveralls, but his eyes were whirring with a frantic, technical intensity.
The engineer executed a slow circle around the invertebrate before his lips split into a wide grin.
"Shark, do you recall the biomechanical blueprints I analyzed with that eccentric shipwright Franky back within the shipyards of Water Seven?"
Jeno leaned down, his finger pointing directly at the dense rows of tentacles lining the creature's soft underbelly.
"The suction organs across this creature's abdomen are practically customized mounting pads! Since its natural armor is too brittle to survive a standard brawling tier, I will utilize my newly balanced lightweight titanium composite alongside memory alloy to forge an absolute, fully automated mechanical exo-chassis for its spine!"
"During normal cruise parameters, it will function as an active, living alloy backpack, securely anchored to your shoulder blades. This mechanical shell will not only insulate your spine from any blind-spot strikes, but it will extend an exceptionally flexible hydraulic tail to multiply your balance vectors during high-speed maneuvers!"
"The highest asset of the design..." Jeno's gestures grew increasingly frantic as he traced the vectors in the empty air. "...is its native water-compression organs! I'll build a series of high-pressure alloy induction pumps directly into its shell! When you transition onto dry land, this beast will be capable of discharging hyper-pressurized water jets that match the kinetic output of a heavy warship's main battery! This is structurally an industrial symbiotic weapon engineered to amplify your Fish-Man Karate!"
Hearing the radical, perfectly aligned modification layout, a sudden, blinding light flared within Shark's perennially flat, triangular eyes.
"Can your department guarantee the integration, Jeno?" Shark asked, his gaze locking onto the mechanic.
"Do not insult the throughput of my forge, you oversized fish!"
Jeno let out a loud roar of laughter, turning on his heel to sprint toward the heavy synthesis laboratories situated within the lower decks.
"As long as its central nervous paths can process an electrical impulse, my workspace can translate this beast into the most advanced mechanical symbiote operating on this ocean! Get its mass down to the lab terminals!"
Does Jeno intend to integrate the symbiotic sea beast's nervous system via direct neural links to Shark's own Haki signature, or will the upcoming entry into the gray mists of the Florian Triangle provide an immediate, hazardous combat trial for this new biomechanical weapon?
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