Amid the vibrations, still laughing wildly, Teach's figure inexplicably appeared up in the sky, catching the eyes of the crowds gathered in the plaza below.
On the fortress bristling with defensive weapons around them, Van Augur pressed one hand against Teach's body, letting the two of them drift down freely.
"Zehahahahaha! Brats, the enemy's already here! Get ready for battle! Let your daddy..."
Teach twisted his head toward the waters beyond the fortress. The sea that had been a clear endless blue, almost a straight line to the horizon, now showed countless tiny black dots, swelling rapidly.
As they were falling, Van Augur activated his ability again, taking Teach's figure with him as they vanished, then reappeared high above the distant sea—just in time to see, stretched almost flat across the ocean, that densely packed fleet.
At the head was the extremely familiar Death Star as the flagship, followed by command ships and warships, nearly occupying all the ocean visible to the eye.
Almost the instant Teach appeared, more than half of the people on the decks below tilted their heads up, red light flaring in their pupils.
Observation!
All of them experts!
"Zehahahahaha! Long time no see, Aibo!!"
Teach let loose a hoarse, booming laugh, clenched one fist, wrapped it in hazy white light, and slammed it down hard.
"Let me say hello to you bastards too!!"
Thud!
His fist shot out; the air he struck cracked like shattered glass, spiderweb fissures spreading, then exploding into fragments that sprayed outward.
Rumble!!
At once, the air roared with a massive tremor, the sea surface heaved violently, as if a chunk of the ocean had been carved out—tilting up beneath the fleet at a diagonal. In the fan-shaped area ahead, over half their encirclement, a towering wall of water surged up, blotting out every trace of the fleet's course. Once it fell, it would drown them all!
A colossal tsunami!
The ones who command this world-ending power of destruction have never been limited to Sage alone.
Teach could claim absolute advantage in naval combat just the same!
"A-a tsunami!"
Across the fleet, plenty of people were thrown into utter disarray by the rising waves; many couldn't even keep their footing. Crawling on the deck, they looked up to see that massive tsunami rising, almost swallowing the sky, and terror twisted each of their faces.
Elites are elites, sure—but they're only elites. They can't compare to overwhelming might.
Watching the tsunami about to crash down, even those who could barely remain standing couldn't help but panic. Even Fishmen couldn't guarantee survival in a wave this huge.
The impact force of a tsunami is like humans standing on land during an earthquake—Fishmen can't withstand that either.
The Quake-Quake Fruit's vibrations are far from some simple "ground shaking."
"Hey! Starting off with the big one, huh!"
On the command ship Thriller Bark beside the Death Star, Moriah managed to keep his footing on deck, staring at the relentlessly rising wall of water, his face dark to a frightening degree.
The Power of Vibration could be defended against using Externalized Haki—but the tsunami it triggers is another story. Teach was a clever bastard; he hadn't just thrown out raw vibrations. He went straight for a tsunami and a seaquake.
It wasn't that he was worried about his whole army being wiped out; his confidence in Sage was absolute. But if he relied on Sage to act from the very start, then this carefully selected force of thirty thousand would be made into a joke!
"Blackbeard..."
In the Captain's cabin of the Death Star, Lily's hand tightened around her sword hilt as she saw the towering tsunami. She was about to burst through the window.
"Lily, you can't take all of it. Save your strength for the battlefield. As for this Teach... pops in just to leave, huh? His Instant Teleportation speed isn't slow. Hm. Still undetectable. So he's mastered that Observation Kill trick you'd expect from a rat."
Sage sat steady on the throne, not the least bit unsettled by the tilt and trembling of the waters beneath. Propping his chin on one hand, the corner of his mouth curled up. "And he pops in just to bail. Is that caution... or is he just a rat who doesn't dare show his face?"
As he spoke, the man on the throne vanished in an instant. The window glass shattered, and in the next heartbeat Sage's figure swung out to the very prow of the Death Star, facing the tilted sea below and the three walls of rising tsunamis around them.
"I've accepted your little greeting—but I'm a guy who cares about face. If I take a gift, then I'm definitely gonna return one!"
No flight, no Breaking the Sky. The moment he appeared above the sea, Sage dropped straight down in free fall. As he fell, white vapor billowed from his body, and his frame began to expand at extreme speed.
Boom!!
Like a man plunging into a giant bathtub, his body hit the slanted sea and threw up a colossal spray. For the ships, that "splash" was a raging tempest.
Luckily, the ones who'd come along were either Sage's veteran subordinates, used to riding out storms, or battle-hardened elites. A mere storm wasn't enough to break them. Though they staggered for a moment, they endured the violent winds and rain and didn't fall into the sea.
"What... is that?"
The Pirates who'd followed, those who'd never set foot on Egghead, forgot the crashing tsunami and chaotic storm for a moment. They could only stare up, slack-jawed, at the figure before them—lower body buried in the vast ocean, upper body nearly pressing against the sky, almost level with that towering tsunami.
A Giant?
Giants had never been this big. Nor this terrifying.
What filled their vision was a monstrosity whose hair burned and writhed like white flame, whose whole body was knotted muscle, layered into a living armor—an existence ten thousand times more ferocious than any Giant.