The clash never came.
Loki's colossal greatsword continued descending through the cavern, red-black lightning writhing around its edge. Below it, Giovanni stood with Ace drawn beside his hip, compressed Armament and Conqueror's Haki gathered so tightly along the blade that the surrounding air seemed to bend toward it.
One attack carried the weight of a falling mountain.
The other had been sharpened into a single point meant to break it.
Then Ida moved.
She did not swing the Great Ladle.
Her left hand shot upward and seized Loki by the ear.
At the same time, her right hand descended toward Giovanni. Her fingers were enormous beside his human body; one thumb was nearly as broad as his chest. Yet with the practiced precision of someone who had spent years handling giant children without hurting them, Ida caught the upper edge of Giovanni's ear between the tip of her thumb and forefinger.
Then she twisted.
"OW—IDA!"
Loki's roar became an undignified shriek.
His enormous body folded sideways despite being many times larger than the woman dragging him. The Haki wrapped around his sword broke apart, crimson lightning scattering uselessly into the air before the great blade struck the floor far from Giovanni and tore another trench through the stone.
Giovanni fared little better.
His feet left the ground.
The dark pressure gathered around Ace vanished as Ida lifted him several feet into the air by one ear. Compared with her hand, he looked like an unruly doll caught trying to escape discipline. His boots kicked once before he forced them still, his face locking into an expression of absolute disbelief.
He had stood beneath Kaido's club.
He had challenged Whitebeard.
He had endured Mihawk's blade, Kizaru's light, and the killing intent of monsters who ruled entire seas.
None of those experiences had prepared him for this.
"Ida," Giovanni said carefully, "we can discuss—"
"No."
Her voice was not loud.
Ida tightened her hold by the smallest amount.
Giovanni immediately stopped speaking.
Loki reached for her wrist with his free hand. "Let go of me! I am the prince—"
"You are about to be the prince without an ear."
Loki froze.
Ida stood between them with one giant son bent nearly double and one human Conqueror dangling from her fingers. The absurdity might have been funny under any other circumstances.
Nothing about her expression invited laughter.
"Have both of you lost every scrap of sense the gods gave you?" she demanded.
Her eyes moved first to Loki.
"You opened the lower pens. You frightened sacred animals with smoke and drums. You drove them into homes filled with families. You nearly crushed children beneath creatures bred to fight trained warriors."
Loki's mouth tightened.
"I did not order them to crush—"
Ida twisted his ear again.
"Do not hide behind wording."
Loki hissed through his teeth.
"You broke the pens," Ida continued. "You abandoned your duties. You damaged homes belonging to people who have never harmed you. You left injured animals bleeding in the plaza because you were too busy watching your little performance through a Den Den Mushi."
Her gaze shifted toward Giovanni.
"And you."
Giovanni avoided her eyes.
"Look at me, Norwell D. Giovanni."
He reluctantly lifted his head.
Ida gestured with the Great Ladle toward the ruined throne room. Pillars lay broken across the floor. Cracks spread through the walls and ceiling. Dust fell steadily from the ancient roots above them.
"You came down here covered in blood and fear, looking for someone to punish. You ignored me when I told both of you to stop. You allowed him to drag you into a battle beneath an occupied village."
Giovanni's jaw tightened.
"I saw what his strike would do."
"And you still stood here preparing to answer it with one of your strongest techniques."
"I was going to break his Haki before impact."
"Perhaps you could have."
Ida's voice remained calm.
That made the rebuke land harder.
"Perhaps your Haki was perfect. Perhaps your angle was exact. Perhaps your control would have held despite your anger."
Her eyes narrowed.
"But the people above us should not have to survive because two furious men trusted themselves to be perfect at the final second."
Giovanni did not answer.
He remembered the future he had seen: the cavern breaking, the clinic disappearing beneath falling stone, the sudden emptiness where living presences had been.
He had recognized the danger.
He had also allowed the confrontation to reach that point.
Ida was right.
Again.
She released Giovanni's ear.
He landed lightly on the fractured stone and sheathed Ace without argument. One hand rose to rub the reddened side of his head, but he wisely kept his expression neutral.
Ida let go of Loki a moment later.
The giant prince pulled back at once, clutching the side of his head. His face burned with humiliation as he towered over the room, one hand covering an ear larger than Giovanni's entire body.
"Have you finished embarrassing me?" Loki growled.
"No."
Ida planted the Great Ladle against the floor.
The iron-bound end struck stone with a heavy boom.
"Now I am going to speak, and this time you are going to listen."
Loki's upper lip curled. Black sparks briefly appeared around his shoulder before he noticed Ida's expression and forced them down.
She pointed toward Giovanni.
"Look at him."
"I have seen enough of the rat."
"Look at him properly."
Loki glared downward.
Giovanni stood near the prince's boot, so small that Loki could have concealed him beneath the front of his shoe. His coat was torn, his shoulder bandaged, and animal blood still stained his face and clothes.
"Do you know why he broke his chains?" Ida asked.
Loki scoffed. "Because pirates dislike cages."
"He stayed in that cage while the village panicked."
The prince's expression shifted slightly.
"He remained there even after he sensed the animals," Ida continued. "He left only when Hiyori stopped moving."
Loki said nothing.
"His anger came from fear," Ida said. "Not fear for himself. Fear that he would arrive too late to save someone he wanted to protect."
Giovanni looked away.
The statement cut more closely than he wanted anyone in the hall to know.
In his first life, anger had often arrived before he understood the fear beneath it. Fists had been easier than admitting that losing someone mattered. Reincarnation had changed the world around him, but it had not erased every flaw he brought into it.
Ida turned back to Loki.
"That does not excuse everything he did down here. Fear can make a protector reckless. It can make him decide that his judgment is more important than everyone else's safety."
Her gaze flicked toward Giovanni, making it clear that the lesson belonged to both of them.
"But his first instinct was to place himself between danger and a child."
Ida stepped closer to Loki.
"Your first instinct was to place danger between yourself and everyone who would not look at you."
Loki's expression darkened.
"You think you understand me because you fed me a few meals?"
Ida did not flinch.
"No. I understand you because you are not nearly as difficult to read as you pretend."
His fingers curled.
"You are angry because Elbaf judged you before you could choose who you wanted to become. You are angry because people watched you for signs of a monster and treated every mistake as proof."
Loki's eyes sharpened.
Ida's voice softened, but not enough to become gentle.
"You learned to insult people before they could reject you. You learned to break things because anger felt safer than asking to be wanted."
The room became still.
Loki looked away first.
"That has nothing to do with today."
"It has everything to do with today."
Ida stepped into his line of sight again.
"You were hurt, so you decided everyone else should feel helpless too."
"I wanted the council to listen."
"Then confront the council."
"They never—"
"Stand before them and make them."
Ida's words carried no mockery.
"You are strong. You are a prince. You have a voice loud enough to shake half the island. Yet instead of placing yourself before the men who angered you, you opened cages beneath a village where children slept."
Loki's face twisted.
"I did not want the children hurt."
"Then their safety should have been part of your plan."
He opened his mouth.
No answer came.
Ida pointed the Great Ladle toward the broken projection Den Den Mushi.
"You watched from down here because distance allowed you to pretend the screams were not real."
Loki's fists tightened.
For one instant, something vulnerable appeared beneath the anger. Then pride covered it again.
"No one died."
"Because the man you called a rat broke out of prison and saved them."
The words struck hard enough to make Loki's jaw clench.
Ida did not allow him to retreat behind another insult.
"Giovanni's fury came from wanting others safe. Yours came from wanting others afraid."
She let the distinction remain between them.
"That does not make him right in everything he did. It makes the direction of his heart different from yours."
Loki glared at the human below.
Giovanni met his gaze without triumph.
There was no satisfaction in seeing Ida expose the wound beneath Loki's arrogance. Giovanni knew too well how ugly a man could become when pain was dragged into the open before he was ready.
But understanding was not forgiveness.
Ida raised her chin.
"A prince does not make his people carry his loneliness. He does not turn their homes into a stage. He does not demand that children fear him because elders failed to love him properly."
Loki's breathing grew heavier.
"I am not asking you to become gentle," Ida continued. "I am asking you to become responsible."
The prince's eyes dropped toward the fractured floor.
Only for a moment.
Then he sneered.
"Finished?"
"No."
Ida lifted the Great Ladle and rested it against her shoulder.
"You will rebuild every pen you opened. You will tend every beast injured because of you. You will repair Gerd's clinic, replace every home damaged in the plaza, and work without attendants."
Loki's head snapped up.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"I am the prince of Elbaf!"
"Then you should be capable of repairing part of it."
"This is tyranny!"
Ida shifted her grip on the ladle.
Loki looked at the iron bands around its head.
His outrage became quieter.
Giovanni's mouth almost curved into a smile.
Ida turned sharply toward him.
"And you will not encourage him."
The smile disappeared.
"Yes, Lady Ida."
"You will also answer to Jarul for breaking out of prison."
"I planned to."
"And you will let Gerd examine that shoulder again."
Giovanni sighed. "That seems excessive."
Ida's eyes narrowed.
"Yes, Lady Ida."
For a moment, the cavern settled.
The Haki had vanished. The blades were lowered. Even Loki's fury had been forced beneath the immediate threat of labor and further maternal correction.
Then the temperature dropped.
It happened without wind.
A sharp, glacial pressure entered the Underworld through the ancient roots and narrow fissures. It passed through stone as though the entire island had been touched by the edge of an invisible blade.
Giovanni's body reacted before thought.
The diagonal scar across his chest throbbed.
Memory struck him with perfect clarity: a blade crossing the sea, golden eyes judging every flaw in his stance, and the overwhelming certainty that he had been allowed to live only because the swordsman chose it.
His fingers stopped against Ace's sheath.
'That Haki…'
The pressure was colder than Gaban's and sharper than Shanks's. It possessed none of Loki's uncontrolled breadth. Every trace of it felt honed toward a single purpose.
Giovanni knew it.
His future knowledge meant nothing here. There was no need for prediction, memory of canon, or speculation about a timeline that had already changed beyond recognition.
The scar was proof enough.
"Mihawk," he whispered.
Ida looked down.
"What?"
Giovanni's expression had changed.
The self-reproach from moments earlier remained, but something older and more dangerous rose beside it. The hunger of a swordsman who had carried one defeat for three years and measured every improvement against the man who delivered it.
He secured Ace at his waist.
"Giovanni," Ida warned.
He bent his knees.
"Do not—"
BANG!
The air burst beneath his feet.
Giovanni shot upward through the broken cavern, using Sky Walk to cross between shattered pillars and exposed roots. Compressed impacts boomed behind him as he disappeared toward the surface.
Ida's hand closed on empty air.
Loki stared after the vanishing human, his humiliation briefly forgotten.
"He ignored you again."
Ida slowly lowered her hand.
"Yes."
Her fingers tightened around the Great Ladle.
"He did."
---
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