Late at night, clouds swallowed the moon.
At the top of G-17's high-level watchtower, the wind howled—sharp as blades across the face.
Rain sat on a chair someone had dragged up here, greatcoat draped over his shoulders, idly flipping a gold coin between his fingers as it danced in a blur.
Gion and Smoker stood in the shadows behind him, one on each side, faces hard.
In front of them, fifteen field-grade officers stood in a line, half-dressed—one still fastening buttons, another blinking sleep out of his eyes. The cold wind slapped the last bit of drowsiness out of them. Heads bowed, shoulders hunched, no one daring to look at the young base commander.
"Eighteen department heads in total."
Rain glanced at the roster in his hand. His voice carried oddly in the wind, light and drifting. "Fifteen are here. Where are the other three?"
Silence.
The dead kind.
The officers exchanged furtive looks, eyes darting. Someone tried to mumble "sick," another said "inspecting the sector," but the excuses came out so small even they didn't believe them.
"Inspecting the sector?" Rain chuckled. "In the middle of the night?"
He didn't bother with the clumsy lies. His gaze slid past the line and locked onto Colonel Moore trembling in the front row.
"Moore."
"Y-yes—yes, sir!" Moore jolted so hard he nearly toppled.
"You tell me." Rain pointed to the empty spots on the roster. "Two lieutenant colonels from Logistics, and a major in charge of port scheduling. If they're not asleep in their bunks at this hour, where did they go?"
Moore's face turned paper-white.
He glanced at the other officers—warning in their eyes—then back at Rain, whose eyes looked unnaturally bright in the dark.
Fear crushed everything else. Moore had always been an outsider—no share when money was split, first in line when blame was handed out. Under Rain's pressure, his mental wall cracked clean through.
Thud.
Moore dropped to his knees. He didn't lift his head. His voice shook and stumbled.
"B-business… I-I think… they went to… do business…"
"Business?" Rain raised an eyebrow. "What kind of business?"
"I-I don't… I don't really know…" Moore lowered his head even further, voice thin as a thread. "But… whenever there's no moon… they go out for a while at night… and come back before dawn."
"So it wasn't the first time."
Rain drew the words out, meaning dripping from every syllable. His gaze turned toward the black, ink-thick sea.
"As base commander, it's strange no one thought to inform me."
…
At the same time—more than ten nautical miles beyond the harbor.
A ship that looked like a merchant vessel drifted on the water, every lantern extinguished.
But below deck—no windows—there was bright light and the thick smell of liquor.
The three "missing" officers had undone their uniform collars, red-faced, slumped on leather sofas with wine in hand—laughing like men who owned the world.
Across from them sat a pirate captain with a slab of a face, a gold tooth flashing when he grinned.
On the table were open crates.
Half were bundled stacks of beri.
The other half were "hot" goods resold straight out of the Marine base—medicine, swords, even a few standard-issue Marine sniper rifles.
"Come, come—gentlemen." The pirate captain poured, all smiles. "Try this. Fine stuff from the West Blue."
"Mm. Not bad." The logistics lieutenant colonel sipped, eyes half-lidded in pleasure—nothing like the wailing pauper he'd been in front of Rain that afternoon.
He patted a cash crate and snorted. "Doing business with you is clean and pleasant. Not like that new brat at the base—still hasn't even grown peach fuzz and he's already putting on airs."
"A new brat?" The pirate captain leaned in, curious. "Nelson's replacement? HQ didn't send someone who understands how things work?"
"Understand my ass." The major spat, boots on the table. "Just some HQ academy stiff—no idea what backdoor he crawled through to get this post. Young as hell, but his mouth's big. First day he's talking about 'restoring discipline.'"
"Exactly." The lieutenant colonel swirled his wine, smug. "Let him thrash around. G-17 is deep water. Without us, he won't even find the latrine. Give it two months—he'll hit walls, take losses, then he'll come begging for us to reconnect the line."
"Hahaha, right, right." The pirate captain laughed along, contempt in his eyes. "Kids think justice can be eaten for breakfast. Starve him twice and he'll learn—when it comes down to it, even the Heavenly King can't beat beri."
"Damn right! For beri!"
Glasses clinked. Warm as family.
This wasn't Marines and pirates. It was business partners.
The deal wrapped quickly.
Crates of treasure went into a Marine dinghy. Base supplies went into the pirate ship.
"We're off." The lieutenant colonel belched and slapped the pirate captain's shoulder. "Same time next month. And bring more of that tobacco. Your stuff has bite."
"Of course, of course! Safe trip, gentlemen!"
The officers started their dinghy's engine, loaded and pleased. They were even discussing how to split the take—whether to "feed" a slice to the new base commander and pull him into the mud.
What they didn't know was—
On a watchtower dozens of nautical miles away, someone was already watching.
…
Back on the tower.
Rain stood at the rail, his coat snapping in the wind.
With the Rumble-Rumble Fruit fused with Observation Haki into a terrifying electromagnetic field, Rain had a god's-eye view. Every word from that ship carried cleanly into his mind.
His expression didn't shift. Only the calm indifference you reserve for the dead.
They'd planned nicely.
He lifted his right hand, extended one finger, and pointed into the empty dark.
Behind him, Gion watched his back and felt her heart tighten.
"Do we send a warship to arrest them?" she asked softly.
"Arrest?" Rain shook his head, a cruel smile cutting across his face. "No. For unrecyclable trash, destruction is the most efficient disposal method."
The moment he spoke—
The world went colorless.
A lightning pillar tens of meters wide tore open the night.
"BOOOOM—!!!!!"
Like divine punishment. Like a judgment spear from a god.
The blinding blue-white column slammed down with annihilating intent, swallowing both the pirate ship and the dinghy that had just left it.
For an instant, time seemed to stop.
The pirate captain's greasy smile.
The officers' smug faces.
All of it froze in that white light—
Then vanished.
The heat flash boiled tons of seawater into steam. Wood, metal, flesh—gone. No screams. Not even ash.
Only afterward did the shockwave arrive, and the delayed roar of the explosion.
A mushroom cloud climbed over the horizon, turning the sea to day. A wall of wind threw up monstrous waves and hurled them outward.
On the tower—
The officers finally snapped awake when the light and thunder hit.
"T-that… that was—"
They scrambled to the rail, grabbed the observation telescope with shaking hands, and looked.
What they saw carved itself into their souls.
Out at sea, where the deal had been—
There was only a huge, boiling whirlpool.
Nothing else.
No ship.
No dinghy.
No men.
Just erased.
"Gulp…"
Someone swallowed. The sound was painfully loud in the dead quiet.
One by one, necks turned stiffly. Eyes fixed on the figure at the front like he was a monster.
Rain still held his hand out, finger aimed at the horizon. A faint arc of electricity crackled at his fingertip—zzzt—as if even the air feared him.
He lowered his hand.
He didn't even bother looking at the "fireworks."
He turned around.
Facing the pale, shaking officers, Rain's cold, handsome face lit with an expression of perfect surprise and regret.
"Oh dear," he said softly, voice crawling across the tower like frost. "How unfortunate."
He spoke calmly, as if remarking on rain.
"Seems the weather at sea is truly unpredictable. That merchant ship must've done a lot of wicked things—getting struck by lightning in the middle of the night like that."
He walked up to one officer drenched in sweat, gently straightened the man's crooked collar.
The officer went rigid, teeth chattering—like a frog under a snake's gaze.
Rain patted his shoulder and asked with a warm smile:
"You'd agree… people really shouldn't do wicked things, right? Or even Heaven can't stand it and sends down divine retribution."
"Y-yes—yes—!"
The officer's legs gave out and he collapsed, sobbing, nodding so hard tears and snot spilled out. "Divine retribution! It was divine retribution! The base commander is right!!"
The others caught on instantly, nodding like maniacs.
"Yes, yes! Natural disaster! So unfortunate!"
"Retribution! That's what it was!"
They were terrified now.
This wasn't a commander you could bargain with.
This wasn't someone you could fool with "old ways."
This was a tyrant with a god's power—one who didn't need evidence, didn't need courts. If he wanted, lightning fell.
Every last scrap of luck and arrogance evaporated the moment that bolt came down.
Watching them crumble, the smile in Rain's eyes vanished. His face returned to its blank, icy calm.
He waved dismissively, like brushing away flies.
"Alright. If it was a natural disaster, then there's nothing for us to worry about."
"Dismissed. Go back and sleep. Remember tonight's lesson."
He looked toward the eastern horizon where the first hint of dawn was bleeding in.
"It'll be light soon."
"An hour from now—everyone assembles in the square."
~~~
Patreon.com/Weze_
— You can read more Chapters in my Patreon Page! please vote, comment, share this, or visit my Patreon Page and join the Free Membership!