Time seemed to stretch into infinity.
The instant that upstream surge of violet lightning collided head-on with the sky-blotting floating island, the world lost its sound.
There was only light.
A violet beam—so deep it felt bottomless—shot from Rain's hand, extending outward without resistance and spearing straight into the island's rocky base.
Only then did the delayed roar arrive, like it meant to shatter the soul.
"HMM—!!!!"
The air wailed. Space itself trembled.
The island's "unbreakable" foundation—under the edge of peak Armament Haki fused with high-voltage thunder—melted and collapsed like butter under a hot knife.
Even Rain's fine-grade blade screamed under the load. The steel glowed red; hairline cracks spidered across it.
He didn't care.
He stared up at the descending darkness, eyes burning like fire.
"OPEN UP… FOR ME!!"
With a violent shout, the muscles in Rain's arm swelled knot by knot, and the lightning overloaded—bursting into a radiance bright as the sun!
"BZZZ—BOOM!!!"
That single line of violet light exploded outward, swelling into a terrifying slash thousands of meters long!
It cleaved rock—cleaved soil—cleaved forest—cleaved even the clouds and the atmosphere above the island.
One strike that split the sky.
"CRACK—!!!!"
A sound like the world's spine snapping detonated high overhead.
Gion's pupils shrank violently as the massive, mythic island… paused for a heartbeat in midair.
Then—
A horrifying fissure crawled from the island's underside all the way to its peak.
The once-solid behemoth split along the violet line—sliding apart and collapsing to either side.
Countless tons of rock and earth—plus the forests clinging to them—were forcibly severed in two.
Boulders the size of houses were crushed into powder along the fracture. Dust erupted like a sandstorm, swallowing all visibility.
This wasn't power a human should possess.
It was pure force and Haki unleashed—a miracle that could shear mountains in half.
"RUMMMMBLE—!!!"
The two halves of the island, their structure destroyed, slammed down into the jungles on either side of Merveille with catastrophic momentum.
The ground convulsed as if a magnitude-ten quake had struck.
Ancient trees snapped in half. Dust columns erupted into twin mushroom clouds.
And through the rain of falling debris—
A streak of violet lightning didn't linger midair to show off. It snapped back in an instant and reappeared beside Gion.
"Careful!"
Gion had been reaching for her sword to deal with the meteor-like chunks of rock.
Then her vision blurred—
A tall figure, accompanied by thunder, stepped in front of her.
"Bzz."
A house-sized boulder came crashing down, carrying enough force to pulp them both.
Rain didn't even look back. He simply reached for his blade.
"Annoying."
The words were a cold murmur.
Clang—!
A flash.
The boulder shattered midair into countless fragments.
Blue arcs exploded outward from Rain in a dense web of lightning.
"BZZZ—"
The debris and dust touched the net and were pulverized—then vaporized—by precise, searing current.
Gion stared at the broad back in front of her.
His coat snapped in the gale; the dust and ruin felt like they couldn't cross the line of his shoulders.
She didn't need protection—she could have cut the rock apart herself.
And yet—
Seeing him reflexively return to cover her, Gion's grip tightened around her hilt.
Her heart, traitor that it was, skipped a beat.
"Hey—why are you spacing out?"
Rain turned his head. His profile, lit by crackling lightning, looked coldly handsome—almost unfairly so. He flashed her a grin with just enough bite to be infuriating.
"I know I'm handsome, but now's not the time to swoon."
Gion's cheeks warmed. She inhaled hard, forced her composure back into place, and shot him a glare.
"Don't flatter yourself. I was evaluating whether your 'power' was going to bury us alive."
She said it like an insult, but her hand on the hilt still trembled.
"Rumble…"
The shaking finally began to settle.
The severed island halves had finished crashing down, and the dust now blanketed Merveille's center. The air reeked of sulfur and grit.
Only then did Gion process the truly absurd part of what she'd seen.
"Why… would an island fall from the sky?"
She whispered it like her brain refused to accept reality. "What kind of power can make an island fly?!"
A sudden, crisp applause drifted down from above—clean and distinct, cutting straight through the lingering thunder.
Along with it came a laugh—mad and domineering.
"Shihahahaha—!!"
"What a spectacular slash!"
The voice stayed arrogant, but a real thread of surprise ran through it. Even for a legend of the old era, that blow was a "gift" worthy of notice.
A pressure dropped from the heavens and forced the dust to peel away.
Conqueror's Haki.
Gion's face went pale.
She'd seen plenty as a Navy rear admiral—but this presence made her body recoil on instinct.
It was the stench of the blood-soaked era. The killing intent of a man who'd climbed out of mountains of corpses. The madness of someone who'd once tried to rewrite the world.
"This pressure…" Her palm slicked with sweat.
The clouds tore open.
A figure drifted down without any visible foothold, floating as if gravity were merely a suggestion.
He wore a wide yellow-and-black striped kimono billowing in the gale. Long golden hair fell like a lion's mane, wild and furious.
A cigar burned between his teeth. Through the smoke, his eyes looked down on them—untamed and absolute.
Most striking were his legs.
Below the knees, there were no feet—only two gleaming swords: Oto and Kogarashi.
And—
A ship's wheel, jammed into his skull like it had fused with bone.
The Flying Pirate. Golden Lion Shiki.
Even missing his legs, fresh from Impel Down, dusty and half-worn—
The moment he appeared, the center of the world snapped to him. The air itself grew heavy under his presence.
This was the man who'd cornered Roger—who'd stormed Marineford alone and wrecked half the fortress.
Shiki didn't attack right away.
He hovered dozens of meters across from Rain, exhaled a thick ring of smoke, and studied him with sharp, predatory interest.
His gaze lingered on the blade still smoking in Rain's hand, then on the fading arcs around Rain's body.
"Such pure Armament Haki… to split my island with a single strike…"
Shiki bared his teeth, a mix of surprise and approval. "Kid, your Haki's impressive. It reminds me of that damn old dog Garp. After Roger died, the seas still birthed a monster like you, huh?"
It sounded like praise—but the condescension never left his tone.
To him, that slash was "worth noticing," nothing more.
Rain stared back—without fear.
If anything, every cell in his body trembled with exhilaration.
A hunter, finally seeing the apex prey.
"Too kind."
Rain held the sword one-handed, its tip angled toward the earth; faint electricity still danced around him, ready to erupt.
He looked up at Shiki and curled his lip into a cold smile, showing no reverence at all.
"I didn't expect the Flying Admiral who once charged Marineford alone… to look this pathetic."
Rain's eyes pinned Shiki like a blade.
"Tell me—did you come to this little island to rot away in a forgotten corner of the world, all by yourself, Shiki?"
Shiki's grin twitched.
Below, Gion's heart lurched. Is he trying to provoke Shiki on purpose?! That's a monster from Roger's era—!
"Shihahahaha!!"
Shiki froze for a beat—then burst out laughing even harder, like he'd heard the best joke in years. His sleeve snapped as he threw an arm wide.
"Your mouth's nastier than Roger's, you little brat. Kids these days are fun."
Instead of anger, Shiki looked at Rain the way an artist looks at a gemstone.
"Hey, kid. I like you."
"Sure, you're Navy—but that stink on you? That greed, that arrogance, that 'I'll cut down anything' attitude—none of it's hidden. You can't stay in the Navy's little 'justice' playhouse."
Shiki extended a hand, eyes blazing.
"Come be my right-hand man!"
"Roger's dead, and his stupid 'Great Pirate Era' turned the seas into a dump full of trash. I hate this kind of ocean!"
"If we team up—"
He gestured toward Merveille, his eyes burning with lunatic ambition.
"We'll destroy this boring world! We'll make the seas kneel again! That is what a man should do!"
His words carried the charisma of a former emperor—sharp enough to sway anyone weaker.
But Rain answered with a snort.
"Pff."
He shook his head like Shiki had said something genuinely pitiable—and even dug in his ear with a pinky.
"Destroy the world? Rule the sea?"
Rain looked at him like he was an embarrassing relic.
"Old lion, did Impel Down rot your brain?"
"The era's changed."
He lifted his sword and pointed it at Shiki.
"You're a cripple with broken legs and a piece of junk stuck in your skull, still dreaming about the past?"
"Wake up."
Rain's voice was cold and brutal; every word stabbed Shiki's pride.
"Your era ended at Edd War—in that storm."
"Right now, you're nothing but a handful of embers from the old age… still glowing."
"I'm not joining you—"
Lightning surged, turning the sky a stark white, like judgment itself.
"I'm borrowing your head."
Rain's grin sharpened.
"You'll make a fine stepping stone on my way to the top."
Silence.
Even the sea seemed to hold its breath.
Shiki's smile vanished.
The admiration in his eyes burned out, replaced by pure violence.
Veins bulged at his temples. Conqueror's Haki crackled around him like black lightning, warping the air itself.
"Stepping… stone?"
He repeated it in a low, beastly growl.
"Good. Very good."
"If you're so eager to die—then I'll grant your wish!"
Shiki raised his right hand, five fingers clawed, and raked the air above the sea.
"Lion's Might: Ground Roll!"
"RUMMMMBLE—!!!"
Sea and earth screamed.
The island halves Rain had just split—those massive chunks—suddenly tore free of gravity and rose roaring into the air!
They weren't random debris. They were islands Shiki had moved himself—every grain of rock under his power.
Now they moved like living weapons.
Stone surged and compressed, forming three colossal lion heads of rock, hundreds of meters tall.
They snarled with grinding boulders and lunged from three directions, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow Rain whole.
This was the true horror of the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi.
Even shattered, even ruined—within Shiki's domain, everything could become a weapon.
One man, one natural disaster.
Gion's face tightened. Even she would struggle to block something this wide-ranging cleanly.
But Rain didn't retreat.
"Big shapes, huh?"
He vanished into a column of lightning, shooting upward straight into the largest stone lion.
"Thunder Beast: Kirin!"
A thunderclap split the clouds.
Lightning condensed into a massive kirin, wrapped in terrifying heat, slamming head-on into the stone lion with a world-shaking crash!
"BOOM—!!!"
Rock liquefied under the heat.
The kirin bored through the lion's skull and detonated it into a rain of pulverized stone.
Debris hammered the sea into towering sprays.
Through the dust, Rain reformed midair, facing Shiki across the sky.
"Rumble-Rumble Fruit…" Shiki narrowed his eyes, voice like ice. "So that's why you're cocky. But kid—Devil Fruit tricks alone won't beat me!"
Rain flexed his wrist. He could feel it—the stone had been coated in powerful Armament.
The old bastard really was tough.
"Warm-up's over."
Rain tightened his grip. Lightning poured into the blade again.
"Now… let's get serious."