Awe, terror, and the fragile, trembling shoots of fanatical loyalty. Ragnar watched it settle upon the faces of Wyper, Laki, Aisha, and their groggily awakened chief.
His work here was done for now. The tribe was his, bound not by chains but by the revelation of their enemy's mortality and the terrifying, sacred promise of their own redemption.
"Wait here," he commanded, his voice cutting through the hum of the residual seraphic energy. "Prepare your people. I will return soon to deal with the false god."
He didn't wait for an acknowledgment. He turned and melted back into the cloud-forest, a shadow moving with preternatural speed towards the settlement.
His mind was already calculating the next moves: retrieve the crew, consolidate their position, and then march on the Upper Yard to personally tear Enel from his gilded throne. Efficiency was paramount.
He arrived at Pagaya's house to find a scene of tense calm. His crew was ready, their shopping completed, their expressions sharpened by the underlying current of danger that permeated the very air of Skypiea. Conis was wringing her hands, her fear a palpable entity in the small home.
"Captain, we heard-" Nami began.
Her words were cut off by a sound that rolled across the island like the wrath of heaven itself. A tremendous, continuous CRACK-BOOM of thunder, so loud it seemed to shake the very cloud-foundation of Angel Island.
It wasn't a single strike, but a sustained, violent storm concentrated in one location. The direction was unmistakable: the Shandian territory he had just left.
Ragnar's golden eyes narrowed, a flicker of cold amusement within them. So, the mouse had grown impatient and came to play with the other rodents. Enel was there, at the Shandian camp. The arrogant fool had saved Ragnar the trouble of a hunt.
"He's there," Ragnar stated, the simplicity of the words belying the cataclysm they implied. "Enel is attacking the Shandians."
"God's judgment! He knows they are related to you!" Conis let out a terrified whimper.
"He's not a god," Ragnar corrected her in a flat tone.
"And he is about to learn the price of touching what is mine." He looked at his crew. "Stay with the ship. This will be over quickly."
Before anyone could respond, Ragnar's body dissolved. He didn't run or leap; he became a torrent of water, a rushing, roaring stream that flowed upwards and backwards, defying gravity as it shot through the air, retracing his path towards the Shandian clearing at a speed that left a trail of mist in its wake.
The display of raw elemental power left Conis and her father gaping, their understanding of the world fracturing further.
….
The scene he returned to was one of brutal, one-sided devastation. The once serene clearing was now a scarred landscape of smoldering craters and shattered cloud-trees.
The air reeked of ozone and burnt flesh. The Shandian warriors who had so proudly stood before him were now scattered like broken toys, their bodies twitching from residual electrical charge.
In the center of the carnage, Enel hovered, a smirk of divine boredom plastered on his face as he casually toyed with his favorite prey.
Wyper was on his knees, his body a mess of new burns and injuries layered over the old. He gasped for air, his Burn Bazooka lying useless several feet away, and melted into slag. Enel raised a single finger, a tiny spark dancing on its tip.
"Yehahaha," Enel laughed, the sound echoing mockingly. "Still breathing, little mouse? Your resilience is tiring. Perhaps I shall simply stop your heart and be done with it."
The spark grew, coalescing into a sphere of contained lightning, aimed directly at Wyper's chest. It was a killing blow, delivered with the casual disinterest of a child burning an ant with a magnifying glass.
That was the moment Ragnar chose to intervene. Wyper was a capable warrior, a symbol of Shandian strength. Losing him to Enel's petty cruelty would be an unacceptable waste.
The torrent of water that was Ragnar solidified behind Enel with a sound like a crashing wave. He didn't announce his presence with a shout or a challenge. He simply acted.
Enel's Mantra screamed a warning a microsecond too late. His eyes widened in shock as he felt a presence materialize where there had been nothing, but his Logia intangibility was his shield.
He didn't even bother to turn, confident that any physical attack would pass harmlessly through his lightning form.
He was wrong.
Ragnar's fist, sheathed in the deep, black, crackling energy of supreme Armament Haki, slammed into the small of Enel's back.
The impact was not accompanied by the normal sound of flesh hitting flesh. It was a deafening CRUMP of compressed air and a sizzling ZZZAP as the Haki-clad fist made solid, brutal contact with Enel's real body.
The god's smirk vanished, replaced by a rictus of pure, uncomprehending agony. His eyes bulged, a strangled gasp tearing from his throat. The lightning sphere meant for Wyper fizzled and died.
Enel was hurled forward like a discarded ragdoll, smashing through three solid-cloud trees before skidding to a halt in a heap, smoke rising from his newly made pristine white robes where the Haki had seared him.
Silence.
Absolute, stunned silence, broken only by the crackle of dying electrical discharges and the ragged, shocked breaths of the few conscious Shandians.
Wyper stared, his mind refusing to process what he had just witnessed. The invincible, untouchable God Enel… had been hit. Not just hit, but hurt. Sent flying by a single, contemptuous blow.
Enel pushed himself up, his body trembling with a mixture of pain and incandescent rage. The lazy boredom was gone, replaced by a fury as volatile as the storm he commanded.
"Y-YOU! How dare you?! How can you touch me?!" he shrieked, his voice losing its divine cadence, becoming the shrill cry of a wounded animal.
Ragnar didn't answer. He merely stood, his fist still clenched, the black aura of Armament Haki shimmering around it like dark fire.
"Your intangibility is a parlor trick," he said, his voice a low, deadly monotone that carried across the clearing. "A crutch for the weak."
"EL THOR!" Enel roared, unleashing a massive pillar of lightning from the sky, a divine spear meant to obliterate the insolent mortal.
Ragnar didn't dodge. He didn't need to. His Observation Haki, far superior to Enel's Mantra, read the attack before the energy had even fully gathered in the clouds. He saw the path, the intensity, the precise moment of impact.
As the colossal bolt descended, he took a single, casual step to the side. The thunderous blast struck the ground exactly where he had been standing, carving a deep, glassy trench in the cloud-earth, missing him by inches.
The force of the explosion whipped at his clothes, but his expression never changed.
"My Mantra… it didn't…" Enel's jaw dropped.
"Your 'Mantra' is a blunt instrument," Ragnar stated, beginning to walk towards him. Each step was measured, inexorable.
"You use it to listen for vague intentions. I use mine to see the future itself. You are blind, playing at being all-seeing."
Enraged and terrified, Enel unleashed a barrage of lightning spears, each one fast enough to vaporize steel. "DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Ragnar weaved through them all. He didn't move with frantic speed, but with an impossible, fluid grace. He leaned his torso back as a spear shot past his face, the heat scorching the air.
He sidestepped another, twisted under a third. It was a dance, a brutal, beautiful ballet of evasion where death missed him by millimeters again and again, his Advanced Observation Haki making the impossible volley look like a child throwing slow, predictable rocks.
The Shandians watched, their awe deepening into something akin to worship. This was not a battle, it was a demonstration. A lesson in power. Their hated god was being systematically dismantled, his every advantage nullified.
"ENOUGH!" Enel screamed, his body swelling with power.
"200,000,000 VOLTS: AMARU!" He transformed into a gigantic, monstrous being of pure lightning, a titan of raw energy, intending to crush his opponent with overwhelming force.
Ragnar finally stopped walking. He looked up at the towering electric monster, utterly unimpressed.
"A larger target," he remarked.
He didn't transform. He didn't unleash a flashy named attack. He simply crouched and then vanished. He reappeared in the air directly in front of the Amaru form's "face," his leg already swinging in a devastating axe kick coated in the same black Haki.
The kick connected with the creature's forehead. There was another sickening, sizzling CRUNCH as the Haki bypassed the lightning form and struck Enel's real skull.
The massive Amaru form flickered and destabilized, howling in pain. Ragnar landed, and as Enel began to collapse back into his human form, dazed and concussed, Ragnar was already upon him.
What followed was a masterclass in brutal efficiency. Ragnar's fists and feet became blurs of black energy. A Haki-infused jab to the solar plexus drove the air from Enel's lungs with a whoosh.
A spinning back-fist cracked against his jaw, spraying blood and teeth. A knee met his gut, doubling him over. A hammer-fist to the spine sent him crashing back to the ground.
Each blow was precise, each impact accompanied by that same sizzling sound and a cry of agony from the so-called god.
Enel tried to reform, to turn to lightning and flee, but Ragnar's Armament Haki was a cage, his fists becoming anchors that pinned Enel's essence to his physical body, forcing him to feel every ounce of the punishment.
Finally, Ragnar ended it. As Enel lay prone, struggling to rise, Ragnar placed a foot on his back, pinning him to the charred earth. He raised a hand, fingers curled like claws, sheathed in the deepest black yet.
"This is the end of your reign," Ragnar said, his voice the final verdict.
He drove his Haki-clad fingers down, not into Enel's heart, but into the space between his shoulder blades. There was a horrific tearing sound, not of flesh, but of energy, of spirit.
Ragnar pulled his hand back, and with it, he seemed to tear something invisible from Enel's body, a scream that was more than sound, a final, desperate denial of his own mortality.
Enel's body convulsed violently once, then went completely still, the light fading from his wide, terrified eyes. The storm around them ceased. The oppressive electric presence that had hung over Skypiea for years simply… vanished.
The silence that returned was profound, holy.
Ragnar stood over the lifeless body of God Enel, the black Haki fading from his hands. He turned his gaze to the Shandians.
They were all on their knees now, even the newly awakened, their faces pale, their bodies trembling not from fear, but from a reverence so deep it shook them to their core. They had seen a true god kill a false one.
Enjoying their gaze, Ragnar took an apple from his heaven's dimension, and as always he used the ability deprivation that he uses on every enemy that has a devil fruit.
….
On Angel Island, the cessation of the thunder was as shocking as its onset. The citizens, who had hidden in their homes, trembling as their god unleashed his wrath, slowly emerged.
They looked towards the Shandian territory, expecting to see a pillar of fire or the continued storm. They saw nothing but a calm sky.
Conis, standing outside her home with the Sea Scourge crew, had her hands clasped over her mouth. She had seen the water torrent leave, and she had heard the battle, the singular, impactful blows, the cessation of Enel's lightning, the final, terrible silence.
"It's… over?" she whispered.
"Of course it is." Nami, with a big smile on her face, nodded.
Then, a new sound began to spread through the crowd, a murmur that grew into a wave of stunned realization. They could no longer feel him.
The ever-present, watchful, terrifying pressure of Enel's Mantra was gone from their minds. For the first time in years, their thoughts were their own. The weight of divinity had been lifted.
They didn't know who or what had done it, but they knew their world had changed forever. The man who had walked among them, who had been dragged shopping by his crew, was not just a powerful outsider.
He was the slayer of gods. And as the news spread, a fragile, disbelieving hope began to bloom in the hearts of the Skypiean people, a feeling they had long forgotten.
The name Ragnar began to pass from lip to lip, no longer just as a trespasser, but as something else entirely, a liberator, a conqueror, a new, and infinitely more terrifying, power.