"Enough," Ragnar said, the word gentle but final. He looked at Wyper and gave a slight nod.
Wyper vanished. Not in a burst of speed, but in a teleportation of pure lightning.
A deafening CRACK-THOOM echoed across the water as the air where he'd been imploded from the sudden vacuum.
He reappeared directly in front of Seraphim Jinbe. The child-weapon swung a powerful fist. Wyper didn't parry. He let the fist pass through his lightning torso.
As Jinbe's arm was inside him, Wyper solidified his form just around the limb. There was a sizzling ZAP and the smell of burnt circuitry.
Jinbe's arm went limp, internal systems fried by a billion-volt surge.
A swift, precise chop from Wyper's electrified hand to the neck, not to decapitate, but to overload the primary motor control nexus, and the Seraphim Jinbe crumpled, smoking gently.
Seraphim Kuma charged, aiming to use his inherited Bounce-Bounce fruit ability. Wyper was faster.
He thrust his Burn Bazooka forward, but instead of fire, he discharged the Flash Dial directly into Kuma's face.
A sphere of silent, blinding white light erupted, overloading every optical and sensor system the Seraphim possessed. Temporarily blind and disoriented, Kuma was vulnerable.
Wyper closed the distance, his hands becoming pure arcs of lightning. He delivered a series of rapid, stunning jolts to key pressure points on Kuma's body, shoulders, spine, and knees.
Each zap was calibrated not to destroy, but to induce systemic paralysis. Seraphim Kuma seized up and fell to the deck with a heavy thud.
Seraphim Mihawk was trickier. The tiny Yoru swept out with skill that belied its user's age, a slash that could cut steel. Wyper didn't try to block the blade. He moved with it, his body flowing like a current around the edge.
As the slash passed through empty space, Wyper reformed behind Mihawk. Before the Seraphim could pivot, Wyper placed a crackling hand on the back of its head. A controlled, low-amplitude surge shot into the neural-processing core.
Seraphim Mihawk's eyes rolled back, and it slumped, its prized sword clattering to the deck.
Throughout this, Wyper had given Seraphim Hancock a wide berth, dancing around her without engaging. She fired laser after laser at him, each one dissipating against his form.
She tried to use a mimicry of the Mero Mero no Mi, striking a pose, but whatever petrification beam she emitted fizzled uselessly against a being of pure energy.
She was irrelevant to his combat calculus, a factor to be handled by the Captain.
The entire disabling operation had taken less than ten seconds.
Lilith watched her ultimate weapons fall like toys. Desperation clawed at her. Her mission was paramount: protect the Seraphim and the SSG data at all costs. ' Must warn Stella! Must transmit the failure data! The parameters of the threat are beyond all projections!'
She turned to sprint back towards the secure comms hub inside the ship's armored bridge.
She took two steps.
And then Ragnar was there.
He hadn't flown down. There was no blur of movement. One moment he was in the sky, the next he was standing directly behind her, his six wings casting a complex, beautiful shadow over her.
Lilith froze, feeling the impossible energy at her back. She started to turn, to activate a hidden weapon in her sleeve.
A hand settled on her shoulder. It wasn't a violent grip. It was firm, warm, and terrifyingly gentle. "Your curiosity is commendable, Lilith," Ragnar's voice murmured, right by her ear.
"But your participation is now required elsewhere."
Before she could scream, or protest, or trigger a self-destruct, a subtle pulse of energy flowed from his hand. It wasn't a physical blow. It was a targeted harmonic disruption tuned to the unique frequency of her artificial consciousness.
It bypassed all physical defenses, all cybernetic safeguards, and gently, precisely, switched her primary cognitive functions from 'active' to 'standby.'
Her eyes fluttered behind her glasses. The fierce intelligence in them glazed over, replaced by blank stillness. Her body went limp. Ragnar caught her easily, lifting her as if she weighed nothing.
He turned his gaze to the final Seraphim. Seraphim Hancock stood alone, still in her attacking stance, staring at him with empty eyes. A perfect mockery of the woman he loved.
Ragnar felt a pang of profound distaste. This was an obscenity. He walked towards her, his steps making no sound on the metal deck. The Seraphim fired a point-blank laser into his chest. It vanished without a trace.
He stopped before her. "Sleep," he said softly, not with a command, but with an imposition of will. He reached out and tapped her forehead with a single finger.
Unlike the brutal efficiency Wyper used, Ragnar's method was surgical and kind.
A thread of his own light energy slipped into her systems, not to destroy, but to initiate a perfect, corruption-free shutdown sequence.
It located the core directive, Obey. Protect. Destroy. and wrapped it in a cocoon of static, then sent a soothing, overriding command to every subsystem: Rest.
The flame at her neck guttered and went out. Her wings drooped. Her eyes closed. She swayed, and Ragnar caught her too, cradling the small form against his side with an unexpected tenderness. He would deliver this clone to the real Hancock.
What she chose to do with it, dismantle it, study it, perhaps even find some twisted kinship with it would be her choice. But he would not leave it as a weapon for the enemy.
Wyper landed beside him, his lightning form subsiding into his normal Shandian physique, though his eyes still crackled with residual energy. "Ship is secure. No other life signs. The automated systems are trying to send a distress signal, but my jamming field is holding."
"Good," Ragnar said. He looked at the sleek, deadly ship, at the unconscious forms of the pinnacle of the World Government's scientific warfare program. "Now, for the relocation."
He set Lilith and the Hancock Seraphim down gently on the deck. Then he raised both hands, palms facing the SSG ship.
The symbols on his skin began to glow, not with a harsh light, but with a deep, internal luminescence, like magma seen through cracks in the earth.
The air thickened. The very fabric of space around the ship began to warp. It wasn't a visual distortion so much as a feeling, a sense that reality was becoming pliable, like warm wax.
A low, subsonic hum built, vibrating the bones of the ship.
The glassy water of the Calm Belt around the ship began to ripple in perfect, concentric six-pointed magic circles, not from the ship, but from the space it occupied.
Then, the edges of the ship started to blur. Not fade, but become indistinct, as if viewed through a heat haze. The process accelerated.
The grey alloy, the SSG logo, the deck, the fallen Seraphim, all of it began to lose cohesion with the surrounding world.
Colors bled into a silvery miasma. Sound was dampened until the only thing audible was the profound, resonant hum of Ragnar's power.
With a final, silent pulse of light that emanated from Ragnar's core, the SSG ship unmade its connection to the One Piece world.
One moment it was a solid object on the Calm Belt. Next, there was only empty, placid water, the ripples slowly subsiding.
In the Heavens Dimension, in a specially prepared docking bay of shimmering light and crystalline structures, the SSG ship remade itself into existence. It settled onto a non-physical berth with a soft sigh of displaced energy.
Ragnar lowered his hands, the glow fading from his symbols. He and Wyper now stood on the familiar silver plain, the captured ship before them, a trophy of impossible technology.
"We have the scientist," Ragnar said, looking at the dormant Lilith. "We have the prototypes. And we have their ship, which contains every secret of the SSG project." He turned to Wyper.
"Have Kuro and Robin begin immediate analysis. Isolate the Seraphim in containment fields, gentle ones. And bring Lilith to the mediation chamber. I will speak with her when she wakes. It's time we had a conversation with the 'Evil' of the world's greatest mind."
He glanced once more at the child-sized form of Seraphim Hancock, a frown touching his lips. "And inform Hancock of what we've recovered. Tell her… the choice is hers."