Captain Ralk was waiting on the docks, his arms crossed, his posture entirely unhurried.
His crew had spotted the approaching Marine warship far too late to set sail and run. But Ralk didn't look particularly bothered by this. He had sunk a few lone Marine vessels in his career, and the sight of a single Major stepping onto his pier didn't inspire panic.
He looked at Light the way experienced predators assessed new threats—taking in the pristine white coat, the youth in the face, the single functional arm, and the relaxed posture. Whatever conclusion Ralk reached, it clearly amused him.
"Marine. You a high rank?" Ralk called out, his voice rough like grinding stones.
"Captain Ralk. Fifty-five million Beli bounty," Light said, stopping a dozen paces away. "I am placing you under arrest."
Ralk was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed. It wasn't a mocking, theatrical laugh; it was the genuine, tired chuckle of a man who had heard that exact sentence a hundred times and had survived the men who said it.
"South Blue boy. I can tell," Ralk sneered, drawing his sword. "There's something too clean about your eyes. They haven't got the Grand Line in them yet." He gestured pointedly at Light's sling with his blade. "And what's this? You're here to capture a fifty-five million bounty with one arm? You think you can? GRAHAHAHA!"
Dirty trash, Light thought, his pleasant expression never wavering.
"One is more than enough," Light said smoothly.
Ralk drew his sword with the lethal economy of a man who had done it ten thousand times. There was no posturing, no grand speech. Just the draw, and then he was moving.
He was fast. Properly, dangerously fast. The first slash came in from the right, aimed to decapitate. Light didn't block; he triggered a micro-burst of Force Authority, repelling the steel just enough to push the trajectory wide. Ralk recovered instantly, his wrist snapping into a horizontal backhand cut. Light stepped back, letting the steel whistle past his throat.
Ralk didn't even blink at the sudden, unnatural redirection of his first strike. He simply adjusted his footing and kept coming.
He has absolutely no reaction to Observation Haki or my Authority, Light realized, perfectly dodging a thrust. To him, it just looks like I have unusually good reflexes. Right. They don't see Haki in the first half of this ocean.
Light stopped retreating. He used Soru to step directly inside Ralk's next wild swing, closing the distance before the sword could even reach the apex of its arc. Too close for the long blade to matter.
Light drove his right index finger into Ralk's sword-shoulder. Shigan.
The Haki-coated finger punched cleanly through the muscle. Light repelled himself backward with his Authority before Ralk's massive left hand could close around his throat.
Ralk staggered, rolling his bleeding shoulder. It wasn't working right, the muscle severed, but the pirate simply switched the sword to his left hand without a word of complaint and kept coming. It was a testament to four years of brutal Grand Line survival.
Light smiled. Recently, he had been theory-crafting new ways to optimize his Force Authority. The massive, wide-area pulls drained his Life Force stamina far too quickly. But tiny, localized bursts? Applied strictly to an opponent's weapon?
As Ralk pressed the attack, Light used his gift to completely dismantle the pirate's muscle memory.
When Ralk swung laterally, Light repelled the blade, making the strike feel impossibly heavy. But when Ralk swung downward, Light applied a burst of intense attraction. The sword accelerated unnaturally, slamming into the docks a fraction of a second before Ralk's brain expected it to. It was completely disorienting. Every time Ralk swung, the physics of his own weapon betrayed him.
Light used Kami-e to weave like a piece of paper around the clumsy, erratic strikes. When the distance opened up, Light threw one-armed flying slashes. They were noticeably weaker without the torque of his left arm, but they still cut, bleeding Ralk and pushing him back. The cumulative damage was rapidly adding up.
A desperate pommel strike managed to catch Light on the ribs when he was a half-step slow. Light took it on a Tekkai, absorbing the blunt force, and answered with a flying slash directly across Ralk's chest that laid his shirt open and sprayed blood across the wood.
Ralk roared and pressed harder, losing his discipline. Light let him. He rolled around the next four frantic swings, reading the man's exhausted breathing perfectly. On the fifth swing, Light redirected the blade hard into the thick wooden post beside Ralk's hand.
The sword wedged deep into the wood for exactly one second.
Light stepped in and drove a Shigan into the exact same shoulder socket, burying his finger to the knuckle.
"GRAHHH!"
Ralk released the hilt. He dropped heavily to one knee, his hand clamped desperately over his ruined shoulder. Light rapidly closed the remaining distance and kicked the stuck sword completely out of reach.
Ralk looked up at the Marine, panting heavily, sweat stinging his eyes. "Hu... hu... Devil Fruit?!" he gasped, his arrogance entirely gone. "Every time I swing, it just—goes wrong! The speed completely changes! It's impossible!"
Ralk, desperately looking for a way to stall for time, shook his head and threw his good hand into the air with a pained expression. "Fine! I yield! I yield, alright?! You've got me, Marine. I surrender!"
Light looked at the glowing red 71,400 hovering above the bleeding man's head.
"Mm," Light hummed pleasantly. He raised his saber.
Ralk's eyes went wide with pure terror. "HEY! I said I—"
"I know," Light said.
SLASH.
Light looked down at the pooling blood and sighed internally. Tsk. Now I have to clean the saber again.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Captain T-Bone had the surviving pirate crew on their knees in a neat line, their wrists bound tightly behind their backs, with fully armed Marines standing guard over them. The skeletal Captain was methodically going down the line, doing what he apparently did with every captured prisoner: crouching to eye level, politely asking for their names, and making brief, diligent notes in a small ledger.
Light walked the line first.
He didn't look at their faces. He read the Bad Karma as he walked. 8,000. 12,400. 9,100. Most of the crew ran well above five thousand. These weren't starving peasants who had drifted into piracy by tragic accident; they were the hardened core who had followed Ralk for years, actively enjoying the burning, the killing, and the looting that the Grand Line offered.
T-Bone realized what was happening about halfway down the line. Major Yagami had already drawn his blood-stained saber and leveled it at a kneeling man's throat.
"S-SIR!" T-Bone shouted, stumbling backward in absolute shock. "They have already surrendered! Protocol dictates we hold the prisoners for trial!"
"Yes, we should," Light agreed smoothly, not lowering his blade.
"THEN—"
"But they are criminals, T-Bone," Light said, his voice entirely devoid of warmth. "Please, stand to the side."
"...Sir?" T-Bone whispered, his skeletal face going pale.
T-Bone stood paralyzed, his small notebook clutched to his chest, and watched Major Yagami go to work. His face was completely unreadable. He had been briefed by Fleet Admiral Sengoku about Major Yagami's "unusual Haki" and his staggering casualty rates. But seeing it... seeing a Marine officer casually slaughter a line of bound, surrendered men... Was this right? Was this what absolute justice looked like?
When Light reached the end of the line, exactly three of the original eleven pirates were left alive—the three who had registered below five thousand Red.
Light wiped his saber and looked at Haas.
"The usual, Lieutenant. These three to the holding cells," Light instructed perfectly calmly. "The rest, log as killed while actively resisting arrest."
Even if the entire crew knew the truth, appearances to Headquarters should still be maintained.
"Tarro, clean the deck," Light ordered.
"YES, SIR!" Tarro shouted, instantly moving to grab a mop, entirely unfazed.
T-Bone stood frozen, staring at the South Blue crew. To his absolute horror, every single Marine under Light's command seemed to have fully expected this. They were stepping over the corpses of men who had died screaming in terror, their throats cleanly opened, without a second thought. The blood was already pooling into the cracks of the wooden pier.
T-Bone finally looked at Light. His orders were to observe Major Yagami. He understood now, with a sickening drop in his stomach, exactly why Sengoku had sent him.
Suddenly, from the bustling market fifty yards away, a voice rang out, incredibly loud and entirely unbothered by the mass execution that had just occurred on the docks:
"BIG BRO PSYCHO! HERE'S A BIG FISH! IT'S MASSIVE! COME NOW, LET'S ROAST IT!"
T-Bone flinched. He exhaled a long, slow breath. The controlled, horrified unease gripping his skeletal features cracked slightly at the edges, utterly bewildered by the sheer absurdity of the pink-haired child waving a raw sea-bass in the air.
"She is... hungry, it seems," T-Bone managed to say, his voice strained.
"She always is," Light sighed, sheathing his sword. "Come on."
They walked toward the market together. T-Bone couldn't bring himself to look back at the bloody dock. Light did, however—just briefly. He looked at the space where the massive red numbers were no longer floating, watching the bright Grand Line morning settle over Kemen Island like it was just another ordinary day.
About ten days until his fractured arm was fully healed, he estimated. The Log Pose had already pointed them onward.
Light thought about the 71,400 KP he had just harvested as a routine, entry-level encounter. He felt, somewhere beneath his pleasant, golden-boy expression, that this ocean was going to be incredibly productive.