The words hit like a bolt of lightning driving straight through the top of Tesoro's skull.
His face, that slicked-back arrogant mask he wore for the world, froze solid. The wine glass in his hand rattled, then dropped. It hit the solid gold floor and burst into shards, red wine splashing across the metal like fresh blood.
"You… how do you know about that…"
Tesoro's pupils contracted to pinpricks. Veins bulged across his forehead.
A secret he had buried for more than a decade. The colossal star tattoo carved into his back had one purpose: to bury that black history, those years he was herded like livestock. He had poured half a lifetime into building this golden city, a monument even the Celestial Dragons had to look up at, all to prove one thing.
He was no longer that powerless waste of a man who could not even protect the woman he loved.
And now this young pirate named Ace had walked into his proudest palace and ripped the bloody bandage off with his bare hands.
"You're angry."
Ace watched the trembling Tesoro. No pity touched his eyes. Only cold mockery.
"Deep down, you already know the truth. In the eyes of the Celestial Dragons, you, the so-called Gold Emperor, are no equal partner."
Ace folded his hands over his knees. Every word landed like a knife.
"You're a fat pig they keep in a pen because it shits gold. An excellent money-making tool. The face they show you now and then? That's a bone tossed to a dog."
"The day they decide they're done with you, the day they want to harvest this golden city of yours… do you honestly believe your precious wealth will save you? With all that gold-plated power of yours, which Marine Admiral can you even touch?"
Ace rose to his feet and looked down at him.
"You tell yourself over and over that money lets you stand equal to the Celestial Dragons. Repeat a lie enough times, and you actually start buying it."
"Shut up…"
Tesoro's voice scraped raw. Something feral clawed at the inside of his throat.
"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"
BOOM!
Tesoro's roar split the air, and the entire office of solid gold, along with the ten-kilometer mega-ship beneath his feet, groaned with a shriek of twisting metal.
"I am the Gold Emperor! I stand above every last soul on this earth! I am no slave!!!"
HUM.
The Goru Goru no Mi surged. Tesoro's control, fueled by a rage past reason, hit the awakened limit.
The unbreakable gold floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything that had been solid a breath ago, now boiled like a raging sea. Ornate decorations and priceless sculptures melted into a churning ocean of liquid gold.
"You know things you were never meant to know. So take that secret with you, and spend eternity as a golden statue!"
Tesoro levitated above the chaos, both hands driving downward.
"Golden Tsunami!"
BOOM!
The molten gold surged into massive columns, meters thick, screaming inward from every direction with crushing weight and searing heat. This was his domain. His element. He pushed the gold flow deeper, forcing it toward Ace's skin, his pores, intent on petrifying him from the inside out.
This was the crushing pressure of an underworld ruler. An awakened Devil Fruit user in his absolute territory.
And at the center of it all, the oncoming tidal wave of gold closing in from every angle.
Ace did not flinch.
"Someone pokes your sore spot, and you just bark like a mad dog."
He stood still, watching the gold bear down on him.
"That false confidence you bought with money and a Devil Fruit. Against real power, it shatters like glass."
"Black Hole."
HUM.
A darkness deeper than the ocean floor spilled out from beneath Ace's feet. It devoured light. It swallowed sight. It surged across the gold floor in a silent, spreading tide.
The darkness yawned open like a bottomless abyss torn into the world.
The moment the crushing Golden Tsunami touched that black domain, Tesoro's proud control snapped clean, severed like a cut string.
No explosion. No dramatic clash of powers.
Only devouring.
Thousands of tons of gold, bent to Tesoro's will a second ago, reverted to dead metal under the Yami Yami no Mi's absolute gravity of negation. They crashed downward in a clattering avalanche. Then, like debris caught in quicksand, the sprawling darkness dragged them under and erased them from sight.
"What?!"
Tesoro's eyes bulged. He surged his powers desperately, but every scrap of gold swallowed by the black mist was gone, utterly beyond his reach.
"What… what Devil Fruit is that?!"
"My abyss can swallow an entire island. Your gold won't even fill the cracks."
Ace's low voice resonated from within the black fog.
He raised his right hand, aiming at the airborne Tesoro.
"Black Vortex."
"Shit!"
An irresistible gravitational pull seized Tesoro. He tried to merge with the gold, to wrench himself free, but the vortex's pull locked onto him like a magnet on scrap iron. His body flew toward Ace against his will.
"Don't underestimate me! I am the Gold Emperor!"
Even as he was dragged in, Tesoro roared and armored his right arm in a dense, gleaming layer of gold. He threw the punch with everything he had.
"Golden Godfire!"
"Your Haki is weak."
Ace did not dodge. His right fist tightened. High-grade Armament Haki, black as ink, wrapped his knuckles in flowing Ryuo, dark crimson ripples forming at the point of impact.
CRACK.
The two fists met.
The gold armor, solid enough to shrug off cannon fire, crumbled like paper under Ace's Ryuo-laced punch. Web-thin fractures spidered across its surface. An instant later, the true destructive force drilled straight through the gold and into Tesoro's arm, his ribs, his chest.
The wet snap of breaking bone cut through the air.
"GWAH!"
Tesoro felt his organs pulverize, as if a war hammer had been driven through his torso. Blood burst from his mouth. The powers he had staked his empire on, the gold armor he trusted absolutely, were ripped apart like wet cardboard against this man's sheer violence.
His body rocketed backward and cratered into the half-melted gold wall. The entire wall caved inward on impact.
He slid to the floor, coughing. The pink suit was soaked red. He clutched his chest and gasped for air, eyes wild with shock and fear he could no longer hide.
Ace walked up slowly and stood over the richest man on the seas.
"Now then. That smug little superiority complex of yours. Still got it?"
The words weren't loud. But in the wreckage of that golden ruin, they landed like a death sentence.
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