Chapter 6: Kizaru Was Seriously Injured And Escaped
"It worked," Kizaru muttered with his usual languid grin, his mouth cocked to the side.
"Fun, so much fun!"
Master Moran was right ordinary attacks wouldn't work against a Marine Admiral like Borsalino, whose body could disperse into light using the Pika Pika no Mi.
With his blade imbued with Busoshoku Haki, Acedus flashed forward in a burst of speed an eerie parallel to Soru—and descended from a high altitude. The blade gleamed black with hardened Haki as he slashed with ferocious precision, his edge aimed at the photon-man himself.
"Oh? You learned Haki that fast?"
(Marine intel on Acedus didn't list Haki among his skills)
"Very scary!!"
Kizaru's tone was sarcastic, but his mouth twitched—he didn't like surprises. As Acedus's Haki-clad blade descended, Kizaru summoned his Ama no Murakumo sword from condensed light and countered upward. The two blades met in a screech of steel and clashing will.
Clang!
Ping ping pong
Jingle--
The duel between the swordsmen escalated into a blinding flurry of slashes and parries, too fast for even Observation Haki users to track fully. Each time their weapons clashed, shockwaves echoed through the sky, shearing clouds and rattling the sea.
Blades of compressed light clashed with pitch-black slashes—one gold, one obsidian. Their sword aura began to leak into the battlefield: blue arcs from Acedus's concentrated force and golden beams from Kizaru's deadly precision. Each shockwave carved into the frozen mountains and split through the icebergs.
(After a few hours)
After hours of relentless combat with no sign of victory, Kizaru ever the bureaucrat—remembered his "shift" was nearly over. With his signature mix of laziness and cunning, he decided to end the stalemate before it dragged on for days.
Kizaru turned his gaze to the pirate ship trapped within the icy circle, then looked toward the Marine warship stationed beyond it. He launched a targeted light slash, splitting the glacier cleanly.
The iceberg cracked in a perfectly angled line, just wide enough to allow the Marine warship to enter.
Acedus noticed the strategic breach but ignored Kizaru's ploy.
Chitong remained aboard the pirate ship, and the weaklings stationed on the Marine warship were hardly a threat worth reacting to.
Rear Admiral Oh Shunda, observing the opening in the ice, hesitated his instincts told him something was off, but his orders were clear.
The pirate ship slowly began advancing through the passage toward the Marine warship.
"What?"
"You think just the two of you can face us head-on?"
(Aboard the pirate ship, earlier that day)
Moran had studied the icy blockade encircling the pirate ship. Although confident they could break through, he couldn't shake the lingering memory of the Summit War—how quickly things could spiral out of control when trapped by enemy forces.
Acedus seemed distracted. Was it jealousy? Arrogance? He wasn't thinking straight.
"Chitong," Moran said sharply, "if she and Kizaru are still fighting when night falls, you split open a route and get this ship moving."
"Don't get trapped inside this frozen ring if Marine reinforcements arrive."
"Understood, Lord Moran."
So when Kizaru split the iceberg, Moran immediately commanded Chitong to set course for the Marine warship, not wasting time on deliberation.
Seeing only two figures on the pirate ship one a former Marine colonel, the other a rookie Rear Admiral Oh Shunda underestimated their threat.
"Prepare to engage! Load the cannons! Move into firing range and blast them out of the sea!"
"Yes sir, Rear Admiral Shunda x300!"
Chitong stood calmly at the bow. She was no stranger to Marine tactics.
"Marine doctrine prioritizes long-range firepower. Most pirate ships sink before their captains even draw their swords."
She turned her eyes toward the distant silhouette of the warship.
"I won't let them strike first."
Chitong drew her katana, Tongyi, raising it above her head. She coated the blade in Busoshoku Haki, its edges turning jet-black.
"Buried!!"
A devastating half-moon-shaped slash of compressed sword energy over ten meters in length—erupted from the blade. The sea split down the middle as the slash surged forward, accelerating toward the warship like a tidal wave of destruction.
"Hey! Are you serious?! That sword energy—!"
"This is bad! ABANDON SHIP!!"
Marine soldiers dove into the sea in a panic, scrambling for survival.
Rear Admiral Oh Shunda did not move. He watched the technique with grim respect, realizing—perhaps too late that he wasn't capable of stopping it.
Although he knew he was outmatched, he still stood resolutely on the bow of the warship. There was no alternative—someone had to take the lead. Admiral Kizaru had been engaged and stalled by Acedus, and with no other high-ranking officers present, Rear Admiral Oh Shunda held the highest rank on site, so the responsibility to stand up fell squarely on his shoulders.
Several Marine officers of commander and lieutenant commander rank stood beside him, their hands trembling but their expressions firm, shouting that the "justice" emblazoned on their coats would never allow them to retreat from the enemy.
"For Justice!!!"
Rear Admiral Oh Shunda roared, voice cracking with emotion, igniting the morale of the men around him.
"For Justice!!! ×5"
Oh Shunda braced his stance, his arms crossed in front of him, and activated Busoshoku Haki, the hardened black sheen crawling over his forearms like armor.
A few of the lieutenant colonels who had yet to master Haki stood ahead of him with rifles, sabers, and other standard Marine weapons, positioning themselves in a futile front-line against the overwhelming threat.
Just seconds after their defiant declaration, the crescent-shaped Kenjutsu wave arrived before the warship. The first to be struck were Oh Shunda and the others on the ship's bow. The slash, infused with Armament Haki and intense killing intent, cleaved the warship nearly in half from stern to bow. Shockwaves from the attack formed slicing gales that hurled through the formation, lifting men off their feet, tearing through steel, and leaving the surviving officers soaked in blood and mangled uniforms.
(A few seconds earlier)
Observing the chaos from atop the iceberg, Admiral Kizaru's casual demeanor finally broke. He instantly converted into photons to escape downward in light form, intending to intercept the attack or at least shield his men.
"Don't move!"
Before he could blink into motion, Kizaru's instincts screamed danger. His eyelid twitched a sign from his unerring Kenbunshoku Haki—and his entire being snapped into defensive alert. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
"Moko Potmo."
With that incantation, space itself warped.
Time and space momentarily froze in a localized area. Acedus had closed the distance in the blink of a suspended instant. Wielding a sword wreathed in advanced-grade Armament Haki—flowing black and crackling he brought it down upon the light form of Borsalino.
As the time-space distortion lifted, Kizaru's body violently de-elementalized—forced out of his light form mid-transition. The sword sliced deep from his left clavicle down to his right waist, exposing scorched, bleeding muscle and bone.
Reeling from the blow, Kizaru vanished using Soru, reappearing dozens of meters away. Blood dripped in long lines down his uniform.
Grimacing, he activated Seimei Kikan, Life Return—to slow his bleeding. The flow stopped as his internal muscles contracted the wound shut, a crude, threadless self-stitch. The cut was still visible—healing would take time but he was no longer hemorrhaging.
"Who the hell are you…? With power like that, there's no way you're some unknown pirate," Kizaru muttered with uncharacteristic seriousness.
"For satisfying me in battle, I'll tell you," Acedus responded coolly. "My name is Acedus."
He jumped skyward, a hundred meters into the air, then snapped his fingers with casual finality.
"Hail Fury Leap."
A massive spherical mass of compressed ice—glinting with Armament Haki descended like a meteor. The dark-coated ice orb, reinforced with black steel-like Haki, whistled as it plummeted with terminal velocity straight toward Kizaru.
Kizaru looked up with his hair in disarray, glanced briefly back at the warship now split in two, and didn't waste a breath activating Kenbunshoku Haki. He didn't even utter a word he fled immediately in light form, abandoning the battlefield with streaks of golden light.
(Decisive retreat. Life > honor.)
Acedus watched Kizaru vanish, his expression blank in disbelief.
"Damn… ran faster than a rabbit."
Back below, Chitong had already cleaved the Marine warship in two with her Haki-infused Ittō-ryū slash. Moran stood in stunned silence, his eyes reflecting the destruction like a polished hawk's gaze reminiscent of Dracule Mihawk when measuring a swordsman's worth.
"That last technique was a wide-area finisher…" Moran muttered. "She's becoming more like him."
"Master Moran," Chitong said with calm confidence, "Do you need me to eliminate the survivors?"
"No," he replied, shaking his head. "There's no value in killing small fry."
At this moment, surviving Marine soldiers scrambled atop the two halves of the nearly unsinkable warship. A few of them were desperately fumbling with a weakened, slumped-over Den Den Mushi trying to relay an emergency SOS to Naval HQ.
"Acedus is a bit far off," Moran noted, his tone sharpening. "Let's go pick her up and move out. Once HQ gets that call, we'll be the ones having to run."
"Understood, Master Moran."
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