A Disparity in Strength

Reality's cruelty was often more biting than the most absurd nightmare.

"I already used everything I had."

Shanks's voice was heavy as he stared fixedly at Makino less than five steps away, the hand gripping his sword trembling faintly beyond his control.

"You... you're not Makino!"

Shanks gritted his teeth and shouted, enunciating every word.

"You're just a demon wearing her skin! You never should have exposed this power."

From the very beginning, he had felt that Makino's aura and the way she spoke had become utterly unfamiliar.

It was just that, deep down, he had always thought it was a change brought on by Ross's brainwashing.

But now, reality had slapped him hard across the face.

He would rather believe the real Makino had died long ago, and that the one standing before him now was merely someone else Ross had transformed into Makino with some Devil Fruit ability.

"Why would you think I'm not Makino? Just because my strength has grown?"

Makino tilted her head slightly, a strange sorrow showing in her eyes.

Before her words had even faded, her figure moved without warning.

She had no refined footwork. Even the posture with which she exerted force looked somewhat clumsy, because she had never received any professional combat training.

But under Ross's development, this seemingly frail body of hers had already had its basic strength forcibly raised.

"Whoosh!"

In the retinas of Snake, Lucky Roux, and the others, she did not even leave behind an afterimage.

They only felt their vision blur, and a gust of wind brushed past.

In the next instant.

Makino had already closed in before Shanks.

That fair, slender hand, which once only knew how to pour drinks and mend clothes, was now like an iron pincer as it seized Griffin's sharp blade, a