Damian lost count of how many times he had swung his blade; the flames burned on the edge longer than ever before.
The orange and blue arcs of the Sun Halo Dance had already stacked dozens of times above the boardwalk. Looking from the direction of the dock warehouse, the entire boardwalk looked like it was covered by a burning cage. The afterimages of flames intertwined in mid-air to form a net of light and shadow, and each arc of light was the trajectory of a blade.
But the lion's claw marks were like flames branded onto the wooden board. Every time Lane threw a punch, the beast's claws missed vital points but still grazed his shoulders, collarbones, and ribs. The wind pressure and sharp claw tips created would leave shallow cuts even if they didn't hit him.
Damian had so many wounds of varying depths all over his body that he couldn't even distinguish them amidst the gushing blood.
This was the forty-second cut, or perhaps the forty-third; Damian had lost count.
He pressed the tip of his knife against the mane on Lane's chest, kneeling on his left knee, sweat and blood dripping from his chin onto the wood chips.
Lane wasn't in much better shape than him.
Nearly half of the golden mane had been shaved off by the Sun Halo Dance, leaving the mane on the shoulders and chest uneven, with charred, curled edges on the cut surfaces.
His right cheek was so swollen that his eye was reduced to a slit, and blood from his nose and gums stained his crooked nose a deep red. All the bandages on his left forearm were gone, revealing an arm that was charred black and crimson red from the fire.
"How many cuts do you have left?" Lane asked hoarsely.
"Enough to kill you," Damian said.
Lane suddenly grinned, revealing thick streaks of blood on his canine teeth.
He lowered his center of gravity and suddenly headbutted Damian in the forehead. As Damian dodged, he used his other beast-like right foot to brace himself, sweeping up a broken section of the railing and slashing it towards Damian's knee.
Damian managed to parry the railing with his knife, but his strained knee finally gave way and he fell to the ground on one knee.
Lane stood tall, looking down at Damian, who was kneeling on one knee. His golden vertical pupils were only a narrow slit hidden by his swollen eyelids.
He raised his still-movable right fist high, and at that moment, the shadow of his ape-like arm and lion-like shoulder was cast on the plank road, obscuring the moon.
Damian looked up.
He could no longer lift his left arm, and the old injury to his right shoulder, after its third fracture, prevented him from raising the knife above his head.
He could only hold the blade horizontally in front of him and watch as the beastly giant fist came crashing down like hailstones.
Then he suddenly lowered the blade and charged forward, his entire body pressed against Lane's chest as he broke through to the inside of his fist, wedging himself into the inner arc of the lion's punch.
Rotate the White Wax Wood handle slightly half a turn over the web of your hand, with the tip of the knife pointing upwards.
Lane's fist missed its mark, because Damian was half a second faster, pressing his shoulder into the old, unprotected cut on Ryan's ribs, and then pushing his wrist upwards.
The final blow.
Flames shot upwards from the tip of the blade, piercing through Lane's jaw at extremely close range and reaching the base of his skull.
The roar of beasts and the sound of waves rose at the same time.
All the afterimages of the sun on the pier vanished simultaneously after that one strike, and the sea breeze rushed back into the dock, making the Fan Flag above their heads flap loudly once more.
Lane's fist stopped less than half an inch above Damian's head. The beastly claws slowly loosened, and the knuckles gradually extended from their hooked shape, returning to the shape of human fingers.
The golden mane receded in patches from his cheeks, shoulders, and chest, shrinking back under his skin like waves being swallowed by rocks at low tide.
The traces of bestiality faded layer by layer, until only a barefoot man stood in the pile of rubble remained.
A crooked nose, a dark red coat tattered from burning and hanging on his shoulder, and an old scar on his chest that ran diagonally from his collarbone to his ribs was almost completely covered by a new wound.
He fell without making a loud noise, his bare feet slid half an inch on the wooden plank, his knees hitting the ground first, then his shoulders, and finally the back of his head, until he lay face up in the middle of the walkway, his amber eyes still open, looking at the night sky in the direction of Orange Town, which was dyed dark purple by the Kakkō.
Damian knelt on one knee, the blade still embedded in Lane's jaw.
He released the knife handle, his fingers twitching as he withdrew, then he slowly sat down on the edge of the walkway, leaning against a broken mooring post, breathing heavily.
Lane wasn't dead yet; his eyes were still open, and the gold in his pupils was slowly fading from the outside in.
He looked up at the starry sky above and suddenly said something in a very soft voice.
"Hello."
Damian looked down at him.
"Have you ever... seen that kind of wound? The kind you watch helplessly, but can't heal?" Lane didn't look at Damian, but a slight smile appeared on his lips, and the bubbles clinging to his canine teeth were blown away by the night wind.
As he spoke, blood gushed from the edge of the knife in his throat, making a very faint gurgling sound.
"I sat beside my mother for two whole days when she passed away. I was five years old that year. Later, I lived alone on a rocky island for four years, practicing my punches, smashing driftwood, and treating the waves as my opponents. But every time the tide came in, I would think, 'Wouldn't it be better if I could learn to throw a punch sooner?'"
He coughed, and a small clump of bloody foam welled up from the corner of his mouth, sliding down his crooked nose and jawline into the skin where the mane had fallen away.
"Dean, when he's not drinking, he keeps asking me why we always let the weakest guys go when we raid ships. That's not what pirates do."
"I told them it was none of their business. But it wasn't because they were weak; it was because I'd been through it myself. Watching my mother being swept away by the sea, I didn't have the strength to hold her. I can't forgive myself for sitting there like a fool back then."
Damian didn't speak; his hands rested on his knees, his fingertips still trembling.
"When Celysia first boarded the ship, she would clean her gun until the wee hours of the morning every day, until the barrel became thin. She believed that as long as she could shoot accurately, she could avenge her father."
Lane's voice grew softer, but he pronounced each name clearly.
"The night I rescued Ram, he huddled in a corner of the cabin, too scared to sleep. He's Fish-Man, he can breathe underwater, but he's afraid of people, afraid of being locked in a cage again. Dean asked why, and I said there was no reason, the fact that they haven't turned bad is already the hardest thing."
"And that sickly Lowell..."
He paused, his eyes slowly turning to Damian's face, the amber color fading to just a small ring of light in the center of his pupils.
"To be honest, I don't want to lose at all."
He pronounced the word "lose" very softly, but his canine teeth flashed for a moment, as if he still instinctively wanted to grin when he said the word.
"However, losing to you isn't entirely unfair, after all, you and I both have families waiting for you."
He glanced to the side again.
At the far horizon, his gaze passed over the docks, boardwalks, and the canopy of the White Wax Forest, barely catching sight of the small bay where the flagship of the Raging Lion Pirates was anchored.
There were no lights, no response; none of those who had sailed back with him from the Grand Line had returned.
He had promised them he would redraw a flag.
His last movement as he closed his eyes was raising his hand, which was resting on his chest. His left hand, with its palm burned through to the bone, was stuck to his chest by blood and scabs, and his fingertips just touched the canine tooth pendant hanging around his neck.
The amber light went out.
The lion swept across his face one last time, its lips slightly upturned, exactly as it had during the day when it lay on the deck, munching on an apple and saying "How wonderful."
Damian leaned against the mooring post, sitting there with his head down for a long time.
The sea breeze once again whipped the tattered Fan Flag into fluttering motions, and the boardwalk was littered with charred wood marks, broken ropes, and blood-soaked tattered canvas.
He took the lion's tooth pendant from Lane's neck, held it in his still trembling left hand, and stood up.
With each step he took, blood dripped from his trouser legs, but he still turned towards the wall of the duty room and picked up the scabbard that he had knocked off earlier. He slowly inserted the straight knife, with four charred marks on its spine, back into the scabbard, the hilt striking the scabbard's opening with a soft sound.
The sounds of fighting had stopped coming from the direction of the commercial street.
Damian dragged his injured leg step by step into the town, passing the crushed fragments of the commercial street signs, the overturned citrus stalls, and a few small flames that were still burning.
He saw his Pops under the old ash tree at the end of the commercial street.
--
Marcus was chopping wood in the backyard. His rhythm was steady, and the White Wax Wood he split had such neat stubble that it looked as if it had been planened. The chopped firewood was stacked in the corner, already half a person high.
He placed the axe on the stake, straightened up, and the sea breeze blew from the direction of the dock, carrying the usual salty smell of evening, but today there was something different in the wind.
Marcus took the pipe out of his mouth.
He tilted his head and listened for a moment, his brows slowly furrowing. Lately, he had been having a bad feeling, the kind of intuition that people who have been at sea for a long time would have.
The sea breeze smelled wrong, the air pressure was wrong, the clouds on the distant horizon looked wrong—all these subtle oddities piled up and became something indescribable but very real, pressing down on my chest.
He placed his pipe on a woodpile and went into the workshop.
The workshop was filled with the sweet smell of wood shavings and wood wax oil, and the tools hung on the wall, each one in its proper place.
He walked to the workbench, pulled open the bottom drawer, and found no tools inside, but a short knife.
The knife has White Wax Wood handle, a straight blade, no handguard, and an undecorated scabbard.
He took off his old apron covered in sawdust, put on a dark gray short-sleeved shirt hanging on the back of a chair, hung the knife at his waist, then pushed open the workshop door and walked towards the commercial street.
At the end of the commercial street, the gate of the Uchiha Trading Company branch was wide open.
The two guards left at the entrance were lying on the ground. One was lying on his side on the steps, his knife still not pulled out; the other was lying face down by the flower bed, his clothes torn open on the back.
One of the iron-framed glass doors of the Chamber of Commerce branch was broken, and shards of glass were scattered on the stone pavement.
Ram stood at the door.
He was a head taller than the two guards, his arm muscles bulging his sleeves, and three parallel gill slits on either side of his neck gleamed a cold gray in the afterglow of the setting sun.
He had just stepped out of the door; the safe inside wasn't what he was looking for. He was looking for the warehouse.
The warehouse is behind the Chamber of Commerce branch; you have to turn into a side alley from the commercial street.
He heard footsteps again.
Ram turned around, her vertical pupils narrowing into tiny slits in the dim light.
Standing in the middle of the stone-paved commercial street was a man in his fifties, wearing a dark gray short shirt, with gray hair and wrinkles on his face from years of sea breeze, and a short knife hanging at his waist.
He looked like an ordinary person: a dockworker, a carpenter at a sawmill, or an old man selling ship equipment in a shop.
Ram twirled the short axe halfway in his palm and took a step toward Marcus.
He was half a head taller Marcus, weighed at least thirty pounds more, and his arm circumference was equivalent to Marcus's two arms combined.
The vertical pupils of the Fish-Men can send chills down your spine when you look into them at close range. It's the gaze of a natural enemy on its prey. The guards who stayed behind at the merchant guild were forced back half a step by this gaze before he caught them off guard.
Ram threw a punch, aimed directly at the center of Marcus's chest, with enough force to send a grown man flying and crashing into a wall.
Marcus dodged to the side. The fist grazed his chest but didn't touch his body.
His left foot turned a quarter turn on the stone slab, his body turned to the side, and his right foot took a half step back. The sideways movement was just enough to make Ram's knuckles brush against his clothes, but not even the fabric was caught.
Turning left, slanting to the right, retreating half an inch—every movement was precise and controlled, without a single superfluous action.
Ram's expression changed. He slowly retracted his right fist, which was still hanging in mid-air in a fist-like position. His vertical pupils narrowed further as he re-examined the thin, gray-haired man in front of him.
He wasn't looking at an ordinary person; he was looking at something he had never seen before: a Shadow Step user without any special abilities or youthful vigor.
Marcus's hand remained on the hilt of the knife, but he did not draw it.
Ram stared at his hand resting on the knife handle; the hand was thin, with large knuckles, and there were still unwashed wood shavings between his fingers.
"So many people are no match for me, why are you, an old man, standing in my way?"
Marcus took the pipe out of his mouth; it wasn't lit, he was just habitually holding it in his mouth.
"Because..." He placed his pipe on the edge of the roadside flowerbed, his fingers leaving the knife handle, then putting it back.
"I'm an Uchiha too."
The ash trees swayed gently in the evening sea breeze.
Ram looked at the human in front of him, who was half a head shorter than him and probably twice his age.
But he didn't act rashly. He had been at sea for so long and had seen many fools who judged people by their appearance, most of whom died young. He slowly gripped the short axe, the scar on the back of his hand gleaming white in the moonlight.