The instant Norton landed, the warship's thick teak deck let out a dull groan. Spiderweb cracks spread silently from beneath his feet.
Smoker felt his breath catch.
There was no overwhelming killing intent, no crushing pressure, yet the man standing before him seemed like a reef that had existed since time immemorial, unmoved by even the fiercest waves!
An instinctive warning screamed through Smoker's mind-the alarm of facing a predator at the top of the food chain. The ash on the cigar between his teeth quietly broke off.
Almost simultaneously, attacks whistled in from three directions!
From the left came Captain Balto, "Heavy Armor" of the 77th Branch.
Nearly three meters tall, his body packed with bulging muscles and draped in a specially reinforced Marine coat, he charged like a human tank. His massive fist thundered toward Norton's temple with enough force to crush anything in its path.
From the right came Captain Milia, "Flash Sword" of the 16th Branch.
She moved so fast she left afterimages. Her slender sword, the Silver Shuttle, became a pinpoint of cold light as she aimed a viciously precise thrust at Norton's back. The blade shrieked through the air-her signature Razor Stab!
Slightly above him, directly ahead.
Captain Kanter, "Peregrine Falcon" of the 98th Branch, used Geppo to stay airborne. His legs blurred into dozens of deadly strikes, swooping like a hunting falcon and sealing off every escape route above Norton's head.
The three branch captains were hardly perfectly coordinated, but they had blocked almost every direction Norton could move. Their attacks arrived together!
Faced with this nearly flawless assault from above and both sides, Norton made a move so simple it was bewildering. His left foot stepped naturally half a pace forward, and his body turned slightly with it.
Just that seemingly casual half step, as though he were taking a stroll.
It let Balto's rock-shattering punch skim past his rising silver hair, the fierce gust stirring only its tips.
It let Mia's lightning-fast thrust pass harmlessly along his twisting waist, the sword tip tearing a corner of his coat.
It left all of Kanter's sweeping Tempest Kick slashes striking the empty deck where Norton had stood half a step earlier, carving several deep gouges.
Then Norton raised his right hand. Their attacks seemed to have delivered their openings straight into the path of his fist.
Thud, thud, thud.
Three faint, nearly simultaneous thumps sounded like someone tapping ripe watermelons.
Still holding his punching stance, Balto's eyes suddenly bulged, bloodshot.
In that instant, he felt an indescribable shock pass through his thick muscles and breastbone, striking his internal organs directly.
All his strength vanished. Balto's hulking body swayed before he sank limply to his knees and vomited a mouthful of frothy blood.
Milia's wrist went numb, and her slender sword flew skyward. Then an invisible battering ram seemed to slam into her chest, her ribs creaking under the unbearable force.
The beautiful captain grunted, her vision going black. She flew backward like a kite with a severed string, struck the mast, and slid down.
Kanter, still airborne, was the most horrified. He felt a faint touch at his ankle, then his flow of strength was violently interrupted. Agony tore through the tendons of his legs, and he lost his balance, plunging headfirst toward the deck!
With a dull thunk, Kanter was knocked unconscious by the impact.
From the start of their attacks to all three hitting the ground, perhaps less than a second had passed!
Three branch captains whose names commanded respect across the East Blue had lost consciousness before they could even fully understand how they had been defeated.
Dead silence settled over the warship's deck.
Every Marine froze, mouth agape, eyes shaking with disbelief.
To them, the three imposing captains had unleashed their most powerful signature moves from three directions, striking like thunder at the criminal with a hundred-million-Beli bounty.
Then that silver-haired man... vanished?
No, he had not vanished. He had moved so fast that the afterimage in the ordinary soldiers' vision made it look like he had teleported!
The Marines saw only an indistinct flash of silver, as though a frame had been skipped.
Then the silver-haired man was back in the same spot, seemingly without even disturbing the hem of his coat.
Meanwhile, all three captains crashed to the ground in various undignified poses and lay motionless.
"Wh... what happened?"
"The captains... lost?"
"How? Did anyone see?"
"N-no... I just saw a shadow flash..."
Amid the whispers, sweat drenched the Marines' hands around their rifles, and their calves began to cramp.
The man worth a hundred million Beli was this terrifying! For the first time, the cold number on his wanted poster had become something real.
Aboard the White Pearl.
Funing leaned almost halfway over the rail, her pale fingers digging into the wood as she stared unblinkingly at Norton on the distant warship.
"So many Marines... and that officer looks really strong... Can King really handle them alone?"
Beside her, Nami heard her concern, peeled off an orange segment, and tossed it into her mouth.
"Relax, Funing! That guy's a monster among monsters! Didn't Norton tell you? He's invincible!"
Zoro stood with his arms crossed and his brow tightly furrowed, struggling to understand how the three captains had lost.
"Tch... I couldn't follow any of it."
After a moment, Zoro spat out those words under his breath, but the fighting spirit in his eyes burned even brighter.
The man's fighting style was so simple it almost seemed to involve no technique at all!
Sanosuke remained in a guarded half crouch, one hand resting on the hilt of the Ninja Sword on his back, his gaze sharp as an eagle's.
He said nothing, but every muscle was slightly tensed, as though he were ready to enter the battle at any moment-even though he knew Norton probably would not need him.
Kuro adjusted his glasses. As a former pirate captain, he understood the strength of those three branch captains better than the others. That only made Norton's effortless victory more shocking.
This kind of power... goes beyond merely being "strong"! As Kuro thought this, certain calculations in his mind quietly shifted.
Unlike the relatively calm atmosphere aboard the White Pearl, the nearby Black Cat Pirates' ship had descended into chaos.
"Marines! Marine warships! Three of them! We're doomed, doomed, doomed!"
Jango scurried around the deck like a headless chicken. "I knew following a lunatic with a bounty that high would bring nothing but trouble! A hundred million Beli! The Marines must have sent an entire force to wipe us out!"
The Nyaban Brothers, Buchi and Sham, clung tightly to each other. "We're gonna die! They'll capture us and lock us up in Impel Down! I heard it's worse than hell! Jango, let's run!"
"Run? Where? If you actually try to escape, Kuro will be the first to kill you!" Jango's words brought despair to the pirates' faces.
"We can only rely on our new captain! If he can't beat these Marines, we're all finished!"
Though Norton had "recruited" these former Black Cat Pirates, their loyalty and courage clearly had not caught up.
Surrounded by a regular Marine fleet, they instantly fell back into their old habits of panic.
"All of you, shut up!" Their shouting gave Jango a headache. Barely suppressing his own racing heart, he fumbled a spyglass out of his coat and raised it shakily to his eye.
Jango adjusted the focus and looked toward the warship. When he recognized Smoker's cigar-clenching face, he sucked in a breath and nearly threw the spyglass away.
"Sm... Smoker?!"
Jango's voice cracked.
As a pirate who had spent years in the East Blue, he knew the name "White Hunter" Smoker all too well. A Logia user with the Smoke-Smoke Fruit, he was almost impossible to hurt by conventional means!
Hearing that, the Nyaban Brothers were terrified out of their wits. They huddled together in a trembling ball.
Jango's heart turned cold. He nearly ordered everyone to break through and flee at any cost. But his instinct to survive forced him to stay calm, and he unconsciously shifted the spyglass across the rest of the flagship's deck...
"Wait... those three lying on the ground are..."
Jango abruptly held the lens still, rubbed his eyes hard, and looked again.
There was no mistake! Three Marine captains!
And judging by their twisted poses and failure to get up, they were clearly out of the fight.
Jango froze, overcome by a sense of utter absurdity. His brain could not quite keep up.
This... did not seem to match the "Marines surround us, we flee in defeat" scenario they had expected?
On the warship, Norton lowered his hand. There was not even a red mark on his knuckles.
Looking at the three captains sprawled across the deck, he sighed.
"Too weak," Norton said, boredom in his voice. "Has the Marine force run out of people? They sent trash like this to hunt me down?"
Even if they were only branch captains, they were far too weak. Enemies at this level could not even give him a warm-up.
Smoker clenched his teeth so hard his gums nearly bled. Pressure poured through his limbs like molten iron, driving him to attack on instinct!
"White Blow!"
As the words left his mouth, Smoker's lower body transformed into billowing white smoke. The tremendous thrust launched him toward Norton like a rocket!
At the same time, his Jitte swung down in a vertical strike!
Norton did not even take a stance against Smoker's fierce attack. His right shoulder merely shifted, and his arm swung as casually as though shaking off water, driving a fist into the smoke and the Jitte within it.
Bang!
A dull impact rang out.
Smoker's forward momentum stopped dead, and his face twisted in an instant!
A moment later, his whole body exploded apart like a smoke sculpture struck by a massive hammer!
He had not dispersed willingly. He had been smashed apart! Thick white smoke churned out of control, swallowing almost half the bow-and Norton with it.
The sea breeze thinned the white smoke.
Norton withdrew his fist, looked at his unmarked knuckles, then at the strands of white smoke struggling to gather around him. His eyebrows rose.
"Hm? A Logia?"
Smoker re-formed beside the rail seven or eight meters away. Down on one knee, he supported himself with his Jitte, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He stared at Norton as though looking at something inhuman.
Norton studied Smoker's face for a moment, then suddenly remembered who he was.
Right, there was a character like him in the original story. Early on, he chased Luffy all over the East Blue. Later, he was just another nobody.
"This is a little tricky..." Norton scratched his head. This was his first time facing an opponent he could not target.
By then, Smoker had already gathered himself for another attack and charged with a low roar!
He raised his Jitte, smoke coiling around the weapon to form a spiral drill.
"White Spiral!"
Norton stared distractedly at the spinning smoke drill hurtling toward him.
That punch clearly connected, but all it did was scatter him...
A Logia's elemental transformation makes physical attacks useless, unless you use Haki or...
He quickly searched his hazy memories from his previous life.
Seastone? Seawater? A specific substance?
The spiral drill was already before him, shrieking as it tore through the air!
Norton did not meet it head-on. He lightly pushed off with his feet.
Bang!
A shallow crater burst open in the deck. Norton shot straight upward, leaping more than thirty meters in an instant.
Smoker looked up, his pupils contracting sharply.
High above, Norton looked down over the entire warship, silver hair whipping wildly in the wind. He raised his right fist, but this time there was nothing casual about it.
Norton punched toward the center of the warship's deck below!
His fist touched nothing, yet the air at the end of its path suddenly warped!
Extreme speed and strength compressed a vast swath of air before him in an instant, creating a transparent shock wave visible to the naked eye!
The shock wave expanded rapidly. The blast from his fist hurtled down like an invisible meteor!
Time seemed to slow. Smoker barely had time to hold his Jitte across his body and turn himself entirely into smoke-
BOOM!!
A deafening explosion! The warship's entire middle section-deck, keel, and cabins-buckled downward, snapped, and shattered the instant the pressure struck!
Wood splinters, metal fragments, ropes, shattered cannon barrels, screaming Marines... everything blasted outward!
The warship was smashed into a V shape at its center. Seawater flooded in, and the fractured hull groaned with a teeth-grating sound!
The shock wave spread in a ring, pressing a huge hollow into the sea and raising walls of water several meters high. They slammed into the two neighboring warships, making them rock violently!
Aboard the White Pearl.
Funing's mouth formed an O.
The orange segment in Nami's mouth fell to the deck.
At some point, Zoro had uncrossed his arms. His knuckles whitened around his sword hilt.
Sanosuke leaned slightly forward in his half crouch, his eyes widening beneath his forehead protector.
Kuro's glasses sat crooked, and he forgot to straighten them.
Aboard the Black Cat Pirates' ship.
Jango's spyglass slipped from his hand and shattered with a crack.
Every pirate stood frozen, staring at the rapidly sinking warship and the figure slowly descending through the air. Only one thought remained in their minds.
Could... a human really do that?
On the deck of the floating restaurant Baratie.
Zeff's chef's hat blew away in the gale, and his braided mustache whipped wildly in the wind.
He stared fixedly at Norton in the sky, complex emotions surging through his eyes-shock tinged with a trace of a pirate's fervor.
Patty collapsed onto his backside.
Sanji did not even notice the cigarette falling from his mouth.
On the sea, amid the warship's wreckage.
Beside the broken keel, wisps of white smoke seeped out of the seawater and laboriously re-formed into Smoker atop a floating fragment of deck.
He knelt on the fragment, gasping violently, his face pale and lingering fear still visible in his eyes.
Smoker... was completely unharmed.
The instant the pressure struck, he had transformed his entire body into the finest particles of smoke, letting the destructive force pass through him. Physical impacts had no effect on him.
But Smoker could feel it-if he had been solid, even protected by Armament Haki, that punch would have pulverized him, armor and all!
This man's fists... are monstrous!
Norton landed lightly on another floating plank. He looked at Smoker, who had re-formed nearby, and sighed.
"So it really doesn't work..." Norton muttered. "Elemental transformation is just cheating."
Norton did not know Haki. After breaking his body's Limiter, he had never encountered an enemy who required Haki to defeat, so his body had never developed that power.
And Seastone was strictly controlled by the World Government. It was virtually impossible to find on the market.
Seawater? There's seawater everywhere, but he's standing on the wreckage...
Wait.
Norton's gaze fell on the weapon clenched in Smoker's hand.
The Jitte.
Fragments of memory flashed through Norton's mind, and he suddenly remembered that the original story had mentioned the seastone embedded in the tip of Smoker's Jitte, meant to counter ability users.
At that thought, Norton's eyes lit up slightly.
Meanwhile, Smoker noticed Norton's gaze. He instinctively tightened his grip on the Jitte. It was his trump card against ability users, and the only weapon he had that might pose a threat to his opponent right now.
But the moment that thought surfaced, Norton vanished before his eyes!
Alarm bells instantly blared in Smoker's mind!