The surrounding cooks and diners screamed and scattered.
Zoro frowned and was about to step forward to kick the bomb away when he heard the young Marine's calm voice behind him.
"If you want to use that firecracker to send your captain off, I don't mind."
Lin Xuan stood on a patch of floating ice, still holding the charred wooden stick. Rather than looking at the bomb in Deuce's hand, he kept his eyes on that stretch of sea.
"Hey, how long are you going to keep playing dead?"
Lin Xuan lightly tapped the water with the stick, making a series of smacking sounds. There was a hint of teasing in his voice. "I used a little finesse with that last hit. It should only have broken a couple of ribs. If you don't come out soon, your first mate's going to blow himself up along with everyone else."
Glug, glug...
A string of huge bubbles rose to the surface.
Then a dripping hand grabbed the edge of the driftwood beneath Lin Xuan's feet.
"Cough, cough... Who... who's playing dead...?"
Amid violent coughing, Mihal dragged the soaking-wet Ace up to the surface with difficulty.
Ace's once-stylish curls were plastered wetly to his face. His left cheek was badly swollen, blood stained the corner of his mouth, and a conspicuous bruised indentation marked his chest.
The seawater had weakened him so much that even lifting a finger took effort. All he could do was hang limply from the driftwood.
Still, he struggled to open his unswollen eye and glare up at Lin Xuan.
"You... what the hell did you grow up eating... cough, cough...?"
"Ace!"
Seeing Ace alive, Deuce nearly dropped the bomb in his hand. He frantically snuffed out the fuse and collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, tears threatening to spill.
He breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for his good fortune.
Lin Xuan crouched, bringing his gaze level with Ace, who could barely raise his head.
With an interested look, he reached out and poked Ace's face, which had swollen up like a pig's head.
"Hiss! Ow, ow, ow! What are you doing?!" Ace grimaced in pain. He instinctively tried to fight back, but with no strength left in his body, he could only yell.
"Checking how it feels."
Lin Xuan stood and shook the droplets from his hands. The fighting spirit in his eyes had faded, replaced by a look Ace found inexplicably familiar-somewhat disdainful, yet not cold.
"Since you're awake, stop soaking in there. Or do you want me to fish you out too?"
That tone...
Ace froze.
That way of talking, that feeling of someone beating you half to death only to reach out and pull you up afterward...
And that look just now.
A figure buried deep in his memories suddenly overlapped with the boy in the Marine uniform before him.
That damned old man who always wore a Dog-Head Mask and laughed as he tossed him and Luffy into remote mountain forests, claiming it was training when he was really just burning off excess energy.
"Wait..."
Ignoring the agony in his body, Ace widened his eyes and stared fixedly at Lin Xuan's faintly mocking face, his voice trembling slightly.
"Hey... Lin Xuan..."
"Why do you... remind me so much of... that old bastard who eats senbei all day?"
The charred mast that had served as a bat traced an arc through the air and sank into the sea with a plunk.
Lin Xuan brushed the charcoal dust off his palms. In his deep, pool-like eyes, the indifference finally cracked a little, revealing a teasing glint he only showed around his own people.
"Ha... haha..."
Ace suddenly laughed. Even though every laugh tugged at the wound by his mouth and made him gasp in pain, he kept laughing.
He pushed away Mihal, who was supporting him, and braced both hands on the driftwood. He stared hard at Lin Xuan's glaring Marine uniform, as though trying to get to know the person before him all over again.
The sea breeze swept past, lifting the justice cape behind Lin Xuan and making it snap in the wind.
"I knew it... there's no way a monster like this would suddenly turn up in the East Blue."
Ace shakily straightened up on the driftwood. His legs were still trembling, but the hostility in his eyes had vanished completely.
He raised his dripping hand and, at the center of this battlefield where everyone had been at daggers drawn and a suicide explosion had nearly occurred, made a gesture that almost stopped everyone's hearts.
He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and grinned at the Marine who had just blasted him into the sea.
Ace's voice was quiet, but it carried clearly across the deathly silent water. "Long time no see, big brother."
The sea breeze blew, yet the scene remained utterly silent.
Clack.
Nearby, the sniper rifle Mihal had tossed onto the deck slid off as the ship rocked slightly. The sound of it striking the planks was unusually grating.
But that tiny disturbance could not break the eerie atmosphere, as though everyone had been frozen by a spell.
Every gaze-the cooks peeking out from behind the Baratie's second-floor railing, Zoro gripping his sword hilt on the deck with a sweaty palm, and even Mihal, still clinging to the driftwood in the water with a bewildered expression-went blank at that moment.
Their eyes shifted back and forth between the indifferent Lin Xuan in his Marine uniform and the bare-chested pirate captain, Ace.
Their brains shut down completely.
"B-big... big... big brother?!"
Deuce was the first to break down.
The first mate who had just been ready to detonate a Gas Bomb for his captain was now kneeling on the ground, his jaw practically dislocated and hitting the deck.
His eyes bulged like brass bells. His trembling finger pointed at Ace, then at Lin Xuan, while strange rattling sounds came from his throat, as though an invisible hand had seized his neck.
"C-captain?! Did water get into your brain? He's a Marine! The Marine who just knocked you flying like a baseball!"
Deuce grabbed his hair in frenzy. "And... and you're a pirate! He's a Marine! What kind of family relationship is that?! What kind of big brother nearly beats his little brother to death?!"
Zoro slowly pushed the half-drawn Wado Ichimonji back into its sheath, a trace of bewilderment appearing in his sharp eyes too.
He was a swordsman who believed in logic.
But everything happening before him had clearly gone beyond swordsmanship and common sense.
"Hey, curly-brows." Zoro instinctively sought someone to confirm whether he had fallen under some illusion, only to find Sanji beside him, cigarette in his mouth, staring at the two men facing each other as though he had seen a ghost.
He did not even notice the cigarette ash falling onto his polished leather shoe.
The floating ice rose and fell with the waves.
Lin Xuan looked at the boy before him, bedraggled but with eyes still stubborn and clear.
"Our first meeting since you set sail, and you're already such a mess."
Lin Xuan slipped both hands back into his pockets, his tone flat, sounding instead as though he were appraising his own good-for-nothing little brother. "Looks like kicking you out of the East Blue was the right call. If you'd stayed in that greenhouse any longer, you wouldn't even be fit to carry my shoes."
At that moment, every member of the Spade Pirates felt the world spin.
Their captain, one of the most vicious rookies of this generation by bounty, was actually the little brother of a Marine monster?
Did a brotherly bond that could bridge the gulf between justice and evil really exist on this sea?
Or... was this an even deadlier trap?
Deuce shakily climbed to his feet, unsure whether to raise or lower the dagger in his hand.
Looking at that figure clad in a Justice Coat, he felt a chill rise from the bottom of his heart.
If these two monsters joined forces, how was anyone else supposed to survive?
Chapter 47: I'm Hungry-Surely Wiping Out a Pirate Crew Along the Way Isn't Too Much?
The scene was deathly silent.
Before Deuce's terrified cries had faded, the sea breeze carried a hint of grilled meat into Lin Xuan's nostrils. The fireball he had split earlier had probably cooked a few unlucky sea fish along the way.
His stomach gave a perfectly timed growl, unusually clear in the silence.
This body had inherited Kenpachi Zaraki's beastlike combat instincts, along with his terrifying energy consumption.
That slash had felt great, but his blood sugar had dropped a little too fast.
"So this is the 'special treatment' that old man mentioned?" Lin Xuan ignored the pirates and cooks around him whose eyes were nearly popping out. He merely straightened his slightly disheveled collar, his eyelids drooping. The terrifying murderous aura from earlier vanished instantly, replaced by the weariness of someone who wanted to clock out.
Lin Xuan glanced at Ace, who was still grinning foolishly, his gaze lingering for half a second on that face that looked as stupid as it was swollen.
"I happen to be hungry." Lin Xuan raised a hand and pointed at the fin-shaped restaurant nearby, which was still belching black smoke. "Since it's a restaurant, you can still cook, right? Or did that slash scare off all the cooks?"
His tone brooked no argument.
With that, Lin Xuan did not bother to check whether Ace could follow his abrupt change of subject. He simply strode forward, stepping over the wreckage floating on the sea as though it were solid ground, heading toward the Baratie.
"Huh? Food?" Ace paused, and his stomach promptly growled in agreement.
For members of the D. Clan, nothing mattered more than eating, even if they had been fighting for their lives a second earlier.
"Sounds good! I'm starving too!" Ace's carefree grin returned. Completely ignoring his first mate Deuce's contorted face nearby, he eagerly followed the Marine.
This scene was even more surreal than the splitting of the fireball.
A Marine who had been ferocious just moments earlier and a rookie pirate with a bounty of over ten million were actually heading off to eat together, arms around each other like high school boys skipping class for an internet café?
Had the logic of this sea broken down?
Amid this bizarre atmosphere, a discordant roar of engines suddenly shattered the peace.
The sound carried a frantic urgency.
Lin Xuan's steps paused slightly. Those dead-fish eyes did not turn back, merely angling fifteen degrees behind him.
Within his hearing range, besides the waves, hundreds of rapid heartbeats were accelerating wildly, a sign of adrenaline surging to its limit.
In the corner of his vision, several small lifeboats that had not been completely destroyed were being frantically launched beside the wreckage of the Dreadnought Sabre.
"Quick! Hurry! That monster's turned his back!"
"Forget the wounded! Row if you want to live!"
Krieg, overlord of the East Blue, was being supported by Gin. Most of his golden armor was shattered, exposing the bloodstained shirt beneath.
His face, usually full of arrogance, now held only the fear of a mouse facing a cat.
Although that slash had not struck them directly, its soul-shaking terror had completely crushed the Admiral's ambitions.
The Grand Line, the Pirate King-none of it mattered.
Before this young Marine whose name he had never even heard, it was all a joke.
He had to flee deep into the East Blue, somewhere he would never see this Marine again for the rest of his life!
"Oh, looks like someone wants to leave without paying." Ace stopped and glanced back at the figures fleeing in disarray. A small orange-red flame appeared at his fingertip again, and eagerness flashed in his eyes. "Lin Xuan, want me to burn them? You don't need to bother with small fry like these."
"Save it. Put that lighter away."
Without even turning his head, Lin Xuan raised a hand and stopped Ace.
His voice was as casual as if he were saying, "We're having braised pork tonight," rather than discussing the fate of hundreds of lives.
"They're my performance credit."
Lin Xuan turned, the hem of his Marine coat cutting a sharp arc through the wind. "They're worth much more alive than as a pile of charcoal. Besides..."
He paused, his gaze crossing a hundred meters to lock precisely onto Krieg, who was trying to slip into the shadows of the cabin.
"I don't like people making noise when I'm about to eat."
The instant his words fell, Lin Xuan vanished from where he stood.
He had not relied on a Devil Fruit ability. Using nothing but the explosive power of his leg muscles to step on the air, he performed Flash Step.
The next second, a tremendous crash erupted over the wreckage of Krieg's battered flagship.
Atop the already teetering mainmast, Lin Xuan's figure alighted silently like a giant black eagle.
He stood on one foot on a crossbeam as thick as the mouth of a bowl, looking down on the panicked pirates on the deck below.
A shadow fell.
The pirates who had been frantically turning the winch froze.
Before you continue