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One face belonged to the present, young and tanned wheat-brown by the sun; the other came from deep within memory, paler, its eyes holding too many embers left after witnessing lava and blood.
They shared this body, conducting a debate atop this platform that no one else could witness.
Without "him"
-the man who should have sunk into the deep sea, yet had unexpectedly stirred up an even greater whirlpool-the world might truly have followed the script of the departed Pirate King: countless ships gnawing at the Grand Line like locusts, stumbling through collisions and blood upon a buried, monumental name-that lost nation, the shadow perched atop the Red Line, and the... name seated within that shadow.
Then some symbol from the prophecy would arrive on schedule to perform the final erasing and writing.
"I don't believe in fate."
The words struck the wooden platform, not loudly, yet even the wind slipping through its cracks seemed to pause.
"So I didn't go looking for that 'one-of-a-kind One Piece.'
I took my people straight to the highest point on that continent."
He paused, pressing his tongue against his palate, as though he could still taste that day's air, mingled with gun smoke and dust. "History is carved out by people, not stamped down by fate.
Even now, thrown up above these clouds, I have no intention of letting go of my blade."
Whoosh-
His thoughts were torn apart.
His body moved first.
A faint crackle of electricity passed through the air, his view abruptly rose, and the smell of rotten planks rushed into his face.
He was already standing atop the Execution Platform.
Beneath his feet were somewhat weathered boards, once steeped in the beginning of an era.
He turned around.
The wind tousled his short black hair, and his