Chapter 589
"Shiki...!" Garp’s laugh rolled through the shattered sky like thunder. "You bastard! Get down here and let me crush that little skull of yours!"
His voice echoed across the remains of Water 7. The once-proud island looked as if the apocalypse itself had brushed against it—buildings split, harbors torn apart, the sea still boiling from the impact that had erased a continent. Even with three hundred thousand Marines deployed, the invasion had become chaos. Only fragments of Kaido’s and Scarlett’s forces had actually reached the island; the rest had been swallowed by the storm that Shiki and the Marines had created.
Garp took a slow breath, scanning the horizon. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the Golden Lion’s airborne galleon, still hovering defiantly above the carnage.
"Heh. Still flyin’, eh? Should’ve hit you harder."
He grinned, though deep down he knew how close they had come. A single minute later and the entire Marine force would have been sleeping beneath the waves. He flexed his fists, cracked a grin—and then blinked.
"...Hmm. I’m sure I forgot something."
For a long beat, he frowned, trying to recall. Then he shrugged.
"Ah well. Must not have been important."
His attention was already drawn toward the horizon, where a tremor rolled across the sea—a Haki signature so enormous that even Garp’s grin faltered. He knew that presence.
"Tch. That quake-wielding troublemaker... Whitebeard. Just what I need."
Far away, on a battered pirate galleon, silence reigned. The crew stood rigid, eyes wide, still unable to comprehend that they were alive. For a full minute they hadn’t breathed, certain the world had ended. Even now, their bodies shook from the memory of that impossible power—the Haki that had rolled over them like a tidal wave, knocking most of the crew unconscious.
The captain, a scarred man with a bounty of four hundred million, was the first to move. He stared at the horizon where the explosion had vanished, then down at his trembling hands.
"Retreat," he rasped. "All sails. Full retreat."
His first mate blinked. "Captain?"
"You heard me! Turn her around! Get us as far from that monster as possible!"
He spat the words with sudden clarity. The greed that had dragged them here—the dreams of ancient weapons, of impossible treasure—drained away. Compared to what he had just witnessed, all of it felt childish.
He had seen the New World. He had faced cadres from the emperor’s crews. But this? This was the power of a man who made the sea itself bow. And across the waters, other ships came to the same conclusion. The order spread like a shared instinct: run.
"Arara..." The voice came softly from within the cracked cabin of the pirate ship, cutting through the panic like the whisper of a storm.
The pirates froze. From the shadows stepped a tall man, his breath misting, his expression equal parts tired and annoyed. His shirt was torn, his hair tousled from impact. He rubbed the back of his neck, muttering.
"For a moment there, I thought I was actually gonna die..."
He stepped into the light, and the crew’s faces drained of color. Even battered, even coatless, everyone knew that figure—the cold gaze, the trail of frost at his feet.
"Th-that’s the new Marine Admiral..." someone stammered.
Kuzan glanced lazily toward them. A bullet cracked from somewhere in the crew’s panic and pierced harmlessly through his temple; ice crystals danced where the wound should’ve been. He sighed, more weary than angry, and rolled his shoulders until his spine popped.
"Yare yare... my mood’s already foul."
"Next time Garp says ’hang on tight’, I’m refusing. Getting tossed like a cannonball into a nest of pirates? Never again."
Only now did the pirates realize something they had overlooked in their panic. Just before the Marine Hero’s punch had obliterated everything in its path, a massive projectile had crashed into their ship, tearing through half the cabins. At the time, they had been too shocked and terrified to make sense of it. But now, as the haze of fear began to fade, the truth became clear—
that "projectile" hadn’t been debris at all. It had been this Marine Admiral who had crash-landed onto their ship.
When Garp had charged to obliterate the continent, he had been carrying Kuzan and Bogard—and in the last heartbeat before his strike, he had thrown them clear to keep them from the blast. Clear... straight into enemy waters.
Kuzan exhaled, letting the last of his patience drift away with the wind. His eyes glowed faintly blue, and frost began to creep outward from his boots, crawling over the deck like living veins.
"I said I’m in a bad mood..."
The temperature plummeted. Masts groaned; sails stiffened. The ocean around them shimmered, then solidified in an instant. In the distance, other retreating ships slowed, their hulls caught as the freezing spread outward like a breath from the underworld.
"Ice Age."
The whisper was gentle, but the effect was absolute. Within seconds, miles of ocean turned to a glassy expanse of ice. The pirates stood frozen in place—not trapped, but paralyzed by awe—watching as frost glazed the horizon. The air sparkled in silence.
Kuzan stretched, arms over his head, a faint smirk touching his lips.
"That should quiet things down a bit."
He looked toward the far-off silhouette of Garp, still visible above the ruined skyline, and shook his head with a mix of admiration and exasperation.
"Old man... you never change."
It wasn’t just Kuzan who was in a foul mood. Somewhere amid the frozen labyrinth of shattered ships and drifting icebergs, another man was very displeased—though unlike Kuzan, he didn’t show it with words.
Bogard, vice admiral of the Marines, stood silently on the deck of a pirate galleon that had long since forgotten how to float straight. The brim of his hat cast a shadow across his eyes, the sea breeze brushing his coat aside. His usual calm was nowhere to be found—replaced by a quiet, simmering irritation that made the air itself feel tense. He exhaled slowly, gloved fingers brushing the hilt of his sword.
Bogard knew there was no getting justice from Garp—that much experience had taught him. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t vent his frustration on something else. And right now, there were far too many pirate ships cluttering his horizon.
A sharp metallic whisper broke the stillness as he drew his blade. The steel caught the faint light of the burning debris of the broken ships, gleaming like a living thing. The pirates surrounding him stiffened. They had seen Haki users. They had even seen sword masters. But something in that quiet draw—the utter lack of sound afterward—made their instincts scream, "Run."
No one moved in time. Bogard’s arm blurred. The sword sang once — a single horizontal stroke that rippled through the sea like a divine chord. For a heartbeat, everything was still. Then, the horizon broke apart.
Nearly a dozen war galleons, each hundreds of meters apart, split cleanly in two, severed along the same line. Masts toppled in eerie synchronization, decks sliding off each other as seawater and timber rained into the deep. The very air seemed sliced — the wind lagging behind the motion.
The ship beneath Bogard groaned, the deck splintering under the backlash of his own attack. With a calm step forward, he vanished, a blur of speed and white foam as he launched himself into the air with Soru, the sea itself his dance floor.
Each flash of movement was followed by another arc of light — one swing, one ship.
The pirates didn’t even have time to scream. They could only watch as the silent swordsman danced across the frozen waves, cutting their escape routes to ribbons. Every motion was deliberate, measured — graceful destruction.
Far off, a few Marine ships that had survived the chaos watched in open disbelief. One ensign’s jaw went slack. "I-Is that... Vice Admiral Bogard? He’s— he’s cutting entire ships in half!"
Another sailor swallowed audibly. "I didn’t even see him swing..."
Bogard’s boots kissed the surface of the sea again, the water barely rippling under his step. He sheathed his sword with a sharp click, and only then did the last of the pirate ships he had cut collapse, as though time itself had waited for his gesture to finish.
A gust of wind swept past, carrying splinters, salt, and silence. He took a slow breath, eyes scanning the horizon until they found the faint silhouette of Garp, still laughing somewhere in the distance like a force of nature given human form. Bogard pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering to himself.
"I definitely need a long vacation...!"
****
More than a hundred miles away from Water 7 — from the storm that now held the world’s collective breath — a lone galleon drifted upon an eerily calm patch of sea. The ship’s black sails hung heavy, unruffled by the distant winds of chaos. Yet the ocean beneath it trembled, a dark mirror quaking with the aftershocks of Garp’s cataclysmic strike.
Without warning, the horizon lifted—a titanic tsunami, an aftershock of the Marine Hero’s attack, reared like a mountain range of water, its shadow swallowing the light of the night sky. The wave surged toward the galleon, large enough to erase the ship and everything upon it.
But the man seated upon the figurehead did not move.
He sat casually, one leg resting over the other, his cloak snapping once in the rising wind. His eyes—sharp, unblinking, ancient—never left the direction of Water 7. The only sign of acknowledgment came from his hand as he raised a gleaming saber, its edge dark with condensed Haki.
With a motion so effortless it seemed lazy, he swung.
A thunderclap followed—not from the air but from the sea itself. The flying slash split the oncoming tsunami clean down its center, the two halves parting around the ship like curtains drawn back by an unseen hand. For a moment, the ocean obeyed him. The water sheared into walls on either side, towering but harmless, before collapsing behind the galleon in a distant roar.
Rocks D. Xebec didn’t even glance at it.
His gaze remained locked on the faraway glimmer of destruction that was Water 7. The reflection of Garp’s Galaxy Impact still danced in his pupils—a light born of chaos and impossible will.
"Hmph... the old dog still bites." Rocks murmured, voice a low rumble beneath the wind.
Originally, he had intended to exploit the uproar—to slink through the shadows of global attention and capture one of his intended targets. But now, with Garp’s arrival, that plan was as good as ash. To move under the eye of the Marine Hero would be suicide for anyone seeking secrecy.
And secrecy, above all else, was the one thing Rocks required. The world believed him long dead—buried beneath God Valley, erased from memory and history alike. It was a lie he had carefully cultivated, a silence he would not yet break. The time for revelation had not come. Not yet. Still, even the ghosts of legends could be stirred by the echoes of war.
Behind him, a low, manic chuckle rolled across the deck.
"Mamamama! Tell me, Xebec," came the voice of Charlotte Linlin, hands planted on her hips, her towering figure framed against the endless sky. "Are we really just going to sit here and watch? Don’t tell me that one little punch has you all shaken up!"
Her laughter rang out again, booming, brash — but beneath the mirth, her eyes burned with restless hunger. Even a hundred miles away, the shockwave of Garp’s attack had made her heart race. The vibration had crawled up her spine like lightning, awakening that old itch she could never quite bury—the urge to fight.
"You feel that, don’t you?" She continued, goading him, voice curling with challenge. "That’s the kind of power that splits the world open! Wouldn’t it be fun to test it again? You and him—the Hero and the Monster—one more round, eh?"
She was baiting him, and they both knew it. Every word was a taunt dressed as laughter. Because she had learned something during her captivity under Rocks’s dominion. The more energy he expended—the more rage, will, and power he unleashed—the weaker the chains that bound her became.
If he fought Garp, if he truly unleashed himself... perhaps she could slip free.
"Come now, Xebec," she purred. "Surely you’re not hiding from an old Marine fossil? Or did that one punch make the great Rocks D. Xebec nervous?"
Rocks turned his head. Slowly.
The temperature on the ship seemed to drop as his gaze met hers. His eyes were voids of malice and pressure, like black holes drawing in light itself. For a heartbeat, Linlin felt that crushing gravity again—the same suffocating dread she’d known decades ago under his command. The sheer presence of the man was enough to still her tongue.
He didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t need to.
"Careful, Linlin," he said softly, almost kindly—and yet every word pressed on her bones like a weight. "The last time you mistook my silence for weakness... you lost your soul to me."
Her grin faltered, ever so slightly. The mirth in her eyes dimmed as she remembered the invisible chains that tethered her existence to him—the price of her rebirth and immortality. She clicked her tongue and turned away with a forced chuckle.
"Tch... fine. Sit and brood then. But don’t blame me if the world forgets your name while you hide behind the horizon."
Rocks didn’t reply. His focus had already drifted back toward the distant storm. The sea groaned beneath his ship, still trembling from the shockwave of Garp’s might. For the first time in decades, Rocks felt something other than contempt for the world. He felt interest.
The Marine Hero—the man who had once stood against him and the monsters of God Valley—was still alive, still breaking the sky with his fists.
"Heh... Garp," Rocks whispered, a smirk tugging at his lips. "You still know how to make the world tremble. But when I rise again... it won’t be the world that trembles. It’ll be the heavens themselves."
The words were swallowed by the wind, but the intent behind them rippled across the waves like a prophecy. Far behind him, Linlin’s laughter resumed—loud and mocking, though tinged now with unease. The galleon cut quietly across the horizon, leaving only the silence of titans yet to wake.
And somewhere in the distance, beneath the shattered remnants of Water 7’s skyline, Garp still laughed, unaware that a ghost from the age of monsters had been watching him—waiting for the moment when the world would be ready to remember the name Rocks D. Xebec once more.
****
Mary Geoise, Red Line
While the world’s gaze was fixed upon Water 7—upon gods clashing and continents falling—far away, hidden beneath the storm-soaked heavens of Mary Geoise, a lone figure moved silently through the shadows.
Each step was deliberate and measured; the sound of thunder was his cover, and the rain his cloak. Fisher Tiger—the man who had once scaled the Red Line with his bare hands—now crept like a phantom through the heart of the Holy Land itself.
He followed the map in his rough, calloused hand—a map given to him by a Celestial Dragon. Even now, the thought made his stomach twist. Trusting one of those monsters went against every drop of blood in his veins. He had half-expected it to be a cruel joke, another test of his kind’s worthlessness—a map that would lead him straight into the jaws of his captors.
But as he passed checkpoint after checkpoint unnoticed, slipping through blind corners, under flickering lanterns, and between patrols that never turned his way, that doubt began to waver.
Could it be that the Celestial truly meant to help him?
No. Tiger shook the thought away. There were no good Celestial Dragons. But perhaps, just this once, their corruption had turned inward, and one of them had grown tired of their own chains.
Lightning cracked across the sky, bathing the alabaster towers in ghostly white for a heartbeat.
Tiger froze beneath an archway, every muscle coiled tight. He didn’t dare even breathe. A squad of armored guards trudged past, their boots sloshing through puddles, their laughter loud against the storm.
When they vanished down the corridor, Tiger exhaled—a single, controlled breath that steamed in the cold air. His heart hammered, not from fear, but from the knowledge that he was close. So close.
Minutes—or hours—blurred together as he climbed narrow stairways, crawled through forgotten canals, and crossed courtyards where the statues of long-dead Celestial dragons from different families loomed like gods watching from the dark.
Then, finally, he saw it.
Through the curtain of rain and shadow stood the Main Gate of the Confinement Sector—the beating heart of this hell. A vast, fortress-like wall of steel and seastone, engraved with holy insignias of the world government that mocked every soul trapped behind it. Beyond those gates were tens of thousands—men, women, and children—slaves from every corner of the world, stripped of name and dignity, their spirits crushed under the divine boot of the so-called gods.
And once... Fisher Tiger had been one of them.
His hands clenched around the wet handle of his blade as the memories clawed at him—the pain, the chains, the laughter of his masters. He remembered how he’d escaped only because another man’s rebellion—the chaos caused by Donquixote Doflamingo—had torn open a crack in the walls. Through that crack, Tiger had crawled, broken and bloodied, into freedom.
Now, he stood before the same gate again. Only this time, he wasn’t here to flee. He was here to open it.
Tiger crouched low behind a tree toppled by the raging storm, eyes scanning the gate’s perimeter. Half a dozen guards stood watch—tall, armored, spears lazily leaning at their sides, their posture betraying arrogance rather than vigilance. To them, this was the safest place in the world. Who would dare storm the Holy Land?
The storm answered that question with a flash of lightning that lit up Tiger’s face—eyes sharp, resolve unbreakable. He touched the satchel at his side—the same one that the celestial dragon had given him, along with this mission and promise. Until now, he had avoided bloodshed so as to not attract the attention of the soldiers, slipping through like a whisper. But this was the final wall.
There was no slipping past this, not without shattering their illusion first. He steadied his breathing. One exhale. Two. Then, like the sea itself awakening, he moved.
The first guard barely had time to look up. A blur of crimson skin and scarred muscle crashed into him, knocking the air from his lungs. Tiger’s palm struck the man’s chest with such precision that the armor dented inward with a muted clang. Before the others could react, Tiger was already gone—sliding through the storm like a current.
His blade flashed once, its blade glinting under lightning. Two more guards fell—not killed, but silenced, their weapons scattering into the mud. The remaining sentries shouted, spears and rifles rising, but the storm swallowed their voices.
Then came the thunderclap—not from the sky, but from Tiger himself.
"Gyojin Karate—Sea Current Break!"
He slammed his palm into the puddled ground. The rainwater exploded outward like a tidal wave, crashing into the guards and hurling them into the gate’s steel frame. The impact rang across the courtyard, a sound like the earth itself splitting open. When the water fell away, silence returned—the kind that comes before history repeats itself.
Tiger stood before the colossal gate, steam rising from his shoulders, water dripping from his fists. For a long moment, he simply stared. He remembered the screams inside. The fear. The children who had whispered songs in the dark to keep themselves sane. He whispered back now—a promise to ghosts.
"I escaped through someone else’s chaos," he said softly. "Tonight, I’ll give you all the same chance."
He reached into his satchel and withdrew a bundle of explosives, each wrapped carefully, their fuses protected from the rain. He began placing them with practiced precision—along the hinges, beneath the reinforcement beams, at the lock itself. Each one clicked softly into place, the rhythm of liberation.
Lightning struck again, and in its flash, the fisherman’s face hardened with resolve. When he was done, he stepped back, looked once more at the gate that had imprisoned him, and closed his eyes.
"For every soul still chained..." he murmured, striking the fuse. The fire hissed to life, a small spark against the storm.
"...let the world remember—Fisher Tiger opened the gates of heaven."
The explosion tore through the silence, a sound so deafening it drowned even the thunder. The Gate of Confinement—that sacred fortress of tyranny—crumbled. And in the wake of its fall, thousands of eyes blinked into the rain, seeing freedom for the first time.
The deafening blast tore through the Holy Land like the roar of a vengeful sea god. The shockwave rippled across marble courtyards and ivory towers, shattering windows, toppling statues, and sending armored guards sprawling to the ground.
But Fisher Tiger didn’t stay to admire his work. He couldn’t, he did not have the luxury of time now that the entire Holy Land was roused. Freedom was a fleeting tide—and he had to make sure it carried everyone it could before the heavens struck back.
He turned on his heel, body low, the rain slashing across his face as he sprinted toward the inner walls. The plan was simple—blow the other gates, scatter the defenses, and unleash chaos wide enough for the slaves to slip through. Every second mattered.
Then, just as he crossed the first courtyard, it happened. A second explosion—louder, deeper—thundered behind him. Then another. And another.
Tiger skidded to a halt, eyes snapping wide as a shockwave slammed into his back, hurling debris past him. He turned just in time to see columns of fire erupting one after another across the prison fortress—from towers, from walls, and from beneath the very courtyards themselves.
The night that had been black and storm-torn suddenly blazed crimson.
"What... what in the seas—!?" he muttered, disbelief cracking his voice.
He had only planted one charge. One. And yet now, it looked as if the entire underbelly of Mary Geoise had been rigged to blow.
The ground beneath his feet trembled like a living thing. Seastone walls split apart, iron bars bent outward, and the sacred engravings of the World Government crumbled beneath the fury of the flames. Alarms wailed across the Holy Land, overlapping in shrill panic. Soldiers screamed orders that no one could hear over the cacophony.
Tiger could only stare, momentarily frozen, as firelight danced across his face. His chest heaved, heart pounding in disbelief.
"No... this—this isn’t mine..."
His words were drowned by the next detonation. A massive tower near the main courtyard—once used to oversee slave processing—imploded as if struck by divine retribution. A storm of rubble and molten stone crashed down, and through the chaos, the reinforced gates of another holding block blew outward, their hinges howling like tortured metal.
The slaves inside screamed—but it wasn’t fear anymore. It was the sound of realization. Of hope. One explosion became ten. Ten became fifty. And then the unthinkable happened—the ground split apart, and a tide of light burst upward, like the world itself was rebelling.
Tiger stumbled back, shielding his face from the heat, mind racing. Had the Celestial Dragon, who gave him the map... planned this? Had someone else—another hand in the shadows—decided that tonight, the heavens would burn?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the walls were falling. The chains were breaking. And the Holy Land was bleeding once more.
He forced his feet to move, sprinting again through the smoke and fire, his powerful frame cutting through the chaos. Each breath burned in his lungs, but he didn’t care. For the first time in his life, the sound of explosions meant freedom—not despair.