Chapter 439 - 90
Shaxia's face went pale the moment she saw the island begin to fall.
Beside her, little Elsa's color drained away entirely.
Throughout the Undying City, the same thing was happening to everyone. Expressions of disbelief, of horror, of absolute despair spread through the streets like a wave.
"This can't be happening."
"Is this the end of the world?"
"There's no way this is real."
"Is there anything anyone can do?"
It was an island. Not a boulder, not a warship. An island, only marginally smaller than the Sabaody Archipelago itself. If it came down, there would be nothing left.
"Are they actually trying to destroy the entire archipelago?" one Supernova captain said, staring upward after cutting down a rare beast that had been charging at him. "Something that size can't be broken apart in time. If it hits, everything is gone. All of us with it."
"We can't even run anymore. There's no time." A pirate sank to his knees on the ground, all fight gone out of him.
"I said we should have left. I said it."
"The wind pressure alone is making it hard to breathe. What chance does anyone have against something like that?"
The island hadn't touched the ground yet, but the displaced air rushing ahead of its descent was already enough to bend people at the waist. If it landed, the destruction wouldn't stop at the city. The archipelago itself might not survive. And even if the land somehow held together, nothing living on it stood a chance.
Up above, Enel's expression shifted for the first time. A flash of genuine annoyance crossed his face.
He had gotten careless. He knew it immediately, and knowing it didn't help. The island was too massive. Stopping its descent wasn't something he could do in an instant. He could kill Scarlett quickly enough, but a dead Scarlett couldn't cancel the fall. Destroying the island was possible, but even for him it would take a moment of preparation that he no longer had. He had wanted to put on a proper display, draw things out, and now because of that the situation had become genuinely difficult.
He was already calculating his next move when a voice cut through the noise, calm and completely unhurried.
"It's fine. Don't worry."
Rosinante had his hand resting gently on top of Elsa's head, and he was smiling at her.
Something about that smile reached her before her mind could. The fear that had been gripping her chest loosened without her understanding why.
"I did say this city was going to be our home," Rosinante continued, tilting his head back to look up at the falling island with an expression of mild reproach. "We're supposed to be taking care of it. I'm not going to let you wreck our house."
Then he was gone from beside her.
Elsa blinked. Her father had reappeared beneath the falling island, standing directly in its path.
"Papa!" she cried out, her voice breaking.
"Gravity, be silent."
Rosinante raised one hand, palm open toward the descending mass of rock and earth above him, and pushed.
The island stopped.
The silence that followed was absolute. Every person on the archipelago, pirate, civilian, rare beast and Oathblood Guard alike, stared at what they were seeing and could not make sense of it.
Rosinante was holding up an island with one hand.
"Is that something a human being can actually do?" a Supernova managed.
It had been falling under its own enormous weight, carrying enough force to flatten everything for miles, and he had caught it with an open palm as though bracing a door that was closing too fast.
"Even for the Dragon King, this is unreasonable," a lone bounty hunter said, his voice barely audible.
"So that's the Dragon King Rosinante. He really is something monstrous."
"Mama, Papa caught the island!" Elsa's voice had flipped entirely from terror to pure, delighted astonishment.
"He did," Shaxia said, and there was a warmth in her voice that no amount of shock could suppress. "There are things in this world that only he can do."
The city erupted.
"He stopped it! The Dragon King stopped it!"
"We're saved! Dragon King! Dragon King!"
The cheering rolled out across the city and the archipelago in a spreading wave, civilian voices climbing over each other in relief and joy.
Even the Navy garrison holding position nearby let out a collective breath.
"He's moved. I think this is almost over."
Up on his floating stone platform, Indigo was already recalculating.
"He caught it. But that's exactly what we needed. Scarlett, now! He can't move while he's holding that thing. Go!"
"Kichi kichi kichi!" Scarlett launched himself off the edge of the island and plunged downward toward Rosinante, closing the distance fast.
"Ara ara. His Majesty has entered the field." Enel watched Scarlett's dive without moving to intercept. He folded his arms and stayed where he was, wearing the expression of a man settling in to observe. If Rosinante had decided to handle this personally, there was nothing left for Enel to do. He knew better than to get in the way.
Rosinante looked up at Scarlett coming down at him.
"This is not a place where you get to throw your weight around."
The hand that had been holding the island open-palmed closed into a grip. Rosinante's fingers curled around the stone and earth as though taking hold of something that weighed no more than a piece of luggage, and then he swung it.
He threw the island at Scarlett.
Scarlett, the King of the Rare Beasts, a creature that had eaten a Devil Fruit and survived sixty million volts of lightning and beaten his chest in triumph, froze completely. His eyes went wide and then wider. His brain, which was not operating at its sharpest, arrived at a single coherent thought.
That was an island. Not a weapon. Not a projectile. An island. People did not throw islands at other people.
Every living soul on the archipelago had the same reaction. Mouths open, eyes unblinking, the capacity for normal thought temporarily suspended.
The island hit Scarlett with a sound that shook the sky.