Grand Line — Sabaody Archipelago
Tenjin moved fast.
The roots of the giant mangroves stretched overhead and underfoot like the ribs of some living world, twisting the pathways of Sabaody into a maze of light, shadow, shops, broken roads, hidden alleys, lawless plazas, and sudden drops. Bubbles drifted through the air in slow, weightless silence, catching the sunlight and making the whole archipelago look gentler than it really was.
It was not gentle.
Not today.
Everywhere Tenjin ran, there was panic. Pirates shouting. Civilians fleeing. Rumors bouncing from one grove to another like sparks in dry grass.
An Admiral is coming.
That was the fear gripping the island.
Tenjin, however, was not interested in the fear.
He was interested in one pirate.
Straw Hat.
He landed at the edge of another ruined section of the archipelago, boots skidding slightly over fractured stone and mangrove roots that had forced their way up through the ground. He straightened and looked ahead—
Then stopped.
Because a familiar face was there.
No.
Two.
No—
Four.
Trafalgar Law stood at the center of the ruined path with Kikoku resting low in one hand, his spotted hat shadowing calm, narrow eyes. Near him stood Eustass Kid, red-haired, broad-shouldered, wild-eyed, with metal already beginning to rattle and tremble around him from the debris scattered everywhere. Beside Kid stood Killer, masked as always, lean and quiet, twin Punishers hanging ready in his hands.
And slightly behind Law—
Hakugan.
Tenjin's eyes rested there first.
Then returned to Law.
A slow smile spread across his face.
"Well," he said, voice carrying lightly through the wrecked grove, "I really can't believe it."
Law's eyes sharpened.
Tenjin kept walking.
"You've grown this much since the last time we met."
Hakugan let out the smallest breath.
"Tenny…"
The old nickname made Kid glance sharply at him.
Law did not look away from Tenjin.
"You know him?" Kid asked, tone already edged with irritation.
Hakugan nodded once. "Yeah."
Tenjin stopped a few paces away, coat resting over his shoulders, the same smug smile still on his face.
Then he looked from Law to Hakugan.
"This time," he said, "I won't hold back."
Law's fingers tightened slightly on Kikoku.
Kid's grin, on the other hand, spread wider.
"Oh?" he said. "So you're that Marine freak from the paper."
Tenjin didn't look at him.
Kid's smile thinned immediately.
"That's pretty damn rude," he said.
Killer tilted his head just slightly, eyes hidden behind his mask.
"This doesn't feel like a simple reunion."
"No," Law said calmly. "It doesn't."
Then his eyes narrowed.
"ROOM."
A spherical field bloomed outward at once, swallowing the entire shattered street in a humming blue space.
Tenjin's smile deepened.
"There it is."
The ground exploded.
Kid moved first.
Metal from broken stalls, shattered weapons, bent signage, and old fittings all shot toward him, slamming together in a chaotic storm until his right arm became a monstrous mass of steel and iron large enough to crush a house.
He came in roaring.
"Move, Marine!"
Kid's giant metal arm swung with enough force to smash through the wall of a nearby building and send fragments of stone and root flying through the air.
Tenjin didn't move.
The blow passed through him.
Through bark.
Through leaves.
Through a body that scattered into a burst of living wood and reformed a step to the side.
Kid's eyes widened.
"What—?!"
"Logia," Tenjin said lightly.
Then roots burst from the ground under Kid's feet.
They snapped around his legs, around the base of the giant metal arm, and jerked violently sideways. Kid cursed as his balance was taken for one fatal second—
—and Killer came in at once to fix it.
Fast.
Clean.
He moved like a trained killer should: no wasted motion, no flashy warning, no unnecessary noise. His spinning blades carved twin arcs toward Tenjin's ribs and neck, the air itself whining under the speed.
Tenjin leaned back from the first.
The second cut through his shoulder—
And passed harmlessly through it.
Killer's masked face tilted just a fraction.
Tenjin drove a bark-hardened elbow straight into his stomach and sent him flying backward across the stone.
Law was already moving.
"Shambles."
Tenjin's eyes flicked sideways.
Kid disappeared from the roots and reappeared on the roof of a broken structure, free of the restraint in an instant. At the same time, a mass of broken stone swapped places with empty air above Tenjin and dropped hard toward his head.
Tenjin's body opened into leaves and wooden strands again, the falling debris passing straight through him before he reformed.
Law clicked his tongue.
Of course.
Tenjin didn't wait.
He slammed one foot down.
"Bokarin."
A forest erupted.
That was the only way to describe it.
Wood burst from the fractured street in thick violent columns, not just roots now but actual trunks and heavy branching growths that rose and spread in every direction. The ruined grove became crowded in an instant, the battlefield transformed into a maze of snapping bark and living pillars that reached upward like the sudden birth of a wild, angry forest.
Kid swore as the nearest trunk exploded up through the roof he was standing on.
He leapt to another surface.
Law moved with him, ROOM shifting to maintain control over the changing battlefield.
Killer landed low, boots sliding.
Hakugan was already retreating from the center line, smart enough to know what happened if he stayed where Tenjin wanted him.
Good.
Tenjin had no intention of going easy on him either.
Kid attacked again.
This time he came from above, metal screaming as it warped and gathered around him, the giant construct on his arm becoming broader, uglier, heavier.
He punched downward.
Tenjin looked up.
Then raised one hand.
"Kinniku Mori Mori."
The wood around his arm surged, thickening and spiraling over muscle and bone until his forearm became a massive hardened limb of bark and trunk. He met Kid's descending metal fist head-on.
The impact detonated through the grove.
Wood splintered.
Metal bent.
The shockwave shattered windows in the nearest buildings and sent loose debris flying.
Kid landed and skidded back, boots carving trenches through the ground.
Then he grinned.
Now that was a real grin.
Violent. Excited.
"Good," Kid said. "Now you're fun."
Tenjin gave him a look that said he had not earned familiarity.
Law struck then.
With precision.
He appeared behind Tenjin in a flicker of spatial distortion, blade already moving.
"Counter Shock."
Electricity exploded from Law's hand into Tenjin's side.
The current ripped through wood and flesh both, blowing Tenjin partly apart into charred bark and sending him stumbling hard across the ground. Law's eyes sharpened immediately.
That had done something.
Tenjin caught himself with one hand.
Smoke rose from his side.
He looked down once.
Then back up.
And smiled.
That smile made Hakugan's stomach tighten.
'This is bad,' he thought.
Because that was not a smile of frustration.
That was a smile of a man finally starting to enjoy himself.
Tenjin moved.
He blurred through the forest he himself had created, not just running across the ground but using roots and branches as stepping points, changing direction mid-motion, vanishing behind trunks and reappearing from impossible angles.
Kid swung.
Missed.
Killer spun, blades cutting in a deadly circular defense.
Too slow.
Tenjin's root-covered fist slammed into his shoulder and sent him crashing through a tree trunk of living wood.
Law's ROOM shifted again.
Tenjin vanished—
And reappeared three paces to the left, his body swapped with a chunk of rubble before Law's trap could fully close around him.
Law's eyes narrowed sharply.
"He's adapting."
Kid clicked his tongue. "Then stop letting him."
Tenjin heard that.
And laughed.
Only once.
Then the roots came again.
Not upward this time.
Sideways.
From every trunk in the grove, heavy root-limbs lashed out at once, turning the entire battlefield into a cage of motion and impact. Kid smashed through three, got caught by two more, ripped free, and then got hit in the side by a thick bark limb that sent him slamming across the street and through a wall.
Killer cut down what he could.
But there were too many.
Too fast.
Tenjin's Devil Fruit was not merely strong here.
It was absolute.
This place had become his.
Law appeared above Tenjin with Kikoku descending in a clean two-handed strike meant to split him down the center.
Tenjin looked up.
"Mori Mori: Wood Wall."
A slab of bark and trunk rose instantly between them, thick as a fortress gate. Law's blade cut into it but did not go through.
And in that same second, roots burst up around Law's legs, waist, and sword arm.
Law's eyes widened.
"Killer!"
Killer moved.
So did Hakugan.
To free Law.
Kid came back in from the side with brute force, metal arm obliterating two full trunks as he smashed through the forest and created exactly enough opening for Killer to cut Law loose.
That one instant of teamwork saved them.
Tenjin watched it happen.
And approved, in the abstract.
Then he punished it.
A giant wooden fist erupted from the ground beneath Kid and launched him upward.
Another trunk slammed into Killer from the side and sent him tumbling.
Law reappeared beside Hakugan and shoved him back just as roots impaled the ground where he had been standing.
The whole grove had become destruction.
And still Tenjin advanced.
He walked now.
No rush.
No wasted motion.
Every step brought new life crawling over ruined stone behind him.
His coat moved in the breeze.
His smile had faded into something calmer.
More certain.
Kid wiped blood from his mouth and glared.
Law was breathing harder now.
Killer had lost some of his smoothness.
Hakugan looked grim.
Tenjin had broken the pace of the battle and made them respond to him at every turn.
Then Tenjin's eyes settled on Hakugan.
"You've gotten stronger too," he said.
Hakugan didn't answer.
Tenjin's expression cooled.
"But not enough."
The roots beneath them shifted again.
Law saw it.
Saw the next wave forming.
And understood before the others did.
"Shambles!"
The world twisted.
Tenjin's final strike came down in a crushing spread of trunk and roots that obliterated the section of battlefield they had been standing on—
—but all four pirates were gone.
The attack shattered stone, split roots, crushed debris, and left only a wreck behind.
Tenjin stood still for a moment.
Then clicked his tongue.
"Of course."
Teleportation.
A deeply irritating ability.
He looked over the ruined grove one last time.
Kid, Law, Killer, and Hakugan had escaped.
Tenjin let out a slow breath through his nose.
Then his eyes sharpened again.
Straw Hat.
Right.
That was still the actual objective.
He moved.
Fast.
---
The next grove over was louder.
Much louder.
Tenjin reached it just in time to see the Straw Hat crew in the middle of a hard fight against a Pacifista.
The cyborg loomed over them, damaged but still standing, its mechanical body smoking in places from repeated attacks. The Straw Hats were spread around it in varying states of fatigue and aggression. Luffy was breathing hard. Zoro and Sanji looked battered. The others had clearly already given more than they wanted to.
Tenjin landed at the edge of the clearing.
He took in the scene once.
And immediately got irritated.
The Pacifista turned toward him, its mouth beginning to glow with the charge of an incoming laser.
Tenjin didn't even pause.
He came in from the side, one arm thickening instantly with wood and bark, roots crawling up from the ground to reinforce the blow.
Then he smashed the Pacifista.
One hit.
A brutal, crushing strike straight through its torso that caved in its armor, shattered its frame, and sent the entire machine folding in on itself before exploding apart in a spray of broken metal and ruined circuitry.
The remains crashed across the mangrove roots and smoked.
Tenjin lowered his arm.
Then looked past the wreckage toward the Straw Hats.
And said, with open annoyance—
"Get out of my way."
---
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