Under a blazing sun.
The sea glittered with light.
A modest merchant vessel cut across the water.
Rocks’s ship.
This wasn’t his first time at sea, and despite his appearance he was no ordinary teenager of sixteen or seventeen.
Leaving home stirred up very little in him emotionally.
In his cabin.
Rocks was running experiments on his own abilities.
“Cero.”
He snapped his fingers.
A marble-sized ball of jade-green energy tore through the air with a crack and punched a shallow dent into the steel plate in front of him.
“A casual fingertip shot hits like a bullet.
Full power should hit at least as hard as a cannonball.”
Rocks flexed his fingers one by one, thinking through the Cero’s output.
This was an ability he’d only unlocked yesterday.
He needed to get a proper feel for it.
A quick test confirmed it was no joke.
He now had a ranged option.
“The Mythical Zoan, Black-Winged Hollow Demon hasn’t given me a beast form or a human-beast form.
What it gives me is a gradual mastery over Hollow abilities.”
“It’s not a standard Zoan.
It’s closer to the Nika fruit.
No physical transformation unless I reach Awakening.”
Seven years had passed since he’d eaten the Devil Fruit.
Rocks understood his own ability thoroughly by now.
His appearance wouldn’t change.
What changed was how much of the Hollow’s power he could access as his connection to the fruit deepened.
“Deepened” wasn’t quite the right word either.
More accurate to say: as the Hollow inside him grew stronger, more of that strength passed to Rocks.
There was a kind of balance between them.
“Kaido once said that Awakening happens when the mind and body can finally keep pace with the ability itself.”
Rocks absently worked his fingers, thinking it through.
“For me, that probably means the process of fully subduing the Hollow inside me.”
There were documented cases of Zoan users failing their Awakening.
The reason was always the same: the user wasn’t strong enough to subdue the beast inside the fruit.
Rocks’s situation with the Hollow was essentially identical.
“The only way to fully eliminate this threat is to Awaken my ability.
And the only way to reach Awakening is to become strong enough to completely subdue the Hollow.
My own strength is what matters most.”
Rocks exhaled slowly, eyes steady.
“Fighting strong opponents, real fights, is dangerous.
But it’s the fastest way to get stronger.”
At irregular intervals, the Hollow inside him launched attacks.
The battlefield wasn’t the physical world.
It was somewhere in his mind, his inner space.
When the Hollow came at him, Rocks had two ways to respond.
The first was to eat, feeding enough energy into his body to give the Hollow something to consume.
Appeasement.
Buy time.
The second was to meet the attack head-on.
Drive the Hollow back, and it would go quiet for a while.
In the beginning, suppressing the Hollow hadn’t been difficult.
But now Rocks could feel the pressure building.
The Hollow was getting stronger faster than he’d expected.
Lately, he’d been relying almost entirely on appeasement.
The result was predictable: the Hollow kept growing, and the threat it posed kept growing with it.
The disadvantages of the Hollow’s strength were starting to outweigh the advantages.
The balance between them was showing signs of breaking.
The sword of Damocles hanging over his head was inching closer.
This was the real reason he was setting sail.
Not to become Pirate King.
Not to inherit any legacy.
Just to deal with the threat living inside him.
“Eat first.
Build up more reserves, just in case.”
Having settled on his goal, Rocks stopped dwelling on it.
He got up and left the cabin, heading for food.
The Hollow had been appeased yesterday, but its next attack could come at any time.
He needed to stay prepared.
Thanks to the Black-Winged Hollow Demon fruit, Rocks could store the energy he consumed inside his body.
Even when it wasn’t being used to appease the Hollow, that stored energy enhanced his recovery, something like the Life Return technique from the Six Powers, though not identical.
Young as he looked, Rocks at seventeen was far from weak.
He just hadn’t had many real fights with other people.
Most of his actual combat experience had come from hunting dangerous beasts in the mountains.
He was genuinely curious how he’d stack up.
What level had he actually reached?
Who would he be able to go toe-to-toe with?
He figured he’d find out soon enough.
Even the East Blue, weakest of the seas, wasn’t exactly peaceful.
Several days later.
After stops at multiple islands, the merchant vessel finally arrived at the island where Shimotsuki Village sat.
The journey had been remarkably smooth.
No pirates, no storms.
So uneventful, in fact, that Rocks had started to wonder if he’d actually ended up in the One Piece world at all.
At the dock.
Rocks paid his fare and disembarked.
He set off in the direction of the Isshin Dojo, following the memory of a path he hadn’t walked in nearly three years.
The road hadn’t changed much.
Rocks was no green-haired directional disaster.
He wasn’t about to get lost.
“Hey.
It’s you.
What are you doing here?”
A voice came from his left.
Rocks turned and found a familiar green head staring at him.
“Oh.
Zoro.”
The green-haired figure was none other than Roronoa Zoro, future member of the Straw Hat Pirates and the man who would one day be called the Pirate Hunter.
Right now he was just a sixteen-year-old kid, green hair catching the sunlight, looking Rocks up and down.
“Why are you here?”
“Keeping a promise,” Rocks said.
“A promise?”
Zoro paused, then put it together.
“The one you made with Kuina?”
“Yeah.”
Rocks nodded, then asked: “Your house isn’t in this direction.
Don’t tell me you got lost again.”
“What?!
How could I possibly get lost?!”
Zoro’s face went red immediately.
“I’ve lived here for over ten years.
You think I don’t know my own village?”
“That’s not very convincing.”
The corner of Rocks’s mouth twitched.
If getting lost were a disease, Zoro had clearly reached the terminal stage.
Zoro said nothing.
This guy was just as infuriating as he remembered.
After a moment, Zoro continued: “I remember the terms of your promise with Kuina: whoever wins calls the shots.
Swordsmanship only.” He paused.
“Your swordsmanship is…
well…”
He stopped himself.
Rocks’s swordsmanship had left a strong impression on him.
Just not the kind of impression that was easy to describe politely.
Zoro changed direction.
“Kuina is genuinely strong.
In a pure swordsmanship match, you don’t stand a chance against her.”
“How many times have you lost to her since I left?”
Rocks looked at him sidelong, genuinely curious.
“I’m pretty sure when I left your record against her was zero wins and two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine losses.
You past four thousand yet?”
Zoro had nothing to say.
This guy was exactly as infuriating as he remembered.
Two seconds back together and he was already poking at the sorest spot he had.