Chapter 32: Thunder and Hammer

Jasmine pushed the heavy canvas flap of the command tent aside, stepping out into the bright afternoon sun.

Her eyes were still a little red, but for the first time since I had found her, her face was completely relaxed.

A massive, genuine smile stretched across her cheeks.

I stepped out right behind her, my hands stuffed into my pockets, feeling lighter than I had in a year and a half.

Waiting for us in the courtyard, standing rigidly at attention in a perfectly straight line, was Jasmine’s Revolutionary Army squad.

The men and women were hardened, battle-tested rebels who had survived some of the worst conflicts in the South Blue and the Grand Line.

But right now, they looked like they were about to face a firing squad.

“Everyone,” Jasmine beamed, gesturing proudly to me.

“This is Victor.

My big brother.”

The rebel lieutenant, the same man Jasmine had been screaming at to dig the moat an hour earlier, swallowed hard.

His eyes darted from my face, to the front page of the World Economic Journal sticking out of his pocket, and then to the completely unbreeched titanium barricades that I had bypassed without making a single sound.

The lieutenant snapped a crisp, frantic salute, his hand trembling slightly.

“Sir!

It is an absolute honor to have you in our camp, Sir!

Please rest assured that Commander Jasmine is highly respected, and we would never do anything to warrant you atomizing us, Sir!”

Jasmine blinked, her proud smile faltering.

“Atomizing?

Lieutenant, what are you talking about?”

“Nothing to worry about,” I chuckled, patting the lieutenant on the shoulder.

“At ease, Lieutenant.

As long as nobody tries to arrest her, my blades stay in my pockets.”

The lieutenant let out a highly pitched squeak of relief, the rest of the squad visibly sagging.

Jasmine buried her face in her hands, groaning in profound embarrassment, realizing her entire platoon was terrified of her older brother.

A few yards away, sitting on a stack of supply crates, Gammamon and Palmon were happily munching their way through a large wooden barrel of green apples.

“So wait,” Palmon said, her large vines holding an apple near her blooming pink flower.

“Jasmine told me Victor fought giant dinosaurs on an island.

Did you fight them too?”

“Yep!” Gammamon nodded enthusiastically, juice dripping down his chin.

“We punched a really big T-Rex!

But it’s okay, because I’m a dinosaur too.

Watch this!”

Gammamon stood up on the crate, puffing out his small white chest.

“When Victor needs me to be really strong, I digivolve!

I turn into a giant, ten-foot-tall red triceratops with fire breathing out of my horns!

And if that’s not big enough, I turn into WezenGammamon, and I get these massive artillery cannons on my back that shoot green lasers!”

Palmon gasped in delight, her petals spinning like a propeller.

“That is so cool!

I have an evolution too!”

“Really?!” Gammamon gasped, his yellow eyes wide.

“What do you turn into?”

“I turn into Togemon!” Palmon cheered.

“I become a giant, towering cactus wearing boxing gloves, and I punch people incredibly fast!”

A pair of rebel soldiers walking past the crates stopped dead in their tracks.

They slowly turned their heads, staring in utter horror at the cute, chubby white dinosaur and the cheerful walking plant who were casually discussing their ability to transform into giant, city-leveling kaijus.

“Note to self,” one of the rebels whispered to the other, his face pale.

“Never, ever upset the pets.”

To avoid terrifying the troops any further, Jasmine and I walked out of the camp, heading up into a wide, grassy clearing nestled between two rolling green hills.

“Okay,” Jasmine said, stopping in the center of the clearing and spinning to face me.

“You’ve seen the newspaper.

You know I can fight.

But Koala told me you have a shadow-ferret and a gravity ape.

I need to see this.”

“Show and tell,” I grinned, crossing my arms.

“Ladies first.”

Jasmine grinned back.

She unhooked the heavy leather strap across her chest, letting her weapon, Coil Mjolnir, drop into her hands.

In its base state, it looked like a heavy, single-handed warhammer with a thick, insulated grip.

She pressed a heavy mechanical switch near the base of the grip.

With a sharp, metallic CLACK, the handle telescopically extended, locking into place, while the head of the hammer expanded, shifting the weapon from a one-handed tool into a massive, highly lethal pole-hammer.

“Mjolnir generates the current,” Jasmine said, giving the weapon a masterful, high-speed twirl that showed she had spent thousands of hours practicing with it.

She slammed the butt of the pole-hammer into the grass.

The head of the weapon sparked, generating a violent, crackling aura of blue lightning.

But instead of shooting the lightning outward like a projectile, Jasmine closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

The electricity arced down the shaft of the weapon and flowed directly into her hands.

I watched in awe as the blue lightning was absorbed completely into her skin.

Her veins briefly glowed with a neon-blue luminescence.

The air pressure around her instantly shifted.

“I don’t shoot lightning,” Jasmine explained, her voice vibrating with latent power, her eyes snapping open, practically glowing with energy.

“I absorb it.

And when I do, it supercharges my cells.”

She casually turned to a massive, ten-ton boulder resting on the edge of the clearing.

She didn’t use the hammer.

She just pulled her fist back and punched the solid rock.

BOOM.

The boulder didn’t just break, it exploded into a cloud of fine, powdery dust.

“It’s a massive, exponential stat boost,” Jasmine smiled, dusting off her knuckles.

“My physical strength, my speed, my durability, and my healing factor all skyrocket depending on how much voltage I absorb.

As long as I have a charge, I can brawl with giants.”

“That is incredible,” I breathed, genuinely impressed.

I stepped forward, rolling up my sleeves.

“And it’s funny, too.

Because our combat styles are actually fundamentally similar.”

Jasmine tilted her head.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t absorb electricity,” I explained, dropping into a loose martial arts stance.

“I store kinetic energy.

Every time I move, every time I block a hit, every time my heart beats, I generate and store kinetic force.

It’s called Fa-Jin.”

I stomped my foot into the ground, flooding my legs with the stored kinetic energy.

The grass beneath me flattened in a perfect circle.

I vanished from Jasmine’s sight, appearing instantly behind her back.

She jumped, spinning around in shock.

“Like you, I use the stored energy to exponentially boost my speed, my physical strength, and my healing,” I explained, tapping the side of my head.

“But I also use it to fuel my weapon.”

I unhooked the black disk from my hip.

I held it flat in my palm, smiling at my sister.

“Let me introduce you to my Jade clones.”

I swiped my thumb across the disk.

Six distinct pillars of emerald mist erupted in a circle around the clearing, rapidly condensing into solid jade.

Jasmine’s jaw hit the floor.

To her left, the Obsidian-Jade Gorilla pounded its chest, the ambient gravity around it instantly warping the grass.

To her right, the majestic Glacial-Inferno Sovereign reared back, its horn radiating a terrifying aura of absolute zero and sun-fire.

Slithering from the shadows of the trees was the massive, clicking form of the Silken Widow-Maker, weaving an invisible thread between its mandibles.

Darting around Jasmine’s boots, melting in and out of her shadow like liquid, was the Night-Terror Ferret.

Above them, blotting out the sun, the Sky-Rift Roc let out a metallic shriek, while the elegant, vibrant form of HoHo, the Phoenix-Peacock, circled gracefully, its jade feathers trailing emerald light.

“Gravity, Ice and Fire, invisible Haki traps, shadow manipulation, and absolute aerial superiority,” I listed off, walking through the circle of mythical beasts.

“They act independently, but we share a telepathic link.

Whatever they see, I see.”

Jasmine slowly reached out, her hand trembling slightly, and gently patted the Sovereign’s cold jade neck.

The unicorn nuzzled her palm.

“Victor,” Jasmine whispered, looking at the army of mythical beasts surrounding her.

“This is…

this is broken.

You’re a one-man army.”

“That’s the best part,” I grinned, dismissing the beasts back into the disk so we didn’t accidentally trigger a panic back at the camp.

“Think about our synergy, Jas.

You are a close-quarters brawler with massive area-of-effect destruction.

I have the ultimate crowd-control.”

Jasmine’s eyes lit up as the tactical realization hit her.

“If your Gorilla uses gravity to crush a platoon into a tight circle…”

“They can’t move,” I finished.

“Leaving you perfectly positioned to drop a maximum-yield lightning strike right on top of them.”

“If your Sovereign flash-freezes a target’s armor…” Jasmine gasped, gripping Mjolnir tightly.

“The metal becomes brittle, and your hammer shatters them into a million pieces,” I nodded.

We looked at each other, the same wicked, completely synchronized sibling grin spreading across both our faces.

If the world thought we were dangerous individually, they had absolutely no idea what was going to happen when we fought side-by-side.

While the Costa siblings mapped out their newfound synergy in Paradise, the atmosphere at Marine Headquarters in the New World was suffocatingly dark.

Deep within the bowels of Marineford, in a heavily soundproofed, smoke-filled office, Admiral Akainu sat behind his desk.

The cherry of his cigar glowed bright red, illuminating the deep scowl etched into his face.

Standing on the opposite side of the desk, shrouded in a pristine white cloak and wearing a blank, featureless mask, was an elite assassin of Cipher Pol Aigis Zero.

“Sengoku and Kong are fools,” Akainu growled, his voice a low, rumbling tremor that heated the air in the room.

“They think a set of blueprints justifies allowing a bloodline like that to fester.

The Costa family is a rot on this world.

The sister is a Revolutionary terrorist aiming to topple the global order, and the brother is a continent-destroying anomaly who humiliated Garp.

I will not allow them to draw breath on my oceans.”

“Admiral,” the masked CP0 agent spoke, his voice mechanically distorted.

“Our orders from Commander-in-Chief Kong are to avoid Victor D.

Costa at all costs to protect the Water 7 mission.”

“Kong’s orders apply to official Marine and Cipher Pol operations,” Akainu retorted, blowing a thick plume of smoke.

“This is off the books.

Officially, you are a ghost squad.

But we have a logistical problem.

Victor D.

Costa’s carriage flies.

We have no way to track him, and Marine Intelligence does not know the exact coordinates of the Revolutionary base his sister is currently occupying.”

“If we cannot find them, how do we execute them?” the agent asked.

Akainu’s eyes narrowed, a cold, ruthless glint flashing in the dim light.

“We don’t find them,” Akainu stated, leaning forward.

“We make them come to us.

The Revolutionaries suffer from a fatal flaw, they bleed for the innocent.

They cannot ignore a massacre.”

Akainu pulled a map from his drawer, sliding it across the desk.

He tapped a large island located in the archipelago region of Paradise, heavily populated by civilians.

“Marine Intelligence confirms that the Revolutionary Army is heavily backing a civilian uprising on this island,” Akainu explained.

“Take your squad there.

I don’t care how you do it, use the prototype sonic disruptors, or slaughter a Sea King calf to provoke a frenzy.

But I want a massive, Tsunami directed straight at the civilian coast.”

The CP0 agent looked at the map, understanding dawning behind his blank mask.

“A catastrophe of that magnitude will force the local Revolutionary forces to deploy their heaviest hitters to stop the wave and save the sheep,” Akainu said coldly.

“The Thunder Maiden will expose herself.

And where the sister goes, the Beastmaster will follow.”

Akainu stood up, his right fist turning into bubbling, dripping magma, melting the ashtray on his desk.

He reached down with his left hand, kicking a heavy iron crate toward the CP0 agent.

The crate popped open, revealing rows of specialized, dark grey weaponry.

“Sea-Prism Stone,” Akainu finalized.

“Bullets, nets, and suppression cuffs.

Specifically requisitioned to ground the Thunder Maiden’s electricity.

When the siblings show up to play hero…

execute them both in the chaos of the flood.

Eradicate the Costa bloodline.”

The CP0 agent bowed deeply.

“In the name of Absolute Justice, it will be done.”

Word Count: 2072

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