One Piece : Brotherhood Chapter 440

"Bang! Bang! Bang—!"

Gunshots rang out in frantic rhythm, echoing through the crumbling halls of the Marine outpost like a dirge for the dying. Smoke and fire curled from shattered doorways and collapsed beams as the fortress—once a proud bastion of justice—groaned under the weight of chaos. Bullet casings littered the stone floors like golden husks, and the stench of blood, smoke, and gunpowder thickened the air.

Inside, the battle raged with unrelenting savagery.

The pirates, led by their vice-captain Vorin, tore through the once-imposing halls with a fury born of greed and arrogance. Their eyes burned with the lust for power, still chasing the promise of the Devil Fruit, unaware that their feared captain had already been silenced—her blood still cooling beneath a stranger’s boot on the deck of her flagship.

Vorin—a rugged brute with jagged teeth, ink-black dreadlocks, and a trio of flintlocks strapped across his chest—charged through the breached main gate, roaring orders.

"Take the armory! Burn the east wing! Leave the officers alive—we need soone to spill where they’re hiding the damn fruit!"

His crew, a savage tide of steel and gunpowder, flooded into the outpost, cutting down anything in uniform. Marines scread as swords pierced flesh, pikes skewered lungs, and axes crashed into bone. But the defenders didn’t falter—not yet.

"You filthy pirate bastards...!"

The Marine captain roared above the chaos, blood streaking down his temple, his coat torn and stained. "You think you’ll walk out of this alive after slaughtering the justice of the sea?!"

An axe whistled through the air, aid at his throat. In a flash, the captain twisted, his saber flashing like silver lightning, parrying the blow with a screech of tal. Sparks flew as the blades clashed, and he drove his knee into the pirate’s gut, following up with a precise thrust that opened the man’s neck from ear to collarbone.

"Hold the damn line!" he barked, rallying the last dozen Marines within the central corridor. "Fall here, and they’ll overrun the base!"

One Marine—a fresh recruit, face pale but eyes steeled by desperation—slamd a repeater rifle into his shoulder and fired. A pirate collapsed mid-charge, skull shattered, but two more surged in his place, screaming through blood-flecked teeth.

The clash beca a at grinder. Bayonets plunged into throats. Blunderbusses roared at point-blank range. Cutlasses hacked through flesh, and fists collided with bone in brutal, bloody exchanges. Smoke obscured the vision, turning the hall into a ghostly battlefield where shadows lunged with blades and death waited around every corner.

One pirate with a spiked flail swung wildly, shattering a Marine’s leg with a crunch that echoed off the marble walls. The Marine scread—but refused to die quiet. With his last breath, he pulled a grenade from his belt and shoved it into the pirate’s tunic.

Boom!

Gore painted the ceiling. Limbs rained down like at from a butcher’s block.

"Fall back to the upper level!" The captain shouted, dragging a wounded ensign by the collar as a support beam collapsed behind them in a burst of fla and smoke. It wasn’t out of rcy; he was simply using the ensign’s body as cover from stray bullets.

But Vorin was already carving his way forward like a juggernaut, laughing through the madness.

"You rats can run, but you can’t hide that fruit forever!"

His twin axes glead red as he hacked down another Marine, cleaving through the man’s pauldron like paper. "That fruit belongs to my captain now! And I’ll tear this place apart brick by brick to get it!"

As the pirates pressed harder, so Marines snapped. One lieutenant, cornered in the western wing, pulled a pair of pistols and raged like a demon, felling pirate after pirate until a spear pinned him to the wall. His blood sprayed across the Marine flag fluttering behind him.

A tragic final stand.

Explosions from stray shells outside rattled the outpost’s foundations. Dust fell from the rafters like snow, and the sound of distant, inhuman screams drifted in from the shoreline—the sound of Vorin’s fleet being annihilated by an enemy they didn’t understand.

And still, inside the fortress, the bloodbath continued.

Bodies were piled knee-deep in the central hall. The once-white walls now dripped with crimson. The symbol of the World Governnt, etched into the stone at the end of the corridor, was nearly obscured by splatter and scorch marks.

The pirates believed they were on the brink of victory. They believed the Devil Fruit was close. But they didn’t know the truth. The fruit was gone.

"Bam... Bam... Bam...!"

The steel-reinforced door shuddered with every blow, groaning under the relentless battering of the pirates outside. Dust fell from the ceiling with each impact, drifting through the dimly lit room like falling ash. Inside, the last two dozen Marines had barricaded themselves, a desperate stand behind hastily stacked crates, overturned tables, and shattered filing cabinets. Blood stained the floor. So of it fresh, most of it old.

They were outnumbered. Outgunned. Surrounded. And running out of ti. Captain Vosk, bloodied but unconvinced about his fate, paced between the defenders trying to wriggle out of this ss that his greed had caused, sweat matting the silver at his temples, his uniform torn and streaked with soot. His eyes, though hardened by decades of deceit, were shadowed with dread.

"Have you contacted HQ?" he barked, spinning toward the comms officer stationed by the battered transponder snail.

The young Marine looked up, panic flickering in his eyes as the snail continued to sputter static. "Y-Yes, sir! I got a response—reinforcents are en route, but..." He hesitated, swallowing hard. "Even the fastest battleship won’t make it for at least half a day..."

The room went still. It wasn’t just silence—it was the breathless, soul-crushing realization of doom. Half a day... They wouldn’t last half an hour. Vosk clenched his jaw. His hand tightened around the hilt of his saber until his knuckles turned white.

"Damn those conniving bastards..." he growled. "They deceived us from the start. Promised discretion, support—this was a damn setup." He turned sharply to another officer. "Any word from the other buyers? Any chance they’ll intervene?"

The reply ca in the form of silence and a slow shake of the head. Vosk’s jaw twitched. "Then we make sure we don’t die with empty hands. Load every rifle, every pistol, every damn slingshot if you have to. We go out firing."

The room snapped to life. Marines scrambled for weapons, fingers trembling as they prid rifles and checked ammunition. So muttered prayers. Others clung to stoic silence. The air reeked of sweat, fear, and the iron tang of blood.

Outside, Vorin stood before the scorched, battered door, wiping his blood-slick cutlass on the shredded remains of a Marine uniform. The hulking vice-captain’s eyes were fixed not on the door—but on the horizon.

The bombardnt from the fleet had stopped. That silence was more unsettling than the screams. His instincts scread at him—sothing was wrong. Their captain, brutal and calculating, would never hold back unless sothing had gone terribly awry.

"She’d burn this island to cinders to get her hands on that fruit," he muttered under his breath, a twitch in his jaw. But he forced the thought aside. The fruit had to be in that room. His captain’s fate could wait.

A subordinate rushed up, panting. "Still no sign of the Devil Fruit, Vice-Captain. We’ve swept every room, crate, and dead body. Nothing." Vorin’s brows furrowed. His eyes narrowed on the door again.

"Then it’s in there..." he said darkly, almost to himself. "The paranoid bastard must’ve sealed it in the Captain’s office." He turned to the n pounding at the steel door. "Enough! You’ll break your damn arms before you break that thing."

He smirked. "Fetch a keg of gunpowder from the armory." The pirates laughed and scattered to follow orders. A few monts later, they rolled up a small barrel and began packing it carefully against the base of the door, stuffing oil-soaked rags between the hinges and seams.

Inside, the silence grew deafening.

The pounding had stopped. So had the shouting, the steel-on-steel clashes, and the distant screams. The silence lingered like a phantom. The Marines tightened their grips on their weapons, fingers twitching on triggers.

"Do you... think they gave up?" one of the younger Marines whispered. Captain Vosk didn’t respond. His eyes flicked to the ceiling, sniffing. Then, his face went pale. He slled it.

Smoke. Sulfur. Oil. His heart clenched. "Brace—!" he bellowed.

"BOOOOM!"

The explosion tore through the corridor like a thunderclap. The reinforced door—engineered to withstand cannon fire—detonated inward, its massive hinges snapping like twigs. Shrapnel and fla filled the room. The shockwave crushed half a dozen Marines beneath twisted tal. The rest were thrown back by the force, limbs flailing, blood arcing through the air.

Screams erupted. Smoke swallowed the room.

Captain Vosk coughed violently, rising from behind an overturned desk, his left ear ringing, blood running from his scalp. Around him, groans and coughs filled the air as survivors crawled from the rubble, burned and broken.

And then— The slow crunch of boots.

Vorin stepped through the smoke like a demon from a nightmare, flanked by a dozen of his bloodied, grinning pirates. Axes. Swords. Muskets. All raised. Vorin’s smile stretched wide as he scanned the devastated room.

"Knock knock," he sneered.

A Marine lieutenant, half-buried under debris, still managed to raise his rifle, his hand trembling as he aid toward the invaders. Vorin didn’t even blink.

Thud.

His axe buried itself deep into the Marine’s skull with a sickening crunch. The man’s body twitched, then went still, blood pooling beneath him.

A pirate cackled as he stomped on another wounded Marine’s throat, crushing it beneath his boot. Another pirate grabbed an officer by the hair and slashed his throat, painting the wall red with arterial spray.

Vosk rose, fury overtaking his fear.

"You bastards... You want the fruit?" he spat, blood on his lips. "Then you’re already too late. You’re fighting for smoke and shadow."

Vorin’s smile faltered for a brief mont. "What?"

Vosk laughed bitterly. "Hahahaha... It’s gone. If you even touch a hair on my head, you will never get to know the whereabouts of the fruit."

Vorin’s eye twitched. He took a step forward, grabbing Vosk by the collar. "Where is it? Where did you hide it?"

Just as Vorin raised his axe, prepared to make an example of the battered Marine captain by removing a few fingers to coax out the truth, his Observation Haki flared like lightning across his senses. Instinct scread. He pivoted, barely managing to hurl himself to the ground. But even with his reflexes, he wasn’t fast enough.

SHHHHHK—!!

A sickening sound of steel eting flesh cut through the silence as Vorin’s left ear was torn clean off, blood spurting in a sharp arc. Pain exploded in his head, but he rolled with it—gritting his teeth, axes drawn mid-motion. He whirled toward the attacker in a fluid spin.

And then—he froze. His mind refused to comprehend what he was seeing. Twelve pirates. A dozen ruthless killers. All dead. Still standing—but without their heads.

They remained for a heartbeat, eerily upright, before their lifeless corpses crumpled like marionettes with cut strings, heads toppling to the ground with soft, wet thuds. Blood fountained from their necks, spraying across the charred walls and filling the air with a thick, tallic scent.

All from a single slash. At the top of the shattered steel door, poised like an executioner atop a guillotine, stood the cloaked figure—the edge of her Odachi still glistening crimson, droplets of blood sliding slowly from the curved, unnaturally sharp blade.

Vorin trembled. His entire body refused to move. His breathing turned shallow. His hands, so used to wielding axes in slaughter, shook uncontrollably. He had faced Marines, warlords, bounty hunters. But never—never—had he felt this kind of raw, unfiltered terror.

The cloaked figure didn’t even acknowledge the corpses. Her head tilted slightly beneath the shadows of her hood, the bloodied Odachi resting effortlessly in her gloved hand. Then—she spoke. A soft, elegant, almost amused voice—but steeped in sothing cruel and terrifying.

"Oh... soone who’s unlocked Observation Haki. Pretty interesting..."

It was tomboyish but unnerving. Smooth like silk over steel, and laced with condescension that only those who had lived above the world could afford. Her gaze shifted to survey the room—what little remained of it.

Smoke. Rubble. Blood. Silence. She walked forward slowly, deliberate and calm. Predator-like. Vorin couldn’t look away. Every instinct scread at him to flee. But his legs—his soul—wouldn’t obey.

The figure now stood re feet from the downed Marine captain, Vosk, who had fallen onto his rear, his eyes still wide in horror, watching the lifeless bodies twitch in final spasms.

"So... you’re the captain of this Marine base?" the figure asked, her tone airy, casual—as if she were making polite conversation in a tea house, not standing in a room full of butchered bodies.

Vosk tried to answer, but his lips moved without sound.

"Tell where the Devil Fruit is," she said, voice dipping into sothing darker. "And maybe... just maybe, I’ll let you live. Or I can show you things that’ll make you wish you’d never been born."

A soft chuckle followed—but it carried no warmth. Only cruelty wrapped in velvet. But before Vosk could answer, a sudden shift in the air made the cloaked figure move—fast.

SHING!

A massive sword slash tore clean through the ceiling above, severing the upper half of the fortress and Vorin with surgical precision. The world shook. Stone cracked. Debris rained from above.

Two figures landed silently on the severed pillar like angels descending from divine judgnt.

Figarland Shamrock, jacket glinting with ornate gold patterns, held his saber with a long, single-edged blade low, its edge still humming from the force of his swing.

Beside him stood Saint Shepherd Somrs, face unreadable beneath the stylish glasses worn by tourists who went out for vacations. His eyes, though calm, burned with cold intellect as they focused sharply on the cloaked intruder.

Shamrock’s voice was cool, dispassionate—yet carried the authority of one who answered only to Imu-sama.

"Did you truly believe you could hide your presence from us?"

The cloaked figure didn’t respond. She didn’t flinch. She landed lightly, knees bending with feline grace, but her attention never left the Marine captain. She hadn’t even turned to face them.

A slight tilt of her head, nothing more.

Shamrock’s brows twitched at the audacity. He shifted his grip on his blade. "So, mind telling us who you are...?"

But Saint Shepherd Somrs had gone deathly quiet. His gaze was no longer on the figure’s face—but locked on the Odachi she held with unsettling ease. There was sothing unmistakable about it.

The elegant curve, the ancient pattern etched into the sheath, the faint pale shimr that warped the very air around the blade like a mirage. Steel not ant for mortals.

His breath hitched.

No... it can’t be...

His thoughts reeled. That sword wasn’t just legendary grade—it was sacrosanct. One of the Twelve Supre Grade Blades, locked away in the deepest vault beneath Pangaea Castle, untouched by ti, sealed by divine decree. It was a blade said to respond only to the bloodline of the gods themselves.

And it had been given to one person. A prodigy of the Nerona family. A girl born not just noble, but practically divine—a direct descendant of the supre god, acknowledged by Imu-sama themselves.

Saint Shepherd Somrs took a half-step forward, an involuntary realisation shaking through him. His gloved hand clenched around his god knight uniform.

"No... it cannot be..." He whispered, but the truth in his voice was undeniable. The blade had confird it. This woman, cloaked in shadow, with a voice like silk and a presence like death, was no infiltrator. She was one of their own. A daughter of Pangaea, he hadn’t recognised her at first because she had left the Holy Land when only a teen.

Before he could speak her na, Shamrock moved. His pride refused to endure her silence. His blade surged with Conqueror’s Haki, tearing through the air like divine judgnt.

"You dare ignore the judgnt of the gods—?!"

His blade fell like thunder— CLANG! The cloaked figure t the strike effortlessly, raising her Odachi with a single hand, her stance relaxed, almost lazy.

Steel scread against steel. Her hood shifted just enough to reveal the lower half of her face—calm, smiling, utterly unfazed. Shamrock’s fury deepened. He flickered behind her with blinding speed, blade flashing for a killing blow—

But he froze. Suddenly, a dense, writhing lattice of thorned vines erupted between them—sacred black thorns, their tips dripping with crystalline poison, unmistakable in their origin.

"Saint Shepherd...?" Shamrock asked, eyes narrowing in disbelief as he retreated a pace. "What is the aning of this... Why are you protecting her?"

Saint Shepherd Somrs didn’t answer at first. The thorns pulsed, alive with otherworldly energy. He simply stared. How could he miss soone who was hiding in plain sight? Unlike most Gods knights, who disregarded the matters of the mundane, he liked to keep himself inford. But despite that, he had failed to relate to that teen who had matured into a grown woman now.

The cloaked figure sheathed her blade slowly, the sound a whisper of finality. Blood still clung to the edge, trailing along the sheath like ink across paper. She turned toward Somrs, her voice light but laced with old, buried recklessness.

"You rember , don’t you, Saint Shepherd? Tell ... how long has it been since I descended from the Holy City?"

She stepped forward into the light, her silver hair catching the glow like moonlight over still water.

"It seems the Supre Commander’s youngest has also made it into the ranks of the God’s Knights after all."

Somrs sighed hard. Her voice hadn’t changed—not really. Still as composed as the girl who once walked the palace halls, but now colder, sharper. Hollowed by purpose.

And then— "Admiral Raylene...?"

The voice ca from the broken corner of the chamber—Captain Vosk, face bloodied and pale, stared up in disbelief as the hood fell completely from her head.

His mind struggled to process what he was seeing. Why would a Marine Admiral be here...? But there was no mistake. Silver hair. Silver eyes. The Odachi. This was Admiral Raylene, one of the three Admirals of the Marines, alongside Akainu and Ginshimo. Revered. Untouchable. A symbol of justice.

Then why... why was she standing here, among the bodies, protecting no one...?

But Vosk’s confusion morphed into hope. He grasped at it like a drowning man reaching for driftwood.

"Admiral Raylene—! The pirates—they’ve destroyed everything, laid siege to the island! Amidst the chaos, soone stole the Devil Fruit... I-I was going to report it to HQ, I swear! It must still be sowhere on the island. We can find it together—!"

His eyes pleaded. He didn’t understand. Couldn’t. He was already dead. Raylene stepped forward without a word. Her boots crunched over glass and stone.

"So... you let the Devil Fruit slip away."

Her voice turned frigid. Void of rcy. Vosk stamred, trying to defend himself, but he never got the chance. With inhuman speed, she thrust the Odachi forward—

SHLK—!

The blade pierced clean through his open mouth, skewering his skull with brutal finality. Bone cracked. His body convulsed violently before going still, sliding off the blade like at from a skewer. The room was silent. Raylene exhaled in disappointnt as she flicked the blood from her blade.

"Tch. What a waste."

She didn’t even spare him a second glance as she stepped away, the corpse collapsing into a heap behind her. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her Observation Haki, letting her will pour across the shattered island, searching—tasting—the presence of the Devil Fruit. Her senses stretched wide, dragging across the spiritual noise of fire, fear, and blood.

Shamrock stood with his guard up, saber still raised, but no longer sure what he was supposed to do.

"How... how deep were you buried...?" Saint Shepherd finally muttered aloud, eyes locked on the silver-haired woman now standing amidst a pile of corpses, his recognition of the once young teen finally overlapping with the woman in front of him.

He had heard about the descendant of Imu-sama. A child from the Nerona family who had vanished decades ago. So claid the child was dead. Others said imprisoned. So even claid she had been executed for challenging the authority of Imu-sama themselves.

But none of them knew she’d been hiding in plain sight. An admiral among the Marines. A ghost among celestial dragons. A blade of Imu-sama themselves. Nerona Raylene.