Chapter 112: Arming the Heavens

[POV: Jacob]

“YOU!”

The word tore through the tense, humid air of the cloud beach like a cannon shot.

I spun around, my double-jointed shoulders tensing as I dropped my center of gravity. Beside me, Peter phased half his arm into its ghost state, and Maria’s metallic serpent, Garuda, let out a low, warning hum.

The sea of terrified Skypiean and Shandian refugees frantically parted, scrambling out of Wyper’s path. The fierce tribal warrior was marching forward, his eyes locked onto a single figure standing near Law’s medical tent.

It was an old man with a long, flowing white beard, wearing a battered suit of knight’s armor and holding a lance. He looked exhausted, leaning heavily on his weapon.

“Gan Fall,” Wyper snarled, his hand dropping to the hilt of his burn-blade. “The former ‘God’ of Skypiea. I should have known you’d be hiding among the cowards.”

The old man, Gan Fall, just looked at Wyper with heavy sorrow. “Wyper. Son of Calgara. It gladdens my heart to see you are still alive in this madness.”

“Don’t speak to me with that patronizing tone!” Wyper roared, closing the distance. The few remaining Shandian warriors behind us tightened their grips on their spears, feeding off their leader’s rage. “Your people stole our home four hundred years ago! You cast us out into the clouds! And because of your weakness, because of your fake ‘divinity,’ you let that lightning freak and the flying lion turn our ancestral land into a slaughterhouse!”

Wyper drew his burn-blade, the weapon igniting with a fierce, blue-hot flame. “You don’t get to survive this, old man! I’ll take your head right here!”

He lunged, bringing the flaming blade down in a brutal, sweeping arc.

Gan Fall closed his eyes, accepting the blow.

Clang!

The blade never connected. Jasmine had crossed the distance in a blur of motion, casually catching the flat of Wyper’s flaming sword with the heavy head of her alchemical hammer. The impact sent a ripple of displaced air across the beach, but my sister didn’t even flinch.

“That’s enough,” Jasmine said, her voice completely calm, but carrying a sharp, absolute authority that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Step aside, Blue Sea woman!” Wyper barked, straining against her block. “This is a blood feud! It has nothing to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me,” Jasmine countered, effortlessly shoving Wyper back. She stepped between the Shandian warrior and the old Skypiean knight, resting her hammer on her shoulder. “Because while you two are standing here arguing over a four-hundred-year-old grudge, there are two monsters up there who are actively trying to enslave or kill every single man, woman, and child on this beach.”

Jasmine looked around the crowd. She looked at the Skypiean mothers clutching their children, and the battered Shandian fighters covered in bandages.

“Look at yourselves,” Jasmine’s voice rose, filling the beach, carrying the unmistakable cadence of a Revolutionary Army Commander. “Shiki and Enel don’t care if you have wings pointing up or wings pointing down! They don’t care about your history. To them, you are just meat. And as long as you keep fighting each other, you are doing their jobs for them. You are making it easy.”

Wyper lowered his blade, his jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth would shatter. “We don’t have a choice. We don’t have the numbers to fight them both. We are just trying to survive.”

“Surviving isn’t living,” Jasmine said fiercely. “And running isn’t going to get your home back. Today, the running stops. Today, we fight back.”

“Fight back with what?!” a Shandian warrior in the back shouted, gesturing to his broken spear. “We are outmatched!”

Jasmine smiled. It was the same confident, slightly unhinged smile Victor always wore right before he broke the rules of reality. She reached into the heavy canvas satchel she had carried from the ship and dumped its contents onto a large wooden crate.

Hundreds of heavy-stock, meticulously detailed trading cards spilled out.

“What is this?” Wyper asked, staring at the cards in utter confusion. “Paper?”

“Miracles,” I answered, stepping up beside my sister. Brook, Law and Robin had spent the entire morning using the Duplicating Mirror to mass-produce the reality-breaking items Damine had given us.

Jasmine held up two distinct cards. “These are spell cards. They require a tiny burst of your willpower, your Haki, or your Mantra, to activate. The first one is called Breath of Archangel. If anyone is wounded, missing a limb, or on the brink of death, you activate this card. An angel will appear and instantly, perfectly heal them. No recovery time. No scars.”

The crowd murmured, disbelief washing over their faces.

Jasmine held up the second card. “This one is called Reflect. When you are attacked, you activate this. It doesn’t just block the blow, it takes all the energy, the fire, the lightning, or the physical force, and violently bounces it directly back into the body of the person who attacked you. And the best part? It completely bypasses their defenses.”

“You expect us to believe that a piece of paper can stop a lightning bolt from a God?” Wyper scoffed, shaking his head. “Or a punch from one of Shiki’s giants?”

“I don’t expect you to believe it,” I said, stepping right up to Wyper. I grabbed a copied Reflect card from the pile. “I expect you to test it. Shoot me.”

Wyper blinked. “What?”

“You have a bazooka on your back,” I said, pointing to the heavy, burn-dial-powered cannon strapped to his shoulder. “Point it at my chest and pull the trigger.”

“Are you insane?” Isa gasped from the crowd, pulling little Aisa closer. “Wyper’s bazooka can vaporize a massive tree in a single shot!”

“Do it,” I challenged, locking eyes with the tribal warrior.

Wyper’s pride flared. He unslung the heavy weapon, planting his feet firmly in the cloud-sand. He aimed the massive barrel directly at my sternum. “If you want to die for a magic trick, Blue Sea boy, that’s on you.”

He pulled the trigger.

A roaring, compressed pillar of blue-white flame erupted from the bazooka, carrying enough concussive force to blow a hole through a galleon.

I didn’t flinch. I just injected a sharp pulse of my Haki into the card in my hand.

The card dissolved into a flash of light, and a faint, hexagonal shimmer formed an invisible wall an inch from my chest. The roaring flames slammed into the barrier. There was a sharp, high-pitched ping!

Instead of incinerating me, the massive blast of fire abruptly stopped, reversed its own momentum, and violently rebounded. Because Wyper was the attacker, the Reflect spell targeted him. The flames bypassed the physical space, erupting directly against the front of his bazooka and his chest.

The explosion launched Wyper twenty feet backward, sending him skidding across the white beach, his weapon smoking and his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.

The entire beach fell into a stunned, breathless silence.

I looked down at my perfectly intact shirt, blowing a wisp of smoke off my knuckles. “See? Physics is completely optional now.”

The explosion launched Wyper twenty feet backward, sending him skidding violently across the white beach. He hit the ground hard, his weapon smoking and shattered. Severe, blistering burns covered his chest and arms, and he coughed violently, too weak to push himself up.

“Wyper!” Kamakiri yelled, rushing forward as panic erupted among the Shandians. Isa quickly covered little Aisa’s eyes.

I looked down at my perfectly intact shirt, blowing a wisp of smoke off my shirt. “See? Physics is completely optional now.”

Jasmine walked over to where Wyper lay groaning in the sand. “And for the second miracle,” she said calmly. She held out one of the Breath of Archangel cards and pulsed a small burst of her Haki into the paper.

The air above Wyper immediately filled with a warm, golden light. A towering, ethereal angelic entity materialized, clothed in flowing white robes. It hovered over the wounded tribal warrior, leaning down to blow a gentle, sparkling breath over his battered torso.

Wyper gasped. Right before our eyes, the charred, blistering flesh simply faded away, knitting back together into perfectly smooth, unblemished skin. His breathing steadied instantly. The angel vanished into the air, and the card in Jasmine’s hand crumbled to dust.

Wyper slowly pushed himself up off the ground, staring at his completely healed hands and chest in absolute shock. He looked at me, entirely unharmed from his strongest attack, and then up at Jasmine. The hostility in his eyes was instantly replaced by a burning, realization.

“We have hundreds of those cards,” Jasmine announced to the stunned crowd, pointing to the pile. “Enough to equip every fighter here with an impenetrable shield and an instant full-heal. You are no longer prey. Today, you are immortal warriors.”

The Shandian warriors and the Skypiean civilians surged forward, the generational hatred forgotten today in the face of undeniable urge to survive. Law and Bepo quickly began distributing the cards, instructing the natives on how to push their intent into the paper to activate them.

“Okay, so we have shields and we have medics,” I noted, looking over at Jasmine. “But we have a slight problem, Jas. We don’t have any weapons to give them. A Reflect card is great when you’re getting swung at, but we can’t exactly mount an offensive if these people are fighting bare-handed.”

Jasmine frowned, realizing the oversight. She had been so focused on extracting the refugees she hadn’t raided the ship’s armory.

A tall Shandian warrior with a braided ponytail and goggles stepped forward. I remembered his name was Kamakiri.

“We don’t fight bare-handed,” Kamakiri said, holding up a strange, shell-like device fitted with a handle and a trigger. “This is a Flame Gun. It uses a Breath Dial to shoot a continuous, high-temperature jet of fire, rather than a solid bullet. It can melt through Shiki’s mutated beasts’ armor.”

“That’s perfect,” Maria said, her horns gleaming in the sunlight as she walked over. “Can we arm the Skypieans with them too?”

Kamakiri grimaced, looking down at the weapon. “That’s the problem. We only have three of them left in the entire camp. We lost the rest in the skirmishes. Three guns aren’t enough to equip a militia.”

Jasmine stared at the Flame Gun for a long moment. Then, that same terrifying, Victor-esque grin spread across her face.

She turned and locked eyes with Law, who was standing near the medical tent. “Hey, Trafalgar!”

Law let out a long, long sigh, pulling his spotted hat down over his eyes. “I am a doctor, Jasmine-ya. I am not a factory worker.”

“Just bring the mirror over here, Law,” Jasmine laughed. She turned back to Kamakiri, taking the Flame Gun from his hands. “Don’t worry about the quantity. I can figure it out.”

Within twenty minutes, Law with Bepo, Shachi and Penguin had set up the Duplicating Mirror on a sturdy crate. The process was mind-numbingly simple, but it broke every law of equivalent exchange I had ever learned in school. Jasmine held the Flame Gun in front of the glass, reached her hand directly into the solid, rippling reflection, and pulled out a second, perfectly functioning Flame Gun.

Over and over again. Reach in. Pull out a gun. Hand it to a refugee.

By the time they were done, over two hundred Shandian and Skypiean men and women were armed with a Flame Gun, five Reflect cards, and two Breath of Archangel cards each. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the beach, victims no longer, but a heavily armed militia.

I looked at Peter, who had dropped his Ghost Touch intangibility, and Maria, who had Garuda resting lazily around her shoulders. We exchanged a look. This was it. Victor had given us all the training that we required. Now, he was giving us an army.

“Listen up!” I yelled, stepping to the front of the unified militia. The chatter died down instantly. “The beach is a death trap in making, if they decide to carpet-bomb the edges of the island. We are moving out.”

“Where to?” Wyper asked, gripping his newly duplicated Flame Gun with his other weapons strapped around him, his eyes burning with renewed purpose.

“We take the high ground,” Peter answered, his deep voice carrying a natural, prehistoric weight. “We march right back into the center of the jungle. We secure the stone ruins of Shandora, where the Golden Bell is supposed to be.”

“We fortify the ruins,” Maria added, cracking her knuckles. “And we let them come to us. We hold the hill against whatever Shiki and Enel throw our way.”

The unified army let out a massive, roaring battle cry.

I turned toward the dark, looming canopy of Upper Yard, my blood humming with the residual energy of the Compound V. I clenched my fists, feeling the cold silver of the BusoRenkin plates strapped to my arms waiting to be unleashed.

Let Victor distract the bosses. We were going to take the island right out from under them.