Chapter 38

The SAD Production Room was a forest of steaming pipes and glowing tanks. The air tasted of chemicals and malice.

Vergo stood in the center of the catwalk, his white coat stained with soot but his demeanor unshakeable. In his hand, he squeezed a small, pulsating cube of flesh.

"Gah…!" Law fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Every time Vergo squeezed the heart, Law was incapacitated.

"You cannot defeat me, Law," Vergo said, his voice devoid of emotion. "You are still the traumatized boy from the White City. And you…"

He looked at Smoker, who was battered and bleeding, his jitte bent.

"…you are merely a smoke screen. Your Haki is too diluted."

Kurumi leaned against a vat of SAD, her breathing shallow. Her ribs burned. Her caloric reserves were flashing zero. She watched Vergo dismantle two powerful fighters with ease.

Luffy… Her mind drifted back to the image of Gear Fourth.

He inflated his muscles to increase tension. He used Haki to force his rubber body into a shape it shouldn't hold. He tricked his fruit into a higher state of existence.

She looked at her golden clock eye in the reflection of the steel tank.

If he can compress rubber… can I compress time?

Awakening affects the environment. But before that… if I force Zafkiel to eat its own tail… if I accelerate my internal time to the point of breaking, while simultaneously freezing my external decay…

It was a paradox. A suicide move.

"Law," Kurumi whispered, her voice trembling. "How much time do you need to cut him?"

"I just… need my heart," Law wheezed. "One second. If I have my heart… one second is enough."

"I'll give you thirty," Kurumi straightened up. She Holstered her guns. She wouldn't need them. At this speed, a bullet was too slow.

The Theory of Relativity

Kurumi closed her eyes. She reached deep into the core of her Devil Fruit.

Usually, she pulled time from her reserves (calories). But she had none left. So, she did the forbidden thing. She pulled from her lifespan.

Zafkiel: Forbidden Form – Chronos Overdrive (Overclock).

Tick.

The sound was loud. It echoed inside her skull like a gunshot.

Her golden clock eye didn't just spin; it shattered. The gears dissolved into golden light that flooded her veins. Her skin turned pale, almost translucent. Golden steam began to vent from her pores.

Time Remaining: 30 Seconds.

"Kurumi-ya?" Law’s eyes widened. "What are you doing? Your life force is plummeting!"

"Vergo!" Kurumi’s voice sounded distorted, layering over itself like a corrupted audio file. "You like speed? Let's race."

00:30 – The Start

Vergo frowned. "A bluff?"

He vanished. Soru. He appeared in front of Kurumi, his bamboo stick coated in Haki, aimed at her skull.

00:28

To Kurumi, Vergo was moving in slow motion. He looked like he was swimming through honey.

She didn't dodge. She stepped inside his guard.

Impact.

She punched him in the stomach.

It wasn't a normal punch. Because she was moving at hyper-accelerated speed, the mass of her fist hit with relativistic force.

BOOM.

Vergo’s eyes bulged. He was launched backward, crashing through three tanks of SAD. The liquid exploded everywhere.

"What?!" Smoker gasped. "She… I didn't even see her move!"

00:20 – The Barrage

Vergo stood up from the wreckage, coughing blood. His Haki-coated abs were bruised. "Fast… but light."

He went Full Body Armament Haki. He turned purple-black, an iron statue.

"Demon Bamboo: Onigiri!"

He swung his stick. It shattered the catwalk.

00:15

Kurumi was already behind him.

She didn't use a weapon. She used a scalpel she had stolen from the lab earlier.

Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash.

In one second of real time, she cut him fifty times. Sparks flew as the scalpel dragged against his Haki. She wasn't trying to cut his skin; she was cutting his tempo. She was targeting the joints, the tendons, the spots where the Haki was thinnest.

"Annoying fly!" Vergo roared, releasing a shockwave of Haki.

Kurumi was blown back, skidding across the rail.

00:10 – The Cost

Cough.

Kurumi spat out a mouthful of blood. It wasn't from Vergo’s hit. It was her own body tearing itself apart. Her muscles were shredding from the G-force. Her heart was beating 300 times a minute.

Ten seconds. I have to get the heart.

Vergo charged. "You're dying, girl! I can hear your heartbeat failing!"

He aimed a kill shot at Law, knowing Kurumi would intercept.

"DIE!"

00:05

Kurumi screamed silently. She pushed the Overclock to the red line.

She vanished.

She didn't intercept the blow. She intercepted the hand holding the heart.

Vergo felt a breeze. Then, he felt a weight disappear from his grip.

Kurumi reappeared next to Law, skidding on her knees. She held the pulsating heart.

"Here…" she choked out.

00:00 – The Collapse

The golden light vanished from her eyes. The steam stopped.

Kurumi collapsed face-first onto the metal grating. Her body was smoking. Her skin was gray. She didn't move.

"Kurumi-ya!" Law grabbed his heart. He jammed it back into his chest.

Thump-thump.

The connection was restored. The Surgeon was whole.

Vergo turned around, furious. "You little thief! I'll crush you!"

He charged at the unconscious girl.

"Smoker!" Law shouted.

Smoker didn't need telling. He launched himself as a white fog. White Blow!

He slammed into Vergo, not to hurt him, but to obscure his vision. To buy one second.

"Room."

The blue sphere expanded. It covered the entire mountain. It covered the lab. It covered Vergo.

Law drew Kikoku. His eyes were cold, filled with the rage of thirteen years.

"Vergo-san…" Law whispered. "The era you and Joker were building… the gears have been broken."

Vergo rushed through the smoke, fully coated in Haki. "Your sword cannot cut my Haki, Law!"

Law gripped his hilt.

"MES!"

No. Not Mes. He swung horizontally.

SLASH.

The sound was clean. Quiet.

The laboratory went silent.

Vergo stopped running. A thin line appeared on his waist.

Then, the railing behind him split. The tanks split. The entire mountain outside—the snowy peaks of Punk Hazard—split in half.

Vergo’s top half slid off his bottom half.

"Impossible…" Vergo wheezed, lying on the floor. "Joker… will…"

"Joker doesn't know what's coming," Law walked over to him. He then looked at Kurumi’s motionless body.

He knelt down, checking her pulse. It was faint. Erratic. Like a clock winding down.

"Smoker-ya," Law said urgently. "Carry her. We need to get to the ship. If we don't stabilize her metabolism in five minutes, the Time Witch is history."

Smoker grunted, picking up the girl who had just defied physics. "She’s light. Too light. She burned everything she had."

"Let's go," Law looked at the sliced mountain. "The Alliance has won. Now we just have to survive the exit."