The Berserker and the Sea of Madness

The sun slowly sank into the horizon, casting a bruised-orange glow over the desert. Shadows stretched long across the cracked earth as the last light of day painted Nanohana Port in fading colors of violence.

Two figures moved across the devastated landscape, walking side by side, their silhouettes stark against the darkening sky.

Guts walked with calm, measured steps, light on his feet despite his size, almost ghostlike. He had nothing left to protect here. Robin already left, their ship disappearing beyond the distant dunes with the rescued Shell Islanders under Gargar's watchful eye. 

The Sea King's massive dorsal fin still glimmered faintly on the horizon, a living fortress against the setting sun. Guts felt no restraint now.

Douglas Bullet kept pace with him, a broad, wild grin on his face. His shoulders rolled with eager anticipation, knuckles cracking like gunfire with every shift of his weight. The ground beneath him seemed to bend under the weight of his power, almost recoiling from his energetic stride.

Their destination lay less than a hundred meters from the battered edge of Nanohana Port: a stretch of desert marked by chaos, chosen as their brutal arena.

As he approached the center of the space, Guts reached behind him and unslung the Dragon Slayer. With a low grinding noise, he plunged the massive blade into the desert floor, its hilt vibrating slightly. He set the weapon down for now.

Behind them, Crocodile and Igaram exchanged hushed words, their voices conspicuous in the vast silence of the dying day, barely cutting through the tense atmosphere.

Crocodile stood perched atop a small ridge, an imposing figure whose face was a mask of cold calculation. He didn't gaze at Bullet; instead, his eyes remained fixed firmly on the scarred landscape and the scattered remnants of soldiers beneath him, a broken group barely holding together.

"Pull them back," he commanded sharply, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to reverberate through the air. "If you don't want to lose what's left of your men, Igaram, get them out of here."

Igaram stood amid the wreckage of their formation, the remnants of Marine-cloaked Baroque Works agents and Alabasta soldiers strewn across the sand like discarded puppets, lifeless and broken. 

Out of the original 100,000 combined forces, fewer than 20,000 remained, a haunting testament to the chaos that had unfolded. 

Some soldiers sat in shock, visibly shaken or broken, unable to comprehend the horror around them. 

Others wept without understanding why, while still more simply stared ahead, trapped in a waking nightmare born from Guts' terrifying Executioner Haki.

Igaram, the Captain of the Royal Guard, remained eerily silent amidst the cacophony of despair.

His hand trembled noticeably as he clutched the now-crumpled bounty poster of Sakazuki, the Vice Admiral's grim face glaring up at him from the torn paper, a haunting reminder of his failure to protect his men.

Blood coursed where his teeth had pierced his lip, a hot rivulet running down his chin, a vivid symbol of the toll this day had exacted.

All of this chaos and devastation had been unleashed because of a single man.

Igaram's gaze fell to the bloodstained glove in his hand, a stark reminder of the nightmare that gripped their world.

Guts tapped the side of his armor with two fingers, a small but deliberate gesture that seemed to hum with unseen power.

As if understanding his intention—as it always did—the Berserker Armor responded. With a shriek of scraping metal and the groan of shifting joints, the cursed steel detached itself from his body. Plates unlatched with the sickening click of dislocated bones, fell with heavy thuds, slithered across the sand, and reshaped as though breathing, each piece an entity unto itself.

It leapt. 

Midair, the disjointed armor contorted and reformed—fleshless, soulless, a mockery of life—and landed with a chilling thump in the shape of a monstrous wolf. Its joints clicked into place with unnatural smoothness, a predator's silhouette of articulated darkness. 

Fangs, bone-white and razor-sharp, bared in a silent snarl, while crimson eyes glowed dimly from beneath a bone-etched helm that resembled a grimacing skull. Without a sound, the creature padded toward the Dragon Slayer embedded in the sand.

Then, with an almost reverent air, it lay down beside the massive blade—silent and alert. Watching. Waiting.

Crocodile, watching from the ridge, froze mid-breath, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow despite the desert air. His pupils narrowed into pinpricks. He'd seen Devil Fruits warp nature, he'd seen grotesque Zoan transformations, chimera beasts, even Vegapunk's twisted experiments—but this...

This wasn't Devil Fruit power. Or was it? His mind scrambled for logic. An animal that consumed a Devil Fruit? An armor that gained sentience? Or something infinitely worse—an entirely new kind of existence, born of something ancient and unknown?

The Warlord jumped down from the ridge, a rare curiosity pushing him. He left Igaram, still wide-eyed with shock, behind. His footsteps were slow, measured, unnervingly cautious as he approached. He needed to see it up close. The armor. The legend. The cursed armor that made its wearer unkillable.

As he closed the distance, a cold sweat prickled along his temple despite the cooling evening air. The Berserker Wolf didn't move. But its glowing crimson eyes never left him, following his every calculated step, a silent, predatory assessment.

Crocodile crouched beside the wolf-shaped Berserker Armor, eyes narrowing with a volatile mix of suspicion and morbid curiosity. He extended one gloved hand, fingers tense, brushing against the jagged, bone-plated surface of its shoulder.

It was cold. Not the kind of cold found in steel or stone. It was a deep, bone-chilling cold that seeped into his very marrow—something alien, something utterly new and horrifying to him.

And then—he wasn't in the desert anymore.

He was in the darkness.

Crocodile's mind plummeted into an endless, suffocating void. His body no longer obeyed him, and time itself stretched thin, distorted into an agonizing eternity. 

A terrifying weightless sensation overtook him, followed by a crushing, omnipresent presence that squeezed the air from his lungs, even in this non-space.

Something was there.

Something impossibly vast. Something hungry.

From the deepest, most absolute shadows, it emerged. The Beast of Darkness. 

Not a wolf, not a form he recognized. 

Its eyes, twin points of crimson-hot malevolence, gleamed from within a swirling, formless abyss of tangled flesh, razor teeth, and obsidian shadows. Its maw bristled with endless, impossible rows of jagged fangs, each one a splinter of pure malice. 

A grotesque tongue, black and thick, lolled from a gaping mouth that seemed to split its skull open to an impossible degree. Smoke, acrid and coiling, mixed with pure, distilled malice poured from its jaws, along with a choking, soul-deep sense of dread that threatened to dissolve his very being.

Then it spoke, not in words that could be understood, but in pure, guttural urge. In blinding, consuming rage. In unfathomable, eternal hate.

And it lunged.

Its fangs sank into Crocodile's spectral chest, ripping through his form like wet paper. Claws, unseen but agonizingly real, tore through sinew and bones that weren't there, yet felt utterly real. There was no physical pain, just the overwhelming, terrifying sensation of erasure—a soul being shredded, stripped, devoured piece by agonizing piece, its very essence consumed.

Crocodile screamed. A soundless shriek of utter, primal terror that ripped through the void.

Reality snapped back like a slingshot. He launched backward from the armor with such raw, unadulterated force that he landed flat on his ass in the sand, his eyes wild and unfocused, breath heaving in ragged gasps. For a full moment, he could only sit there, trembling, the phantom sensation of being torn apart still echoing through his phantom soul.

Bullet, halfway through removing his jacket, turned at the sudden sound of Crocodile hitting the sand. He blinked once, saw the Warlord's wide-eyed, dust-covered fall, and let out a single, booming bark of laughter.

"Heh... I've never met a pirate scared of a dog before."

Crocodile, still unnervingly pale beneath his tanned skin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached. He didn't dignify Bullet with a direct response.

"That thing..." he muttered under his breath, his voice barely a rasp, refusing to elaborate, refusing to acknowledge the profound, soul-deep terror he had just experienced.

Bullet turned his head slightly, cracking his neck with a sharp pop that echoed in the silence. "Oi, Guts," he said with a wolfish grin. "You got a pistol?"

Guts glanced down at himself—bare feet dug into the sand and shirtless. The only thing he wore was his long black leather pants. 

He shrugged. "Nope."

Bullet looked at himself. Same situation—topless, barefoot, pants hanging low, fists already twitching for violence. "Shit," Bullet muttered. "We need pistols. Gotta make it official."

They both turned their heads—slowly, deliberately—toward Crocodile.

The Warlord, still subtly trembling from his supernatural trauma with the Berserker Armor, immediately clicked his tongue in annoyance. "You think I carry flintlocks for ceremony?"

Guts raised an eyebrow.

Bullet pointed a massive, accusatory finger at him. "Warlord title comes with responsibilities, Croc. C'mon."

Crocodile let out a long, sharp sigh of exasperation. "...Mr. 3!"

From the edge of the ridge, still soaking wet and trembling, with seaweed tangled in his absurdly shaped hair, Mr. 3 shrieked, "Why always me?!"

"Gun," Crocodile barked, his voice devoid of patience.

Mr. 3 whimpered, but obediently reached into his soggy coat. He pulled out two old pirate pistols, covered in rust and half-melted wax. "Please don't be too rough to Jenny and Betty!" he wailed, clutching them mournfully.

Crocodile snatched them midair with a swift sand tendril and tossed them disdainfully toward the duelists.

Guts caught his without even looking, his hand closing around the cold, rusted grip with familiar ease. Bullet just let his fall into the sand, picked it up like it was nothing, and grinned, the weapon dwarfed in his immense hand.

"Now this feels proper," Bullet said, hefting the old pistol.

The two raised their pistols skyward, the metal glinting in the dying light.

Bang. Bang.

Two shots, echoing across the vast desert, one for fate, one for Davy Jones. The sound was swallowed by the approaching twilight.

Done. Guts and Bullet simultaneously threw away the guns, discarding them as useless now that the ceremony was complete.

Mr. 3 shrieked and scrambled to run and catch his beloved weapons. Annoyed, Bullet vanished and reappeared behind Mr. 3 in a blur, and with a casual, booming kick to his backside, launched him upward once more.

Crocodile lit a fresh cigar and muttered, "Idiot."

Now the monster of men turned fully toward Guts, his hulking frame silhouetted against the burning orange horizon. Nearly five meters tall, Bullet looked carved from red iron—every inch of him muscle and violence. His old wounds glistened under the dying sun, and his new ones hadn't even stopped bleeding. He didn't care. He never had.

His voice boomed, more amused than hostile. "Who's going first?"

Guts didn't speak. He simply tilted his chin forward, a wordless gesture that said: you.

Bullet burst into laughter—a deep, chest-thundering roar that echoed across the dunes, shaking the very air.

Then, in a flash, his Conqueror's Haki erupted.

The desert quaked. Red and black lightning ripped through the air, shattering the calm like a thunderclap over a battlefield. He pulled his massive fist back, winding up behind his shoulder, Armament Haki gathering in such density that his skin turned coal-black, pulsating, volatile—a cannon made of flesh.

Then He vanished.

The ground cracked where he once stood, a small, radiating spiderweb of fissures appearing in the sand.

And in the blink of an eye, Bullet appeared right in front of Guts. With an inhuman roar, he slammed his fist into Guts' torso with all the force of a collapsing mountain.

The impact rang out like a bomb, a deafening crack that seemed to shatter the very air.

And Guts—

exploded.

Shrapnel-like pieces of flesh and black mist flew out, covering the sand. The sheer magnitude of the impact seemed to have obliterated the fundamental notion of a human body.

Bullet's grin slowly fell as he pulled his fist back, his eyes wide, feeling nothing but profound disappointment. Was that it? Was the Berserker really that fragile?

But before disappointment could fully bloom—it happened.

The mist coalesced.

Pieces knit together. 

Muscles regrew. 

Bones reformed. 

In a grotesque, seamless spectacle, Guts knitted himself back together from the shredded remains, standing tall once again, a single breath escaping his lips.

Crocodile's cigar, forgotten, fell from his gaping mouth, unnoticed.

That... that wasn't the armor's doing. He'd assumed Guts's legend, his impossible resilience, his very unkillable nature, came from the Berserker Armor.

Crocodile's knees buckled slightly, a tremor of genuine fear running through his hardened body. His assumptions, his logic—they all cracked under the crushing weight of what he had just seen.

He began to shudder, a cold, foreign sensation.

Everything he thought he knew was wrong.

The accursed weapon of Ohara wasn't some cursed relic.

It was Guts.

The man himself.

Bullet laughed, the sound booming across the desert like a cannon blast, echoing off the distant dunes. "I knew it!" he roared, spreading his arms wide like a colossus, delight radiating from his massive frame. "The infamous Devil Swordsman. The Marine Nightmare. No way you'd drop dead from a love tap!"

His scarred chest rose and fell with wild anticipation. "Come on, show me something real!"

Guts stepped forward, a grim grin spreading across his face, not one of malice, but of dark purpose. "I've been wanting to try this for a long time," he said calmly, his voice a low growl, like grinding stone. "A technique that made Pirate King's First Mate hide behind his wife."

That caught Bullet's interest. His predatory grin faltered, just slightly. He'd grown up knowing him; he knew what kind of monster Silvers Rayleigh was. And if he chose to avoid something...

Instinctively, Douglas Bullet covered himself with a thick, almost impenetrable layer of protective Armament Haki, bracing against whatever Guts was about to unleash. His skin turned a deep, obsidian black, shimmering with potent power.

He watched as Guts raised his arm—not with flourish, not with Conqueror's Haki flaring like a tempest, not with Armament blackening his skin. 

No lightning crackled around him. 

No tremor preceded his movement. 

No explosion of latent force burst forth.

Instead...

Guts's hand turned paler. A sickly, almost translucent white, as if the blood itself was retreating from his flesh, abandoning the very cells. The veins beneath the skin darkened, not with power, but with something more sinister, something terribly, fundamentally wrong. 

He was covering his fist with the very corrosion that reshaped him, the essence of his monstrous endurance.

He casually stepped forward—and delivered a light tap to Bullet's torso.

A punch so soft it was almost insulting, barely a touch.

Bullet blinked, his Armament Haki-clad form unmoving. "...Are you mocking me?" he barked, his voice laced with fury and disbelief. "You call that—"

His words were cut short.

His knees hit the sand like stone, sending up small clouds of dust.

His breath caught in his throat, a guttural choke.

And then—he screamed.

A raw, inhuman howl tore from Bullet's chest as he clutched at his body with both hands, eyes wide, the whites flashing red with sudden, overwhelming agony.

It wasn't pain like broken bones or ruptured organs. No—it was something deeper. Truer. Something that resonated through his very core.

Bullet's whole body shuddered violently, convulsing on the spot. His monstrous strength, his impenetrable Haki, his legendary endurance—they meant nothing.

Because what Guts delivered wasn't just a punch. It was the pain of two lifetimes. The pain Guts felt every time he was injured, every time his body was shredded, every single time he died and regenerated.

It was the accumulated, unending pain he always felt, the true, agonizing price of his immortality, delivered in a single, devastating blow.

"You good?" Guts asked, his voice a low rumble, a hint of genuine amusement in his eyes.

Bullet, still gasping for air, his immense chest heaving, weakly raised a hand—a desperate, trembling gesture to stop Guts from speaking, from saying anything more.

With legs trembling like a newborn deer, he tried to push himself upright, only to fall back onto the scorching sand with a groan.

He stayed like that for a moment, chest seizing, before, with a monumental effort, he finally managed to get to his feet, swaying slightly.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Guts said, his grin widening, a dark, knowing smile.

"What kind of technique is that?!" Bullet demanded, his voice hoarse, raw with a mix of fury and bewildered pain. 

He, one of the strongest pirates, a former member of the Pirate King's crew, had never encountered anything like that. His entire life had been defined by force, by destruction, but this... this was beyond his understanding.

Guts just chuckled, a sound like gravel shifting. "You just need to die many times, to master that technique."

Bullet's face contorted with irritation. "Just shut your mouth then!" he roared, glaring at Guts, refusing to acknowledge the morbid truth in the Berserker's words.

He readied himself. And like he did previously, he struck again, a blur of Armament Haki-clad muscle. And just like before, Guts exploded into a shower of flesh and black mist, only to seamlessly regenerate, standing whole and unyielding.

This time, Guts, with a showman's flourish, slowly began rotating his arm at the shoulder, loosening it with deliberate slowness. He didn't need to, of course; his body was already perfectly primed. He just wanted to. His grim grin was getting wider, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

As Guts's pale, corrosive fist connected with Bullet's torso once more, Bullet let out another piercing scream, a sound of agony that was torn from his very soul, and rolled on the sand, convulsing from the unbearable pain.

Igaram, watching Guts's body break apart and regenerate repeatedly, a grotesque cycle of destruction and impossible rebirth, started to turn paler and paler. His face, already ashen, seemed to drain of all color, and a dark stain began to spread across the front of his royal uniform as he finally pissed himself. 

The captain of the Royal Guard, witnessing this impossible spectacle, felt a profound, chilling realization dawn upon him: what a foolish, terrifying thing this kingdom had done, trying to contend with monsters like Guts.

And Crocodile, engrossed in the horrifying display, just watched with his mouth agape, completely oblivious to the fact that the Berserker Armor, now a silent, watchful wolf, had subtly shifted closer and was chewing on his golden hooked hand, its bone-etched teeth silently gnawing.

The sky had already deepened into a velvet black, dotted with the first hesitant stars, casting the desert in an eerie, dim glow. 

The only sounds now were the raw, guttural screams of Bullet and Guts's irritating, almost gleeful laughter echoing through the vast, silent desert. Guts, in his own tormented existence, felt a strange, perverse happiness to finally have someone strong enough, resilient enough, to share in the endless agony that was his constant companion.

The brutal exchange continued, punch after punch, scream after scream, until finally Douglas Bullet, the Demon Heir, the unyielding war-freak, dropped face buried in the sand, his monstrous body convulsing.

And he shouted, a broken, desperate cry that reverberated across the vast, moonlit dunes: "SURRENDER!"