Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

Page 199

"Isn't that Shanks?!"

He raised one hand, which, like a moving dark cloud, drew a huge arc in the air before landing with a "thud" about five steps in front of Shanks.

Five fingers sank deeply into the fallen leaves and soil.

"Long time no see! It's been several years since then. Have you thought things through?"

Loki said.

Shanks tilted his head back, looked at that face, and a slight smile appeared on his lips.

"Loki."

He said.

Two words.

There were no small talk, no greetings, no superfluous "Are you alright?"

"You still look the same as always."

Shanks said.

"The usual?"

Loki's laughter rang out again, this time even louder than before, causing the leaves nearby to rustle from the sound waves.

"Hahaha, you look quite different, Shanks! You've even lost an arm!"

Shanks remained silent.

He raised his hand to touch the three scars on his left cheek and the missing arm.

"Yes."

He said.

Time has been unkind to you.

Loki said.

His gaze shifted from Shanks to Jabba.

That smile underwent a very subtle change in that instant.

"Yo, Jabba."

Loki's voice became a little lower than before.

"You old codger, you're still alive?"

Jabba looked up at that delicate, young face.

His expression didn't change much, but something warm flickered in his black, bronze-colored eyes.

“You’ve grown up quite a bit since that incident.”

Jabba said.

"But you haven't changed at all."

Loki's smile widened even further.

"Then you'll age much faster than me."

He looked at Jabba's gray hair, at every wrinkle on his face, and at the gleaming leather sheaths of the two axes at his waist.

"Were your years of seclusion in the land of giants difficult?"

"Is life easy or not?"

Jabba said, "It has nothing to do with hair color."

Loki stared at him for two seconds.

Then he withdrew his hand.

The enormous hand rose from the ground, its fingers covered in fallen leaves and black mud, with a few broken stems of small ferns stuck between its fingers.

He casually flicked his hand, and the soil and broken stems fell off his skin, dispersing into a cloud of brown mist in mid-air.

"so."

Loki's voice suddenly changed.

It's not that the volume or the tone has changed, but rather the tone of voice.

That undisguised joy of seeing old friends vanished the moment the word "so" was uttered, as if a power source had been unplugged.

Instead, there was something colder, deeper, and more like the golden halo deep within his pupils.

"What are you doing here?"

he asks.

It wasn't a questioning tone, but an interrogative one.

Shanks remained silent for a moment.

Then he spoke.

"Loki."

He said.

This was the second time he had called Loki by his name.

But this time the tone was completely different from the last time.

The last time was a greeting.

"I still have the same idea as last time."

Loki's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Don't go out to sea to cause trouble for the World Government."

Shanks said.

Loki's smile vanished.

It didn't disappear slowly, nor did it disappear gradually; rather, it vanished completely from her face in an instant, like a light being suddenly turned off.

That delicate, youthful, sculpted face took on a completely different texture after the smile faded.

It wasn't anger, sadness, or fear, but something closer to a vacuum—a complete, absolute emptiness devoid of any emotion.

The blank space lasted for about three seconds.

Then it was filled with something that Bai Yu had never seen before, something that could not be defined by any known emotional vocabulary.

It was something more primal, more instinctive, like some dark liquid that had been sealed away for a long time, suddenly gushing out from a crack in the earth's crust.

"What did you say? Are you kidding me?!"

Loki's chest began to heave violently.

Each inhalation was like a giant bellows being pulled open, and each exhalation was like hot air being exhaled from the nostrils of an enraged bull.

He lifted his fingers from the pile of fallen leaves, clenched them into a fist in mid-air, and the knuckles of his five fingers protruded like the ridges of five small mountains.

"You'll stop me from getting my revenge!!"

Loki's voice began to tremble.

It's not the trembling of fear, nor the trembling of sadness, but the kind of trembling that occurs when you try to suppress an extremely intense emotion that's about to erupt, and your vocal cords can't withstand that suppression.

"Avenging one's father is a matter of course!!"

Shanks remained silent.

He stood there, his red hair gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the tree canopy.

Loki looked at him, his anger evident.

"so."

Loki said.

His voice suddenly returned to normal.

It's not the angry, somber, trembling normality, but a truly, almost callous, normality.

"You really came here to stop me."

It is not a question.

It is a declarative sentence.

Shanks looked at him, and something flickered deep within his unfocused eyes.