"Damn it, why is this thing so hard?!"
"We can't break it at all, it's totally useless!"
After a bout of clanging and banging, the pirates under the dome weakly lowered their weapons. Their blades were already nicked, yet they still couldn't break through the wax barrier Mr. 3 had created.
The wax made from the Wax-Wax Fruit becomes as hard as steel once it solidifies. It's precisely thanks to the protective color of that white wax and its hardness that they managed to find this little resting place amid the cannon-fire-ridden battlefield.
But now, the barrier protecting them had turned into their prison.
Originally, Mr. 3 himself could've undone the wax wall outside, but Yamato and Kuzan's fight had affected the battlefield's environment. Even though Yamato's goal was to throw the fight, if she wanted to fool Kaidou, there was no way she could hold back.
The Ice-Ice Fruit and New Kyurem's Extreme Cold Power had already turned the surroundings into a hellish winter like a crimson purgatory, causing Mr. 3's wax-melting speed to actually be slower than its re-solidifying speed.
If you looked from the outside, you'd see that a massive iceberg was already covering the space above them.
The weight of the iceberg kept them from pushing the lid above, the extreme cold kept Mr. 3 from melting his own wax blocks, and the hardness made it impossible for these pirates to break them. For the moment, they were trapped in a deathtrap.
"Mm, as expected of wax blocks made by Mr. 3, they really are sturdy."
"Captain Buggy! Now's not the time to be praising Third Bro's ability!"
"Yeah, even though Third Bro's ability was a huge help in the prison break, now's not the time!"
"Wait, Captain Buggy, you definitely have a way, right? Please do something, quick! If we don't break this thing soon, we really are gonna run out of oxygen!"
"Huh? What am I supposed to do? We don't even know how thick the ice layer below us is. We can't get out either up or down, so we might as well just wait for fate's judgment."
The most powerful thing on him was his special Buggy Bomb. The problem was, the Buggy Bomb's power had always been pure voodoo—if he detonated it in here, he had no idea if it could blast apart the prison outside, but he was sure it could blow him to pieces.
Both mentally and physically exhausted, Buggy simply chose to lie flat, sprawling helplessly on the ice.
"Captain Buggy! You're just going to give up hope like that?! That's way too disappointing!"
Shing!
The surrounding pirates were busy condemning Buggy's inaction when a flash of blade light suddenly sliced across above them. The originally sealed wax dome slid off to one side, and the pirates inside finally saw the sky again.
"I-it's Hawkeye and Flower Sword! Their slashes cut through Third Bro's wax!"
They were prisoners from Impel Down, but most of them were only from the first two levels. Those capable of Steel Cutting were few and far between.
But for a Sword Master, Steel Cutting was just basic—and that goes double for the world's greatest Great Sword Master, Hawkeye.
He'd answered the government's summons and wasn't throwing the fight, but up to now he'd only swung his blade once at Whitebeard, and after that he'd gone into his own special slacking mode.
As a pure swordsman, ever since Shanks lost his arm, Hawkeye hadn't seen a suitable opponent for quite some time. Zoro from the East Sea had a decent mindset, but he was still just a little sapling, nowhere near enough to stir Hawkeye's interest.
On this Marinfanto battlefield, only Vista had sparked a bit of curiosity in him.
Captain of Squad 5 of the Whitebeard Pirates, Vista—also known as Flower Sword—was a skilled Dual-Sword Style user and an outstanding swordsman. In every swordsman's heart, Hawkeye was the ultimate challenge at the very top.
On top of that, they belonged to enemy factions, so a duel between swordsmen naturally broke out.
...
"We're saved...."
"That's great.... Wait! Captain Buggy! You predicted all of this from the start, didn't you? That's got to be it, right!"
One pirate rubbed his bald scalp—the Sword Qi just grazed past their heads. If Buggy hadn't lain down and forced them all to bend over while yelling at him, they probably would've been cut clean in half.
"So that's how it is. Captain Buggy, for the sake of saving us, you actually put your own reputation on the line...."
"To think that's the case! Captain Buggy! We'll follow you to the death!"
"OHH!!"
The Impel Down prisoners were all fired up, faces full of fanaticism, leaving Mr. 3 beside them completely dumbfounded.
"Buggy, I think every one of these guys' brains is broken. Are you really going to let them be your subordinates, Buggy?"
Looking back, Buggy—who'd just been resigned to his fate—had gone cocky again. His body split into pieces and flew through the air as he schemed up the Awakening plan for Lord Buggy's future.
Under everyone's random fiddling, a live-broadcast Radio Snail suddenly woke up again, and the reporters far away in Marinfanto once more saw the live feed...
...
"What's going on?! Why has the broadcast come back?!"
Below the execution platform, Sengoku glared angrily at the live signal that had reconnected. After his Great Buddha Transformation, the execution platform was no longer suitable for him to stand on—so as not to collapse it, Sengoku had moved down from the platform.
The course of this war had long since gone beyond expectations, even slipping out of control.
The encirclement wall had been breached, Whitebeard had inexplicably regained his youth, the Flying Dragon Team meant for hunting down stragglers had been scattered by an Eight-Headed Dragon rampage, the Seven Warlords of the Sea were either slacking off or half-assing it, and the only one who actually put in real work had been clubbed down by Kaidou.
Post-modification Kuma wasn't much of an issue, but his combat ability was far inferior to the conscious Kuma, and right now he was tangled up fighting Ivankov. The battlefield's situation had already entered a stage of full-blown chaos.
And an even more chaotic element had already come right up to Sengoku.
"I gotta say, as the Marshal of the Navy, you doing nothing at all in this war—are you sure that's okay?"
A questioning voice rang beside Sengoku's ear, but the person saying this was wildly inappropriate; he wasn't some Navy soldier, but Kaidou.
Letting him sit out a war was worse than killing him. The current Whitebeard was still fighting to save his son, and Kaidou had already chosen his own target.
Akainu and Kizaru were combining forces to fight Whitebeard, Aokiji and Yamato were trading blows full throttle, and Kaidou hadn't noticed any issue with that.
He wasn't planning to join forces with Whitebeard, nor did he intend to steal his daughter's opponent, so naturally his eyes locked onto the two old geezers zoning out on the execution platform.
The Three Great Admirals were all engaged in battle; no one could possibly stop Kaidou. Or rather, before anyone else could even react, Kaidou had already reached the front of the execution platform, staring greedily at the two men atop it.
"Kaidou, this is a war that has nothing to do with you."
"If it's war, how could it have nothing to do with me? Let me see for myself the strength of the Navy's Marshal! Daiitoku Thundering Hakken!"