The central courtyard of Thriller Bark was a wide expanse of cracked cobblestone and decaying stone architecture. Above, the fog of the Florian Triangle masked the sky in an oppressive grey light.
While the vanguard of the Straw Hat crew clashed with the World Government's forces on the coastline, and Ace's squad intercepted the Blackbeard Pirates to the north.
Nico Robin, Nami, and the two androids—Sunny and Merry—stood in a defensive diamond formation in the center of the courtyard.
The air was unnervingly quiet. The sounds of explosive magma and shattering ice were muffled by the sheer distance and the damp mist.
Sunny stood clad in the massive, imposing red-and-gold Hulkbuster armor. The suit's internal arc reactor hummed, the blue light of its chest core piercing the gloom.
Beside him, Mecha Merry, the thirty-foot-tall bipedal war machine crafted from polished Adam Wood, stood with its colossal, Seastone-plated knuckles resting against the ground.
Nami held her upgraded Clima-Tact loosely in her right hand. Her posture was grounded, her breathing steady. Months of absolute hell under Garp's relentless tutelage in the Time Chamber had fundamentally altered her baseline combat readiness.
Robin stood a few paces away, her arms crossed lightly over the violet silk of her shirt. Her blue eyes scanned the upper ramparts of the crumbling stone walls.
"Sensors are clear," Sunny's mechanized voice echoed from the external speakers of the Hulkbuster suit. "Heat signatures detect zero biological entities within a three-hundred-meter radius. The infantry appears to have been routed by the initial shockwaves."
"Don't rely entirely on the scanners, Sunny," Robin advised, her voice calm and measured. "Technology can be fooled. The World Government does not send its standard infantry when the objective is high-value. Rely on your intent."
"Auntie Robin is correct," Mini Merry's voice projected smoothly from the wooden titan's cockpit, her tone analytical and polite. "My optical sensors are clean, but my proximity alarms are registering anomalies. The ambient humidity just spiked, and the atmospheric pressure is dropping. We are being targeted."
Nami closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. She breathed out slowly, forcing her mind to quiet. She pushed her newly awakened Observation Haki outward, casting an invisible, spherical net of awareness over the courtyard.
Above. Left flank. Right flank. Center.
Nami's eyes snapped open. "Above us! Disperse!"
The warning came not a microsecond too soon.
Three figures dropped from the dense fog directly above the courtyard, descending in silence. There were no battle cries. They fell like executing blades.
Sunny fired his repulsor boots, launching the Hulkbuster suit backward. Mecha Merry shifted its Adam Wood legs, twisting its torso to the side. Robin and Nami utilized Soru, vanishing from their standing positions just as the stone floor beneath them melted and shattered.
KRA-KOOM!
As the dust settled, the attackers stood in the center of the crater. They wore white suits, tailored for maximum kinetic mobility. Their faces were obscured by unsettling masks.
One wore a featureless mask, another a smiling theater mask, and the third the ridged visage of an owl.
"Target confirmed," the agent in the featureless mask said. His voice was modulated and flat. "Nico Robin. Priority: Capture or Eliminate. The surrounding hostiles are classified as collateral. Execute."
The three agents moved simultaneously, turning the courtyard into an elemental hazard zone.
The Owl-masked agent (Aegis-3) slammed his palms onto the cobblestones. "Garasu Garasu no Mi: Shrapnel Field!"
The ground around the two Mechas crystallized. Jagged, translucent glass spikes erupted from the earth, shooting upwards to impale the robots.
"Targeting parameters locked! Evading crystalline structures!" Sunny announced from the Hulkbuster. He engaged his repulsors, hovering just above the spikes.
Aegis-3 blurred into the air using Geppo, his arms transforming entirely into razor-sharp glass blades. He launched a volley of glass needles toward Mecha Merry's cockpit.
"Deploying thermal counter-measures!" Merry chirped from inside the cockpit. She swiftly triggered the ship's emergency venting system.
High-pressure, scalding steam erupted violently from the wooden joints of her knee and shoulder. The sudden shift in temperature hit the incoming glass needles and the surrounding glass forest.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The rapid thermal shock caused the glass constructs to shatter into harmless dust. Aegis-3 recoiled, shielding his face as his weapons disintegrated mid-air.
"Batter up!" Sunny yelled. The armor pivoted, winding up its Seastone fist. With a hydraulic roar, Sunny swatted the disoriented CP0 agent like a baseball, sending Aegis-3 skipping across the courtyard and crashing through a stone archway.
On the ground, the Smiling-masked agent (Aegis-2) targeted Nami. He didn't sprint; his body seemingly melted into the floor.
"San San no Mi: Corrosive Wave!" His form dissolved into a bubbling pool of green acid that rapidly expanded, surging across the courtyard and melting the cobblestones in its path. He intended to flood the entire area, leaving them nowhere to stand.
Nami vaulted onto a broken pillar to avoid the acid. She didn't panic. She spun her Clima-Tact, calculating the chemical composition of the attack.
"Rain Tempo!"
A dense, localized raincloud formed instantly above the courtyard. A heavy downpour washed over the stone, rapidly diluting the expanding pool of acid and neutralizing its corrosive strength.
"Merry, ignite it!" Nami called out.
"Acknowledged," Merry reported from the cockpit. Mecha-Merry raised her massive wooden arm, exposing a row of internal ports. She fired a volley of incendiary micro-missiles directly into the diluted, watery acid puddles scattered across the ground.
The explosions flash-boiled the water. A dense, scalding steam screen instantly filled the entire courtyard, blinding the CP0 agents and masking the Straw Hats' positions entirely.
From within the thick steam, the leader of the CP0 squad, the Featureless-masked agent (Aegis-1), moved with a singular purpose. His target was Robin.
Aegis-1 charged through the whiteout conditions. As he ran, his skin turned into dense, jagged grey stone. He transformed into a massive gargoyle—the Ishi Ishi no Mi, Model: Gargoyle.
Beating his heavy stone wings, he launched himself through the steam, aiming to crush Robin beneath his weight.
Mecha-Merry stepped forward to intercept, locking her wooden arms with the heavy stone beast. The two giants collided with a heavy thud. The Gargoyle's raw Zoan strength began to slowly push the thirty-foot wooden mecha backward.
"He is too heavy," Merry analyzed calmly. "Applying supplementary force."
Robin stepped out of the steam, her hands crossed. "Ochenta Fleur."
Several pale hands sprouted directly onto Mecha-Merry's wooden chassis. They fused together rapidly, forming two giant, purplish-black arms coated entirely in Armament Haki.
The mecha now fought with four arms.
The newly sprouted Haki hands reached forward and gripped the Gargoyle's stone wings, pinning them firmly and denying him leverage.
"Initiating blunt force," Merry stated.
With the Gargoyle locked in place by the Haki arms, Mecha-Merry's original wooden fists pulled back and delivered a relentless, synchronized barrage of heavy piston-punches directly to the stone creature's face.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The impacts echoed through the steam, chipping the Gargoyle's stone armor and forcing him to his knees. Aegis-1 coughed, momentarily forced out of his beast form and back into his human state from the concussive trauma.
The tactical reality of the battlefield began to solidify. The CP0 agents recognized that isolated skirmishes were failing. The durability of the Mechas and the coordinated, elemental tactics of Nami and Robin were pushing them back.
They shifted their strategy. Aegis-1 raised two fingers.
Aegis-2 (reforming from the diluted acid) and Aegis-3 (pulling himself from the rubble) immediately repositioned, executing high-speed Geppo leaps to converge on Aegis-1's location.
"They're grouping up," Sunny warned, hovering his Hulkbuster armor to cover Nami and Robin. "Detecting a spike in kinetic and chemical energy."
"They are combining their Devil Fruits," Merry called out, stepping forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sunny's armor. "Divert all power to forward shielding!"
The three CP0 agents stood together. Aegis-2 unleashed a geyser of boiling green acid into the air, while Aegis-3 generated a storm of razor-sharp glass shards. Aegis-1, shifting his arms into heavy gargoyle stone, slammed his fists into the mixture, using a synchronized Rokushiki technique to propel the lethal concoction forward.
"Sanju Rokuogan: Corrosive Shrapnel!"
A heavy shockwave carrying melting acid and piercing glass ripped through the air with a screech.
The attack slammed into the crossed arms of the two mechas.
KRA-KOOOOOOM!
The Vibranium plating of the Hulkbuster groaned under the load, glowing violet as the acid ate at the joints and the glass shrapnel scored the armor.
"Shields critical! Armor integrity compromised by acidic compounds!" Sunny yelled, the alarms inside the cockpit blaring red. "Eject sequence initiated!"
Just before the Hulkbuster armor crumpled under the force of the combo, the back hatch blew open. Sunny ejected high into the air. The empty Hulkbuster suit remained in place, absorbing the remainder of the blast before melting and shattering into scrap metal.
Mid-air, Sunny called out. "Sister! My armor is compromised! Requesting Vanguard replacement!"
From her cockpit inside Mecha Merry, Mini Merry tapped her console. "Acknowledged, Sunny! Re-routing a Vanguard unit from the eastern front now!"
On the shoreline miles away, one of the red-and-gold Iron Legion drones abruptly disengaged from a brawl with a Pacifista. It shot straight into the sky and tore across the island toward the central courtyard.
The empty suit arrived in a blur of blue thruster fire, splitting open mid-air to catch the falling Sunny. The armor sealed seamlessly around him just as he hit the ground. He landed heavily behind the CP0 trio, raising his repulsor palms to lay down suppressing fire.
But the CP0 agents had accomplished their goal. The force of the explosion had kicked up a localized hurricane of dust, pulverized stone, and green acid-smoke, obscuring the courtyard entirely.
In the dust cloud, Aegis-1 utilized Life Return: Kami-e to erase his presence. His heartbeat slowed to a crawl, slipping past their Observation Haki.
He moved through the swirling acid-smoke with the silence of a ghost, bypassing the others and appearing directly behind Nico Robin.
He raised his index finger, coating it in a dense spike of black Armament Haki, aiming precisely for the base of her spine. "Shigan: Ogi."
Robin tried to turn, but the strike was too fast.
CLINK.
The sound was sharp and metallic. Aegis-1's forward momentum was stopped dead.
His Haki-coated finger was pressed directly against the flat edge of a remarkably thin, elegant, double-edged blade. The sword had slid perfectly between the agent's finger and Robin's spine. Frost instantly began to spread from the blade, creeping up the agent's finger and freezing the residual acid in the air into harmless snowflakes.
"My, my," a polite voice drifted through the swirling dust. "Striking a lady in the back while she is distracted? That is a severe breach of etiquette, sir. I find it utterly chilling!"
The dust cleared slightly, revealing a towering skeleton dressed in a tattered black suit and an orange ruffled collar, holding a cane sword.
"Though," the skeleton continued, "I suppose I cannot be chilled, for I have no skin! Yohohoho! Skull joke!"
Aegis-1 stared at the undead apparition, caught off guard by the absurdity of the situation as the cold began to numb his hand.
"Brook-san!" Robin breathed, genuine surprise coloring her tone as she stepped forward.
"At your service, my dear lady," Brook tipped his top hat gracefully.
Aegis-1 quickly retreated. Realizing his stealth approach had failed, he shifted rapidly back into his massive Gargoyle form, intending to rely on his thick stone armor to crush the skeleton.
He lunged forward, raising two massive stone fists.
"A sturdy exterior," Brook noted calmly, adjusting his grip on his cane sword. "But every armor has its gaps."
Brook dashed forward. He didn't aim for the thick stone chest. Using his extreme lack of weight and incredible speed, Brook sprinted vertically up the Gargoyle's massive stone leg.
Aegis-1 tried to swat him, but the skeleton was a blur.
"Aubade Coup Droit."
Brook didn't slash. He delivered rapid, precise stabs into the unarmored, shifting crevices of the Gargoyle's body—behind the knees, under the armpits, and at the neck joints.
The freezing chill of the underworld erupted from the blade with every stab. The ice expanded rapidly within the articulating joints, flash-freezing the moisture in the air and locking the stone limbs in place.
Aegis-1 let out a strained grunt as his body seized up. He was physically paralyzed, locked in place like a frozen statue.
Robin didn't hesitate. "Ochenta Fleur!"
Eighty hands sprouted across the frozen Gargoyle, instantly tightening their grip and securing his immobilized limbs to the ground.
Seeing his leader trapped, Aegis-2 recovered. His body bubbled with acid as he roared in anger, charging blindly at Robin to melt her sprouted hands and free his captain.
"Brook-san!" Robin called out, maintaining her hold on the statue.
"At your service!"
Robin sprouted a thick chain of hands directly onto Brook's skeletal back. She pulled back and slingshotted the lightweight skeleton forward at three times his normal sprinting speed.
Brook became an absolute blur of white bone and black suit, rocketing toward the charging acid-man. "Yahazu Giri!" (Arrow-Notch Slash).
He slashed past Aegis-2. The chill from the blade froze the acid in the agent's body solid, turning him into a frozen statue mid-stride.
But before Aegis-2 could shatter from the freezing strike, Robin sprouted two hands directly on the agent's smiling mask. She violently yanked his frozen head downward, pulling him directly into the path of a supercharged lightning bolt that Nami had just called down from her Clima-Tact.
KRA-KOOM!
Aegis-2 was blasted into the cobblestones, knocked unconscious from the combined attacks.
As Aegis-1 struggled helplessly in Robin's frozen grasp and Aegis-3 staggered out of the rubble from Sunny's repulsor blasts, the CP0 squad realized the truth. They weren't fighting a scattered rear guard; they were fighting a perfectly synchronized, highly adaptable crew.