BOOOOOOOOM!
Aokiji's eyes widened in terror. He crossed his Ice Gloves in a desperate attempt to block, but the sheer proximity and power of the dying Emperor's retaliation were too overwhelming.
KRA-KOOOOOOOM!
The quake-punch bypassed the ice entirely. The shockwave detonated squarely against Aokiji's side.
"GA-AH-!"
BURST!!
The sound of the Admiral's ribs shattering was drowned out by the localized earthquake. Aokiji coughed up a massive spray of blood. He was violently launched off his feet, transforming into a blur of blue and white light as he was shot across the battlefield like a cannonball.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
CRASHHH!
He flew for hundreds of yards, skipping violently across the shattered plaza, until he slammed into the massive, towering wall of a frozen tsunami-glacier he had created earlier in the war.
BOOOM!
Aokiji embedded deeply into the thick, blue ice, a massive spiderweb of cracks spreading outward from his impact crater.
The ice Admiral hung there, suspended in the glacier.
"Fuck..."
COUGH! COUGH!
He coughed, blood freezing to his chin.
"...just die already, old monster."
He could feel his organs screaming in protest. He had taken a direct, unmitigated hit from the crazed old monster.
Aokiji slowly opened his hazy eyes, blur looking through the smoke and ash toward the center of the plaza.
"Ah..."
He saw Whitebeard standing there. Half of the Emperor's head was gone, smoke rising from the blackened skull.
"Haaa...."
THUD.
Aokiji exhaled a long, ragged breath, his head falling back against the cold ice.
He didn't try to pull himself out.
He's missing half his brain, Aokiji thought, the pain making his vision swim.
Sakazuki...
you can do it.
"Me..."
Aokiji closed his eyes, deciding to stay put, leaving the final rites of the old era to his colleague.
"...I'm gonna take a nap."
He didn't want to deliver the final blow. Let Sakazuki do it.
COUGH! COUGH!
It was this time when-
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
...
The simultaneous, perfectly timed displacement of the Navy's greatest defenders was complete.
At the exact same second Whitebeard's quake-punch launched Aokiji into the distant glacier, miles above the plaza, Sengoku the Buddha crashed into the ruins of the Marine Headquarters, temporarily pinned under thousands of tons of stone by Light Yagami's strike.
"HA..."
Down on the blood-stained, tilted ice of the plaza, Admiral Akainu stumbled backward, landing heavily on his feet. He pulled his smoking, magma-coated arm away from Whitebeard's face.
"HA... HA..."
The Red Dog stood panting, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he stared at the horrific, fatal damage he had just inflicted.
Edward Newgate, the Strongest Man in the World. The Emperor's massive chest was rising and falling in slow, agonizing, rattling breaths. Blood poured freely down his massive torso. His left eye was gone, his half waist was gone, his kidney incinerated, his jaw melted away.
But he was standing.
The silence that blanketed the shattered plaza of Marineford was not peaceful; it was the suffocating, heavy stillness that immediately precedes a cataclysm.
A momentary lull had fallen over the epicenter of the war.
Barely a second ago, the Fleet Admiral Sengoku was blasted away and pinned beneath thousands of tons of the destroyed Marine Headquarters. But the world's attention wasn't on the Fleet Admiral's fight.
Whitebeard was about to die.
A mile or two away, Admiral Aokiji was embedded deep within a frozen tsunami-glacier, his body radiating a dull ache from the point-blank quake-punch he had just absorbed.
In the center of the ruined permafrost, Edward Newgate stood alone.
He was a monument of dying flesh and unyielding Will. Blood poured freely down his massive torso, pooling at his boots.
Yet, the World's Strongest Man did not fall. His broad, scarless back remained completely, impossibly straight.
A dozen yards away, Admiral Akainu stood. The Red Dog's crisp suit was ruined, and he was coughing up thick globs of blood.
Kuzan... he won't be coming back. Akainu knew enough about his friend.
He stared at the Emperor, his fanatical eyes wide with a mixture of absolute triumph and lingering, deeply ingrained terror. The monster was on his last breath.
Whitebeard did not look at the Admiral.
His remaining golden eye stared past Akainu, past the ruined Marine fortress, looking far out toward the churning, grey ocean where his sons were escaping.
In the final, fading moments of his life, Edward Newgate's mind did not dwell on his injuries. He didn't think about his territory or his wealth. He remembered a quiet, sun-drenched day beneath cherry blossom trees, sharing sake with a man who wore a straw hat and possessed an infuriatingly contagious laugh.
'Roger', Whitebeard thought, a peaceful, proud smile touching his lips.
The World Government believed that by killing him today, they could sever the Great Pirate Era at its root. They believed they could crush the romantic dream that drove men to the sea.
Whitebeard would not allow his death to be a symbol of the Navy's victory. He would use his final breath to pour gasoline onto the fire Roger had started twenty-two years ago.
Whitebeard slowly, agonizingly, drew in a massive breath. The air rattled violently in his ruined chest. He didn't need a long speech. He only needed one sentence.
"THE ONE PIECE..."
Whitebeard's voice boomed, a deep, tectonic rumble fueled by the absolute last embers of his legendary vitality. It commanded the attention of every living soul on the island, echoing directly into the visual Den Den Mushi transponders broadcasting to the entire world.
"...IS REAL!"
The declaration struck the world harder than any earthquake.
It was an absolute, undeniable confirmation from the man who had stood closest to the Pirate King. It wasn't a myth. It was real.
Miles away, on the Sabaody Archipelago, a profound, stunned silence held for three seconds before the entire island erupted in chaotic, roaring frenzy. The Great Pirate Era had just been violently, irrevocably rebooted.
Deep within the fractured ice of the tsunami-glacier, Admiral Aokiji slowly opened his eyes. He heard the Emperor's final decree ringing across the bay.
"Ha..."
The ice-man let the back of his head rest against the frozen wall, letting out a long, exhausted sigh. A small cloud of freezing mist plumed from his lips.
"Oh... couldn't have stopped it anyway." Aokiji muttered quietly to himself. He closed his eyes again, a heavy dread settling in his stomach as he thought about the absolute nightmare of a future he, Akainu, and Kizaru were going to have to face.
The seas were going to boil with new pirates.
Down on the ice, Admiral Akainu's face twisted into a mask of pure, demonic rage.
It was his hesitation that cost them this!
It was his fault!
Damn it!
DAMN IT!!!
The Red Dog's magma flared violently. His tactical mind, his disciplined observation, his entire sensory network was completely, utterly clouded by a fanatical, blinding fury.
Whitebeard's breath hadn't faded away but...
"TOLD YOU I'LL MELT YOUR FACE OFF!" Akainu roared, the magma bubbling violently up his right arm, expanding into a massive, molten fist.