Donquixote Doflamingo was not weeping. He was not terrified.
He was trembling.
"This..."
"This!"
The Heavenly Demon gripped his own face, his long, spider-like fingers digging into his pale skin. Behind his pink sunglasses, his eyes were wide, manic, and completely alight with twisted euphoria.
"Fuffuffuffu..."
A low chuckle vibrated in his throat, rapidly escalating into a full-blown, hysterical cackle that echoed eerily across the frozen bay.
"FUAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Doflamingo threw his arms wide, embracing the cold, bloody wind.
He didn't care!
He didn't give a fuck about safety!
Let them all hear!
He would dare to shout it!
How could he couldn't!
"LOOK AT IT!" Doflamingo roared, his voice trembling with sheer excitement.
"Look! The Whitebeard is dead! The Red Dog is dead! The absolute pinnacle of the old era and the supreme weapon of the Navy... wiped out in a single breath!"
He pointed a jagged finger toward the False Deity standing in the distance.
"WHAT A FALSE DEITY!"
"WHO IS JUSTICE NOW?!" Doflamingo screamed to the heavens.
"Who gets to decide what is right and wrong?! The center cannot hold! The throne is empty!"
"The world is going to tear itself apart, and it is going to be absolutely beautiful!"
"FUAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"FUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
....
Doflamingo seemed to have been bit by a rabid dog as he screamed and enraged people he would never dared have.
Not all the Warlords shared his psychotic joy.
They hadn't come out of the shock themselves yet.
Gecko Moria was sweating profusely, his massive, onion-shaped body shivering. He took several steps backward, his shadow writhing nervously beneath him.
"He killed an Admiral..." Moria muttered, his teeth chattering.
"He just... he just killed him like it was nothing."
"No no no no no I'm leaving! I'm getting out of here right now!"
Boa Hancock stood atop her mound of petrified Marines. Her beautiful face was an unreadable, imperious mask, but beneath her robes, her hands were clenched into tight fists. She had been looking at Luffy when it happened, happy that Luffy was not caught in the crossfire, but even the Pirate Empress felt a cold shiver trace its way down her spine as she looked at Light Yagami.
'What kind of man is he?' she thought.
'To hide his intent so perfectly, to wait for the exact moment of an Admiral's triumph to execute him... does... does he not know?'
A few yards away, Dracule Mihawk remained completely still.
The World's Greatest Swordsman had his golden, hawk-like eyes locked onto Light Yagami's pitch-black saber.
Mihawk didn't care about the political fallout. He didn't care about the Marines or Whitebeard. He only cared about the blade.
'He is evolving... to evolve as he fights!'
Mihawk realized, a profound, sharp intrigue cutting through his usual boredom.
He pushed his vessel past the limit of humanity. His Haki... its intensity is abnormal!
Mihawk's grip on Yoru tightened slightly. For the first time in years, the swordsman felt a genuine thrill of anticipation for the future.
However.
There was something else.
...
The shockwaves of this double-execution were not contained to the island of Marineford.
Miles away, bathed in the warm, setting sun of the Sabaody Archipelago, the world was watching.
Three massive visual Den Den Mushi screens were broadcasting the live feed to tens of thousands of civilians, reporters, and pirates gathered in the central plazas.
The silence that had gripped Marineford had infected Sabaody as well.
The crowds were completely, utterly paralyzed.
Eustass 'Captain' Kid stood near the front of the crowd, his mechanical arm whirring softly. His trademark, arrogant grin had completely vanished.
Kid was a man of ambition. He had sailed the Grand Line leaving a trail of civilian casualties in his wake. He believed in violence. He believed he was destined to be the Pirate King.
But watching him—a man roughly his own age—casually orchestrate the assassination of a Marine Admiral right after the Emperor of the Sea had his head melted off...
A bead of cold sweat rolled down Kid's forehead.
"This was definitely planned..."
"What the hell are we even sailing into...?" Kid whispered, his voice completely devoid of its usual bravado. He looked at Killer, who was standing silently beside him.
"Killer... the New World... it's a completely different dimension of monsters."
A few feet away, Trafalgar Law leaned against his nodachi, pulling the spotted fur hat low over his eyes.
"He used the Emperor," Law murmured, his analytical mind dissecting the tactics of the False Deity with terrifying clarity.
"He used Whitebeard's final moments, and the distraction of his death, to blind the Admiral's senses. He engineered a scenario where the Navy's greatest weapon defeated himself."
A slow, dark smirk crept across Law's face.
"Straw Hat-ya... you have a terrifying ally. "
In a dimly lit bar on Grove 13, Shakuyaku exhaled a long, thin stream of cigarette smoke.
The former pirate and intelligence broker stared at the small screen behind her bar. Her hands, usually steady as a rock, trembled ever so slightly as she picked up a glass of whiskey.
"Oh, Newgate..." Shakky whispered softly.
She wasn't looking at Light. She was looking at the headless corpse of Edward Newgate.
"The sea is going to boil," she said to the empty bar.
"The balance is completely destroyed. Without you to hold the territories... without Sakazuki to instill absolute terror... I don't know what will happen."
And hidden among the crowds of Sabaody, scattered and disguised, the remaining members of the Straw Hat crew watched the screen in absolute, terrified awe.
Nami covered her mouth with both hands, tears welling in her eyes, not just for the death of Ace's father, but out of sheer terror for her captain.
"Luffy... what THE HELL are you doing in the middle of all that?!" Nami sobbed quietly.
"That is no place for us!!"
"Get out of there! Please, just run!"
"RUNNN!"
Usopp was gripping a lamppost so hard his knuckles were white. His legs were shaking violently. He was the man who wanted to be a brave warrior of the sea, but watching the gods of the world casually rip each other apart made his knees weak.
'He killed an Admiral', Usopp thought, his mind racing back to the Sabaody auction house, remembering the calm, chilling demeanor of Light Yagami.
'Ally?'
'Don't joke with me!'
'That guy... he really is a demon!' '
Back on the blood-soaked ice of Marineford, the silence had stretched to its absolute breaking point.
Light Yagami stood over the corpse of the Red Dog.
He slowly raised his pitch-black saber, flicking his wrist. The thick, molten blood of the Admiral splattered across the permafrost, leaving the dark steel completely, immaculately clean.
He didn't look at the weeping pirates. He didn't look at the terrified Marines.
He slowly tilted his head upward, looking toward the colossal, smoking ruins of the Marine Headquarters building.
Rumble.
The sound was faint at first, but it quickly escalated.
The massive, thousand-ton boulders of shattered stone and steel began to shift.
KRRR-CRACK.
A blinding, violent pulse of golden light erupted from beneath the rubble. The sheer kinetic force of the light violently blasted the heavy debris outward, sending massive chunks of the fortress flying into the bay.
From the heart of the wreckage, a golden figure rose.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku pushed himself out of the crater.
His colossal Buddha form was battered, scorched, and heavily bleeding. The golden aura around him was not the bright, righteous light of Justice; it was dark, erratic, and violently pulsing with pure, unadulterated, blinding fury.
Sengoku stood at the edge of the ruins.
He looked down at the plaza and wished to any God or creator that Doflamingo's shouts were falsities and lies spun of derangement.
He wished for it to be a dream.
INHALEEEEEEEEE.
Glance.
The veins on Sengoku's massive, golden forehead bulged. His eyes turned completely bloodshot.
He saw the headless body of his greatest rival, Whitebeard. And then, his golden eyes locked onto the decapitated, slaughtered corpse of his greatest weapon, Admiral Sakazuki.
Fifty years of discipline. Fifty years of stoic, calculated, Commander restraint.
SNAP!
He snapped.
""YAGAMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!""
Sengoku's guttural roar was not a battle cry. It was the sound of a god losing his mind.
BOOOOOM!!!
The shockwave of his scream physically tore the ice apart, violently snapping the paralyzing silence that had held the battlefield hostage.
The execution was over. The wrath of the heavens was about to begin.
.
.
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A/N: Guys I'll try to be regular but things are a bit shaky for some time as I must prepare and appear for placements. F.