The sound of skis heralded the arrival of the Suomi in the battle. Soldiers in groups of twelve, clad in grey, skirted the edges of the Whitebeard army on their skis, either taking potshots while moving or stopping to unleash devastating volleys. Attempts to engage them proved fruitless. Their rifles fired rapidly, and they kept retreating to bait pirates into machine gun nests hidden among the ice or mortar barrages from the seawall.
It was Curiel, leading the Whitebeard Pirates' 10th division (which had most of their firearm specialists), who organized a proper counterattack.
"Alright, boys!" the pirate bellowed as he jogged towards the Suomi stronghold. "Persistence is key! Keep advancing no matter what these pansy ski-boys throw at you!"
"Aye!" came the chorus… right as several Suomi fireteams slid in out of nowhere and unleashed rifle volleys.
Curiel met them, still running, with a spray of bullets from his twin auto-pistols. He managed to hit three Suomi before they all fell back, leaving more casualties on the ice than in any of their previous engagements. Curiel grinned.
"That's what I'm talking about! Forward, boys! Press them back!"
With a roar, the pirates took off in pursuit. More Suomi fireteams popped up, but they stuck to taking potshots and leaving, unwilling to engage the pirates directly. The pirates, for their part, took this as a sign that the plan was working and pressed further.
It was only after rounding a fairly large ice hill that they realized they had been somewhat mistaken.
Several Suomi machine guns opened up, striking down the leading edge of the pirates and forcing even Curiel to take cover.
'How did those damned ski boys infuse their bullets with Armament Haki?' he demanded, before leaning around the ice and emptying both his bazookas at the machine guns. He got a gratifying screech of metal and several screams of pain, but more attention from the other machine guns forced him to duck back again. 'This isn't working…'
"Commander!" shouted one of his pirates, panicked. "The Suomi just closed our line of retreat!"
Curiel whirled around to find that yes, the skiers had gotten behind them. Somehow. However, they were also stationary, which gave him an idea.
"So give 'em a full-division volley already!" he bellowed. From the lightbulbs Curiel saw go off, most of them had genuinely not thought of that. Morons.
Sadly, the Suomi were already starting to pack up when the volley was fired. They got a bunch of them, but most of the soldiers retreated in good order. And then the mortar shells started falling again.
"Fall back, boys!" Curiel declared, before grabbing a bazooka in one hand and an automatic pistol in the other. "I'll take care of this."
Ducking out from his cover, Curiel blasted the nearest machine gun with his bazooka and sprayed the rest to suppress them a bit. He was just about to reload and go after the next when he was abruptly tackled and brought to the ground.
"How—?" he bit out, because his Observation Haki should've warned him, but one look at the Suomi soldier's crazed eyes, completely unlike the calm, focused determination the rest of the soldiers were wearing, explained everything: he was drugged to the gills and not consciously thinking. Growling, Curiel pushed back, trying to break the grapple he was in, to no avail. Whatever drugs the guy was on, they were the good stuff.
The Whitebeard changed tactics. While one hand was needed to keep the Suomi from strangling him, the other grasped one of his machine pistols and unloaded it into the soldier's gut. The arms went slack, for without a spine, the drugs could only do so much, and he shoved the dying man off.
Just in time for a mortar shell to explode right in his face. Hacking, but no more than superficially hurt, Curiel responded with a bazooka shot and unhinged but mostly affected laughter.
"C'mon, boys!" he roared. "You're mincemeat!"
-o-
Of the Devil Dogs, the Angevins had caused Sengoku the most headaches. Not because of their off-duty behaviour—the hard-drinking Vikverir had the entire rest of the Devil Dogs combined beat there—but in the planning. The Vikverir wanted to be on the front lines: simple enough. The Suomi would prefer a flanking position: done and done. Irian was Akainu's problem.
But, as the Angevins explained, their way of fighting required some… accommodation. Specifically, they needed a runway, and they needed plenty of horizontal space. Being heavily armoured cavalry, they did not go straight from a standing start to a gallop.
There were two reasons for this. The first was that even their coursers and destriers, extensively bred for generations to be the perfectly knightly warhorses, simply couldn't accelerate that fast. Oh, they were fast creatures, but it was a speed that needed to be built up to, especially with several hundred pounds of man, armour, barding, and weaponry on their backs. Not to mention that, despite their best efforts, the Angevins had never been able to do much about their horses' stamina. One mile at a gallop was the best they could do.
The second was cohesion, and that had brought more than a few nods from the officers gathered to set the formations. Knights at a gallop could not maintain cohesion, and for armoured cavalry like the Angevins, cohesion was everything. Cohesion was the difference between a hard rain and a firehose, and all Marines knew how hard a firehose hit.
The accommodations were made, including the Angevins' late arrival. When the Vikverir charged over the seawall, the 1500 Angevin knights set off at a walk. On the ramp down to the ice, they accelerated to a trot. Even at this speed, every man on the ice felt the thunder of their hooves shake their footing. They accelerated to a canter. And now every man knew their presence.
Three hundred pounds of man and armour. Three thousand pounds of horse. All moving very, very fast, and wielding weapons that ended in almost needle-thin points. The Angevins had great confidence in their charge. None had stood their ground against a charge and lived.
On the battlefield of Marineford, the charge met its match. Shattered like spun glass against an immovable object: Diamond Jozu, who, simply by standing his ground, ripped the guts out of the charge. Lances shattered, horses went careening on impact, and the charge's center lost all cohesion entirely. And then the man waded into the melee.
The center was not the only unit savaged by the Division Commanders. On the right, the charge was brutally interrupted by a huge section of ice collapsing, sending several dozen knights and their horses plunging into the drink. For their fellow knights, who knew this to be a death sentence in their heavy armour, such an underhanded attack aroused their ire. So too did learning the identity of their assailant.
Several dozen knights were in the process of dismounting when another spot of ice shattered, and Namur, commander of the Eighth Division, darted out and grabbed one of the knights in his jaws, armour shattering under the points. The fishman promptly dragged the screaming knight underwater.
He did not scream for long after.
"Coward!" bellowed a knight. "Demon! Show yourself!"
"Gladly," growled the voice of the ocean from all around them. Namur shot out of the water again and was almost impaled on several arming swords. Some he caught in his hands, others in his jaws. Either way, once he wriggled free, he found himself on dry (if icy) land, facing down dozens of knights.
"Well. This hardly seems fair," he blandly remarked.
"C'est la guerre, démon," one of the knights retorted.
Namur's eyes narrowed. Suddenly, his opponents found the knight who had spoken gone and Namur standing where he'd been, fist outstretched and grin wide enough to show all his very sharp teeth.
"Oh, I don't mean for me."
And on the left, the first inkling the knights had that they were under attack was when two helmeted heads came flying off their bodies. The charge didn't stop—it frankly couldn't—and heads continued to fly off, though the knights extracted a gruesome toll of pirates in return.
It was when the line wheeled to try and support the rest of their army that it happened. One knight, nondescript except for the golden lions etched into his armour, closed his eyes, sinking into a state of hyperawareness that he'd cultivated over long years of training and combat. A state of nothingness he could sink into, where everything slowed as if moving through molasses.
Sir Lionel opened his eyes to find his opponents and was deeply alarmed to see that they were moving at normal speed even in this state. The swordsman seemed to have noticed him because he was moving towards Sir Lionel with obvious intent to kill. The lancer, who was impossibly fast instead of ridiculously so, seemed content to keep killing his knights.
It burned at him, but Lionel had no time to indulge such feelings. He hastily drew his sword, and because he'd seen that sword carve through steel plate like wood, utilized the Rising Swan instead of a more conventional parry to deflect the attack by the flat.
Sadly, his opponent was, as he'd suspected, a master swordsman. Adjusting his footing, the swordsman turned the deflection into a vicious thrust aimed at Lionel's cheek. The knight kicked his spurs into his horse, which, with a whinny, galloped a few paces forward just fast enough that Lionel could duck ahead of the strike.
It was then that his instincts screamed at him, and he drew his horse up short just in time before the lancer would have impaled him.
The next few minutes were a blur. Two opponents were an impossible task for all, but the most skilled knights, and that was when the two opponents were in the normal range of skill! The two opponents Sir Lionel faced—Division Commanders, they had to be—were well beyond that. And yet, Lionel's sword was always there to intercept their weapons, to make them stumble just long enough to keep them out of synch with each other.
Then he came back to his senses—his normal senses—to find the two gone, his breath roaring in his ears, and his life still with him. He pulled off his helmet to suck in air, and it was like this that another knight found him.
"Sir Lionel! You're alive!" he declared, surprised.
Lionel couldn't help it; he smirked. "You don't get to be named the Lion of the Rock by collecting dust." Then he sobered. "In all seriousness, I didn't expect to survive that, either. What's our status?"
The knight, even under his armour, visibly grimaced. "We've been carved to pieces, Sir Lionel. I'd estimate almost 200 knights are dead already. The survivors have grouped into three and are currently moving to assist the Vikverir in their advance."
"Good," Lionel nodded, putting his helmet back on. "Direct me to the nearest company; they'll need every man on hand."
"Aye, sir."
But Lionel's eyes had already fallen on a silhouette in the fog, a silhouette that made his danger sense scream.
"Gods above and devils below…" Sir Lionel of the Knights of Mare breathed as a titanic shadow loomed out of the mist.
-o-
Most of the time in battle, the single most critical mistake a fighter could make was taking their eyes off their opponent. And yet, in a single moment, every soldier, warrior, and pirate fighting on Marineford broke that cardinal rule.
An understandable misstep, as there were few sane reactions to the sight of a Titan who outweighed most castles stepping forth from the mist for all to see.
The Marines crewing the battleships outside the harbour were scrambling to fire their cannons in hopes of doing something. Unfortunately, their target had other ideas.
"ACE!" the ever-so ironically named 'Little' Oars Jr. bellowed, his booming voice setting many ears ringing, and not even showing an ounce of strain or effort as he hefted a Marine Battleship as easily as if it were a toy. "HOLD ON! WE'RE COMING TO SAVE YOU!"
CRAAAASH!
And with that, he swung the battleship at the left flank of the island's seawall, reducing the ship to splinters but accomplishing what all the cannonballs onboard couldn't: the wall collapsed, creating a straightforward opening for all of the pirate crews near it.
"ALERT! ALERT!" An alarm blared across the battlefield, a sizable amount of terror in the speaker's voice. "THE PERIMETER HAS BEEN BREACHED! THE PIRATES ARE ADVANCING!"
"Yeah, we noticed!" One of the Marines on the remains of the wall snarled as he helplessly watched the Titan march through their defences without pause. "What I want to know is how we didn't notice sooner! We should have seen this guy coming from a mile off! Someone tell me, how did he sneak up on us? HOW!?"
"Sea turtles," Oars rumbled without stopping, having somehow heard the question.
Despite the situation, the surrounding Marines faulted.
"NOT THAT ANSWER, A REAL—!"
SPA-LOOOOSH! The waters on the eastern side of the island abruptly erupted in a massive plume of water… and suddenly, the Marines were presented with much bigger issues to concern themselves with.
"…oh, crap."
-o-
"You have got to be kidding me," Sengoku ground out, more tired than anything at this point.
The world had heard Cross use the 'sea turtles' line more than once since the fall of Enies Lobby. At one point, he had even explained the story it came from, though not the name of the pirate who had told it. It was just a lie, in the end. Just a wisecrack.
Which made the sight before them not only frustrating but sanity-straining. Little Oars Jr. did, indeed, approach Marineford with the help of actual sea turtles.
Except that they were sea turtle Sea Kings, complete with diamond-hard shells and skullplates that allowed them to make quick, brutal work of the other side of their fortified sea walls.
"When did they start taming Sea Kings!?"
No response came. Which, after a few moments, led him to reluctantly eye the snail again. It blinked slowly.
"Oh, I'm sorry, were you hoping I knew?" Cross asked dryly.
"Don't you?" Sengoku challenged.
"Of course I do. Were you hoping I'd be dumb enough to actually tell you? Sorry again. As it is, I'd advise you to pay less attention to me and more to the field. Your men are about to have company."
Sengoku fumed, not helped when a final mighty CRASH! signified the collapse of the right wall. The only positive was that with their deed done, the massive turtles vanished back into the depths as quickly as they'd arrived. He wasn't confident that he had seen the last surprise that the Whitebeards would bring up from the deep, but at least they didn't have to worry about fighting three mountain-sized monsters for the time being.
That the dozens of crews that followed Whitebeard now had two openings through which to reach the mainland was enough of a headache for now.
Openings that they immediately exploited. Pirate ships converged on the breaches, their crews pouring down to the waiting warzone as soon as they were within jumping range. Whitebeard would soon have his full army upon the battlefield, and for all that that was a threat, Little Oars Jr. was still front and center. And becoming more and more pertinent by the second as he stomped forwards, one earth-shaking, unshakeable step at a time.
The battle lines heaved, surged, and then buckled, the Marines falling back inland as the pirates pressed their advantage.
-o-
"How do we fight something this big?!" demanded one of the hapless Marines in Oars' path. The answer to his question was made all the more complicated when, with a single sweep of his sword, Oars demolished the makeshift defensive line the Marines had fallen back to. Further hampering efforts came in the form of the pirates streaming in through the breach Oars had made, screening the supergiant from attempts to bring in heavier weapons and stronger fighters. And if that wasn't enough, joining the crowd of pirates to support Oars were two of Whitebeard's Division Commanders, Rakuyo and Blamenco.
"Damn it, we can't stop that thing!" another Marine further inland lamented.
"So you say. But we say much differently."
The panicking Marines stared incredulously at one of the Vikverir—no, the Chief Vikverir, Angmar, as he spoke. The size of their enemy did visibly discomfit the Viking leader, but his visage was one of determination rather than fear as he hefted something massive from off his shoulder. And it wasn't his mighty warhammer.
"When facing a foe larger than yourself, get something bigger to fight it for you."
The 'something' was now revealed to be a massive horn. Clearer still when he breathed in deeply—
BA-ROOOOOH!
—and blew out a reverberating blast of pure sound that rattled in the skulls of pirates and marines alike. All over the island, combatants stopped and looked around for the source of the noise.
And in that brief pause, two new noises came to the attention of the combatants.
One was a series of earth-shaking footsteps, clearly coming from beings much larger than any humans. Footsteps that were heavy, frequent, and numerous.
The other noise, however?"
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▄▄▅▅▅▅!"
It was the sound of pure fury. Fury at its most raw, primal, and bloodthirsty.
The source of the noises became apparent seconds later, as they emerged from around the back of Marineford's mountainous central fortress. Pirates and marines both reeled in shock at the sight before them.
"What the hell are those?!" the Marine standing next to Angmar demanded fearfully.
"Our answer," the war chief chortled grimly. "Let's see how your 'problem' fares against our Jotun."
And they were a substantial answer indeed: giants, over a dozen in number and the traditional size, but covered head-to-toe in arctic-white fur that gave them a truly bestial appearance. Their only garments were belts and loincloths of heavy fur and metal, and even heavier helmets that seemed welded on.
Yet the helmets did nothing to stifle the bellows of the beasts as they stampeded for the battlefield in an avalanche of might and muscle.
"They are formidable normally. Now that we've stimulated them, they should be too much for even this monster," Angmar said with a vicious smirk. "I hope they leave the skull intact this time, it shall make a most worthy trophy!"
Nervous or disturbed expressions spread amongst the onlookers as the berserk giants charged headlong into the advancing pirates. And then both groups abruptly slowed in their advance.
Few of the pirates were built to fight giants of any stripe, and so either fled or were swept away by weapons crafted from ice and bone. Rakuyo and Blamenco dove into the fray ahead of Oars. Rakuyo's flail struck by biting into one Jotun's Achilles and tearing it in two, sending the ice giant toppling to the ground, while Blamenco yanked a massive hammer out of his chin and slammed it into a Jotun's kneecap, sending the owner sprawling as well.
Unfortunately, that still left plenty more Jotun charging at Oars. As one, they bellowed, rocking the battlefield and drawing Oars' attention. One, a little faster than the rest, reached melee range first and slammed a hammer made out of a giant femur bone into the flesh of Oars' thigh.
Given it had been aiming for Oars' knee, the retaliation was swift and effective. "Hey, that hurt!" he bellowed, punting the Jotun straight up into the air.
As it landed head-first behind him with a sickening crunch, Oars met the rush of the rest of the pack with another sweep of his sword. The Jotun were bowled over, many bleeding from the deep cut made by the blade, until the last met the strike with another hammer, this one made of hard blue ice. The improvised weapon shattered under the strain, the force of the blow sending that one hurling away and into the side of a battleship that had been frozen in the bay, the hell crumbling around him.
But the Jotun's efforts were not completely in vain, as the destruction of the beast's weapon also shattered Oars's sword.
Flaring his nostrils in annoyance, Oars tossed aside the hilt and advanced anyway, stomping on and punching past the Jotun. They fought back, of course, hammers and picks and axes biting into Oars' flesh. But he was too big for them to seriously damage.
This was also when Rakuyo and Blamenco rejoined the fray. Rakuyo's living flail sought out joints with all the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile, paralyzing Jotun where they lay battered by Oars' blows. Blamenco merely waded into the fray, trusting that Oars wouldn't hit him. Certainly, his hammer blows had no issue providing the coup de grâce after the beating Oars was giving them.
Within the span of a minute, the entire Jotun force lay in crumpled heaps, some clutching savaged joints, and Oars advanced, the two division commanders readying themselves to head back to the fight at the plaza seawall.
"Tch. Had me going for a minute there, but no, he's not stopping," the Marine from earlier bit out dismissively, drawing his blade in grim anticipation of the unstopped juggernaut. "Why would you keep these guys back as a secret weapon anyway?"
"Simple…" Angmar's malevolent aura grew all the more, the man pointedly not preparing to fight. "Because they can do this."
It was at that instant that one of the Jotun—the very one that Oars had punted, that he'd taken out first—charged him from behind and dove for his left knee.
Caught completely off-guard, Oars' leg buckled, and he crashed to the ice, shattering it and ending up kneeling in the harbour's frigid water. With a growl, he plucked the giant off his legs and squeezed. With a snapping sound, the giant's skull gave way, and it went limp, Oars contemptuously tossing the body at the execution platform, only for a blast from Akainu to intercept and melt it.
Unfortunately, that distraction proved to be critical as the rest of the Jotun, miraculously and impossibly still mobile, leapt at and onto Oars. Some grabbed his limbs and held fast despite his thrashing bellows. Others rained down blows from fists and weapons of stone, ice, and bone.
For a moment, Oars simply took the beating, and then with a roar of exertion, he flipped over, squashing several Jotun under his mass and flinging a few more off. No longer completely weighed down, he planted his feet and charged for the execution platform, heedless of the Jotun still draped over him. One scrambled to its feet and tried to tackle him again; it was met with a palm to the face, sending it windmilling through the air.
All their might, all their fury, and for all that they were genuinely starting to hurt Oars Jr., starting to make him bleed, they couldn't stop him from coming close, so close to his goal.
"AAACE!" the titan bellowed, reaching out to save his comrade, save his friend.
Isuka's hand clenched tight on her rapier's hilt, staring unblinking at the approaching turret-sized hand. "Sir, we appear to have an impending situation…"
Sengoku, meanwhile, showed no reaction or emotional shift. His only response, his face blank, was to raise his hand and gesture at the Titan.
Ace's reaction, however, was overt and very emotional. "No… no, Oars!" He jerked in his chains, panic set on his face. "Oars, look out—!"
The snail on the platform tensed and looked away. "Oh, this is gonna suck—"
And then in one brief, blazing moment…
"GREAT ERUPTION!"
KRA-THOOM! "ARGH!"
Any hope Oars sought to bring was violently put out.
Like a bolt from the blue, a great fist of lava the size of Oars' head blindsided him from his flank and smashed into his face. The supergiant reeled back, a heady mixed stench of burning hair and cooked pork spreading over the battlefield. And, off-balance and blinded by the pain, he stumbled and fell onto his rear, half-crashing through the bay's cap of ice.
That momentary lapse proved to be his downfall, the Jotun renewing their assault with a possessed fervour, striking harder, fiercer, and more importantly, striking at Oars' head. The mega-giant tried to fight back. He struggled and flailed, and slammed and broke the Jotun time and again. But where they were willing and able to ignore their own wounds, Oars was not.
Bit by bit, the strength went out of Oars' limbs, and his struggling slowed, until finally he was left with a single active limb, his hand. Raised and trembling as he futilely reached out for his brother.
"Ace… hold… on…"
The limb fell to the ice and went still. As did Oars.
Once Oars' struggles and thrashing ceased, so too did the Jotuns' assault. Deprived of a moving target, the giants turned to the allied crews streaming in.
Rakuyo and Blamenco, meanwhile, had problems of their own. When the Jotun had dogpiled Oars, the Vikverir in position had entered the fray. Blamenco had found himself swarmed by the beasts' handlers, who were, to a man, tough, mean sons of bitches who were doing an admirable job of pressing him. And Rakuyo…
"TEMPOS!"
"Gah!" the pirate yelped, ducking under Angmar's ballistic hammer. He lashed out with his flail and was annoyed to see the war chief grab the head by the jaws, flip it under him, and leap at Rakuyo with the momentum, his hammer returning to his hands.
"No time for a full introduction, pirate!" he declared, swinging the hammer. "May he who dies, die well!"
The hammer landed, and in a fifty-foot radius, the ice shattered. The spray did nothing to deter Rakuyo's weapon, which screamed in and tore a chunk out of Angmar's back. He did little more than grunt in pain, straightening and concentrating on the head as it returned to its owner. One second… two…
Angmar hurled the hammer again and was rewarded by a bout of swearing. Unfortunately, that was all, and he couldn't pinpoint the pirate's location, so his next reward was the flail tearing in again.
Back and forth the two fighters went, their long-range duel mostly inconclusive, though Angmar was definitely getting the worse, small wounds adding up all over his body. He had just retrieved his hammer from the twelfth clash when his instincts screamed at him to move. He jumped back, right as Blamenco's hammer smashed into the spot he'd been standing.
"Tempos!" he bellowed, hurling the hammer and catching Blamenco square on the chin. Angmar took the opportunity to retreat. Much as he would've loved to fight at least one division commander to a conclusion, two on one was no fun, and there was plenty more fighting to be had elsewhere.
Blamenco, for his part, didn't press. He rubbed at the developing bruise on his chin as Rakuyo jogged up to him, face grim.
"Oars is still breathin'," his crewmate reported, and indeed, the combatants were giving the space in front of the supergiant's mouth a wide berth. Likely as much for the smell as the gusts. "For now, we just gotta trust he'll get up again." Rakuyo glanced at him. "You okay?"
"I'll be okay when we get Ace back," Blamenco replied, sneering up at the ever-imposing platform. "In the meantime, what say we unclog this sector a bit?"
Rakuyo hefted his flail, his scowl matching his weapon's tooth-for-tooth as they both growled rabidly. "Gladly."
-o-
By now, Marineford Harbour was completely engrossed in battle. Despite the efforts of the Warlords, Vice Admirals, Devil Dogs, and regular Marines in the plaza and ice field in front of the execution platform, the Whitebeards continued to push closer, exacting a deep toll in blood. In the skies above, Kizaru and Marco continued their duel while Doflamingo was as indiscriminate in his string slicing and friendly fire facilitating as Hancock was pretending to be. And on the right wing, the pirate advance had stalled out with Oars down and the Vikverir Jotun wreaking havoc unopposed.
One, attracted by the fluttering sails of the Moby Dick and its joints intact, leaped for the ship and what its berserker mind thought was a mere statue on the prow.
With a distorted halo wrapped around the head, Whitebeard slammed his bisento into its chest like a baseball bat. Tough though they were, these giants were no more able to take Whitebeard's earthquakes than regular giants. The Jotun went flying at the execution platform. This time, it was Garp who batted it aside.
Coby watched all these events with all the pants-darkening terror of a green soldier thrust into action for the first time. This was war, a battle of the scale the world had not seen in decades. A broken and bloody captain landing in front of them certainly didn't help. And perhaps understandably, he broke. Coby fled the battlefield into the dependents' housing to the rear of the fighting, Helmeppo running after him.
'I can't do this!' was the litany running through his head. 'So many people, so much stronger than me, getting swatted by flies!'
Where he was running to, he wasn't sure, other than away. But he wasn't so frightened that the feminine bark of "Get back to the battlefield!" didn't seize him up immediately.
Coby skidded to a halt behind a corner, carefully peeking around. There, standing in front of a Marine who seemed to have had the same idea, was that strange priestess Akainu had brought with him. Irian, her name was.
"Please, let me go!" the Marine begged, desperate. "I've lost my nerve! I don't wanna die! I got a family! I gotta take care of them, please!"
The smile on Irian's face should've been comforting. It was warm and friendly, reaching her eyes. It was not comforting in the slightest. Rather the opposite, really.
"Of course, of course. I understand completely," Irian crooned. "And I promise, you can go."
"Really?!" the Marine demanded in obvious relief.
"Of course! You just need to do one thing for me." Faintly, as if from a great distance, Coby and Helmeppo heard a sound of drums. "Let the beat take hold."
Abruptly, the Marine's body language… shifted. Where before it had been desperate and fearful, hunched over to make himself smaller, now he stood straight, stiff, and even more terrified. Turning, he marched off towards the front lines, following the cadence of the drums.
"W-What's going on?! I-I can't control my body!" the Marine exclaimed.
"That's working as advertised!" Irian cheerfully called after him.
Footsteps sounded rapid-fire, a courier running up to Irian and saluting. "Miss Irian, I'm here to report that preparations are complete."
"Oh, fooey," she groused. "I was hoping to sweep up a few more deserters. Oh well, I think I have enough. Lead the way!"
Coby and Helmeppo didn't move, didn't dare breathe, as Irian walked away, shoes clacking on the cobblestones. Only when the sound of drums faded away entirely did they relax into heaving gasps.
"What the hell was that?!" Helmeppo demanded.
"I-I don't know, but whatever it is, it's really bad," Coby answered.
There was a moment of silence between the two friends, and then Helmeppo grabbed Coby by the shoulder and began to drag him back the way they'd come.
"Hey! Helmeppo, what are you doing?!"
"Saving our lives!" Helmeppo answered, before adding, "Hopefully."
"Hopefully?! Wait, are we going back to the battlefield?! Helmeppo!"
Abruptly, his fellow Marine turned around and grabbed Coby by the shoulders and pulled him close. His sunglasses had slipped down slightly, revealing wild eyes.
"Yeah, I know how fucking outclassed we are there, okay?! But you know what?! There's Akainu's scary woman prowling around looking for deserters, which means Akainu himself is going to show up at some point! And I don't know about you, but I'll take my chances with a battle that might kill me rather than a fucking Admiral who'll give me a magma enema on the spot!"
Panting, Helmeppo stared Coby in the eyes, willing him to understand. And damn it all, Coby did. He hung his head in his hands. "This situation is so…!"
"No argument from me," Helmeppo agreed, pushing his glasses back up. "Now come on, let's get back before someone notices we're gone."
As they moved back towards less certain death, Coby's miserable expression dropped all the more.
"…I wonder if the Navy was the best choice after all," he mumbled.
-o-
Sengoku watched, outwardly impassive but inwardly furious.
As good a job as the Jotun were doing on the right flank, those damned sea turtles had torn a hole into the left that the pirates were taking ample advantage of. That sector was lightly defended, with troops shifted to the right and center, and the attacking pirates were fresh, having been held up by a massive traffic jam while trying to aid their comrades on the right. All of which meant they were making alarming amounts of headway.
"They've breached our defences at two points! We may be overrun, Fleet Admiral Sengoku!" the officer who'd reported the situation to him shouted.
"This is fine," Sengoku replied, and really, it was. They wanted the pirates drawn into the bay. This made it easier.
So why did he have a sinking feeling in his stomach?
He ignored the feeling, picking up his snail and dialling a number. "Jonathan, we're enacting the plan."
"I suppose it's time," the Vice Admiral replied. "Transmitting the appropriate messages to the fleet now, Fleet Admiral."
Nodding, Sengoku put away his snail. He had a more important problem to handle.
"Gramps…" Ace breathed as Vice Admiral Garp stepped onto the platform.
"What are you doing here, Garp?" Sengoku asked. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet."
"No. We're fighting pirates here. There's no reason to show any mercy," the Fist of the Marines said, just a little too forcefully, as he sat down cross-legged.
"So…"
"Just shut up and let me sit here!" Garp barked.
A short time passed in silence. Then…
"Outlaws deserve no mercy," Garp repeated, his shoulders trembling. "But this is family! What am I supposed to do?"
Tears welled in his eyes, a shocking sight for anyone who knew him. Ace gaped in shock, while Sengoku continued to stand outwardly impassive. Inside, though, he was cursing up a storm. Of all the times for Garp, of all people, to have doubts!
"Ace!" he cried out, voice choking. "Why? Why didn't you live the way I told you?"
"Gramps…" Ace breathed.
Sengoku said nothing for a long moment, worst-case scenarios flowing through his head. If Garp turned, here and now…
"Just don't get any funny ideas in your head, Garp, or I'll dispose of you, too," he finally said.
"Hmph!" the hard-headed Marine snorted heavily, before shooting a scowl that was more insulted than anything at his commander. "Dumbass. If I were going to do that, I'd have done it a long time ago."
"Same song and dance from all the decent men left at the top: all they can do is too little, too late."
Garp snapped his head to the snail, a thunderous scowl creasing his brows.
"I don't want to hear it from you, brat. All you're doing is whining to the whole world about how this isn't fair, somewhere nice and safe from this battle. I don't see you trying to stop it."
The silence that followed blared from snails all over the world. A lesser man than the Hero of the Marines would have flinched.
"…you're wrong on all counts, Garp," Cross whispered solemnly. "I'm not whining. I'm not in a safe place. I've fought harder to stop this madness than anyone else before it was even a fact. And if you can't see what I'm doing to put an end to this mess…"
The snail's expression morphed into rage, and the next five words hissed across the world.
"I suggest you look up."
It took a moment for them to process what he had said. The next moment was a breath of hesitation, on the off chance that Cross… no, because it was only an off chance that he wasn't right.
Slowly, and not being the only ones on the battlefield to do so, the four people on the execution stand followed Cross's advice.
And something was indeed there. Something very big was falling very fast.
Sengoku's face turned red and his teeth grit. Garp wasn't far off, shock and anger mixed together, though he seemed more indignant than anything. Ace's jaw slowly fell open. And Isuka…
Ultimately, all she could manage was to blink in numb surprise. "Well. This is new."
-o-
Vice Admiral Jonathan grimaced at the orders he was sending out. Accelerating Fire Fist's execution made perfect military sense with Whitebeard knocking on their door. In literally any other circumstance, he would be applauding this decision. Now, he only hoped that Luffy had a Transponder Snail on whatever ship he'd hijacked and that he got here in time to actually use the information.
Jonathan had been assigned to the communications room at Marineford, the nerve center through which communications flowed. And he did more than just relay plans; as a Vice Admiral, he was authorized to make amendments and even send out plans of his own, on the theory that this battle would be sufficiently chaotic that they needed to let the men on the spot make decisions. That would come in handy later. But for now, it was a source of anxiety.
"Uh, Vice Admiral, sir?"
Jonathan started, realizing he'd gotten lost in his thoughts, and directed his attention to the Lieutenant who'd spoken up. "Yes? Do you have something to report?"
"Um, I think?" the lieutenant said. "It's weird, and might just be a malfunction…"
"Just share it already," Jonathan said, mildly impatient.
"Well, according to the vis-snails we're using for monitoring, there's a Marine battleship falling out of the sky, but I've accounted for the entire fleet already."
Jonathan blinked, genuinely surprised, before shaking his head. "Just can't arrive normally, can you, Straw Hat…"
Cross had gone into extremely fine detail where he had deemed it appropriate and skimmed the remainder. The Masons hadn't pressed due to the time constraints, but it had the somewhat annoying effect of certain details catching them off guard. Such as 'After Hancock became an ally,' omitting the fact that she fell in love with Luffy. And for what was currently happening, he had given the woefully inadequate description of, 'That's when Luffy and the escapees arrive.'
"…and what will the third one be this time?" he muttered to himself.
-o-
Indeed, the battlefield had halted for a hot minute so that everyone could gawk at the battleship falling from the sky, and the figures falling alongside it. And bickering. Constantly.
"I'm telling you, you keep going too far!"
"Blame the witch."
"It's instinct, I tell ya! Instinct! I see ice, I break it!"
"Well, there's ice down there! Go and break it with your skull so we don't all die!"
It was Ace, of all people, who summed up the mood with a simple, flat "What."
"AAH! WE'RE FALLING!" Straw Hat Luffy shouted as he entered the battlefield, falling from a great height, before blinking in realization. "Hey, wait! I'll be fine, I'm made of rubber."
"Well, the rest of us aren't! DO SOMETHING!" rose a great chorus.
"I never should've listened to you and Cross's loony ideas, Straw Haaaat!" Buggy the Clown added in a wail.
The war was about to get a lot crazier, everyone could tell.
-o-
In the depths of the Sixth Hell, the second pirate who had gambled everything to rescue his brother was pacing feverishly back and forth. As minutes morphed into hours, caution had faded. Clearly, nobody was going to interrupt them anytime soon, which, given how long it was taking to thaw Byrnndi, was a damn good thing.
"Captain, what's eating you? The process is almost finished, and our defences are solid. Another hour, likely less, and we'll be on our way back to the submarine," Nightin said, her eyes straying only momentarily from the melting ice.
"That's exactly why I'm worried, Nightin," the elderly man responded. "How long have we been waiting here for Byrnndi to thaw? How long has it been since Luffy left? And aside from that acid dump earlier that almost tripped Gairam into whatever's below this floor, what's come of it?"
He tugged on the horns of his helmet. "No matter how things ended up against the Warden and his staff, it has to be long finished by now. They know why we're here and where to look for us. So why hasn't anyone shown up yet? What else is going on that's as troublemaking as Luffy?"
The grim feeling spread to the others, and Byojack sighed.
"Not to mention that before we get out of here, we need to find the hitchhikers. After all the risks we've taken, I'd rather not add betraying him at the end of it. Even they aren't stupid enough to risk that, and neither are we."
"Not even with the Captain backing us?" Gairam asked curiously.
Byojack heaved an even more tired sigh. "Seeing as Byrnndi will likely want to do business with that scum of the earth once all is said and done, better we stay on his amicable side…" His scowl deepened with a fearful shudder. "Especially given that he could easily overpower even Byrnndi if he felt so inclined. Or have you forgotten how his recruitment pitch went?"
The World Pirates collectively swallowed at that particular reminder, uneasily rubbing at their throats.
"Alright, point made…" Nightin admitted, before gritting her teeth as she contemplated the new problem. "So then, how are we supposed to hunt down Caribou, assuming the slimeball is still alive?"
"Kehihihihi… About that…"
The World Pirates all jumped as a murky chuckle suddenly sounded from the cell's corner. They spun to see the slimy swamp-man peeking through a hole that most certainly had not been there before, leering and wringing his sleeve-engulfed hands eagerly.
"Your task, you see, might turn out easier than you'd think," he snickered, licking his lips with ill-concealed—outright naked, really—malice. "Sooo sorry for the delay. Ran intoooo… well, let's call it a little trouble."
Byojack's already grim demeanour slipped over the edge to indignation at Caribou's tone. "You… feckless bounty hunter!" he barked, shambling towards him as fast as his old bones could carry him. "What have you done? What have you brought down on our heads?! Answer me, right now—OOF!"
Byojack's advance was abruptly halted when his path was suddenly blocked by someone stepping in front of him, causing him to smack into a solid wall of flesh and fall onto his rear.
The impact merely stunned the old man; nothing too serious. But then he looked up, up at the person he'd run into.
He looked up, saw his face, his demeanour that spoke of nothing but cruelty and bloodshed, that wretched, horrible smile…
And then he was trapped. Trapped in a nightmarish memory he'd tried his hardest to escape for years. One that refused to be bound in the past where it belonged.
A memory, well over forty years old, which reprised itself, word for word, in the present. The man before him in the present and the devil he'd met forty years ago spoke as one.
"Move aside, runt. You're in my way."
Byojack's already panicked breathing accelerated, his heart pounding to the point where he was dead certain it would leap out of his chest. "N...N-No… t-that's impossible… y-y-you died!" his tearful blubbering escalated in terror and volume as he frantically swept his arm out, scrambling back in an effort to put some, any distance he could between himself and the monster before him. "You died! They killed you! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!"
His screaming brought his crewmates running to his side, already primed for combat, but also confused and worried. None had been with the crew from the very beginning like him, but they had been there for a long time. And in all that time, through all the horrors that Byrnndi had perpetrated, that they themselves had committed, not once had they seen Byojack in such a state as this.
The World Pirates as a whole were summarily ignored as the towering man who'd breached their hiding place turned back to his slimy compatriot. "What's with Grandpa? He having a heart attack?"
"Kehihihi…he's likely confused," Caribou simpered, bowing his head in deference to the superior monster. "I would wager he expected to die at Magellan's hands… rather than yours."
"Oh yeah, good point…" The man scratched his chin thoughtfully, before baring that Smile again, every inch as deadly now as it had been all those years ago. "Well then, old man, it's your lucky day! Because that—"
For a single second, Byojack swore he felt his heart stop as a cloak of Darkness—his Darkness, the Darkness that should have died with him, this couldn't be happening!—swept over the foul man. It was at that point that mortal terror finally kicked the poo-flinging monkey part of his brain into overdrive, dumping adrenaline into his system in a demand from mind to body to live. "RUN! RUN—!"
"—CAN BE ARRANGED!"
Before any of the older pirates could react, the Darkness leapt off the man and towered above them all. The shadow of death, sure, certain, and merciless.
"LIBERATION!"
A cascade of purple slime erupted from the darkness, an oncoming tide of liquid death that overshadowed the pirates… and killed all hope of escape, without exception.
"ZEHAHAHA!"
And in his last moments, as their doom fell upon them and spelled the end of the World Pirates, Byojack begged and pleaded in his mind what he knew was a vain wish:
'Byrnndi… please… if I ever… meant anything to you as a brother… for once in your life… listen to me… don't fight… just run… just run…'
And then… nothing.
He was gone.
"ZEHAHA! ZEEEEHAHAHAHAAAAA!"