"Did you honestly think that your stupid monkey could tell mine what was going on and we would take it lying down? I've said it before, I'll keep saying it until it finally gets through the thick skulls of idiots like you the world over: Nobody gets away with provoking the Straw Hat Pirates."
Sengoku was ready to boil over at this point, staring up at the hijacked Marine battleship falling from the sky—guaranteeing the loss of yet another one of those—which held, at a glance, 'Straw Hat' Luffy, 'Knight of the Sea' Jinbe, 'Sir' Crocodile, Emporio Ivankov, and a host of others that he knew had been in Impel Down not long ago. Along with several others that he only knew by their—
His eyes slid over one particular face and then darted back. His heart stopped. A moment later, he nearly ripped off his Transponder Snail's speaker.
"ALL UNITS! AIM AT THE FALLING INVADERS AND FIRE AT WILL! DON'T LET THEM REACH THE ICE ALIVE!"
Any soldiers that weren't already locking blades with pirates (and several saps who were) snapped up their rifles or muskets at the order. The battleship's underside was facing down, making it a bit more difficult to aim at those on board, but they had numbers and space over the intruders.
It was a truly impressive display of firepower that rang out, one that in any other circumstances would have guaranteed a rain of bullet-riddled corpses. But these weren't any other circumstances. These weren't just any simple targets, and one target, in particular, was someone whom Sengoku didn't want to give even a single chance to live. Which was what prompted him to clarify his order somewhat
"No matter what happens, JEREMIAH CROSS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO REACH THE BATTLEFIELD ALIVE!"
-o-
In a certain darkness, a human and his snail exchanged confused looks at that proclamation. Only briefly, though, before the human shook his head dismissively.
"Roll with it," he breathed.
The snail's only answer was to concentrate harder.
-o-
Most of the others in the world, however, had to do a double-take. Including pretty much everyone on the battleship itself.
"How the hell—?"
"Cross!? Wait, when did you get here—!"
And then Crocodile and Luffy processed the outfit that 'Cross' was wearing and swallowed their questions. It was tasteful enough not to be mistaken for a Newkama's outfit—a hoodie and jeans, albeit a garish neon orange-and-pink combination—but, at the same time, it was an outfit they had seen on someone else multiple times on the journey to Marineford.
On top of that, there was no Soundbite on his shoulder, and Lassoo and Funkfreed were also conspicuously absent. Cap it off with the fact that he was currently making sure that the bandages around his face and hands were properly secure, and Crocodile, at least, was mentally kicking himself for not immediately realizing he was looking not at the Voice of Anarchy, but at the Okama of a Thousand Faces.
He exchanged a look with Straw Hat. Something passed between them, the two mutually and unspokenly deciding to just roll with this development.
That's when the bullets fired up at them quite rudely intruded, the battleship beneath them becoming less and less of a shield as they fell.
"STRAW HAT! MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S BULLETPROOF!" Buggy shrieked.
"We're losing men here, take out the gunners!" Galdino agreed loudly, himself already clad in his Candle Champion.
"The whiners bring up a good point. Any of you wanna—GAAH!"
'Maelstrom Spider' Squard's snarking died in a pained shout, his shattered kneecap spurting blood. It was that, inflicted on some of their best muscle, that finally prodded the elites among them into actually doing something.
"Alright, that's quite enough of that, let's clear out these pests! Croco-Boy, lend me a hand?" Ivankov barked, ramming his fingers into his neck and ballooning his already impressive head to a grotesque size.
The ex-Warlord scowled at being ordered about, but chose to direct his ire to the hapless gunners waiting below. A sandstorm spun to life in his palm, and he reared his hand back.
"Sables: PESADO!"/"HELL WINK!"
The condensed sand shot to the ground with the force of Ivankov's wink, and the combined wind and stone shook the entire area. The attack didn't actually affect the majority of the shooters, but the resulting blastwave did knock askew follow-up shots. While that kept the rest of the prisoners from being shot or blasted to pieces, it didn't do anything to halt their plummet.
"ANYONE—besides Straw Hat—HAVE A PLAN FOR US NOT BREAKING EVERY BONE IN OUR BODIES ON THE ICE!?" Buggy screamed.
"Leave it to me," Whitey Bay grinned, positioning a pair of cannons she'd appropriated from the falling ship onto her shoulders and angling them down. "After all, in case ye've forgotten, me an' ice have a very special relationship!"
"HOW COULD I FORGET?! YOU'RE THE ENTIRE REASON WE'RE IN THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE!"
"Aye, exactly, now shut up and lemme do my job!" Whitey shut an eye as she scrutinized the ice below. "Alright, let's see, faultlines there, thickness like so, so the soft spot should be… THERE YA ARE, YA BUGGER! SHATTERPOINT SHOT!" And with that declaration, she unloaded both her cannons, the cannonballs streaking ahead of the plummeting pack—
KRA—KRACKOOM!
—and blasting through the icy hellscape below before detonating. The resulting explosion did its job, blowing open a massive hole in the ice to the water below that would allow for a soft(er) landing. It did more than that, though.
Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact site across the entire impromptu battlefield, the once-solid pack now a field of ice-floes and bergs. The battlefield grew even more chaotic as fighters on both sides struggled to keep their footing, scramble away from the cracks, and otherwise avoid falling over or into the sea.
That was a luxury not available for most of those falling from the sky.
SP-LOOOOOOOSH!
After all, even with the ice shattered, there was too much force for the battleship to properly absorb. When it struck the water, it snapped in two almost immediately, and many of the rank-and-file prisoners from Impel Down fell overboard from the impact.
"This is why you don't see more mixed-race crews: the fishmen always get stuck with lifeguard duty…" Jinbe groused as he dove into the water to fetch the Devil Fruit users who didn't stick the landing. He promptly resurfaced, gaping, for there was Luffy, soaked but still above-water. A closer look revealed a chunk of flotsam that must have dragged him back up, and so Jinbe mentally shrugged and dove back under.
After all, while the king anchor was in no immediate danger, there were plenty of other Devil Fruit users he needed to save.
-o-
Not even Jonathan, who had actual experience with Straw Hats unexpectedly falling from the sky, had expected that Luffy would drop out of the air on a stolen battleship. And yet…
"I know that this is utterly unprecedented and completely insane, but it is for those precise reasons that I wonder why I'm surprised at this development," the Minister of the Left stated, his left eye twitching spasmodically.
"Indeed," Prince Fukaboshi idly responded, his mind having already moved past the arrival and onto its implications. His eyes picked out several faces of interest among the falling pirates, one or more interesting than the others. And not only because he was very dramatically tendering his resignation from the Warlords by sweeping entire companies into the water. "Jinbe is with them."
"And fully allied with them, by all appearances…" the Minister of the Left grimly noted. "Which means he isn't with the World Government any longer. This bodes ill for the Sun Pirates. Without a Warlord's authority, they—"
"They won't be going anywhere."
The Minister's head whipped around at the response, finding his prince with a small but rather unfriendly smile on his face.
"Y-Your Highness?!" the catfish merman stammered. "What do you mean? Without the authority of a Warlord, they'll be treated as any other pirate would… be…"
Slowly, his mouth open, the Minister looked around the grove they were in, at the gathered fishman soldiers, at the embassy building currently under construction, and, of course, a few Sun Pirates gathered to watch, completely unafraid of any potential consequences.
"As any other pirate would be, under the World Government's law," Fukaboshi agreed, his smirk still in place. "But if that mattered even a jot before, then that jot has been erased with this embassy. Nobody in the Ryugu Kingdom will be punished for bearing the mark of the sun."
"The World Government is going to be utterly livid about that." The Minister of the Left glanced at the screen. "Which, given current events, is saying something."
"Well, on consideration of the World Government's recent actions, I know precisely what you can tell them when they question our policies."
"Yes, your highness?"
"Choke on it."
"Yes, sir, your highness!"
-o-
Two minutes later, Jinbe ripped off the breastplate of Galdino's candle armour to properly resuscitate the man within. Whitey Bay kneeled nearby, soaked and trying to hack out a lung.
"Puah! Gagh, so that's what hammer-dom feels like…" she croaked. "I'll be honest, I don't care for it. The powers, aye, I like those. The sinkin', not so much…"
"Serves you right! You overdid it again, witchy woman!" one of the Whitebeards who'd been helping her cackled.
"Said it before, I'll say it as many times as I need to! I see ice, I shatter it!" Whitey swore, shaking her fist defiantly. "That's my thing, it is! You cannae be denying a lass her thing! Why, ye wouldn't go and deny Crocodile his kingdom-conquering, would ye?" The witch froze (non-literally, for once), the gears in her brain turning. "…waaaait. Hang on. That dinnae come out quite ri—wait." Whitey froze up further, snapping his head around. "Hold on a—piss and buckshot, where'd that dry-hided reptile get off to!?"
"Over there!"
As the ex-Warlord flew towards the Moby Dick, several pirates broke away from their fights to try to intercept him. But the sand-man easily outpaced them, soaring up to the whale's head with his hook reared back.
"It's been a long time, old man," Crocodile drawled.
"You never learn," Whitebeard sighed, not moving a muscle to stop Crocodile's attack.
The ex-Warlord was undaunted by the lack of reaction and would have pressed the attack had he not had to parry a steaming red leg that slammed into his hook and knocked it away. He leaped back to dodge the palm-strike that followed—only it wasn't a palm strike, but a grab to the front of his coat. With soaking wet fingers.
Crocodile met Luffy's glare with a bland, disinterested expression, something that only made the fingers gripping his coat clench harder.
"Did you really think I'd let you?" Luffy demanded quietly.
"If you want to save your brother so bad, you should stay out of my way," he replied with all the care of someone talking about the weather. "I'm killing Whitebeard, and you can't stop me."
Luffy's grip on his target tightened further. "Last time we fought, you needed to replace the end of your hook. Try that again, you'll need to replace the whole thing next time." He yanked the sand-croc in close, his scowl inches away from Crocodile's face. "If there's a next time."
Crocodile's face betrayed no emotion as Luffy roughly released him. To an observer, he turned away of his own volition, ignoring the glares, swords, and rifles aimed his way. But underneath the facade, Crocodile had felt a shiver at that threat. He was acutely aware of how much Luffy hated him, and after his performance in Impel Down, the sand-man wasn't foolish enough to believe that Luffy couldn't beat him. Unconsciously, his remaining hand gripped his other arm, right above his hook.
Luffy, for his part, knew that this wasn't the end of it. Crocodile would bide his time and strike when an opportunity presented itself. All he had to do was not let an opportunity present itself.
With the crisis temporarily averted, Luffy reached into his bag and looked up at the Emperor beside him. Whitebeard stared back at him with curiosity and even a little respect. Not looking away, the rookie pirate withdrew a bottle from his bag and held it out.
"Thirsty?" he asked.
~o~
Four Dugongs exchanged regretful looks before nodding and setting a small collection of bottles before Luffy.
"This is our secret stash, Luffy. Not even Boss knew about it until now, so I speak for all four of us when I say that we really hope it's useful for you," Leo said.
"Secret stash of what?" Luffy asked.
"Fermented seaweed juice," Donny replied. "It'll make for a good disinfectant if you need a quick fix—"
"—or a molotov cocktail if you need a quick weapon—" Raphey added.
"—or if you drink it, liquid courage when it comes down to the crunch—" Leo continued.
"—or if you just need to really cut loose and forget about everything else for a bit," Mikey put in.
"We've saved up five bottles. It's not much. But it's the best that we can do, so we hope it helps," the four said together.
Luffy nodded and accepted the box. "Thanks, Mikey, Raphey, Donny, Leo."
As he stowed it away, he noticed that the four of them were resolutely not looking at Boss. The elder dugong observed them for a minute before huffing out a sigh.
"I'll let it pass this time, only because of the circumstances."
They sagged in relief.
~o~
Of the many things Whitebeard had expected from his first meeting with the famed Straw Hat Luffy, being offered a bottle of booze hadn't even been on the list. Unfortunately for his health, he responded with laughter rather than proper shock.
"Gu…GURARA—HACK! Cough!"
The World's Strongest Man bent over, coughing fit to shake the heavens. And it wasn't a normal dry or phlegmy cough, either. It was a deep, wet, hacking cough that came from deep in his chest and drew concerned looks from those on the deck near him. Looks that caught the small streaks of red on his hand as he lowered it from its mouth.
"Heh… It's brats like you that are killing me… even faster," he remarked, taking the bottle. He eyed it for a moment before taking a sip.
"Fermented seaweed," he muttered before downing the remaining contents.
"Yeah, my guards gave it to me. I tried some, but it didn't taste that good. Glad you liked it."
"Your guards… meaning that this is Alabastan Dugong seaweed…" Whitebeard mused, giving the bottle a look of renewed respect. "'Either the best booze you'll ever drink or the last'… tch, decades later and the old blubber-ass turns out to be right on both counts. He always did love to overachieve."
"Huh?" Luffy tilted his head in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
Whitebeard only hummed to himself as he returned the bottle, a wry smirk on his face.
"I was asking if you have your head screwed on right, kid. Even with your third mate stacking the deck this high, you're still a small fry compared to the forces in play here. Do you really think you're ready for this?"
"…maybe not. Which is better than the 'definitely' I would have given you a few weeks ago," Luffy admitted, grimacing at the hellscape before them. Or, perhaps, the person at the center of it all. His fists clenched at his side. "But it doesn't matter. I don't have to beat everyone here, just whoever gets in my way. I'm going to save Ace and get him out of here alive…" He slammed his knuckles together, snorting like an angry bull. "Even if I have to give him a Fist of Love and carry him out."
As if they could hear him—and maybe they could—on the execution stand, Garp looked at his hands, searching, while Ace seemed to pale a bit.
"Gurarara!" Whitebeard laughed. "So that's all it takes to reel that brat in! Would have been good to know a few years back."
A silence fell, a comfortable one, both men gazing out at their goal.
"…Thanks for helping Ace," Luffy said with complete sincerity.
"Thank you for allowing me to meet him," Whitebeard replied.
Luffy started at the feel of a large and powerful hand on his back and looked up at the old man. Whitebeard smirked back, before saying under his breath:
"Don't let them get you from behind."
Luffy nodded before lowering his gaze to the bedlam he'd have to cross. It was a situation that wasn't as bad as it had been just minutes before, but not as good as it could have been.
The shock of Luffy and his reinforcements crashing in their midst had shaken the Marines in the center, both physically and psychologically. As such, the Whitebeards were pressing the attack, seizing control of swathes of ice and several bites of the docks surrounding them. Already, the fortifications were being turned on the Marines on the execution plaza.
But that was all they could do. Sengoku's orders had brought renewed, if desperate, energy to the Marines. Their retreat had been checked, and a hasty counterattack was organized to at least retake the fortifications. A counterattack that had run headlong into the Whitebeards' renewed offensive.
The result was a scrum of white and blue in pitched battle against an entire rainbow riot of colours, so dense that not even a glimpse of the ground was visible. Clearly, it would not be easy to cross.
"Straw Hat-boy, you may want to look directly ahead of you," Ivankov remarked, vaulting up onto the Moby Dick's deck along with a handful of others, 'Cross' included. "The Navy hasn't been idle while you've been chatting."
Luffy followed his advice and frowned. It seemed that several units of Devil Dogs had gone to work capitalizing on Luffy's arrival by expanding on the cracks that Whitey's attack had caused. Much of the space between the Moby Dick and Oars's fallen form was water again. Entire battalions lined the edges, most busy fighting with each other, but others unengaged and staring down Luffy, just waiting for him to make himself an easy target by rocketing over.
"Looks like the white-hats tried to get rid of our bridge. Gimme a spell, and I'll have it solid as new," Whitey smirked, flexing her fingers and cracking the permafrost that had accumulated on her knuckles. It would have been much more impressive if she hadn't stopped herself from cracking her knuckles the normal way.
"You do that. I'll be going on ahead," Luffy said before vaulting clear off the side of the Moby Dick.
"YOU IDIOT!" came the cry from everyone watching, including Garp and Ace. Jinbe rolled his eyes as he vaulted back over the edge, ready to fish Luffy out as he landed on the sea, crouching on the surface to absorb the—
…wait a second.
"WHAAAAT!?"
Straightening, Luffy sprinted for the ice on the water's surface, to the general befuddlement of everyone watching.
SPLASH! "WAGH!"
While Jinbe, left with nobody to rescue, face-planted on the ocean's surface, resurfacing a moment later red in the face. Hard to say if it was from impact, anger, or embarrassment. Though he wouldn't hear the end of it in the following months, at least everyone's attention was still on Luffy, somehow, to repeat, running on water.
"…OK, how is he doing that?" the once-unflappable Inazuma demanded.
"It's gotta be his shoes." Buggy rolled his eyes at the general incredulity that his comment provoked. "Oh come on, what else could it be!?"
"Ahh, right, I remember now," Galdino nodded. "Those must be the Taolf wood sandals."
~o~
Funkfreed's trunk was carefully maneuvered forward, dropping a pair of sandals onto the table with the sound of clattering wood. A closer look revealed that they were made of peach-colored wood, a good inch thicker than Luffy's normal footwear, and with small black ropes as straps.
"Every beri of my allowance on Skelter Bite went to buying this wood, Luffy. I've still got enough left to make a sheath, but I carved these sandals for you first. 100% pure Taolf wood, the most buoyant substance in the world. As long as you can keep your balance with these on, you won't have to worry about sinking in the water."
"Buoyant enough to counteract a Devil Fruit?" Chopper asked in amazement.
"Ten square feet of the stuff would be enough to lift a battleship from the ocean floor," Funkfreed confirmed with a satisfied grin. One that Luffy matched, as he tucked the sandals away for later use.
"Thanks, Funkfreed."
The elephant loosed a mournful bray, flicking his captain's head back with his trunk.
"Thank me by coming back alive, Captain. That's all I ask."
~o~
Whitebeard stared out after the young rookie, struck by the fact that, even after all these years, the ocean could still find new and creative ways to surprise even the likes of him. "Cheeky upstart brats… where do they get these wonderful new toys?…tch…" he scoffed, scratching at the back of his head. "Like I don't already know the answer. This new generation is something special indeed."
And then Whitebeard grew still and sober, not turning to face the presence that he sensed behind him.
"…but then, nobody knows that better than us relics of the last generation, huh, Squard?"
The 'Maelstrom Spider', who had somehow climbed aboard the Moby Dick despite his shredded beef brisket of a knee, said nothing. Just stared at the old man's back, acutely aware of the number of swords and guns around him. Several Whitebeard Pirates, as well as Ivankov, Inazuma, and (surprisingly) Buggy, had their weapons ready. Not pointed at him, but clearly prepared to change that as fast as you could say, 'Cross, you son of a—!'
The fact that he was still holding the naginata he had appropriated, even if he was presently leaning on it as a makeshift cane, probably didn't help.
"…You know why I'm upset, Pops," Squard grunted out, his gaze dull and unfocused, staring more through Whitebeard than at him. Staring at a scene that had played out long, long ago. "So be straight with me: how long have you known, and were you ever going to tell me?"
A heavy silence fell, the old man not moving an inch to answer or to dodge. Squard grit his teeth and was about to ask again, far less politely, when Whitebeard finally spoke. "Knew from the start. Only that idiot's son would be the special kind of stupid necessary to keep going after my head for a straight year. But it wasn't my secret to share."
Squard's fists clenched hard, his expression livid as he drew up his weapon, supporting himself on only one leg. Ignoring the weapons now abruptly aimed at him, he finally properly focused. Focused on Whitebeard, and then Ace, and then something only he could see, before shakily dropping his stare back to Whitebeard.
"…how am I supposed to forgive him, Pops? How am I supposed to let go of what Roger did to me? To my friends?!" The last barked word was accompanied by a reckless slash of his blade, in spite of how it further aggravated everyone else's paranoia.
"Who said that you were?" Whitebeard retorted. "And more importantly, what the hell does that have to do with Ace?"
The naginata audibly creaked. Squard was gripping it so hard. Everyone around him tensed further, one of them even sneaking around and aiming a rifle at his back—!
And then he slammed the naginata into the deck before slumping onto the old man's side, sobs shaking his frame.
"I've… I've been such an idiot…" he choked out.
"Yes. You have been," Whitebeard agreed, stepping back to kneel down and embrace him with his free arm. "But if I couldn't look past that, I wouldn't have any sons left."
It was a tender moment amid a war. And unfortunately, such moments were seldom left undisturbed.
-o-
When the Suomi had first arrived in Marineford, the higher-ups had been briefly disappointed that there was no elite fighter among them. Soldiers, especially soldiers as capable and specialized as the Suomi, were always welcome, but to fight Whitebeard they needed as many aces—and kings, queens, and jacks, for that matter—as possible.
Then the Suomi had conducted marksmanship drills, and they'd seen Halvar practice. So when Halvar approached the planning team a week before the battle, asking where the best place to set up a sniper's nest was, they immediately gave him the very best on the base.
Now, he was atop one of Marineford's great towers, clad all in white to blend in with the stone, and observing the battle below, rifle in hand. Already, he'd picked off multiple Whitebeard gunners and kneecapped the Maelstrom Spider, a feat that bothered him since he'd been aiming center mass. Now, he intended to correct that mistake, among other things.
"Eyes on target. Wind is optimal, conditions good…" Halvar squinted down his sights at Squard, tracking the sitting man even through the completely inconsequential giant standing in front of him. "Path is obstructed, but negligible. I have the shot."
The monologue was entirely for his own benefit. He'd already been given the all-clear to fire at will, yet the lack of a connection to his commander was grossly unprofessional.
Still, a job was a job, and a target, a target.
He took a breath, infused his will into the weapon…
"Execute."
And pulled the trigger.
-o-
Under normal circumstances, a single gunshot should have gone unnoticed in a warzone, especially one from a sniper's rifle. These were not 'normal circumstances.'
Those aboard the Moby Dick stared in horror as Whitebeard suddenly turned his body in a clear dodge, and yet one just a little bit too slow. The bullet pierced his flesh and slammed into the deck a fingernail's length away from Squard. Blood dripped from Whitebeard's new wound. Not fatal, not even critical, but definitely not good.
"Sniper! Tch," Ivankov spat angrily, reaching up in his hair and fishing out his own medical kit. "Hold still a moment, I'll—"
"Don't bother."
Ivankov stopped at Whitebeard's command. He didn't elaborate, but he didn't need to. A dark expression crossed Ivankov's face as he turned back toward the battlefield.
"Like being with Dragon all over again, why do I find all of the death-seekers outside of Hell?" he grumbled. As he began organizing the newkamas for a charge over Whitey's new path, everyone else was more focused on the first blood drawn by the Navy from Whitebeard.
"H-how didn't you notice him sooner!?" Squard blustered.
"Because they were using an old sniper's trick: they weren't aiming for me, they were aiming for you. Trying to use you to kill me. Which…"
Whitebeard straightened, seemingly none the worse for wear and obviously furious.
"Was a mistake."
-o-
Halvar clicked his tongue as he looked up from his rifle. A bead of sweat trickled down his brow at the fact that his pinpoint-perfect shot had failed to kill either of his targets. "Well, that's inconvenient."
That single bead evolved into a full-blown cold sweat when the real target glared up right at the marksman and started to rear his fist back.
"And that's very inconvenient. Right, time to go—"
The Suomi didn't get far in his attempt to abscond, due to Whitebeard throwing his fist out and shattering the air with his knuckles.
"…perkele."
Three seconds later, the tower experienced a very localized 5.0 earthquake. Localized enough that it quite literally blew the roof off of it.
-o-
While everyone not otherwise occupied stared at the spectacle, there were only two things on Luffy's mind. One was Ace. The other…well, no, even he couldn't quite shake off the sight of one of the towers suddenly getting blown into oblivion.
"Geez, how'd that happen?"
"Consequences of making Whitebeard angry. Should have been self-explanatory, but apparently, the whole world needs a refresher."
Luffy stumbled on the water at the sudden voice in his ears, very nearly taking a dunk. "Can you hear me, Cross?" Luffy asked, doing his best not to move his lips.
"Loud and clear, Captain," came the faint response in his ears. "Glad you made it out alive. And with more company than I expected at that. …how bad was it?"
"Ehhh… they upgraded the floors because you told everyone about them… and there were these weird monsters like Shiki's, but they were cyborgs… but Magellan was pretty cool. He let me go in the end."
"…wait, what?" Cross demanded. "Two of those I can buy, but what's that about cyborgs?"
"I think Iva called them… BioMEGA?" Luffy grit out, dodging away from a barrage of gunfire from some soldiers unoccupied enough to try attacking him. They wouldn't hurt, but deflecting them was a delay he couldn't afford. "The Government is making them, one of them tried to kill the Amazons, and there were… five in Impel Down."
A tense silence fell as Luffy reached the edge of the ice and started needing to dodge melee weapons.
"Soundbite. Scan."
"Way ahead of you, looking past these scrubs and thugs and—MAYDAY, MAYDAY!" All the pirates on the battlefield jumped as a panicked klaxon blared out across the battlefield. "GIANT ENEMY WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT AT THREE DIFFERENT PLACES!"
"Thought so…" Cross grumbled darkly. "If they were willing to use those things in the field, then there had to be more at Marineford."
Luffy grit his teeth harder at that revelation. And as the line of Navy soldiers abruptly parted to allow a certain Vice Admiral through, Luffy found an excellent target for his ire and exasperation.
"Stand still, brat," John Giant—the only one really left in the Marines' ranks—rumbled. "Roger's line will be wiped from this world, for the sake of Absolute Justice!"
On "Justice", he swung his massive sword down at a steaming red Luffy. The pirate jumped into the air, evading the blow, and reared back his bandage-covered hands without inflating his arms first.
The Vice Admiral's reaction was curious: his eyes widened in panic, and desperately tried to dodge the blow he knew was coming. It was no use. He was too big and overextended from the earlier sword swing, and Luffy was just too fast. The Jet Bazooka to the giant's face hit like a heavy battleship cannon, not a fatal blow for a giant of his stature. But half a second later, his body slammed into the ice from the force of a battleship to his face, which shattered… pretty much every bone in his body. The giant zealot was left out cold, and Luffy landed back on the ice none the worse for wear.
"I don't give a damn why you're fighting, I just want my brother."
Then he turned back to lock eyes with 'Cross' on the Moby Dick, saying something else. Something that 'Cross' immediately repeated to the rest of the battlefield, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time.
"Everyone! Look out for half-machine monsters! Don't bother with their heads or anything else; you need to aim for their hearts to kill them! They look like balls of meat and metal!"
-o-
Sengoku watched Straw Hat Luffy somehow take down John Giant in one blow, and Cross do what he did best: blow the whistle on the most absolutely inconvenient thing he could find, and felt his face redden and his blood pressure climb. "This. Is the very last thing that I needed today," he rumbled.
"If the element of surprise is lost, then there is no longer a need to hold them back. Deploy them all."
Sengoku's first thought was to object to squandering even this resource, as well as to the sheer escalation they represented.
His second thought was that under these circumstances, with the Straw Hats in play, the prudent thing was not to hold anything back.
His third thought was that he had no choice either way. Which did absolutely nothing to improve his mood.
"As you command," Sengoku answered, swapping to a different number in seconds and speaking three words:
"Deploy all BioMEGAs."
Sengoku suspected that this would not be the last unexpected twist this battle would see. What he couldn't know was that it would be the last time such a twist was remotely to his benefit.
-o-
About a hundred Whitebeards had remained aboard the Queequeg to man the deck cannons. Less powerful but more mobile than the ones on the gun deck, they'd been playing a merry game of counter-battery with Marine mortars, as well as trying to support Curiel against the damn Suomi still playing cat and mouse with his entire division. And despite cannon hits and snipers thinning their ranks, they were doing a good job of it.
They continued as Straw Hat Luffy pressed the assault, only for the water around them to suddenly turn mud-brown.
"What the—" one of the pirates said before the ship suddenly rocked as if there was a Sea King nosing it. After a few seconds, the rocking stilled—and then a monster burst out of the deck in a spray of splinters that scythed down the gun crews.
And 'monster' was an apt description. The body was an unholy combination of a snake and a flatworm, three lines of sharp spines lining its back and the edges of its belly, and a line of armour plates running dead center along the belly itself. Atop the serpentine belly was a disturbingly human-like torso-and-arm structure, terminating in three claws arranged more like a praying mantis's than those of any mammal or crustacean. The head, though… the head was the most freakish of the thing's body parts. A massive bony frill extended out the back of its skull, and its face was rounded, pointed, and featured narrow eyes and two jaws full of sharp teeth.
At first glance, it appeared entirely organic, but a closer look revealed that the bone frill, the spines, the armour plate, all of it was metal, colored the same matte swamp green as the rest of the creature. The only real way to spot the transition was to find the glowing Cherenkov-blue lines in the skin that formed the seams. Otherwise, an observer could be forgiven for assuming the armour was wholly organic, so smoothly integrated.
Shaking itself, the new BioMEGA finished rending the Queequeg into two halves that were, by that point, little more than driftwood. Its target obliterated to its satisfaction, the monster turned seaward, where Whitebeard's allies were doing a damn good job holding off the battleships that had moved to pen them in. The monster tensed. Two flaps opened up in its shoulders, revealing gaping holes. And with a clench of artificial muscles, the monster fired two bony spines, the approximate size of a large tree, at very high speed.
The spines smashed into the pirate ship they were aiming at, one tearing a massive gouge in the ship before splashing into the sea on the other side, while the other took the stern cabin clean off.
While all this was happening, a deep bellow echoed through the battlefield. Striding out from between the buildings of Marineford was another creature, this one as tall on the shoulder as John Giant was to the feathered tip of his hat. This one made no pretense of being wholly organic. Smooth, interlocking armour plates covered practically every square inch, culminating in another head plate that covered most of its back. Appearance-wise, it was as if someone had taken a giant rhinoceros, slapped enough armour plate on it to bankrupt a medium-sized country, and then made it an insect.
But what truly caught the attention was the four artificial arms, attached to the part of the creature's body that couldn't decide whether it was an oversized neck or a second torso. Each carried a curved, gleaming metal claw the size of a ship, and it immediately went to work applying on the pirates assaulting the plaza in front of the execution platform, each swipe demolishing dozens of pirates, and just as many Marines and Devil Dogs that were too slow to clear the area.
The final BioMEGA went almost unnoticed in the chaos the first two churned up. Floating over the battlefield, this one resembled nothing more than a flying jellyfish, its tentacles lazily floating beneath it. But the skin was translucent enough that anyone paying attention could see dark shapes moving down their length.
What those shapes were was made clear when they reached the tips of the tentacles. Each biological strand tensed, squeezed, and fired a dart into the battlefield. Soldiers present near the impact sites found a biological corkscrew the size of a small tree trunk—a corkscrew that rapidly unfolded itself to reveal a creature very similar to its progenitor, ten long, spindly, almost spider-like tentacles sprouting from a very squid-like mantle with an axe-shaped fan on the back of its head. And the squid comparisons didn't stop there. Two disturbingly human eyes stared out from bare inches above the base of the tentacles, and everyone watching had no doubt there was a beak hidden on them.
For a moment, the fighters could only stare, waiting for the things to do something. After maybe fifteen tense seconds, they did: they screamed. A piercing scream that struck straight to the most primitive fear centers of the brain, inciting the fight-or-flight response. These being pirates, they, to a man, chose "fight" and charged in, at which point the odd squids ceased their screaming and wrapped their tentacles around the nearest appendage. They crackled with bioelectricity, and the pirates jerked in place, stumbling back a few seconds later with weeping sores where the arms had grabbed, and their whole bodies cooked to extra-crispy.
And beneath the chaos and screams and increased pressure from the Navy, another sound came, one that the entire world heard. 'Cross' scowled furiously as he spoke across the battlefield from beside Whitebeard, echoing the subtle snarling in his ear.
"That's Indigo's mutations… Ratchet's engineering… and that's Hogback's ability to make Frankenstein look like a grad student. So, they took three mad doctors responsible for mass suffering and put them to work for themselves. I don't know why I'm remotely surprised."
Whitebeard was sporting a similar scowl. In fact, glaring up at the jellyfish, he actually raised his hand. That was as far as it got before someone else's hand alighted on his own.
"No, Pops. You need to conserve your strength for the opportune moment. When you can cause the most damage, save the most of our family."
On the battlefield, the okama queen abandoned his warcharge in favour of batting his eyelashes at the jellyfish. Whitebeard, deprived of his target, slowly turned his head toward seven very familiar women giving him steely expressions. Their outfits were now black and formal rather than pink nurses' outfits, and each of them was carrying a weapon. One with long, tousled blonde hair was the one holding his hand and the one looking him in the eyes.
"Tate. Iris. Hannah. Mila. Shion. Camellia. Sayuri," Whitebeard spoke, his tone flat with discontent. "I distinctly recall dropping you off at Sphinx so that you wouldn't—"
"See you die?"
Whitebeard started visibly at the interruption. And also at the look in Tate's eyes, a look that everyone on the Moby Dick feared, save for Whitebeard himself… nominally.
"If this hellstorm has taught us and you anything, it's that we are nothing if not a pack of idiots. If this is your last hurrah…" She drew her rifle from her back and cocked the bolt. "Then it's everything that we've been working for since we became your daughters."
"We're not leaving before the rest of the crew, and that's final," the purple-haired Sayuri summed up.
"And I don't know what made you think we would stay behind," Iris added, lowering her shades with a sly smile. "We're pirates, Pops. We're free to go wherever we want."
"And live how we want, meaning we can contribute here," Shion added, running her hands on the kusarigama she was carrying. "After all, you've helped us hone the best part of being doctors."
Disapproval radiated from every pore of his being, but rather than admonish them further, he just sighed and gave a rueful shake of his head. "Well, you girls have spine, I'll give you that."
Turning, he pinned another of the new arrivals with another disapproving frown.
"Can you say the same, clown?"
Buggy's eyes widened, and he immediately backpedalled.
"W-Wha—!? Hey, h-hey, no chance, no way!" the 'low-class' pirate yelped, quailing under the Emperor's expression. "Look, I was only following that rubbery brat to survive! This isn't my fight, I just want to live my life—!"
"And any other day, I would respect that," Whitebeard grunted. "But this isn't that day. This day, that's one of my sons, every person counts, and you still owe me for the scars your damn firecrackers left me."
"—ULP!" Buggy swallowed and paled as, while almost every Impel Down escapee in earshot looked awed, every other pirate in earshot was glaring at him. And starting to finger their weapons. And there was one taking aim, and yeah, time to go.
"ICE WITCH, ARE YOU READY YET!?" he desperately howled, running towards the forming bridge.
With that potential attack vector neutralized, Whitebeard returned to his previous stance, staring dead ahead at Ace with his former nurses grouped around him. He scoffed.
"I should not be bantering half this much in this sort of situation," he said, shaking his head. He spared a glance at 'Cross,' who was still kneeling beside him.
"I blame you."
"…I'll be glad to laugh about that once they make it out of here alive," 'Cross' replied. "Meanwhile, the war marches on."
"So we can see," Ivankov simpered, rubbing against his eyes as he finally turned back to them. The jellyfish monstrosity he had attacked looked shrivelled, several of its tentacles twisted up, but it was still flying.
"This is a step above that beast from Level 5. I'll need to sink my fingers into it to do any real damage myself," he growled. As he lowered his hand, though, he smirked. "Myself, anyway. Inazuma, dear, are you ready?"
"On your mark, my queen. And rest assured, nobody was harmed in these acquisitions."
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
"Well, nobody important."
For all that the Navy's new monsters had pushed against the pirates, the fact remained that one powerful Devil Fruit user was better than three battleships. Whitebeard's conversation had been long enough for Inazuma to tear a path past the front lines, into the quagmire, and then back to the Moby Dick.
'Tear' is quite literal in this case. Next to the Revolutionary was a gargantuan rolled-up carpet of ice with cannons, rifles, pistols, and various other weapons poking out every other foot. Already, the combatants were adapting to the new gap in the battlefield. Moving back a step, Inazuma snapped his scissors once more.
"Snip-Snip Origami."
This time, the scissors didn't cut; instead, they grabbed the amalgamation between the flats of the blades. With a flick of his wrists, Inazuma yanked out the folded ice and metal into the air, unravelling the ball like it was made of string.
Another flick of his wrists, and a hole was cut into the base of the icy strips, a hole. Inazuma artfully positioned himself under so that the whole construct fell over him. That construct was itself an artfully folded pentagon-shaped fortress, bristling with all the weaponry that had been caught up in it, arranged in enfilades that would have impressed any castle designer, and all raised on four folded, spring-like legs. And a moment after it finished settling, Inazuma emerged in the very center, raised slightly above the icy walls.
Perfectly cut. Perfectly folded. Perfectly appropriated from the Navy, it was a siege engine of ice armed to the teeth with ammunition that, if the way it wobbled was any indication, was even capable of waddling away.
"Frog Tank."
And waddle it did as newkamas clambered into the cobbled-together structure, the fortress emptying its pilfered ammunition with every lumbering step it took. And judging by the Wax-Man that had also entered the structure, they weren't going to run out of firepower anytime soon.
Whitebeard allowed himself another smirk.
"The backlines are secure. Now it all depends on the vanguard."
-o-
"Enies Lobby all over again, only worse," Luffy grumbled, dodging and weaving between swords and bullets aimed to kill. All they were doing was slowing him down, but that was precisely what he didn't want to be doing.
His eyes and ears were strained for possible threats, and a quick smack with his fist, his foot, or his pipe was enough to put down most anyone who got in his way, but they just. Kept. Coming! And no matter how far or how hard he pushed, Ace was still way too far away. And he wanted, he wanted more than anything else to ram back into Gear Second, and push himself as hard and as far as he could manage, give anything and everything to save Ace, like he so often had in the past—
But. But he knew he couldn't. Luffy knew he had to conserve his energy. The only thing more important than getting Ace free was getting Ace off the island, and that would be the hardest part. None of the Marines who had come at him since the giant fell were worth using Gear Second on anyway. That would come later.
It was this wide-open focus that allowed him to notice that something was off. The closer he got to the execution platform, the stronger he felt a strange, unnameable compulsion. And the more he realized that the Marines attacking him were ever-so-slightly acting in sync. Like a combination attack, one after the other… no, more than that—
"Wait a second," he said, reluctantly halting his advance to perceive this threat. A sword swipe here, a punch, a pistol shot there, another sword. It was too precise, but it was familiar somehow…
"…rhythm!" he realized, clapping his hands over his ears. Sadly, that did nothing to reduce the compulsion he felt to follow the rhythm, though now that he was paying attention, he found it was ignorable aside from a compulsive foot-tap.
Luffy juked left and then right, trying to find the source of the compulsion. In the event, he didn't need to, because the source announced itself quite dramatically.
"Rahuhuhuhuhu!"
"Hey! Can I—?" Luffy asked a nearby taller Whitebeard, one wearing a cape, no shirt, and heavy gauntlets, who immediately scooped him up so he could stand on his shoulders. "Thanks!"
Shading his eyes, Luffy scanned the battlefield, and it wasn't hard for his gaze to fall on the seawall to the right, where an unusually cohesive group of Marines were hard-marching for the front lines. And trailing right behind them was a wide platform elevated above the crowd on someone's shoulders, upon which stood a woman in a Marine-adjacent suit and a lei around her neck, shuffling about in some sort of strange dance.
Something about her sent shivers down Luffy's spine.
"Hey, what's going on over there?" the Whitebeard Luffy, who was riding on, asked.
"I dunno," he replied, before pointing. "The Marines are getting reinforcements over there, though. And there's at least one really strong one."
"Thanks," the pirate grunted, pulling out a Transponder Snail. "I'll alert the other Division Commanders, then go after her." Giving Luffy a sidelong look, he grinned. "Name's Kingdew. And I believe you, Monkey D. Luffy, have a brother to go save."
Nodding, Luffy clambered down. "Thanks. Good luck with her."
As he charged off, Kingdew snorted derisively, "How dangerous could a woman in a lei be?"
-o-
Over on the Marine left, Whitebeard right, the arrival of another thousand or so Marines largely went unnoticed at first. The allied crews were pressing hard in that sector of the battlefield, the Marines' best all busy either holding the center or counterattacking on the right. The Marines were falling back in good order, but they were falling back. A thousand more Marines, none ranked higher than a lieutenant, should have made no difference.
The pirates only noticed something was wrong when the front ranks of the Marines suddenly fell into step. Marines were always famous for their discipline and ability to support each other in tight ranks, but this took that coordination to a whole new level. The Marines attacked as one, defended as one, and advanced as one, with nary a momentary slip-up.
This wouldn't have been a problem if the Whitebeards hadn't found themselves unconsciously slipping into that same coordination. Pirates were an uncontrollable lot on the best of days, and this sort of synchronicity immediately drew exclamations of surprise and panic. And then pain, as they all realized that their attacks and defences were also in sync with the Marines. Attacks hit nothing but air after timed dodges and stepbacks. Marine counters arrived at the exact right time to land a hit of their own.
And on the platform behind the front lines, Irian stomped her right foot and thrust her right hand, finger pointed straight up, into the air. As if on cue, the Marines struck as one and cut down the front lines of the Whitebeard advance. Immediately, the Whitebeard advance came to a halt. Not the slow, grinding halt of attrition, or the sporadic, jerking halt of infighting. No, it was the hull of a small fishing vessel that slammed headlong into a Sea King.
"Rahuhuhuhuhu!" Irian cackled, resuming her odd shuffle-dance. "Dance, my puppets, dance!"
Abruptly, she stilled, and then artfully swayed out of the way as Kingdew, commander of the 11th Division, soared out of the sky with his fist reared back. He crashed down on her platform, being careful not to punch it. It was too good a battlefield.
For a moment, the two combatants eyed each other, the rhythmic battle ongoing despite Irian's distraction. Kingdew was drawn up in a boxing stance, waiting for his Observation to give him some idea of what she was going to do. Irian drew two obsidian daggers out of sheathes at her back and held them loosely in her hands, her weight on the balls of her feet. Idly, Kingdew's foot tapped out a rapid rhythm on the platform.
Abruptly, with no warning from his Observation, Irian shot forward, daggers lashing out in a slashing flurry. Caught off guard, Kingdew found himself immediately on the defensive and accumulating a distressing number of small cuts. Grunting, he counterattacked, his fists raining down on Irian and hitting nothing but air and the occasional deflection block. And the woman had no problem counterattacking herself, just as fast.
Of course, Kingdew was a Division Commander, and you didn't get to command a division of the Whitebeard Pirates by collecting bottle caps. All fighting styles had a pattern, and Irian's, fast and aggressive as it was, was no different. In particular, the all-offence approach meant she was relying on reflexes and footwork to evade. With his wits now about him, Kingdew tried to time his punches as proper counters.
He was only somewhat successful at this. Something was affecting his timing, the punches coming just a hair too late to actually hit, though they were successful in slowing down the slashes carving him up.
Then, abruptly and again with no hint from his Observation, Irian's fighting style changed entirely. The short, swift jabs were replaced by slower but more precise sweeping attacks, ones that met his fists head-on and knocked them aside.
'How strong is her Armament?!' Kingdew wondered.
The Whitebeard decided to test that. Each slash was met by a punch, one intended to overpower her Haki and shatter her glass blades. Instead, Kingdew had to give up the tactic as a bad job after one punch nearly got one of his fingers hacked off entirely.
It was then that her style changed again, back to the fast attacks, but this time alternating between bursts with a single hand and paired slashes that attacked the holes left from defending against the earlier flurry.
So when she switched up again to two-blade power attacks, Kingdew, bleeding from all over, had lost the strength to resist. Two slashes took out his elbows, another pair his hamstrings, and he crashed to the floor of the platform, bleeding out.
"H-How—" he groaned.
"Ruhahahaha! This is the power of the Chord-Chord Fruit," Irian declared. "With it, I can make anything follow a rhythm!" Abruptly, she tapped her foot on the platform, bringing it to a halt right before one of Whitebeard's earthquakes came crashing through mere inches in front. "And it's oh so easy to predict something when you know the rhythm it follows."
-o-
"Okay, what literally unholy heathen woodwork did she crawl out of!? Because I know she's not a Marine, not even G-5 can hold that kind of insanity! She'd have been locked up in—!"
It took all Jonathan had to remain composed when he heard Cross's voice in his ears, quiet but frantic. He did still blink in surprise at the sudden end to the sentence.
"In…?"
"…not important. Bigger things to worry about right now. Details?"
Jonathan frowned. The emotional part of him that had driven him to ally with Cross in the first place demanded that he press for an answer, but unfortunately, in these circumstances, he had to concede to the logical side that was running this war.
"I will have to ask for more details later…Laut Kecil must be a very interesting place," he muttered, seemingly to himself. He had relocated from the comms room to the northeast watchtower for a better view of the battlefield, and while his only present company was a pair of white snails, he was unwilling to take any chances.
"Admiral Akainu was certainly shrewd to play on her piety towards a volcano god, but it makes me wonder what the rest of the population is like. I don't know if fanatics or slaves is a better prospect."
"Tch… the worst kind of fanatic. Mmph… odds on sheer discord being enough to break her rhythm?"
"Though I suppose it's an asset to have her here now. If one errant, blown horn is enough to break her powers in otherwise silent circumstances, it would take something much more powerful if it's thriving in the din of a warzone. This should counteract the new arrivals nicely."
"Roger that. Thanks, Sagittarius. Oh, and you may want to cover your ears."
And with that, caution went out the window. Jonathan didn't even try to hide his grimace as he dug two clumps of wax from his pocket and shoved them in his ears. "Oh, I swear that this job is going to give me tinnitus before I go gray…" The Vice Admiral paused in thought and then shrugged indifferently. "Though that likely won't be much longer, anyway…"
-o-
"Pffhehehehehehehe…"
Every Marine who heard it felt their blood run cold at Cross's mirthless laughter. Nothing good could come of that with how angry he was.
"You know, I really appreciate how so many people are so forthcoming with how their powers work. Makes it so much easier for me to do my job. Now, what's the best way to disrupt this concentration… tcheh. As if I need to ask."
Realization dawned all over the battlefield, and hundreds on both sides dropped their weapons in favour of covering their ears. Irian was not one of them.
"What are you—?"
BWAAAAAAAAAH!
'Cross,' wisely, had chosen to make himself scarce. The many, many glares following the foghorn blast fell upon an empty space rather than a brightly clad young man. His voice was quiet once more when he sighed solemnly:
"Even when things are so grim… I still really love this thing."
"WE KNOW!" most of the island, and most of the world, roared.
Irian, red in the face, got back to her feet from where she'd thrown herself to the ground in sheer surprise.
"I'll string him over the crater and let him cook to ashes, sacrifice him speck by speck," she hissed, shaking her head to get rid of the ringing in her ears and failing to notice a certain rubber man take a seashell out of the bag on his back.
"But ultimately, it's no issue to pick up where I left off. Now, dance!"
"YO-HOHOHO, YO-HO-HO-HOOOOO! YO-HOHOHO, YO-HO-HO-HOOOOO!"
And lo and behold, a rhythm took hold. But not the one she'd intended or recognized.
~o~
"I found the sound of my old crew to be a source of great comfort to me while I was alone in the Triangle," Brook stated solemnly, presenting the Tone Dial they had received from Shiki, which still bore the recording of their victory party. "With the added reassurance that this parting of the ways is only fleeting rather than forever, I hope that our voices can be a source of comfort for you as well, Captain."
Luffy's smile was small but genuine. "Thank you, Brook."
~o~
The foghorn was, and always had been, ear-splittingly loud. But as the battlefield regained its senses, they became aware of just how much louder it had been than usual. The main clue?
"Gather up all of the crew, it's time to ship out Binks' Brew! Sea wind blows, to where, who knows? The waves will be our guide!"
The joyful noise pouring out from Luffy's vicinity, far louder than one single Tone Dial should have been able to produce.
Only now did it become painfully clear that, for all of the unfamiliar company Luffy had arrived with, he wasn't the only Straw Hat present.
Irian felt hollow, at first, at the fact that someone barely even close enough to see her had shattered her formation in less than a minute. She had heard plenty about the Voices of Anarchy until now, but this was the first time she saw what she deemed the lesser of the two in play. And it was the last time that she would dismiss Soundbite as no threat.
As crescendo after crescendo smacked down her attempts to replace and seize the rhythm, the soldiers lost their cohesion and split from her, the hollowness filling with rage.
"SHIIIIIIIIT!" she screamed, loud enough to make everyone in a hundred-foot radius flinch. "Are you kidding me?! Isn't this a personal attack?!" A gout of magma erupted somewhere else on the battlefield, and in an abrupt 180, Irian was all smiles. "Ah, Ulawun, good luck, sorry!" Aaaand then back to the rage, complete with angry, Haki-enhanced foot-stomping. "Seriously! I'm! So! Angry!"
What followed was wordless, and yet perfectly conveyed her blistering ire. Finally, after about a minute, she took a deep breath and let it out, patting down her suit. "Okay. Okay, I'm cool, I'm calm." Her eyebrow twitched. "Or, y'know, seething with barely repressed rage, but—"
" FALL."
"YEEAAGH!" she screamed again as her bones tremored and cracked beneath her skin, the agony sending her reeling and writhing off the platform and down to the level of the Marines' boots.
In an ironic twist of fate, in that moment, her body defied her will and obeyed the God of Noise. And though she remained conscious and soon regained control of herself, a renewed press by the Whitebeard allies found her surrounded on one side by a pack of bloodthirsty maniacs just as eager to cut her down as defend themselves from their nominal enemies, and on the other by a pack of pirates. Simply put, she was way too busy defending herself to try and regain control, a fact she made her displeasure with abundantly clear, to the aggravation of anyone within earshot.
And that was when a sizable company of Angevins, about two hundred or so, slammed into the pirates' left flank. The charge was ragged in comparison to that first glorious one, but this time the only division commander in the vicinity was bleeding out on the ground, so the pirates in front of them folded like an accordion, allowing the knights to go to town with mace, sword, and their own horses' hooves and teeth.
All at once, the left side of the battlefield descended into a clusterfuck of everyone fighting everyone in a mad attempt to disengage and regroup. One thing was clear: nobody was pulling that off anytime soon.
-o-
"Well, she's going to be utterly insufferable for the rest of the conflict…" Tsuru muttered grimly. The snail's mouth then tugged up in a grim smirk. "Which would be a marked improvement on her attitude up until now."
Jonathan hummed in agreement, his gaze never leaving the raging throngs of humanity—and others—before him, nor the fishing pole that was tugging ever so gently in his hands. "…he is truly terrifying, isn't he?"
"A year ago today, I would have laughed you out of my office for suggesting it," Tsuru replied glibly, admirably calm for someone on the frontlines of hell. "Politely, of course, but I would have laughed. Today? Quite. It's quite incredible, really, how far that young man got with only the shirt on his back and the snail on his shoulder."
"Truly astounding…" Jonathan agreed, shaking his head. "Except that that's—ah, hold that thought." The rod in his hand shook violently as he spun the reel. In short order, he was left blinking in honest surprise as he processed that he'd fished up an octopus. Legitimately an octopus.
"GET YOUR STUPID HOOK OUT OF MY TAKONO!"
Oh, and there was a six-armed man wearing the octopus as a hat, which made more sense.
"Ah, blast. Karma of the Cephaloctopus Pirates."
"WHO WERE YOU EXPECTING, MORON!?"
"Well, I was hoping to fish a big catch, but you're barely into nine digits."
"So, what will you do with him?" Tsuru asked over the line, ignoring the blue streak that ripped out of the octo-man's mouth.
"Eh, I'll just throw him back in."
"—worm-brained son of a—wait, what, the hell do you mean throw—oh nononoNO—WAAAAGH!"
And with practiced ease, the Vice-Admiral whipped his rod back and then forth, yanking the hook out of the octopus and slingshotting the wailing pirate and his pet back into the fray.
"Have to let them mature to something respectable, you know. The only way to keep the waters healthy."
"Were things less tense, I'd crack a smile," Tsuru said dryly. "But as you were saying?"
"Simple, really: you misunderstood me. I wasn't referring to Cross."
Tsuru fell silent as she turned that thought over, before cocking her brow. "…Straw Hat, then?"
Johnathan hummed in agreement as he tugged back and adjusted his line, glancing at the white snails and verifying that they were still looking at him attentively before he let caution rest and spoke again. "Cross… Cross is a very dangerous individual indeed. He brought us all together and has started more chaos than most men could ever dream of. Jeremiah Cross, a true friend and ally, is terrifying. And what did Monkey D. Luffy do with this terrifying young man?"
The Vice Admiral gave his rod a flick. "He recruited him. More than that, quite frankly, he created him. Unleashed this demon upon the seas, and inspired him to do what he does, to become who he is. Cross has faltered at times, has stumbled, but his faith in his captain has always held fast, unswerving for even a moment. Everything Cross has done has been in Luffy's name, to prepare the throne and kingdom for the king. Jeremiah Cross is the demon who set the world on fire, but Monkey D. Luffy is the man who took that demon and made him his standard-bearer through charisma alone. A charisma whose effects…"
A slew of explosions drew his gaze below. His ears told him that they were cannonballs, but his eyes told him that the resulting waves of smoke and destruction heralded something far greater. Not unlike Garp's Meteor Fists, but definitely not to the Navy's benefit.
"Well. We're experiencing them for ourselves. His brother gets put in harm's way, and what does he do? Move heaven and earth to save him, quite literally. Why," Jonathan threw his head back and let out a bark of honestly amused laughter. "Even we're genuinely rooting for him to succeed for more reasons than the strictly pragmatic. Or…" Jonathan tilted his head with a smirk. "Am I wrong?"
"… A truly terrifying young man indeed," Tsuru said, her voice heavy with respect.
"Well, at least I certainly like him," Jonathan smirked.
And at last, the snail's lips turned upward.
"At what point did I say that I disagreed?"
-o-
"…darn it."
Such was Luffy's woeful understatement as another cyborg monster appeared before him. He was really starting to hate cyborg monsters, though the feeling would always be strongest with the first one.
Luffy had almost let go of his anger towards Bartholomew Kuma. But he found nothing wrong with hating the Government puppet that his body had become, mainly because it was currently in his way. He reached behind him, his fingers on both hands flexing, but he hesitated to make a move. Sea prism stone might not work on a robot, because robots never get tired; they just run out of cola. And the Reject Dial beneath his bandages was too risky. If his paw deflected it, Luffy wouldn't have the time or energy to recover.
Luffy's teeth grit as he watched, ready to dodge at a moment's notice and, as much as he hated it, waiting for someone else to show up and keep—
"Hey, Nuts for Bolts! If you're programmed to aim for bounties, then reboot your calculator! Mine is higher!"
Luffy's head snapped around before the rest of his body. Even if it wasn't really Cross, it was still a friend of his trying to jump in front of a gun to protect him! Only he was supposed to do that!
"Get back to the whale, Cross, it's too dangerous!"
"When has that ever stopped me? If I get a new scar from this, it'll be my proudest one yet!"
"OH, NO, YOU DON'T!"
As Kuma's gaze seemed to lock on Cross, a much bigger face forced its way into the picture.
"I'd apologize for butting in, but you'll forgive me if I skip that part. This is personal for me, thank you very much, so allow me to fill the dance card," Ivankov growled, somehow striking a combat pose in position to block Kuma's advance despite his massive cranium. "Straw-Boy, focus on what you came for while I handle him."
Luffy let out a growl, wrestling with his basic instinct to never, never run from a fight. And then he let off a snort and a sharp nod as an even stronger and baser instinct chokeslammed his first instinct to the mat. "Don't either of you even think about dying!" Luffy barked as he shot past the cyborg, who ignored him entirely. "OTHERWISE, I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF!"
"THAT HAS NEVER MADE SENSE, LUFFY!" 'Cross' yelled after him.
-o-
Thirteenth Division Commander 'Water Buffalo' Atmos tore into his opponent with a grim frown, even though the term 'opponent' was likely a bit too generous for the thing he was facing. The command to back up Luffy went without saying, and for the strongest fighters among the pirates, this meant keeping the big guns occupied. And none were bigger than the land-based BioMEGA that was currently acting as a walking, bleeding mortar emplacement.
"Are you sure this works?!" he shouted, wielding his swords more like oversized chisels than proper weapons as he tore at the left chest plate.
"Definitely!… I mean, most crustaceans don't have shells made of wootz steel filament cemented together, but I'm using New World techniques so definitely maybe—!" Namur called back, zipping across the beast's shoulders to keep its claws trained on him.
"THAT'S WAY MORE UNCERTAIN THAN I'D LIKE!" Atmos roared back. A moment later, the cracks he'd created finally took hold, one side of the armour loosening. Atmos grabbed and heaved, tearing away a big enough chunk of the armour to expose the tough-looking flesh beneath. Tough-looking and really more like leather than anything, but still flesh.
"One down," Atmos declared, tearing at the flesh with his swords—
SSSSSSS! "AAAAAAAGH!"
And immediately leaped back to the right side of the chest as acid poured out, drenching everything below the exposed wound. Atmos shook himself free of the bile that had splashed onto him, fervently appreciating the protection of Armament Haki and vehemently cursing the fact that he hadn't applied it faster. The burns were minor but coated his entire body. But even worse was that, looking back at the wound, he realized that all his efforts had been for nothing. He grit his teeth as the vein he had apparently tapped showed itself to be just that: a vein of acid with no telltale signs of a heart to be seen.
"Of course, the heart isn't where it should…" Atmos trailed off as he realized something else: the beast had suddenly stopped moving. Both Division Commanders stared momentarily - and then Atmos tore his way up to the right shoulder beside Namur. Both braced themselves as the abomination's armoured carapace shifted upon its back, plates of metal between its shoulder-blades shifting smoothly to allow a pair of sleek firearm barrels made of bone to slide out and angle skywards. Mere moments later, they pumped out a salvo of cannonball-sized bursts of the same acid that had poured out of the chest cavity.
"Yeah, yeah, of course it was booby-trapped this much, that is how this day would go on top of literally everything else!" Namur snarled before shaking his head to calm himself down. "Alright, alright! So, tearing out its eyes didn't slow it down, and it is literally heartless! How about we see how it reacts to the whole head this time!?"
Namur began tearing at the neck while Atmos worked on parrying the claws, neither one able to spare attention for what kind of damage the acid was causing below.
-o-
Luffy had actually been making good progress before the sudden storm of acid rain. Now, however, it seemed as though that monster or whoever was at its controls was doing its best to hamper him in particular. The angles of the shots left him leaping backward a little bit more each time, and just as he was about to use Gear Second to just rush past, things took a turn for the worse.
"Don't lose heart now, men! We didn't break out of hell just to die here! My li—I mean, our lives and freedom are on the other side of this war, and if they have their way, we won't live to see it! PROVE THEM WRONG, AND MAKE IT FLASHY!"
No, not because Buggy and his band had made their way to the front lines. Because Vista had apparently turned his blades toward another opponent at some point, which left Dracule Mihawk free to oppose other pirates on the battlefield. Specifically, he had just stepped a couple of feet in front of Luffy, Yoru in hand.
His eyes not parting from the hawk-eyed swordsman's, Luffy carefully withdrew one of the bottles of seaweed booze in his bag.
"Could you stop watching me and drink this instead? I didn't poison it or anything," Luffy offered, his tone deadly serious.
While thousands of people around the world facepalmed for various reasons, Mihawk blinked in honest befuddlement. Then he sighed and shook his head.
"Tempting as that is, and at the risk of Red-Hair throttling me the next time we meet, for multiple reasons, I must decline."
SCHWING!
"GAH!" Luffy yelped, hastily letting go of the bottle he'd been holding, or at least, of the slivers of glass that had once been the bottle he'd been holding.
"Vehemently."
"Hawk-Eye, as it stands, the number of Straw Hats after your head and hat has just upped to seven. Swing that sword again, you'll make it an even twenty-three," Cross's disembodied voice said, his voice surprisingly dry instead of cold. "I know better than to try intimidating you, but tell me: do you really want to deal with how annoying the inevitable fallout will be?"
Mihawk's expression remained unchanged, his eyes locked on Luffy's.
"…what I want," the World's Greatest Swordsman answered slowly, raising the World's Greatest Blade high so that a black pall was reflected across the field of battle—a field that was rapidly emptying of people in a hundred-foot radius around them. "Is to see the potential for which Red-Hair sacrificed his arm. Now… show me your strength."
Luffy was already dodging before Mihawk swung down. It was probably the only thing that saved his life from the slash that was unleashed, a slash that threaded between the Whitebeard ships before continuing on out of sight. Skidding to a halt, he tried to think of a way to get past Mihawk, who seemed content to stand in the way like a statue. A statue that periodically unleashed lethal razor winds.
Scrambling his way through another dodge, Luffy briefly charged in to try and move Hawkeye out of the way and force an opening for retreat… progress… heading toward Ace!
Said charge was only 'brief', however, because the rubber-man had hardly taken two steps before a vision of him getting bisected and bleeding out on the ice flashed through his mind. Luffy hastily ground-sliding to a halt, literally folded himself back in half to stop, Yoru stabbing through the space where his waist had been. Luffy was then forced to follow the move with another rolling tumble when Mihawk turned the stab into a slash.
"GYAAH! Watch where you're swinging that thing!"
Luffy looked back over his shoulder, where Buggy was pulling himself together. "Buggy, you came to help me?"
"IN YOUR DREAMS! I got blasted here by that monster. Now excuse me while I—"
Shi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shing!
Luffy stared in some bemusement as Mihawk literally sliced Buggy to ribbons. He reformed himself moments later.
"ALL RIGHT, BIRDBRAIN, YOU WANNA SCREW WITH ME!? SPECIAL MUGGY BALL!"
Luffy slowly adjusted his stance to start Gear Second, the better to blur away from the fight while Mihawk was focusing on Buggy. But as the black sword sent the marble-sized cannonball right back at its wielder to detonate in a plume of smoke and fire, the rubber-man couldn't help but pause and shake his head.
"Are you really that weak, Buggy? I thought that you'd be stronger if you were—MMPH?!"
A disembodied hand flew out of the smoke and clamped on Luffy's maw, followed swiftly by Buggy's furiously flushed and scowling—not to mention liberally smouldering—head.
"Don't. You. Dare. Say it!" the clown hissed. "I am clinging to the last sliver of hope I have left that I can get out of here without anyone finding out, and I'm not losing it because of your big mouth. And that goes for you, too, Cross!"
"...he said, blatantly missing the treasure for the doubloons. You're getting a bad case of tunnel vision, Buggy," Cross whispered in response. "I suggest you worry about the other man with a mic and a big-mouthed Monkey beside him."
Buggy froze at that, slowly turning his head to regard the execution platform where Sengoku was staring right at him and—far more concerning—Garp was pointing straight at him, saying something to the Fleet Admiral that was rapidly darkening his demeanour. Buggy's blood pressure outright spiked when the Fleet Admiral drew breath to speak into his microphone.
"No… nonono, you flashy golden bastard, DON'T YOU DARE—!"
"All soldiers, a new priority target has been identified!" the selfsame 'golden bastard' declared to the battlefield, staring down the rapidly paling clown. "The pirate accompanying Straw Hat Luffy, Buggy the Clown!"
"CROSS, CAN I GET A FOGHORN HERE!?" the pirate shrieked in horror.
That plea actually made Sengoku (and hundreds of others) pause and tense. But as even more attention was locked on Buggy, Cross's response was prompt and cool.
"…you tried to cut my captain's head off. Why would I do more for you than I already have?"
"No, wait, you don't understand!" Buggy shrieked, flailing his hands. "I understand I've done a great many terrible things, hurt a lot of people, some of which you like for reasons I can't honestly understand—!"
"While initially we deemed this pirate to be a minor nuisance at best," Sengoku continued over Buggy's blubbering. "It has now been brought to my attention—" This was said with a pointed glare at an unrepentant Garp, "That the threat he presents is far more dire than it would appear. In truth, this 'Buggy' once served on Gold Roger's crew! The apprentice was singlehandedly responsible for providing the prodigious firepower that the Oro Jackson sported! He was, and is, a Roger Pirate!"
While the battlefield didn't miraculously grind to a halt, those in close proximity to the now shellshocked pirate did, in fact, pause to boggle at the seemingly harmless clown.
Most prominently, Mihawk himself, despite having stood in the same spot for the last five minutes, stiffened even more, blinking in naked shock. "Wait, you mean to say that you're the 'old flashy friend' that Shanks keeps slurring on about when he's three bottles in?" His already neutral expression fell flat. "Just when I thought I couldn't lose more respect for that man…"
Buggy didn't respond to the jab. His body was frozen, his head bowed to shadow his eyes, and his teeth audibly grinding against each other.
"Well, at least you've got all the fame and respect you wanted now?" Luffy offered.
It seemed as though that was precisely the wrong thing to say, as Buggy's head slowly spun—ground, really—on his neck to glare at Luffy.
"Fame…"
Luffy paused, instincts blaring. There was something wrong about how Buggy said that word.
"Respect…"
A wrongness that intensified as an unmistakable undertone of murder slipped into his voice, and Luffy finally caught sight of his eyes, which were burning with a rage and madness that Luffy had last seen in the eyes of a rabid Sea King. Mihawk, for his part, had yet to sheathe Yoru but seemed curious enough of what was happening to let it play out.
"Is that… what you think comes with Roger's name?" Buggy hissed, slowly taking step after step toward Luffy as his fingers twitched with a visceral urge to throttle. "Do you think I didn't know what would happen if I flashed my captain's name? I knew exactly what would happen, which is exactly why I've never done it."
A zealous Vikverir nearby charged towards him, axe at the ready—and choked as Buggy's hand shot out and grabbed his throat, the clown not turning to face him.
"I sailed almost this entire world, from the clouds in the sky to the ocean floor, across the deadliest seas and against opponents the most powerful anyone could imagine. And when it was over, I decided that I didn't want to be a part of it anymore."
Tried charging him more, but he remained where he was. Ribbon-thin strands like Mihawk had just sliced him into flew in every direction, wrapping around their necks and hovering them.
"I reaped the fruits of the strongest sea, and I chose to use them to ensure that I would never have to return to a life of paranoia, where every puff of smoke, every ripple on the water was a reason to keep your guard up, lest it kill you in a new, creative and utterly ludicrous way. I lay low and sandbagged as a small-time pirate for over twenty years—TWENTY. YEARS.—because I earned it, surviving the utter madhouse that was Roger's crew."
Seeing that melee wasn't working, a squad of Suomi skidded to a stop and unslung their rifles. Sadly, they forgot to look up. It was with casual ease that Buggy floated over his Vikverir captives and dropped them right on the Suomi squad's heads.
"I just wanted to live the rest of my life in PEACE and SANITY. WAS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK!?"
By now, Buggy had the attention of a sizeable chunk of the battlefield. Luffy, though he hadn't quite stopped listening, was busy trying to edge past Mihawk, and Mihawk was busy blocking him at every step, but hundreds of other troops had decided that he was the priority threat. An Angevin lance, their armour scuffed and dented. More Vikverir, howling like lunatics. And grim-faced Marines, affixing bayonets.
"…well. Apparently, it was. I never planned on this getting out. I never truly wanted to come back. Back to this sea, to this life, to this insanity again…"
With casual ease, Buggy sidestepped, a bullet smacking into the ice mere inches away. Then he finally raised his head, and slowly grew a mad smile.
"But since I have no choice anymore… if this is what you really want… THEN SO BE IT! LET'S! GET! FLASHY!"
And in a flash, Buggy… flew apart. There was no other way to describe it. His entire body divided itself into countless cubes about an inch across that flew across the battlefield. For a moment, everyone in the line of sight stared in confusion, even Mihawk. Then a din rose above the battlefield. A din of startled yelps, of metal dragging against metal and ice.
A din that coalesced into streams of weaponry, swords, rifles and cannons, floating up into a rapidly-growing ball. That finally broke the Marines out of their shock, and they shouldered their own firearms and opened fire.
"GYAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Buggy cackled, only his hands and head visible, safely ensconced within the ball. The incoming bullets simply bounced off the collection of weaponry or else passed harmlessly through the gaps. "It's no use! Welcome to the true festival of madness, the absolute revelry of pure carnage! THE CHOP-CHOP CARNEVALE!"
With a thunderous roar, an entire side of the ball of rifles and cannons opened fire, practically obliterating whatever they aimed at. Survivors—particularly the Angevin lance—decided that the better idea was to try and get close before Buggy could reload.
In two seconds flat, the ball rotated its weapons and fired again.
A score of soldiers from the New World had charged at Buggy. And all of them now lay on the ground in shreds. Buggy himself turned to look straight at the execution stand, the malice and sheer mania in his grin a match for Doflamingo.
"You wanted a Roger Pirate, Sengoku? Well, congratulations: you've got one."
To the surprise of just about everyone on the battlefield, Sengoku simply stood, impassive, on the execution stand, by all appearances completely unfazed by this development. And if ever there was one flaw of Buggy the Clown's that would never go away, it was that he did not handle being ignored well.
"What's wrong, Sengoku? Too scared to reply—"
A crescent of razor air cleaved through the airborne mass of weapons and pavises. Many were carved to pieces, but the overall sphere remained intact and wheeled to meet the new threat. A threat that, normally, would've sent him scurrying for the hills.
Hawk-Eye Mihawk. Smiling. Eagerly.
"Finally," he breathed. "I thought this war would never become interesting."
"That's nice," Buggy sneered. "Now please die."
With that, every scrap of firepower within the sphere unloaded on Mihawk, weapons rotating around after their just-emptied brethren. Even many of the swords were turned into high-speed missiles that, when they missed, buried themselves up to their hilts in the ice.
It was a display of firepower that would've shredded most ships. It was also completely futile. When the smoke and steam cleared, there stood Dracule Mihawk, unscathed and still grinning. Buggy, of course, was not pleased. Nor was he surprised.
"Right, then," he rumbled, his voice reverberating with a chorus of ringing blades, cocking guns, and burning gunpowder. "As I used to say in the mad old days… Let's get dangerous."
And with that declaration, the two exploded into motion. And the world around them just exploded.