Whitebeard stared down at the Admiral's form, half-buried in a pit of ice, and raised his bisento. Unconscious though he was, Whitebeard knew the man wouldn't stay down unless he lost his head. And quite frankly, this rabid dog's death was a high-placed item on his—and every pirate's—bucket list. But before he could do the much-desired deed, a sudden chill in the air forced him to swing his weapon upward instead, bisecting the miniature iceberg Aokiji had just tried to drop on him.
The Admiral didn't share the avenue of attack, however. Instead, he'd landed on the ground. And there, in sight of everyone, he ripped his eye mask off.
"Done deluding yourself then, brat?" Whitebeard asked.
"No. But against someone like you, I can fight with no regrets," Aokiji retorted, drawing his arms up. "Partisan!"
Whitebeard shattered the ice spears and then stomped his foot, shaking the ground. Tsuru deftly leapt up and flipped over the localized earthquake, landing next to Aokiji. And by extension, the remaining Vice Admirals.
"So that's your play," Whitebeard rumbled.
"Quite," Aokiji replied. His eyes widened, and he hastily threw up a wall of ice that shattered to absorb the earthquake-enhanced punch. "Tch. Vice Admiral Tsuru, before we get too deep into this, I believe we need to have a talk after this battle is over."
Tsuru's eyes widened fractionally. "Yes. I believe we do."
Dalmatian and Onigumo both leapt over the ice wall, a mere second before Aokiji shattered it and sent it in a spray of razor-sharp shards at Whitebeard. The pirate promptly shattered them into a snowy mist, but it allowed the two Vice Admirals to land a couple of hits. Retaliation was not long in coming, but it was stymied by more Vice Admirals attacking Whitebeard's flanks and Aokiji himself jumping into melee range with a pair of ice swords.
-o-
Vice Admiral Vergo landed hard on the ground, grimacing imperceptibly. Whitebeard was no joke; even under his black-as-coal Armament, his side ached from where a block of ice kicked up by his latest sweep had hit, a rock that had knocked him a good thirty feet back from the fray. He eyed the ongoing battle. With Aokiji in play, keeping up a steady stream of attacks and attacking Whitebeard's footing, the Vice Admirals could actually get in some licks. Not many, but there was a hope that they could wear him down.
But Vergo wasn't interested in that, and not only because of the weakness starting to encroach on him from a mere couple of minutes of fighting him. Beyond that, Whitebeard was not the only target they needed to take out, after all. His fellow officers had Whitebeard well in hand; time to go handle Portgas. He tensed his legs—
And then whipped his Armament-coated staff up to catch a sword that would've gone straight through his spine otherwise.
Spinning around, Virgo flipped his staff and flipped his opponent as well. It was one of the Marine officers who'd mutinied, an ex-captain by the name of… of… It had something to do with meat, he was sure. Pork chop? No, that wasn't it.
"Captain Ribeye, was it?" he asked, before shaking his head. "Sorry, ex-captain. Anyway, do me a favour and get out of my way. I'm willing to leave your death to someone else; I've got more important people to kill."
From the angry shaking, the name probably wasn't Ribeye. Damn it.
"Do you… not remember?" the traitor breathed.
Vergo tilted his head. "I might have seen you in a meeting or two."
Clearly, that was the wrong thing to say, because the traitor tried to take his head off again. Vergo easily dodged, but to his annoyance, his opponent dodged the return smash of his staff.
"Twelve years ago, I swore this oath: I will never again lower myself to fighting beside you…no matter how many are unaware of your true nature who support you! Even if it should take my final breath, I…WE SHALL HAVE JUSTICE!"
Vergo's eyes narrowed behind his shades. He had snubbed more than a few individuals on his path to power, but he had been nearly certain that they had been buried over the years. Had he missed one that had grown this strong, or was it possible that he knew more than that?
All thoughts of Whitebeard and Portgas fled from Vergo's mind as he turned to give the ex-Captain his complete attention. With Cross involved, the possibility was too high to ignore. And nothing would ever be a higher priority for him than an immediate threat to the Young Master.
And speaking of whom…
-o-
The sun had refused to shine on the battlefield since dawn broke, a pale haze from the overcast sky only emphasizing the war's gloom. Unherded shadows blanketed the entire battlefield, the poor visibility lending itself to anyone who needed to hide. This slight difference in lighting was all it took to alter Doflamingo's hiding place from difficult to notice to downright impossible unless you knew what to look for.
If only because otherwise, there would have been some light to glint off the Warlord's too-wide smile.
"Moria, you old reptile, this one's for you. Hope you're still alive out there somewhere…" Doflamingo's wistful grin became viciously sadistic as he raised both his hands, his fingers splayed wide. "After all, I wanna rip you open and find out what the hell you are myself. But for now, I'll settle for this."
And with a single massive wrench, he flung his hands skywards.
"Vampire String."
The Parasite technique he had mastered was simply not enough. From his position just below the long-abused roof at the highest point of the island, it took the full focus of both of his hands for Doflamingo's meticulously placed strings to pull taut and force their puppet to rise. But rise he did, much to the horror of the Whitebeard Pirates. And every other fighter across the battlefield.
Yellow flesh forced itself upright, palms pushing against the ice and stone and feet moving back into a position to support their owner's weight. A firm push and the figure was on his feet once more, towering above the combatants.
Little Oars Jr.'s open and drearily panning eyes betrayed that he was awake. But his mouth was visibly strung shut, preventing him from letting out the dizzied groan that rattled his chest as his body surged forward, a marionette dancing on the demon's strings with the intent to slaughter everyone in its path.
The frozen terrain, all but disintegrating under the Titan's unrestrained staggering, was merely the prelude to the slew of casualties that would strike the retreating forces' backs.
-o-
As the battle between Buggy and Mihawk had raged, the prisoners of Impel Down who'd chosen to follow Buggy had been the only ones willing to even approach the fight. After all, their new captain needed fresh weapons periodically, and the battlefield was just littered with them! And, as the Whitebeards began to flow back towards their ships, they noticed.
"Cap'n Buggy?" one man said, tapping one of his captain's body parts.
Instantly, Buggy's face reformed in front of him, scowling fit to physically strangle a bitch. "What?" he snapped. "In case you missed it, I'm kinda busy fighting he—"
As if on cue, Buggy's head suddenly split, the prisoner feeling the air slash Mihawk had launched, shaving off a bald spot in his crew-cut. The only real effect, however, was the clown's decapitated and bisected scowl somehow contorting even tighter as his cranium's halves snapped around.
"AY, I'M TALKIN' HERE!" Buggy bellowed, the roar of an intense volley of cannonfire briefly drowning out his annoyed muttering. "Inconsiderate pompous bastard…" His head pieced itself back together, and then his eye swivelled to regard the speaker. "You were saying?"
"W-Well, beggin' your pardon, Cap'n, b-but it's just, that, w-well… the Whitebeards? They're retreating," the ex-convict pointed out, indicating the many rapidly departing backs turned in their direction. "And, well, me'n the rest of the boys was thinkin', if the Whitebeards is retreating—"
"Then we'd best follow," Buggy decisively stated. "Particularly that fool Straw Hat; he'd be the one most willing to let us hitch a ride. Now, pay attention, men! We called this the Sir Robin Maneuver back on the Oro Jackson—"
Sadly, what precisely the Sir Robin Maneuver entailed would for now remain a mystery, because Buggy suddenly jerked in shock and spun his face around just in time to yank it out of the way. Barely. The tip of his nose was just barely nicked, and to the shock of everyone present, it bled.
Though some for different reasons than others.
"That ridiculous thing is real?" Mihawk said in wonder. "I always thought it was rubber."
A red haze sprang to life around Buggy, and his new minio—subordinates all slowly backed away. Hardened criminals and experienced pirates to a man, they knew exactly what it looked like when someone was about to take an explosion of rage, and wrap it up into a tight little ball. Those were the second-most dangerous kind of person, the first being the one walking a blood-soaked battlefield without a care in the world.
"What…" Buggy said, his voice as calm as the bleached surface of the moon. "Was that about my nose?"
Mihawk merely raised an eyebrow, one whose brother joined it when Buggy collapsed into a ball. Briefly, at least, before something shot out of it and he reassembled on the ground.
The Warlord sliced it, of course. He could no more ignore that instinct than learn to fly. Yoru cut through compacted steel before biting into a core of volatile explosives. Yoru then continued on through the ensuing explosion, cutting it in half and letting the lower half vent pointlessly at the ice below.
That still left half the explosion heading right for him, and Yoru was still finishing the swing. With impossible speed, Mihawk drew the small knife he always kept on his person and slashed it into the heart of the explosion. It split, blasting trenches in the ice on either side of him; in front of him, the shattered remains of the dagger clattered onto the ice.
"That stung," he groused, raising Yoru. "And you broke my dagger. It had sentimental value to me. I stabbed some dear and important people with it."
No more words. He swung Yoru down. The blade crashed into two crossed daggers, held in a floating pair of hands. The blades cracked but held, and one slid off and tried to stab him. It was an easy matter to bat it aside, but by then the hands were already shooting back towards Buggy in the distance, obscured behind Marines who'd flowed in to exploit the retreat. And even as aggravated as Mihawk was, he was not going to stoop so low as to deliberately harm Marines.
Sighing, he sheathed Yoru, scanning the battlefield. Oh, he'd join in attacking the Whitebeards' retreat, because he needed to let off some steam. But no reason to rush it.
-o-
One last tug of the bandages, and they were set tight. Angmar stood, wincing slightly at the protests that shot from his chest despite the bandages. He winced a lot harder when the medic who'd been patching him up cuffed him upside the head. Bertha was a bear of a woman who'd gotten into healing largely because no one in her hometown had been willing to spar with her, so the blow would've sent anyone else tumbling ass over teakettle.
"You're not going back out there, you daft fool, not if I have anything to say about it!"
She was also irreverent as hell, even by Vikverir standards.
"Bertha, move," Angmar ordered.
"Nay. Your ribcage more resembles match wood right now," Bertha retorted. "The last thing you want to do is go out and risk injuring it further."
"We've lost too many good warriors this day. If we're going to assault a retreating enemy, I need to be there." He grinned, all the way to the molars. "And besides, there's no way I'm missing this fight!"
Snorting, Bertha crossed her arms. "Make me, your majesty."
Angmar's grin didn't falter. Grabbing his hammer, he inched closer to her, watching her crossed arms. Eventually, he got close enough that she tried to grab him, at which point he smoothly flowed around her, locked the haft of his hammer in front of her neck, and with a grunt of exertion bent his back to suplex her to the ground.
"Fair enough…" Bertha groaned.
Jogging up to the seawall past some injured but combat-effective Suomi serving as a screen, he gazed over the battle on the ice and grimaced. The Marines and their allies, his Vikverir included, had lost any cohesion they'd once had, a jumbled mass fighting solely as individuals, often against each other. Well, except for the Suomi, disciplined bastards that they were, but from the looks of it, they'd gotten pretty badly chewed up.
So, first order of business: they needed to get organized. And hopefully shake off the effects of that hypnotist.
Angmar reached into a pouch on his belt, pulling out a horn that looked like it'd been plucked off an excessively large goat. Taking a deep breath, he blew, the deep note echoing over the battlefield. At the same time, he jumped off the seawall, shattering the outer layer of ice on impact.
Surprisingly, the first person to greet Angmar was Lionel, that Angevin ponce. Well, okay, that was unfair. Angmar hadn't particularly liked the Angevins—too clean and stuffy—but seeing Lionel trot up on his horse, splattered with blood, his helmet gone to reveal scruffy, sweat-soaked hair and beard, and his painted and polished armour dulled, dented, and scratched all over… Well. Clearly, the man had been in the thick of it. He could respect that.
"Your majesty," Lionel stated, nodding respectfully. "I take it the horn was a call to reorganize?"
"Aye. You've been on the frontlines more than I have. What's the situation?"
Lionel snorted. "Worst clusterfuck I've ever had the displeasure of partaking in, and I've been in some serious clusterfucks in my time. The only good news is that the pirates are just as disorganized as we are. An organized attack should make some very good headway."
"That's what I was thinking, aye," Angmar replied, eyeing the first of the Vikverir breaking free of the front lines—with Angevin knights at their side, universally all dismounted. "And when we finish this battle, you'll have to tell me some stories over a few drinks! A man like you has to have some good ones."
"I believe I'll take you up on that."
Though Angmar itched to re-enter the battle, he forced himself to wait as more and more of his warriors gathered. Lionel, from the tapping fingers on the hilt of his sword, was of like mind. Finally, though, they had about a thousand soldiers gathered, and the flow of troops had trickled away to almost nothing. But when he made to sound the advance, Lionel stopped him.
"Why?" he demanded.
"We need a distraction," Lionel stated. And not two seconds later, laser explosions bloomed on the battlefield. Even better, that aquatic beast of the Marines burst from the water and launched a pair of its spines into the battlefield, erasing entire swathes of pirates. "And we're not going to get a better one than that. Forward!"
"Forward!" Angmar bellowed. The makeshift army lurched forward, on the attack.
-o-
Blue flame clashed against bright-yellow lasers, neither gaining an edge. A blue flaming bird claw intersected with Kizaru's outstretched, glowing leg, and their respective Armaments deflected off each other. The same stalemate the two had been locked into the entire battle, which was just fine by Kizaru. He did have another play literally sitting in his back pocket, but his instincts had screamed at him every time he thought about it that it was exactly the sort of play that Jeremiah Cross would know about and blab to the Whitebeards.
Naturally, it was right then that the voice of Vice Admiral Jonathan sounded in his ear. "Admiral Kizaru. Why haven't you used the handcuffs?" It wasn't a commanding question, merely curious.
It was also a damn problem because he wasn't admitting on an open channel that he was this paranoid about the Voices of Anarchy.
"Well, you know the year I've been having," he idly stated. "After everything I've been through, I want to feel the satisfaction of beating a bird to death at C."
It wasn't entirely a lie, either. Two embarrassing losses to Paradise rookies could make a man just the teensiest bit insecure.
"That seems… inefficient," Jonathan remarked.
"Maybe, that's just how I feel like handling this, Vice Admiral," Kizaru replied, before something caught his eye.
He glanced down at the battlefield, noting the splash of flame charging down the center. Oh dear, that was Fire Fist Ace. Getting away.
"Vice Admiral, you wouldn't happen to know if anyone is in a position to intercept Straw Hat and Fire Fist?" he asked.
"Unfortunately, no. Akainu is still unconscious, Vice Admirals Vergo and Momonga are tied up, and everyone else is being held up by Whitebeard."
Sighing, Kizaru replied, "I was afraid of that," before hanging up. Turning, he aimed a laser shot at their fleeing backs, idly tossing his hand and the cuffs they'd removed from his pocket out when Marco charged in. "Now, none of that, you—"
Click.
Kizaru stared at the cuffs encircling his wrist and sighed mournfully, at which point gravity reasserted itself and sent him into the curiously unfamiliar sensation of free-fall.
"I knew that would happen," Kizaru groused, picking up his snail. "Vice Admiral, if you could be so kind as to arrange a cushion for me. And also have whoever has the key for my cuffs sent to my position."
"Fuck. Of course, he knew about that plan, too," Jonathan spat. "By your command, Admiral. I recommend angling yourself to land on the seawall."
Hanging up, Kizaru spread his limbs and tried to remember his training in how to fall.
Marco, meanwhile, angled his body into a dive for one spot. One particular fighter needed to go down now if they were going to get away cleanly. He came to a halt in a plume of blue flame in front of Donquixote Doflamingo, his flame burning away some of the strings the Warlord had spread out to control Oars.
But not all of them.
"Doflamingo," he all but snarled. "Let my crewmate go."
"You don't really think I'm going to give up my best puppet just like that, do you?" Doflamingo leered. "But hey, if you really want your buddy Oars back—"
A twitch of a finger, and Oars' massive hand swung down to crush Marco.
"Make me!"
Marco smoothly evaded the blow and shot towards Doflamingo.
"Terms accepted."
-o-
Amidst the chaos of the scrambling armies, whether to retreat, to sow discord, or to fight the war that they had as good as lost already, two individuals were left unbothered by the gravity of the situation around them.
"And good riddance," Crocodile spat as he polished the hook he had just used to finally shatter the Lofoten's heart. The way the entire construct suddenly lost all tension and collapsed in on itself, its withered skin and skeleton, was revolting but so satisfying.
"The jellyfish next, sir?" Daz asked, already preparing to buzzsaw through the drones.
Crocodile took a look at the battlefield, and seeing Whitebeard against the better number of the Navy's remaining top brass, and the conspicuous retreat of everyone else on his side…
He's not planning to leave here alive… he never was, Crocodile realized. Rage stirred in his heart at the thought that he would never be able to take his revenge, but it just as quickly cooled as his more logical side pointed out that Whitebeard was going to die either way. And that single fact, combined with the sight of Akainu hot on Straw Hat's tail and the sound of Cross outright leaking, made the future so much brighter in his mind.
…all of which was to say nothing of the justifiable paranoia that stepping close to anyone remotely on Whitebeard's side would get him killed at Straw Hat's request.
"…no. I think we've done enough," Crocodile said, smirking softly. "We'll need to find a good perch to watch this from."
"Might I recommend the battleship that is maintaining a holding pattern approximately a half-mile offshore to the west?" Daz pointed out.
The ex-Warlord took a look at the warship, evaluated its state (noticeable damage, but serviceable) and position (well away from the cordon, well placed for an exfil), and nodded. "Let's go," Crocodile agreed, breaking into sand and vanishing into the air as Daz literally tore after him, skating on his blades and slicing through whoever he couldn't evade.
Once the human grinder (or grinder-human, as it were) reached the edge of the ice sheet, Crocodile re-coalesced his hook near him. Daz grabbed the gold without hesitation and didn't flinch as his feet left the ground. Bullets trailed after them both, but the ones that impacted were nothing against sand and steel. And when they arrived minutes later, they found the crew and the lifeboats missing. Convenient, if slightly disappointing, but that seemed to describe the day in general, didn't it?
Crocodile and his right-hand man had left the war. But they would bear witness to its climax before they returned to the sea.
-o-
All of this was witnessed in bits and pieces by Ace and company. Mihawk was pressing the left entirely solo. The right was collapsing under the weight of Oars, the Devil Dogs, and the BioMEGAs and Pacifistas, despite Marco doing his damndest to rip Doflamingo's face off with his bare talons. And while Vergo had been intercepted, it was also clear that Whitebeard couldn't tie up all the Vice Admirals forever. The Division Commanders glanced among themselves and came to a decision.
"Ace, continue to the ships. We need to go back to the front lines and make sure this doesn't turn into a rout," Jozu rumbled.
"Straw Hat, Jinbe, and the rest of you," Namur added with a toothy grin. "Keep our favourite idiot alive, okay?"
"Oi!" Ace snapped. "That goes for you guys, too! No sacrifice plays on my watch!"
"Aye-aye, Captain!" they all barked, before splitting off.
Ace came to a freezing halt, staring off after them. Well, at least until Isuka smacked him upside the head in passing.
"Ow! What the hell?!"
"Less gawping, more running!" she snapped, prompting a chastised Ace to resume doing exactly that. "And what did you expect? You're Whitebeard's heir apparent! Everyone knows that!"
Ace blinked dumbly. "I am?"
"Yes, you are," Jinbe answered.
"The Navy certainly thought so," Lucci added.
"Even I know that, Ace," Luffy finished.
For a moment, Ace was silent. Then…
"Right, don't have time to unpack that. I'm going to wait until after we're free and clear to break down gibbering in my cabin."
"Shishishi—WOAH!"
Luffy's laughter was quite rudely interrupted by the spines of the aquatic BioMEGA landing around them. The group was spared impalement mostly by Jinbe batting the one on target aside. This was followed by some of the drones of the aerial BioMEGA landing among them.
"Jinbe, get the sea serpent! Luffy, Lucci, keep these things off of me!" Ace barked, flames bursting to life around him. "I'll get the jellyfish! Flame Commandment!"
"Hey, I can still—AUGH!"
Isuka's protests died in a cry of agony, the ex-Marine collapsing to the ice, clutching her gut.
"Isuka!" Ace shouted in a panic. "Didn't she get healing hormones?!"
"This is an unavoidable side effect, Ace-boy!" Ivankov shouted in passing, still sliding along the ice propelled by her Hell Winks. "Ask Straw Hat-boy, he experienced them himself!"
Ace gave Luffy a pleading look, to which he answered, "Yeah, it took me a really long time to recover. But she's less injured than I was, so it should only take a few hours."
"I got her," Kaku said, scooping Isuka up.
"Thanks," Ace growled, glaring up at the aerial BioMEGA. "As for you, time to work out some misplaced anger. Flame Pillar!"
A column of fire the size of a battleship's mast leapt from Ace's body, engulfing the aerial BioMEGA. Already damaged by prior combat, the great beast went limp, trailing smoke as it slowly drifted to the ground.
Jinbe, meanwhile, charged at the remaining BioMEGA, only to hastily roll out of the way of a spread of lasers from the Pacifistas advancing.
"What the hell are those things?!" he demanded.
"Ah, those are the robots axe-guy brought with him to that Super Body place!" Luffy realized. "They're really tough, and they really like using those lasers."
"I've noticed!" Jinbe snarled, frantically dodging said lasers, an endeavour his girth didn't make any easier.
Suddenly, a wall of soap bubbles washed in front of the Pacifistas. Kalifa, scorched and battered but still fighting, followed shortly afterward, as did a familiar "Dammit!"
"If one of you can hold Sentomaru off, I'll handle the rest."
"On it!" Jabra replied, sprinting off. "The rest of you keep going!"
"Whoa, whoa, we're just going to leave them behind?!" Ace demanded.
"Kalifa and Jabra are elite agents of Jormungandr; they can handle themselves. Besides, we all signed up knowing we could die on any mission." Kaku smirked mirthlessly. "As deaths go, this wouldn't be a bad one."
"Also, wolf-guy's kind of a jerk," Luffy noted.
"That too!"
From the expression on Ace's face, he plainly didn't like that. But he kept running.
By now, the way seemed clear to the Moby Dick. The fighting still continued all around them, but the Whitebeards seemed to have formed an ad-hoc perimeter that kept the core group clear of further attacks. None dared to say it, but for a moment, they all thought they might be home free.
And then the deck of the Moby Dick bulged and blackened right under the mainmast. Magma erupted from the bulge, a veritable volcano of it, dropping burning lava on the other ships of the Whitebeard flotilla and setting them alight as well. Out from the hellscape that had been the center of the ship strode Admiral Akainu, bleeding from the head but plainly still able to fight, a glowing orange trail now becoming visible beneath the ice, answering how he had gotten in front of them.
"No…" Ace breathed.
-o-
From his position near the execution platform, Whitebeard spared enough attention to give his stalwart ship a forlorn look. The ship had been his home for decades, practically since he'd left Rocks behind, and to see it burn like this… Involuntarily, his mind was cast back. Back to the memories…
~o~
A much younger Edward Newgate stood on a much less thriving Water 7, staring with a massive grin at the masterpiece assembled before him.
"Well, here she is, exactly as you asked!" said a yellow-skinned shipwright recently graduated from an apprenticeship. "Exactly-exactly, even. Are you sure about this figurehead design? It does look a tad on the dopey side."
"Yeah… Yeah, it fits. It looks nice. Friendly. Which is definitely what I want. A nice, friendly ship."
"A pirate with a friendly ship… and here I thought I'd heard of everything! TAHAHAHA! Alright then, she's all yours! Though, one last thing before you send her off the slip: what're you gonna name her?"
"Hmm… heh. I got just the thing. A name that'll be heard the world over."
~o~
Two grand and majestic ships sailed across the ocean close to one another, side by side as they braved the waves. Too close, actually.
"ROGER, YOU ASS!"
"Ahhhh, come on, what did I do this time, Ed? If it's about your booze, that wasn't me! Shanks beat me to it! Think the kid's getting a taste for the stuff."
"NOT THAT, YOU BASTARD—though yes, I'm absolutely livid about that—BUT I'M TALKING ABOUT MY SHIP!"
"Eh? The Moby looks fine."
"Her flank sure as hell ain't! Look at this! Your barnacle-choked tub stripped off half her paint!"
"Huh? Ah, so he did. Whoops, my bad!"
"'YOUR BAD' MY ASS! FIX IT, ROGER, NOW!"
"Eeeeh? I-I can't hear you! Some weird current must be carrying us away! Sorry, we'll have to talk about this later!"
"ROGER, GET BACK HERE! SON OF A—MEN, DROP THE SAILS, FULL AHEAD! THIS TIME I'M KILLING THAT DRUNK FOR SURE!"
~o~
A massive wall of sheer water crashed and cascaded before the Great White Vessel, titanic fish impossibly leaping up the face of the waterfall in defiance of gravity and sanity.
"C-Captain, we need to turn back, now!"
"Eh? Why the hell would we do that? This is where the Log is pointing, isn't it?"
"Captain, that is a waterfall! A waterfall! In the middle of the ocean!"
"What's your point?"
"CAPTAIN! This is way too risky, we're all gonna—!"
"Risky? HA! What risks?! Of course, we'll make it, boys! After all, there isn't an ocean in the world our Moby can't brave! What's a few falls to someone as great as her!"
~o~
"I'm sorry," Whitebeard whispered.
"…Don't be, Captain."
Whitebeard's eyes widened and darted to the whale figurehead. Plain for all the world to see, a ghostly figure stood upon the white face, a tilted-down pirate hat hiding her face save for a solemn smile.
"Are you—"
"Mourn, Captain, but don't apologize. To die in battle to rescue a lost crewmate… that is the greatest death… any ship could ever ask for…"
For a moment, Whitebeard was silent. And then he bowed his head.
"Then thank you for all the years of service you have given us."
"Of course. I was… proud to do it… I'll see you on the other side…"
Abruptly, Akainu stomped down on the figure, dissipating it and incinerating the figurehead with more magma. His voice rang out across the battlefield, from his miraculously intact snail.
"People. Vessels. Miracles. If they exist because of outlaws, they must die."
It was the worst possible thing that he could have said and done. The long-term implications would crystallize in the months after the war, but the short-term results made a significant impact on their own.
Because now, Whitebeard was angry.
"Bother," Tsuru swore, rearing back from a swing of his bisento and yanking back Aokiji with her. Much later, she'd fully appreciate how far away his eyes had seemed at the sight of Akainu remorselessly destroying a ship.
The remaining Vice Admirals were unprepared for the force. At best, they were thrown back, and at worst, they lost consciousness. Either way, Whitebeard moved past them with the force of a horde of bison, charging at the titanic puppet of Little Oars Jr.
And in seconds, he closed his fist around a critical wire.
Doflamingo jerked to a halt, tugging intently on his wire in an effort to dislodge it.
And when he followed the line down in an effort to find the snag, he froze up as his mind processed just who he was attached to, and what the circumstances of said attachment were.
"…well, then," Donquixote Doflamingo stated quietly, his voice more subdued than it had been in his entire life. "Mistakes have been made."
"YES." Whitebeard rumbled and then gave the line a harsh jerk.
A harsh jerk that rated an 11.0 on the Richter Scale.
Doflamingo detached his line within seconds of recognizing the imminent demise, but within a fraction of a second, the very start of one of the vibrations reached the Warlord. Regrettably, the Warlord had disengaged his string soon enough to miss the brunt of the damage that would have pasted him.
"SONNUVA—!"
But thankfully, he was attached to it just long enough for the whiplash to strike his arm like an all-out sledgehammer, reducing his skeleton in said limb to a pile of matchsticks.
"MNRGH—Piece of—!" Doflamingo growled, narrowly keeping himself aloft with his remaining hand, while he directed a tooth-cracking grimace in the direction of the two agents still locked in a stalemate with Hancock.
"And whoever made this mistake is going to live for a very, very long time," he swore, retreating to a nearby parapet to buy the time he needed to string his arm back together.
Which meant that he had a front-row seat to Whitebeard grabbing his remaining strings and reminding everyone present that he was the world's strongest man by throwing Little Oars Jr. off the island. For his titanic size, the impact was comparable to jumping into a swimming pool. But the distance ensured that neither Doflamingo nor anyone else would make the poor life choice of trying to go after him again.
"Well, then… who do I go after now?" he pondered, his grin returning as Whitebeard changed tactics and charged towards what remained of his ships.
-o-
The amount of smoke and ash from the burning ships and the unfortunate souls left aboard threatened to block out the already darkened sky, and what little light remained in this war was threatening to disappear. A perfect parallel to the mood on the battlefield.
How long Ace stared at what remained of the Moby Dick, he didn't know. It felt like an eternity. More likely, it was only a few seconds before Luffy tapped him on the shoulder.
"Ace," he said, voice deadly serious. "What's the backup plan?"
That threatened to send Ace into hysterical laughter. Who would've thought Luffy would ever talk about backup plans? But paradoxically, it gave him something to latch onto, long enough to shove his grief at the destruction of the Moby Dick onto a growing and distressingly large pile.
"There's a fifth ship. They came in underwater via a coated ship, right?" he asked, getting a nod from Isuka. "Then it's still there. We need to tell them not to surface, because as long as Akainu's there, he'll just destroy it."
"I expect the Maelstrom Spider is already rallying the crew. He'll be smart enough not to surface with an Admiral guarding," Lucci intoned.
"That's… That's good." Ace let out a breath, running his hand through his hair. "We need to get Marco over here; he's the only one on the crew besides Pops I'd trust to get Akainu out of there."
"He appears to have been fighting Doflamingo before Whitebeard intervened," Jinbe mused. "No easy opponent, and he might still go after him again."
"Okay… Lucci, sneak over and let Marco know the plan. Also, get some of the other Division Commanders to engage Doflamingo. They just need to hold him off. We'll hold the fort here."
For a heart-stopping moment, Lucci stared at him, and Ace thought he wouldn't follow the order. And then, he blurred away in Shave. Ace turned back towards Akainu, eyeing him. The man stood amid the flaming wreckage of the Moby Dick on an island of cooled magma, not moving.
"What's he doing…?" Ace muttered. "It's like he's waiting for something."
"Me."
Ace whirled around at the voice just in time to catch a fist to the forehead that ignored his Logia intangibility and slammed him head-first onto the ice.
"Argh! Fuck!" he swore at the dizziness that overtook him.
Luffy and Jinbe, with more time to react, took in the figure standing before them. Irian had clearly seen better days. Bruises dotted her face, her clothes were dirty, torn, and rumpled, and her trademark obsidian daggers were nowhere to be seen.
Both fighters still attacked her near-simultaneously, Luffy red from a hasty pump of Gear Second. Irian moved even before they did, slipping between their two punches and kicking out at Jinbe's ankle. Thanks to his robes, she hit a little high on his calf muscle, so he merely got his leg kicked out from under him rather than a destroyed ankle. But that was enough, for she followed it up by punching him in the ribs hard enough to leave a crater on impact with the ice.
"Gum-Gum Jet Gatling!"
Luffy had no better luck. Irian merely stepped carefully to one particular spot and let the punches rain down harmlessly around her, before grabbing both arms and yanking him in close. Her knee rose to meet his chin, and the blow nearly knocked his teeth out. It did spray blood and left him dazed, something she used to wrench him in close again and wrap her hand around Luffy's throat.
"Wherever Jeremiah Cross is," she hissed, squeezing harder to choke gurgles. "I am going to find him. And I am going to make him dance to death. It takes hours, you know. Hours of agony before the victim dies." A vicious smile spread over her face. "But before that, I think killing his captain will be a delicious dose of despair."
Wind brushed against Irian's cheek, prompting her to turn her head. This probably saved her life, as Lucci's Finger Pistol, rather than puncturing the weak point in her skull at her temple, instead squelched into her left eye.
"YAAAAAAARGH!" she shrieked, clutching the bleeding socket. She lashed out, kicking Lucci hard in the chest and sending him skidding back across the ice. "Gonna fucking kill you! Fucking kill you!"
"Oh, shut up!" Ace, now back on his feet, interjected. "Fire Fist!"
The fireball engulfed Irian, sending her screaming again. The flames cleared quickly, but that was of no help to her: it merely revealed Jinbe in her strike zone, fist reared back, with no time to react.
"Three Thousand Tile True Fist!"
Credit to Irian, she managed to jump back some, and so was not completely turned to paste by the punch. She was hurled clear into the tower of Marineford, where she was left stuck in her own silhouette.
"Tsk," Jinbe scowled, clutching his throbbing side. "Meant to send her into the sea."
"Maybe she's dead anyway?" Isuka proposed, earning her incredulous looks from Jinbe, Ace, and Kaku. "Okay, okay, I can dream, can't I?"
"We can pray for her slow and drawn-out death once we've escaped our own," Ace snarled back, waving for the rest of the group to follow him. "For now, we just need to keep moving towards the edge of the ice, avoid the rabid mutt and the rest of his pack, and run out the damn clock. Now come on, let's move people, move!"
The group immediately followed the flame-man's leave, following the rest of the Whitebeards as they endeavoured to put as much distance between themselves and Marineford as humanly possible. Said endeavour was made infinitely easier when, through sheer happenstance, the mass of people happened to open up just right, so that a clear avenue became visible. A path, from the escapees to the blue, boundless ocean that promised freedom.
That sight, that spark of hope, spurred the pirates, criminals and other miscellaneous convicts on like nothing else. For a moment, they ran faster than they had all day. For a moment, the dangers behind them vanished, and all that was left was the escape ahead.
For a moment, they were home free.
And it was then and there, when emotions were highest on every side, that the war finally hit its peak, and the world bore witness to the determination of fate.
…blam…
It was just one shot out of the literal thousands that were ringing out across the battlefield, a mere firecracker in comparison, missed by all in the war. But that single, inaudible shot had the most devastating effect out of any in the whole course of the war.
"AGH!"
Because it was that one, single bullet that managed to do the impossible and harm Monkey D. Luffy.
As though in slow motion, Ace and Jinbe saw Luffy miss a step and go tumbling as a bullet somehow tore through his good ankle. For a single second, he stopped moving forward.
And all around him, for the briefest moment, the war paused.
-o-
"Good! He felt that one!" Onigumo said with vindictive glee, nodding at the snail in his palm. "Good shot, Halvar!"
"A good shot indeed, komentaja. It is, therefore, a shame that I was not the one to make it."
The Vice-Admiral froze up, shooting an incredulous look at his connection to the sniper. "What!?"
-o-
As Luffy fell, he wasn't the only one who was attacked. Far away from that specific hell, another ally also found themselves under assault.
"Soundbite, what—nrgh!" Cross wheezed, teeth grit as he choked a throatful of blood. "What was that? What's going on?!"
"I-I don't know!" The snail gurgled back. His minuscule frame was trembling with strain, and a veritable roadmap of veins crisscrossed what little of his slimy flesh was visible. "THERE'S SO MUCH, I-I'M TRYING TO PROCESS IT, TRYING TO PIECE IT OUT! JUST GIVE ME A second, just one more, I ALMOST—!"
And then it hit him. Like the fist of God… or more accurately, the hand of a darker, much less merciful power.
A noise worked its way across the world and into Soundbite's nonexistent ears.
"ZEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—!"
And just like that, the little snail popped a blood vessel.
Cross froze, staring in horror as the gastropod's small body went slack. "S… Soundbite?"
Soundbite let out a pained whimper as his eye slowly turned red. "BelGIUM…"
And with one last foamy gurgle, the snail collapsed in on himself.
"Soundbite—!" Cross cried out in shock, lunging for his friend to do anything he could to help him, but before he could, something stopped him.
Because in Soundbite's last, fading moments of consciousness, a noise rang out in the darkness.
A noise that ripped through Cross's heart and mind as surely as any bullet.
-o-
As an entire swathe of the battlefield froze in numb shock, there was one person who did not.
One person, who while all else paused, leapt into immediate, violent action.
The only person on the battlefield who kept moving in the second where the rest of the world froze was Admiral Akainu, who closed the distance between the two D's and himself and reared his arm back, dissolving it into a roiling mass of blazing death as he prepared to strike.
The last thing Soundbite transmitted to the world, with his fading shreds of awareness, was the agonized scream of a man with an unshakeable will.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!"
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~1 Day After the War~
In an easily overlooked nook of the Eternal Hell, there was a winding stair leading downward. For different reasons, the jailers and the Marines were silent as they descended. The inkling of dread that Tashigi had felt from Magellan's mundane reaction only grew stronger as they descended the stairs, something in her mind screaming that this was wrong.
"Level 7," Hannyabal announced, gesturing at the trapdoor embedded in the floor. "So, do you think you could explain why we're here, or—woah!"
He was immediately sent spinning by a rough shove from Tashigi, forcing her way past him. While the Vice-Warden was left dazed and the other staff of Impel Down stared on in confusion, Tashigi grabbed at the iron handle for the trapdoor and yanked with all her might.
"Cross!" she shouted, desperately, fighting forcefully against the trapdoor's lock. "Cross, say something! An insult, a sob, anything! SPEAK TO ME!"
~o~
Enshrouded in darkness, a metallic clanking abruptly rang out.
That clanking stirred Soundbite awake, his eyestalks blinking blearily from exhaustion yet clouding his mind. The constant sound swiftly woke him right up, however, and his gaze snapped upward with panicked attentiveness as the door in their cell's ceiling rattled in its frame.
The prospect of someone opening that door and coming through it filled Soundbite with a single, overwhelming emotion.
Raw terror.
"Cross? Cr-CROSS!" the snail yelped with increasing volume, inching his way to Cross's head and nudging him frantically. "CROSS, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP! Wake up, RIGHT THE UNHOLY HELL NOW!"
But in spite of his pleas, the otherworlder didn't move.
In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to see, but his eyes were wide open and blank. Not dead, but not remotely cognizant.
~o~
"Cross! Cross!" Tashigi cried, wrenching at the door with all her might, silently pleading for just an inch of give.
"Ahh," Hannyabal raised his hand uncomfortably—he still felt dizzy, after all—his other drifting towards his belt. "You know, we have a key for—"
What little of Tashigi's patience remained was shredded to nothing, and she ripped Shigure from its sheath with both a shriek of steel and a shriek of rage.
"Or you do you, either works!" the Vice-Warden recoiled with a terrified yelp.
With a final exclamation of effort, Tashigi ripped her blade through the trapdoor's lock and hinges. A surge of strength that her wiry frame belied, and the door was ripped out of its place and thudded to the ground beside the exposed hole.
Tashigi lunged down, shoving her head through the hole and into the darkness, a grin of relief writ across her face.
"Cross! I'm here, it's fine, you're—!"
Then, staring down into the room, she froze. And she felt the whole world freeze around her.
"…Cross?"
~o~
As the roof tore open, a woman stared down at them, and Soundbite retreated fearfully into his shell.
That she was a woman, only her voice revealed. The only features visible in what scraps of dim light there were were a pair of almost glowing, sickly-yellow eyes, void of sclera or pupils, and a Cheshire Cat's grin, except two times bigger, ten times pointier, and a hundred times hungrier. She wasn't quite weeping with delight as she ogled down at them, but her mouth was certainly making up for it with the sheer amount of drool dribbling from it.
"Ohhh, yessss… such a ssss-CRUMPTIOUS serving of MEAT! Thick and tender and raw… and soooo FRESH!" The being let out a shuddering moan as a shiver coursed through her body. "Blood still coursing through the c-RRRR-unchiest of bones, and… oooh, I smell pre-COOKED muscles in the arms and legs! I'LL SAVOR EVERY LAST BITE! COME TO ME, FILET—!"
SPLA-FWOOSH!
"GYAGH!"
{PLASTER-PALM COMBO!}
The insane woman wasn't as bothered as she should have been from being soaked in tar and lit on fire. But it made her writhe enough that Lassoo was able to body-check her back out, giving them a bit of room.
{We're out of time, we're about to get mobbed! Hurry—Oh, for the love of is he still out of it!?}
"Like I'm not trying to SNAP HIM OUT OF IT!?" Soundbite shouted hysterically.
CRASH! {COME ON!}
Funkfreed charged through the wall of the abandoned prison cell, grabbing Cross in his trunk before encasing him in a Pachy-Shield, gun and sword locked in their hybrid forms to make themselves as unappetizing as possible. As Cross's erstwhile sanctuary crumbled behind them, they stared into the lightless labyrinth, their ears and noses sharp and ready to kill anything that came near.
And as the darkness shifted and roiled with unseen movement and echoed with maddened sounds, their one regret was that they couldn't just say that they had a long night ahead of them.
After all, according to the closest count they could keep, they'd yet to see the sun for the last week.
~o~
The dread crystallized as they stared into the room. Dim lights illuminated row upon row of normal bookshelves and file cabinets. The smell of musty pages and arsenic permeated the space around the trapdoor, emphasizing how little reason there ever was to enter.
Smoker, Tashigi, and Popora had never been more horrified at the sight of a file room.
"…you weren't expecting our other file storage?" Domino asked.
Shaking in anger and horror alike, Tashigi withdrew a Tone Dial from her pocket and clicked it. A cacophony of screams and static echoed out, followed by Cross's unmistakable voice.
"TASHI—KRCH!—ELP ME! YOU NEED TO GET M—KRCH!—HELL OUT OF—KRCH!—DAMNED PLACE!"
"Where are you, Cross? Where are you?" Tashigi's voice demanded.
"IT'S—KRCH!—THAN WE THOUGHT! DAMN BASTARDS, SO THIS IS WHAT THEY—KRCH!—HELL! THIS PLACE IS THE SEVENTH HE—KRCH!—HELL OF DARKNESS!"
Tashigi's foul mood quickly spread to the rest of them as she replaced the Dial into her pocket, her teeth grinding and her eyes teary.
"If it isn't Level 7… if this isn't the Seventh Hell… then where is Cross?"
-o-
Tashigi's question was one that echoed in the minds of all the world, on every side of the law. Nobody knew where Cross was, despite having almost all of the biggest organizations in the world looking for him, whether to kill or to save.
But their efforts were futile: Cross's location was an area known to precious few, and those few never thought of it. If anywhere in the world was above suspicion for where Cross was hiding, it was the place where the Government would have seen him sent from the very beginning.
He wasn't the first to try to change the world the way he did, shining a light on history that needed to be snuffed out and never heard of again. He was merely the only one who had truly succeeded, due as much to the foolish Saint Charloss intercepting Aegis-0 as the Straw Hats' infamy and luck. If the Government had had their way, Cross would have been erased. But even where he was, he still managed to strike them hard. Even if he had to do it in a whisper to avoid drawing any hostile attention. Or to clue in anyone listening to the fact that, since before he began the Marineford SBS, he was suppressing the pain from getting a knife in his belly.
There is something to be said for this particular training ground: Bartholomew Kuma was not overly confident in Cross's ability to survive it. But Luffy needed to reach the end of the Grand Line, and the Voices of Anarchy were one giant bullseye on his back. And so Kuma chose the only viable solution: Cross would demonstrate that he was capable of handling the unprecedented chaos that he was spreading across the world, or he would die and free Luffy of a burden he could not handle.
Thus, the place he chose was the Never Day Island of Nox Vestibule, a forsaken mass of land in the shadow of the Red Line and the only landmass in the North Blue untouched by the Vinsmoke Family. And upon this otherwise-deserted island was the Seventh Hell.
A gargantuan parasitic mass that perpetuated the shadow in which it dwelt, devouring all light that touched it, both the actual rays of the sun and the sanity of those forced to dwell in its rancid embrace. And as with all sources of rot and ruin, those creatures that were in search of a putrid meal of death flocked to it in droves, making a meal of anything and anyone they could get their maws on. Whatever was left sank inside with ease. With the ground as soft as sand, the corpses never stayed for long.
The location was inhospitable on its own. But the most dangerous feature of the land was the inhabitants. The Marines and Government agents assigned were handpicked personally by the Five Elder Stars for having the special kind of personality needed for the job: not evil so much as twisted, devoid of empathy or decency and caring only for their own appetites. That was to say nothing of the prisoners themselves, who were usually driven insane or feral long before death took them.
The environment lent itself to that. The 'jailers' employed there typically remained on the fringes. All they ever needed to do was throw the arrivals into the massive labyrinth, supply them with a touch of provisions, and let the monsters do the rest. But they kept their eyes on things, naturally, the cameras secured to hell and back and broadcasting on secure frequencies to exactly two locations: the guardhouse at the foremost entrance… and Mariejois. A more delightful form of sport, the Nobles couldn't find; they could always look into seeing those who had dared to rise against them fight for their lives like the uncivilized beasts that they always were.
This was where Jeremiah Cross now dwelled, and the only hope he had for overcoming it was that he wasn't alone. With the reach of his weapons and the guidance of the God of Noise, it was just possible for him to survive…
A secret place exists between the North Blue and the East Blue. Not atop the Red Line, but beside it, hidden in its shadow… or rather, hiding as its shadow. It is a place of death for truth, liberty, and light. Any whose deaths could make their causes grow instead of disappear were to disappear themselves. The only light here is of the Gods who watch the torture from far away. The only liberty here is to possibly choose when and how you die. The only truth here… is that nobody leaves once they enter.
Vast as a city, tall as a mountain.
Dark as a starless night, lifeless as the ocean floor.
The Eternally Rotting Tree releases none that dares to grace its branches, save into the embrace of death.
DESTINATION REACHED
THE HELL OF DARKNESS
SERPENT