This Bites! (One Piece SI)

[BuKoG]

Oh ..... we got "bullshit!" faces incoming

Edit:Seeing how The Summit War is just starting and the straw hats dropped in from a stolen marine ship i say that's a justified reaction to have

 

[Xomniac]

Chapter 80​

"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 underside of the battleship was facing down, making aiming at the ones onboard a bit more difficult, but they had numbers and space upon 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 who 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 looks of confusion 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 he—!"

And then Crocodile and Luffy processed the outfit that 'Cross' was wearing and swallowed their questions. It was tasteful enough to not 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 to some of their best muscle, that finally prodded the elites among them into actually doing something.

"Alllright, 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 ta 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, lessee, 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 of more interest 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 armor 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 me 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 her 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 and 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," 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 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 colors, 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 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 away the sandals for proper use later.

"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 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 in the midst of 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 finish 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, vhy 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 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 raise an objection to squandering even this resource, as well as the sheer escalation that 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 make his mood any better.

"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 armor 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 anything 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 armor 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 armor was wholly organic, so smoothly it was 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 armor 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 armor plate on it to bankrupt a medium-sized country, and then made it an insect.

But what truly caught the attention were the four artificial arms, attached to the part of the creature's body that couldn't decide whether it was an oversized neck or second torso. Each carried a curved, gleaming metal claw the size of a ship, that 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 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 scream and wrapped their tentacles around the nearest appendage. They crackled with bioelectricity, and the pirates jerked in place, stumbling back after a few seconds 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 favor 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 and tousled blonde hair was the one holding his hand, and also 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 backpedaled.

"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 neutral, 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 shriveled, 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' being 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 grabbing 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, unraveling 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 of 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 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 synced up. 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 defenses 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 halt of a small fishing vessel 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-offense 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 favor 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 had always been ear-splittingly loud. But as the battlefield regained their 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, and the soldiers lost their cohesion and split apart from her, the hollowness filled 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 herself 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, that 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. 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, has started more chaos than most men could ever dream of. Jeremiah Cross, as well as 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 got tired, they just ran 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 armor loosening. Atmos grabbed and heaved, tearing away a big enough chunk of the armor 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—

SSSSSSSS! "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 armored 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 their 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 slid to a halt and 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 smoldering—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 demeanor. 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 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 direr than it would appear. In truth, this 'Buggy' once served on Gold Roger's crew! The apprentice 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, ax 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."

More tried charging him, 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 laid 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 armor 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 up 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 and 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 airborne the 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.

-o-​

Luffy was more than happy to leave those two to their strange grudge match. As soon as Mihawk had declared Buggy 'interesting,' he'd happily booked it past the swordsman and toward the execution platform. "Hope nobody else wants a piece of me today for weird reasons…"

"Tempting fate again? You really are an idiot. But hey!"

CRASH!

Luffy desperately lunged forward, only barely getting out of the way of the pink-boa-clad meteor that smashed into the ice where he'd been standing moments before.

"Who am I to deny your heartfelt request? And don't even try running, Monkey-boy!" Doflamingo cackled eagerly at Luffy's back as he tried to do just that, the air shimmering around him. "I want to break you like I broke Cross's will to live!"

Doflamingo's grin grew all the wider as Luffy abruptly slid to a halt and spun around, fury coursing through his body, the words "Don't leave me hanging" in that smarmy voice echoing in his ears.

"What, too soon?" the Warlord sneered.

Luffy's fists clenched, ready to swing—

—and then he stopped as a much more acute reminder came to his ears. Directly to his ears, judging by the lack of reaction from anyone else, especially Doflamingo. Drowning out the sounds he could hear across the battlefield was the sound of deep breathing. Too deep, and too fast.

Cross, wherever he was, was having a panic attack. Just from being in that monster's vicinity by proxy. He was too out of control to even warn Luffy about how stupid he was being, how stupid he knew he was being.

And Luffy, coming to a decision as someone else drew closer, didn't say a word. He simply reached into his bag, his eyes not leaving the monster's sunglasses, and in one motion, flung an object towards him.

The demon scoffed and raised his hand to catch it.

"You're trying to bribe me with—?"

Catching the bottle, Doflamingo felt putty instead of glass. A glance was all he needed to recognize the substance. He snorted.

"Not a bad trick, Straw Hat, but not—"

Luffy crushed the detonator in his hand before wheeling around and springing off.

The plastique explosion was expected.

The spray of flaming booze and shrapnel was expected.

The burst of lightning in the dead center of the flames, booze, and shrapnel? Not so much.

~o~​

The last being to join the crew was the last to step forward, five carefully bundled cloth packages within his wings.

"I've been working on this for the last few weeks, Captain, and this is the best that I can do right now. Each of these contains one of my feathers, supercharged with as much electricity as they can hold. They'll explode as soon as they touch something alive that isn't made of rubber, and anything weaker than a Sea King won't get back up from it. I couldn't make too many of them, but I hope you can use them well."

Luffy was almost grinning as he accepted the bundles, unable to resist peeking at one of the flickering feathers inside.

"I'll make it count, Billy. I promise."

~o~​

When the smoke cleared, Doflamingo himself seemed unharmed. But his signature pink jacket was tattered and a few tongues of flame and lightning still licked across his form. Veins bulged on his forehead, and his smile was extremely tight.

"That. Brat," he bit out, fingers twitching viciously and carrying out nearly a dozen atrocities at a time in a futile effort to relieve his mounting rancor. "Is so damned lucky he's funny!"

Then, the Heavenly Yaksha noticed a tiiiiny crack in the lens of his glasses and felt a very small snap in the back of his skull.

"That being said," Doflamingo chuckled ruthlessly to himself, raising his increasingly twitching fingers in the direction of Luffy's retreating back. "He can still be funny without an ear."

His index finger raised, tensed—! And paused.

"Actually, you know what…"

He spread all five of his fingers wide.

"Let's make it a leg!"

Doflamingo made to snap his fingers shut, to cut into the little brat's potential a bit—!

!

—and then swung his hand and the strings with it up, barely deflecting a cataclysmic impact that would have pasted his skull. As it was, the ice shattered beneath his feet, forcing the pink-clad Warlord to jump back to less perilous footing.

A motion that was mirrored, as Doflamingo's attacker—and wasn't that a novel concept, someone actually having the balls to attack him! What a day!—landed a few meters ahead of him.

Doflamingo took one look at his attacker, and his grin evolved into an out-and-out smile.

Forget the dumbass Monkey running to his death, this promised to be far more FUN.

"Why, Empress. I do believe we're on the same side, aren't we?" he pointed out as Boa Hancock straightened in the crater she'd made so that she and Salome could regard her fellow Warlord, the massive red and white serpent coiling around her being like the living weapon it was. Both of their faces were… impassive. Eerily so.

"Ostensibly, yes," she answered, as expected. What wasn't quite so expected was her flicking her hand out, her siblings flanking her moving to circle around the two world-class pirates, holding back the nearby combatants so that the two Warlords were unobstructed.

Doflamingo grinned further. "Then why, pray tell, are you attacking me, rather than those who you should be?"

"I was indeed attacking these mongrels when something I saw took precedence."

"Oh? What?"

"Your expression."

Doflamingo's brows shot up in genuine surprise. "Oh?"

"The expression upon your face," Hancock clarified, her own demeanor rapidly and aggressively darkening. "It has offended me. And thus, I must destroy it completely."

"My expression?"

Hancock's eyes flashed as she reared into a combat-ready stance. The ice beneath her shattered and heaved beneath her unstoppable heel, and the world hissed and roared as it was crushed in the coils of an all-engulfing serpent.

"Your face!"

Doflamingo's grin was almost too big for said face as he flung his arms out; his strings sheared through ice and flesh alike, as the worthless puppets continued to put on a show at his behest, dancing and leaping to his every cruel whim.

"INTERESTING!"

As one, the Warlords went at one another.

KA-CRASH!

And vaporized a good chunk of the battlefield's eastern front.

-o-​

"…no, thanks, I like living."

Such was Perona's sentiment as she and any nearby Hollows floated a little further away from that clash.

"Then focus on Straw Hat instead."

Sengoku's voice echoed to her from another Hollow, and her main body spun around in the air to see him glaring at her. That or he was glaring at Luffy who was drawing closer again, it was hard to tell.

"Your loyalties were in question from the beginning. We brought you here for a reason and put no small amount of resources towards that end. Put him down here and now, or risk your own arrest or worse."

Perona huffed in annoyance and, between one breath and the next, had appeared beside the execution stand.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, Fleet Admiral. Two of my predecessors tried their luck against him, one of whom is already here, and both had literally ten times my power and twice my life experience! I'm going to stick to the enemies I am actually managing to handle, you deal with the monkey you decided to poke in the eye!"

Without waiting for a reply, she turned away and raised a hand aimed at Luffy's barely visible form, while using another Hollow to focus her 'sight' on the aquatic BioMEGA that was starting to claw its way up the side of one of the Moby's other escorts.

"But I'll step up my game if this isn't enough for you," she uttered, snapping her fingers three times.

And at once, another group of bestial roars sounded out, this time from within the city itself. Much of the battlefield waited with dreadful anticipation for whatever biomechanical horror was going to enter the field of play this time, so it was a relief when a large, silver, and 100% organic crane soaring up from the rear of the island to circle over the battlefield.

Then, beneath the crane, another pair of beasts appeared on the walls. One was a toad, eating ground with great leaps, its color scheme bringing to mind a volcano on the verge of eruption… a volcano that just so happened to have the face of an especially pugnacious bulldog.

The other, initially moving too fast to see more than a white blur, came to a halt beneath its mistress, revealing itself to be an oversized porcupine. And judging by the trail of punctures left in its wake, the quills on its back were made of some kind of metal. The crane landed beside the porcupine, and the toad arrived a moment later. All three bowed before the princess.

"Three of the strongest members of my Peerage will now join the fight. Now, remember your training, you three. Do a good job and you'll get extra Positive Hollows on the way home."

All three nodded eagerly, smiling as widely as their expressions and demeanors allowed.

"Good. Now, Libic? You go after that young man with the blood-red shirt. Calcab, Rubic? Do our home proud…"

She waved her arm at the field.

"And show them Hell."

Letting out war cries, the crane shot into the air while the porcupine leaped into a cartwheeling dash towards Luffy, its limbs and tail striking the ground almost fast enough to Shave. The toad, meanwhile, simply turned in place and began breathing in, its skin growing redder and hotter by the moment.

Then it began spitting out fireballs roughly as big as itself, raining down on the battlefield in a way that even Akainu would have had to appreciate… if they were a little more discriminatory in their targets. As it was, Marines and pirates alike had to scramble to avoid the shots.

The crane, meanwhile, had decided on a single large target: the aquatic BioMEGA. It landed atop the ice near the serpentine monstrosity and went to work hammering at it with its beak. The crane's pecks were strong and fast, and while it was a struggle to even dent the metal, the fleshy parts of the serpent were shredding like paper, and the crane's conditioning made it easily agile enough to predict and dodge the claws and mandibles of the monstrosity.

As for the porcupine… well, it was certainly shooting its spines at Monkey D. Luffy, but merely aiming in the right general direction didn't mean they were actually hitting. Or at least, hitting their intended target. The Marines and Devil Dogs that Luffy ran in front of? They learned firsthand how effective javelin-sized metal quills could be when flung at sufficient velocity.

Perona observed all of this impassively. Then, with acute awareness of the seething rage being directed at her being, she turned her impassive stare on her glowering 'superior.'

"Satisfied?"

"They are attacking my men!" Sengoku bit out, just short of a literally incandescent roar.

"Because like I warned and you asked for in spite of my explicit warnings, they're my strongest beasts, not my best-trained! In fact, barely any of my Peerage is trained! I told you I needed three months to get situated, you're the one that took that as a suggestion! You're the one who started this war, and dragged me and mine into it! You want to complain when things start going wrong? Do it to someone who cares!"

"…one reason I shouldn't just kill you, right now."

"Because if I die, then all of my beasts—both here and back on Merveille—go on an indiscriminate rampage and you get the unenviable accolade of managing to dig through rock bottom and somehow making even this series of ludicrously bad decisions even worse. Now, if you'll excuse me—" Perona raised her fingers with a prim sniff. "—I'm going to get back to fighting your war."

And with a snap, the ghost was back to the frontlines.

A heavy silence fell over the platform. A silence that prompted Sengoku to turn to the others beside him. "Nothing to add?"

"I'm lucky I've gotten away with this much, I'm not pushing my skull's durability any farther," Garp answered.

"I'm just waiting for my cue so I can get this over with," Isuka sighed, cradling her forehead.

"I'm still stuck on 'my dumbass little brother dropped in on a ship from the sky.'" Ace dragged out.

"Seriously? Running on water, one-shotting a giant Vice Admiral, blowing past all five Warlords, and you're still stuck on page one?"

And that drew everyone's attention back down to the battlefield, where Cross rolled his eyes before turning back into battle.

Sengoku frowned even more deeply as he watched him go. Since he'd thrown himself in front of Kuma, Sengoku had felt that there was something off about this whole situation with Cross, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Making jokes at a time like this?" Garp scoffed. "Does he really think he'll make it out of this alive?"

Sengoku's eyes slowly widened as he realized what was bothering him. When it came to mind games, Cross was a credible threat to anyone. But physically, he was among the weakest of the Straw Hats. Yet the pirate on the battlefield leading PX-0 on a merry chase was without his usual reinforcements: no dog-gun, no elephant sword, not even armored limbs. And then the most blatant fault of all: no other Straw Hat nearby helping him.

Another glance at his captain—who was getting too close to making landfall for comfort—only reinforced the issue. Luffy had eyes only for his brother and was barely sparing a glance back at his crewmate. Any of the Straw Hats on the battlefield should have been a distraction that they could capitalize on, but it was as if he wasn't worried about—

…it couldn't be. Sengoku stepped forward, eyes wide open as he stared down at Cross. The hood was down…no, even focusing now, the face was unmistakable. It couldn't be an imposter, not unless they could perfectly copy—

"SONNUVA—! THAT'S NOT JEREMIAH CROSS!"

His sudden shout on the PA system drew attention, mostly incredulous, from all sides.

"THE COLORBLIND PIRATE ON THE BATTLEFIELD ISN'T CROSS! THAT'S AN IMPOSTOR USING THE CLONE-CLONE FRUIT!"

"THAT'S THE COLORBLIND IMPOSTOR-PIRATE TO YOU, MISTER GOLDFINGER!" 'Cross' yelled back, Soundbite amplifying his voice so that everyone heard the distinctly flamboyant tone he adopted. "BUT NOW THAT THE CAT'S OUT OF THE BAG, I SUPPOSE I MIGHT AS WELL SLIP INTO SOMETHING MORE COMFORTABLE!"

'Cross''s left hand slapped to his own face, which reconfigured to that of Bentham, poised and ready to lay any foes out flat with his martial arts.

"Yes, 'tis I, Bentham, AKA Mr. 2 Bon Clay, master of Oh Come My Way Kenpo! What do you think of that, you oversized tin tyrant!?"

Kuma stared at Bentham blankly for a few seconds before turning to stare at Luffy's back. "Reprioritizing priority target. Priority target acquired."

"…oops."

"BEN-BOY! VHY DIDN'T YOU KEEP UP THE ACT!?" Ivankov screeched, slamming into Kuma's way once more.

Sengoku dropped his hand into his palm.

"I am so conflicted," he grumbled. "Thank goodness he's not actually here, but now we can't kill him."

"…wait a minute," Isuka muttered. "If Cross was never here… then how did Soundbite take down Irian?"

"Pffheheheheheheh…"/"Heeheeheehoohoohoo…"

Mirthless laughter rang out once more. "Took you too long to figure it out. The power of an Awakened Devil Fruit and a Straw Hat scorned. We may not be in a safe place right now, but we're not in Marineford, either."

"OR AT LEAST… not in any capacity that you can STOP."

Then the entire battlefield seemed to quake, and it wasn't Whitebeard doing it. A hammer strike to his inner ear made Sengoku lose his balance for a brief moment. The results on the battlefield varied wildly: cannoneers in the most vital sectors began spiking their cannons or even pushing the weapons over the edge and into the harbor if they thought they didn't have time.

The Angevins in particular suffered wildly from the sudden audio-assault, as they were the only forces fielded who were actually mounted. This advantage abruptly and violently reversed when their horses started bucking and thrashing wildly. And, once their riders were dismounted, the horses proceeded to sow further chaos, either stampeding through the battlefield or just causing massive amounts of collateral

The aerial BioMEGA found its squid spawn suddenly start taking Marine fire, and was itself riddled with bullets. Though judging from how many Marines turned and how fast, it was hard to say if it was all due to Cross.

Soldiers in the affected areas shoved earplugs in as fast they could and strained their eyes to read lips, ostensibly to repulse any attempts to confuse them but in reality to ensure that actual orders fell on deaf ears where it mattered most.

And of course, scores of soldiers all across the battlefield stumbled and even toppled in response from the Gastro-Phonies popping up all over the place.

~o~​

Everyone had given their gifts now. As Robin handed Luffy a list to keep track of them, Soundbite took the chance to speak up.

"I can't be there with you in the flesh… but I can be there in the NOISE."

The snail's expression was resolute, locking eyes with Luffy's.

"I've spent the last YEAR jailbreaking my powers. I CAN CHANNEL THEM ANYWHERE THAT I CAN HEAR… and ONE connection IS ALL I NEED."

His eyestalks swiveled around to take in the entirety of the crew. "THE SBS is our gateway. He was alone in one lifetime. HE WON'T BE THIS TIME. MY POWERS WILL MAKE SURE OF IT."

The rest of the crew nodded, and Luffy put a hand over his eyes, smiling.

"Thank you, Soundbite."

A pair of squinting eyes silently observed the snail as he again defied what was and wasn't possible for them to do, beyond what even Cross knew.

She was the only one who couldn't do anything to help Luffy, who couldn't contribute anything.

'This will be the last time I'm this powerless before them. I don't know what these two years will hold, but I'll find the Children myself. One way or another, I'll get the power I need to stand on my own four paws, or I will die trying.'

~o~​

Sengoku briefly closed his eyes in frustration. He had suspected that Soundbite would be able to do this much over a mere snail call. Underestimating an Awakened Devil Fruit was the height of stupidity. But he had no recourse for it. Cutting communications, be it by radio silence or earplugs, was suicide, and using a cipher had to wait until they had tried baiting Whitebeard.

He only had two reliable countermeasures, one of which had failed at the outset. The only option left—

"Puru puru puru puru!"

Sengoku very nearly had another cardiac episode as the baby snail on his person abruptly started ringing. Soundbite's singsong suggestion of "You're gonna want to get that~!" didn't help matters either.

Sengoku sincerely considered ignoring the demonic pest's taunt, but unfortunately, if the past hour had demonstrated anything about the Fleet Admiral, it was that the bastard didn't leave him much in the way of options.

So when he took out the snail and answered it, he wore a furious scowl, a scowl which only deepened when the temperature in his palm suddenly spiked. "Akainu. What news?"

"Fleet Admiral, we have a situation," the blood-soaked hound stated.

~o~​

With Squard no longer an option, Akainu had opted to approach the problem from a different angle. Gossip spread like a wildfire, and all he needed was a spark from an innocuous place. He began spinning lies among any pirates he came across to turn Whitebeard's forces against him from the bottom of the chain up.

Or that was the plan, anyway.

"So, let me get this straight: Pops is trying to sell all of us out to save his own crew?" asked the first nameless pirate he had targeted and hobbled.

"That's right," Akainu confirmed.

"WOW," he said, letting out a bark of incredulous laughter that didn't faze Akainu one bit. "You really are stupid."

That, however, made him narrow his eyes. "Excuse me?"

The pirate grinned a wide and menacing grin.

"You expect to be able to trick any of us into turning on Pops while Cross is listening? He had your number from the word go, about this and about your walls! YOU NEVER HAD A CHANCE OF WINNING!"

He fell back cackling as though it were some great joke. Akainu sprouting a fist of magma didn't faze him, nor did the swing. Even as he perished, his mocking laughter and smile stuck in Akainu's mind, as though that laughter would continue no matter what he tried.

A thought that grew stronger when the Voices of Anarchy decided to stop holding back their power. Scowling at the unfolding chaos, Akainu connected to Sengoku.

~o~​

"The Jericho Gambit has been compromised. Jeremiah Cross has informed the Pirates of our plans; we must act now."

For a long second, Sengoku had an urge to let out a stream of invective to make any sailor blush. Damn Jeremiah Cross to the deepest, darkest pits of hell! How could he know that? They hadn't even come up with that plan until months after he'd arrived!

But that second passed, and the Fleet Admiral let go of the urge. It didn't matter how he knew. All that matter was that he did, and he'd spilled the beans to the Whitebeards. The only option left was to accelerate their plans, which he now had twice as much reason to do. Assuming everything was in place, of course.

Sengoku scanned over the battlefield. On the right, the Marines, despite all the problems, were still pushing the Whitebeard allies back. On the left, the front lines hadn't budged, Irian and the armored Angevins doing an excellent job of carving through pirates and deserters alike so that fresh Marine units could relieve them. And in the center… well, the success of the pirates in clearing out the harbor was actually working in their favor now. The only fly in the ointment was that Whitebeard himself hadn't yet committed to battle, and an encirclement would probably be all the motivation he needed to do so.

"So be it. You know what to do," Sengoku said. The connection terminated with a nod.

As he connected to give the next orders, the words caught in his throat. He surveyed the battlefield once more…closed his eyes…and spoke the command.

"Initiate Jericho."

"What are you doing, Fleet Admiral?" Isuka demanded. "Communications need to be cut—"

"It won't do any good," Sengoku dismissed. "If Cross has ever been right about one thing, it's this: let the world watch. One way or another, nobody will deny the truth."

In the long run, and for his conscience and integrity, Sengoku knew that he had made the right choice.

In the immediate future, however? The regret was colossal.

-o-​

"Initiate Jericho."

"Right away, Fleet Admiral, sir!" Captain Enji saluted his snail before hanging it up.

He then flipped open the main speaking tube in his cabin and addressed his men, his voice reaching every corner of Marineford's cavernous underbelly.

"ALRIGHT BOYS, THAT WAS THE CALL WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR, TIME TO GET TO IT AND SHOW THOSE PIRATES THAT THE ENGINEERING CORPS AIN'T JUST FOR SHOW! ALL HANDS, INITIATE JERICHO, AUTHORIZATION CODE: AURUM! I REPEAT, INITIATE JERICHO!"

The Marines' Engineer Corps leapt to work to enact the orders they'd been waiting for from the moment the first shell had been fired. Coal was flung by the bucket and shovelful into the waiting maws of the underbelly's mighty boilers, and they roared to life with a belch of smoke and a shriek of steam.

And then, with a grinding howl, the true work began: A wall of gears, ranging from the size of a man to the size of a giant, slowly spun to life. Teeth ground against teeth, metal strained to push metal, and for the first time in decades, the great walls of Marineford's last line of defense rose for their intended purpose, ready to rebuff the foes at their gates once more.

Enji let out a contemplative huff as he watched the massive sheets of metal start to rise. Truly, it was a melancholic moment: on the one hand, it was always a spectacle to witness the walls rising, even if only for drills and maintenance tests. But on the other, for matters to have proceeded this far, for the enemy to have pushed them to this point of desperation, the mere thought of it all was, was just—!

The creak of a door opening shattered Enji's train of thought, and whipped around with his hand on his sword, ready to strike—!

"At ease, Captain."

—only to whip it away just as fast as he recognized the newcomer. "Captain T-Bone, sir!" Enji breathed in relief, taking a moment to catch his breath before shooting a glare at his fellow officer. "Warn a guy you're coming, why don't you? Today's not a good day to sneak up on people."

"My apologies, Captain Enji, I will be sure to keep that in mind."

"So, what brings you down here, T-Bone?" Enji continued as he turned back to his instruments. The boilers didn't stop needing to be babied just because an officer was present. "Shouldn't someone like you be on the bleeding edge of the frontlines, leading the charge?"

"My skills were deemed to be of better use at the rear," T-Bone sourly answered. "But as your walls are sure to halt the enemy in their tracks, I thought I might as well see how your part in things is playing out. So… these are the mechanisms that control the walls, then?"

"Yessir, they are!" Enji puffed his chest out with pride for a moment, before wincing and deflating as the grinding of gears reasserted the reality of the current situation to them. "I, ah, would be more enthusiastic about them, if the present situation wasn't giving me very mixed emotions…"

"It's understandable, soldier," T-Bone said with a rueful smile. "We take precautions for war, but we would rather never use them, no matter how impressive they are."

Enji nodded gratefully, looking back at the grinding gears. T-Bone closed his eyes and let out a soundless sigh, then he spoke again.

"What are your thoughts on this war, Enji?"

"Not a small question… frankly, not a question I have an answer to. I just want to do my job as best I can and take pride in it, you know?"

"Yes, I know. I know all too well… I respect your dedication, Captain, truly I do. You are, without question, a good and honest man." T-Bone nodded his head solemnly. He then kept his head lowered, and lowered both it and his stance even further. "...which makes what I am about to do all the more difficult."

"Eh?" A confused Enji turned around to face his fellow Marine. "The hell are you—?"

SHING!

Enji froze as a faint breeze passed above his head, the fact that T-Bone had just drawn his sword taking a few seconds to register. He whipped back around at the sound of a creaking grind, just in time to see the biggest gear and several others alongside it split neatly in half.

With the central gear gone, the mechanisms that had been moving the walls up lost all motive power. Worse, without that motive power, gravity reasserted itself. With a screeching crash, the walls fell back down on their supports, demolishing them and then the underground machinery as well. Gears shattered under the strain, pistons collapsed in on themselves, and the hiss of steam and screams of agony filled the room.

Faced with the destruction, Enji whirled on T-Bone, his face a sickly shade of purple.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

"Foiling your plans," T-Bone answered.

"Foiling our plans?!"

"Indeed. And I'm afraid I don't have time for an entire bit at the moment, so please, just take a nap."

Enji paled in realization, and barely had the presence of mind to reach down, either for his sword or his snail, before a pommel strike laid him out cold.

T-Bone carefully looked around him and found no other soldiers nearby. Nodding to himself, he withdrew a snail from his jacket and spoke:

"Curtain Call in three, two, one."

-o-​

Luffy's breath came out in ragged gasps as he drew closer, at last, to the edge of the harbor. He was already heading straight towards the fallen mega-giant, but as he drew closer, he became aware of the unfortunate fact that he'd lost roughly half of his stamina just getting this far.

"Stupid Warlords, making me waste my energy," he groused. "Every time I fight one, there's something new to worry about! Can't things get a little bit easier for once? Just once?! Come on, that can't be too much to ask for!"

It was at that moment a bone-rattling KA-CLUNK! echoed out from the docks Luffy was charging towards, and sheets of metal started to rise from the stonework. A lot of metal, actually, all around the bay. Why did that sound so familiar to Luffy oh crap right.

"EASIER! I SAID EASIER!" Luffy roared at the universe. He accelerated as fast as he could without Gear Second, smashing away Marines left and right. He had to reach the walls before they could go up, before this entire fight would become that much harder—!

KRRRRCHUNK!

The seawalls' rise suddenly ground to a halt, the sound of grinding metal ringing out. For a few seconds, the walls shuddered in place, half-risen out of the ground. And then, with an almighty shriek of tortured metal, the walls collapsed back into their prior housing.

While the Marines gaped at the failure of their ultimate trump card in naked horror, Luffy took a moment to scratch his head in genuine surprise.

"…huh. That works."

-o-​

"ARE WE MAKING ANY PROGRESS AGAINST THAT STUPID TANK!?"

"Sir, I believe we've managed to chip its front armor a bit, sir!"

"FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC, JUST THE THING I WANTED TO HEAR!"

"Yes, sir!"

Such was the topic of conversation in one of the large foxholes on the western half of the harbor, where a squad of Marines was huddled for shelter. They periodically took potshots over the top to try and stem the flow of incoming pirates, but the difference in power was too wide to overcome. Only their own artillery had prevented them from being outright overrun.

As such, standing orders were to be ready to retreat at any moment. One tremor in their general direction and they'd be sent to the bottom of the sea or, at best, rolled into another one of those tanks.

And speaking of which, the icy frog-tank that was the original object of conversation seemed to be deliberately aiming at the weak spots in their improvised fort. Somehow.

"ARE WE SURE CROSS ISN'T HERE!? BECAUSE WHOEVER'S RUNNING THAT THING KNOWS TOO MUCH!" the commander bellowed.

"Puru puru puru puru!"

"AND NOW ON TOP OF IT ALL, SOMEBODY'S REMEMBERED THAT WE EXIST! PERFECT!" the commander barked, snapping up a finger at the soldier nearest the ringing snail. "PICK THAT UP AND FIND OUT WHEN SOMEBODY'S COMING TO SAVE OUR HIDES!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" the soldier saluted, unhooking the snail. The gastropod woke up, donned a serious expression…

"Curtain Call. KA-LICK!"

And then immediately went back to sleep.

The Marines in the foxhole, and several others carved into the ice all around them, all paused in place at the apparent non-sequitur.

"WELL, THAT TOLD US ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!" the commander roared, the veins on his temple visibly throbbing. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT!?"

"Sir, I believe that was a cue, sir!"

"A CUE FOR WHAT, THOUGH?!"

"This."

CRACK!

And that was the last the commander heard before the subordinate behind him broke the butt of a gun over his head.

Half the Marines in the defensive line reeled in shock, stunned and outraged at the blatant mutiny. The other half of the soldiers made sure they never got past that stage by jumping them and rendering them unconscious just as fast.

For a moment, the remaining Marines stood over their downed once-comrades, panting from exertion and the shock of what they'd just done, until the soldier who'd downed the Commander straightened up and gave his fellow soldiers a nod.

"Alright, boys…"

He withdrew a bandana from his pocket and tied it around the lower half of his face.

"Let's go be big damn traitors."

The rest of the 'Marines' mirrored their new leader, donning their own bandanas and saluting. "Sir, yes sir!"

Steeling themselves, they emerged from the trenches and moved towards the Whitebeards. And while the pirates reacted with (thankfully not immediately lethal) surprise mixed with bloodlust, the frog-tank abruptly ceased firing.

"Finally! Sorry for jumping the gun, but I was staying out of sight!"

All of the 'Marines' and pirates glanced up at the tank to find that the soldier Inazuma had collected earlier was wearing his own bandana and very much not subdued by the others manning the tank. On seeing this, the pirates turned back questioningly.

"We're on your side now," the turncoats' leader confirmed. "Follow us, we'll show you how to breach the defenses. Just keep bloodshed to a minimum, don't shoot anyone wearing a bandana like us unless we shoot at them first, and let's go and get your man back! Now come on!"

He turned face, and as one the 'Marines' and pirates both glared bloody murder at the monument to bloody Justice towering before them.

"Let's go make this a mutiny to remember!"

-o-​

"…can someone please tell me what I'm looking at?" one gunner requested, his voice as calm as the cannon in front of him.

Another gunner came up beside him and took the telescope he was using, taking in the sight of bandanna-wearing Marines popping up by the dozen all along the front lines. A line that was rapidly being pushed back towards the mainland due to the bandanna'd Marines turning on their shocked compatriots like wolves on wounded moose.

…what? They can't all be about Sea Kings.

"Hm…" the gunner mused, watching as the renegade soldiers overtook a gunner's nest and reversed its armaments' direction. "It looks like there's more than a little bit of mutiny going around at the moment."

BOOM!

The gunners both jumped as the cannon emplacement next to theirs suddenly fired, planting a round far behind the Marines' lines.

"Aaand it looks like a few of the other gun emplacements are turning coat too. Ooh…" The on-looking gunner winced as a massive detonation blasted out from where they'd hit. "Looks like Wellerman hit a powder stockpile. Bet you he won't stop bragging about that for months."

The first Marine forced the telescope away from his eyes to glare at him, almost nose to nose.

"Hey, you asked," the grunt said.

"Why are you taking this so casually?! We need to figure out what's going on!"

"I do know what's going on, Grunnle. They got the signal."

"'Signal'? What signal…?" Dawning comprehension struck him dumb, just a moment too late.

SLAM!

"The one saying it's time to do that," the grunt said, waving his punching hand as he pulled out his bandanna and put it on. "Always did have a hard head, Grunnle. Just wish I didn't have to prove it with my fist. Eh, he'll get over it."

His new uniform properly secured, the 'Marine' stuck his head out of the gun emplacement and let out a sharp whistle. "HEY! Need a new gunner over here!"

Another bandanna'd 'Marine' ran up to him and saluted readily. "Reporting for duty, sir!"

"Help me tie up my ex-partner and then load us up with some incendiaries. I want to see if we can burn the coat off a Vice Admiral!"

"Yes, sir!"

-o-​

One of the many armored knights who had gotten separated from his lance looked around feverishly as the battlefield began to turn, a massive reversal of fortune for the pirates' side. His eyes fell on a woman nearby clad in a captain's coat who was directing her subordinates with an impressive amount of skill and expertise. Which, given the current situation, was something they were direly in need of.

"Captain, ma'am!" he called, cantering up to her. "This is pandemonium! The front lines have collapsed into chaos and it's working its way back towards us! Marines are turning towards the pirates!"

"Hina knows."

The Angevin processed that, then sagged in relief. "Then—"

"Hina and her allies are the ones who gave the order!"

"Wha—A-Allies?!"

BOOM!

And his attention then snapped to a previously hidden door in the Navy fortifications. Emphasis on previously hidden, as both the door and most of the surrounding wall had just been blown straight to hell.

Out of the smoking hole strode one of the captains the knight and his fellows had come to recognize personally for his chivalric demeanor: the so-called Ship Cutter and most upright Captain serving, Captain T-Bone. But the knight only just recognized the man, as his helmet now sported a faceplate that covered his skeletal visage.

This did not impede the gaunt captain's intimidating demeanor. If anything, it was enhanced by the narrow, cross-shaped gap in the plate, which afforded the barest glimpse of the Captain's eyes. Eyes that blazed with fury, with determination…

With a fierce promise of swift, brutal Justice.

A promise that was echoed across the full-score of bandana-wearing Marines who were shadowing the menacing captain.

Any further contemplation was denied by a blow striking the knight's head, which immediately robbed him of his sight and painfully pressed the metal against his head. As he made to raise his arms, another blow struck his upper back, and his arms locked to his sides.

Hina looked dispassionately at the knight as he squirmed around blindly. The Divine had spared no expense evaluating these newcomers of Absolute Justice, and it seemed that most of them were amicable, with real reasons to fight for justice and oppose pirates. Had Cross or the Masons reached them first, they might have been allies. But the deciding factor was the 'interviews' that Jango had conducted. For all the variations and reservations among them, one question spoke volumes: every last hypnotized Dog had been asked about Onigumo's actions in Enies Lobby… and in full cognizance of the context on both sides, not one of them saw any issue with it.

These men believed in Justice, let there be no question. It was just that they believed in it in all the wrong ways.

In the end, no matter their good points, the Devil Dogs were fanatics to a man. And so the Masons had decided their course of action: they wouldn't go out of their way to attack them, but if they crossed blades, there was no need to hold back. Unspoken was the fact that it was nearly certain that they would clash.

And so Hina left him there, disoriented but alive and armored, before turning her attention back to the matter at hand, discarding her coat and bringing a bandanna to her face.

"MARINES OF THE BLACK CAGE SQUADRON!" Hina bellowed, raising her fist high, rallying her soldiers to herself. "Take up your arms...and about-face."

Hina backed up this order by doing just that, turning on her heel and casting a final, scathing glare at Marineford as she cracked her knuckles, layering a healthy coating of Bind-Iron over her fists. "It's about time we put down some dogs."

Hers was not a lone cry, as T-Bone drew his own mighty blade, and leveled it at the soldiers that, just a day before, an hour before, he had called comrades. "For honor! For Justice! CHARGE!"

And with that, both rebellious forces let loose their own determined roars as they rushed into battle, striking a blow at the very heart of the Marines' forces.

-o-​

Sengoku, Garp, Ace, and Isuka stared in a collective mixture of shock and horror as their depleted ranks began to implode. Hundreds of their loyal soldiers acting in not only premeditated but pre-coordinated actions and transforming the battlefield from two opposing tidal waves to a full-on quagmire.

It took a minute for Sengoku to get his senses about him. And at that time, he turned to glare bloody murder at the impassively observing snail.

"You… You did this," he hissed furiously.

The snail cocked its eyes to the side in a parody of a shrug. "Technically? Correct. Specifically, not really. I can honestly say I'm surprised by this. Certainly not disappointed, but surprised."

Sengoku flashed a furious gold, far past caring about his heart. "Bullshit!"

"Hey, I've been pleading for some show of sanity all throughout this war. Hell, I've been begging on bended knee for over a year now. My guess? You all might have blocked your ears to my words…" The snail's eyes jerked down toward the battlefield. "But they didn't. And now, well… you're paying for it."

It took an effort of will, but Sengoku just managed to not get in an argument with Cross in favor of taking in the tactical situation. It was, in a word, not good. Their lines had imploded and were only being held by the skin of their teeth and the determination of the Suomi, the seawall was out of commission so a proper encirclement was out of the question, even the Warlords were at one another's throats…

There was no question about it: his entire strategy for this hellhole had effectively imploded, to the point where not even he could predict what would happen next. Which, frankly, was what he should have expected the moment the Straw Hat Pirates got involved in any capacity.

The Fleet Admiral narrowed his eyes as he mulled that thought over. Well, if the Straw Hats could make sticking to one's guns past the point of rationality work for them…

Sengoku brought up his snail again. "Complete the Encirclement Protocols. Flank the Whitebeard Pirates, and drive them into our ranking officers."

"Acknowledged, Fleet Admiral; moving to engage."

As he lowered the snail, suspicion stirred in his mind, and he snapped at the two beside him.

"Empty your pockets, show me that you're not carrying one of those bandannas."

Isuka turned out her coat's pockets before shrugging it off, repeating the same for the clothes beneath. No cloth was out of place.

Garp, however, only gave Sengoku a glare that dared him to repeat his order. After a few moments, they looked away from each other in unison, the one regretting his suspicions and the other regretting, in some measure, not vindicating those suspicions.

-o-​

Whitebeard stared up at the execution stand where Sengoku, understandably, was livid. The old man couldn't help the smirk that came to his lips, both at the turn of events and the fact that a single person was responsible for much of it.

The smirk faded, however, as he turned to look behind him. The approaching battleships and the line of Kuma-shaped robots marching onto the ice were a decidedly unwelcome sight.

"They're really breaking out all of their toys, aren't they…"

Then an ominous whistling sound reached his ears, and he turned back towards the front to see a meteor shower surging towards his whales. His frown became a scowl.

"And they're letting their mad dog off of his leash, too. Dumb mutt, don't you dare…" Whitebeard let out a harsh grunt as he swung his naginata through the space in front of him. "Make a mess on my ships!"

A barrage of rippling cracks flew from the edge of his polearm, blasting through the air—

KRAKOOM!

—and prematurely detonating the molten projectiles mid-flight, raining flaming debris across the battlefield, though most of it blasted back at their point of origin.

Whitebeard snorted dismissively as he pounded the butt of his weapon on the deck. "Inconsiderate brats, not even bothering to housebreak their dogs… still…"

Hearts all around the battlefield flew for the throat and plunged for the stomach at the sight of Whitebeard limbering up his shoulders.

"If the Navy is showing off their best, then it's only polite to respond in kind."

And with that, Whitebeard leapt off of the Moby Dick with far more dexterity than someone of his age and size should have possessed. He landed on the ice with a crash and strode forward, slowly but inexorably and the new center of gravity for the whole battlefield.

And the black-clad nurses looked on with conflicted frowns.

"…did we come this far just to wait on the back lines?" Camellia asked darkly.

"Up close to Pops is too much, we'd only be in his way when he's going all-out," Iris pointed out.

"Guarding the way out and being here to patch up the ones who need it is an important job," Tate mentioned.

SPLOOOOOOOSH!

Their discussion was abruptly halted by the sound of water breaching behind them, and they turned to find… the warships that had flanked them getting treated as chew toys?! By some very familiar hard-shelled Sea Kings, too.

"Wait, weren't those guys supposed to leave after they broke us through the seawall?" Hannah demanded.

"I mean… they are Juveniles," Shion noted, sympathetically wincing in spite of her own opinions on the Marines as one of the Sea Kings started to gnaw on—

CRUNCH!

—correction, as it ripped off the prow of one of the Battleships.

"I'd imagine they're about as impulsive and easy to control as… well, any of us, frankly."

Considering those facts, Tate smirked, an expression that spread to the other six.

"Well, then, there goes our excuse. Shall we, sisters?"

Katana, kanabo, kusarigama, naginata, butterfly swords, sai, and shotguns snapped out as the seven of them charged into the fray.

-o-​

Gritting his teeth, Sentomaru braced himself on the prow of the battleship he was on as it bucked and tried to throw him off. His hand already held his axe and, channeling Armament into it, tried to slam it against the neck of the turtle trying strenuously to sink the ship he was on. Sadly, he wasn't quite quick enough to outpace the turtle's reflexes. Its head retreated into its shell, which Sentomaru wasn't willing to test his ax against. It was enough, at least, that the turtle abandoned its assault and disappeared into the deep once more.

Warily, Sentomaru turned his eyes to the battlefield he was about to enter. It was, as expected from the SBS broadcast, utter chaos, particularly in the center where any semblance of set lines had devolved into a general melee. He needed better intel, and so picked up his Snail.

"Vice Admiral Jonathan, this is Sentomaru preparing to disembark. Can I get a status report?"

"We're glad to have you," Jonathan responded grimly. "Among our assets, our experimental weapons have accrued some significant dents but are still functional. The Hebrides has inflicted significant damage to Whitebeard's ships despite being under constant assault from the pirates and one of Warlord Perona's wayward pets. The Lofoten has accrued mostly cosmetic damage so far, despite attracting the attention of a significant portion of the enemy's forces with its acid bombardment protocol, which is working as you reported. The Nassau has taken significant damage, but both it and its drone capabilities are functional and continue to support."

Sentomaru snorted. "Glad to hear that Vegapunk managed to make something worthwhile out of all the headaches those scientists have given us." The sumo-scientist cast his gaze across the rest of the battlefield. "What about the broader tactical picture? It could factor into the data."

"Frankly? Not as good as it could be, but not outright abysmal either. Akainu has entered the fray with all his usual fervor, while Kizaru is still locked in a duel with Marco, Whitebeard's right-hand. Neither of them is holding anything back and they've left significant collateral damage in their wake. As for Aokiji, his status remains unchanged: a walking hellstorm of ice that Speed Jiru is managing to keep well-distracted and directed. Granted, the amount of ice the Commander has accumulated does indicate progress, but they'll likely still be at it for a while."

"Mm…" Sentomaru hummed thoughtfully, his gaze focusing on the titan-crane that was doing its best to peel its way through the Hebrides-model BioMEGA's carapace. "But it doesn't look like the Warlords are helping much with that deadlock?"

"All rather occupied, at the moment. Roger's clown is throwing sparks with Mihawk, Emporio Ivankov has arrested Kuma's attention, and Hancock and Doflamingo seem to be in some sort of grudge match with each other, which nobody can survive getting close enough to stop. Only Perona is free to do anything to influence the larger battle, but her Hollows aren't stalling the big names for long if they manage to score a hit, and her beasts are, evidently, double-edged swords at best. I should also note that the ex-Warlords Crocodile and Jinbe escaped with Straw Hat and aren't making things any easier.

"More broadly, the situation is rapidly deteriorating in all sectors. Little Oars Jr., while out cold, provided a foothold for the pirates that, with the walls sabotaged and reinforcements unavailable, we've been unable to dislodge. And Straw Hat Luffy appears to have reached him, he'll be climbing up soon… blast, I knew I should have gone cotton-hunting for more string."

Sentomaru blinked in confusion at that non-sequitur. "What was that?"

"My fishing line, don't worry about it. Anyway, we're also dealing with widespread mutiny in the center and left, and the pirates are gaining ground twice as fast. It's madness. The leaders seem to be Captain Hina and Captain T-Bone, though the latter's apprentice and her fire-breathing beetle are trying to—ouch. Never mind, T-Bone just laid them out."

"Really? His own apprentice? Huh," Sentomaru shrugged indifferently. "He must not have trusted her as much as she thought, then. At least we still have a prime specimen of Menagerie on our side."

"Quite. Whitebeard himself has just entered the fray, though as of yet, nobody has engaged him. And last… well, while we've just learned that the Voices of Anarchy aren't physically present, the connection over the SBS is enough for Soundbite to channel his powers through other snails. So take any orders you hear with a grain of salt. The turncoats have likely even leaked our cipher to them by now."

"We'll leave it there, then. I'm disembarking now," Sentomaru said, walking past the ruined bow.

"Best of luck, Officer. KA-LICK!"

As Sentomaru led what was supposed to be their trump cards into the fray, his eyes scanned across the battlefield in silent scrutiny. The Hebrides's heart was underwater for better defense, but there were two powerful fishmen to worry about who could get to it: Namur of the Whitebeards… who seemed to be one of the two occupying the Lofoten, good. And Jinbe, who… was…wait, where was the renegade Warlord?

A sudden geyser near the van of the battle answered that question, and its terminus made him frown even more deeply than usual.

"Well, this could be a problem," he muttered.

-o-​

Jinbe shook off the last remnants of his Spear Wave, took a split-second to analyze the situation he'd launched himself in, and moved so he was back-to-back with the craziest rookie on the sea.

"Well, this is yet another fine mess you've gotten us into!" he declared.

"Eh?" Luffy twisted his head to stare up and over his own shoulder in disbelief. "'Another'? We've only known each other a day or two!"

"And in that time, you've led me through an escape from Impel Down, facing down Warden Magellan in a fight to the death, and not an hour ago you were almost directly responsible for me falling from the sky! And then this situation!"

Jinbe slowly swept his head across the crowd that had surrounded Luffy and thus himself on exit from the water. A crowd of what appeared to be every Vice Admiral left standing save only for Garp.

Yamakaji, Doberman, Stainless, Cancer, Onigumo, to name but a few out of the two dozen world-class combatants that had them both cornered, ready to attack at any time. Against two lone pirates.

Hell, it was an open question why they hadn't attacked yet. Luffy seemed to have locked eyes with Vice-Admiral Tsuru, though what significance that had escaped the fishman at the moment.

"Four times, in less than twenty-four hours!" Jinbe shook his head in mock-despair as he cracked his knuckles in anticipation. "Honestly… At least Big Bro Ti only got us into peril once a day!"

"Perhaps you chose the wrong ally, then," said the encirclement's leader, the severe-looking Vice Admiral Tsuru. "You're both a hundred years too young to stand against us." She slowly flexed her fingers, her joints popping audibly. "Do an old woman a favor and surrender peacefully, would you now? You'll both still be executed, obviously, but at least this way it can be painless."

"Tell that to Cross, he'll care as much as I do," Luffy answered, steam rising from his skin. "Right now, all I care about is saving my brother."

Tsuru exhaled and raised her hand, preparing to give the signal to attack. Or rather, giving a signal, and not the one the gathered Vice Admirals were expecting. The hand remained raised, rather than chopping down, and they all stiffened at the sound of a door creaking open.

"Time to die."

A salvo of razor winds exploded through the ranks of Vice Admirals, Observation alerting them to the threat and prompting them to scatter out of the way. In completely different directions, mind, scattering their formation all over the place.

All attention turned to the newcomers, Luffy and Jinbe out of surprise and everyone else in hostility morphing to shock once they saw who and what had just intervened.

There weren't many of them, just four in all. Four individuals clad in gray suits.

Three men… and one pigeon.

"So we meet again, Monkey D. Luffy."

One of the men took a step forward, his top hat tilted down and shadowing his face, until he tipped it up just so, regarding the only man there he respected with a cold, cold stare.

"And to think, it would be under circumstances like these," Rob Lucci stated as he strode—prowled, really—forward. "If this is what life holds for me now… I suppose I made the right choice after all."

For a moment, incredulous silence reigned. It was Luffy who was the first to regain his wits, and his reaction was a good deal less sanguine than his old rival's.

"What the hell are you three doing here?" Luffy snarled, fingers tensed on his pipe and ready to swing.

The second member of the trio flinched and slapped a hand over his muzzle in pained memory. It did not stop Jabra from shouting, "We're here to walk orphans to school and pick blueberries for peace, what does it look like we're doing here, nitwit?! We're saving your dumb ass!"

The third man groaned and pinched the bridge of his own substantially elongated nose. "While Jabra is undoubtedly an idiot," Kaku declared, pointedly ignoring the wolf-man snapping his teeth at him. "He's also not wrong. Rest assured, Straw Hat, we're on your side, not theirs. We've all come to help."

That comment caused Tsuru, tense enough already, to freeze up. "Did you just say 'all'?"

The grins that drew from the trio—even Lucci, especially Lucci—would've sent many lesser men fleeing for the hills. Even the Vice Admirals felt a twinge of fear, a twinge that stayed their hands just a few seconds longer.

"Rest assured, Vice Admiral," the fallen Soldier of Justice declared. "You aren't losing your hearing just yet. When we say all…"

BOOM!

Everyone's eyes snapped to the seaward horizon, where a plume of fiery smoke was rising over the rear of the battle.

"We mean all."

-o-​

Sentomaru's face was rapidly reddening. The unexpected and very unwelcome arrival of CP9 was one thing. The fact that the mob of ridiculously overpowered suit-wearers who were attacking the rear lines of the war indicated that the rogue agents had subverted and integrated the rest of the Cipher Pols into their own ranks was another. The issue from all of them standing in their way at that moment was infuriating as well.

But the biggest thing bothering him was that their Pacifistas, their marvels of engineering, killing machines meant to subdue the world, were being held at bay by glorified SOAP BUBBLES.

"Bubble Marsh," Kalifa remarked, smiling coyly. "It doesn't matter how powerful your toys are if they can't even step forward."

"Honestly, it's pretty dangerous settin' up walkin', thinkin' weapons," a South Blue-accented man in a hard hat drawled, tearing at some of the fallen and sunken bots with an oversized wrench. "Sometimes, you just need a little less gun."

"You're strong. We're stronger, SO WE WIN, TOYMAKER!" a dark-skinned Scottish man with an eyepatch cackled, tearing at the fallen androids in the other direction by shoving explosives in their jaws.

"All units," Sentomaru spat. "Stand your ground and fire at the obstacles."

"Now, why didn't we think of that? Oh, wait, we did," a Bronx-sounding punk (as Soundbite would later deem him) called from behind him.

"JERRY AURORA FLICKER JAB!"

Sentomaru mentally cursed as a section of ice beneath the Pacifistas gave way, dumping several into the drink. They were waterproof—they'd be pretty poor anti-pirate weapons if they weren't—but the harbor, being deep enough to dock fully-loaded battleships, was deep enough to submerge them entirely. They were programmed to find their way back to the surface, but that would take precious time.

The remainder, and unfortunately the ones that had all taken superficial skin damage, had come under the strangest fire Sentomaru had ever seen. That glorified ramen chef Wanze was shooting wet noodles at them, and unfortunately, they were doing a damn good job of clogging up their joint servos. Kumadori's hair was the same. It still didn't stop the machines, as Vegapunk had built the joints strong enough to snap steel cable. But once again, that took time, a problem only magnified by the soap that continued to hinder them, and the Pacifistas' opponents were taking full advantage.

Specifically, someone in a full-cover fire suit had circled around them and doused them with fire. Not something that would stop the machines, but burning off their clothing and synthetic skin exposed more vulnerable mechanisms. That let the entire rest of the force to go after those weak spots—and how they knew those weak points with such precision was going to lead to some very pointed questions after this battle, if he had his way—with a combination of firearms, explosives, and some very large hammers.

"Chapapapa!"

Or in Fukuro's case, just throwing his own Iron Body at them like a bowling ball.

And through it all, Sentomaru could only watch helplessly. Not just because of those damnable turrets the man in the hard hat had set up on arrival, but because of—

"Please don't move," drawled a French voice. "If you move, I will stab, and I think that would be inconvenient, yes?"

Yeah, that. Sentomaru somehow managed to grimace even harder at the knife that had appeared at his throat. Despite his proficiency in Armament Haki, he could sense this man was damn good at the technique himself. How they stacked up was not something he wanted to learn the hard way. Not after he'd been snuck up on this easily.

So he could only watch, fists clenched around his axe, as the Marines' secret weapons were steadily dismantled piece by piece.

-o-​

Atmos and Namur had spared enough attention away from the BioMEGA they were fighting to take in this newest development. Unlike everyone else, their expressions were flat, unshocked. Almost as if they had anticipated this...

"He subverted the Cipher Pols."

"Of course he did."

"All nine of them."

"Yep."

"Why are we still surprised?"

"I have no clue, he already recruited us."

The Lofoten was now without a head as well as one of its arms and acid cannons, but was no closer to being felled than it had been at the start. They had had to aim for its weapons when they aimed for its center mass and it suddenly redoubled its efforts against them, now they just needed—

"Desert Encierro."

The beast abruptly began writhing in agony, and they could feel it growing weaker beneath them. The source was plain to see: Crocodile had his hand upon one piece of exposed flesh, and was siphoning every bit of moisture from it.

The fact that his right hand Daz was carving at one of its legs probably didn't hurt, either. But for all that the help was welcome, neither pirate took the help at face value.

And Crocodile, of course, noticed.

"If the Government is going to be mass-producing these things, then I want to know how to kill them. If you want to help Straw Hat save Fire Fist, get going."

Neither was pleased. But between Crocodile making far faster progress than they were, the fact that he was nowhere near Pops, and the fact that the rest of their brothers appeared to be converging, they left him to his carnage and ran for the plaza.

Crocodile smirked as he turned his full attention to the abomination kneeling before him. "Now, then… the heart should be around here, right?" he remarked, swinging his hook hard at the shriveling torso.

-o-​

"Our colleagues are dealing with the Navy's reinforcements, while we'll be helping you on the front lines. Working to save a life is a new mission for all of us…" Lucci's grin became noticeably sharper as he abruptly packed on nearly fifty pounds of pure feline muscle. "I think it'll be a fun learning experience."

"And after what you did, after all you've done, to us and so many others, you expect us to trust you?" Cross's hiss wove around them, prompting scoffs.

"Of course not. We expect you to recognize that you need our help and save the antagonizing for later," Hattori answered, shooting a pointed look at the fight they had just left where Kaku was spinning on one hoof to prepare an attack and Jabra was drawing as much aggro as his Iron Body Kenpo could net him. "I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that against that many Vice Admirals, all we can do is buy time."

Luffy grimaced and let out a frustrated sigh, but his answer was to shove a bottle into Lucci's hands and start charging forward again, Jinbe beside him. Lucci eyed the bottle in brief confusion, then smirked.

"Hattori, drop it on them," he said, tossing it into the air. The pigeon caught the bottle's neck in his talons as his master Shaved after Luffy. He soared over to where Jabra was just about to be overwhelmed, flinging the bottle onto the ground still soaked from Jinbe's arrival. As were several of the Vice Admirals.

KZRRRT!

The bottle broke, unleashing a Haki-circumventing explosion of electricity that surged through the elite Marines. Nowhere near enough to take them down, but the shock (by both definitions) still paralyzed them for a few precious seconds. Seconds that Kaku and Jabra used to attack.

"TEN FINGER PISTOL!"

"SKY SLICER!"

Five Vice Admirals staggered, four clutching bleeding chest wounds and Jabra's fingers buried in Comil's torso. That was all they accomplished; Jabra yelped mid-Shave when Vice Admiral Doberman grabbed his tail and yanked him in close, while Kaku was immediately run down by Yamakaji and had his face shoved into the stone.

"And what," growled Doberman, the remaining Vice Admirals still shaking off the effects of the shock. "Was that supposed to accomplish?"

"Distract you," Jabra replied, grinning. "That sure is working well, isn't it?"

Dragging in the agent close, Doberman growled, "And now you'll die for i—"

The Vice Admiral's last sentence was cut off by a diamond fist hitting him square on the temple, Jabra slipping out of numb fingers as he went tumbling across the landscape. The wolf-man landed on his rear, watching as the Whitebeard commanders went at it hammer and tongs with the Vice Admirals. There, Vista dueling Stainless and Mozambique simultaneously. There, Izo trying to get a bead on Dalmatian. And a good dozen other fights way, way out of his league.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Jabra sprinted the other direction, scooping up an insensate Kaku as he went.

"C'mon, idiot, don't pass out on me now…"

-o-​

"What. Was that."

Luffy couldn't help a smirk at Lucci's flat gaze, his eyes twitching in well-justified irritation and just a hint of jealousy.

The reason for this was that Luffy had just laid out a Jotun that had crossed their path with what Lucci could have sworn was a Six King Gun. But he had done it with a one-handed palm strike and without the proper stance or aftershock.

"I'll tell you later," he said, waving his arm out to shake off the pain from the Dial—

BOOM! "Whoa!"

—and then whipping the same arm back out, flinging his hand in the path of the cannonball that had almost managed to brain Lucci. The projectile froze the moment that it met Luffy's palm, and he grinned madly.

"I always wanted to do this… METEOR FIST!" he yelled, rearing back his hand and sending the cannonball flying back to where it came from with all the destructive interest he could manage.

And while the throw wasn't up to his grandfather's standards, Luffy allowed himself a satisfied grin at the direct hit on the gun emplacement.

"It's just one more thing I love about being made of rubber!"

Lucci's brows furrowed further as they kept on. For all that he was a worthy rival, Straw Hat Luffy was still a pain in the—

"AGH!"

Blood. He smelled it before he saw it, along with the scent of gunpowder and a hint of seawater.

Lucci's leopard nose processed all of this before his eyes processed the sight of a bullet wound. One made by a sea prism stone bullet, considering who it had hurt. He snarled in the sniper's general direction and fired off a few Flying Finger Pistols.

Behind him, Luffy fell to the ground. The bullet had torn through his right calf, and while it had exited his body, his leg was refusing to respond to his orders.

"Not now, not now, not now!" Luffy raged, pounding a fist against the limb to try to force it to move again.

"Soundbite," Cross whispered harshly. "Get in contact with the rebels, tell them to call their Medic over here—"

"DON'T…BOTHER…"

"Soundbite!?" Cross hissed.

"CAN'T HOLD IT BACK…Captain. You've got a call… from the other side."

Then static blasted from every snail in the vicinity, a loud and very annoying noise. Jinbe, as the sane man, was already digging through Luffy's bag for the first aid kit and assumed that that was why Soundbite spoke up.

"Hey kid, listen."

Three-quarters of the battlefield abruptly fell still and silent. They knew this voice. Few had ever actually heard it, but somehow in their heart, they knew who was speaking.

"I've been watching you for a while now, and I gotta say, I'm real proud. You've come so far, you've done so much. Look, what I'm trying to say is that you've done good by me."

Veterans felt their hearts pound at the memories of the storms that had swept the world twenty years prior. Younger pirates and Marines paled, the blood evacuating their faces at the realization that he was back.

"And…" The voice, that voice, his voice, trailed off, followed by a heavy, tired sigh that carried far more regret now than he ever had in life. "Look, I have a favor to ask of you, alright? Now, I won't lie to you, it's a damn big one and one that, honestly, I have no right asking of you."

Edward Newgate, paused in his advance by the throes of nostalgia, brought a hand to his head with a weary sigh of his own. "Ah, you damn golden bastard… Now you choose to remember that your actions have consequences? Tch…"

He then allowed a slight grin to slip out from under his palm.

"Better now than never. Getting to hear Roger regret something… those brats really are miracle workers."

"Plus, it's something you're already doing, but… well… I have to ask. Monkey D. Luffy..."

And at the peak of this madness, overlooking it all, Ace's mind came to a screeching halt. Outrage, the same anger he had carried all his life at the truth that he knew, he knew that man was about to say, clashed with a heady sense of euphoria, at the thought of hearing those same words, words that showed that on some level the man actually cared.

"Please save my son."

-o-​

And that was the final straw. The bridge too far. The Godzilla Threshold crossed. Whatever your metaphor, the important part was that now, after the obvious prewarning the Whitebeards had received, the sudden arrival of Straw Hat and the even more sudden arrival of the Voices of Anarchy, and above all the completely unexpected mutiny and the resulting collapse of his battle plan, and now this?

It was all too much. Something in Sengoku's mind snapped.

"Commodore Isuka. Execute him, now," Sengoku stated, deathly calm to the point he circled right back around to mind-numbingly furious.

The quiet command sent ripples through a battlefield still recovering from Roger himself, damn him and the Voices of Anarchy, begging Straw Hat Luffy to save his son. And as Isuka drew her sword, they were nowhere larger and more important than from the nearest threat.

"DON'T! YOU! DAAAARE!"

A wave of presence exploded from Luffy, the image of a colossal beast crushing itself into the mind's eye of everyone nearby. Even most of the Vice Admirals were unbalanced for a crucial second.

But Isuka took it the hardest, the tip of the blade plunging through the execution stand in an attempt to avoid falling to her knees. And while her teeth were clenched and her brow was drenched and her knees wobbled dangerously, her grip on sword and consciousness was iron.

"Apologies… Fleet Admiral. Just… give me a moment…" she hissed, tearing a gash in the stand as she used her sword to lever herself back to her feet.

"Your will is impressive," Sengoku said, eyeing her with respect.

"Has to be for this…now, let's start Plan B."

Sengoku nodded, eyeing her as she stabilized her stance. Still wary of the possibility of turncoats, he watched as she stood and reared back her sword to behead Ace, heedless of the screams or projectiles flying towards her.

Then her thumb moved beneath her glove.

BOOOOM!

It took Sengoku two seconds to piece together what he had seen: a small bulge in her glove that her stance had hidden all of this time. The movement of her thumb had been pressing a button, which gave away that the hidden object was a detonator.

Unfortunately for the soon-to-be-ex-Fleet Admiral, it didn't take even one second for the bombs that had somehow been planted in every shadowed nook and cranny of the execution platform to explode, throwing himself and Garp off balance long enough for Isuka to complete her swing and sever part of the platform.

The part where Ace was chained down.

"Just for the record!" she shouted as the platform plummeted into the scrum of battle. "I meant my Plan B!"

Sengoku could feel the steam rising from his face as he shifted into his Buddha form, gathered energy into his palm, and slammed out a shockwave. Isuka snapped her blade up between them and the assault, pumping as much Armament into the weapon as she could manage. It was enough that, when it hit, she grunted in pain and rode out the shockwave until she slammed feet-first into the ground rather than be turned into a spray of blood and meat on the spot.

"Arrrrrgh, my knees…" she groaned, before descending into a hacking cough that splattered blood on the ground. "My insides…"

"My everything…" was Ace's very helpful contribution.

Rolling her eyes, Isuka grabbed him by the cuffs and dashed for the line of Marines, people who ten seconds ago had once been her comrades and now stood between her and freedom. Her sword, held in her other hand, flashed out, cutting down soldiers. She only made it a few steps before the shock passed from the soldiers and they met her steel with their own, but Isuka was unfettered in slicing and stabbing her way through them. Yet despite her determination, each slash drew a wince from her.

"Come on, you myopic jackboots! Shove the hell off!" the decidedly ex-Marine snarled, lashing her boot out and kicking a soldier away. "We've got places to be, and sticking around here isn't one of them!"

She'd made it another ten feet through the Marine line when it occurred to her that this was all entirely too easy. She'd left two utter monsters at her back. Frankly, Isuka was surprised she was still alive. Parrying a naginata, she chanced a look behind her.

Judging from the way he was clutching his chest and surrounded by a swarm of medics, Sengoku had just suffered another cardiac episode. And Garp just looked like someone had buried a poleaxe in his back, staring into the aether in a daze as his wizened mind tried to connect the series of events that had just blindsided him.

Satisfied, Isuka turned around and went back to carving her path. Sadly, resistance was stiffening. Occupied as she was by multiple melee opponents, she didn't notice a Marine draw a bead on her until the bullet scored a gash in her hip.

"Augh!" she shouted, stumbling for a moment before getting enough strength in her legs to pay the sharpshooter back with a flying thrust. "Sonnuva—Ace, now would be a really good time to start contributing here!"

That demand managed to get Ace's head back in the game again, but his focus latched onto a different problem than what his would-be rescuer was hoping for. "Isuka, what are you doing?!"

"What does it look like, I'm trying to—! Wait a minute…" Fire blazed in her eyes, realization hitting like the proverbial smack upside the head. "OH, YOU BASTARD!"

"Shit!" Ace cursed, very narrowly catching the point of her blade in the chain of his cuffs, holding its quivering tip mere inches from his neck. Not an easy task considering that his hands were still cuffed behind him.

"YOU ACTUALLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO KILL YOU?!" Isuka spat, smoldering with outrage. "YOU JACKASS, AFTER I WENT TO THE TROUBLE OF SAVING YOUR UNGRATEFUL LIFE!? I REALLY SHOULD, THAT'LL SHOW YOU!"

"Wha—YOU HAD A SWORD TO MY NECK!" Ace barked back, veins popping on his brow. "AND YOU STILL DO!"

"OH, PLEASE!"

"Um, if we're not interrupting—"

"You are!" Isuka snapped, ripping her blade out of the lock and sweeping around into a massive slash, throwing back the Marines that had been attempting to surround them before grabbing at Ace's chains again— "WHOA!" —and dragging him back into the fray. "Honestly, of all the ungrateful, unbelievable, selfish—and to think I begged to be a part of this shitshow! For your sake! Shows what I know, should have just left you to hang, would've made my life a whole lot easier!"

"You had a sword to my neck!" Ace snapped back, finally on familiar enough ground to actually contribute to his own escape. As much as he could while he was still down his arms, powers, and a lot of his strength, but even weakened, someone with his skill and power could still dish out some hurt. Something he proved by Sparta-kicking a Marine noncom hard enough to bowl over his entire squad on the way. "And you said you wanted to kill me, to my face! What was I supposed to think?!"

"You—ugh, one second." Isuka vaulted over a riot shield and smacked the flat of her sword into the owner's face in a spray of blood. "There we go, and to answer you, you were supposed to remember that you asked me to join your crew!"

Isuka's answer was blunt and harsh as if that statement said it all. And from Ace's full-body flinch, which did not stop him from successfully shoulder-checking a soldier that tried to grab him from behind, it really did.

"Yeah, well, you could have picked a better time or given me some slack!" Ace fired back just as harshly. "Impel Down isn't the best of places to try and play on someone's faith in the goodwill of mankind!"

"Well I'm sorry, but in case it slipped your mind, I've been kind of busy working deep cover for the past five months—FIVE! MONTHS!—that I just blew clear to hell for the sake of saving your sorry hide!" The slash that cut down the next Marine in their path was perhaps a little more savage than necessary. "Kept my head down, toed the line, was the perfect little Marine! And then you go and get your dumbass caught and of course, I need to stick my neck out for you, because what else am I going to do but blow my career for your sake?! SPEAKING OF WHICH!"

Isuka abruptly brought them to a halt when she spun around and stuck her blade in Ace's face again.

"When we get out of here, I want first mate and nothing less!"

Ace ignored the blatant threat to his life (or at least his nose) in favor of glaring at her incredulously. "Okay, first, I don't have a first mate anymore because I don't have a crew anymore!"

Isuka's decidedly unimpressed stare, even as she swept her arm back to slice the Marine trying to flank her, told him how much she bought that.

Ace grimaced and shrugged in acknowledgment. "Right, fair. But that still leaves second, you can't be first mate because I already have a first mate, Deuce!"

"Pft, who, that toothpick?" Isuka scoffed, swinging back around and redoubling her hacking and slashing. "I'll break him over my knee in ten seconds. If you want to bullshit me, at least make it believable!"

"That is not how we do things!" The Whitebeard snapped as he managed to shove his way ahead so that they were both forging on shoulder-to-shoulder.

"I just saved your hide and you—well, 'we' now, I guess—are pirates, the hell it ain't!"

"She has a point, you know." A snide voice opined from above.

"You're not helping, Cross!"

"Did you honestly expect him to?" Isuka smirked aside at him.

"Hey, look at that, she really does listen to me." The Voice of Anarchy's voice abruptly tightened. "Now, if you're done, pick up the pace before things get harder."

"Harder HOW?" Ace demanded, straining his chains as he tried to move his arms over his head.

"RAAAAAAAGH!"

A blastwave of sheer rage and power washed over the sector, leaving a thousand men quivering and wondering what the hell just hit them.

Only one person actually managed to react to the blast, and then only because he'd experienced a watered-down version of that rage before.

"Shit," Ace cursed weakly, his omnipresent cold sweat running even colder now. A shadow loomed over him, and very slowly he turned his head around to find-

Rage. Nothing but pure, blinding rage in the eyes of Vice Admiral Garp. Rage as he loomed over him, leapt at him and Isuka, FIST drawn back in preparation to obliterate, to devastate, to enact nothing short of pure JUSTICE—!

"METEOR FIST!" CLANG!

A thrown cannonball smacked into Garp's forehead, shattering on the spot. And despite the situation, it took all of Ace and Isuka's willpower to not break up laughing at the bewildered expression on the Vice Admiral's face.

"Huh?" the Hero slurred, blinking owlishly. "What was I—?"

His eyes shot up, Ace and Isuka following. There, at the apex of his jump, was Luffy, arm reared back and determination blazing in his eyes.

Because this… this was it. This was it. Ace was off the platform. Lucci had given him the key. They were so close, he was right there.

And with Ace right there, so close, the very last person that Luffy was going to let screw this up after coming this far was his grandfather.

"GUUUUM-GUUUUM—" Luffy shouted, channeling every ounce of force he had left in his body into his right arm, the one that lacked the Reject Dial on the end of it.

And then several things happened at once that had Sengoku, Whitebeard, and even Ace himself forgetting his current situation.

As Luffy swung his arm forward, what they had thought was a mirage from the steam instead revealed itself to be a familiar hardened black. And the next moment, the steam around the arm ignited.

"—RED HAWK!"

Luffy's will-fueled fist slammed into Garp's skull with a resounding blast, and before the eyes and ears of the world, the Hero of the Marines was sent tumbling through the air back to what was left of the execution stand's base. His body cracked the ground as he landed, and practically the entire battlefield stared in shock.

As Luffy's arm extinguished, leaving him standing before his brother and panting from exertion, Garp dizzily managed to push himself up into a sitting position, one hand coming to his cheek where the blow had landed.

"…'sgonna scar," he mumbled, blearily taking in the sight of his grandsons standing there.

To his grandson, standing in front of his brother… protecting him.

Protecting him from… from Garp.

Garp's eyes ventured past them, to the countless pirates standing ready to defend Ace and the hundreds of mutineers who had allied with them. He took this in through all the clarity he could manage while nursing a concussion… and sighed as he fell back to the ground, his skull cracking the pavement beneath his head.

"Hey, Sengoku?"

The Fleet Admiral looked down at him with a mix of concern and simmering anger.

Garp stared up at the sky, blinking slowly.

"…I quit," he said.

And when Sengoku snapped into his Buddha form from sheer outrage a moment later, even that was now glowing red instead of gold.

"This is not good," one of the foot soldiers near the front lines muttered, tugging out the collar of his shirt.

"Oh, I don't know."

The sweat intensified for reasons besides as he slowly turned to regard Fire-Fist Ace, whose sea prism stone handcuffs, key and all, were disappearing into Straw Hat's duffel bag. The newly freed pirate flexed his hands experimentally as the temperature around them continued to climb, the two brothers wearing matching malicious grins.

"Personally," the Flame-Man declared, his blaze roaring higher and hotter with every passing second. "I think my day's just gotten a whole lot better."

-o-​

Rather unfortunately for the world, it was not only Ace's fortune that was rapidly improving.

"Kehihihihi! Here we are, sweet escape! All aboard!"

"Zehahahaha… well done, rookie."

Those voices of pure evil echoed across the passageways toward the bulkhead where the World Pirates' submarine waited, all that stood in the way of half the prison getting flooded. The fact that the Worlds had sabotaged the emergency backup system as soon as they arrived was the only reason that the staff of Impel Down hadn't destroyed the vessel yet.

And with the entire thing armed or armored, getting close enough to try anyway was a risk they had decided to postpone until the World Pirates were dealt with. Well, now they had been dealt with, and the person who dealt with them had done what they came to do—break a mess of dangerous people out of Level 6—and was now heading for their reserved exit.

Something that Hannyabal, Saldeath, and Mistress Sadi were racing to stop. They didn't let the many, many fallen guards, beasts, and Blugori in their way slow them, nor the prisoners that had gotten out of their cages (beyond an offhand strike here and there), nor even what they were realizing was a deliberate trail of blood.

And they skidded into the airlock just in time to see roughly a dozen dangerous pirates pile into the submarine, with a bulky wrestler the last one to board and the black-haired Warlord leading them all right behind him.

"ZEHAHAHAHA! Too late, jailers!" Marshall D. 'Blackbeard' Teach gloated. "I've got an era to claim, and none of you are worth my time! Get lost!"

"You've gone far past acceptable behavior for a Warlord, causing this much damage in—AGH!"

The sniper behind Blackbeard hummed dispassionately as he shot Hannyabal in the hand. The Warden's weapon fell from his grip, and he wound up tripping over it and falling flat on his face. As sniper and Warlord both disappeared into the ship, Hannyabal forced himself to his knees, and in utter desperation, seeing they were about to get away… did the last thing any of Impel Down's staff would ever dare to conceive of doing.

"Please, you can't do this!" he begged, hand outstretched in desperation. Begging for his life, for the lives of everyone in the prison… for a trace of mercy. "Stop!"

"WIIHAHAHAHA!" Jesus Burgess heard every one of these pleas… and merely cackled in response, rearing back his arm and lashing it out so that the resultant airwave slammed back the other two Wardens before they could take a step.

The shockwave sent them flying back beside the Vice Warden. Impel Down's best fighters next to Magellan were powerless to stop the infiltrators from boarding the submarine and tearing back out of the Blugoris' gate.

Only the trail of blood remained behind, and now, as they saw motion from outside amidst the water rushing in, they understood why.

"The emergency bulkheads are still broken…"

With grim resignation, Hannyabal raised his halberd, Sadi her whip, and Saldeath his trident. All were bloodied, still dealing with injuries from the Straw Hats' breakout mere hours before. None were bowed.

"It doesn't matter if I'll never be Warden. I will defend Impel Down to my last breath," Hannyabal vowed. The two beside him stood firm as a group of titanic entities surged forth, a massive frog Sea King flanked by an eel and a beaked serpent cramming inside and straining the walls within further.

The three of them grimaced, preparing to die—

SWOOSH!

And were nearly knocked off their feet as a column of white smoke rushed past them, reconstituting into Commodore Smoker. Moments later, Tashigi blurred into existence beside him, Popora in tow. Before the jailers could say a word, the Marines faced the Sea Kings and shouted two words. Short, simple, innocuous words, but which, when paired together, carried an immeasurable weight that resonated across the ages:

"JOY BOY!"

A weight that struck the aquatic tyrant like an appropriately-sized sledgehammer, halting it in its tracks. The jailers could only stare at the sight of the Sea Kings frozen, their every iota of attention on the Marines.

"Yes, we know the name, and yes, we're friends. Or at least, allies," Smoker declared.

"We wouldn't have used it if we had any other choice, but you didn't leave us one," Tashigi continued, a very audible tinge of desperation in her voice as she kept her hands raised placatingly, and well clear of her sword. "Besides the fact that you would have killed us, too, this place is too important to destroy! Please, we're begging you: Honor the agreement, and leave in peace!"

The frog slowly swept its gaze over the tiny, almost insignificant specks that stood before it. Its stupefaction darkened into hostility as its eyes narrowed, and it let out a menacing croak.

"That's… not the enthusiastic yes we were looking for…" Tashigi hedged uncertainly, before her eyes lit up at an idea. "Oh! But maybe there's a way that we can—Oof!" The swordswoman was cut off by her furry compatriot using her head as a leaping point to approach the Sea King.

Once he was a foot away, Popora paused to give the frog ample forewarning, before slowly extending his mace so that it poked at the megafauna's rubbery hide and—

~o~​

Shattered eggshells and shredded embryos littered upon the ocean floor, a weeping rhinoceros Sea King bleeding from a torn fin watching as Blugoris swam away. A single rhinoceros calf nuzzled against the Sea King…

~o~​

The memory rocked them all, and Smoker was the first to recover, shooting a furious glare back at the still-shaken imp-commander of Impel Down.

"Saldeath, us living past the next ten seconds depends on your Blugoris being able to live on Sea Kings without targeting eggs or children. Yes or no?"

"…y-yes, yes," Saldeath hastily stammered out, keeping his shaking gaze focused on the entity that very literally held his—and all of their—lives in the jaws of its teeth. "I-It will take time, a week or so, b-but I can weed out the more moronic individuals who won't listen. There might be… one or two stragglers, but… We can deal with them as they come?"

The Sea King was silent for a heart-pounding minute before loosing a snort that, while not necessarily accepting, wasn't overtly hostile.

Smoker took the opening for what it was and pressed on. "We'll do what we can on our end. We'll honor our end of the arrangement…"

He then proceeded to cause no less than a half-dozen heart attacks when he unslung his jutte and leveled it at the center of the frog's face.

"Now honor yours."

Seconds passed, hearts pounding in the chests of all involved. An inch away from death, a single twitch would be all it took.

But apparently, if the frog's croak and the slow relaxation of its companions were anything to go by, that would not happen this day.

As Popora darted back away from them, the eel and snake slowly withdrew while the frog rubbed down his body and spread his webbed hands wide. As he too retreated, the mucus film stuck fast to the inside of the broken airlock. The water flow subsided, and when the frog disappeared into the ink-black deep, nothing more sought to penetrate the makeshift barrier.

With their cover exchanged for their lives, the two Divine turned back to face the three jailers.

"Before you say one word, I'll remind you that Blackbeard let out every single animal that was locked up in Level 6 on his way out. Restore order first. Then, we'll talk," Smoker stated.

The jailers wasted no time splitting up again.

The three Masons remained behind, looking back at the film. Tashigi's regret was plainer to see, but it was visible even on Smoker's face.

"…is this really enough?" she wondered, staring into the darkness of the abyss. Staring after the Darkness that had just slipped through their fingers, and was now traveling to the one place they had wanted to keep it from, above all others.

"It has to be, Tashigi," Smoker huffed out. "Stopping the two jailbreaks was never something we could handle. Running damage control on anyone else who tries is still going to make a positive difference for the world."

The iron grips that all three maintained on their weapons showed just how little that was a consolation.

"…we'll win this battle. But the war isn't over yet," Tashigi said grimly. "I'll find a snail and warn Sagittarius. Tell him that the worst-case scenario is in effect. After that… they try and stop the world burning out there. We'll do what we can in here."

And as guards arrived at the area to begin repairing the bulkheads, the Divine ran back into Hell… even as a single thought rang through all three of their heads.

'However little and late that might be.'

Cross-Brain AN: Unless or until canon says otherwise, you may feel free to assume that nine certain expies now among Jormungandr's ranks came from CP2.

 

[Finagle007]

New chapter... But sleeeeeeeeep...

 

[Xomniac]

Oh, by the way, we got this too:

 

[Always Late]

... you know, I was having fun until I realized Team Fortress' mercs were accurately recreated amidst all the Oda style characters.

I cringed. But I still laughed. Now I'll have to wait 24 hours to read the update.

 

[Tale Swapper]

It's been a while since I laughed out loud like I did tonight. Thank you, cross-brain.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I need to go nurse my cliffhanger-induced headache.

 

[Big Lurker]

But were they CP2 Red or CP2 Blue? Now I'm picturing some of the Overwatch crew out there as well...

 

[Finagle007]

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 armor 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 anything 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 armor 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 armor was wholly organic, so smoothly it was 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 armor 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 armor plate on it to bankrupt a medium-sized country, and then made it an insect.

But what truly caught the attention were the four artificial arms, attached to the part of the creature's body that couldn't decide whether it was an oversized neck or second torso. Each carried a curved, gleaming metal claw the size of a ship, that 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 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.

Click to shrink...

...Been playing Starcraft recently, I see. Those three are based on a Hydralisk, an Ultralisk, and an Overlord respectively, or I'm a Protoss.

 

[Franz-026]

I ... oh my god. I don't know what to even say.

Well done.

Well fucking done!

 

[Chojomeka]

I would've laughed my head off if Isuka demanded that Ace put a ring on her finger....and for Ace to desperately look for anyone else willing to rescue him even pleading with Garp.

 

[Reinholdt]

Even while ensuring progress was made in story, you did a great job portraying the overall clusterf* that is an active war-zone in this setting. The little sprinkles of Haki usage and how it works or can be worked around help build things for the future while letting the bigger names be showcased some.

The entire last part with Garp was especially poignant I feel. He doesn't seem like he is admitting to anything about the overall situation with the Marines and the War to himself. Just that he knows that while Luffy may conflict with what he thinks is right, his Family should never be in a position where they are protecting someone from him.

 

[Always Late]

Oh, by the way:

"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!"

Click to shrink...

Which person on the writing team is the Hololive fanboy?

Spoiler: Because your youtube history may or may not be compromised now.

Luffy is bottom left and you can't convince me otherwise.

 

[CV12Hornet]

...Been playing Starcraft recently, I see. Those three are based on a Hydralisk, an Ultralisk, and an Overlord respectively, or I'm a Protoss.

Click to shrink...

Guilty. I'll admit to missing the Overlord parallels, though.

Oh, by the way:

Which person on the writing team is the Hololive fanboy?

Spoiler: Because your youtube history may or may not be compromised now.

Luffy is bottom left and you can't convince me otherwise.

Click to shrink...

*raises hand*

And Luffy isn't lewd enough to be bottom left. He's top left with Gura.

 

[Chojomeka]

*raises hand*

And Luffy isn't lewd enough to be bottom left. He's top left with Gura.

Click to shrink...

....we now need a Hololive English/This Bites! x-over omake, Gura and her army of Shrimps vs the Straw Hats.

 

[Finagle007]

Guilty. I'll admit to missing the Overlord parallels, though.

Click to shrink...

Only the Overlord looks like a "flying jellyfish" though the Corrupter comes a close second, and the "dark shapes" moving down the tendrils refers to it's status as the Zerg transport unit.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

...huh, a whole bunch of marines just made the same mistake I did.

 

[Taller Then Some]

....we now need a Hololive English/This Bites! x-over omake, Gura and her army of Shrimps vs the Straw Hats.

Click to shrink...

Sora debuted 2 years after Cross got ROB'd, meaning he'll be just a confused as everyone else. So what I'm saying is that this is a fantastic idea and should be written immediately.

Of course an alternative to Gura and her shrimps, would be the X-potatos.

Spoiler

 

[YuffieK]

The other thing? Whitebeard's nurses?

They're the Daughters of Aku.

 

[Z000]

The other thing? Whitebeard's nurses?

They're the Daughters of Aku.

Click to shrink...

that an upgrade in paternal figure

nothing wrong there

 

[Verdom]

I only kinda remember the nurses. They were only shown that one time in typical sexualized nurse outfits with Whitebeard hooked up on medical stuff, while meeting with Shanks? The sexualization is 'uugh' on its own but with the whole 'Father/children' thing of the crew...uuughhh.

 

[Roaming_Guardian]

The more shit breaks for the World Government the more terrified I am of what Cross Brain still has in reserve for the New World.

The Marines are effectively defunct as an organization at this point, having now lost their entire intelligence arm save for CP0, many of their most talented up and coming officers, the use of their most feared prison, along with what might be a full HALF of their regular troops. And then the not insignificant loss of Garp. And even for the future, Issho would have to be literally living under a rock having removed his ear drums for the same reason as his eyes to consider joining after this latest clusterfuck, meaning if Aokiji still leaves they are down to just two Admirals.

Add to that two of the four (five if Kuma still counts) Warlords are already working for Starw Hat, and all the Navy has LEFT are the BioMEGAs. Which everyone with a brain in their skulls agrees are abominations which should never have existed, further damaging their already nearly non-existent reputation.

I will be fucking shocked if the entire planet is not in a state of civil war during the timeskip.

 

[Dakkan Sall]

I almost wondered if Buggy had Awakened from being outed on top of everything else he's been through since Luffy arrived at Impel Down, and pretty much literally thrown into the war here. The jump in his displayed powers isn't quite the same as Soundbite or Moria's (though compared to the latter's case, Buggy hasn't actually gone insane), but I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been the case when he pulled out the "Carnevale."

 

[Roaming_Guardian]

I almost wondered if Buggy had Awakened from being outed on top of everything else he's been through since Luffy arrived at Impel Down, and pretty much literally thrown into the war here. The jump in his displayed powers isn't quite the same as Soundbite or Moria's (though compared to the latter's case, Buggy hasn't actually gone insane), but I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been the case when he pulled out the "Carnevale."

Click to shrink...

Well it's pretty apparent Buggy has been sandbagging HARD after we see our favorite young Clown actually fighting Whitebeard Pirates in some of the Wano flashbacks.

 

[Evil M. Lurker]

Oh, this is everything I could have dreamed of but wasn't hopeful enough to contemplate.

FUCK DESTINY WITH A POISONED SHARPENED JET-PROPELLED TELEPHONE POLE! 😍

 

[BuKoG]

welp i wonder there are *shudders*fangirls of Cross now this seems like this will make him a celebrity