The smoke of the apocalypse had barely cleared before the reality of their situation fully set in. Saint Jaygarcia Saturn stood entirely unblemished, his ancient, black-coated form towering over the newly excavated crater of Dressrosa like an immortal god of ruin. Conqueror's Haki from Giovanni's maximum strike had cleaved him in two, yet his unnatural immortality had simply reset the board in seconds.
"Move! Now!" Giovanni roared, the feral grin completely vanishing from his face.
He didn't waste a single millisecond waiting for the others to process the absurdity of the situation. Turning on his heel, Giovanni detonated forward with an explosive burst of speed, his boots ripping up the loose stone dust. He bypassed Shanks, dropped past the startled line of the commanders, and sprinted straight toward the rear defensive line where Hongo had been treating the wounded.
Nico Robin was still on her knees, her small frame trembling, her wide, tear-stained eyes staring at the monstrous spider-yokai in absolute horror. Before she could even gasp, Giovanni slid across the dirt, scooped her up effortlessly into his left arm, and pinned her securely against his chest.
"Hold on to my neck, Robin!" Giovanni commanded, his right hand tightly re-gripping the legendary cutlass, Ace. "We're leaving this hellhole right now!"
Robin didn't hesitate. She buried her face into the crook of his neck, her hands clutching his shirt with a desperate, white-knuckled grip.
Shanks let out a sharp, commanding whistle, his red hair whipping in the volatile gale. "You heard him! Retaining our lives is the priority today! All units, full tactical retreat to the eastern coast! Fall back!"
Two miles away, the pristine waters of the eastern Dressrosa port were churning violently. The flagship of the Red Hair Pirates was already entirely detached from the wooden docks. The heavy iron anchors had been violently severed rather than hauled, bubbling light particles and foaming wake trailing behind the vessel as it began its frantic sprint out toward the open sea.
"Haul those sheets! Drop the main topsail, now!" Yasopp bellowed from the quarterdeck, his signature flintlock rifle slung over his shoulder as he yanked hard on a massive rigging line. His sharp eyes were locked onto the smoke-plumed horizon of the island's interior, sweat dripping from his braided hair. "They're coming hot! I can feel the captain's Haki from here, and it's surrounded by something completely rotten!"
Beside the helm, the towering, muscular frame of Building Snake spun the massive wooden wheel with furious precision, aligning the ship's prow with the incoming wind currents. "The tide is fighting us, but the current is clear! If they don't hit this deck in three minutes, we're going to be trapped against the coastal reefs!"
Down on the main deck, Bonk Punch grunted, his massive shoulders straining as he threw his weight against a heavy capstan bar. Perched squarely on his shoulder, his loyal companion, Monster the monkey, chattered frantically, pointing its small paws toward the high coastal cliffs.
"They're on the move!" Bonk Punch barked, looking up as a series of distant, sonic booms echoed from the plateau. "Get the boarding netting dropped over the port side! We aren't stopping this hull for anyone!"
Back on the shattered plateau, the escape was anything but peaceful. Saint Saturn let out a guttural, earth-shaking roar of pure, unadulterated fury. The concept of these "insects" daring to turn their backs on a member of the Gorosei was an unforgivable stain on the honor of the Celestial Dragons.
BOOM!
Saturn's massive spider legs blurred, striking the earth with the speed of falling meteors as he pursued the retreating pirates. His massive, ancient form scaled the rim of the crater in a fraction of a second, tearing down the remaining historical structures of the city like paper.
"Insignificant filth!" Saturn's voice boomed, rattling the teeth in Giovanni's skull. "You will rot in the dark foundations of this world!"
From his crimson eyes, an unprecedented, rapid barrage of invisible, concussive gaze attacks detonated across the landscape. The atmospheric pressure violently imploded directly behind the running prodigies.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
"I see it!" Charlotte Katakuri hissed, his Advanced Observation Haki flaring to its absolute limit despite being carried like a sack of flour under Marco's left arm. "Three degrees to the left, Marco! A compressed strike is entering our immediate trajectory!"
Marco the Phoenix didn't argue. His arms were fully transformed into brilliant, swirling wings of blue and yellow fire, his talons gripping Katakuri's massive shoulders while his secondary leg constructs held tightly onto Limejuice. With a violent twist of his wings, Marco executed a sharp, mid-air barrel roll. An invisible concussive wave shot past them, the sheer kinetic draft ripping away several of Marco's glowing blue feathers and violently pulverizing a five-story stone clock tower directly beneath them into fine powder.
Right beside them, King the Wildfire maintained a parallel trajectory. His massive, black pterodactyl wings beat the air with thunderous power, his Lunarian flames projecting a continuous, white-hot heat shield behind them to incinerate the stray sprays of toxic venom Saturn was spitting into the sky. Gripped firmly within King's massive, taloned feet was Lucky Roux, who had wrapped his arms tightly around his own knees, minimizing his wind resistance to keep King's flight path steady.
"He's gaining ground!" Lucky Roux shouted, looking back through the smoke. "The old monster is moving faster than an Admiral!"
At the front of the fleeing vanguard, Giovanni was forcing his legs into a supersonic rhythm. He cracked the air beneath his boots, utilizing Sky Walk to launch himself and Robin fifty feet through the air with every single stride.
BOOM!
"You're doing great, Robin," Giovanni muttered through his grit teeth, feeling the little girl's grip tighten around his neck. "Just don't look back."
Directly above him, Shanks was executing his own high-speed Sky Walk. The Red-Haired captain was carrying the double burden of Benn Beckman. Whose ribs were severely cracked from Saturn's previous counter-strike and Hongo, who was desperately holding onto his medical pack with both hands.
Shanks' face was a mask of pure, unyielding focus. Gryphon remained unsheathed in his right hand, and every time Saturn's tracking gaze locked onto their position, Shanks would violently swing his blade backward without looking. He released rapid, horizontal crescents of Advanced Conqueror's Haki that collided mid-air with Saturn's invisible force waves.
CLANG!
The resulting spiritual detonations produced localized shockwaves that shattered the residential glass of Dressrosa for miles, creating a beautiful, terrifying rain of sparkling shards that illuminated the dark morning sky.
They reached the high, jagged cliffs overlooking the eastern port. Two hundred feet below, the Red Force was cutting through the white-capped waves, its sails fully billowed, its hull already a hundred yards away from the shore.
"We only have one shot at this!" Shanks roared over the howling wind, his boots fracturing the cliff edge as he prepared for the final, massive leap. "Don't miscalculate the distance!"
Behind them, Saturn materialized through the dust cloud like a nightmare from the ancient void. Realizing his prey was about to slip into the sea, the Elder Planet completely abandoned all restraint. His mouth split open past its biological limits, revealing a gaping black abyss lined with razor-sharp chitin.
A colossal, apocalyptic torrent of dark purple, highly pressurized venom erupted from his maw, transforming into a massive, sweeping tidal wave of absolute corrosion that threatened to engulf the entire cliffside and the ocean below.
"He's going to dissolve the ship!" Beckman gasped, coughing up a trace of blood against Shanks' shoulder.
"Not on my watch!" Giovanni roared.
Stopping dead at the very edge of the precipice, Giovanni violently tossed Nico Robin upward into the open air. "Catch her, Shanks!"
Shanks' reflexes were god-like. Mid-stride, he reached out with his free arm, catching the young archaeologist securely by the waistband of her coat and tucking her safely against Beckman's side as he launched himself off the cliff, his boots shattering the stone into a million fragments.
Giovanni turned around completely, facing the oncoming ocean of dark acid. He took a deep, centering breath, letting the volatile, green energy of the Mink medicine explode entirely through his nervous system one final time. He placed both hands on the hilt of Ace, the Supreme Grade steel crackling with a terrifying, tempestuous storm of black and red lightning.
"Davy Sword Style..." Giovanni stepped back, his heel hanging over the two-hundred-foot drop as he swung the blade upward with a ferocious, animalistic scream.
"...TEMPEST CONQUEST!"
───!!!!*
The resulting strike was not a single crescent; it was a massive, cross-shaped grid of Conqueror's Haki that flew through the air like a localized hurricane. The sheer spiritual weight of the attack successfully collided dead-on with Saturn's sweeping tidal wave of venom. The raw, kingly ambition contained within the slashes literally parted the acid, forcing the toxic ocean to split into two separate, harmless streams that poured uselessly into the stone valleys to the left and right.
The kinetic recoil of his own attack blasted Giovanni backward off the cliff face. He plummeted through the open air, his energy completely spent, his vision beginning to blur at the edges as the first faint whispers of the Mink medicine's double-pain penalty began to prickle against his nerve endings.
"Gotcha, you reckless brat!" Marco's voice echoed.
Swooping down from the clouds, Marco altered his trajectory, his fiery blue talons catching Giovanni securely by the collar of his shirt just before he could hit the water.
With a final, triumphant roar, the remaining flyers and Sky Walkers cleared the massive gap. King, Marco, and Shanks descended upon the moving deck of the ship like falling stars, their heavy boots slamming against the wooden timbers with a series of thunderous thuds that shook the entire ship.
"We're clear! Cut the remaining lines! Full sail!" Yasopp screamed, slamming his fist against the railing as he saw the entire vanguard safely aboard.
Building Snake violently yanked the wheel, utilizing the sudden, explosive drafts from the Haki clashes to propel the ship forward at an impossible velocity, the ship bounding over the massive coastal waves and rocketing out into the safety of the deep, blue sea.
At the edge of the Dressrosa port cliffs, Saint Jaygarcia Saturn came to a sudden, grinding halt. His massive spider legs dug deep into the stone, the dark purple acid sizzling around his joints.
He stood perfectly still, his glowing crimson eyes locked onto the retreating silhouette of the pirate flagship as it rapidly shrank against the horizon. For the first time in centuries, the pristine, untouchable composure of the Elder Planet was entirely shattered. The black slime around his face bubbled frantically, his massive jaw tightening until his ancient teeth cracked under the pressure.
A sudden, violent explosion of negative black Haki erupted from his body out of pure, unadulterated malice, completely vaporizing the entire cliffside he was standing on and sending thousands of tons of shattered rock crashing down into the empty, foaming port below.
They had escaped. The insects had defied the gods and lived to tell the tale.
---
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