The day after the war, Smoker, Tashigi, and Popora met with Impel Down's five executives. Smoker revealed that they had borrowed from the Sea Kings' armistice with the pirates, using the password Cross provided, and Tashigi admitted that they had helped Luffy with his jailbreak as the price for the chance to stop the war, a failed attempt to save countless lives. They revealed that they had turned against the Government because of its self-centred definition of Justice, and that another reason they had come to Impel Down was to recruit them for their cause. And despite the jailers' indignation at the idea, Smoker pointed out that the only reason he was still alive was that they were already considering it.
After a lengthy interrogation about what they had done, what their motivations were, and what they would give him in return, Magellan agreed to join the Zodiac of the Damned, vowing to hold them to their promise of transparency and thoroughly evaluate the New World Masons before he decided whether or not to permanently join them. He chose the codename Boar and, at Tashigi's insistence, led them down to Impel Down's seventh level.
Back in the present, Ace had just been released from his Sea Prism Stone handcuffs and cut off their pursuers with a wall of fire. Luffy and Ace enjoyed a brief reunion before Cross warned them to leave. Luffy gave Ace his last bottle of seaweed alcohol as well as a pipe to help him fight their way out, and as Cross tried to urge them again, he coughed up blood, revealing that he was nursing a stab wound in his stomach. Soundbite urged them to run still, and grimly, they acquiesced. Whitebeard stepped in to block the pursuing Vice Admirals, and he shared a final hug and farewell with Ace before they retreated: Luffy, Ace, Lucci, and Jinbe in one direction while Jabra (still carrying Kaku) and Isuka headed another way.
Whitebeard blasted away Bartholomew Kuma and began fending off the Vice Admirals. Akainu appropriated a loudspeaker and, with Sengoku still recovering from his heart attack, assumed command of the remaining Navy forces, ordering them to kill anyone not on their side, anyone who ran away, and anyone who objected. As the Whitebeards sounded the retreat, Vice Admiral Momonga found a group of Marines supervising a group of pirates that had surrendered, in defiance of their orders. He demanded to know what they were doing, but Akainu appeared and killed them all—pirates and Marines—before they could answer, then demanded Momonga's excuse for not killing them. Momonga admitted that he did not have one, which satisfied Akainu. The Admiral headed back into the battlefield, oblivious to Momonga's discomfort; the Vice Admiral saw a target for venting, Hina, and charged towards her. Unconcerned, she ordered Jango to "start the encore," to which, with Soundbite's help, Jango triggered prearranged hypnotic suggestions all across the battlefield, causing countless more Marines—including Devil Dogs—to begin fighting against the Navy. Momonga was forced to miss his window against Hina as his erstwhile comrades attacked, and Fullbody taunted Akainu about being able to differentiate the real traitors from the sleeper agents.
Two agents of CP-0 interrupted Doflamingo and Hancock's fight, giving the former new orders while revoking the latter's Warlord status. Doflamingo left, hating taking orders from them but agreeing that their 'suggestion' sounded like more fun, while Hancock began fighting with the agents, vowing that they would never take her alive. They answered that they didn't plan to, and Hancock began drawing them away from where she assumed her sisters had retreated.
Amidst Ace and Luffy's retreat, Jabra and Isuka returned to their group alongside Ivankov, who recharged Luffy with his energy hormones. Isuka had already received the same hormones along with healing hormones, as had Kaku. Ace melted the ice behind them, disrupting another attempted charge from the Angevins, but Akainu appeared behind them, solidifying a path forward with magma. Cross panicked, and Soundbite shifted his focus from battlefield-wide support to calming Cross and reassuring Luffy: drowning out the rest of the world in both directions, he signalled the other Straw Hats to call in from all over the world, reigniting Luffy's passion and drowning out whatever Akainu had to say. Akainu tried forcing their attention onto him by killing a group of retreating soldiers, but they kept running, and Lucci and Jabra taunted Akainu by saying he was acting like a baby. Ivankov switched to female as she began stalling Akainu. With Akainu's attention on her, the Admiral was blindsided by Whitebeard, the true reason for Ivankov's stalling. Whitebeard knocked Akainu out, leaving him buried in a pit of ice, but Aokiji and a swarm of Vice Admirals arrived and prevented him from killing Akainu.
T-Bone engaged Vergo, drawing his attention away from Whitebeard and Ace with his vow of Justice that made Vergo suspicious of how much he knew. Doflamingo, meanwhile, hid in the island's highest shadows and, using the full power of his strings, puppeted Little Oars Jr. into attacking the retreating forces. Buggy made to join the retreat, but Mihawk nicked his nose, and Buggy's retaliatory projectile exploded when Mihawk cut it; he parried the explosion with his cross-shaped dagger, which shattered from the strain. Buggy parried Mihawk's retaliatory slash with daggers in his disembodied hands, which immediately zoomed after the rest of his body to join him in retreat.
The Devil Dogs' remaining leaders organized their forces for battle and charged as the aquatic BioMEGA wiped out swathes more of the pirates. Kizaru fell out of his stalemate with Marco when Jonathan coerced him into trying to use the sea prism stone handcuffs, which he'd held off on using out of paranoia; Marco snapped the cuffs onto Kizaru's own hands before engaging Doflamingo, trying to burn the strings controlling Little Oars Jr. Crocodile and Daz finished killing the land-based BioMEGA and, seeing that Whitebeard was planning to die, commandeered a battleship off of the coast and left the war, observing its remainder from a distance.
Whitebeard's other Division Commanders headed back for the front lines to protect the retreat, calling Ace captain as they went, to his shock. As they continued retreating, the remaining two BioMEGAs attacked; Ace brought down the jellyfish with his fire, and Jinbe engaged the sea serpent. Kaku began carrying Isuka, who was coughing up blood from the hormone overdose, and the Pacifistas briefly gained ground before Kalifa swamped them with her soap again, Jabra parting from the ranks to help her. They neared the Moby Dick, but Akainu, who had tunnelled through the ice, erupted in the middle of the Moby Dick, destroying it and the three other whale ships.
Whitebeard mourned his ship briefly, but Moby Dick's Klabautermann appeared and bade him a fond farewell. Akainu snuffed out the Klabautermann, vowing that anything existing because of outlaws, miracles included, had to die. Outraged, Whitebeard tossed the Marines opposing him aside, Aokiji distracted by a flashback of Akainu mercilessly destroying a ship, and charged for Little Oars Jr., seizing Doflamingo's strings and sending a category 11 quake through them; Doflamingo released his hold on Oars fast enough to survive, but not fast enough to avoid having the bones in his arm crushed to dust. He swore vengeance on whoever arranged for him to puppet Oars before retreating to the background to fix his arm.
Ace, though thoroughly shaken, mentioned that they have a fifth whale beneath the waves, which Squard is already coordinating. Akainu remained where he was, and a very dishevelled Irian appeared and attacked them, stunning Ace, parrying Jinbe, and preparing to kill Luffy. Rob Lucci struck with a Finger Pistol that she barely turned in time to make non-lethal, but lost her left eye to the attack. With her reeling from pain, Ace burned her with a Fire Fist, and Jinbe sent her flying with a Three Thousand Tile True Fist, accidentally hurling her into Marineford's tower instead of the sea.
Luffy's group made for the edge of the ice to wait out the escape ship, but as they ran, a sea prism stone bullet shot out at Luffy's uninjured ankle. A bullet that came from someone other than the Devil Dogs' sniper Halvar. Soundbite struggled to find the source, but with him already overstrained, a concentrated burst of Haki accompanied by Blackbeard's menacing laughter knocked him out. The final sound from the battlefield he transmitted came from a clash between Akainu, Ace, and Luffy; amidst the otherwise frozen battlefield, Akainu charged and prepared to snuff out their lives, and the last thing Cross and Soundbite heard was the agonized scream of a man with an unshakeable will, leaving Cross catatonic.
A day later, in Impel Down, Magellan directed Tashigi to a trapdoor that led to Level 7. As she attempted to open the door, Soundbite began panicking at someone trying to break in, trying in vain to rouse Cross. Tashigi looked in horror as she revealed only a file room, and shared a Tone Dial recording of a panicked Cross begging her to help him out of the Seventh Hell, the Hell of Darkness.
As for Cross, the person breaking into the isolated cell where he had sequestered himself for the broadcast was a feral and cannibalistic woman whom Lassoo and Funkfreed fended off, destroying the cell and preparing to wade back through a dark labyrinth. At last, Cross's location is revealed: a secret prison on the island Nox Vestibule, a Never Day Island in the Red Line's shadow in the North Blue. Upon the island was the gargantuan structure that the World Nobles had appropriated into their personal prison: the Eternally Rotting Tree, Serpent.
And now begins the end of Marineford Misery. Pardon the exposition along the way as we welcome you to our Hell…
The Necrophage Tree—called 'Eternally Rotting' for the sake of the less-sophisticated—was a secret prison for the World Government, established for one simple reason: Impel Down was too regulated. For all its hellacious punishments, law and order held absolute sway within its walls.
And law and order were an obstacle to what the World Nobles had decided certain people deserved for opposing the children of the gods. The light was theirs alone, and if someone tried to use it for themselves, there was nothing for it but to cast them into darkness.
And what a darkness they had chosen.
-o-
[Gif, is the coast clear?]
The Visual Snail had made the choice herself to tag along with Cross instead of remaining on the ship for two years, and she had quickly proven a valuable ally. Even if she was starting to vaguely regret the decision. The whir of her rig's propellers was soft enough that she didn't attract the enemies lurking just out of range of their collective senses, and her subspecies had exceptional eyesight even in the darkest of darkness.
"(T∩T);;" The smallest snail of the group sank in the air, her eyes low, sad, and very, very afraid.
Lassoo whined in acknowledgment. [Yeah, I know. This entire hellhole isn't safe. But right now, is anything around?]
Gif glanced warily back into the darkness, before wavering side-to-side, the best approximation of 'probably' she could manage.
The haggard hound-weapon gave an exhausted nod. ['Maybe' is the best we've had in hours. I will take 'maybe'. Alright, let's budge up to here and see what we can—!]
Thump.
Lassoo and Gif went very, very still. Lassoo clenched his teeth to the point of cracking, and Gif's rotor ground to a halt, dropping her to the floor like a rock. The impact hurt. Staying in the air would have been outright fatal.
Their paralysis was broken only by the two tilting their eyes up, right at the near-certain death looming above them.
-o-
The horror of Serpent begins even before you look into its geography, for what does it say about a prison that it has its own geography in the first place?
Approaching from the outside, the guardhouse was the first threat encountered. 'Guardhouse', though, was a misnomer used by the bureaucracy to help hide its purpose. In reality, the structure was a fortress built around—and into—the base of the trunk, tall and thick enough to stymie even a giant from both directions. This, however, described only the ground defences, for the guardhouse kept more than the inmates confined. The island was naturally home to territorial beasts unwelcome in the light, and one species, in particular, ruled the skies…
-o-
Three red orbs ringed in silver glowered balefully down at the cowering duo, rapidly cocking back and forth. Their owner was almost completely hidden in the ever-present gloom, and what little they could see showed a beast at least the size of a small elephant (and they would know), straddling the alley they cowered in on viciously taloned legs.
For the longest time, the two non-human pirates held their breaths, not daring to twitch a muscle as the hungry eyes scoured their hole.
SNAP!
They didn't even flinch as a third leg abruptly shot out of the dead center of the shadows, talons sinking into and skewering a discarded corpse before yanking it back up and out of sight.
There was a rip of meat, a rush of movement and displaced air, and the beast was gone.
The less-monstrous beasts waited a full minute before they allowed the breath they'd been holding to whoosh from their lungs, collapsing to the ground in relief.
[I really hope that that's as big as they get,] Lassoo groaned.
"TT^TT" Gif shuddered, nodding her eyestalks in agreement.
The two took another moment to catch their breath before Lassoo peeked over his shoulder and let out a hissing whine.
Moments later, another creature approached them. Thankfully, this one was familiar.
[You suck at whistling,] Funkfreed sniffed.
[Well, I'd howl, but from what we've seen, I'm not eager to find out whether those things consider anything smaller than an adult human enough food to be worth hunting.]
-o-
Moving up from Serpent's roots, the trunk itself is almost totally barren: the only signs of life are the galleries of tunnels densely studded in the bark. An ever-shifting labyrinth where, with every second, your risk of being eaten approaches one, whether by the train-sized entities that bored the holes or by the tree itself, sealing its own wounds and devouring anything trapped within.
The only other means of ascending or descending unharmed is the highway, colloquially known as 'The One Way Trail'. Carved through the rotting wood and lined with metal-reinforced stone, the tunnel spirals up the trunk, linking a chain of heavily fortified checkpoints and connecting the earth to the summit of Serpent. Fortresses one and all, they were designed to keep the guards within safe from whatever dwelt in the tree, and render even the merest notion of escape an impossibility.
But for all that the trunk and branches were vast and labyrinthine, Serpent was still a tree. Though the outer limbs had all the inclination to release their captives, as a Venus flytrap did, it wasn't impossible to break through. Just unwise.
Those few who managed to break through enough branches to penetrate to the outside would, if they were lucky, get caught on twigs and eaten alive by the yatagarasu. If they weren't, they'd be met with a seemingly bottomless drop down to the earth below, and be lucky if they were killed on impact. Invariably, whether they were or not, they were bound, gagged, drugged, and added to the next shipment of provisions to the prisoners.
Oh, no, the guards didn't kill them. They were simply left to soak in the bouquet of genuinely humane and decent food, unable to eat any of it. And then delivered, with the rest of the food, by trebuchet. Given that the delivered supplies were deliberately kept to half to three-quarters of what was needed for the whole population on more bloody weeks, their final fate was both obvious and rarely pleasant.
All part of driving the prisoners to the greatest heights of depravity imaginable, of course. Prisoners delivered to Serpent tended to be in unsound states of mind even before being detained, for only a madman opposed the Government in the sort of manner to get them delivered to Serpent. Add delirium from chronic lack of food and sundry nutritional deficiencies, the cruelties of the guards and Nobles, and, above all else, the paranoia from the perpetual darkness, and food delivery on the Serpent side tended toward a feeding frenzy like a piranha school.
After all, fear of the dark, at its heart, is fear of whatever might be lurking in it. We learn, as children, not to be afraid of the dark, because there isn't anything there. Those condemned to Serpent last less than a day before reverting back to childhood form, for in Serpent, there is always something there: monsters as bad or worse than the prisoners themselves.
-o-
[Yeah, well, outweighing them by a metric ton doesn't seem to be doing the trick lately, so we're all having a shit time. Especially!] The quadrupedal blade hefted his trunk, shaking the limp body he was carrying. [Seeing as I'm the one hauling and protecting the dead weight here—!"
[Don't Use The D-Word,] Soundbite rumbled, Funkfreed flinching. Only briefly, however, before he collected himself and glowered at the snail.
[Listen, you slimy little basta—!]
And then they all froze at the soft, harsh sound of metal scraping on stone.
A man lumbered by the alley. He was massive by normal standards, possibly due to a giant somewhere in his family tree. His torso was bare, exposing a ripped barrel chest and abdominals on his front, crisscrossed with ragged and ill-healed scars, and a half-dozen broken swords sticking out of his back. His equally muscular legs dragged stiff feet listlessly through the dirt, one arm loosely dragging a machete the size of a person behind him. And his face? There was none to be seen. Only an expressionless iron mask welded—outright welded, the molten seams glinting in the minuscule torchlight next to raised ridges of once-seared flesh—to his head.
Cross's band hadn't quite managed to nail down what the misshapen, humanoid monsters stalking this hell were. Some form of experiment like what Shiki and Indigo had done, most likely, but applied to humans instead of animals. What they did know was that they were freakishly stealthy, even more freakishly strong and tough, and compensated for their thoroughly mediocre night vision with distressingly keen hearing.
For a heart-stopping moment, the monstrous human(?) paused in place, his head panning across his surroundings. The animals all held their breath, tensed to fight for their lives. The sighs of relief when he began trudging once more were all mental. It was only once the scraping faded from their senses that they let their breath rush out.
[We need a new place to rest so I can actually snap at you,] Funkfreed murmured.
[Yeah, well, half the buildings around here have only two walls standing if we're lucky, and the other half are already occupied, so unless you think we can evict some crazies without kicking the hornet's nest again, this is the best we're going to get.] Soundbite ground out. He nodded his head at the wall. [Just… drop Cross, and plant your hide in front of the entrance so that maybe anyone passing by mistakes you for more wall. Then maybe we can try and snap him out of his head.]
The elephant grumbled something deeply unkind under his breath, but he nonetheless gingerly laid Cross up against the wall of the alley, doing his best not to aggravate his wound. They had bound and treated it to the best of their ability, but their best was just barely better than a stopgap measure.
Funkfreed then maneuvered his way past Lassoo and Gif so that he could press the bulk of his flank up against the alley's opening, closing it off to the outside. With that done, the group turned their full attention to Cross, and after a look of confirmation at Soundbite, Funkfreed spoke.
"Cross, come on, wake up!" he pleaded, shaking his wielder with his trunk as hard as he dared. "I know that things look grim for the world, but things are dire for us right now! Being deadweight isn't doing us any good; we need all hands on deck, or we're all going to get very dead, very soon! Come on, show us that you can hear us! A twitch, a blink, I'll even take an angry rant! Just… come on, react!"
But, regrettably, the plea elicited no reaction from Cross. Not even an acknowledgement that he'd heard anything. Funkfreed's actions had all the effect they'd have had on a string-less puppet.
"…okay, round two. Partner, look," Soundbite said. "I know that THAT was a BAD LAST THING to hear. But WE DON'T KNOW WHO SCREAMED. I WAS TOO OVERLOADED to ID the voice. IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO."
Cross still didn't stir, his eyes dim and unfocused.
Growling to himself, Lassoo stuck his face around Cross's jacket, sniffing out an item within. With a grunt of victory, he slowly pulled it out: an orange bag, a foot long and an inch thin, the biggest of Merry's backup bags. Catching the zipper in his teeth, Lassoo tugged it open, carefully extracted the bag's most recent and most important item, and forced it back onto Cross's head.
"If you're not going to think about what could be true, think about what is," the dog-gun snarled. "Luffy is our captain. We all know that he will be the King of the Pirates!"
This finally sparked a reaction, a shiver running through Cross's body. Soundbite leaped onto the opportunity before it could drift away.
"He's our Captain, Cross, AND our friend! He survived EVERYTHING, and he had all the help we could give him! And he trusted you with his hat! THE KING'S CROWN! HE WOULD TRUST YOU NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED! EVEN IF SOMETHING DID HAPPEN—!"
"Which we're damn sure it didn't!" Funkfreed cut in.
"Then he'd never blame you for it! But only as long as you get up off your ass AND ACTUALLY START SHOWING A PULSE!
-o-
The actual 'prison' is a cobbled-together complex at the apex of the tree's trunk. The fact that they could build any sort of structure there in its natural state meant that it was the safest place in the tree itself. A problem solved by the fact that the highest point of the complex was a fortified tower that served as the guards' headquarters.
The warden was never seen, for there was none to be had. No single authority, no uniting leaders - and no single point of failure. Rather, the guards of Serpent only followed one will, and only followed a single directive: the will of Serpent itself, to consume and devour all within. All the guards did was ensure that that process, that ongoing carnage, continued unabated, no matter the circumstances. And since to the World Nobles the mere continued existence of Serpent fulfilled their will, that was sufficient.
Of course, the fact was that no matter how feral a beast was, it would always have the instincts to survive and, subsequently, seek out nourishment and shelter. Cheap buildings made of materials just developed enough that the tree couldn't absorb and digest them immediately ensured that the prisoners of the hell-pillar did not die of exposure—such was far too boring a fate to be allowed.
And then there was the biggest point in their favour: even the most barbaric man could see the potential of fire, and never more than when it could make the Darkness turn, run… and solidify.
-o-
For a few more heartrending seconds, Cross remained immobile, staring at nothing. Then he finally twitched, awareness chasing away the thousand-yard stare. The pirate groaned, a hand coming up to massage his eyes.
"You finally back with us, or are these just your death throes, and I NEED TO FIND MYSELF A NEW TALKING HEAD?" Soundbite attempted to heckle, but his efforts were undercut by the genuine worry that seeped into his tone.
The only response was another groan, but at least it was a response.
Soundbite heaved a weary sigh, glancing at his cohorts. "He's waking up. KEEP PUSHING."
"Luffy's waiting for us, Cross! He's out there, waiting for us! You can't give up!" Funkfreed asserted.
Cross shook his head, a grimace sprouting on his face as he ground his palm against his forehead.
"Because that's what this really comes down to, you know! That's the deciding factor that you have to, have to acknowledge!" Lassoo barked, his voice rising to the point where Soundbite had to muffle it for him. "Answer us, Cross: do you believe that there's any chance that Luffy didn't make it out alive!?"
And that was the tipping point: Cross jerked in place, his head snapping up with more life than he'd shown in the past twenty-four hours.
For a few seconds, Cross's expression was one of shock, the fitful surprise of someone only just woken from a deep slumber. But then, his expression fell. His face collapsed back into an impassive mask, tears falling silently down his cheeks. It was a testament to the faith Luffy inspired that, even in his prior state, Cross had to deliver an honest answer.
"…no."
Relieved at the response, Funkfreed followed up:
"Then you know that we'll bounce back from this. Why are you acting like it's the end of the world?"
"…why?"
Cross shuddered, full-body.
"…have you been paying attention at all? Look at what's happened. The Straw Hats are bigger, richer, and more well-connected than they were in the story. The Government is weaker, and the Revolutionaries are stronger. The slave trade is fatally damaged, and the world hangs on my every word."
Another shiver came over him, and he fell over onto his side, instinctively curling up into a fetal position.
"And what do I have to show for it where it matters most? The war in Alabasta, the war in Skypiea, the Davy Back Fight, Robin going to Enies Lobby, Kuma on Thriller Bark and Sabaody, and the Paramount War are still happening... Who cares about the rest of the world? It's always been about how I can help Luffy. And… And I…"
Another shiver wracked Cross' body, a shiver that graduated into full-on trembling. He clutched his head in despair, silent tears cascading down his face.
"…what difference have I made? Everything crucial to the main plot hasn't changed at all. I called in every favour that I could to twist fate in Luffy's favour, and it wasn't enough. If all I can do is watch fate have its way and comment on it. Why should I keep trying? Luffy has never needed me."
Tears mingled with the blood coating his face as he lay there, staring blindly into the darkness.
"This entire world has never needed me."
"Are you serious?" Funkfreed all but hissed. "Are you really saying that if you failed to save Ace, everything you've done, every wrong you've exposed, everyone you've saved and helped—including the four of us, is completely meaningless!?"
"Yes," Cross answered immediately, sending his companions reeling back like he'd slapped them all in the face. "There is no number of miracles I could pull that wouldn't be scarred by a tragedy like this."
Lassoo's mouth contorted into a sharp-toothed snarl, his eyes narrowed in anger. He opened his maw—
"Don't bother," Soundbite warned him in a mutter quiet enough so that Cross didn't hear. "He's bluescreening hard, AND ALL HE'S PROCESSING IS THIS ONE THING. Look, progress is progress: we've got him reacting, NOW WE JUST NEED TO BREAK THE BREAKDOWN!"
"…why is this so important?" Funkfreed cut in with Lassoo, capable of nothing more than inarticulate sounds of intense frustration. "Luffy would have bounced back in less than a week!"
"But Luffy didn't know. Luffy didn't have a chance to stop it, even back then. Luffy wasn't responsible—"
"And neither were you!" Funkfreed was forcefully interrupted. "No one could have known what was coming, not even you! Look, you can't take this all on your shoulders! The Straw Hats made it this far because they built off of each other! If Ace died—and we still don't know if he did—it just means all of us have to grow stronger so that this doesn't happen again."
"And just as importantly, so we can take REVENGE FOR THIS," Soundbite sneered, his teeth set in a vicious grin.
Cross just stared at his first partner emotionlessly for a second before looking away. "Revenge won't change the fact that it happened…"
Lassoo and Funkfreed started at a discordant sound, which they quickly realized was a vein popping on Soundbite's face.
"Oh yeah, that's deep and profound. HEY, MORON, WE'RE IN A SHOUNEN, NOT A SATURDAY MORNING SPECIAL! SCREW THE AESOP, GET PISSED!"
"That's what got us here in the first place."
Soundbite deflated, his teeth still grinding and eye twitching. "HOW is he STILL winning arguments when he's despaired OUT OF HIS MIND?"
"W-W-Well… um, ah…" Funkfreed's eyes darted about, looking for something, any thread to grasp on. It took him a long moment, but when he chanced upon it he shot his trunk out and pressed it down onto his ace in the—er, his trump card. "Well, what about this then, huh!? What about the hat?! Luffy's hat, remember?! He gave it to you, he trusted you with it, you need to—!"
Cross ignored the elephant in favour of pushing the trunk out of his face. "It'll find its way back to him," the tactician huffed dismissively.
"How!? It's just a hat!" Lassoo demanded.
"No, it's not. It was Roger's hat," Cross explained, ignoring his companions, all flailing in shock at that revelation. "Then Shanks's, and now Luffy's. All of them, even that hat, have a destiny waiting for them. And they'll reach it, eventually. It's their purpose."
Cross reached up and slid the hat off his head, followed by his own cap that he brought down to his eyes. He stared despondently at the cross and crossbones emblazoned on its brow.
"…but I don't figure into it. I'm just a bump in the road. Always have been from the start…"
He carelessly flicked the hat away to clatter on the ground.
"Always will be."
CLUNK!
Something mechanical hit Cross's face, startling a reaction out of him. Gif hovered before him.
"( Ĭ ^ Ĭ )!" the mute snail sobbed.
And at least some of Cross's despair gave way to a different sort of discomfort altogether. Gif held his gaze for several seconds before turning to Soundbite and soundlessly communicating something. The other snail's eyes widened a bit.
"Wow. Thanks, cuz. AND CROSS, picking up on what she's 'saying', you promised that no matter what happened, YOU'D COME BACK STRONGER!"
"…when did I ever—?"
"No matter what happens. No matter how we change, we'll always be friends. We'll all get stronger. And then we'll all meet back here again. It's a promise."
Everyone present saw Cross' eyes widen, though the rest of his body didn't react. Lassoo and Funkfreed saw the chance and seized it.
"It's the captain's orders, Cross. If Luffy is what matters most, then think about how he'll react, how you know he'll react: he'll know you did your best and say that we just need to make sure that it doesn't happen again."
"Luffy may not have needed any of us, Cross, but we're all here for him. We've come this far and grown this much for him. And if we don't come back, he'll come after us anyway and catapult us kicking and screaming back onto the Sunny."
Cross's eye twitched at that. He sighed and lowered his gaze to the ground, to his armoured hands, and to the cap he had discarded.
Slowly, Cross reached beside him and picked up the cap that he had discarded, staring at the symbol of everything that he had become. The constant thoughts of 'not good enough,' 'missed a spot,' 'failed again,' and 'useless' slowly and unwillingly gave way to thoughts of what he had done. Who had he helped? Who still wanted him in this world despite everything.
"No matter what happened, Cross, you can do this. We can do this. But you have to stand beside us for us to—"
FFFWUMP!
All five of them suddenly stilled at the sound of something landing nearby, sounding very much like a large bird falling.
Carefully, in a move he had gotten far too much practice with over the past few days, Lassoo brought the fumes of a Cani-Blast to his mouth and held them there, letting the fire illuminate the newcomer. He nearly bit out the light from both the sight and the incredulous gasp that Soundbite gave a split second before the light came on.
The fallen figure was a three-foot bird with a mess of ruffled white feathers, bloodied and scratched all over. The beak flopped wide open to suck in oxygen, and the eyes betrayed exhaustion that would have him pass out any second now.
It was a miracle that he had found his way there at all, a greater one that he had made it inside, and the greatest of the three that he had found his way to literally the only people there who wouldn't murder him on the spot. Including the guards, of course. Not even animals were allowed to leave, and roasted gull had become a delicacy because the Government didn't tell the news agencies and their Coos to cancel the prisoners' subscriptions. After all, they all wisened up after the first loss of a delivery bird.
Not knowing any of this at the moment, the Straw Hats reacted appropriately:
"Coo!?" Soundbite, Lassoo, and Funkfreed demanded.
"O.o" Gif concurred.
Cross had just enough life to blink blearily at the bird. "…You should not have come here. This is not a place of honour—"
"Funkfreed," Soundbite snapped.
The elephant's trunk slapped into the side of Cross's head, knocking him for a groaning loop.
"OK, he's still out of it but slightly better if he can MANAGE TO QUOTE," Soundbite muttered grimly before focusing on the half-dead bird before them. "Skipping the aimless shock and incredulity, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"
"Ngh…Cross… had to find…had to find Cross…" the bird wheezed out, a half-working wing flapping weakly over his messenger bag. "Had to get it to him… Special delivery… from the new… Chief Operating Officer of the…Free Feather Reporrrghhh…" And with that, what little strength remaining fled his body for blissful unconsciousness.
Funkfreed quickly snatched him up in his trunk and stashed him further out of sight, while Lassoo nosed through his bag and withdrew the crumpled paper within. A quick cough and hack, and he had a small blaze smouldering in his maw. Small enough to give them enough light to read by, but not big enough to paint a giant target on them. The fugitives in the alley all took one look at the front page, Cross even finding the strength to glance down at it. And all froze in shock from the headline:
THE TRAGEDY OF MARINEFORD
THE BLOOD PRICE OF JUSTICE
Funkfreed wrapped himself around them. Gif and Soundbite monitored the area with an eye on each other. And Cross took in all the details that he had missed…
-Two Days Before-
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!"
When Luffy had been shot, almost the entire battlefield had frozen. Those few that hadn't did so as a direct result of this new development, of the scream that tore across the battlefield.
History would look back on that moment as the turning point of the battle. It was, in truth, the point where the loser was decided. And many on the losing side, if you put a gun to their head, would have agreed, considering how many of them chose that moment to lay down their weapons and fall back.
After all, if it wasn't enough to hear the Marines' most powerful supporter of Absolute Justice screaming in agony, the sight that caused it absolutely was: his massive fist of magma crushed and mangled. One of the Navy's ultimate powerhouses had just lost his hand. The only thing more shocking was the identity of the one who did it.
The still-outstretched hand that had maimed the Admiral, coated in obsidian Haki, belonged to a man clad in a green cloak with a mane of black hair. The tattoos on the left side of his face did nothing to mask his deadly glare.
"You will not touch my sons."
Monkey D. Dragon spoke with the calm of a hurricane's eye and the force of the storm itself.
Then, ignoring the rapidly climbing temperature from the blazing volcanic hound before him, he turned to regard the two nearest thunderstruck pirates.
"I've tipped the scales back in your favour. I trust that you three can handle the rest."
Before they could respond, someone else grabbed them from behind, hoisted them on his shoulders, and sprinted away from Dragon, cursing the two as he went:
"THERE'S REALLY JUST NO OTHER WAY I COULD HAVE FOUND YOU IDIOTS AGAIN, IS THERE?!"
With his sons together, Dragon returned his full attention to Akainu, who'd pushed through the agony enough to raise his other hand and try to finish what he'd attempted to start.
"No," Dragon said firmly, striking the Admiral's arm and redirecting his lava plume into the ocean.
Akainu snarled at the interference, glaring bloody, infernal murder up at the Revolutionary. "You… why are you doing this?! This fight, those pirates… they have nothing to do with you! Why are you here?!"
The words carried all of Akainu's vitriol, his hate, his fury, along with a blast of air scalding enough to strip the scales from a Sea King. And Dragon weathered it all without a flinch.
"I am here because it was my decision," he declared solemnly. "Mine alone…"
Dragon's left hand snapped open to drop what was left of Akainu's right, then clenched back into a fist—
CRACK!
—and slammed into the middle of the Mad Dog's face, sending him bouncing back across the length of the battlefield.
"And no one else's." Dragon took a moment to wave out his gore-soaked fist, and after a brief moment, allowed himself the slightest of smirks. "Though I will admit that was disproportionately enjoyable."
The Revolutionary cast his gaze over the still shell-shocked Marines facing him, his smirk deepening as his fingers curled into claws, black lightning crackling.
"Would anyone else care to contribute?"
It was a third of what the Navy had left, generously, that didn't flee in search of any excuse that they could find to not fight the world's most wanted man. And a good many of those who didn't flee did so only because they were still frozen in fear.
His appearance even affected those no longer loyal to the Government. By the time anyone's attention moved on from Dragon's appearance, every fighter in a gray suit had vanished, and the bandana-wearers were not far behind.
-o-
"Wha—? No, nonononono!" exclaimed the Beast King's child. Yamato ran his fingers angrily through his hair. "Nggggh… is there any other outgoing broadcast you can tap into?"
The snail's eyes narrowed in focus, its body shifting to and fro. Then its eyes lit up and it smiled. A moment later, the din of battle echoed through the room once more. After a few moments listening, Yamato sighed in relief.
"Thank goodness you're OK, Ace."
Thunder rumbled through the room, and Yamato's eyes snapped in the direction of the sound.
"Ugh… looks like Father's attempt to join in on the 'fun' didn't pan out. Great Schadenfreude! Not so good for me."
Already resigned to the consequences of Kaido's return, the self-proclaimed Oden sat down to keep listening.
-o-
It took a few seconds after the battlefield unfroze for Jozu to notice that one particular combatant had yet to rejoin the fray.
"Cross? Soundbite?" he asked as he tossed around any Marines with enough courage or not enough sense to keep coming after him. But no answer came, neither a voice nor a hint of static. He grimaced.
"Guess they hit their limit. But they've done more than enough."
A quick glance around the immediate vicinity showed his siblings—all seven sisters and all thirteen brothers, only Ace excluded—converging on his location, while Pops had rendered their assistance unnecessary, burning the candle at both ends as he held off the strongest that the Navy had left. His jaw and eyes tightened at the sight, but he shook his head. They had already said their goodbyes.
He resumed his path to the edge of the ice, the rallying point for the other Commanders. They couldn't stop Pops from dying. But if the worst still came to pass, they would protect his legacy with their lives.
-o-
Nothing about this situation should have been as much of a surprise to Ace and Luffy as it was. Yet, there they were, toted on the backs of a very familiar blond-haired man toward where the rest of the Whitebeard Commanders were clustering, and struggling just to say his name.
"HONESTLY! THE FIRST TIME I SEE YOU MORONS IN YEARS, IN YEARS, AND EITHER ONE OR BOTH OF YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE!" Sabo roared. "HOW IN THE HELL DID YOU TWO SURVIVE TEN YEARS WITHOUT ME, HUH?! IT'S LUDICROUS, ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS! I SHOULD JUST TRADE YOU IN FOR A PAIR OF LEMMINGS, AT LEAST THEY'D HAVE BETTER SURVIVAL INSTINCTS THAN YOU TWO TROGLODYTES! AND YOU, ACE! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, RUNNING AROUND WITHOUT A SHIRT!? I DON'T CARE IF YOU CAN SELF-REGULATE YOUR THERMALS, YOU'RE GETTING A SHIRT ONCE WE GET OUT OF HERE, EVEN IF I HAVE TO SEW IT INTO YOUR IDIOT FLESH!"
"Shishishi!" Luffy snickered, grinning over his and his brother's shoulders at his cursing sibling with tears of joy streaming down his face. "We missed you, Sabo!"
"I MISSED YOU MORONS TOO! NOW SHUT UP SO I CAN CONCENTRATE ON PULLING YOUR ASSES OUT OF THE FIRE, AGAIN!"
"Hey, I take offence to—OOF!" Ace let out a pained sound as Sabo pointedly bounced his older brother on his shoulder, jabbing the joint into Ace's solar plexus. "Point made… also, good to see you again too, but can you put me down now? I'm not the one who got both of my feet shot out."
"They got lucky! And I don't know Observation yet, so they cheated, too! Also, I can run! Just get this sea prism stone out of me!"
"Considering you're also the person who was comatose in cold storage for four months after a massive beating, and you're the one who literally went to Hell and back for the other guy?" Sabo turned his head around, facing Ace with a sickly grin. "All your opinions are rejected! I'm carrying you anyway! Don't worry, you lummoxes, you'll be safe; remember, I'm the responsible one!"
"YEAH, RESPONSIBLE LIKE A BULL IN A CHINA SHOP, YOU DIMWIT!"
Sabo's head snapped around at the familiar shout. He saw a Vikverir barreling towards him with an axe held high over his helmeted skull—for all of one second before a salvo of high-velocity water drops knocked the berserker clean on his ass. A petite woman shot into the air from the direction of the water, elbows bent behind her.
"ARABESQUE DOUBLE BRICK FIST!"
The resulting shockwave knocked the Vikevrir for even more of a loop, and more immediately, turned the ice beneath him into shrapnel. The force was almost enough to break through to the water.
"FLAMING AXE KICK!"
The final blow that her heel struck on the berserker's battered helmet finished the job, breaking the ice and sending him into the drink. Koala landed on the edge of the crater she'd made, giving the trio a thumbs-up.
"But hey, that's why you've got us," she grinned, giving the brothers a jaunty wave and a cheeky grin.
Said grin became pointedly vicious as she glanced over her shoulder at the Angevin who was raising his mace over her head. "And no, I didn't misspeak. When I say 'us,' I mean 'us.'"
CRASH!
"SHORYUKEN!"
The ice shattered beneath the knight, and a yellow fist slammed into his chin, sending him flying off his feet.
CRACK!
"FIVE-THOUSAND BRICK FIST!"
Backward, and clean into the waiting blue fist of the newly-arrived whale shark fishman.
"Flawless victory," Jinbe declared proudly as he shook the blood and shattered metal from his fist.
"Victory? Indeed. Flawless? Well…" 'Hundredth Dan' Hack huffed as he stepped up. "I wouldn't go that far. Your footwork was out of position, your fist is much too tight, and don't even get me started on your breathing. Honestly, old man, have you forgotten everything about how to throw a punch?"
"Even if my sojourn to the bowels of Hell knocked a few habits loose, I've still got enough experience to wipe the deck with you, brat," Jinbe shot back, jabbing his finger in Hack's face.
The two held their expressions for only a second more before they cracked into matching grins and clasped each other's forearms. "Good to see you again, Jinbe!" the Revolutionary chortled, giving his old friend a punch in the shoulder. "Sorry to have missed the Conch Tournament. I was busy starting an insurrection in West Blue."
"Ahh, we made do, even if it wasn't the same without the chance to break your face again. But for once, I'm glad that I'm fighting with you, rather than against you." Jinbe's good mood dropped into a grim scowl at the frozen, blood-soaked hell around them. "Though the venue leaves a thing or fifty to be desired."
A horrible screech filled the air, drawing the attention of those present to the Hebrides, its two mouths the source of the noise and its spiked arms and body threatening anyone who drew near.
"And I can't say much about the quality of opponents either," the whale-shark-man added.
"What a monster. Honestly, I thought that the things that lurked in the trenches were horrifying." Hack raised his hands in a shrug before glancing at his old rival. "Think you can keep up if I offer a collaboration? Ravage its insides so it can't move anymore?"
"Hmph," Jinbe grunted with a smirk. "Well, with Namur occupied, you'll do for backup. Try not to break a hip, old man!" And with that declaration, he shot off at the flailing monster, which happened to be in the sea.
"For the last time, my hair is naturally like this! I'm younger than you, damn it!" Hack barked, lunging after the paradoxically nimble whale fishman.
The pair's griping and sniping didn't slow them down by even a step, and in seconds they drew up alongside the flailing monstrosity. Talons scythed down into the ice in an attempt to slice up the attackers, but they always hit too late, the fishmen having long since dodged by the time the attacks were even initiated.
In a flash, they both arrived at the creature's flank, their palms pulled back into mirrored stances.
"Fishman Karate," they rumbled as one, thrusting their palms forward and slamming them into the beast's hide. "Shark Fist Tile Breaker!"
For the first moment, the Hebrides barely even flinched at the strike - and then ripples blasted across the monster, sending it writhing and shrieking in agony as its very innards systematically imploded. Organs and muscles were shredded, bones were powdered, and with a keening wail, the creature's body lost all energy and plummeted beneath the waves, sinking to the bottom of the harbour.
Jinbe nodded in satisfaction, turning on his heel and strolling back towards the gaping humans. "Well, that was satisfying. … Even if you were a half-second late on your strike."
"I'm never going to win with you, am I?!" Hack laughed, clapping his old friend on the back.
Long-since inured to the sheer feats that Fishman Karate could accomplish, Sabo was the first to recover, breaking his brothers out of their shock with a polite cough. "Well, now that that's handled… Who else do we need to grab before we get out of here?" Sabo asked, mainly directing the question at Luffy. The rubber man looked back the way they came, frowning.
"Hancock, Sonia, and Mari. I want to say they should be fine, but the Government wants them dead, so I'm not risking it." He grimaced and shook his head. "But everyone else who broke out with me is either on Whitebeard's side, Ivankov's side, or their own side. They can take care of themselves."
Both Sabo and Ace felt Luffy grip them, as if to remind himself what was most important. Despite the rush of… well, unfamiliar emotion Ace made a mental note to unpack later, he grimaced and shook his head.
"One more person. We're not leaving without Isuka," he said, his tone brooking no argument.
Everyone scanned the battlefield to find nothing, and Luffy snorted.
"Darn, shouldn't she have just shown up when we said that?"
"I don't care what Cross says, we're not operating on narrative logic," Sabo hissed back.
Sploooosh!
All present snapped their attention at the harbour, where a fourth blue whale had surfaced relatively close to the entrance.
BOOM!
And almost immediately, it jerked out of the way of a salvo from a battlement that neither pirates nor Masons had managed to reach.
"Oh, come on! Pequod is Pops's last whale, if it can't get here—"
"There," Jinbe cut in, staring at the battlements on the other side of the field. Which, seconds later, opened fire on the one attacking Pequod. "Looks like your friend was coordinating an attack against the Navy gunners," he observed.
"Which, might I note, is nowhere near as easy as you might think. Seriously, there is a fine art to it. I'd still be over there if they hadn't been planning for this all week."
The assembled outlaws collectively jumped as Isuka limped up to them, clutching her elbow at her side and her expression almost bored.
"Shishishishi," Luffy, one of the only ones who hadn't been surprised by her arrival, snickered. "Oh, look, she's here. On cue. Ya know, you really shouldn't say bad stuff about Cross, he's almost always ri—oof!"
"Shut up," Sabo grumbled, rolling the shoulder he'd just rammed into Luffy's gut.
"Still, sorry for the wait," the ex-Marine apologized, waving her free hand at her trembling legs. "Still dealing with the aftershocks from Sengoku, plus Akainu's broken up the battlefield something fierce—"
SHONG!
"Oh, and this bastard," she deadpanned, jerking a thumb over her shoulder where Jinbe had just intercepted Vice Admiral Dalmatian's attempt to chop off Isuka's head.
"You filthy, flea-bitten—"
"Bitch, yes, how original," Isuka sighed. "Haven't had that shouted at me fifty times in the last few minutes. And this time coming from an actual dog, doesn't that make you a hypocrite?"
"How many of our gunnery crews have you subverted, fiend?!"
"Well, points for classics, so I might as well inform you that Gunnery Crew Phi-12 over there have had something of a change of heart in the past week." Isuka pointed off to the side with an ironically catty grin.
Pointedly ignoring the directions given, Dalmatian snorted derisively. A snort that quickly turned into a choking gurgle, as Jinbe's hold on him was too tight for him to dodge the Water Shot that shot over the whale-shark-man's shoulder and smashed into Dalmatian's throat. Haki mitigated the damage, but still left him coughing long enough for Jinbe to throw him over his shoulder and slam him hard onto the ice—
CRACK!
—swiftly followed by a solid kick from Ivankov as he (at the moment) spun over to them.
"Well, that was certainly exciting," the King of Queens declared grimly.
"And it's only going to get worse, fast," Koala said, eyeing the remainder of the forces on either side. The retreat was in full-tilt now, and as a result, the quagmire that the battlefield had become was fading. The line between friend and foe was beginning to reform in the middle, and without that confusion, the more disciplined soldiers were rallying the rest to battle.
"Even with the Commanders and, well, our commander drawing attention, the Marines are making a hard push, and flag officers like him are starting to seep through the cracks. Surprise, surprise, they are not happy that the guest of honour and his escort are two steps away from skipping out on the main event."
"They can get over it, I don't give a shit," Ace snapped. "On the topic of getting out of here, is taking your way in an option?"
"Nix on that," Sabo answered. "He dropped us off and then we snuck our way to the battlefield, he's already left. Exfiltration is on us. We were actually hoping you guys could give us a lift."
Ace cast a dark eye towards the burning warships that, just a few scant months ago, had been his home. "Yeah, slight problem with that plan."
"Clearly."
"Do we have any hidden cards left to play?" Jinbe inquired.
"For a certain measure of the term," Ivankov said quietly, wary of any potential eavesdroppers. "As far as more fighters, I don't think we'll get another miracle like Dragon, but concerning an escape route? If things are even half as accurate as Cross-boy foresaw, it's an inevitability that we'll make it out of here alive. We just need to run out the clock, so as long as nothing distracts us—"
The reason Ivankov never finished that sentence, and the reason that the entire battlefield—literally everyone still fighting—stopped what they were doing and froze, was the same reason that Soundbite had cut out several minutes earlier. Only those whom Cross had already warned thought that they were prepared.
They were not.
"ZEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The laugh echoed with pure menace across the entire island, and the force it carried was an aura of concentrated malevolence, an unmitigated contempt for life. For many on the battlefield, their pause lasted only as long as it took to shudder, but everyone did pause.
As for Luffy's group, they were able to fend off their anger and dread at that awful sound for precisely ten seconds. In which time—
WHAM!
—Emporio Ivankov was almost punched through the ice, and all present followed up the physical assault with a verbal one.
"You. Idiot," Luffy growled.
"Ivankov! How could you, you taught us to avoid saying things like that!"
"Excuse me, I barely survived going face-to-face with the one-armed mutt! Pardon me if my mind is a mite scattered!" He blinked and straightened up. "On that note, excuse me while I coordinate my candies. I wager we'll need to get involved."
As he winked away, the voice of pure evil spoke once more.
"I was aiming to get one of them killed. But getting the mad dog maimed? I'LL TAKE IT!"
Gritting his teeth as he felt his brother's tension rising, Sabo coated his fists in Armament and ran through a set of light punches across Ace's body before putting him back on his shoulder.
"S-Sabo, what the—!?"
"Like hell am I leaving you to your own devices with him in the area," Sabo spat. "You just forgot every warning and almost charged straight into death."
"I ONLY LOST LAST TIME BECAUSE OF AOKIJI SHOWING UP!"
"Even if that's true, he's got too much backup this time," Luffy noted.
And though the SBS had been cut off, the visual snails set up in advance by the Navy's own forces had not. The truth of Luffy's words was clear to everyone who could see the battlefield, some of them closer than others.
-o-
"Sanjuan Wolf, Catarina Devon, Avalo Pizarro, Vasco Shot… and those are the less infamous ones," Daz observed, analyzing the newcomers through a telescope. "Quite the group. And he somehow managed to convince them all to bend the knee for him?"
He waited. At the lack of response, he lowered the telescope and eyed Crocodile instead. The ex-Warlord had a heavy frown on his face, though it had little anger in it. Irritation, yes, but mostly bewilderment.
"Is it that surprising, sir?"
"…that brat broke my hook."
Daz blinked, his expression blank. "…yes, but why are you thinking of that now? That was almost a year ago."
"I used to be able to kill people. And they stayed dead when I did."
Daz gave a slight nod, otherwise impassive. He knew the start of a monologue when he heard it.
"And I was good at it too."
Daz nodded again.
"That stopped after I fought Straw Hat. I stabbed him and left him in a sinkhole. I dehydrated him and left him in the sand. I poisoned him and left him in a crumbling mausoleum. And he kept coming back. I came to the conclusion over the past few months that it was just because I underestimated the wrong person. That was the only problem: his ridiculous will to live."
His fingers traced the grooves of his hook.
"But now we have this. I left Shiliew of the Rain emaciated and limbless in literally the deepest pits of Hell. Yet there he stands, more of a monster than ever."
There was, after all, no other possible description when his new crew seemed to have cannibalized the BioMEGAs for parts to replace his missing limbs. Daz nodded again, adding, "I can see how that would be… aggravating."
"The brat broke my damn hook. I swear, the next time I get a shot at killing him, I'm going to make sure it sticks."
Daz didn't respond. He didn't believe it would be quite that easy, and he knew that Crocodile didn't think it would be either.
But he didn't say that. After all, he was a professional. And quite invested in living a day longer besides.
-o-
"ZEHAHAHAHA! Well, I have to say I'm surprised, I was expecting a lot more dead Whitebeards by the time I got here!" Marshall D. 'Blackbeard' Teach cackled from his perch on the seawall.
Both sides of the battlefield glared at the man who had betrayed them. But not even Whitebeard was glaring with as much rancour as Luffy and his brothers.
Of course, for Luffy, his glare was mixed with disbelief and no small amount of horror, on account of three specific individuals in the Darkness-monster's retinue, who he had not expected to be among Blackbeard's recruits.
"JIHAHAHA! Third time back here, and I'll make certain that it's the charm! Let's sink this wretched island, once and for all!"
The first was a rehash of the past: the Golden Lion Shiki, taking to the air once more. Haggard, bloodied, legless, and half-starved in a ragged prison jumpsuit, but there was no mistaking his mane, his wheel, or his rampant ego. The bastard floated over the assembled tyrants, arms spread wide and raucous laughter spilling out from his rakish grin, as he lorded his second successful escape from Impel Down over the world.
"Pshhh-koh… Do… whatever you want… Pshhh-koh… Just so long as they bleed… make them all bleed…"
The second one was the entire reason the cavalcade of scum was even alive to begin with: the entity that Luffy could only assume was Shiliew of the Rain, and if it was, then he was definitely going to kill Crocodile when he got his hands on him.
But that having been said, the sand-man apparently hadn't lied: the ex-Warden's limbs had been removed, and violently at that. It just hadn't been enough, somehow. And whatever else could be said about Blackbeard, it was impossible to fault his choice in underlings. After all, it took a special combination of skilled and downright demented to take a man with no limbs and little to no bodily fluids left and replace his ruined flesh and appendages with metal.
Metal, outright bolted to Shilliew's mummified flesh and stumps, his prosthetic arms ending in rough facsimiles of hands that twitched spasmodically. And not only his limbs, but his actual body too, cables and other machinery lacing through his torso. Tubes flexed and pulsed with god knows what flowing through them. And the mask welded over the lower half of Shilliew's face flexed with his every tortured, wheezing breath. The only human parts left of the man were his eyes, and there was no humanity to be seen in his maddened glower.
"Been meaning to come here all my life! This place and you bastards have had this coming for forty years! AND I'M GOING TO ENJOY EVERY LAST SECOND OF IT! BARORORO!"
And finally, there was an individual that very few had seen before that day, but that almost nobody could ever forget. The one prisoner among the ex-inmates who wasn't wearing prison stripes, because when that man—that monster—had been imprisoned, they hadn't even dared let him loose long enough for him to change. Towering over most of his compatriots with nearly ten feet of muscle and menace, and clad in fur, armor and horns that made him look oh-so-similar to the Vikverir, more than a few members of the old guard, pirate and Marine alike, felt a stirring of mortal terror in their hearts at the idea, the concept, that Byrnndi World was free once more, and clearly just as deranged as the day he'd been imprisoned.
But for one pirate, the fear that his presence stoked was deeper and far fresher. Because as he looked up at the maliciously guffawing pseudo-giant, and saw that there was no sign of his crew, Luffy knew immediately that something had gone very wrong with Byojack's plan.
And, in a small part of his brain, he was forced to acknowledge the fact that he would never see his new friend again. A fact which, in that moment, served to supremely piss him off.
Besides the star maniacs, there were eight others: a wrestler, a sniper, a corpse riding a horse, a demented clown, a drunkard, a tyrant, a witch, and a giant who made Oars and Oars Jr. look tiny by comparison. Luffy didn't recognize any of them, but the giant was an obvious problem, and from the whispering and pointing around him, he could guess that several of the others were pretty nasty individuals in their own right.
In all, an all-star lineup of eleven of the most dangerous, most reviled individuals in all the six seas, all under the command of a single unrepentant, unmatched monster.
"Shiki. World," that monster sneered, leering down at the battlefield with yellowed teeth. "There are way too many rats scurrying around for my tastes. Do us all a favour, and show us who here deserves to stay alive."
"JIIHAHAHAHAHAHA! My pleasure, Captain," Shiki intoned, raising his hands. And the sound of a large amount of displaced water came from nearby a moment later. In a twisted echo of his 'taste of what's to come' a few months prior, half a dozen of the battleships still on the perimeter of the island floated up and hovered over the battlefield, ready to crash down.
That was bad enough on its own. But Shiki was levitating one other thing: a large chunk of metal that World was effortlessly balancing upon. And it was carrying him straight for the ships.
"CLEAR THE AREA! RUN!"
Vice Admiral Garp's bellow echoed across the battlefield and did wonders for stirring Sengoku back to awareness. For all the good that it did.
In the time it took to blink, the stormy sky that had heralded Dragon's arrival became invisible. In its place was a Marine battleship that had spontaneously grown huge enough to cover the entire island. And Shiki kept the world flying so that the five above it increased in size just as fast.
"More-More Hundredfold—" World declared, his mouth stretched in a bloodthirsty leer.
"—Meteor Shower!" Shiki finished in a roar, matching his 'crewmate' tooth for tooth.
Immediately, the battleships dropped. And the events of the next minute were enough on their own to ensure that by the time Cross read the newspaper, everybody in the world had Blackbeard's name engraved in their minds.
In the wide seas, there is a saying that relates to combat: the man who least defends himself is the man who least needs to. And of course, no sooner had such a phrase been uttered than some wise-ass spoke its corollary: anything that gets such a man to properly defend themselves is an attack that can kill him in one hit.
To put it in plainer terms: any attack that got all three Admirals, the Fleet Admiral (who the world had seen suffering a heart attack barely ten minutes prior), and Whitebeard himself to defend against was a big fucking deal.
The skies over Marineford erupted, animal-shaped constructs of magma, light, and ice coalescing in seconds and shooting up to consume the gigantified, falling battleships, all perfectly coordinated. A mere second later, the sky erupted again, two visible shockwaves—one glimmering gold and one bright baby blue—taking the flaming and/or frozen debris and forcefully ejecting it out to sea.
All this, and the attention of all five combatants was locked onto the man having the time of his life, cackling with sick, unhinged glee while flanked by some of the nastiest human beings ever spat out by the seas, while the sky was rent apart. The man who had ordered World and Shiki to launch this attack.
It was a sound that would be engraved in the minds of everyone for the rest of their lives.
"ZEHAHAHAHAAAA!"
Years after the war, surviving combatants would swear, to the very end, that those moments felt like the end of days.
And most unfortunately, that was not the only intent behind the attack. Another could be seen in the combatants that had deflected the attacks: the three Admirals winded, Sengoku a breeze away from passing out, and Whitebeard doubled over and coughing up a fresh lungful of blood.
"Teach… what the hell are you doing!?" Sengoku hissed into his snail.
"Zehahahahaha. You have to ask, Fleet Admiral? As pirates that were enemies of the Government, it would be impossible to open the Gates of Justice and enter Impel Down! And of course, that's the only reason I needed the title of Warlord!" Teach answered, before adding, "You can have the title back. Now that I have my powers, my crew, and my soon-to-be army?"
He pounded his chest.
"The One Piece is mine. And nobody can stop me!"
"Yours, Teach? Don't get too big for your britches."
Blackbeard turned to Whitebeard, on his feet, stalking towards him with icy rage, a tremor forming at the tip of his bisento.
"Tch," Blackbeard scoffed, pointedly ignoring the sweat beading on his brow. "Doesn't know when to stay down. Shiki, keep him busy until I give the cue."
"Mmm, a bit of a challenge. But I won't disappoint," he drawled, raising his hands again. Once more, a sound of displaced water came from outside, but this time it was accompanied by the cacophony of splintering wood and, faintly, the cries of hundreds more doomed men.
Two large, curved, soaking-wet objects soared over to Shiki, flanking him on either side: keels, ripped from the battleships and laced with sea prism stone. And with that, he shot down to hover before Whitebeard, his arms folded.
"Once more for old time's sake, Whitebeard?"
Whitebeard's glower passed from Shiki to Teach and back. A question had been in his mind, briefly. Now he understood the answer.
"I'm disappointed that this is how it ends for us," Whitebeard answered.
"Jihahaha… well, what can you do?" Shiki chuckled.
Then they clashed, and the sky itself quaked. Yet among Blackbeard's crew, nobody else moved from their perch save for World, who headed for the remnants of the execution stand.
-o-
High above the battlefield, on the island-fortress's battlements, three Warlords observed the entire spectacle dispassionately.
"…this isn't fun anymore," Doflamingo grumbled, his tone petulant.
"You're only saying that because you got hurt," Mihawk huffed.
"Exactly," the Yaksha grunted, still in the middle of lacing together the powdered bones in his arm.
The least powerful of the three gave Doflamingo a thoroughly unimpressed stare. "You really are the textbook definition of a manchild," Perona coldly remarked.
Doflamingo's head slowly turned to stare at the Hollow Girl. "Want me to test Cross's theory about you becoming a real ghost, girly?"
Perona shrugged indifferently, not even deigning to look at him. "Feel free to try, it might be interesting."
The Warlord paused, giving Perona a curious look. "…when did you get the balls?"
The ghostly girl waved her hand out over the havoc. "Look around you, Doflamingo: the world is ending. Hell, nobody's even noticed that my pets—three ten-ton bioweapons—have left the battlefield. Sorry, but you aren't the scariest monster around anymore. Not even close."
"...Fu," Doflamingo sighed as he looked back out over the spectacle playing out before him. "Well, you've got me there."
"So this is the company I have to look forward to…" Mihawk groaned, running a hand down his face.
-o-
Boa Hancock had had worse days. But not many. Her left arm was completely numb, and would've hung limply at her side were it not for Salome curled around it to make it move. A necessary maneuver, because otherwise the CP-0 agents warily watching her would've taken her down by now.
Thankfully, that was her only direct injury. In exchange, she had been patently unable to do anything to the agents. They were slipperier than a duck eel, never took risks, and seemed content to just wear her down. Bastards didn't even have the decency to look out of breath. She needed something that would get her an opening.
Her eyes landed on someone in the distance, someone who very quickly went from "in the distance" to looming ominously over the agents. Hancock's eyes widened, her mind whirling for a way to take advantage of this person's presence… and she decided on a plan that was, even in her head, decidedly Luffy-esque. Mentally groaning, she put it in action anyway.
"Oh my, is that Monkey D. Dragon behind you?"
A delightful series of emotions crossed the normally stoic agents' faces: panic, then annoyance, then panic again, and then resignation. Extremely reluctantly, they turned around.
Monkey D. Dragon promptly grabbed both of them by their throats.
"And just when I thought this day couldn't get any better," Monkey D. Dragon veritably purred. "Crush an Admiral's hand, reunite my two precious sons, see Dad flat on his ass and some perspective sinking in - and now, two CP-0 agents literally in the palm of my hands. The only way this could get any better is if the Elder Stars all dropped dead at my feet."
There was a long pause before Dragon sighed wistfully.
"Oh well, worth a shot."
"Slave Arrow!"
Huffing, Hancock lowered her hands, leaving Dragon to blink in surprise at the two statues he was now holding.
"They were about to try something," Hancock stated, flicking her eyes to one agent with his hand in his pocket.
Dragon nodded. "Dyna-Stone, I would wager, these scum do not like to be taken alive. And now, I suppose, I'll have to help you escape from this battle so that you can unpetrify my prizes. Preferably right in front of my interrogators."
"Preferably," Hancock nodded. "And I suppose it wouldn't hurt to state that I am not averse to a more… long-term professional arrangement."
Dragon grinned, and in that grin, Hancock saw the relation to Luffy. "I look forward to it. Now, let's get out of here before someone tries to rescue these fools."
Hancock nodded, though a look of concern came on her face as she looked back to the sea. "I need to find my sisters first. I won't leave without them. And—Luffy!"
Dragon was already looking in the same direction, and the same dark anger he'd had when he intercepted Akainu had now reappeared. This time, however, it was directed at someone else going after Luffy.