Well, I really didn't want to do this to you... Drake thought with a small sigh. But it seems this is just your fate.
Clapping his hands together, he prepared to head back to base in high spirits. Suddenly, every hair on his body stood on end as a primal instinct of pure dread slammed into his nervous system.
"Ma-mamama... Ma-mamama!"
A booming screech tore through the sky as Big Mom, her fiery pink hair wild, charged straight at him. Riding atop her black thundercloud, Zeus, she brandished her massive broadsword and licked her lips with bloodlust. She was fully armed and combat-ready.
"Holy hell, this isn't how the script was supposed to go," Drake muttered, forcing his reflexes into high gear.
But he was a microsecond too slow. The giant blade swung down, accompanied by a sudden bolt of heavenly lightning that completely enveloped him in an apocalyptic flash.
CRASH-RUMBLE!
As the thick cloak of smoke finally drifted apart, Drake's silhouette slowly materialized before the Emperor's eyes.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
His face was entirely blackened by soot. With every ragged breath he drew, a thick puff of dark gray smoke billowed past his lips.
"Today, I'll pay you back in full for what you did to Totto Land!" Big Mom roared, bringing her massive sword down in a ferocious vertical strike.
"Then bring it on!" Drake barked.
The multicolored brilliance of the Canhong Sword flashed into his grip as he threw his full torque into a direct counter-slash.
BANG!!!
The monumental collision unleashed a violent energy wave, ripping into the marine grid below and sending massive walls of seawater crashing outward in every direction.
Vrumm!
Drake violently punched the air with his free fist, activating his spatial displacement loops. The localized space fractured like glass, channeling an unparalleled, crushing shockwave straight toward Big Mom's torso.
Coating her massive arm in a thick shell of Armament Haki, Big Mom drove her own fist forward to meet the shockwave head-on.
BOOM!!!
The surrounding space shattered layer upon layer, the ocean churning in a frantic frenzy as colossal waves erupted into the sky. Along the nearby coast, massive jagged boulders disintegrated into fine gravel under the pure pressure.
SMASH!
FLASH!
In a fraction of a millisecond, Drake vanished, reappearing directly behind Big Mom's blind spot to drive a heavy fist downward.
While the confrontation had locked both fighters into aerial parameters, Drake commanded absolute maneuverability through his spatial loops and instantaneous teleportation, navigating the sky with perfect freedom. Big Mom, in contrast, was entirely dependent on Zeus and her fire homie, Prometheus, to preserve her flight tracks.
The disparity in their mechanical mobility was absolute.
Vrumm—CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!
As his fist connected, the space around them crumpled, dumping a terrifying volume of raw kinetic force directly into Big Mom's frame.
"Agh!" Big Mom shrieked as the impact bit into her flesh. Wrenching her torso, she swung her massive sword through a sweeping horizontal arc to cleave him apart.
Drake simply met the blade with another full-power punch.
BOOM!
The concussive shock forced both combatants apart, Drake instantly utilizing his teleportation to establish a safe tactical buffer.
Staring across at the matriarch, a shadow of genuine surprise crossed Drake's features. Big Mom was fighting like a woman entirely possessed. Within a remarkably brief timeline, they had already traded dozens of high-intensity blows.
His own stamina pools were beginning to record a noticeable drain, yet Big Mom appeared entirely unbothered, her vital signs remaining completely stable.
While Drake technically held the upper hand in terms of positioning, the raw, terrifying endurance the Emperor commanded was an anomaly his baseline attributes couldn't match in a long war of attrition.
The data was clear: Big Mom had prepared extensively for this rematch.
However...
The corners of Drake's lips curled into a sharp, confident smirk. They were currently locked over the open sea, which mathematically meant he was standing directly in the center of his absolute home court!
"Spatial... Tidal Wave!"
Bringing his palms together in a synchronized snap, Drake condensed his spatial energy to its absolute limit before violently wrenching his arms upward. At the same time, he drove a crushing fist down from the heavens.
BOOM!
The descending spatial shockwave slammed heavily into Big Mom's guard, forcing her to cross her broadsword over her head to brace against the torque.
Right at that exact microsecond, the ocean beneath her feet violently convulsed. With her coordinates acting as the absolute epicenter, gargantuan walls of sea-stone currents erupted from every single quadrant, forming a massive aquatic maw that forcefully swallowed her whole.
"Gah!" Big Mom shrieked in sudden panic.
It was an immutable law governing the world that the exact microsecond a Devil Fruit user intersected with seawater, their internal systems suffered total power failure.
But for an anomaly like Drake, a limitation of that nature simply didn't exist.
"The simulation is over, Big Mom!" Drake focused his spatial currents through the length of his masterwork steel, unleashing a flying slash that literally bisected the raging surface of the ocean.
Trapped deep within the watery abyss, Big Mom was entirely deprived of her mobility, her systems unable to coordinate a single defensive action to counter the descending slash.
Yet, before the blade could claim her life signs, a massive wall of sea-stone-infused water and candy slammed into the path, accompanied by a desperate roar from the rearguard.
It was the eldest son, Charlotte Perospero!
Riding atop a customized candy craft to preserve his own buoyancy, he desperately surged across the swells, mapping an intercept course to shield his mother.
"Candy Maiden!" A gargantuan, jagged fortress of hardened syrup erupted from the waves, thrusting forward to blockade Drake's line of sight.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Drake unleashed a heavy spatial tremor, instantly pulverizing the candy construct into fine sugar dust.
"You honestly calculate that a low-tier asset like you possesses the leverage to rewrite this equation alone?"
Drake drove his fist downward in a ruthless follow-up.
The marine grid tilted violently under the kinetic pressure. Perospero's fragile candy craft was reduced to a lone, shivering spark caught in the dead center of an apocalyptic typhoon, his survival probability dropping toward zero.
"Ma-mamama... Ma-mamama! My precious son doesn't belong to a class of assets you're permitted to delete so easily!" A thunderous roar suddenly erupted from the absolute rearguard.
"What?!"
Drake's pupils violently contracted. Without a single millisecond of latency, he stacked six independent layers of spatial walls directly behind his spine.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK...
The distinct, terrifying resonance of shattering space echoed through his ears. Before his brain could even process the data of his shattered shields, a massive blade had already breached his perimeter from behind.
Forced into an immediate micro-adjustment, Drake violently wrenched his hips and swung his fist around to intercept the steel head-on.
BOOM!!!
Executing a hasty counter-move without proper leverage, Drake was violently thrown backward through the air tracks, tumbling across a massive distance before his teleportation loops could successfully re-stabilize his position.
Bracing his stance, a wave of genuine shock rippled through Drake's mind. While he commanded an overwhelming environmental advantage in this sector, systematically finalizing the deletion of her line was proving to be an exceptionally grueling calculation.
An Emperor of the Sea was an Emperor for a reason.
Even if a fighter had successfully secured a verified victory against them in the past, a single microsecond of complacency could still cause their entire strategy to capsize in a total disaster.
Re-aligning his focus, the relaxed expression on Drake's features dissolved into absolute gravity. Engaging a Yonko in a total war was no simulation.
Furthermore, he wasn't just dealing with an isolated sovereign; her elite officer cabinet was actively reinforcing her perimeter. He held absolute zero clearance to miscalculate.
He had to deploy his maximum-intensity combat protocols right now.
"Ma-mamama... you truly represent an exceptionally dense, irritating obstacle to clear!" Big Mom growled, her massive boots anchoring themselves onto Perospero's candy platform as she glared across at Drake.
The real-time data verified that Perospero's high-stakes intervention had successfully extracted the matriarch from the ocean currents. Otherwise, her physical mass would have already plummeted to the dark bottom of the sea.
Even if her vital signs had managed to survive the submersion, her consciousness would have been knocked permanently offline, stripping her of any capacity to project her lethality for the rest of this campaign.
Trading blows with a Yonko truly permitted zero margins for error.
The Fall of the Samurai
Meanwhile, across a separate sector of the marine grid a mere two thousand meters away from the Onigashima shoreline...
Kaido's gargantuan dragon frame threw its head back, unleashing a world-altering roar that sent a massive, visible shockwave of compressed air tearing through the sky.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The remaining retainers of the Akazaya Nine were converted into a succession of human cannonballs, their broken frames blasted across the sky to crash heavily onto the parched earth of Onigashima's plaza. Within a single fraction of a second, Kin'emon and the core loyalists suffered total combat failure.
Just as Ace and Yamato were preparing to launch a high-velocity breakthrough to clear the infantry dragnets before them, a mangled silhouette slammed violently into the stone directly in front of their boots.
It was Kin'emon.
"You... your profile maps to Kin'emon!" Yamato's pupils violently contracted to pinpricks. Dropping her spiked club, she frantically reached down to stabilize his frame.
"Hold your hands, Yamato! His internal structure has sustained catastrophic mechanical trauma; any physical displacement during this phase will accelerate his system failure," Ace barked, his hand aggressively clamping onto her shoulder to freeze her movement.
Kin'emon's current telemetry was exceptionally grim. His limbs rested against the stone with an unnatural, absolute limpness, verifying that the shockwave had systematically pulverized his entire skeletal framework into fine splinters.
"Sir... your profile... represents Luffy-dono's other older brother, Ace-san... correct?" Kin'emon whispered, every single syllable clearing his jaws demanding a grueling expenditure of his remaining life reserves. "My individual leadership metrics... have returned a total deficit... even at this definitive threshold of destiny... I lack the necessary capability to avenge our fallen lord... to fulfill his sacred dreams... I..."
As the words trailed off, a thick stream of bitter tears spilled uncontrollably down the samurai's battered face.
"Save your remaining energy blocks and terminate the report," Ace noted, his tone dropping to a monolithic pitch. "From this microsecond forward, the deletion of Kaido's line remains strictly under my jurisdiction!"
Vrumm—
A spectacular, apocalyptic aura of pure fire violently erupted across Ace's physical mass, the thermal currents scaling up in volume with every passing millisecond until the heat warped the air.
The cool composure in his eyes dissolved entirely as brilliant, incandescent flames began venting directly from his pupils. His brows, his hair, and his very silhouette transformed into a roaring, blinding vortex of crimson fire.