Chapter 81

Cross-Brain AN: We changed our minds about the cruel cliffhanger for this chapter: it will no longer be at the end of it. Or maybe it will, depending on your viewpoint…

We'll be cutting a bit into the future in this chapter, but the Denouement is still one more update away. For now, rest assured: the war isn't over. The 'Misery' in 'Marineford Misery' is about to begin.

but before that, at the suggestion of Yu Narukaze on FFN, due to how long it's been since our previous update, here's a recap of what happened last time:

As Luffy and the escapees fell from the sky, Bentham used his powers to pose as Cross. Sengoku's forces fired at them, and a sniper intending to kill Squard instead shot his knee out. Ivankov and Crocodile nullified the guns while Whitey Bay blasted a weak spot on the ice to open a patch of water for the ship to fall into.

After landing, Luffy shut down Crocodile's attempt to attack Whitebeard, then gave Whitebeard one of the five bottles of fermented seaweed juice that the TDWS gave him for the care package. The action caused Whitebeard to laugh so hard that he coughed up blood. The two of them shared a respectful conversation as the rest of the escapees came to the Moby Dick, and Whitebeard patted Luffy's back, warning him to not get hit from behind. The Marines tried to stall the Pirates by breaking the ice between the Moby Dick and the plaza, but Whitey Bay prepared to fix it while Luffy used Funkfreed's present, carved sandals made of Taolf wood, to run on the water.

Squard confronted Whitebeard about Ace's parentage, ending with him sobbing in remorse and Whitebeard embracing him. A Suomi sniper in a tower, the same who shot Squard, tried to kill Whitebeard by targeting Squard to circumvent Haki. Whitebeard detected it too late, managing to divert the bullet from Squard but taking an injury himself; he retaliated by blasting the tower with his powers.

With Soundbite's powers, Luffy and Cross had a quick sitrep, and Soundbite identified three BioMEGAs dormant in the area. Luffy vented his frustration at that fact by attacking John Giant, using a Jet Bazooka to mask the blast of the Reject Dial under the bandages on his left hand to knock him out in one blast, then repeated the BioMEGAs' weak point to Cross, which the disguised Bentham repeated to the battlefield. With the surprise foiled, Sengoku unleashed the three BioMEGAs: an aquatic serpent with mantis sickles that tore through one of Whitebeard's blue whale ships, a gargantuan four-armed rhinoceros that spewed acid, and a giant flying jellyfish that deployed squid-like drones.

Whitebeard's seven nurses showed up ready to fight, and Whitebeard coerced Buggy into entering the fray. Inazuma used his Snip-Snip powers to cut a mass of ice, appropriated weapons, and one unfortunate Marine soldier into an origami frog-shaped tank, which the Newkamas and Galdino armed.

Further in, Eleventh Division Commander Kingdew challenged Akainu's mysterious priestess Irian, who was revealed to have eaten the Chord-Chord Fruit, allowing her to make anyone move according to her rhythm, which she used to force any Marine deserters to return and fight. After getting answers from Jonathan, Cross destroyed her rhythm with his foghorn, and then Soundbite's powers amplified the Tone Dial that Brook gave Luffy to fill the air with Binks's Brew, preventing her from reclaiming the rhythm. Soundbite finished by Gastro-Blasting Irian, sending her off of her platform and into the midst of battle, impeding her further.

While Jonathan and Tsuru reflected on Luffy and Cross's abilities, the Warlords began confronting Luffy. The disguised Bentham and Ivankov intercepted Kuma, and after Luffy failed to bribe Mihawk with his second bottle of seaweed juice, Buggy inadvertently engaged Mihawk after the land-based BioMEGA's acid sent him flying. Sengoku, at Garp's information, exposed Buggy as a Roger Pirate to the battlefield and the world, and Buggy, enraged at having his secret exposed and no longer being able to lie low, unleashed his true strength as a veteran of the New World, fighting Mihawk equally. Doflamingo confronted Luffy next; hearing Cross having a panic attack at Doflamingo being in his vicinity, Luffy distracted Doflamingo by tossing his third bottle of seaweed juice, strapped with one of Robin's plastique explosives and with one of the five supercharged feathers Billy gave him inside. This bought enough time for Hancock to reach Doflamingo and engage him. Finally, Perona called three of her strongest pets: a giant silver crane, a fireball-spitting toad, and a super-fast quill-shooting porcupine. All three were indiscriminate in their attacks, which Perona dismissed as inadequate training time.

Sengoku finally saw through Bentham's disguise, but Soundbite demonstrated that with his Awakened powers, they didn't need to be physically present to fight. Akainu informed Sengoku that Cross had leaked their plans both of baiting Whitebeard and the encirclement walls, and Sengoku immediately initiated the plan but made no attempt to cut communications first. But T-Bone destroyed the gears that would deploy the walls and gave the signal for the other Masons to mutiny.

From the front lines to the gun emplacements to the soldier who got swept up in the frog tank, Marines turned on their fellows, donning bandannas to differentiate themselves, led by Hina and T-Bone; Yoko and Boss Kabuto attacked T-Bone but were knocked out. Furious, Sengoku ordered Sentomaru and the Pacifistas forward, then confirmed that Isuka wasn't carrying a bandanna.

While the Pacifistas docked, Jinbe joined Luffy in confronting a mob of Vice Admirals led by Tsuru, who inconspicuously signaled Jormungandr to enter the fray: Lucci, Hattori, Kaku, and Jabra joined Luffy on the front lines while everyone else, including the subjugated remnants of the other eight Cipher Pols, held off Sentomaru and the Pacifistas. Kaku and Jabra stalled the Vice Admirals, which Luffy contributed to by giving Lucci his fourth bottle of seaweed juice, also with one of Billy's feathers inside. Hattori dropped it on them, and that along with Kaku and Jabra's assault bought enough time for the Division Commanders to converge on them.

Crocodile and Daz took over attacking the land-based BioMEGA from Namur and Atmos while Luffy, Lucci, and Jinbe continued forward. A sniper shot Luffy's ankle with a sea prism stone bullet, and while Lucci sniped the sniper and Jinbe bandaged Luffy, Soundbite channeled Roger's voice from beyond the grave, praising Luffy on his progress and pleading with him to save his son.

That was the final straw for Sengoku, who ordered Isuka to execute Ace immediately. Luffy unleashed a burst of Haki to try stopping her, but she remained conscious…and blew up the stand with a detonator hidden in her glove, grabbing Ace and running into the battlefield, though enduring a shockwave from Sengoku's Buddha form as they fled. The pair of them bickered about Ace not seeing through Isuka's ploy while Sengoku dealt with another heart attack and Garp tried to break out of his shock. When he succeeded, he confronted them in a blind rage. Luffy snapped him into sense with a cannonball to the face and then, with all the strength and will he could muster, struck his grandfather with Gum-Gum Red Hawk, sending him flying back to what remained of the execution stand. Garp took in the fact that the attack would leave a scar before falling back to the ground and telling Sengoku that he quit. And on the battlefield, Luffy unlocked Ace's shackles with the key Lucci provided, and Ace prepared to fight his way out.

Meanwhile, in Impel Down, Caribou led Blackbeard and his newly expanded crew to the World Pirates' submarine, and despite Hannyabal, Sadi, and Saldeath's best efforts, they escaped, leaving a bloody gaping hole to the Calm Belt. Three Sea Kings began struggling to break in, but Smoker and Tashigi arrived and shouted Cross's password, Joy Boy. With Popora's help to convey their wishes, the Sea Kings left, using a layer of mucus to block the hole, with the promise that Saldeath would train the Blugoris not to target eggs or children when they hunted Sea Kings. The jailers agreed to save their questions for after they undid Blackbeard's damage to Level 6, and the Divine grimly resigned themselves to waiting to see what the others at Marineford could do to stop Blackbeard.

And there you have it. Now, into the future…

~1 Day After the War~

In the aftermath of the worst day in living memory, amidst the world's forces squabbling over power in the sudden imbalance, a happy few nations were able to disregard the new storm and return to some semblance of normalcy.

From the outside, Impel Down seemed to be one of them. Only those within its walls knew better, and none more than the five executives and three outsiders currently sitting in the Warden's office.

"An armistice with Sea Kings," Magellan said, frowning heavily. "We owe you much for saving this prison. Our home, our lives, the lives of many beyond the walls of this place… But your actions, however beneficial, do not excuse any potential crimes that you might have committed in achieving such ends."

"The Whitebeards broke through the Marines' lines with the aid of two Sea Kings that were unnaturally cooperative," Domino stated with clinical precision. "In all of recorded history, the ability to tame Sea Kings has never been confirmed beyond the level of rumor, even counting the incidents that involved a Conqueror. If that can be called 'taming', even. Did they use your same alliance?"

"Yes," Smoker answered immediately. "Except that we were the ones using their alliance. There's been bad blood between the Sea Kings and the World Government for centuries, so when they found out exactly what the black flag meant, they decided to ease up on attacking pirate ships. Those of us who aren't pirates have to rely on the password—" His grimace deepened, but there was no choice but to reveal the truth. "—that Cross gave us."

The room's atmosphere suddenly became three times thicker, though the three Masons didn't visibly react.

"So, you are collaborating with him," Magellan bit out darkly.

Furious as he sounded, it was a positive sign that the room wasn't currently a toxic hell zone. Still, the stares coming their way were becoming more and more scathing by the second.

"You came here to facilitate Straw Hat Luffy's jailbreak."

Hannyabal himself might not have carried much weight, but his words were spoken like a death sentence. Which in this room and company, they might as well have been.

"That was the price," Tashigi confirmed without a shred of remorse. "One we were perfectly willing to pay, given how Luffy is genuinely a good person, as I'm certain everyone in this room can agree upon—" Tashigi took solace in the fact that the room's atmosphere momentarily abated, the Wardens grimacing. "—but still the price we had to pay. They undermined Justice by ignoring Ace's crimes and arranging the execution only because of his blood. We took the price because of that and because of the number of lives we could save by preventing the war and everything that came with it."

Her piece said, Tashigi's facade cracked. She slumped in her seat, her hand pressing to her face. "For all the good that that accomplished. We failed, Luffy failed, and all those people died…"

The silence that followed could only be described as 'oppressive'. After a moment, Domino cocked her head. "Are you referring to the Marines… or to the Pirates?"

Tashigi's gaze slowly lifted to stare at the Chief Guard, her gaze dead. "At what point…" she asked in a slow, low tone. "Did the loss of thousands of human lives, regardless of allegiance, stop being a tragedy?"

Five unimpressed expressions answered her. Magellan spoke again.

"Why would you do this? Turn against Justice and ally with—?"

"Against Justice?" Smoker snapped. "I've seen, over and over, that when it actually matters the Government does whatever suits their interests and calls it Justice. I've chosen to keep my own definition. The only thing that I would disregard it for is something like this, where the alternative is a bigger bloodbath."

He folded his arms, leaning back from where he'd leaned over the desk. "The world's been rotten for a long time, and plenty of the whistleblowers wound up down here, framed or forgotten. We allied with Cross because he forced us to acknowledge the corruption, and once we did, the only choice was to do something about it. It's only with his help that we've been able to recruit like-minded people to fix what's wrong with the world. And that's another big reason we came here."

At that, the jailers looked almost indignant.

"Excuse me? You confess to high treason, facilitating a break-in, consorting with the most infamous pirates in Paradise, and you expect us to pardon all of that and join you?" Mistress Sadi demanded.

"You're already considering it," Smoker countered calmly, getting a flinch from the less-disciplined members of Impel Down's staff. "If you weren't, you would have melted us into a slurry as soon as I said Cross's name."

Magellan got to his feet, staring with well-bridled anger at Smoker. "The events of the past week seem to have been designed to make us wish to rebel against the World Government. Tell me, how much of it was your doing?"

"Next to none of it," Tashigi answered immediately. "We made sure that our path to Marineford took us close to Impel Down so we would be the ones that they arranged for extra security, so that we could monitor Luffy's progress. And Isuka…" Here, Tashigi's stern confidence faded to sheepish hesitation. "Ah, w-well, she was deep-cover at the time, and was putting on a show more for any onlooking Marines than for you. She's far nicer and more polite than she acted…and, ah, very sorry about what she said, and very intent on never coming within a nautical mile of here again?"

"Good," Magellan snorted, his glare intensifying. "And? Beyond that?"

"Nothing else," Smoker answered. "We had nothing to do with those abominations, we didn't contact anyone on the outside until after Blackbeard escaped, and we didn't request Fire Fist's early transfer. If he hadn't left in chains, we could have stopped everything. What you need to understand is that we've tried sending agents in before, but never succeeded. We couldn't have done anything, even if we'd wanted to."

Magellan's frown remained as he sank back into his seat, and Saldeath spoke up.

"And what about where you were involved? How much did you facilitate the jailbreaks?"

"We did nothing to help Blackbeard and we were as surprised about the Worlds as you were. As for Straw Hat—" Smoker jerked his head at his subordinates. "These two and Boa Hancock made sure that he made it in unnoticed. Everything else was all him, and I didn't hold back when I fought them on their way out."

"And I didn't hinder your guards in any way when we went looking for him after his escape," Tashigi added, Popora half-snorting, half-sneezing in agreement.

Hannyabal's stare narrowed suspiciously. "But you likely did know what happened to him after he escaped. Where he escaped to."

"What I know is that our justice system is inherently flawed and that you've been taking in prisoners that were condemned in rigged trials," Tashigi retorted hotly. "Meaning that there are a lot of cases that need to be re-evaluated, before their sentences, or the prisoners involved, are executed."

"We're not pretending that everything we do is just because of our end goal," Smoker continued. "But when our enemy is someone who does, lines have to be crossed. We need people like you, who won't compromise your own feelings on Justice, to make sure that when it's all over, we haven't lost ourselves along the way."

Silence fell. Hannyabal opened his mouth, but Magellan raised a hand to stop him. It was a mix of respect, habit, and just a small amount of guilt at how he had claimed his position that made the new Warden obey. Another minute passed before Magellan spoke.

"Two outside forces vying for my loyalty. Both of them engaging in morally reprehensible acts. Prison breaks, mutinies, alliances with pirates…" He slowly dragged his glare across the Marines before him. "And all in the name… of 'The Greater Good'?"

The other jailers looked to their (ostensibly) former Warden and were a bit surprised to see that his expression had softened. He was still scowling, but the venom had abated some.

Magellan broke the lingering silence again, this time with a tired sigh. "…Your motivations are better than most I could name with the same goals, that much I will concede." And then, just as swiftly his glare redoubled. "But what proof will you offer that you are on the correct side?"

"The fact that we're here now."

Blinks of surprise ran around the table, because rather than Smoker as they'd expected, it was Tashigi who said that.

"We put our lives on the line by telling you the truth, and we took that kind of risk because we believe that your motivations are unquestionably just. And if we're right about that… then we expect that you'll make the right choice."

On any other day, the mere idea would be blasphemy. Insanity. Nothing short of utter impossibility. But today was not 'any other day'. This was one of the days following Marineford. By the miracle of the impossible events preceding it, Magellan seemed to be at least considering the proposal laid in front of him. But his face remained grim.

"…if I were to accept. What would you expect of me?"

"All we'd ask is information, and discretion," Smoker answered.

An incredulous snort ripped its way out of Domino's mouth. "You expect us to believe that?"

"Yes, because of what he'd be getting in turn," Smoker drawled. "Magellan would be one of the leaders, equal to any of the other decision-makers. Any information we have is yours to request as long as it remains in trusted hands, and we ask the same in return. Anything else is open for discussion."

Magellan tented his fingers on his desk, somehow looming even more as he stared at the possible, very vaguely possible allies arrayed before him. "…and, beyond possibly being part of something that follows Justice better than the World Government… what else do you have to offer? On a personal level."

Smoker and Tashigi exchanged looks, clearly caught slightly off-guard by this question.

"We would be your allies… your friends, if you wanted. We would fight and die alongside you as readily as any of your subordinates," Smoker ultimately answered. "We either change the world and make it out on top, together, or we'll all be sharing the same grave."

"A-And, if that isn't enough!" Tashigi piped up, a cold sweat coating her brow. "We can get you a… a steady supply of Amazon Lily's snake wine?"

Magellan's eyes shot wide. When his chest abruptly distended and he started shaking, the Wardens all leaped for their gas masks in a panic, not wanting to get melted for these Marines' impudence.

"A-Ah, we could probably also arrange Alabastan desert strawberries?" The Inquisitor's tone hitched in mounting panic. "Or even, maybe… ah… aheh, Commodore? Help?"

Smoker didn't answer, though the sheen of sweat on his own forehead said everything. But the panic of those gathered froze into shock when all that escaped from Magellan's mouth…

"Snrk…"

Was a snort. A snort that was followed by another, and another until finally, the unprecedented happened.

"SNRK—! DOKU! DOKUKUKUKU!"

(Ex-)Warden Magellan, the living embodiment of miasma and bane of criminals the world over, clapped his hands to his belly, threw his head back, and laughed. Laughed with honest, genuine amusement.

"DOKUKUKU! You… You are the first, the first outlaws in my entire tenure at this prison, to try bribing your way out of punishment. The audacity, the gall…" He shook his head, a small smirk of amusement on his face. "You are most definitely allies of Monkey D. Luffy, however far removed."

Smoker's eyes twitched and Tashigi fought hard to not look away, her face blazing. Popora hid his own smirk.

Magellan's smile slowly melted away into a neutral mask. Tashigi calmed her heart rate while the other four jailers tentatively removed their masks. It was a thoughtful silence permeating the room.

"…explain your organization to me," Magellan said at last. Not as a demand or an order, but a patient request.

"The New World Masons have officers on both sides of the law; the common goal uniting us is a world of freedom, with a proper balance between keeping people safe and allowing them to live as they please," Tashigi instinctively rattled off, having delivered the exact same lecture dozens of times since the founding of the Masons. "The leadership roster is divided into the Zodiac of the Divine and the Zodiac of the Damned. The Divine are Marine officers. We hold two of the six seats that are filled and plan to fill three more with the war over. The Damned, however, are outlaws. After the events of the War, we now have eight seats filled, one shared between two people. Cross is the Warden of the two groups, with only a handful of the other Straw Hats directly involved as Adjutants. Anyone below the leaders only knows as much as their CO trusts them to know."

"And the Revolutionaries?"

"Indirectly affiliated," Smoker answered. "Cross has an alliance with Dragon himself, and we have plans to establish regular communications going forward. But our operations are separate. Only the Zodiac members and the Straw Hats have the authority to contact them."

No further questions came. Minutes ticked by, the three Divine forced to exercise every scrap of discipline to not let their impatience show. The other executives, even Hannyabal, watched silently for the ex-Warden's answer.

At long last, he puffed out a sigh and raised his head to face them.

"I… will take a seat. But!" Magellan forestalled the Masons' relieved reactions with a raised finger. "It shall be one among the Damned. Keep your half among those who pretend to be subordinate to the World Government." The Warden leaned back and sat tall in his seat, as his subordinates all snapped to attention. "Impel Down flies its own flag."

The three Divine, though surprised by his request, sagged in relief. The other four jailers, while still at attention, all looked at Magellan with mixed expressions as he rose to his feet and continued to talk.

"And rest assured, this is not a declaration I make lightly: I will give the New World Masons my utmost scrutiny. Be aware! This is not a pledge of my loyalty to you, yet. You have promised transparency, and I will hold you to it. I will see what you do in the name of your Justice, what you condone, how you act. And I will make my decision whether I will support you permanently from what I see."

The other jailers relaxed, and Hannyabal nodded as he faced them.

"You have our interest. The Government has proven itself to be lacking, so we'll give you a chance."

"But make no mistake, mmmmm, we have no issue standing alone if you prove yourselves lacking as well," Mistress Sadi continued.

"Agreed," Smoker said, rising to his feet alongside his companions. "We will answer whatever questions you have. And you'll need to choose a codename from the Eastern Zodiac; the remaining options are Rat, Horse, and Boar—and Dragon, though we've been avoiding that one for obvious reasons. As for us, there's one thing we need to know from you right now."

Magellan's eyebrows rose. The two officers exchanged looks again, nodded, and Tashigi looked Magellan in the eye as she spoke.

"The seventh floor of Impel Down. We need to see it." Tashigi's gaze sharpened. "Non-negotiable. Before anything else, we need to see it immediately."

Magellan blinked slowly at the request. Otherwise, his expression remained unchanged as he answered:

"As you wish."

He rose to his feet and led the company out towards the elevator. Once it lurched downward, Magellan spoke again.

"And, by the way… I do believe that 'Boar' will suffice."

Hannyabal's face reddened, visibly forcing himself not to say the wisecrack on his tongue. Perhaps noticing this, and knowing it was a losing battle, Mistress Sadi took the chance to ask the biggest question left on the jailers' minds:

"…really, though. 'Joy Boy?'"

Their soon-to-be allies sighed heavily.

"Don't ask," Tashigi stated fervently. "Cross is the one who set it up. We don't know, they don't want us to know, and frankly, none of us particularly want to know either."

Domino slowly turned her head to eyeball the Marine.

"I take it he annoys you a bit as well, then?"

The only response to that was Popora throwing his head back and cackling.

~Present~

"FLAME FENCE!"

A wall of fire, twenty feet high and half again as thick, roared to life between Ace and the remaining troops around the execution platform. It curved around, protecting their flanks, and he knew he didn't need to close the rear. His crew, his family, had that avenue well-covered.

"There, that should buy us a little time," Ace declared. He turned to his brother. "Now—"

CLONK!

Suddenly, Ace found himself squatting, clutching a goose egg on the top of his skull. Above him, Luffy loomed, looking more pissed off than Ace had ever seen him, and with his pipe tapping steadily in his hand. It was not an expression he liked. But for the moment, one question was ringing in Ace's ringing skull.

"How even?!" he demanded of his Paradise-level little brother.

"Sea prism stone," Luffy answered bluntly. "That was for being a dumbass even after Cross told you not to!"

"Hey, that wasn't my fault!" Ace protested. "I got help, just like he said! How was I supposed to guess that a freaking Admiral would show up just when I was about to win?!"

Luffy blinked. "Oh." Then he squinted slightly at Ace. "Are you going to say something about how you don't deserve to be rescued?"

"I mean, not anymore. I'd like to think I'm past that at this point."

Luffy grinned, and something in Ace's chest untangled. "Shishishi! That's fine, then."

"Good, because I've got something to say, too." And with that, Ace coated his fist in Armament and socked Luffy square in the nose, knocking him on his ass.

"Ow! Ace, what was that for?" Luffy wailed, clutching his bleeding nose.

"That was for being a dumbass yourself and charging into Hell behind me!" he snapped, before reaching out his hand and hauling Luffy to his feet, wrapping him in a one-armed hug. "This is for coming to save me."

Somehow, Luffy's grin grew even wider. "Shishishishi! No problem, Ace!"

Off to the side, Jinbe, Isuka, and Lucci watched the byplay with bemused expressions. "Are they always like this?" Lucci asked.

"Yes," the other two said together.

"Guys, as touching as this reunion is, we're on the clock and the two-minute warning is about to hit. We need to go." There was a pause, and then Cross added, with more venom than Ace had ever heard from the man, "And so help me, if a single one of you morons says 'we made it' while that fortress is still on your horizon, no power in this world or any other will save you from my judgment."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Ace hastily and truthfully replied. He turned to regard the other fighters near him, nodding respectfully at Jinbe and squinting briefly at Lucci, before turning back to the battlefield behind them. It was, naturally, a complete clusterfuck that defied his attempts to make any sense of it. "Alright, what's our plan for getting out of here?"

"Um, well…"

Of all the people to open the planning session, Luffy had been the last person Ace expected. So he damn near dropped the two items Luffy tossed at him. The first, a bottle, he was pretty sure had more of that seaweed alcohol, and he could already think of a few uses for it. The latter, though, that made him hesitate.

"Ace," Luffy cut in, drawing a surprised flinch. "It's okay. Use it. It's why I brought it."

Ace hesitated a bit longer, but ultimately, he gave the item a much more appreciative once-over.

"Well, when you put it that way…"

~o~

"Hey, wait! If you're all giving me something to bring along, then I should bring something too, shouldn't I? My own item?"

"To… yourself?"

"No, for Ace! He'll probably need some help once I get him out, right?"

"That… actually makes sense."

"I'd check for signs of the apocalypse, but that feels a bit on the nose at the moment."

"Still, what'll you take, then? What the hell could give a New World-grade Logia who can turn into a one-man inferno that little extra edge?"

Luffy gave that a moment's thought. A long moment's thought.

"I know one thing."

~o~

FWOOSH!

The temperature of the air surrounding the would-be escapees spiked ever higher as Ace coated the pipe in his hand in his power, doubling the makeshift weapon's length in flame.

"Who the hell am I to refuse?" the flame-man chuckled to himself, draping the portable pillar of flames to rest across his shoulders. "Right, this'll definitely help, but as good as it is to be armed, I was hoping for an actual plan."

"Simple. A fighting retreat back to your ships. Whitebeard should have left at least one remaining on the seabed as a contingency," Lucci intoned.

Ace nodded. "Sounds like the old man. Then it seems we need to link up with the rest of the Whitebeards. Unless… Cross, do you have anything to add?"

"No. You know where the Division Commanders are, they're your best bet," Cross declared fervently, his heretofore calm, even voice starting to rise. "They should be disengaged shortly, and after that, all you need to do is run. Run, keep running, and no matter what, don't stop, don't you dare stop for even a single—GRGH!"

Suddenly, a hacking cough echoed through the battlefield. Luffy's eyes snapped to one of the traitor Marines—which was an unkind description but the most accurate he could come up with—who had a snail on his shoulder.

A snail that, along with countless others in the world, had just coughed up blood, and whose face was twisted in agony.

-o-

"Gnyaaagh," Cross wheezed, his eyes clenched shut and his blood-stained teeth grit in clear agony. Dreading what he could already feel, Cross raised his hand from where it was clutching his throbbing stomach. Seeing by the gentle lights of his transceiver that it was stained red, he rammed his head back against the wall he was leaning against. "Nnnoooo, nononono c'mon damn it, not now…"

"Cross?" Luffy breathed.

The pirate stiffened before tentatively cracking his eye open, a soul-deep desperation burning within. "N-Not to worry, Captain. 'Tis only a flesh wound." His gaze rolled up blearily, clouding slightly with a manic sense of amusement. "Heh… got to say number ten."

"Coping, coping, coping…" Soundbite muttered, keeping a nervous eye and ear on his partner as he bled out. "He's fine for now, Luffy, he's been able to keep from spilling his guts this long. BUT HE DEFINITELY WON'T BE IF YOU TWO DON'T SCRAM! FLY, YOU FOOLS!"

-o-

Grimacing, Ace turned and sprinted for the harbor. Luffy, Isuka, and Jinbe followed, while Lucci blurred out of sight with a Shave. They quickly passed Jabra, still carrying Kaku, who took one look at the group and joined them in running.

"I hope some of you have ideas for separating the Division Commanders from the Vice Admirals," he growled. "Because that's a hell of a job, and I've stuck out enough for one day, and so has this idiot! And that's saying something!"

" 'ate you too, furball…" Kaku slurred drunkenly.

"I have a few ideas—" Ace started, only for the earth to suddenly shake. "Never mind! Everyone, brace yourselves!"

If Halvard had earned himself a localized 5.0, then the Vice Admirals merited a mildly less localized 8.0. That greater spread meant none of them were seriously injured, but all of them found themselves forced to focus on their footing, rather than their opponents. Not only did this allow the Division Commanders to disengage and begin to fall back, but it also left them blind to the threat to the rear.

"Cross Fire!"

Fire bloomed in the center of the Vice Admiral line in the shape of a cross, sending singed, disoriented officers every which way. Luffy, Lucci, and Jinbe fell on them a bare second later; though unable to put any of them down, the path was clear and Jabra, Ace, and Isuka broke through, sprinting behind the cover of the Division Commanders and Whitebeard himself. They would have continued running had Ace not stopped on realizing that one particular person hadn't moved to follow them.

"Pops?" he breathed, turning around to find Whitebeard standing like a wall behind them. "Pops, what are you doing?! C'mon, we need to get out of here!"

"You need to get out of here," Whitebeard intoned. "You and all the rest of my sons and daughters. I am old, Ace. A relic of an era long past. A new era is dawning, and it's reckless youngsters like you that need to lead it. Not an old fossil like me."

"Pops…" Ace breathed, wide-eyed.

"Ace, tell me. Was I a good father?"

A hush fell over the area. Calls to hurry up and go fell silent. And in this silence, Ace answered, his voice quivering, "You were. You were the best father I could have asked for."

Whitebeard turned and knelt down in front of Ace, drawing him into a hug. "Live, brat," he declared. "Because if I see you again too soon, I'll make you regret it."

After a moment, Whitebeard stood, and stepped back into his guard spot. Ace stared at his back, face twisting through emotion after emotion until a hand alighted on his shoulder. He looked back, finding Luffy giving him a concerned look.

"Ace. We need to go."

Grimacing, and wiping his eyes, Ace turned his back on his father and ran. Luffy, Lucci, and Jinbe fell into step alongside him while Isuka and Jabra, still toting Kaku's body, split off in another direction.

-o-

Hearing his son running finally eased the last of the tension in Whitebeard's chest. He felt relaxed. Freer than he'd been in decades. There was no more consideration of politics, of responsibility. Those were all in the hands of his sons, his crew. All he needed to do was wreak the most havoc possible to aid in their escape.

He eyed the battlefield. The Vice Admirals, battered but all combat-capable, clustered in a ragged line, visibly unwilling to be the first one to engage him. Behind them, Ace's flame wall was dying down, revealing Fleet Admiral Sengoku being tended to by medics and Vice Admiral Garp still sprawled on the ground with a patchwork of rage-induced injuries on his face. The Admirals were nowhere to be seen. For now, that just left—

Danger flared in his mind, and Whitebeard spun and unleashed an earthquake to his left, intercepting a paw-shaped ball of compressed air that exploded on impact.

"Priority target identified," a battered, bleeding Bartholomew Kuma intoned in a mechanical voice. "Threat level: extreme. Hold nothing back."

The Warlord vanished, reappearing to Whitebeard's right—

And promptly got the pirate's hand clamped around his face.

"You're annoying me," Whitebeard stated, his hand glowing with the power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit. "Go away."

With a resounding BTOOOOM!, Kuma flew away in a ballistic arc that would take him out to the battle line, trailing smoke.

Fingers dug into Whitebeard's chest before he could turn back to the Vice Admirals. He glanced down, finding Vice Admiral Brett in the position of the Ten-Finger Pistol, and an expression of the purest regret on his face. Whitebeard clamped his hand over the back of Brett's skull, and with his free hand swung his bisento at the advancing Vice Admirals, sweeping them off their feet.

"I. Am. Whitebeard!" he declared, idly pulling Brett off his chest and slamming him face-first into the ground, before releasing him and standing to full height once again, glaring at the enemies in front of him. "And you! Shall not! PAAAAAAAASS!" The World's Strongest Man threw his fist forward, shattering the air and sending the Vice Admirals that had still been standing flying backward. Further away from his idiot son and those idiotic brats that had come to save him.

A hacking cough could be heard before a bloodstained smile appeared on a just barely visible snail on an insensate Vice Admiral Brett's shoulder.

"No matter the outcome… I… am officially winning at life… for converting Whitebeard to the Meme Side…"

Whitebeard grimaced, both due to his sucking chest wounds and the running commentary, and loosed a literally earth-shaking bellow. "Anyone else want to try their luck!?"

The gathered Vice Admirals hesitated. Whitebeard made no move to attack them; the longer they stood there, the longer his sons had to flee. Alas, it was not long before someone goaded them back into action.

"To all units: this is Admiral Akainu. Fleet Admiral Sengoku is unfit for command. I am in command now, and my orders are thus: kill every pirate. Kill every traitor. Kill every deserter. Kill every objector. Kill them all until Straw Hat Luffy, Portgas D. Ace, and Edward Newgate lie dead on this battlefield, and every enemy is driven into the sea. In the name of Absolute Justice."

Whitebeard snorted derisively. "What, does that dog think the Marines won't do that already?

"No, he knows they will…" Cross groaned miserably. "This is just him giving them some… motivation."

That proved a very British understatement, Akainu's announcement having an effect on Marine morale something akin to an afterburner on a jet engine. The Marines roared with renewed energy—fuelled by both primal fury and primal terror alike—and charged the retreating pirates, ripping into their rear flank with reckless bloodlust and abandon.

And it really said something that the Vice Admirals even managed to find the wherewithal to charge the last man on the planet you wanted to charge in a last-ditch effort.

Whitebeard heaved a tired sigh as the might of the Marines bore down on him. "Honestly, people all day today… Alright, everyone, let's hurry this up. I've got a date to keep with Roger…"

He slammed the butt of his weapon into the earth, sending a tremble all throughout the island as he threw his arms wide.

An honest smile arced beneath his glorious white beard.

"So let's make my final hours in this life as memorable as possible!"

-o-

The sight of Portgas D. Ace, Monkey D. Luffy, and a gaggle of some of the strongest Whitebeard-aligned fighters on the battlefield running away from the front line took some time to percolate through the battlefield, by sight and by snail. But percolate it did, and the Whitebeards, with the benefit of clear communications, were the first to react.

"Retreat!" came the cry. "To the ships!" All around the battlefield, the pirates unleashed one last salvo into the face of the Marine dogs and then turned to run.

Of all military maneuvers, the retreat is the most difficult to execute, particularly if one cares at all about keeping the force retreating cohesive and in fighting condition. One of the best ways to make a man face the possibility of death is to make either advancing or standing their ground seem their best option. Once given the option to flee, it can be very difficult for a man to consider anything else. The Whitebeards were a disciplined, skilled, and experienced pirate crew. But even for them, a large-scale retreat was difficult.

This was especially exacerbated by the particularly high-scale enemies that were raining hell and fury down on their heads, intent on making sure that not one more pirate than necessary could survive the day.

Most of the Vice Admirals had gone to wall off the execution platform, and so were now fighting Whitebeard. But a few had been busy leading the counterattack on the right around Oars's unmoving body, among them Vice Admiral Momonga.

As the officer stepped away from the latest knot of resistance he'd carved up, flicking the blood off his sword as he went, his gaze alighted on a few Marines standing over a group of about a dozen pirates. Pirates that were not only visibly unarmed but holding their hands behind their heads.

Frowning, Momonga blurred over in a Shave to the spot. "What do you all think you're doing?" he demanded in his best officer's voice. The Marines started, opened their mouths to explain—

And were very suddenly immolated by a fist of magma. They didn't even have time to scream.

It was only with a strong effort of will that Momonga didn't physically react. The death of the pirates didn't move him, but the abrupt execution of several Marines… Well, if Akainu hadn't been right there he probably would have done something… violent.

"Vice Admiral Momonga," Akainu stated as he disgustedly eyed the blob of cooling rock where there had once been people. "You hesitated."

"Sir," Momonga saluted. "I—"

"What part of my orders," Akainu interrupted, the temperature spiking a few dozen degrees. "To kill all pirates and objectors was unclear, Vice Admiral?"

Thank goodness for the heat, because it provided a cover for the cold sweat Momonga broke out in. "Nothing, sir. I have no excuse."

At that answer, to his relief, the temperature evened out. "See to it that you don't forget again, Vice Admiral. The Marines still need men like you." And with that, Akainu jetted off to the main battlefield on a plume of magma.

As such, he didn't see Momonga grip his sword's hilt hard enough to make it creak. Didn't hear his teeth audibly grind together. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of black, and he reared back his sword as he charged towards one of the traitors' commanders. A ways off, but with no immovable enemies in his path.

Yet when she noticed his approach, Hina's eyes regarded him with no passion whatsoever.

"Hina was wondering how long it would take. Jango, start the encore."

"Aye-aye, Captain!" the hypnotist saluted. "Soundbite, give me a boost, you're gonna like this one!"

"You're live!" the snail obliged.

Half against his better judgment, Momonga slowed his approach, shutting his eyes and raising his guard. Traps were Hina's specialty, and with how utterly fearless she was in this moment he wasn't about to just charge in. He was, unfortunately, the only one who showed such caution. He tried to warn everyone else around to shut their eyes, but Soundbite's powers again surged through the battlefield, drowning out all voices but one.

"Time to give the world a makeover that's funky fresh! EVERYONE, EYES ON ME! ONE, TWO, JANGO!"

Momonga felt the shift in the soldiers around him. Among the remaining soldiers, from the grunts all the way up to other Vice Admirals, and even throughout the Devil Dogs.

Hina fled as soon as he came within range, and he was forced to miss his window in favor of blocking the attack from a Vikverir that had been on his side moments before.

"KILL EVERY TRAITOR, MAD DOG!? GOOD LUCK PICKING OUT THE REAL ONES!" Fullbody roared.

"Seriously!?" another Suomi snarled. "How many of you traitors are there?!"

"Well, for starters, there is Gunnery Crew Beta-5 over there."

Hina's nonchalant statement complete with pointing in the direction took Momonga aback—up until he was blasted by cannons fired from the opposite side.

"Oh, my mistake. Hina meant Gamma-7."

Momonga dismissed the urge to throw down his sword in exasperation. But the fact that the urge surfaced in the first place spoke volumes.

-o-

Donquixote Doflamingo was having the time of his life on the battlefield. Straw Hat Luffy and Jeremiah Cross had once again exceeded all expectations he'd had of them, lofty as they'd already been, shrugging off his little motivational message and raising chaos wherever they went. The one trouble was that they were succeeding a little too cleanly for his liking, but he couldn't even be too mad about that. The only reason he couldn't personally fix that little problem was that Boa Hancock had shown her true colors, which included some absolutely delectable depths of hatred and the power to back it up.

The Warlord slowly circled his opponent, searching for openings. Even balanced on one foot and looking down so hard on him that she was looking up, there were none. None that he particularly wanted to risk, anyway. Not in these circumstances. Oh, well. That just meant he'd have to make some.

And then someone murdered his good mood in cold blood.

"We will take it from here, Doflamingo."

It said much about the men that strolled into their private battlefield and who they answered to that both Warlords—both of the stubborn, narcissistic, Conqueror Warlords—deemed him noteworthy enough that they paused their fight to regard him, despite their expressions screaming that they'd much rather murder him.

One might think that was because the speaker's attitude was as though they had every right to expect the two royal pirates to immediately defer to him. And that was part of it. But the bigger causes of their hatred were the spotless white outfits and tribal masks that the speaker and his companion wore.

Hatred and, for Hancock, terror.

"I think you've forgotten your place," Doflamingo snarled, not even attempting to maintain a smile. "You obey me, not the other way around."

"Boa Hancock," the agent intoned, seemingly ignoring Doflamingo, to the man's vein-popping aggravation. "You have proven to be uncontrollable at best and a liability at worst. By the authority of the World Government, I hereby strip you of your authorization to capture enemy ships as well as all the titles and rights afforded you by the World Government. Additionally, you and all members of the Kuja Pirates are under arrest. You will submit promptly and without argument."

The second agent ignored the byplay in favor of handing Doflamingo a piece of paper.

"An audible exchange is out of the question. This is a 'suggestion' for a better use of your time."

Snarling, the tyrant king snatched and scanned the note. And slowly, ever so slowly, his body relaxed. And while veins pulsed on his forehead, his lips pulled back up into the smile that, for the past decade, had ever and always promised mass destruction.

"You know, I hate taking orders from you, even tangentially… but you're right. That DOES sound more fun!"

Shredding the paper with a swipe of his hand, he leapt straight up and blasted into the air, while the second agent joined the first in staring at Hancock.

"If you—" Hancock began, and made it precisely that far before having to raise an arm and a shin to guard against an attack on either side.

"You seem to have forgotten your place, slave. You are to speak only when asked, and you are to obey without delay," the first agent said, his tone still possessing all the emotion of a corpse.

Her eyes narrowed in outrage, silencing the trauma of her past with one firm declaration.

"You will never take me alive."

"We never intended to," the second agent replied.

That was almost comforting. As she continued parrying, she strained her eyes for flashes of green and orange nearby. Finding none, she refocused on her opponents. Her sisters had to have fled for the back lines, which meant that the assassins needed to not be there.

…something that made her acutely aware of the fact that every denied kill was pushing her further back from freedom.

-o-

"Get. Out. Of my WAY!"

Ace was doing what he could to suppress his emotions about his father's death, well aware that making it out alive himself was still not a guarantee. There was too much at stake for him to risk breaking down, and the one thing that made it rather easy to keep that thought away was how many justifiable targets kept throwing themselves in his path, even with roughly half of their forces compromised by the turncoats.

'And if Cross isn't behind that, I'll eat my… oh, right, I lost my hat,' Ace thought, rubbing his head a bit wistfully. 'I liked my hat…' His expression twisted up into a vicious scowl as he spiked the ambient temperature. 'At least I can take out my frustrations on some very flammable targets!' And he proceeded to do just that with a sweep of his blazing pipe.

Jinbe was still holding as strong as he'd expect a Warlord, and the only sign of Lucci's fatigue was that he had now entered his hybrid form. Luffy, on the other hand, wasn't trying to hide how much he was gasping for breath. Chopper's medicine kept him running despite the ankle wound while he made up for his failing strength with one overpowered Dial and a handful of bombs, but his prior motivational boost was starting to run thin, so unless something changed fast—

"STRAW HAT!"

Ace nearly immolated the speaker before recognizing the Okama Queen, who was running up directly behind Isuka and Jabra. Luffy, with a look of utter relief, ran up to Ivankov, who reared back his sharpening fingers.

"EMPORIO ENERGY HORMONE!"

Ace's good sense was all that kept him from reacting to seeing the oversized okama stab his brother in the sides with his fingers. He had just enough time to reflect on how strange that thought was before Luffy let out a roar of renewed vigor. Ivankov kept moving towards the ships while Luffy, overflowing with energy, sped after him. Ace and the others were fast on his heels.

"What just happened?" Ace demanded.

"It's just a quick fix, it'll only last a few hours before I can't move," Luffy spat, disgusted with his own weakness.

"Hey, count yourself lucky," Isuka spat, showing twice as much pain as before. "At least you're not double-dosing on the healing-factor hormones while you're at it."

"Or looking like accordion-face over here," Jabra snarked as he jabbed his claw at Kaku's mutinous expression.

"Say that to my face, flea-bottom!" Kaku snarled back. The other outlaws took one look at his face, and most of them had no choice but to look away to keep from laughing at the way his nose resembled a crinkle fry. Lucci only sighed—at least until a wheezing noise came from Kaku's direction.

"He's even making the noise!" the wolf-man snickered.

"That's me trying to breathe through my shattered nose!" Kaku snapped back.

"PfheheHURK!—oh, it hurts to laugh—heheh…" Cross wheezed out of the aether. "F-For the record, I'd have a-advised you to just do what we do, and b-blame Soundbite. But as is, I-I'd like to just comment on my new appreciation, f-for polka."

"CROSS, YOU SON OF A—!"

"Stampede incoming."

Lucci's growl cut off the banter, and looking over their shoulders revealed a rapidly approaching line of Angevins. Ace bit back a curse at the sight. Honestly, who even used cavalry charges nowadays, especially on terrain so uneven and—! Fragile…

"I'm an idiot," the rescued pirate deadpanned, slowing to a stop.

"Tch, no question, are you—ERGH!—going anywhere with this?" Cross groaned impatiently.

"We're standing on ice… and I'm made of fire," Ace answered, an earsplitting grin painting over his face as flames coalesced around his right arm—

"FIRE FIST!"

—that he slammed onto the ground, a vortex of flames spiraling out and shrouding the area in steam. Steam that had moments ago been solid ice fit for running on.

"That should slow them down. Let's go."

"Right," echoed through the group, though Luffy spared enough time to throw something into the steam. Moments later, the cloud was much bigger and much pinker.

"Alright, come on, we're almost—!"

THOOM!

Jinbe's statement was cut off as the entire swathe of the battlefield they were in was shocked into silence, due to a blast of heat and air pressure buffeting everyone and bowling a great many of them over. The blast also extinguished Ace's flames as easily as snuffing a candle, and dissipated the smokescreen in an instant.

"Shit. Shitshitshit. Run. RUN NO—GACK!"

Another cough of blood. Cross muffled himself as he struggled to get himself back under control, but as a result, any support from Soundbite abruptly cut out across the battlefield.

…but only after he had whispered a code to the rest of the world: "Roll Call."

It became clear quickly that while Soundbite was focusing on Cross, he had enough focus left to ensure that only Luffy and his companions heard the next minute of the SBS—and only the SBS, as the rest of the world fell into a muted silence—begun by a steady "Dot dot dot dot—KA-LICK!"

And then, any doubts or hesitation in Luffy's heart died a harsh and swift death with the words that came.

"You said that it was only right that the Greatest Swordsman serve the King. Well, here's me formally agreeing to that. If you die here, I'll kill you."

"We've mapped out the perfect route for you, Captain, and your hair isn't green—" "HEY!" "—so you shouldn't have a problem walking it! Especially not when you're inches from the goal!"

"I've swallowed my own pride since you invited me onboard, but my pride in my captain has never been stronger! I'm going to be a Warrior of the Seas and you're going to be King of the Pirates! I haven't given up, so you can't fall either!"

"I followed you to chase my dreams because you were too stupid to give up and fall until you won. Don't you dare change that now. After all, I've got a hundred and one new recipes to cram down your greedy gullet."

"Taking it easy isn't an option here… so go wild, Captain! Do whatever it takes, and I'll fix whatever breaks! And if anyone tries to hurt you, I'LL BREAK THEM!"

"This life… it's what I chose. What I chose two years ago, and what I choose now. I'm coming back to you, Captain! Now be there, and come back to me! To us!"

"None of us knew what a real challenge was until we joined you. We're waiting for you to come back, Cap'n, and we'll wait as long as it takes. We've still got more heads to bust, so no matter what! DON'T LET THIS MAN'S ROMANCE END HERE!"

"I believed for twenty years that nobody could fight the world and win. Your crew proved me wrong. You proved me wrong. Finish the mission, so that nobody will ever believe that lie again!"

"You've struck down gods. You've overwhelmed demons. Nothing the world has to offer has stopped you. Don't let something so insignificant as this, Captain!"

"YOU'VE SUPER GOT THIS! BURN RUBBER, BOTH OF YOU, AND MAKE THEM REGRET EVER CHALLENGING US!…I MEAN, NOT LITERALLY, BUT—!" "Quit while you're ahead, alloy-ass." "OKAY!"

"Fate isn't final, Captain. Not if we have anything to say about it, and I'm living proof. I was beyond saving but I'm still here and fighting! GET OUT AND COME BACK!"

"Read this? Why the hell would I—oh crap, you mean you're a—!?" A metallic SHING! rang out around the world. "I-I-I mean! 'I-I was dead in both body and soul when you found me. I'm alive again thanks to you. So don't you die either, i-it's not all it's cracked up to be.'…eh? Guh, alright, fine! 'Yohoho, skull joke'. Happy?…WHADDAYA MEAN NO!?"

The encouragement, the fact that they were still there for him, quirks and all, was enough for Luffy's focus to grow sharp as knives. He and Ace would escape alive. And the latest in a line of people trying to stop them would fail like all the others.

They didn't look back to see molten rock cascading onto the exposed water, hardening and cooling and remaining above the surface just long enough for its source to move to the next step, moving inevitably towards the two brothers, his advance slow and menacing… or it would be if he wasn't falling behind?

"—utmost limit for disappointing me. I suppose one can never lower their expectations too far, can they?"

"I guess someone didn't notice THAT YOU HAD better things to listen to?" Soundbite chuckled wickedly.

And at that, Luffy and Ace both laughed out loud.

"KEEP ON YAPPING, WE CAN'T HEAR YOU, STUPID DOG!" Luffy shouted, not even looking over his shoulder to do so.

"Then perhaps you'll hear this."

Akainu raised his hand once more, only this time it wasn't towards the pirates before him. Instead, he aimed at one of the retreating flanks of the Whitebeards.

"Pyroclasm."

The air ruptured in front of Akainu's hand into a pillar of smoke and flame that ripped through the space between him and his target. It impacted the ice, struck the vanguard that had inverted into the rear, and detonated into a devastating pillar of superheated water that, for some small measure of mercy, made the devastation that was wrought at least quick.

A flank of the Whitebeards' forces as wide as a battleship vanished in the wake of the superheated steam, never to be seen again, and the ones remaining on either side were burned and flung back just from the shock. Steam erupted from the flash-boiled ice around them, sending everyone left remotely nearby into a retreat either way, even chasing some of the Whitebeards away from their escape.

And despite this destruction, the most that the brothers, Isuka, and Jinbe did was flinch as they fled. Lucci, however, paused in his retreat and gave the Admiral an utterly unimpressed look.

"Your response to someone ignoring you is to lash out and break things to get more attention?"

"We definitely made the right choice turning against the World Government if one of their best men is an overgrown baby," Jabra sneered.

That shut Akainu up and drew reactions from everywhere on the battlefield, be it gasps, ohs, or even laughter. The two assassins faded into Shave and didn't give him a second to respond.

The admiral's scowl was murderous now, and he made to surge forward—

"HEE-HAW! Where do you think you're going, baby?"

Emporio Ivankov and his very, very big head stepped into his path, effectively blocking him from even seeing the two he was trying to kill. Akainu, however, seemed to have learned from Ace's actions and fired magma directly at the ice beneath Ivankov's feet.

"WHOOPS! EMPORIO ESTROGEN!"

As the Okama Queen backflipped off of the melting ice, his body grew taller and his muscles smaller. Well, her muscles, as it soon became. She smirked at him, no longer as big but no longer as slow.

"Seems speed is more important than muscle against a lumbering volcano."

"You could never beat me either way," Akainu growled, already rearing back another fist. Ivankov threw back her head and laughed, evading the blow with what looked like Paper Art.

"Oh, silly boy, who said I had to? I'm just keeping you busy."

"They. Will. Not. Leave here alive." Akainu raised a hand, a scorching ball of heat igniting in his palm. "And neither will you."

No sooner did Akainu launch than Ivankov twirled into his strike zone, kicking the ball of magma straight into the air as soon as it launched. Akainu's other hand, dripping with lava, swept in, but Ivankov was already twirling out of the way on her toes.

"Hmm, you're going to have to try better than tha—" A gout of magma ten feet wide erupted from Akainu's chest, prompting Ivankov to hastily plant her feet and limbo under it. "Not that much better! Aren't you supposed to start slow and work your way up?"

More magma gouted from the Admiral, leaving Ivankov frantically dodging every which way. "Absolute Justice demands no less than a swift death to evil," he answered. His fist bloated with magma, and then he charged.

"No, no, you're doing it wrong!" Ivankov snapped, once again dodging the attack. "You're supposed to banter, maybe say something about how you are starting slow! Here, let me try for—aghpft!"

"Ah, silence," Akainu sighed, Ivankov lying on the ice clutching her burned-but-not-nearly-as-bad-as-it-could've-been-face. He reared his fist back. "Now die."

"You first," said a terrifyingly familiar and absolutely unwelcome voice. "Good job, now get going."

With a salute, Ivankov obliged, a wink sending her skidding away on the ice. And Akainu didn't even consider attacking her as she fled, too occupied with the realization that she hadn't been buying time for Ace and Luffy to leave, but for someone else to arrive.

He spun around with all the speed and strength he could muster, aiming his fist at Whitebeard's bare chest. The Emperor met his fist with his own, and it was all that Akainu could do to keep his bones from crumbling to pieces even before the tremors hit. Then all he could perceive was pain.

-o-

Whitebeard stared down at the form of the Admiral, half-buried in a pit of ice, and raised his bisento. Unconscious though he was, Whitebeard knew the man wouldn't stay down unless he lost his head. And quite frankly, this rabid dog's death was a high-placed item on his—and every pirate's—bucket list. But before he could do the much-desired deed, a sudden chill in the air forced him to swing his weapon upward instead, bisecting the miniature iceberg Aokiji had just tried to drop on him.

The Admiral didn't share the avenue of attack, however. Instead, he'd landed on the ground. And there, in sight of everyone, he ripped his eye mask off.

"Done deluding yourself then, brat?" Whitebeard asked.

"No. But against someone like you, I can fight with no regrets," Aokiji retorted, drawing his arms up. "Partisan!"

Whitebeard shattered the ice spears, and then stomped his foot, shaking the ground. Tsuru deftly leapt up and flipped over the localized earthquake, landing next to Aokiji. And by extension, the remaining Vice Admirals.

"So that's your play," Whitebeard rumbled.

"Quite," Aokiji replied. His eyes widened and he hastily threw up a wall of ice that shattered to absorb the earthquake-enhanced punch. "Tch. Vice Admiral Tsuru, before we get too deep into this, I believe we need to have a talk after this battle is over."

Tsuru's eyes widened fractionally. "Yes. I believe we do."

Dalmatian and Onigumo both leapt over the ice wall, a mere second before Aokiji shattered it and sent it in a spray of razor-sharp shards at Whitebeard. The pirate promptly shattered them into a snowy mist, but it allowed the two Vice Admirals to land a couple of hits. Retaliation was not long in coming, but it was stymied by more Vice Admirals attacking Whitebeard's flanks and Aokiji himself jumping into melee range with a pair of ice swords.

-o-

Vice Admiral Vergo landed hard on the ground, grimacing imperceptibly. Whitebeard was no joke; even under his black-as-coal Armament, his side ached from where a block of ice kicked up by his latest sweep had hit, a rock that had knocked him a good thirty feet back from the fray. He eyed the ongoing battle. With Aokiji in play, keeping up a steady stream of attacks and attacking Whitebeard's footing, the Vice Admirals could actually get in some licks. Not many, but there was a hope that they could wear him down.

But Vergo wasn't interested in that, and not only because of the weakness starting to encroach on him from a mere couple of minutes fighting him. Beyond that, Whitebeard was not the only target they needed to take out, after all. His fellow officers had Whitebeard well in hand; time to go handle Portgas. He tensed his legs—

And then whipped his Armament-coated staff up to catch a sword that would've gone straight through his spine otherwise.

Spinning around, Virgo flipped his staff and flipped his opponent as well. It was one of the Marine officers who'd mutinied, an ex-captain by the name of… of… It had something to do with meat, he was sure. Pork chop? No, that wasn't it.

"Captain Ribeye, was it?" he asked, before shaking his head. "Sorry, ex-captain. Anyway, do me a favor and get out of my way. I'm willing to leave your death to someone else, I've got more important people to kill."

From the angry shaking, the name probably wasn't Ribeye. Damn it.

"Do you… not remember?" the traitor breathed.

Vergo tilted his head. "I might have seen you in a meeting or two."

Clearly, that was the wrong thing to say, because the traitor tried to take his head off again. Vergo easily dodged, but to his annoyance, his opponent dodged the return smash of his staff.

"Twelve years ago, I swore this oath: I will never again lower myself to fighting beside you…no matter how many unaware of your true nature support you! Even if it should take my final breath, I…WE SHALL HAVE JUSTICE!"

Vergo's eyes narrowed behind his shades. He had snubbed more than a few individuals on his path to power, but he had been nearly certain that they had been buried over the years. Had he missed one that had grown this strong, or was it possible that he knew more than that?

All thoughts of Whitebeard and Portgas fled from Vergo's mind as he turned to give the ex-Captain his complete attention. With Cross involved, the possibility was too high to ignore. And nothing would ever be a higher priority for him than an immediate threat to the Young Master.

And speaking of whom…

-o-

The sun had refused to shine on the battlefield since dawn broke, a pale haze from the overcast sky only emphasizing the war's gloom. Unherded shadows blanketed the entire battlefield, the poor visibility lending itself to anyone who needed to hide. This slight difference in lighting was all it took to alter Doflamingo's hiding place from difficult to notice to downright impossible unless you knew what to look for.

If only because otherwise, there would have been some light to glint off of the Warlord's too-wide smile.

"Moria, you old reptile, this one's for you. Hope you're still alive out there somewhere…" Doflamingo's wistful grin became viciously sadistic as he raised both his hands, his fingers splayed wide. "After all, I wanna rip you open and find out what the hell you are myself. But for now, I'll settle for this."

And with a single massive wrench, he flung his hands skywards.

"Vampire String."

The Parasite technique he had mastered was simply not enough. From his position just below the long-abused roof at the highest point of the island, it took the full focus of both of his hands for Doflamingo's meticulously placed strings to pull taut and force their puppet to rise. But rise he did, much to the horror of the Whitebeard Pirates. And every other fighter across the battlefield.

Yellow flesh forced itself upright, palms pushing against the ice and stone and feet moving back into a position to support their owner's weight. A firm push and the figure was on his feet once more, towering above the combatants.

Little Oars Jr.'s open and drearily panning eyes betrayed that he was awake. But his mouth was visibly strung shut, preventing him from letting out the dizzied groan that rattled his chest as his body surged forward, a marionette dancing on the demon's strings with the intent to slaughter everyone in its path.

The frozen terrain all but disintegrating under the Titan's unrestrained staggering was merely the prelude to the slew of casualties that would strike the retreating forces' backs.

-o-

As the battle between Buggy and Mihawk had raged, the prisoners of Impel Down who'd chosen to follow Buggy had been the only ones willing to even approach the fight. After all, their new captain needed fresh weapons periodically, and the battlefield was just littered with them! And, as the Whitebeards began to flow back towards their ships, they noticed.

"Cap'n Buggy?" one man said, tapping one of his captain's body parts.

Instantly, Buggy's face reformed in front of him, scowling fit to psychically strangle a bitch. "What?" he snapped. "In case you missed it, I'm kinda busy fighting he—"

As if on cue, Buggy's head suddenly split, the prisoner feeling the air slash Mihawk had launched shaving off a bald spot in his crew-cut. The only real effect, however, was the clown's decapitated and bisected scowl somehow contorting even tighter as his cranium's halves snapped around.

"AY, I'M TALKIN' HERE!" Buggy bellowed, the roar of an intense volley of cannonfire briefly drowning out his annoyed muttering. "Inconsiderate pompous bastard…" His head pieced itself back together, and then his eye swiveled to regard the speaker. "You were saying?"

"W-Well, beggin' your pardon, Cap'n, b-but it's just, that, w-well… the Whitebeards? They're retreating," the ex-convict pointed out, indicating the many rapidly departing backs turned in their direction. "And, well, me'n the rest of the boys was thinkin', if the Whitebeards is retreating—"

"Then we'd best follow," Buggy decisively stated. "Particularly that fool Straw Hat; he'd be the one most willing to let us hitch a ride. Now, pay attention, men! We called this the Sir Robin Maneuver back on the Oro Jackson—"

Sadly, what precisely the Sir Robin Maneuver entailed would for now remain a mystery, because Buggy suddenly jerked in shock and spun his face around just in time to yank it out of the way. Barely. The tip of his nose was just barely nicked, and to the shock of everyone present, it bled.

Though some for different reasons than others.

"That ridiculous thing is real?" Mihawk said in wonder. "I always thought it was rubber."

A red haze sprang to life around Buggy, and his new minio—subordinates all slowly backed away. Hardened criminals and experienced pirates to a man, they knew exactly what it looked like when someone was about to take an explosion of rage, and wrap it up into a tight little ball. Those were the second-most dangerous kind of person, the first being the one walking a blood-soaked battlefield without a care in the world.

"What…" Buggy said, his voice as calm as the bleached surface of the moon. "Was that about my nose?"

Mihawk merely raised an eyebrow, one whose brother joined it when Buggy collapsed into a ball. Briefly, at least, before something shot out of it and he reassembled on the ground.

The Warlord sliced it, of course. He could no more ignore that instinct than learn to fly. Yoru cut through compacted steel before biting into a core of volatile explosives. Yoru then continued on through the ensuing explosion, cutting it in half and letting the lower half vent pointlessly at the ice below.

That still left half the explosion heading right for him and Yoru still finishing the swing. With impossible speed, Mihawk drew the small knife he always kept on his person and slashed it into the heart of the explosion. It split, blasting trenches in the ice on either side of him; in front of him, the shattered remains of the dagger clattered onto the ice.

"That stung," he groused, raising Yoru. "And you broke my dagger. It had sentimental value to me. I stabbed some dear and important people with it."

No more words. He swung Yoru down. The blade crashed into two crossed daggers, held in a floating pair of hands. The blades cracked but held, and one slid off and tried to stab him. It was an easy matter to bat it aside, but by then the hands were already shooting back towards Buggy in the distance, obscured behind Marines who'd flowed in to exploit the retreat. And even as aggravated as Mihawk was, he was not going to stoop so low as to deliberately harm Marines.

Sighing, he sheathed Yoru, scanning the battlefield. Oh, he'd join in attacking the Whitebeards' retreat, because he needed to let off some steam. But no reason to rush it.

-o-

One last tug of the bandages, and they were set tight. Angmar stood, wincing slightly at the protests that action sent out from his chest despite the bandages. He winced a lot harder when the medic who'd been patching him up cuffed him upside the head. Bertha was a bear of a woman who'd gotten into healing largely because no one in her hometown had been willing to spar with her, so the blow would've sent anyone else tumbling ass over teakettle.

"You're not going back out there, you daft fool, not if I have anything to say about it!"

She was also irreverent as hell even by Vikverir standards.

"Bertha, move," Angmar ordered.

"Nay. Your ribcage more resembles match wood right now," Bertha retorted. "The last thing you want to do is go out and risk injuring it further."

"We've lost too many good warriors this day. If we're going to assault a retreating enemy, I need to be there." He grinned, all the way to the molars. "And besides, there's no way I'm missing this fight!"

Snorting, Bertha crossed her arms. "Make me, your majesty."

Angmar's grin didn't falter. Grabbing his hammer, he inched closer to her, watching her crossed arms. Eventually, he got close enough that she tried to grab him, at which point he smoothly flowed around her, locked the haft of his hammer in front of her neck, and with a grunt of exertion bent his back to suplex her to the ground.

"Fair 'nough…" Bertha groaned.

Jogging up to the seawall past some injured but combat-effective Suomi serving as a screen, he gazed over the battle on the ice, and grimaced. The Marines and their allies, his Vikverir included, had lost any cohesion they'd once had, a jumbled mass fighting solely as individuals and often fighting each other. Well, except for the Suomi, disciplined bastards that they were, but from the looks of it, they'd gotten pretty badly chewed up.

So, first order of business: they needed to get organized. And hopefully shake off the effects of that hypnotist.

Angmar reached into a pouch on his belt, pulling out a horn that looked like it'd been plucked off an excessively large goat. Taking a deep breath, he blew, the deep note echoing over the battlefield. At the same time, he jumped off the seawall, shattering the outer layer of ice on impact.

Surprisingly, the first person to greet Angmar was Lionel, that Angevin ponce. Well, okay, that was unfair. Angmar hadn't particularly liked the Angevins—too clean and stuffy—but seeing Lionel trot up on his horse, splattered with blood, his helmet gone to reveal scruffy, sweat-soaked hair and beard, and his painted and polished armor dulled, dented, and scratched all over… Well. Clearly, the man had been in the thick of it. He could respect that.

"Your majesty," Lionel stated, nodding respectfully. "I take it the horn was a call to reorganize?"

"Aye. You've been on the frontlines more than I have, what's the situation?"

Lionel snorted. "Worst clusterfuck I've ever had the displeasure of partaking in, and I've been in some serious clusterfucks in my time. The only good news is that the pirates are just as disorganized as we are. An organized attack should make some very good headway."

"That's what I was thinking, aye," Angmar replied, eyeing the first of the Vikverir breaking free of the front lines—with Angevin knights at their side, universally all dismounted. "And when we finish this battle, you'll have to tell me some stories over a few drinks! A man like you has to have some good ones."

"I believe I'll take you up on that."

Though Angmar itched to re-enter the battle, he forced himself to wait as more and more of his warriors gathered. Lionel, from the tapping fingers on the hilt of his sword, was of like mind. Finally, though, they had about a thousand soldiers gathered, and the flow of troops had trickled away to almost nothing. But when he made to sound the advance, Lionel stopped him.

"Why?" he demanded.

"We need a distraction," Lionel stated. And not two seconds later, laser explosions bloomed on the battlefield. Even better, that aquatic beast of the Marines' burst from the water and launched a pair of its spines into the battlefield, erasing entire swathes of pirates. "And we're not going to get a better one than that. Forward!"

"Forward!" Angmar bellowed. The makeshift army lurched forward, on the attack.

-o-

Blue flame clashed against bright-yellow lasers, neither gaining an edge. A blue flaming bird claw intersected with Kizaru's outstretched, glowing leg, and their respective Armaments deflected off each other. The same stalemate the two had been locked into the entire battle, which was just fine by Kizaru. He did have another play literally sitting in his back pocket, but his instincts had screamed at him every time he thought about it that it was exactly the sort of play that Jeremiah Cross would know about and blab to the Whitebeards.

Naturally, it was right then that the voice of Vice Admiral Jonathan sounded in his ear. "Admiral Kizaru. Why haven't you used the handcuffs?" It wasn't a commanding question, merely curious.

It was also a damn problem, because he was not admitting on an open channel that he was this paranoid about the Voices of Anarchy.

"Well, you know the year I've been having," he idly stated. "After everything I've been through, I want to feel the satisfaction of beating a bird to death at C."

It wasn't entirely a lie, either. Two embarrassing losses to Paradise rookies could make a man just the teensiest bit insecure.

"That seems… inefficient," Jonathan remarked.

"Maybe, that's just how I feel like handling this, Vice Admiral," Kizaru replied, before something caught his eye.

He glanced down at the battlefield, noting the splash of flame charging down the center. Oh dear, that was Fire Fist Ace. Getting away.

"Vice Admiral, you wouldn't happen to know if anyone is in position to intercept Straw Hat and Fire Fist?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, no. Akainu is still unconscious, Vice Admirals Vergo and Momonga are tied up, and everyone else is being held up by Whitebeard."

Sighing, Kizaru replied, "I was afraid of that," before hanging up. Turning, he aimed a laser shot at their fleeing backs, idly tossing his hand and the cuffs they'd removed from his pocket out when Marco charged in. "Now, none of that, you—"

Click.

Kizaru stared at the cuffs encircling his wrist and sighed mournfully, at which point gravity reasserted herself and sent him into the curiously unfamiliar sensation of free-fall.

"I knew that would happen," Kizaru groused, picking up his snail. "Vice Admiral, if you could be so kind as to arrange a cushion for me. And also have whoever has the key for my cuffs sent to my position."

"Fuck. Of course he knew about that plan, too," Jonathan spat. "By your command, Admiral. I recommend angling yourself to land on the seawall."

Hanging up, Kizaru spread his limbs and tried to remember his training in how to fall.

Marco, meanwhile, angled his body into a dive for one spot. One particular fighter that needed to go down now if they were going to get away cleanly. He came to a halt in a plume of blue flame in front of Donquixote Doflamingo, his flame burning away some of the strings the Warlord had spread out to control Oars.

But not all of them.

"Doflamingo," he all but snarled. "Let my crewmate go."

"You don't really think I'm going to give up my best puppet just like that, do you?" Doflamingo leered. "But hey, if you really want your buddy Oars back—"

A twitch of a finger, and Oars' massive hand swung down to crush Marco.

"Make me!"

Marco smoothly evaded the blow and shot towards Doflamingo.

"Terms accepted."

-o-

Amidst the chaos of the scrambling armies, whether to retreat, to sow discord, or to fight the war that they had as good as lost already, two individuals were left unbothered by the gravity of the situation around them.

"And good riddance," Crocodile spat as he polished the hook he had just used to finally shatter the Lofoten's heart. The way that the entire construct suddenly lost all tension and collapsed in on its withered skin and skeleton was revolting but so satisfying.

"The jellyfish next, sir?" Daz asked, already preparing to buzzsaw through the drones.

Crocodile took a look at the battlefield, and at seeing Whitebeard against the better number of the Navy's remaining top brass, and the conspicuous retreat of everyone else on his side…

He's not planning to leave here alive… he never was, Crocodile realized. Rage stirred in his heart at the thought that he would never be able to take his revenge, but it just as quickly cooled as his more logical side pointed out that Whitebeard was going to die either way. And that single fact, combined with the sight of Akainu hot on Straw Hat's tail and the sound of Cross outright leaking, made the future so much brighter in his mind.

…all of which was to say nothing of the justifiable paranoia that stepping close to anyone remotely on Whitebeard's side would get him killed at Straw Hat's request.

"…no. I think we've done enough," Crocodile said, smirking softly. "We'll need to find a good perch to watch this from."

"Might I recommend the battleship that is maintaining a holding pattern approximately a half-mile offshore to the west?" Daz pointed out.

The ex-Warlord took a look at the warship, evaluated its state (noticeable damage, but serviceable) and position (well away from the cordon, well placed for an exfil), and nodded. "Let's go," Crocodile agreed, breaking into sand and vanishing into the air as Daz literally tore after him, skating on his blades and slicing through whoever he couldn't evade.

Once the human grinder (or grinder-human, as it were) reached the edge of the ice sheet, Crocodile re-coalesced his hook near him. Daz grabbed the gold without hesitation and didn't flinch as his feet left the ground. Bullets trailed after them both, but the ones that impacted were nothing against sand and steel. And when they arrived minutes later, they found the crew and the lifeboats missing. Convenient, if slightly disappointing, but that seemed to describe the day in general, didn't it?

Crocodile and his right-hand man had left the war. But they would bear witness to its climax before they returned to the sea.

-o-

All of this was witnessed in bits and pieces by Ace and company. Mihawk was pressing the left entirely solo. The right was collapsing under the weight of Oars, the Devil Dogs, and the BioMEGAs and Pacifistas, despite Marco doing his damndest to rip Doflamingo's face off with his bare talons. And while Vergo had been intercepted, it was also clear that Whitebeard couldn't tie up all the Vice Admirals forever. The Division Commanders glanced among themselves and came to a decision.

"Ace, continue to the ships. We need to go back to the front lines and make sure this doesn't turn into a rout," Jozu rumbled.

"Straw Hat, Jinbe, and the rest of you," Namur added with a toothy grin. "Keep our favorite idiot alive, okay?"

"Oi!" Ace snapped. "That goes for you guys, too! No sacrifice plays on my watch!"

"Aye-aye, Captain!" they all barked, before splitting off.

Ace came to a freezing halt, staring off after them. Well, at least until Isuka smacked him upside the head in passing.

"Ow! What the hell?!"

"Less gawping, more running!" she snapped, prompting a chastised Ace to resume doing exactly that. "And what did you expect? You're Whitebeard's heir apparent! Everyone knows that!"

Ace blinked dumbly. "I am?"

"Yes, you are," Jinbe answered.

"The Navy certainly thought so," Lucci added.

"Even I know that, Ace," Luffy finished.

For a moment, Ace was silent. Then…

"Right, don't have time to unpack that. I'm going to wait until after we're free and clear to break down gibbering in my cabin."

"Shishishi—WOAH!"

Luffy's laughter was quite rudely interrupted by the spines of the aquatic BioMEGA landing around them. The group was spared impalement mostly by Jinbe batting the one on target aside. This was followed by some of the drones of the aerial BioMEGA landing among them.

"Jinbe, get the sea serpent! Luffy, Lucci, keep these things off of me!" Ace barked, flames bursting to life around him. "I'll get the jellyfish! Flame Commandment!"

"Hey, I can still—AUGH!"

Isuka's protests died in a cry of agony, the ex-Marine collapsing to the ice clutching her gut.

"Isuka!" Ace shouted in a panic. "Didn't she get healing hormones?!"

"This is an unavoidable side effect, Ace-boy!" Ivankov shouted in passing, still sliding along the ice propelled by her Hell Winks. "Ask Straw Hat-boy, he experienced them himself!"

Ace gave Luffy a pleading look, to which he answered, "Yeah, took me a really long time to recover. But she's less injured than I was, so it should only take a few hours."

"I got her," Kaku said, scooping Isuka up.

"Thanks," Ace growled, glaring up at the aerial BioMEGA. "As for you, time to work out some misplaced anger. Flame Pillar!"

A column of fire the size of a battleship's mast leapt from Ace's body, engulfing the aerial BioMEGA. Already damaged by prior combat, the great beast went limp, trailing smoke as it slowly drifted to the ground.

Jinbe, meanwhile, charged at the remaining BioMEGA, only to hastily roll out of the way of a spread of lasers from the Pacifistas advancing.

"What the hell are those things?!" he demanded.

"Ah, those are the robots axe-guy brought with him to that Super Body place!" Luffy realized. "They're really tough and they really like using those lasers."

"I've noticed!" Jinbe snarled, frantically dodging said lasers, an endeavor his girth didn't make any easier.

Suddenly, a wall of soap bubbles washed in front of the Pacifistas. Kalifa, scorched and battered but still fighting, followed shortly afterward, as did a familiar "Dammit!"

"If one of you can hold Sentomaru off, I'll handle the rest."

"On it!" Jabra replied, sprinting off. "The rest of you keep going!"

"Whoa, whoa, we're just going to leave them behind?!" Ace demanded.

"Kalifa and Jabra are elite agents of Jormungandr, they can handle themselves. Besides, we all signed up knowing we could die on any mission." Kaku smirked mirthlessly. "As deaths go, this wouldn't be a bad one."

"Also, wolf-guy's kind of a jerk," Luffy noted.

"That too!"

From the expression on Ace's face, he plainly didn't like that. But he kept running.

By now, the way seemed clear to the Moby Dick. The fighting still continued all around them, but the Whitebeards seemed to have formed an ad-hoc perimeter that kept the core group clear of further attacks. None dared to say it, but for a moment, they all thought they might be home free.

And then the deck of the Moby Dick bulged and blackened right under the mainmast. Magma erupted from the bulge, a veritable volcano of it that dropped burning lava on the other ships of the Whitebeard flotilla and set them alight as well. Out from the hellscape that had been the center of the ship strode Admiral Akainu, bleeding from the head but plainly still able to fight, a glowing orange trail now becoming visible beneath the ice answering how he had gotten in front of them.

"No…" Ace breathed.

-o-

From his position near the execution platform, Whitebeard spared enough attention to give his stalwart ship a forlorn look. The ship had been his home for decades, practically since he'd left Rocks behind, and to see it burn like this… Involuntarily, his mind was cast back. Back to the memories…

~o~

A much younger Edward Newgate stood on a much less thriving Water 7, staring with a massive grin at the masterpiece assembled before him.

"Well, here She is, exactly as you asked!" said a yellow-skinned shipwright recently graduated from apprenticeship. "Exactly-exactly, even. Are you sure about this figurehead design? It does look a tad on the dopey side."

"Yeah… Yeah, it fits. It looks nice. Friendly. Which is definitely what I want. A nice, friendly ship."

"A pirate with a friendly ship… and here I thought I'd heard of everything! TAHAHAHA! Alright then, she's all yours! Though, one last thing before you send her off the slip: what're you gonna name her?"

"Hmm… heh. I got just the thing. A name that'll be heard the world over."

~o~

Two grand and majestic ships sailed across the ocean close to one another, side by side as they braved the waves. Too close, actually.

"ROGER, YOU ASS!"

"Ahhhh, come on, what did I do this time, Ed? If it's about your booze, that wasn't me! Shanks beat me to it! Think the kid's getting a taste for the stuff."

"NOT THAT, YOU BASTARD—though yes, I'm absolutely livid about that—BUT I'M TALKING ABOUT MY SHIP!"

"Eh? The Moby looks fine."

"Her flank sure as hell ain't! Look at this! Your barnacle-choked tub stripped off half her paint!"

"Huh? Ah, so he did. Whoops, my bad!"

"'YOUR BAD' MY ASS! FIX IT ROGER, NOW!"

"Eeeeh? I-I can't hear you! Some weird current must be carrying us away! Sorry, we'll have to talk about this later!"

"ROGER, GET BACK HERE! SON OF A—MEN, DROP THE SAILS, FULL AHEAD! THIS TIME I'M KILLING THAT DRUNK FOR SURE!"

~o~

A massive wall of sheer water crashed and cascaded before the Great White Vessel, titanic fish impossibly leaping up the face of the waterfall in defiance of gravity and sanity.

"C-Captain, we need to turn back, now!"

"Eh? Why the hell would we do that? This is where the Log is pointing, isn't it?"

"Captain, that is a waterfall! A waterfall! In the middle of the ocean!"

"What's your point?"

"CAPTAIN! This is way too risky, we're all gonna—!"

"Risky? HA! What risks?! Of course we'll make it, boys! After all, there isn't an ocean in the world our Moby can't brave! What's a few falls to someone as great as her!"

~o~

"I'm sorry," Whitebeard whispered.

"…Don't be, Captain."

Whitebeard's eyes widened and darted to the whale figurehead. Plain for all the world to see, a ghostly figure stood upon the white face, a tilted-down pirate hat hiding her face save for a solemn smile.

"Are you—"

"Mourn, Captain, but don't apologize. To die in battle to rescue a lost crewmate… that is the greatest death… any ship could ever ask for…"

For a moment, Whitebeard was silent. And then he bowed his head.

"Then thank you, for all the years of service you have given us."

"Of course. I was… proud to do it… I'll see you on the other side…"

Abruptly, Akainu stomped down on the figure, dissipating it and incinerating the figurehead with more magma. His voice rang out across the battlefield, from his miraculously intact snail.

"People. Vessels. Miracles. If they exist because of outlaws, they must die."

It was the worst possible thing that he could have said and done. The long-term implications would crystallize in the months after the war, but the short-term results made a significant impact on their own.

Because now, Whitebeard was angry.

"Bother," Tsuru swore, rearing back from a swing of his bisento and yanking back Aokiji with her. Much later, she'd fully appreciate how far away his eyes had seemed at the sight of Akainu remorselessly destroying a ship.

The remaining Vice Admirals were unprepared for the force. At best they were thrown back, and at worst they lost consciousness. Either way, Whitebeard moved past them with the force of a horde of bison, charging at the titanic puppet of Little Oars Jr.

And in seconds, he closed his fist around a critical wire.

Doflamingo jerked to a halt, tugging intently on his wire in an effort to dislodge it.

And when he followed the line down in an effort to find the snag, he froze up as his mind processed just who he was attached to, and what the circumstances of said attachment were.

"…well, then," Donquixote Doflamingo stated quietly, his voice more subdued than it had been in his entire life. "Mistakes have been made."

"YES." Whitebeard rumbled, and then gave the line a harsh jerk.

A harsh jerk that rated an 11.0 on the Richter Scale.

Doflamingo detached his line within seconds of recognizing the imminent demise, but within a fraction of a second, the very start of one of the vibrations got back to the Warlord. Regrettably, the Warlord had disengaged his string soon enough to miss the brunt of the damage that would have pasted him.

"SONNUVA—!"

But thankfully, he was attached to it just long enough for the whiplash to strike his arm like an all-out sledgehammer, reducing his skeleton in said limb to a pile of matchsticks.

"MNRGH—Piece of—!" Doflamingo growled, narrowly keeping himself aloft with his remaining hand, while he directed a tooth-cracking grimace in the direction of the two agents still locked in a stalemate with Hancock.

"And whoever made this mistake is going to live for a very, very long time," he swore, retreating to a nearby parapet to buy the time he needed to string his arm back together.

Which meant that he had a front-row seat to Whitebeard grabbing his remaining strings and reminding everyone present that he was the world's strongest man by throwing Little Oars Jr. off of the island. For his titanic size, the impact was comparable to jumping into a swimming pool. But the distance ensured that neither Doflamingo nor anyone else would make the poor life choice of trying to go after him again.

"Well, then… who do I go after now?" he pondered, his grin returning as Whitebeard changed tactics and charged towards what remained of his ships.

-o-

The amount of smoke and ash from the burning ships and the unfortunate souls left aboard threatened to block out the already darkened sky, what little light remained in this war threatening to disappear. A perfect parallel to the mood on the battlefield.

How long Ace stared at what remained of the Moby Dick, he didn't know. It felt like an eternity. More likely it was only a few seconds before Luffy tapped him on the shoulder.

"Ace," he said, voice deadly serious. "What's the backup plan?"

That threatened to send Ace into hysterical laughter. Who would've thought Luffy would ever talk about backup plans. But paradoxically, it gave him something to latch onto, long enough to shove his grief at the destruction of the Moby Dick onto a growing and distressingly large pile.

"There's a fifth ship. They came in underwater via coated ship, right?" he asked, getting a nod from Isuka. "Then it's still there. We need to tell them not to surface, because as long as Akainu's there, he'll just destroy it."

"I expect the Maelstrom Spider is already rallying the crew. He'll be smart enough not to surface with an Admiral guarding," Lucci intoned.

"That's… That's good." Ace let out a breath, running his hand through his hair. "We need to get Marco over here, he's the only one on the crew besides Pops I'd trust to get Akainu out of there."

"He appears to have been fighting Doflamingo before Whitebeard intervened," Jinbe mused. "No easy opponent, and he might still go after him again."

"Okay… Lucci, sneak over and let Marco know the plan. Also, get some of the other Division Commanders to engage Doflamingo. They just need to hold him off. We'll hold the fort here."

For a heart-stopping moment, Lucci stared at him, and Ace thought he wouldn't follow the order. And then, he blurred away in Shave. Ace turned back towards Akainu, eyeing him. The man stood amid the flaming wreckage of the Moby Dick on an island of cooled magma, not moving.

"What's he doing…?" Ace muttered. "It's like he's waiting for something."

"Me."

Ace whirled around at the voice just in time to catch a fist to the forehead that ignored his Logia intangibility and slammed him head-first onto the ice.

"Argh! Fuck!" he swore at the dizziness that overtook him.

Luffy and Jinbe, with more time to react, took in the figure standing before them. Irian had clearly seen better days. Bruises dotted her face, her clothes were dirty, torn, and rumpled, and her trademark obsidian daggers were nowhere to be seen.

Both fighters still attacked her near-simultaneously, Luffy red from a hasty pump of Gear Second. Irian moved even before they did, slipping between their two punches and kicking out at Jinbe's ankle. Thanks to his robes, she hit a little high on his calf muscle, so he merely got his leg kicked out from under him rather than a destroyed ankle. But that was enough, for she followed it up by punching him in the ribs hard enough to leave a crater on impact with the ice.

"Gum-Gum Jet Gatling!"

Luffy had no better luck. Irian merely stepped carefully to one particular spot and let the punches rain down harmlessly around her, before grabbing both arms and yanking him in close. Her knee rose to meet his chin, and the blow nearly knocked his teeth out. It did spray blood and left him dazed, something she used to wrench him in close again and wrap her hand around Luffy's throat.

"Wherever Jeremiah Cross is," she hissed, squeezing harder to choked gurgles. "I am going to find him. And I am going to make him dance to death. It takes hours, you know. Hours of agony before the victim dies." A vicious smile spread over her face. "But before that, I think killing his captain will be a delicious dose of despair."

Wind brushed against Irian's cheek, prompting her to turn her head. This probably saved her life, as Lucci's Finger Pistol, rather than puncture the weak point in her skull at her temple, instead squelched into her left eye.

"YAAAAAAARGH!" she shrieked, clutching the bleeding socket. She lashed out, kicking Lucci hard in the chest and sending him skidding back across the ice. "Gonna fucking kill you! Fucking kill you!"

"Oh, shut up!" Ace, now back on his feet, interjected. "Fire Fist!"

The fireball engulfed Irian, sending her screaming again. The flames cleared quickly, but that was of no help to her: it merely revealed Jinbe in her strike zone, fist reared back, with no time to react.

"Three Thousand Tile True Fist!"

Credit to Irian, she managed to jump back some, and so was not completely turned to paste by the punch. She was hurled clear into the tower of Marineford, where she was left stuck in her own silhouette.

"Tsk," Jinbe scowled, clutching his throbbing side. "Meant to send her into the sea."

"Maybe she's dead anyway?" Isuka proposed, earning her incredulous looks from Jinbe, Ace, and Kaku. "Okay, okay, I can dream, can't I?"

"We can pray for her slow and drawn-out death once we've escaped our own," Ace snarled back, waving for the rest of the group to follow him. "For now, we just need to keep moving towards the edge of the ice, avoid the rabid mutt and the rest of his pack, and run out the damn clock. Now come on, let's move people, move!"

The group immediately followed the flame-man's leave, following the rest of the Whitebeards as they endeavored to put as much distance between themselves and Marineford as humanly possible. Said endeavor was made infinitely easier when, through sheer happenstance, the mass of people happened to open up just right, so that a clear avenue became visible. A path, from the escapees to the blue, boundless ocean that promised freedom.

That sight, that spark of hope, spurred the pirates, criminals and other miscellaneous convicts on like nothing else. For a moment, they ran faster than they had all day. For a moment, the dangers behind them vanished, and all that was left was the escape ahead.

For a moment, they were home free.

And it was then and there, when emotions were highest on every side, that the war finally hit its peak, and the world bore witness to the determination of fate.

blam…

It was just one shot out of the literal thousands that were ringing out across the battlefield, a mere firecracker in comparison, missed by all in the war. But that single, inaudible shot had the most devastating effect out of any in the whole course of the war.

"AGH!"

Because it was that one, single bullet that managed to do the impossible and harm Monkey D. Luffy.

As though in slow motion, Ace and Jinbe saw Luffy miss a step and go tumbling as a bullet somehow tore through his good ankle. For a single second, he stopped moving forward.

And all around him, for the briefest moment, the war paused.

-o-

"Good! He felt that one!" Onigumo said with vindictive glee, nodding at the snail in his palm. "Good shot, Halvar!"

"A good shot indeed, komentaja. It is, therefore, a shame that I was not the one to make it."

The Vice-Admiral froze up, shooting an incredulous look at his connection to the sniper. "What!?"

-o-

As Luffy fell, he wasn't the only one who was attacked. Far away from that specific hell, another ally also found themselves under assault.

"Soundbite, what—nrgh!" Cross wheezed, teeth grit as he choked a throatful of blood. "What was that? What's going on?!"

"I-I don't know!" The snail gurgled back. His minuscule frame was trembling with strain, and a veritable roadmap of veins crisscrossed what little of his slimy flesh was visible. "THERE'S SO MUCH, I-I'M TRYING TO PROCESS IT, TRYING TO PIECE IT OUT! JUST GIVE ME A second, just one more, I ALMOST—!"

And then it hit him. Like the fist of God… or more accurately, the hand of a darker, much less merciful power.

A noise worked its way across the world and into Soundbite's nonexistent ears.

"ZEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—!"

And just like that, the little snail popped a blood vessel.

Cross froze, staring in horror as the gastropod's small body went slack. "S… Soundbite?"

Soundbite let out a pained whimper as his eye slowly turned red. "BelGIUM…"

And with one last foamy gurgle, the snail collapsed in on himself.

"Soundbite—!" Cross cried in shock, lunging for his friend to try and do anything, to help him as best he could, but before he could, something stopped him.

Because in Soundbite's last, fading moments of consciousness, a noise rang out in the darkness.

A noise that ripped through Cross's heart and mind as surely as any bullet.

-o-

As an entire swathe of the battlefield froze in numb shock, there was one person who did not.

One person, who while all else paused, leapt into immediate, violent action.

The only person on the battlefield who kept moving in the second where the rest of the world froze was Admiral Akainu, who closed the distance between the two D.s and himself and reared his arm back, dissolving it into a roiling mass of blazing death as he prepared to strike.

The last thing Soundbite transmitted to the world, with his fading shreds of awareness, was the agonized scream of a man with an unshakeable will.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!"

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~1 Day After the War~

In an easily overlooked nook of the Eternal Hell, there was a winding stair leading downward. For different reasons, the jailers and the Marines were silent as they descended. The inkling of dread that Tashigi had felt from Magellan's mundane reaction only grew stronger as they descended the stairs, something in her mind screaming that this was wrong.

"Level 7," Hannyabal announced, gesturing at the trapdoor embedded in the floor. "So, do you think you could explain why we're here, or—woah!"

He was immediately sent spinning by a rough shove from Tashigi forcing her way past him. While the Vice-Warden was left dazed and the other staff of Impel Down stared on in confusion, Tashigi grabbed at the iron handle for the trapdoor and yanked with all her might.

"Cross!" she shouted, desperately, fighting forcefully against the trapdoor's lock. "Cross, say something! An insult, a sob, anything! SPEAK TO ME!"

~o~

Enshrouded in darkness, a metallic clanking abruptly rang out.

That clanking stirred Soundbite awake, his eyestalks blinking blearily from exhaustion yet clouding his mind. The constant sound swiftly woke him right up, however, and his gaze snapped upward with panicked attentiveness as the door in their cell's ceiling rattled in its frame.

The prospect of someone opening and coming through that door filled Soundbite with a single overwhelming emotion.

Raw terror.

"Cross? Cr-CROSS!" the snail yelped with increasing volume, inching his way to Cross's head and nudging him frantically. "CROSS, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP! Wake up RIGHT THE UNHOLY HELL NOW!"

But in spite of his pleas, the otherworlder didn't move.

In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to see, but his eyes were wide open and blank. Not dead, but not remotely cognizant.

~o~

"Cross! Cross!" Tashigi cried, wrenching at the door with all her might, silently pleading for just an inch of give.

"Ahh," Hannyabal raised his hand uncomfortably—he still felt dizzy, after all—his other drifting towards his belt. "You know, we have a key for—"

What little of Tashigi's patience remained shredded to nothing, and she ripped Shigure from its sheath with both a shriek of steel, and a shriek of rage.

"Or you do you, either works!" the Vice-Warden recoiled with a terrified yelp.

With a final exclamation of effort, Tashigi ripped her blade through the trapdoor's lock and hinges. A surge of strength that her wiry frame belied and the door was ripped out of its place and thudded to the ground beside the exposed hole.

Tashigi lunged down, shoving her head through the hole and into the darkness, a grin of relief writ across her face.

"Cross! I'm here, it's fine, you're—!"

Then, staring down into the room, she froze. And she felt the whole world freeze around her.

"…Cross?"

~o~

As the roof tore open, a woman stared down at them, and Soundbite retreated fearfully into his shell.

That she was a woman, only her voice revealed. The only features visible in what scraps of dim light there was were a pair of almost glowing sickly-yellow eyes, void of sclera or pupils, and a Cheshire Cat's grin, except two times bigger, ten times pointier, and a hundred times hungrier. She wasn't quite weeping with delight as she ogled down at them, but her mouth was certainly making up for it with the sheer amount of drool dribbling from it.

"Ohhh, yessss… such a ssss-CRUMPTIOUS serving of MEAT! Thick and tender and raw… and soooo FRESH!" The being let out a shuddering moan as a shiver coursed through her body. "Blood still coursing through the c-RRRR-unchiest of bones, and… oooh, I smell pre-COOKED muscles in the arms and legs! I'LL SAVOR EVERY LAST BITE! COME TO ME, FILET—!"

SPLA-FWOOSH!

"GYAGH!"

{PLASTER-PALM COMBO!}

The insane woman wasn't as bothered as she should have been from being soaked in tar and lit on fire. But it made her writhe enough that Lassoo was able to bodycheck her back out and buy them a bit of room.

{We're out of time, we're about to get mobbed! Hurry—Oh for the love of is he still out of it!?}

"Like I'm not trying to SNAP HIM OUT OF IT!?" Soundbite shouted hysterically.

CRASH! {COME ON!}

Funkfreed charged through the wall of the abandoned prison cell, grabbing Cross in his trunk before encasing him in a Pachy-Shield, gun and sword locked in their hybrid forms to make themselves as unappetizing as possible. As Cross's erstwhile sanctuary crumbled behind them, they stared into the lightless labyrinth, their ears and noses sharp and ready to kill anything that came near.

And as the darkness shifted and roiled with unseen movement and echoed with maddened sounds, their one regret was that they couldn't just say that they had a long night ahead of them.

After all, according to the closest count they could keep, they'd yet to see the sun for the last week.

~o~

The dread crystallized as they stared into the room. Dim lights illuminated row upon row of normal bookshelves and file cabinets. The smell of musty pages and arsenic permeated the space around the trapdoor, emphasizing how little reason there ever was to enter.

Smoker, Tashigi, and Popora had never been more horrified at the sight of a file room.

"…you weren't expecting our other file storage?" Domino asked.

Shaking in anger and horror alike, Tashigi withdrew a Tone Dial from her pocket and clicked it. A cacophony of screams and static echoed out followed by Cross's unmistakable voice.

"TASHI—KRCH!ELP ME! YOU NEED TO GET M—KRCH!HELL OUT OF—KRCH!DAMNED PLACE!"

"Where are you, Cross? Where are you?" Tashigi's voice demanded.

"IT'S—KRCH!THAN WE THOUGHT! DAMN BASTARDS, SO THIS IS WHAT THEY—KRCH!HELL! THIS PLACE IS THE SEVENTH HE—KRCH!HELL OF DARKNESS!"

Tashigi's foul mood quickly spread to the rest of them as she replaced the Dial into her pocket, her teeth grinding and her eyes teary.

"If it isn't Level 7… if this isn't the Seventh Hell… then where is Cross?"

-o-

Tashigi's question was one that was repeated in the minds of all the world on every side of the law. Nobody knew where Cross was, despite having almost all of the biggest organizations in the world looking for him, whether to kill or to save.

But their efforts were futile: Cross's location was an area known to precious few, and those few never thought of it. If anywhere in the world was above suspicion for where Cross was hiding, it was the place where the Government would have seen him sent from the very beginning.

He wasn't the first to try changing the world the way he did, shining a light on history that needed to be snuffed out and never heard from again. He was merely the only one who had truly succeeded, due as much to the foolish Saint Charloss intercepting Aegis-0 as the Straw Hats' infamy and luck. If the Government had had their way, Cross would have been erased. But even where he was, he still managed to strike them hard. Even if he had to do it in a whisper to avoid drawing any hostile attention. Or to clue in anyone listening to the fact that since before he began the Marineford SBS, he was suppressing the pain from getting a knife in his belly.

There is something that must be said about this particular training ground: Bartholomew Kuma was not overly confident in Cross's ability to survive it. But Luffy needed to reach the end of the Grand Line, and the Voices of Anarchy were one giant bullseye on his back. And so Kuma chose the only viable solution: Cross would demonstrate that he was capable of handling the unprecedented chaos that he was spreading across the world, or he would die and free Luffy of a burden he could not handle.

Thus, the place he chose was the Never Day Island of Nox Vestibule, a forsaken mass of land in the shadow of the Red Line and the only landmass in the North Blue untouched by the Vinsmoke Family. And upon this otherwise-deserted island was the Seventh Hell.

A gargantuan parasitic mass that perpetuated the shadow in which it dwelt, devouring all light that touched it, both the actual rays of the sun and the sanity of those forced to dwell in its rancid embrace. And as with all sources of rot and ruin, those creatures that were in search of a putrid meal of death flocked to it in droves, making a meal of anything and anyone they could get their maws on. Whatever was left sunk inside with ease. With the ground as soft as sand, the corpses never stayed for long.

The location was inhospitable on its own. But the most dangerous feature of the land were the inhabitants. The Marines and Government agents assigned were handpicked personally by the Five Elder Stars for having the special kind of personality needed for the job: not evil so much as twisted, devoid of empathy or decency and caring only for their own appetites. That was to say nothing of the prisoners themselves, who were usually driven insane or feral long before death took them.

The environment lent itself to that. The 'jailers' employed there typically remained on the fringes. All they ever needed to do was throw the arrivals into the massive labyrinth, supply them with a touch of provisions, and let the monsters do the rest. But they kept their eyes on things, naturally, the cameras secured to hell and back and broadcasting on secure frequencies to exactly two locations: the guardhouse at the foremost entrance… and Mariejois. A more delightful form of sport the Nobles couldn't find, they could always look into seeing those who had dared to rise against them fight for their lives like the uncivilized beasts that they always were.

This was where Jeremiah Cross now dwelled, and the only hope he had for overcoming it was that he wasn't alone. With the reach of his weapons and the guidance of the God of Noise, it was just possible for him to survive…

A secret place exists between the North Blue and the East Blue. Not atop the Red Line, but beside it, hidden in its shadow… or rather, hiding as its shadow. It is a place of death for truth, liberty, and light. Any whose deaths could make their causes grow instead of disappear were to disappear themselves. The only light here is of the Gods who watch the torture from far away. The only liberty here is to possibly choose when and how you die. The only truth here… is that nobody leaves once they enter.

Vast as a city, tall as a mountain.

Dark as a starless night, lifeless as the ocean floor.

The Eternally Rotting Tree releases none that dares to grace its branches, save into the embrace of death.

DESTINATION REACHED

THE HELL OF DARKNESS

SERPENT