(Bellamy POV)
I ruffle Aisa's hair affectionately for a job well done while she gives me a tired smile in return. Seriously, having perhaps the most powerful kenbunshoku haki user on the planet as part of my crew was paying off dividends like wouldn't believe. I just had to stand where Aisa told me to stand and turn into a polished silver mirror when she gave me the signal.
I really should reward her later. Even if her level of control has was unrecognizable from just a few months ago, it still couldn't have been comfortable focusing all of her haki on the three admirals. She earned that cookie.
It had been obvious that the only admiral who could spare the time to come and sink us was Kizaru. No offense to the other two but they'd be too slow and leave a giant gap in their own lines for Whitebeard to exploit if they tried to make the round trip. And even if they tried, I was certain the Black Pearl could outrun them if given enough of a head start.
And if his past and future actions were anything to go by, most notably on Egghead, Kizaru loved making casual entrances for drama's sake, instead of doing things simply and efficiently. There had been no reason for him to land behind the Vegapunks and just stand there.
In hindsight, maybe it hadn't been the smartest move to gamble everything on the chance of Kizaru choosing to teleport over to our deck and say hello. If he'd chosen to arrive at some location above our ship instead, we'd have been in big trouble.
But with how little threat we could realistically pose to him and because of said behavioural pattern, I had decided the odds were good enough to take the gamble. It turned out, they had been.
And judging by the large splash over there…
"We need to rescue the admiral! Why aren't we moving yet?"
"The ice is too thick! The ship is stuck!"
"Dive into the water, damn you! Move it!"
"The pirates are coming!"
…I don't think we were going to be seeing him again any time soon.
Uhm…I think Kizaru going uh…missing rattled Sengoku quite badly. Like, really badly. To be fair, having your plans be stymied repeatedly with the world as your witness because of one random clown…that would wear on anybody's nerves. That it took one of his three admirals having an accident to break his composure spoke volumes about Sengoku's inner stability.
But everybody had a limit and Sengoku had apparently reached his.
The encirclement walls are activated, trapping the majority of the Whitebeard pirates within and creating a kill zone with dozens upon dozens of overlapping fields of fire from the wall-mounted artillery. Akainu melting the ice from under the pirates was just the cherry on top. Until this point, the situation seems very much like canon.
What was decidedly unlike canon was the presence of a horde of victorious and motivated pirates on the outside of the encirclement walls, who are masters at clambering up rope ladders. One has to remember that these pirates didn't just achieve these feats of agility and dexterity during fair weather in the four Blues. These men and women were veterans of the New World, tempered by the deadliest storms and craziest weather. Hence, it should come to no-one's surprise that scaling a steady wall with some rope under windless conditions was child's play for them.
The gun crews who had been ensconced within the wall were caught completely off guard by the flood of screaming pirates appearing to their rear. Heavy fighting broke out with the beleaguered marines desperately attempting to break out and retreat to the safety of their main battle line. Some managed it, some didn't, but in either case the guns fell silent nearly as soon as they had fired their first shots.
Is it any wonder then, that when Whitebeard himself took to the field, the marines countered by playing their strongest hand? Not sure why Sengoku didn't choose to just execute Ace and be done with it, but instead of doing so the marines decided to go for the high-risk high reward option.
Which resulted in my being an audience to a spectacular performance, one which showcased just why Whitebeard was called the strongest man alive.
Aokiji had the home ground advantage and he used it well. The glacial battleground provided prime conditions for traps and ambushes, stakes sprouting up out of nowhere to drive themselves into Whitebeard's back, others attempting to nail the old captain's feet to the ground. Hundreds more took the long way round, raining down from above and cutting off every possible escape route.
But why seek an existing escape route when one can make their own? The ground shakes, the air quakes as Aokiji's ice is reduced to dust, a thousand, thousand fragments. Much like the Admiral himself who reforms some distance away, clutching his chest in pain.
It's still a better situation than what Akainu found himself in moments later. His own aerial bombardment had failed to achieve its objective of depriving Whitebeard of his stable footing by removing the ice around him. Thus, when the marine's mad dog timed his approach to take advantage of an opening which never came, he discovered firsthand how strong Whitebeard's grip on his face could be. Shortly thereafter, Akainu's head is being pressed against the icy floor as quake after quake after quake is launched straight into his brain.
Marco clashes with Doflamingo, one trying to protect his father, the other trying to kill him, neither willing to give an inch. It's a beautiful display of power and skill, setting the air alight in a cascade of phoenix flames.
A little to the side, the "Bohemian Knight" Doma is locked in a duel with vice admiral Momonga. He is a veritable whirlwhind of cuts, stabs and lunges and yet, despite Doma's ferocity, the marine officer is a rock, solid and unmovable as he weathers the storm of blades.
It's only when Sengoku can no longer stand to sit on the sidelines, that Whitebeard's rampage slows down to a crawl. Like how the clash of two emperor's split the sky, the resulting backlash between the two giants of their age swept a myriad of officers into the sea.
Proving himself to be more tenacious than a literal zombie, Akainu blankets the field in magma, most of it focused on hemming in Whitebeard, trying to encase him in molten rock. And with Sengoku pinning him in place it works, much to the alarm of the watching pirates. When the lava is turned to solid obsidian held within a shell of ice, that alarm turns to despair.
Yet for all its hardness, obsidian is…brittle. It only takes a tiny flex for everything to shatter, shards flying everywhere, forcing Doma and Momonga to disengage and desperately dance around in order to avoid being turned into Swiss cheese.
While the pirates and the lesser ranked marines experience a roller coaster of emotions, running counter to each other and spanning the breadth of despair and elation, the admiralty watches on in silence. They knew Whitebeard, they knew his strength and yet they challenged him. They were not fools who believed something as insignificant as a seamless coffin could hold the strongest man alive.
Wordlessly, both sides reengage and Marineford trembles.
In the meantime, Trafalgar Law is putting in the final few stitches.
(Laki POV)
If you had shown the spectacle before her to Laki half a year ago, she'd have called the fighters gods. Even now the sheer strength on display boggled her mind. Even at the height of the war in heaven, Enel had never shown this level of destructive power.
She knew better now. No matter how large the iceberg dropped from the sky, no matter how fiery the vision of hell being crafted, no matter how clearly the quakes could be felt all the way out here…these men were mortal.
Laki isn't sure whether that made them less or more terrifying.
And as she watches the man she got to know as Whitebeard pummel a live volcano into submission, Laki can't help but wonder what her legendary ancestors would have thought if they could have witnessed this.
Would they have cheered on the large gleaming giant trying to bury Whitebeard beneath his palm? Applaud along as two golden hands start clapping rapidly with the pirate placed between them? Or would they have whooped in excitement as the fleet admiral is taken by the hand and flung headfirst into the marine HQ?
Surely her ancestors wouldn't have been like her, intimidated by what she is seeing. This was the level of strength she had so naively declared she would reach, back when she realized the consequences of freeing Marie.
Never mind an admiral, even the likes of the glittering man were astonishing in their resilience. Would she have been able to withstand the barrage of frozen lances the way he was doing? Albeit he was doing so with great difficulty and with the assistance of a crossdressing gunner, who was countering the bombardment with volley after volley of his own.
Bellamy had mentioned that the Blue Sea had many individuals who could have beaten Enel before breakfast and Laki is ashamed to admit that she hadn't truly believed him. Some part of her refusing to accept that the greatest tyrant her people had known was nothing but an insignificant pebble down here.
Would she ever reach that level? How long would that take, a decade? Two?
Shaking her head violently to clear it of depressive thoughts, Laki opts instead to refocus on the combat, trying her best to glean inspiration and knowledge via observation. Truthfully, not all of the fights are equally useful for her, most of them in fact not matching her preferred style of combat. Take the deluxe version of Shura for example, who according to Bellamy also used strings. There was precious little she could do to copy the way he was slicing the phoenix to bits. Shura looked like he was experiencing a religious revelation.
The thing is, should she attempt to charge recklessly into that web like Marco was doing, she wouldn't be kicking Doflamingo in the head. On the contrary, she wouldn't be doing much of anything really, on account of being dead. Though it may be something Aisa might be able to mimic when she's older. Enel had been invulnerable to most things and if her ward had sufficient control…who knew? Either way, the girl is seemingly glued to her side as she stares across the water at the carnage.
Same with Eddy, though his focus is wholly on the duel between two master swordsmen. Flying slashes are used liberally, deep gouges are left in the ice at regular intervals and their rapid strikes are producing enough sparks to be mistaken for fireworks. Ignorant of the art as she is, Laki isn't quite sure of what is going on all the time, though she can see each blow with ever increasing clarity. But Eddy is busy taking notes so at least he's getting something of value, even if Laki isn't.
In her own case, it's obvious on whom she should be focusing her attention on. Izou, the commander of Whitebeard's sixteenth division.
How was he firing shots so rapidly with two flintlock pistols? His movements are a blur, the only signs of a bullet's existence being the explosion of ice all around him. Though the more she focuses, the more she can see. The blur lessens as familiar motions start appearing, though performed at a level of mastery she's never seen before.
"AAACCCEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Then a wave of something washes over her and her world expands. Behind her she can hear the sight of Rivers tumbling off his avian perch while clutching his ears. Aisa buries her face into Laki's side as her legs start to tremble from the pressure. Next, her ears start registering the smells and the sight of the dead and the dying, the screams of angry and fearful men pungent to her olfactory nerves. Mani is heaving on the deck, sweat running down her face like rivulets.
And at the execution platform, the two executioners collapse like two puppets who have had their strings cut.
(Bellamy POV)
So that's what conqueror's haki feels like. No wonder that average people keel over from the pressure. Several members of my crew were impacted especially badly, though I can't help but notice that this group includes two of my three haki users. Actually, make that all three. Shura just keeled over too.
Thumbs up to the rest for recovering so quickly though, including Byron who barely missed a beat and is continuing to play song after song without rest. Though he has stopped singing, claiming that his voice is starting to go hoarse about twenty minutes ago. Then again, music didn't require lyrics to be amazing.
There had been a brief lull following Luffy's outburst but soon enough both sides went right back to murdering each other. Bonney, in particular, was leaving a trail of devastation in her wake, any area she vacated no longer having any marines capable of combat left. And as expected, she was making a beeline for Kuma who was mechanically firing off Ursa Shocks at any groupings of pirates near him.
Internally I wish her luck in getting her father's body out of there, but I do not get to witness the outcome as a massive roar forcefully redirects my attention to the execution platform, where a mountain begins to move.
Next, a lot of things happened almost all at once.
Oars staggers back to his feet, reducing segments of wall to rubble in the process.
Garp remains seated while a giant hand seeks to envelop Ace, platform and all.
Akainu abandons the fight against Whitebeard to fling himself at Oars, only to be blindsided by Crocodile.
Sengoku, distracted and suddenly on his own, fails to stop the formerly beleaguered Whitebeard cleaving through his ankle with a bisento.
Oars is frozen solid by Aokiji.
Marco dropkicks Aokiji.
Garp gets punched in the face by Luffy and gets punted off the platform.
Meanwhile, Doflamingo is laughing like a madman and encasing Oars in a net, shortly thereafter reducing him to into lots of little cubes of frozen meat. All the while vocally inviting Trafalgar Law to a family reunion. On his part, Trafalgar gives his former employer the proverbial finger and runs off to hide in the melee with the heavenly Yaksha hot in pursuit.
And while all this is going on, a key is slipped into a lock and turned.
A sun reignites on Marineford.
Author's note:
ACE. IS. FREE!
Or not.
We'll have to see.
It may feel like I'm rushing this but I promise you we haven't reached what I personally consider the climax of this arc just yet.
Admittedly this is a climax for Luffy but our MC is Bellamy...
See you on the next one.
P.S. comments and discussion make me happy.