The ashes of the Flame Emperor settled, leaving behind ashes and smokes.
"Stay down, Ace," Gunnar grunted, his voice a low growl of pure grit. "You're done."
"Like hell I am," Ace retorted, forcing himself to his feet. His body was a symphony of pain, his flames reduced to mere flickers on his shoulders, but the fire in his eyes burned as brightly as ever. He stood beside Gunnar, ready for his last stand.
Katakuri, his mochi form slowly solidifying from the searing heat, rose to face them. The air was thick with the ozone of Haki, the sweet smell of burnt sugar, and the metallic tang of blood. The time for complex techniques was over. This was about who would be the last man standing.
There was no signal. They moved as one.
Gunnar and Ace charged, a two-headed beast of ice, fire, and fury. Katakuri met them head-on. He didn't evade; he engage.
Gunnar threw the first punch, a right hook powered by raw, Titan-born strength and coated in a thick, obsidian shell of Armament Haki. It was a simple, brutal strike meant to cave in a mountain. Katakuri met it with his own, his fist transformed into a massive, square block of Strength Mochi, also gleaming with the dark luster of Haki.
BOOM!
The air itself buckled, a visible shockwave erupting from their fists that tore through the molten landscape. Both men were thrown back a step, their arms screaming in protest, the sheer force of the blow felt by every soul in the dimension.
Before they could recover, Ace was there. He slid in low, a blur of motion, his own Haki-coated fist aimed for Katakuri's midsection. "You're not the only one who can hit hard!"
Katakuri, his future sight piercing through the chaos, reacted instantly. His torso morphed, a hole opening to let Ace's punch pass through. But as Ace's arm was extended, Katakuri's mochi body snapped shut like a venus flytrap, trapping Ace's arm in a sticky, unbreakable grip.
"Got you," Katakuri rumbled. He began to swing Ace, using him as a living flail, intending to smash him into Gunnar.
"I don't think so!" Gunnar roared. He stomped his foot, and the ground beneath Katakuri turned to a treacherous sheet of black ice. At the same time, he slammed his palms together. It wasn't a quake punch. He gathered heat, creating a miniature, invisible bomb of pure concussive force. He unleashed it.
The quake-blast slammed into Katakuri, not with enough force to injure him seriously, but enough to throw him off balance on the ice. His grip on Ace loosened for a fraction of a second. It was all Ace needed. His trapped arm exploded into flames, melting the mochi and freeing himself.
Gunnar grabbed Katakuri in a brutal bear hug, his arms of ice and lava threatening to tear the commander apart. "I've got him, Ace! Hit him!"
Katakuri, caught in the hold, simply smirked beneath his scarf. His body turned to liquid mochi, oozing out of Gunnar's grasp before reforming behind him. He delivered a powerful, Haki-infused axe kick to the back of Gunnar's neck. Gunnar stumbled forward, his vision swimming.
Ace came flying in, his entire body wreathed in a final, desperate burst of flame. "Fire Flight: Phoenix Scorch!" He was a living missile.
Katakuri met him head-on, his arms transforming into multiple thick, sticky tendrils. He didn't try to block; he tried to entangle. The tendrils wrapped around Ace's fiery form, hissing and steaming, the mochi caramelizing and hardening into a makeshift cocoon.
But Ace being a stubborn man. He let out a defiant roar, and his flames intensified, turning from orange to a brilliant, burning white. "Amaterasu's Embrace!" The heat became so immense it didn't just melt the mochi; it vaporized it. The cocoon exploded outward in a cloud of super-heated steam.
The blast caught both Katakuri and Gunnar, throwing them in opposite directions.
They all landed hard, panting, bleeding, their bodies pushed to the absolute brink.
"This ends now," Gunnar rasped, pushing himself to his feet. He looked at Ace, then at Katakuri. He knew they had seconds before their energy gave out completely.
He charged one last time. Katakuri, seeing his approach, prepared for a final clash of fists. But Gunnar did something unexpected. At the last second, he dropped, sliding on the icy floor, ducking under Katakuri's guard. He wasn't aiming for a punch. He was aiming for a takedown.
He wrapped his arms around Katakuri's legs, using his immense strength and weight to tackle the commander, lifting him off his feet and slamming him onto the hard, checkered floor. It was a raw, desperate, street-fighter's move.
They were on the ground, a tangled mess of limbs and blood. Katakuri tried to turn his body to mochi, but Gunnar held him in a chokehold, his arm of ice lowering the temperature, making the mochi sluggish and hard to manipulate.
"ACE!" Gunnar screamed, his voice raw, his muscles straining. "FINISH IT!"
Ace, seeing the one, final, unmissable opportunity, put every last ounce of his strength, his Haki, and his soul into his right fist. It glowed with the intensity of a dying star.
He brought it down like a meteor.
But Katakuri was the pride of the Charlotte family. Even pinned, even in this humiliating position, his will was absolute. With a final roar, he managed to free one arm and met Ace's descending fist with his own.
The final impact.
Fist met fist. Fire met mochi. Brother met brother-in-law.
The resulting explosion was not a grand, world-ending blast, but a sharp, focused, deeply personal detonation. It threw all three of them apart, leaving them in broken heaps on the floor of the ruined Mirro-World.
The silence that followed was absolute.
From behind the shattered mirrors, a figure emerged, moving with a desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength. It was Smoothie. Her face was pale, her body trembled with the aftershocks of childbirth, but her eyes held a rage. She held her massive, named sword, Hyorin, in her hands, its immense weight. She had watched them fight to the brink for her. She would not let it be for nothing.
She saw Katakuri, her brother, beginning to stir. He was pushing himself up, his mochi body slowly, painfully, knitting itself back together. He was going to get up again.
With a cry that was part war-cry and part a mother's protective roar, she charged. She put all her strength, all her fear, all her love for the man bleeding on the floor, into one final, decisive swing. She aimed to decapitate her brother, to end this nightmare once and for all.
Katakuri's head snapped up. His eyes, glowing with a last, desperate flicker of future sight, saw her coming. He didn't have the strength to form a complex defense, but he had enough to react. He threw himself backward, rolling clumsily, the massive blade of Hyorin whistling through the air where his neck had been a second before. The sword slammed into the floor, shattering the molten slag with a deafening crash.
Smoothie, her momentum carrying her forward, stumbled, her own body screaming in protest. The single, powerful exertion had cost her dearly.
Katakuri was on the ground, vulnerable, trying to push himself up. He had dodged one attack, but he saw another future coming, fast and unstoppable.
Gunnar and Ace, seeing Smoothie's valiant, reckless charge, had found their last reserves. They roared in unison, pushing themselves to their feet.
"NOW!" Gunnar bellowed.
They became a two-man avalanche. Gunnar's fist, coated in a final, cracking shell of ice and Haki, and Ace's, wreathed in the last, sputtering embers of his soul-fire, flew through the air.
This time, Katakuri couldn't dodge. He could only watch as the two fists, coated in devil fruit and Haki slammed into his chest.
CRACK-BOOM!
The impact was definitive. Katakuri's eyes went wide with shock. The Haki on his body shattered like glass. He was launched backward, tumbling through the air like a broken doll before crashing into a far-off mirror, the glass spiderwebbing around his unconscious form. He did not get up.
The invincible commander had finally fallen.
Silence.
Then, a weak, sputtering laugh broke the tension. It was Ace. He was standing, swaying on his feet, a wide, triumphant, and utterly exhausted grin on his face.
"We… we did it…" he gasped, looking at Gunnar.
Gunnar, leaning heavily on his knees, breathing in ragged gasps, looked back. A slow grin of his own spread across his blood-stained face. "Told you… we'd get him."
The laughter, ragged and triumphant, echoed in the desolate Mirro-World.
Gunnar, leaning on his knees, looked up at Smoothie, a grin of pure, unadulterated love on his face. He had done it. He had kept his promise.
He took a step toward her, his arms outstretched, ready to finally hold his family and leave this hell behind.
And that's when she moved.
With a speed that defied her exhaustion, Smoothie snatched her greatsword, Hyorin, from the floor. Her face, which had been a mask of relief and pride, was now chillingly blank, her amethyst eyes as cold and hard as gemstones.
Gunnar froze mid-step, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Smoothie?"
She didn't answer. With an expression devoid of emotion, she lunged. Not at an enemy. At him.
The massive blade, coated in a shimmering, unseen layer of her own powerful Haki, swung in a vicious, horizontal arc.
Gunnar, his body spent, his guard completely down, had no time to react. The blade connected with his chest. It was not the flat of the sword; it was the edge.
SHIIIIINNNK!
The sound was obscene, a wet, tearing noise that cut through the silence. The blade sliced through his hardened skin, his muscles, and his bone, carving a deep, gruesome cleave from his left collarbone down to his right hip. It was a wound designed not just to injure, but to disembowel.
Gunnar's grin vanished, replaced by a look of profound, heart-shattering shock. He stared down at the greatsword embedded in his torso, then up at his wife's face. The woman staring back at him was a stranger.
"S…moo…thie…?" he whispered, his voice a choked gargle as blood began to well from his lips.
Ace, who had been laughing a moment before, screamed. "SMOOTHIE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"
He launched himself forward, his fist igniting with a desperate, sputtering flame, aiming to knock her away from Gunnar.
Smoothie didn't even look at him. As Ace closed in, she released her sword, leaving it grotesquely embedded in her husband's body. She spun, her movements fluid and powerful, and drove her own Haki-coated fist into Ace's face.
The impact was brutal. There was a sickening crack of bone. Ace's eyes rolled back into his head, his fire extinguished for the final time. He was launched sideways, a limp, unconscious projectile, before crashing into a heap beside the fallen Katakuri.
Silence. Utter, deafening, soul-crushing silence.
Gunnar swayed on his feet, his hands weakly trying to grip the hilt of the sword protruding from his body. He looked at her, his golden eyes wide with a pain. It was the pain of absolute, world-ending betrayal.
"Why?" The word was a broken, bloody whisper.
Pudding and the nurses stood frozen in horror, their hands over their mouths, their minds refusing to process the scene.
Smoothie stood before Gunnar, her chest heaving, her expression unreadable. She looked at him, at the man who had declared war on the world for her, the father of the child she held just moments ago, and a single, crystalline tear traced a path down her stone-cold cheek.
[A/N: This Arc is Ending in a couple of Chapters.]