The silence that followed Vista's death lasted exactly as long as it took for Marco to process what his enhanced vision had shown him.
Shackled to the far wall of Marineford's detention center, the Phoenix's head snapped up with predatory alertness. Through the reinforced window of his cell, his eyes had caught something that made his heart skip a beat despite the seastone cuffs draining his strength.
"Ace..." he whispered, his voice hoarse from hours of frustrated rage.
On the execution platform, two figures stood where there should have been one. Luffy's distinctive straw hat was unmistakable, but beside him, unshackled and free, stood the man they had all come to save.
Marco's lips curved into the first genuine smile he'd worn since the battle began. "You magnificent little bastard."
The seastone burned against his wrists as he strained against his bonds, not to escape, that was impossible, but to get a better view of what was about to unfold. After hours of helpless watching as his family was systematically slaughtered, finally, FINALLY, there was hope.
His voice echoed through the detention center, carrying all the defiant joy of a man who had just witnessed a miracle.
"POPS! ACE IS FREE!"
In the plaza below, surrounded by a nervous ring of Marines who dared not approach but couldn't look away, something that should have been a corpse stirred.
Edward Newgate knelt in a pool of his own blood, his massive frame crumpled forward like a broken monument. The Marines around him maintained a respectful distance, even beaten, even dying, he was still Whitebeard, and instinct warned them against getting too close to a wounded Emperor.
Edward Newgate had been many things in his long life: a son without a father, a brother to the lost, a captain to the brave, and a father to the abandoned. But he had never been a man who stayed down when his children needed him.
His massive frame began to shift, not with strength, but with pure, desperate will.
A single, enormous hand pressed against the blood-soaked stone, fingers that could once crush mountains now barely able to form a fist. Blood didn't just stain the ground beneath him, it poured from wounds that would have killed lesser men ten times over.
When Whitebeard slowly, agonizingly, began to rise from his knees, he was barely recognizable as the World's Strongest Man.
Sengoku's earlier assault had been devastating. Half his body was devastated with trauma and exposed bone. His legendary coat hung in tattered remains, revealing a torso that was more wound than flesh. The Fleet Admiral's golden fists had carved trenches through his chest so deep that his breathing came in wet, rattling gasps. One arm hung useless at his side, the shoulder joint shattered beyond repair.
The Marines around him took involuntary steps backward as he rose. Even broken, even dying, the aura of absolute power that had once made the world tremble still clung to him like a shroud.
His legs shook with each step, leaving bloody footprints on the stone. His breathing came in ragged gasps, each one potentially his last. The man who had once stood equal to the Pirate King could barely stand at all.
But his eyes... through the blood and the pain and the approaching darkness of death, his eyes still burned with the fury of a man who had just heard his son's chains break.
"Gura...ra...ra..." The laugh that had once shaken islands came out as little more than a wet wheeze. Blood bubbled from his lips with each attempted chuckle, his punctured lungs struggling to draw breath.
But even broken, even dying, it was still unmistakably the laugh of Edward Newgate.
Every head on the battlefield turned toward the sound. Pirates who had thought their captain dead felt hope bloom in their chests. Marines who had celebrated victory felt ice form in their veins.
Whitebeard planted his naginata in the cracked stone, not as a gesture of dominance, but because without it, he would have collapsed. His grip on the weapon was weak, his hands barely able to maintain their hold on the shaft that had once cleaved battleships in half.
As he surveyed the carnage through his eye, his voice came out as barely more than a whisper that somehow carried across the silent battlefield.
"My sons..." Each word was a struggle, bought with blood and borrowed time. "Your old man... is still here..."
The Gura Gura no Mi stirred around him, but where once it had obeyed his every command with devastating precision, now it sputtered and cracked unpredictably. The power that could split islands flickered like a dying flame, responding more to his desperate will than any conscious control.
Sengoku's enhanced awareness had been tracking Whitebeard's vital signs through the rubble, expecting them to flatline at any moment. When the readings spiked instead of fading, his massive Buddha form turned toward the plaza with grim understanding.
This was no longer about containing a healthy Emperor. This was about stopping a dead man who refused to die.
In his accelerated thinking, the tactical analysis was brutally simple. Whitebeard was operating on pure will and adrenaline. He had minutes, maybe less, before his body finally gave out. But in those minutes, a dying Emperor with nothing left to lose could still destroy everything.
The erratic tremors running through Marineford's foundations confirmed his fears. Whitebeard's power was unstable, uncontrolled. He wasn't trying to use precise techniques anymore, he was just letting his Devil Fruit leak out in desperate bursts that could collapse the island by accident.
"Sakazuki," Sengoku's voice boomed across the battlefield, his tone carrying absolute authority. "Execute Fire Fist Ace immediately. Do not engage Whitebeard."
Through the chaos, Akainu's response was coldly efficient. "Understood."
The Admiral's form began to shift, his body becoming living magma as he launched himself toward the execution platform. His trajectory was perfect, his intent unmistakable. If Ace was free, then Ace would die in the next thirty seconds.
But Sengoku was already moving, his massive Buddha form crossing the plaza in tremendous strides. Not toward Ace, that was Akainu's task now, but toward the monster that was pulling itself from the rubble with murder in its eyes.
As he moved, his enhanced mind processed the tactical situation with cold precision. Whitebeard's resurrection changed everything. The systematic execution of his crew would have to wait. Now it was about damage control, about preventing a wounded Emperor from destroying everything they had built.
"All units," he commanded through the Den Den Mushi network, "Surround and contain Whitebeard. Do NOT engage directly. Maintain distance and await orders."
His golden fist began to glow with accumulated power as he approached the World's Strongest Man.
"Edward Newgate," he called out, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction. "Your war ends here."
Whitebeard's response was to weakly raise his trembling fist toward the air.
The crack that appeared in reality was jagged, unstable, nothing like his usual precise control. It spread unpredictably, and Marineford's foundation groaned under the chaotic stress. Buildings swayed not from calculated seismic waves, but from the uncontrolled death throes of a power that was consuming its wielder.
"My war?" Blood poured from his mouth as he spoke, each word a monumental effort. "This stopped being... my war... the moment you made it... about my family."
He tried to lift his naginata with both hands, but his ruined arm wouldn't respond. The massive weapon, once wielded with the grace of a master, now scraped against the stone as he struggled to raise it with his remaining strength.
"Now it's about... justice, Sengoku..." His voice was fading, but the raw determination in it was terrifying. "The kind that comes... from a father's... dying breath."
Around him, the air didn't crack with controlled precision, it shattered randomly, chaotically, the awakened power of his Devil Fruit responding to emotion rather than technique. This wasn't mastery. This was a dying emperor's final tantrum, and it might be enough to drag them all into hell.
But on the execution platform, as Akainu's magma form approached like a falling star, two brothers stood ready to face their destiny together.