The moment Ace's shackles hit the execution platform with a metallic clang, the air itself seemed to ignite.
Akainu's form had already begun its transformation during his leap from the plaza below. What launched toward the platform was no longer entirely human, it was living magma given purpose.
"FIRE FIST ACE!" His voice carried the finality of an avalanche. "YOUR BLOODLINE ENDS TODAY!"
Luffy's eyes widened as he processed the approaching death. His brother had just been freed, they had just achieved the impossible, and now Akainu was rising to steal it all away.
"Ace, run!" he screamed, his voice cracking with desperation.
But there was nowhere to run. The platform was surrounded by Marines, the plaza below crawling with enemies, and behind them, the execution stand offered no escape. They were trapped on a stage built for death.
Ace's hands ignited, flames bursting from his palms in desperate defiance. "Hiken!"
The column of fire that erupted from his fist was magnificent, orange and gold and blazing white at its core, hot enough to melt steel, powerful enough to vaporize lesser men. It streaked toward Akainu with all the fury of a man fighting for his brother's life.
The magma Admiral didn't even slow down.
Akainu's fist met Ace's fire column head-on, and the result was inevitable. Superior heat devoured inferior flame, magma consuming fire like a hungry beast. Ace's technique didn't just fail, it was absorbed, adding fuel to the inferno that was Sakazuki's body.
"Fire cannot burn magma, boy," Akainu said, his voice carrying over the roar of conflicting elements. "Your flames are nothing but kindling for absolute justice."
Luffy launched himself forward, his body stretching impossibly as he activated Gear Second. Steam poured from his skin as his blood flow accelerated, turning his rubber body into a pink blur of desperate speed.
"Gomu Gomu no Jet Pistol!"
His fist struck Akainu's shoulder with enough force to crater stone, but the Admiral's magma body simply reformed around the impact. Luffy's hand burned on contact, his rubber flesh sizzling against heat that could melt mountains.
"Brother complex?" Akainu's free hand swung toward Luffy with casual contempt. "How touching. You can die together."
The backhand caught Luffy across the chest, sending him flying backward with his shirt igniting from the brief contact. He crashed into the execution stand's base, smoke rising from his burned flesh.
Ace caught his falling brother, his own flames flickering weakly around them both. They had thrown everything they had at Akainu, and it hadn't even slowed him down.
The Admiral of the Fleet approached with measured steps, each footprint leaving molten stone in his wake. This wasn't a battle, it was an execution that had been delayed by mere seconds.
"Any last words?" Akainu asked, raising his magma fist for the killing blow.
"DEATH WINK!"
The blast of compressed air caught Akainu from the side, not with enough force to harm him, but enough to make him stumble half a step. The Admiral turned with annoyance toward the source of the interruption.
Emporio Ivankov stood at the edge of the platform, his massive form barely upright, his flamboyant outfit burned and tattered beyond recognition. The Revolutionary Army's miracle worker looked like he had been fed into a furnace and somehow survived, barely.
Half his face was a ruin of melted flesh, his signature hair singed down to charred stubble. His left arm hung useless at his side, the bone visible through burned muscle. Every breath came as a whistling gasp through damaged lungs.
But his eyes... his eyes still blazed with the fire that had made him a legend among revolutionaries.
"You vant to hurt my little Luffy-boy?" Ivankov wheezed, blood frothing at his lips. "You'll have to go through Mama first!"
"Emporio Ivankov," Akainu said with clinical interest. "I thought you were dead."
"Death is just another gender, and I refuse to transition!" Ivankov's voice cracked, but his defiance remained absolute. "Hell Wink!"
Another blast of air, this one weaker than the first. Akainu didn't even bother to dodge, letting the technique wash over him harmlessly.
"Pathetic," the Admiral said, turning back toward Ace and Luffy. "Your revolution dies with Dragon's brat."
But Ivankov wasn't done. His ruined body began to swell, muscles bulging despite the burns, damaged hormones forcing one last transformation.
"EMPORIO... TENSION... HORMONE!"
The technique that had once made him seem immortal now barely managed to keep him standing. But it was enough, enough to lunge forward, enough to wrap his arms around Akainu's waist, enough to buy his boys precious seconds.
"Run!" he screamed, his voice breaking. "Run, my darlings!"
Akainu looked down at the burned revolutionary clinging to him with something approaching respect. "Your loyalty is admirable. Your methods are flawed."
A magma fist punched through Ivankov's chest, emerging from his back in a spray of blood and steam. The Revolutionary's grip didn't loosen.
"For... the future..." Ivankov whispered, and then his body went limp.
"Ivankov!" Luffy's scream tore across the platform, raw with grief and rage.
But even as the Revolutionary's sacrifice bought them moments, those moments were already running out. Akainu shrugged off the dead weight and turned back toward the brothers with renewed purpose.
Then another figure stumbled onto the platform.
Galdino arrived more falling than running, his wax-covered body a patchwork of cracks and burns. The former Baroque Works agent had used every ounce of his power to maintain his disguise, to create the keys, to help free Ace. Now he was running on nothing but desperate courage.
"Candle Wall!" he gasped, throwing up a barrier of hardened wax between Akainu and the brothers.
The magma Admiral looked at the obstacle with mild amusement. The wax wall was impressive, thick, hardened, carefully crafted. It might have stopped most attacks.
It lasted exactly two seconds against Akainu's heat.
"Did you truly believe wax could stop magma?" Akainu asked as he walked through the melted remains of Galdino's barrier.
But Galdino had used those two seconds well. His remaining wax had formed a crude slide extending from the platform toward the plaza below, a desperate escape route that might give the brothers a chance.
"Go!" he wheezed, blood running down his face. "I'll hold him!"
"Candle Lock!"
Wax erupted from the platform, seeking to bind Akainu's feet, to slow him down for even a moment. The Admiral's magma body simply melted through the restraints, but Galdino kept trying, pouring everything he had into technique after desperate technique.
"Noble," Akainu said, almost conversationally. "Futile, but noble."
His fist took Galdino in the chest, the wax-man's body exploding in steam and blood as magma met human flesh. Another sacrifice, another few seconds bought with a life.
And still Akainu advanced, inexorable as a lava flow, patient as the grave.
Ace and Luffy looked at each other, understanding passing between them in the way it only could between brothers. They had run out of rescuers. They had run out of time. They had run out of hope.
All they had left was each other.
"Together?" Ace asked, flames flickering weakly around his fists.
"Together," Luffy confirmed, activating Gear Second one more time despite his burns.
They turned to face the Admiral who had killed their friends, who had come to end their family line, who represented everything they had spent their lives fighting against.
Akainu smiled, the expression cold and terrible on his magma-wreathed features.
"Together, then."
**************************************
In the plaza below, Sengoku's massive Buddha form approached the kneeling figure of Edward Newgate with the slow, measured pace of inevitability.
The Marines who had been maintaining their wary circle around Whitebeard parted before their Fleet Admiral like water, their relief palpable. They had been terrified that the wounded Emperor might suddenly lash out, might spend his final moments taking as many of them with him as possible.
Now their leader was here to end it properly.
"Edward Newgate," Sengoku said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "Your war is over. Your crew is broken. Your son will die in minutes. Surrender what remains of your life with dignity."
Whitebeard's response was to slowly, agonizingly, push himself from his knees to his feet.
The effort was monumental. Blood poured from his wounds in rivers, his shattered body screaming in protest at every movement. The Marines around them took involuntary steps backward as the World's Strongest Man rose to his full, terrible height.
"Surrender?" Whitebeard's voice was a whisper that somehow carried across the entire plaza. "You think... I came here... to surrender?"
His good hand found the shaft of his naginata, fingers that could barely maintain their grip somehow finding the strength to lift the massive weapon.
The Gura Gura no Mi stirred around him, responding to emotion rather than technique.
Sengoku's awareness read the situation with cold clarity. Whitebeard had minutes, maybe less. But in those minutes, his uncontrolled power could still bring down all of Marineford. This wasn't about victory anymore, this was about preventing mutual destruction.
"Then die as a father should," Sengoku said, his golden form expanding to its full Buddha state.
The clash between Fleet Admiral and Emperor began with Whitebeard's desperate swing of his naginata, the blade trailing chaotic vibrations that cracked reality itself.
Sengoku caught the weapon in his massive golden palm, the impact creating a shockwave that shattered windows across Marineford.
"You're already dead, Edward," Sengoku said, his voice carrying genuine respect despite everything. "Why won't you just fall?"
Whitebeard's response was to slam his forehead into Sengoku's golden face, the impact drawing blood from both men.
"Because," he whispered, his voice carrying all the love and fury of a man who had spent his life collecting sons, "they're still... my children."
Above them, on the execution platform, Akainu's magma fist descended toward two brothers who stood defiant in the face of certain death.