Just the thought of it made Garp's blood boil. He had spent ages perfecting that Armament Haki technique only for Ares to pick it up mid-battle?
Zephyr was just as shaken. His expression hardened. "Garp, this isn't the time. We take him together and end this now. If we let this chance slip, at Ares's growth rate… we may never get another shot."
He fixed Garp with a grave look. "Remember what we carry on our backs: justice."
That was the fear gnawing at him. If this carefully laid operation failed, Ares could grow into another Rocks perhaps something even worse. Because if Zephyr's memory served…
Tengetsu Ares was sixteen.
Sixteen. The same age Zephyr had still been a nameless recruit, while this boy now traded blows with Garp head-on and pressed the Marine hero with his fists alone.
A monster among monsters. How could the seas birth a creature even more terrifying than Charlotte Linlin?
"Fine," Garp growled. "Since that brat wants to play dirty, I won't play fair either."
More than that as Zephyr had said, they were Marines. Justice was theirs to uphold. He wasn't yet the "Hero of the Marines," nor the venerable "living fossil" he would one day become. He was a man in his thirties, steel in his spine and thunder in his fists.
They exchanged a glance and saw the same iron resolve mirrored back.
"Go," Zephyr barked.
Power surged underneath his close-cut purple suit, chest like a mountain under cloth, back ramrod straight. The air tremored.
Hum !
Armament Haki flared. Both forearms turned a glossy black; a shock ring rippled from his feet as he launched, arrow-swift, for Ares.
Garp moved with him in perfect time, aura exploding into the sky feral, immense, like a charging tiger.
The Marines' two strongest combatants attacking as one. A sight the seas rarely witnessed.
"Black Arm Shatter-Impact!"
"Fist Bone Meteor Crash!"
High above, standing on a banked flame-cloud like some hell-born war god, Ares threw back his head and laughed, eyes blazing.
"Come on!"
"Let this fight become a legend upon these seas sung by the world!"
His twin scarlet arms knotted with muscle, veins bulging like bundled steel, a demon's strength coiling beneath his skin. That explosive, annihilating force sang in his bones. He drowned in it, exultant.
"Crimson Armament Twin Dragons Play the Pearl!"
Boom !
Boom !
Where their fists met, the sky bloomed like a dying star. A world-ending shock wave ripped outward.
Zephyr and Garp's power was all iron edges and crushing weight. The impact rattled Ares's body with pain and fire, and his blood roared hotter. Adrenaline flooded him.
"Again!"
"This this is the kind of battle I live for!"
"Come!"
He laughed into the wind, face cut in iron and fever-bright. Two of the Marines' foremost warriors, and he showed not a flicker of fear. There was no such word in his bones.
The three of them crossed and recrossed the sky, moving so fast that only smeared afterimages remained.
Boom !
Thud !
"Crimson Armament Leopard Lunge!"
"Crimson Armament Great Ape King's Fist! Tiger Descends the Mountain! Lion Shakes the Heavens !"
Thud !
Rumble !
"Armament Shock!"
"Armament Spiral Wrist, Double Drive!"
"Fist Bone Meteor Descent!"
"Fist Bone Fury Iron Fist!"
They threw everything they had. Every ounce of strength, every trick of Haki, every last breath they smashed it all together in a death-defying storm.
Far off on the sea, Princess Stylla of the Sea Demons crouched upon a great Sea King's back, her pupils jittering like a broken clock hand. "Their battlecraft… it's unreal. Compared to them, I fight like a child who doesn't know her own strength. If I were half as skilled, those two humans would already be dead."
She had the Medusa-form Mythical Zoan, the Snake-Snake Fruit, and its dreadful gifts. But she had once been a pampered princess, a life of music and calm seas. Even with her Devil Fruit, the finer gears of battle had never been honed. For over two centuries she had largely relied on the siren's call and a Sea King's maw to crush intruders; the subtler arts had withered.
Now, watching Ares, Garp, and Zephyr carve the sky with force and technique, she could only hold her breath. Cold spray whipped her face as black waves rose and fell, and with each stinging drop the killing frost in her eyes thinned.
At that moment, through gale and surge, a massive raft nothing but trunks bound tight came surging in. No sail. No mast. Only the raw power of Slardar beating through the water below kept it from capsizing beneath the mountainous chop.
On the raft, Captain John stared at the sky and blanched. "Damn it. Garp and Zephyr… they've joined forces! Together, even Whitebeard or the Golden Lion would have to give ground. Ares can't hold out forever we have to get there and pull him out!"
Kaido's face was tight with fury. He leaned over the rail and roared to Slardar, "Faster! I'm going to help big brother Ares!"
"Right!" Slardar's jaw set. He drove harder, and the raft knifed ahead.
Kaido's eyes burned red. "Damn Marines, ganging up on him. Not while I'm here."
Elsewhere, at the island's rim, a figure in golden armor crested the rocks Wang Zhi, the Golden Sword Saint. He tipped his face to the storm-lit heavens and whispered, shaken, "Terrifying. Even with the two strongest Marines in step, he's still standing. A year and change, and he's grown into this? It beggars belief."
He drew a long breath. "Maybe he really can do it surpass even a Supreme Grade blade with his flesh alone."
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