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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The ground trembled with every earth-shattering step. Little Oars Jr. was a force of nature unto himself, a moving mountain of flesh and loyalty. His charge was not one of strategy or tactics; it was a pure, unfiltered expression of love for a friend. He saw Ace, and his entire world narrowed to a single, desperate objective: reach him. Cannonballs from the Marine batteries struck his massive frame, exploding in clouds of smoke and fire, but they might as well have been pebbles thrown by a child. He didn't even seem to notice them, his gaze fixed on the execution platform, a horrifyingly vulnerable target in the center of the world's most secure fortress.
Ace's heart, a chaotic fusion of two souls, was being torn in two. The part that was Portgas D. Ace screamed with a gut-wrenching mix of hope and despair. He remembered Oars Jr., not as a weapon of war, but as a gentle giant who had once fashioned him a hat from a massive straw kasa, a gesture of friendship from the Land of Wano. The giant had laughed, a sound like an avalanche, and called him "little brother." To see that kind, simple soul charging headfirst into a meat grinder of legendary warriors for his sake was a torment worse than any physical chain.
"OARS! STOP! TURN BACK!" he screamed, his voice raw and hoarse, easily swallowed by the din of battle. "DON'T DO IT!"
The Kenji part of his mind was a colder, more analytical entity, watching the scene unfold with a sense of grim, clinical dread. This is a bad move. A very, very bad move. He's a Class-A, city-sized target, and he's charging directly at a lineup of the world's biggest sharks. This isn't a rescue; it's a suicide run.
The sharks in question, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, had been observing the battle with a mixture of boredom and detached amusement. Oars Jr.'s charge, however, finally gave them something interesting to do.
The first to move was the most enigmatic of them: the towering, bible-clutching Bartholomew Kuma. He was silent, his face devoid of any emotion as he raised a massive, bear-like palm. A small, paw-printed bubble of air formed in his hand, which he began to compress with terrifying pressure.
"He's a big one," another voice, dripping with sadistic glee, giggled from above. Donquixote Doflamingo, perched languidly on the back of a petrified Marine, wiggled his fingers. "Fufufufu... What a perfect toy."
As Oars Jr. drew closer, smashing a line of giant-squad Marines with a single swing of his warship-sized katana, the Warlords struck.
Kuma unleashed his attack first. "Ursus Shock."
The tiny, compressed bubble of air shot across the plaza at an impossible speed. It was small, almost unnoticeable in the grand scale of the conflict. It struck Oars Jr. in the chest, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, the bubble decompressed in a cataclysmic explosion of pure kinetic force. It was not a fiery blast, but a concussive one, a colossal, invisible paw that slammed into the giant with enough power to level a city.
Oars Jr. roared in pain, stumbling backward for the first time. The shockwave ripped through his body, and a plume of blood erupted from his mouth. His seemingly impenetrable hide had been breached, his insides pulped by the sheer pressure.
Before he could even recover his footing, Doflamingo's attack came. Unseen by anyone but the most skilled Observation Haki users, razor-sharp strings shot out from the Warlord's fingertips. They weren't aimed at Oars's torso, but at his right leg.
With a flick of his wrist and a wicked, ear-to-ear grin, Doflamingo pulled. "Puppet show's over," he sang.
There was a sickening thump. Oars Jr.'s entire right leg, from the knee down, was severed in a clean, bloodless cut. For a horrifying second, it just hung there, detached, before toppling over with a ground-shaking crash. The giant cried out, a sound of pure agony, and collapsed onto his remaining knee, his momentum finally broken.
"And now for the finishing touch," a guttural voice rasped. Gekko Moriah, the hulking, onion-shaped Warlord, cackled, his shadow stretching unnaturally long across the plaza. "Tsuno-Tokage!"
A swarm of shadow bats erupted from the ground, but they were a feint. The real attack came from Oars Jr.'s own shadow. It detached from his kneeling form, warped, and solidified into a spear of pure darkness. Moriah's own shadow, his Doppelman, materialized behind Oars, holding the spear. With a final, gleeful laugh, the shadow-clone plunged the spear straight through Oars Jr.'s back, piercing him clean through the abdomen.
Ace watched, his eyes wide with horror, every attack landing on him like a physical blow. He saw his friend, his kind, gentle friend, brutalized, dismembered, and impaled in a matter of seconds. The calculated, overwhelming cruelty of it was breathtaking.
Kenji's internal monologue was frantic. The Warlords. I knew they'd act, but seeing it... the coordination, the sheer destructive power... this is what separates them from everyone else. They're not just strong; they're sadistic executioners. He felt Ace's rage boiling over, threatening to shatter their fused consciousness. Calm down, Ace! Panicking won't help him! It won't help anyone!
But Oars Jr. was not done.
Even with a hole in his chest, a severed leg, and a gaping wound in his stomach, he pushed himself up. He was bleeding profusely, his life force pouring out onto the cold stone of the plaza, but his eyes were still locked on Ace. He had failed to break through the Warlords, but in his charge, he had accomplished something else. He had smashed through one of Marineford's massive outer walls, creating a breach. A path.
"The wall... it's broken!" a Whitebeard pirate commander yelled. "He made a path for us! All forces, follow Oars! Charge into the plaza!"
Roaring with renewed hope, the pirates surged forward, pouring through the gap Oars Jr. had created with his own body. They were no longer trapped in the bay; they were inside the fortress.
Oars Jr. had succeeded. He had opened the way.
With the last of his strength, fueled by a will that defied his catastrophic injuries, he began to crawl. He clawed at the stone, dragging his mangled body forward, inch by painful inch. Marines fired their rifles at him, but he no longer registered the pinpricks of pain. He was a dying beast, using his final moments to reach his goal.
He reached the edge of the inner plaza, the final open space before the execution stand. He was so close. The distance was agonizingly short. He looked up, his one good eye finding Ace's. Blood streamed down his face, mixing with tears.
"Ace..." he wheezed, the name a ragged, bloody whisper.
He lifted a massive, trembling, blood-soaked hand, reaching, stretching across the chasm of the plaza, trying to get to the platform, to his friend. For one, beautiful, heart-stopping moment, it seemed like he might just make it. His fingertips were mere feet from the edge of the stone dais.
Ace strained against his chains, his entire body screaming, reaching back with an invisible limb. Come on, Oars... come on...
Then, the final, inevitable blow.
His shadow, still wielded by Moriah, twisted violently, causing him to spasm in agony. From above, Doflamingo laughed, wiggling his fingers again, and a dozen more strings latched onto Oars's outstretched arm, halting its progress.
It was Kuma who delivered the coup de grâce. He appeared in front of Oars in a flicker of movement, his expression as impassive as ever. He placed his bare palm on the giant's forehead. There was no explosion this time, just a quiet, ominous hum. A pale, paw-shaped bubble of energy emerged from Oars's back. It was his pain, his fatigue, all of it extracted from his body in an instant. Kuma let it dissipate into the air. Oars Jr.'s body, now feeling the full, delayed weight of every injury simultaneously, went limp.
His arm, which had been reaching with such desperate hope, fell.
It slammed onto the stone with a final, deafening BOOM.
The giant collapsed, his head hitting the ground with a sickening thud that shook the very foundation of the execution stand. The light in his eye faded, his body a broken, unmoving mountain range in the middle of the plaza. He had fallen, just short.
Silence fell in Ace's world. The sounds of the battle, the cannon fire, the screams—they all faded away into a dull, distant roar. All he could see was the fallen form of his friend. All he could feel was a cold, hollow emptiness where his hope had been, swiftly replaced by a new, volcanic rage. The part of him that was Kenji Tanaka was gone, utterly submerged by the pure, undiluted fury of Portgas D. Ace.
His head, which had been bowed in sorrow, snapped up. His face was a mask of absolute, murderous hatred. He wasn't looking at the Warlords. He wasn't looking at the Admirals. He was looking at Sengoku, at the entire system that had orchestrated this, that had turned his family into targets for sport.
He opened his mouth, and a scream tore from his throat, a sound of pure, heart-rending agony and rage that, for a moment, cut through the noise of the war itself.
"OARS!"