Douglas Bullet's confidence, a fortress built on a lifetime of absolute, solitary strength, cracked.
The man standing in the crater was no longer the kid he had been effortlessly beating. The very air around Ace was now a threat, a crushing field of heat and gravity-like force—the Solar Pressure—that made the tons of metal in his mech feel sluggish and heavy.
"What... what is this power?" Bullet growled, his voice a low rumble of disbelief.
Ace didn't answer. He just smiled. A calm, terrifying, and utterly joyful smile. And then he vanished.
He didn't move fast. He simply ceased to be in one place and appeared in another. He was a heat mirage, a flicker of light, his Ignition Acceleration moving him faster than Bullet's monstrous Observation Haki could even track. He appeared directly above the Bullet Armor's massive head.
"You're too slow," Ace's voice whispered, a sound that seemed to come from every direction at once.
He didn't use a grand technique. He just punched.
The blow was not a normal punch. The moment his fist made contact, a silent, sonic-fire implosion erupted, a contained blast that didn't just dent the metal but melted it, turning the armor plating into molten slag.
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Bullet roared, swinging a massive arm to swat him out of the sky.
But Ace was already gone, phasing through the heat of his own attack, reappearing at the mech's knee. Another punch. Another silent, melting implosion. He was a phantom, a blur of white-hot flame, dismantling the colossal war machine piece by piece. To him, in this state, the world had slowed to a crawl. He could "hear" the pulse of heat from Bullet's own body inside the armor, a frantic, raging heartbeat that was the only thing he needed to track.
Enraged, Bullet transformed his mech's arm into a massive plasma cannon, a weapon he had designed to challenge a Buster Call. He fired a beam of pure, destructive energy directly at Ace.
Ace didn't dodge. He just held up a hand.
What happened next defied all logic. The beam of energy, a force that could have vaporized a mountain, simply... stopped. It was absorbed into Ace's body, the light bending around him as his Pyrokinetic Dominion asserted its absolute authority. He didn't just block the attack; he consumed it. The flames of his hair flared brighter for a moment, and then he let out a satisfied sigh, as if he'd just had a light snack.
"My turn," Ace said.
He appeared before the mech's chest, his five ethereal flame-arms grabbing onto the armor, melting and tearing at the plates, while his main hand, his father's sword, Ace, was drawn and coated in a blinding, golden Haki. He was going to end this.
With a final, desperate roar, Bullet ejected from the crumbling mech, his own body coated in an impossible layer of Armament and Conqueror's Haki. He was a living torpedo of pure, concentrated power. "If I can't kill you with the world's toys," he bellowed, "I'LL DO IT WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS!"
He met Ace in the sky, his fist, a weapon that had once clashed with the Pirate King himself, aimed directly at Ace's heart.
Ace saw the attack coming as if in slow motion. He saw the rage, the will, the lifetime of solitary power packed into that single blow. And he met it not with a sword, not with a fist, but with a simple, elegant, and utterly terrifying gesture.
He snapped his fingers.
A single, void-silent flame, black as the abyss and utterly soundless, bloomed at the tip of his fingers. Zero-Point Combustion.
It touched Bullet's Haki-clad fist.
There was no explosion. No sound. Bullet's Haki, a legendary defense that could shatter mountains, simply... disintegrated. The silent, black flame consumed the energy, the will, the very concept of his defense, leaving a blackened "void burn" mark on his knuckles that seemed to smolder with an unnatural darkness.
Bullet's eyes widened in pure, abject horror. His ultimate power, his absolute defense, had been unmade by a finger snap. His will, for the first time in his life, faltered.
Ace didn't waste the opening. His body was screaming, his time limit almost up, the power threatening to destabilize and consume him. He had one last shot.
He brought all six of his ethereal arms together, his main hands forming a familiar sphere. He poured every last drop of his life force, every last ember of his joy and his rage, into it. A miniature sun, dense and white, with a swirling corona of black and golden lightning, formed in his hands.
"This is the power of a king," Ace declared. "CRUEL SUN!"
(A/N: SMIRKS...)
He slammed the attack into Bullet's now-defenseless chest. The resulting explosion was a silent, blinding flash of white light that consumed the entire island.
When the light faded, Ace was on his knees, his Ignition Phase gone, panting, completely drained, his body steaming. Before him, Douglas Bullet lay unconscious, his belief in his own solitary strength shattered into a million pieces.
When Bullet awoke hours later, he found Ace sitting by a fire, being tended to by a very bored-looking Kuzan. His first instinct was rage. But then he remembered. He had lost.
He slowly stood up. "I lost," he said, the words tasting like poison.
"You did," Ace said, not even looking at him.
"You defeated me with a power " Bullet stated, his voice a low growl. "I cannot surpass Roger if a strength like that exists in the world. I must understand it."
He looked Ace dead in the eye, his pride replaced by a new, burning obsession. "I will follow you. I will be your subordinate. I will be your shadow. I will watch your every move until I have learned the secret to your strength. And when I have... I will defeat you and prove that my path is the true one."
Buena Festa, now thawed and shivering, saw his chance. "An excellent idea! I will come too! To record this legendary journey!"
Ace just looked at his two new powerful and insane companions. He looked at Kuzan, who just shrugged.
He had set out to get a caterer. He was coming back with a demon he couldn't get rid of.
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