Marineford.
The sea fortress built of blank stone and iron in the name of Absolute Justice lay under a lid of suffocating cloud.
The wind had fallen away. The air hung wet and heavy, like a soaked sponge pressed over every chest.
With the Pirate King's execution imminent, no one could swear nothing would go wrong.
A crescent harbor cradled the bastion. Buildings rose rank on rank. Justice capes crossed the plaza like strokes in a meticulous engraving.
Beneath that order, the tension was visible to the eye.
"Hey, you hear? It isn't just us. There are a lot of CP here today."
"Shut it. You want the brig."
Patrols moved at a clipped pace, eyes hard. The cadence shouts from the training yards were fewer, thinner.
High on a clocktower spire, Kael Grylls sat like a solitary hawk.
He looked down on a forest of masts in the harbor and the ant-small figures of Marines on the walls.
Force it head on.
The thought lasted a heartbeat before he laughed and strangled it.
Crash in alone, shake Marineford to its foundations. Satisfying. Cathartic. Not smart.
He was strong, but not arrogant enough to think he could overturn all of Marine Headquarters by himself.
Even if he punched through vice admirals and rear admirals alike, Garp, Sengoku, and maybe even Kong would arrive. The best outcome would be a stylish retreat.
That was stupid.
He needed a teammate. One who could draw most of the fire. One pathologically proud.
A perfect lightning rod.
Kael swung a leg, bored, gaze drifting to the colossal main block stamped with the word MARINE.
You will come, won't you, Hakijishi.
…
As if the sky heard his call, day dimmed with no warning.
It was not cloud. It was a thicker, almost tangible dark.
Colossal shadows unrolled like dropped stage curtains and smothered half of Marineford.
Every head tilted up.
Patrols halted. The drill shouts died. Stevedores froze with crates in their hands.
They saw it.
The cloud deck was torn open by brute force, and hulking masses shouldered through, their shapes coming clear and monstrous.
Islands. Several islands afloat in the sky.
Bare rock and earth showed on their undersides. Trees grew stubbornly downward. Grit and pebbles sifted away, like a broken corner of heaven from an old myth.
"You're kidding." A young Marine's mouth shook. His rifle clattered to the stones.
"What is that."
"Islands. Islands are falling."
Panic spread like plague.
Then a voice, wild and unrestrained, rolled like thunder from the horizon and crashed over Marineford.
"Sengoku. Garp. I'm here. Hand Roger over."
On the clocktower, Kael finally smiled, satisfied.
There he is.
The best lightning rod in the world, Shiki the Golden Lion.
Boom.
Shiki did not give the Navy time to breathe. Before the last syllable fell, several mountain-sized chunks sheared away from the floating archipelago.
Air burned around them. They lit like coals and became a rain of red meteors, tails streaming, aimed straight at the central plaza.
Destruction came fast.
Only then did the sirens shriek to life, splitting the hush and going up across the fortress.
"Enemy attack."
"Single hostile, the great pirate Shiki the Golden Lion. All units to maximum battle readiness."
Figures rocketed from within the bastion.
"Soru."
They ran on air, bodies blurring into afterimages, and met the falling boulders head on.
"Rankyaku, Pack of Wolves."
A burly vice admiral with a gull-wing pompadour struck first.
His legs became ghosted arcs, and in a heartbeat dozens of compressed azure blades wove a net and met the foremost stone mass.
On the other flank, a compact vice admiral with corded arms drew a breath and pressed two fingers together, steel-hard.
"Shigan, Kōren."
His arms vanished into motion. Needle-fine shockwaves hammered the weak seam of another boulder with stormfall speed.
Boom. Rumble.
One rock was sawed to gravel midair. Another flowered into holes and came apart with a roar.
Shrapnel rained. It rattled off stone and flags and sent dust climbing. New recruits went down screaming.
It was only the start.
"Too slow. Far too slow. Brats of the Navy, show me something real."
Shiki's laugh was pure mockery. The hovering islands quivered. A dozen more meteorites howled down, wider spread this time.
Their targets were the barracks and the rear supply piers.
Marineford slid into fire and chaos.
"Move. Shield family quarters and civilian blocks."
"Medics, ready."
"Batteries, elevate. Targets in the sky. Fire."
Guns along the wall finally found their mark and bellowed. Shells streaked upward.
As they neared the islands, their paths kinked under an unseen hand and burst in midair, flowers of wasted flame.
"Useless. That's the Float-Float Fruit." A bespectacled officer shouted over the din. "Long-range bombardment won't land."
Rain began.
At first a fine mist, then a sheet that drowned flames and raised white steam.
Blood and mud braided into sullied streams, creeping through the seams of the flagstones.
Shiki drifted down through it all, three feet above the stones, at the calm center of the riot.
The rain slicked his golden mane. Droplets traced the hard lines of his face without quenching the blaze beneath.
He held two famed blades, Oto and Kogarashi.
"Stop him." A Marine captain roared and led a charge with sword raised.
Shiki did not bother to look. He stepped.
"Cutter Wave."
A formless slash slid free, skimming the ground in a horizontal sweep.
The captain and the line behind him froze mid-stride. A red seam opened at the waist, and they fell into the spreading pool.
"Monster."
The living fell back, eyes huge.
"Ze ha ha ha ha. That's all it takes to scare you. Is this what Marine justice amounts to."
Then the Golden Lion flowed through their line. Oto and Kogarashi spun into twin storms of death.
No flourish. Only the oldest verbs of steel, hew, chop, thrust, tear.
Each stroke took lives. Each turn sparked a fresh gale of blood.
Formations tore like paper. A gash opened where he passed.
Blade-light flickered. Blood sprayed. Screams tangled with the rain until neither could be told from the other.
Moments later, a low mound of bodies and broken steel had grown beneath his boots.
He stood atop it, looking down on the hell he had made. There was no triumph on his face, only rage distilled to pitch.
Rain sluiced the blood from the piled dead. He did not seem to feel it.
"Roger." His voice carried, clear through weather and war. "There is no way these weaklings took you."
His head snapped up. Lightning lived in his stare as it raked the officers holding lines at a distance.
"He is a man I acknowledged."
Two auras rolled out from the main keep then, different as night and noon but both heavy enough to crush breath.
One man came like a fired shell and landed at the far end of the square hard enough to craze the paving.
He wore a Justice cloak. His cropped hair was salt and pepper. Monkey D. Garp, the Navy's hero.
The other walked, a steadier weight. Round frames glinted on his nose. Sengoku, who would one day be fleet admiral.
"Shiki." Sengoku's voice cracked like a whip. "Enough. This is not your playground."
"Oh. At last, worthy faces." Shiki bared his teeth, all cruelty and contempt. "Sengoku. Garp. Hand Roger over."
"Roger is the Pirate King." Sengoku's tone was flat and iron, every word a verdict. "He already won the fight that matters, Shiki. Title and end alike."
The smile fell off Shiki's face. Snarl twisted in its place.
"Pirate King. So what." He roared, the wheel embedded in his head trembling with the force.
"If he had joined hands with me, we would already rule the world."
Fury fogged his eyes with old memory.
"We were enemies, but we walked an age together. If he's here, bring him now."
He raised a finger and pointed straight at the pair, a command that would brook no refusal.
"If he must die, I will be the one to do it."
"Roger's death will make the pirates who run riot across the world bow their heads," Garp said at last, casting his cloak aside.
Sengoku took the line, his gaze turning grave as pressure built around him. "So you will not interfere."
"Ze ha ha ha." Shiki laughed so hard the islands hummed in answer. "Then I will take you with him."
"Lion's Might, Earth Scroll."
He drove both blades into the mound beneath his boots.
Power detonated.
The entire plaza bucked. Stone, flags, and bedrock lifted as if they were carpet. They curled and rose, sculpted by force into a pride of roaring stone lions that charged Garp and Sengoku in a tidal rush.
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