Will ignited beats fear. Flames of a do-or-die resolve blazed again in the eyes of dozens of Marine officers.
"Moonwalk!"
"Shigan Barrage!"
"Tempest Kick, Storm!"
For a moment the square filled with the scream of torn air, the shriek of blades cutting wind, and the battle roars of men who had forgotten death.
Kael's answer to that tide of conviction was simple and direct.
He moved.
A Marine captain who excelled at Shave blurred out of Kael's blind spot. His long blade, armored in Haki, thrust straight for the heart from behind.
Before the tip ever touched cloth, an invisible shock detonated against his chest.
Kael vanished where he stood, and in the same heartbeat reappeared behind the captain as if the two had traded places.
"Guh!"
The man's uniform burst apart at the chest. He spat a red arc and crumpled.
Kael threaded the press of bodies like a stroll through a garden, yet he was too fast for the eye to follow.
In barely ten seconds the encirclement collapsed again.
The square was a field of groans. Officers lay scattered, unconscious or broken. Not one could still stand.
The rain kept falling, washing the wreckage of men and stone.
Only four figures remained upright on the vast ruined plaza.
Kael, and the triangle around him formed by Sakazuki, Kuzan, and Borsalino.
"Kh." Sakazuki coughed up blood laced with magma. Every breath scraped knives across the gash carved from shoulder to belly.
He still stood ramrod straight. The killing intent in his eyes burned cleaner and hotter than before.
Kuzan's hands were no longer in his pockets. He leaned forward, cold rolling off him in waves, freezing the raindrops as they fell.
Borsalino's lazy mask was gone. Both hands raised, fingertips pearled with gold, and his gaze was taut as a bowstring.
"My my," Borsalino drawled, trying to take the edge off the air that had frozen solid, "what a terrifying monster. This is getting rather troublesome."
Before the words had faded, Sakazuki moved.
"Meteor Volcano."
He roared to the sky. Both arms became volcanic maws. A storm of giant magma fists erupted upward, tore the rain apart, and then dropped like the end of days toward Kael's crown.
Almost in the same instant Kuzan slammed both palms to the ground.
"Ice Block: Pheasant Beak."
A colossal ice-bird surged out with killing cold and drove at Kael's chest. Even the rain froze in its wake.
Borsalino's body broke into gold and reformed behind Kael. Countless sparks gathered at his fingertips.
"Yasakani no Magatama."
A golden downpour of light-bullets swept from behind and filled every gap left to dodge.
Sky above, earth below, front and rear in unison.
For a heartbeat their timing was seamless, a death net of magma, frost, and light.
Facing that world-ending tri-strike, Kael finally showed a trace of satisfaction.
He raised his left hand and spread his fingers toward the rain of magma overhead. Then he closed his fist.
Decades of cultivation of his fruit power, reaching into the laws of space-time. Gravitational waves.
Universal Pull.
The volcano storm froze in midair as if time had been paused.
A heartbeat later all those blazing meteors curved on unseen tethers and arced toward the ice-bird howling in from the front.
Booming detonations rolled.
Scalding magma and killing frost slammed together and blew apart in the sky. A ring of pressure ripped outward. Steam boiled up and swallowed the field.
"What," Kuzan and Sakazuki barked together.
Kael's right hand never looked back. He flicked his black-gold naginata behind him almost lazily.
For an instant the blade shimmered with seven hues.
A prismatic arc of sword aura whistled back through the mist and met the golden storm head on.
Where that rainbow edge passed, it became an invisible crystal. Beams refracted and split, bursting into a blizzard of dazzling motes that painted the steam's veil in dream colors.
"Oh my." Borsalino's voice floated out, genuine for once. He even watched several of his own beams bend ninety degrees and spear off toward Garp and the Golden Lion.
"Whoa there. Mr. Garp, heads up."
Garp smashed through one of Shiki's slashes and backhanded the errant lasers to powder. "Borsalino, you little punk, what are you doing."
Through the steam the three surged again from three directions toward the man in the center.
Hum.
The ground under their feet shuddered without warning.
It did not feel like an earthquake. It felt like the earth had turned into a drum that had been struck, a savage frequency pouring up through their legs and into their bodies.
"Ugh."
All three grunted. Their charge stuttered.
Sakazuki's bones sang with pain. The water in Kuzan's body felt ready to boil. Borsalino's light-body even flickered toward particle collapse and almost failed to hold shape.
A flaw born in one breath.
Kael flashed between them.
Crack.
A simple elbow drove into Sakazuki's split-open wound.
The iron face twisted. He folded like a boiled shrimp and went skidding away.
Crack.
A precise whip-kick slammed Kuzan in the ribs.
He cartwheeled into a broken statue and brought it down in a crash of ice and stone.
Crack.
A palm-blade that looked slow but landed first kissed Borsalino's neck just as his body reformed.
His eyes rolled white. He toppled like a robot that had lost power.
The storm of blows ended in an instant.
Steam thinned. The rain came back down and rinsed the scars of battle.
Sakazuki clawed at the ground with a magma arm and tried to rise. The shock that had burrowed into him wrung a muffled groan from his throat.
Kuzan lay in a heap of rubble, misting cold, unable to get up for long seconds. Pain at his waist twitched the corner of his mouth.
Borsalino was the most pathetic. He lay flat in a puddle, frozen in the pose of that chop to the neck, mumbling, "Ko… kowai…"
After that flurry the three were a wreck, hurt on top of hurt.
At the center of the square Kael slowly let the stance fade.
The storm still raged. Not a drop touched him. Only a brush of mud stained the corner of his coat.
His chest rose a shade faster than before, then settled within two breaths.
He looked to the other battlefield.
Old man Garp was still a monster. Shiki's slashes had lost all rhythm. Garp's iron fists drove him backward step by step, and Sengoku's pressure from the flank gave him no air. Defeat was only a matter of time.
It was time.
Kael had taken his measure. The moment for a strategic redeployment had come.
He looked down from above at the three battered men who would one day be the Admirals. For once his expression was wholly serious.
"This battle will likely be a Marine victory. The three of you are indeed strong.
I, Kael Grylls, bestow upon you the name 'The Three Admirals.'
Live with it as the price for walking away. Each of you carry the weight of your own honor."
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