At the forefront of the black fleet, hundreds of small fighters slammed into Xandar's shield. The blue barrier flickered violently. Inside the Nova Corps base on the ground, alarms blared relentlessly. The Nova Corps was Xandar's defense force. Clad in uniform, they piloted golden starfighters and maintained the order of the Xandarian civilization through interstellar technology.
A Nova Centurion looked up at the radar projection, his face grim. "Ronan's fleet has entered attack range. Evacuate the city sectors! Launch all fighters!"
"Sir, there's an unidentified flying organism hovering at high altitude," a communications officer quickly reported.
The Centurion paused. "No vehicle?"
The feed zoomed in. A man in a gold-striped kimono, his wild blonde hair flaring out like a lion's mane, floated at the edge of the clouds, arms crossed, looking down with utter disdain. The Centurion felt a wave of savage oppression just looking at the man's face.
"Intercept him first. Ronan is already enough trouble; I don't want an unknown variable."
Three Nova fighters, trailing golden exhaust, launched into the sky. They rapidly closed in on Shiki, boxing him in with a tight triangular formation. A cold warning blared from the comms channel.
"Unidentified flying organism. This is the Nova Corps. Land immediately and submit to authority!"
Shiki picked his ear, his eyes brimming with absolute contempt. "Submit to authority?" He cast a sidelong glance at the three tiny ships. "Do you even have the right?"
Inside the cockpits, the Nova pilots paled. "Target is refusing to cooperate. Prepare tractor beams."
Three blue beams shot from beneath the fighters, locking onto Shiki's body. Shiki didn't even bother dodging. The moment the beams touched his shoulder, his Mangekyo Sharingan slowly rotated. The surrounding air instantly became impossibly heavy. The three fighters plunged violently downward, as if crushed by invisible boulders.
"Gravity anomaly!" a pilot screamed in terror. "Engine thrust is completely suppressed!"
Shiki impatiently waved a hand. The three fighters were swatted away like flies by a massive, invisible hand, spiraling erratically toward a distant transit rail. Fortunately, the pilots were highly skilled; they desperately pulled up right at the edge of the rail, narrowly avoiding a fatal crash.
"Don't get in my way," Shiki spat in annoyance. "I'm actually in a decent mood right now."
In the next moment, the defensive shield above was ripped open by Ronan's fleet. Dozens of energy blasts poured through the breach, ruthlessly bombarding the city below.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Skyscraper facades shattered. Streets were torn apart layer by layer. Hover-cars were flipped, smashing into storefronts. Civilians screamed, running frantically toward underground bunkers. A little boy tripped on the side of the road, and as his mother turned to grab him, an entire glass curtain wall plummeted toward them from above.
Normally, Shiki couldn't care less about collateral damage. But this particular barrage landed uncomfortably close to the cloud layer beneath his feet. The rising smoke choked him, and his face darkened instantly.
"Too damn noisy. Stop dropping bombs by my feet!"
He violently threw both hands out. The power of the Float-Float Fruit expanded outward like a tsunami. In the center of Xandar, dozens of half-destroyed skyscrapers trembled violently. Foundations snapped. Rebar and concrete burst apart.
Inside the Nova Corps command center, everyone stared in shock.
"Sir! Structural anomalies in the city! Sectors Seven, Eight, and Nine... the buildings are detaching from the ground!"
The Centurion's jaw dropped in sheer disbelief. On the screen, dozens of skyscrapers were uprooted, carrying dirt, roads, and severed pipelines as they slowly ascended into the sky. The civilians who hadn't managed to escape in time were scooped up within the remaining structures, floating safely away from the bombardment zone. The little boy, held tightly in his mother's arms, stared blankly out the window. The entire street had taken flight.
"The city is flying!" a Nova pilot shrieked over the comms.
Standing above the clouds, Shiki thrust his hands forward. The floating skyscrapers rapidly accelerated. They were no longer buildings. They were dozens of floating, concrete-and-steel reefs of destruction. The first skyscraper smashed into Ronan's swarm of small fighters.
Boom! Dozens of ships were instantly crushed into metallic scrap.
The second building swept horizontally like a colossal, sky-blotting iron hammer, obliterating an entire row of fighters in mid-air. Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth. Above Xandar, the city ruins formed a vast, floating archipelago. Shiki stood at the pinnacle of the highest building, his golden hair whipping wildly in the shockwaves.
He smiled. A laugh that vibrated deep within his chest tore free.
"Jihahaha! Now this is a battlefield! Marine Headquarters? Impel Down? Compared to this sea of stars, they're nothing but pathetic little puddles!"
Inside the Dark Aster, the sub-commander of the Kree Empire's fanatic forces stared at the battlefield feed, his face an ugly shade of green. Ronan the Accuser had brought this fleet to annihilate Xandar using the Power Stone. The sub-commander never expected the Xandarians to hide a monster like this.
"What kind of weapon is that? Xandarian gravity technology?"
A soldier frantically reported, "Unrecorded! The target organism isn't wearing any gear!"
"I don't care what kind of freak he is, shoot him down!" the sub-commander roared. "Focus fire with the main cannons!"
The massive cannons on the sides of the Dark Aster rapidly calibrated. Rows of blinding energy coils lit up. Standing atop the floating ruins, Shiki looked coldly up at the cannons. His Mangekyo Sharingan spun faster. His ocular jutsu didn't just see—it commanded absolute lock-on. The internal mechanisms of the cannons, the energy conduits, the structural stress points—everything was perfectly mapped in his vision.
Shiki raised his right hand, pressing two fingers together, and made a sharp, slicing motion at the void.
"Ame-no-Tokotachi."
An invisible severing force instantly sliced into the first main cannon. The barrel, currently overflowing with highly compressed energy, was violently misaligned from the inside. Unable to vent, the energy catastrophically detonated within the chamber.
Boom!
A chain reaction of explosions ripped through the entire left broadside of the flagship. Fire frantically climbed the armored hull. The sub-commander was thrown hard against a control console.
"What happened?! Did the cannons self-destruct?!"
"No, sir! The internal structures were sliced open by something!"
Shiki raised his other hand. "Lion's Threat."
The floating skyscrapers began to spin violently. Stone, metal, transit rails, and broken bridges were drawn into the sky by the Float-Float Fruit. They coalesced behind Shiki, forming massive, terrifying lion heads. Every single one was dozens of times larger than a standard pirate galleon, bearing the horrifying weight of an entire Xandarian city sector.
In the Nova Corps command center, the Centurion's throat went dry. "What... what is he trying to do?"
Shiki spread his arms, looking every bit like a demon god ruling the cosmos.
"So you're Ronan, huh? I don't care what bullsh*t empire you're from. If you park your fleet above my head, you pay the toll with your life!"
He thrust both hands downward. "Lion's Threat: Star Meteor!"
Dozens of colossal stone lions, dragging city ruins behind them, plummeted with apocalyptic momentum, crashing into Ronan's vanguard fleet from every direction. The first stone lion pulverized three frigates. The second crushed a swarm of fighters and slammed into the flagship's flank. The third dropped straight down, punching a massive hole through a battleship's reinforced bridge.
Explosions bloomed endlessly across the starry sky. Ronan's front lines were devoured, as if a colossal space beast had taken a massive bite out of the fleet. Down on Xandar, fleeing civilians stopped in their tracks. They stared at the floating city sectors, watching the black warships be smashed to pieces one by one. No one knew whether to cheer or not. Because the man doing it didn't look like a savior. He looked like an untamed, walking disaster.
The Nova Corps fighters were forced into a ceasefire. They had wanted to intercept Shiki earlier, but now, not a single pilot dared to get close to the lunatic. Centurion Rhomann Dey slowly piloted his fighter toward the outer edge of the floating ruins. He opened the public channel, his voice tight.
"Stranger. Whose side are you on?"
Shiki looked down at the golden fighter. He pulled a piece of shattered warship toward himself and planted his feet firmly on it.
"Whose side?" Shiki grinned, baring his white teeth. "I'm on the side where no one dares fly above my head!"
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