Three minutes passed.
They passed without sound.
Without breath.
As if time itself had stopped moving.
Then—
As though some god had finally answered the prayers of the countless watching eyes, the black screen—knocked unconscious by overwhelming Haki—flickered.
Once.
Twice.
And came back to life.
The darkness shattered, and an image formed.
The moment it did—
The world froze.
"ACEEEEEE…!"
Luffy's shout tore through the Thousand Sunny.
His fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms, veins bulging, eyes burning as if the very screen had committed an unforgivable sin simply by showing what it did.
On Sphinx Island, the silence exploded.
"Ace!!!"
Rage-filled voices echoed across the town. Whitebeard's sons surged forward instinctively, eyes bloodshot, bodies trembling—each of them looking at the screen as if sheer will alone could let them tear through it, reach Marijoa, and slaughter every last dog of the World Government.
Yamato stood unmoving.
Silent.
Her gaze never left the image—but her fingers curled slowly into a fist, knuckles whitening.
Kaido watched the screen for a long moment.
Then his eyes shifted—just briefly—to Yamato.
As if confirming something.
Something he felt.
He didn't move.
Not yet.
He wanted to see the end of this.
And somewhere in his mind, a thought surfaced—clear and heavy.
Marijoa…
Before, it had been impossible. Too many people.
But now?
Chaos.
Vacuum.
Power gaps left unfilled.
Maybe now, Kaido thought, I can finally go there.
Maybe now… I can die.
As that thought crossed his mind—
The screen fully stabilized.
And the image sharpened.
Kaido's pupils shrank.
For the first time in a long while—
He was genuinely shocked.
Because standing there—
That silhouette
That presence
He had seen it once before.
At God Valley.
"…So you're still alive," Kaido muttered.
Then—
He laughed.
A deep, violent laugh that shook the air around him.
"Wororoorrororo…"
His eyes burned.
"But I'm not the same as I was back then."
Conqueror's Haki leaked out
Like a challenge thrown across the world itself.
This time—
If fate wanted a rematch—
Kaido was ready to answer.
---
Marijoa.
Ace was hanging in the sky.
Not by chains.
Not by ropes.
He was suspended by a black energy.
Black, condensed, oppressive—shaped like an arrowhead, its form sharp enough to distort the air itself. It had pierced straight through his chest, lifting him off the ground as though he weighed nothing.
Blood streamed down freely.
Heavy.
Unrestrained.
It dripped from his body and froze before it could even touch the frozen ground below.
That arrow—
It came from Imu.
Ace could feel it clearly now.
This wasn't like the Admirals.
Not like the Knights of God.
Not even like the Five Elders.
This power was on an entirely different level.
Overwhelming
Ancient
Absolute
Stronger than any opponent Ace had ever faced.
And yet—
There was no fear on his face.
No despair.
Only a smile.
Almost mocking.
That smile twisted something unseen.
Imu's voice echoed, cold and distorted, as if the world itself spoke through it.
"What… are you laughing at?"
Ace didn't answer.
Outwardly, he remained silent—bloodied, impaled, suspended like a sacrifice.
But inside—
Ace was calculating.
Not his wounds.
Not the distance.
Not even Imu.
He was calculating the energy stored inside his heart.
Yes—his heart.
The moment Ace had first awakened his Devil Fruit, something strange had happened. Along with the expected rise in power, he gained an additional authority—one that went beyond flame itself.
He gained control over his surroundings.
Not metaphorically
Literally
His awakening allowed him to influence the environment and bend it to his will, turning the battlefield itself into flames. His attacks became stronger, wider, more absolute.
During the past two years,
Ace researched this power,
and while battling Fujitora, Ace awakened his Devil Fruit for the second time.
At first, he didn't understand what it meant.
He didn't know whether this was something unique to him—an anomaly born from circumstance—or whether Devil Fruits truly possessed a second awakening that no one had yet documented.
But one thing was certain.
This was different.
Ace had expectations.
He believed his second awakening would grant him overwhelming flames—fire beyond imagination.
Flames like those spoken of in legends from other worlds.
Fire that burned with the heat of the sun itself.
Like the first captain of another era—Genryūsai Yamamoto—whose flames were said to rival the surface, even the core, of a star.
Ace thought his power would become something like that.
It didn't.
His flames did grow stronger.
His control improved.
His mastery deepened.
But the true change lay elsewhere.
Ace gained something beyond fire.
He gained authority over temperature.
Not merely producing heat—but absorbing it.
He realized that he could draw in the heat of his surroundings, stripping it away, storing it within himself. Flames, ambient warmth, residual thermal energy—everything could be taken.
Fire was no longer just something he created.
It became something he could consume.
From that moment on, Ace began to think differently.
For the past year, he experimented—testing limits, imagining applications, searching for ways to turn this power into something decisive.
And it was during that time…
That he began to understand how dangerous this ability truly was.
And eventually—
He created a forbidden technique.
A technique that, once fully activated, would inevitably lead to his own death.
A technique he swore he would never use unless the world itself demanded it.
Its principle was brutally simple.
Absorption.
Ace could draw heat energy from his surroundings—ripping it out of matter, air, stone, even life itself—and store it directly inside his heart.
Three kilometers.
That was the radius.
With Ace at the center, everything within that range slowly bled heat.
And every fraction of energy removed—
Was compressed and sealed inside him.
Stored.
Waiting.
When the time came, Ace could release it all at once.
Detonate it.
The cost, however, was absolute.
While this technique was active, Ace could not use his fire abilities at all.
No flames
No intangibility
No regeneration through fire
That was why—
During the battle at Marijoa—
For the past several minutes—
Ace had been fighting without his Devil Fruit.
That was why he'd taken hits he shouldn't have.
Why he'd been pushed back.
Why he'd been captured so easily.
The temperature of Marijoa had fallen from 21°C to −37°C.
And even that number didn't matter anymore.
What mattered—
Was the amount of energy stored inside Ace now.
It was enormous.
So vast that even Ace himself could barely contain it.
So vast that fighting Imu directly had become impossible.
So vast that his own body was beginning to fail.
But that—
That was also part of the plan.
Because being captured—
Being impaled—
Being brought face to face with Imu—
Was never a mistake.
It was one of Ace's goals.
---
Ace felt it.
The control he had maintained so carefully was slipping.
The pressure inside his body—inside his heart—was reaching its limit.
Time was running out.
He shifted impatiently, the black spear of energy still piercing through his chest, suspending him in the air. The world around him felt distant now, muted, as if wrapped in glass.
His gaze slowly moved.
Not toward Imu.
Not toward Marijoa.
But toward the sky—toward the places where Morgans had hidden countless Den Den Mushi, broadcasting this moment to the entire world.
Ace smiled.
A genuine smile.
"Well," he murmured softly, almost casually,
"guess this is goodbye."
That was all.
For a fraction of a second—inside Marijoa, across the seas, in every nation watching—
People were about to react.
Then—
BOOMMM
A sound so deep, so overwhelming, that it didn't feel like an explosion.
It felt like the world itself had been struck.
The screen went completely black.
---
"ACEEEEEEE!!!"
Luffy screamed.
Rage, fear, denial, grief—everything tore out of him at once as he slammed his fists into the deck of the Thousand Sunny. His eyes were wide, bloodshot.
Just moments ago, he had seen Ace's eyes.
That smile.
This was the first time Luffy had ever seen his brother look like that.
And now—
Nothing.
No image.
No sound.
No answers.
---
On Sphinx Island, silence reigned.
Every member of the Whitebeard Pirates stared at the darkened screen, as if trying to burn that final image into their souls.
Ace's last smile.
That was all they had left.
They didn't know what Ace had planned.
They didn't know about stored heat, forbidden techniques, or what was truly about to happen.
To them—
Ace had said goodbye.
And died at the hands of the World Government.
Whitebeard slowly stood up.
The air around him trembled.
"Everyone," he said, his voice heavy, restrained only by will.
"In three hours, we depart Sphinx Island."
Every head snapped up.
"The Whitebeard Pirates," he continued, eyes blazing,
"declares war on the World Government."
A pause.
"Even if we die—
we will drown them in our own blood."
Not a single pirate hesitated.
Not one voice opposed him.
If anything, their killing intent burned hotter than Whitebeard's own.
Three hours.
Three hours to dock ships, gather supplies, prepare for war.
None of them cared.
They wanted to sail now.
The sixteen commanders stood together, gazing up at the sky—at the moon—as if Ace were watching them from there.
---
Ten nautical miles away from Marijoa.
A Marine ship drifted silently.
Garp stood at the edge, fists clenched so tightly they trembled.
Tears threatened to spill from his eyes—but his expression was pure fury.
Sengoku stepped forward and grabbed Garp's arm, stopping him from jumping overboard and charging straight toward Marijoa.
"Don't," Sengoku said quietly.
Garp didn't respond.
---
Few seconds ago
For the first time—
Imu hesitated.
Ace's smile was wrong.
It wasn't resignation.
It wasn't despair.
It was acceptance.
And that terrified her.
For hundreds of years, Imu had stood above kings, above gods, above history itself. It had erased nations, silenced eras, crushed legends before they could bloom.
But now—
A sensation crept up it's spine.
Cold
Sharp
Fear
It's eyes widened as it finally felt it—something gathering, something vast and unstable, something that should not exist inside a human body.
Imu's fury erupted.
"YOUUUU DAREEEEEE—"
Ace didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
What answered was light.
( Isaac Netero Death style : Nuclear Bomb )
A blinding flash—pure, absolute—erased sound itself. For a fraction of a second, the world lost color, lost shape, lost meaning.
Then—
Detonation.
Ace became the center of annihilation.
Marijoa vanished.
Not shattered.
Not destroyed.
Erased.
The land beneath Ace ceased to exist in an instant, matter collapsing under impossible energy. Stone, steel, palaces, weapons—everything within a Two km radius was turned into nothing more than expanding light and heat.
The Red Line screamed.
A massive section of it was obliterated, torn apart as if a god had taken a blade to the spine of the world. Mountains were ripped free and vaporized before they could even fall.
The sky ignited.
High above the clouds, a colossal sphere of blinding brilliance formed—
a second sun.
For one terrible moment, the world thought dawn had come early.
On the seas—
Luffy froze.
His body moved before his mind did, his head snapping upward, eyes locking onto the horizon.
There—
In the place where Marijoa should have been—
A sun burned.
White-hot.
Expanding.
Roaring silently across the sky.
Gas and plasma spiraled outward in violent waves, the clouds disintegrating as the atmosphere itself was torn apart.
---
Ten nautical miles away—
Sengoku stared.
His mind refused to process what his eyes were seeing.
"That's… impossible," he whispered.
Garp said nothing.
The shockwave reached them.
The sea was forced backward.
Water rose unnaturally high, then evaporated in an instant, turning into towering walls of steam. The ocean itself recoiled, as if terrified.
Marine ships were hurled away like toys, hulls screaming under pressure as the force slammed into them. Waves kilometers tall formed, rolling outward in widening rings of destruction.
Everything in front of that light—
Had been annihilated.
Not conquered.
Not defeated.
Erased.
And at the center of it all—
Where Marijoa once stood—
There was nothing left.
Only burning air.
Only silence.
Only the afterimage of a man who smiled…
…and chose how the world would remember him.
-----------------------------
📌 Author's Note — Energy Estimate (For Reference)
The following is a simplified thermodynamic estimate to give readers a sense of scale. It is not part of the narrative.
Initial Ambient Temperature: 21 °C
Final Ambient Temperature: −37 °C
Total Temperature Drop: 58 K
---
Heat Absorbed from the Air
Affected Radius: 3 km (spherical volume)
Estimated Air Mass: ≈ 1.38 × 10¹¹ kg
Heat Absorbed:
≈ 8.0 × 10¹⁵ joules
---
Heat Absorbed from the Ground
Affected Radius: 3 km
Depth: 50 m
Estimated Ground Mass: ≈ 2.26 × 10¹² kg
Heat Absorbed:
≈ 1.05 × 10¹⁷ joules
---
Total Thermal Energy Possessed
Combined Energy (Air + Ground):
≈ 1.13 × 10¹⁷ joules
---
☢ Nuclear-Scale Comparison
Equivalent Energy Yield:
≈ 27 megatons of TNT
For comparison: this places the stored energy in the same general class as the largest thermonuclear detonations ever recorded.
≈ Half of the Tsar Bomba's maximum yield
(Tsar Bomba ≈ 50 megatons TNT)