[Don't… whatever you do, don't look back, Ace.]
[Don't look back.]
[Don't look back.]
"So… that's what it meant?"
Don't look back—because behind you stands the one you would give your life to protect.
The moment you turn around, you can never let go. You will fly into the flames like a moth, knowing full well you will burn.
A bitter yet strangely peaceful curve tugged at Ace's lips as blood spilled steadily from the corner of his mouth.
But…
How could he possibly not look back?!
That was his little brother!
The boy he had grown up with. The one he had sworn to set sail beside. The kid he had watched place that straw hat on his head and declare to the world that he would become King of the Pirates!
This bond—stronger than blood, fused into bone and marrow—had long ago become part of his very life.
More real. More tangible. More weighty than the so-called "sinful blood" left to him by the father who had given him life.
To protect Luffy, he would turn back.
He would pay with his life if that was the price.
"Haah!!" Sakazuki's killing intent did not diminish in the slightest, even after punching through Ace's body.
"The Pirate King's bloodline is no different! But—"
With Whitebeard no longer there to restrain him, his eyes sharpened coldly.
"You won't stop me!!!"
Before the words had fully left his mouth, the magma fist lodged inside Ace's chest began to gather energy once more—violently, mercilessly.
"BOOM!!!"
The magma erupted inside Ace's body in a second explosion.
Scorching lava ravaged what little life remained within him from the inside out. The terrifying shockwave and surging magma extended forward like a venomous dragon bursting from its lair, lunging straight toward Luffy—who stood frozen in place, paralyzed by shock and grief, directly in front of him.
Akainu intended to skewer them together.
To roast the "sinful brothers" in a single strike.
"ACE!!!"
Jinbe, Marco, and the others' eyes split wide in horror as they hurled themselves forward—but they were too late.
Too far.
Faced with Akainu's merciless second detonation…
Faced with that fist that would swallow Luffy along with him…
Faced with the hopeless distance that even Marco and Jinbe, straining with everything they had, could not close in time…
Ace looked at his little brother.
At Luffy—utterly shattered, soul stripped away by despair.
At the fist still protruding from his own chest.
With a final, brutal surge of will, he raised both hands and clamped them down around Sakazuki's magma-coated arm. His palms sizzled instantly, flesh melting and charring under the heat.
Then, drawing upon every last scrap of strength remaining in his dying body, he threw his head back and screamed toward the execution platform.
No longer "old man."
No longer the distant, rebellious title he once used.
But a word that carried childhood memories, tangled emotions, and—now—only the purest, most helpless plea.
"GRANDPA!!!!!!!"
The cry detonated across Marineford's sky.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely thin.
On the execution platform, the figure who had sat motionless like a statue—cut off from the world—
The Hero of the Marines, Monkey D. Garp—
At the instant that cry of "Grandpa" reached him—
His bowed head snapped up.
The coat of Justice draped across his shoulders fell away without wind.
The eyes that had been filled with agony, conflict, and unshed tears burst open.
That cry—raw, unfiltered by politics or allegiance—shattered expectations.
It exceeded Sengoku's calculations.
It exceeded even Gern Reginald Sigmar's distant foresight amid the ruins.
This was not strategy.
Not ideology.
It was blood. It was family.
It was a cry that transcended everything.
"Tesoro!!" Gern shot upright from the ground in an instant, his voice cutting sharply through the air. "Shut down all the Den Den Mushi! Now!"
He knew what was coming.
Even he felt his heart seize at the pressure building in the air.
On the execution platform, Sengoku reacted at the same moment Gern did. His face drained of color as he spun toward his old friend.
"Garp!!!"
Too late.
"SA—KA—ZU—KI—!!!!!"
The roar shook the execution platform to its core.
For so long, Monkey D. Garp had endured.
Suppressed.
Struggled.
Bound himself in chains forged from the title "Hero of the Marines."
In that moment—
The string called "reason" snapped.
Family. Duty. Pain. Rage.
All the emotions he had forced down exploded like a dam giving way.
"BOOM!!!"
A surge of Conqueror's Haki erupted—far more terrifying, far more absolute than anything he had unleashed before.
The execution platform cracked beneath his feet.
And then—
He vanished.
Not Geppo.
Not Soru.
But a straight-line detonation of raw physical force.
The air itself was torn open into a vacuum corridor by his charge, a deafening sonic boom trailing behind him.
In a single instant, Garp appeared at Akainu's side.
The right fist known across the seas as the "Iron Fist" was now clad in the highest level of Busoshoku Haki—
And wreathed in boiling black-and-red lightning: Conqueror's Haki made manifest.
That cry of "Grandpa"—filled with a dying man's despair, with his final reliance, his last plea—
Erased every trace of Marine "justice" from the hero's eyes.
There was no warning.
No wasted word.
No opportunity for Sakazuki to react.
"Grandpa's here!!!!!!!"
He could not dodge.
The iron fist smashed squarely into Akainu's face.
"BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!"
A dull, earth-shattering detonation ripped through the air—like space itself had been punched through.
Under countless stunned gazes, Akainu's body twisted grotesquely, his skull snapping sideways at an impossible angle, fragile as porcelain under that monstrous blow.
He didn't even have time to scream.
He was launched like a cannon-fired projectile, reduced to a blurred streak tearing across the sky.
His body shredded the air as he flew—crossing nearly half of Marineford's harbor in the blink of an eye.
Finally—
With a cataclysmic crash that shook the earth—
He slammed into the mountainside of one of Marineford's outer supply islands.
Smoke and dust erupted skyward.
The entire island trembled violently.
A massive, horrifying crater scarred the mountainside, shattered rock raining down like a storm.
Akainu's body lay embedded deep within it.
The magma had gone dark.
His presence flickered faintly.
Alive or dead—
No one could tell.