Meanwhile, over on Nikolas's side of the battlefield, chaos was already unfolding.
The very instant his leader gave the signal, Nikolas did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He immediately activated his Devil Fruit ability, unleashing the eerie power of the Kiri Kiri no Mi. A rolling mist began to pour from his body, thick and suffocating, spreading rapidly in every direction until the entire area was swallowed by a ghostly fog. Visibility dropped to zero within seconds, and confusion erupted among the marines as panic rippled through their ranks.
"Huh?! Where the hell is this mist coming from?"
"Shit! It's getting thicker by the second! I can't see a damn thing!"
"Everyone, hold your ground! This is clearly one of the enemy's tricks — stay alert!"
"There's something wrong with this mist! It's not normal!"
"I—I'm losing my—!"
Thud!
"What? Where is—argh!"
Thud!
"The enemy is among us! Be car—!"
Thud!
One after another, the marines collapsed like marionettes with their strings severed, their bodies dropping to the ground with dull, echoing thuds. Fear spread faster than wildfire among those still standing.
Amid the fallen soldiers, a single figure moved with the calm poise of a predator. Nikolas stood tall, his sharp grin gleaming through the haze. Cloaked in mist, he looked less like a man and more like an apparition, a phantom born of smoke and silence, untouchable and merciless.
As a Logia-type Devil Fruit user, Nikolas possessed a distinct advantage. The moment his mist spread out, he could merge with it completely, vanishing into the fog to become an unseen predator. From within this dense cover, he waited with uncanny patience, striking only when the moment was right. Yet, this power came with one significant drawback. To land an actual hit, he needed to solidify his body, even if only for a second, which made him vulnerable during that brief window.
His mist, however, was far from harmless. It was toxic in its very essence, not a poison, but a slow, suffocating thief that drained its victims of strength the longer they remained trapped inside. Their senses dulled one by one . Their sight, hearing, smell, touch, and even taste faded until they could barely register their own existence. The longer they breathed it in, the closer they drifted toward a living death.
What hope did a person have when stripped of vitality and robbed of every sense that tethered them to the world? It was like being buried alive inside one's own body.
Of course, Nikolas knew better than to think himself invincible. He had weaknesses, and they were painfully simple. If a marine managed to coat their weapon with Haki or, worse, strike him with Sea Stone, his mist would instantly lose cohesion. Just one touch of that cursed mineral would be enough to cancel his Devil Fruit powers entirely, forcing him back into human form.
He had always found this vulnerability utterly ridiculous. "One tap and it's game over? What kind of joke is that?" he would often complain to himself with dramatic disgust.
Amused by his own thoughts, Nikolas allowed himself a moment of smug reflection, a moment that almost cost him dearly.
Because, as he was basking in his own magnificence, a sudden movement from the mist caught his attention too late. A sharp gust of displaced air reached him just in time to warn him. He twisted aside instinctively, narrowly dodging a sneak attack from a determined marine captain.
Reacting on instinct, Nikolas countered with a savage kick aimed straight for his attacker's midsection. To his irritation, his foot sliced clean through the target without resistance.
"Smoke?" Nikolas muttered, raising one eyebrow with mild interest before his mouth curled into a knowing grin. "Ahh, so you're that Captain Smoker, huh?"
It was not exactly hard to guess. The man had literal smoke billowing from his body and he was puffing on not one, but two cigars like some sort of hardcore chimney. Honestly, Nikolas found it both impressive and ridiculous at the same time. Honestly, the guy looked like a caricature of his own name.
Smoker, however, was not in the mood for idle banter. He wordlessly shifted back, dodging a second kick Nikolas sent his way. His sharp eyes narrowed the moment he noticed the faint black sheen coating Nikolas's leg, the unmistakable sign of Busoshoku Haki.
Smoker inwardly cursed.
A Haki user. Of course.
He should have expected it. What else would come out of the New World but another Haki-wielding monster? What was he hoping for, a polite spar and afternoon tea?
Before he could react, a voice drifted to his ear, close enough to make every muscle in his body tense.
"Oi, you might wanna pay attention to your surroundings," came the lazy, taunting whisper.
Smoker barely had time to turn before Nikolas's leg shot upward with terrifying speed. The kick connected squarely under his chin, slamming into him with bone-rattling force.
Damn Haki users, Smoker thought bitterly as his vision blurred, his body reeling from the impact..
.
.
.
At Yuzu's side.
The battlefield around her was an orchestra of chaos, and Yuzu conducted it with cold, merciless precision. Blood sprayed in grotesque arcs, the bodies of her enemies crumpling like discarded puppets with every swing of her blade. The brown-haired woman, her expression colder than winter steel, did not even break a sweat. She moved with effortless cruelty, cutting down opponents one after another, leaving a trail of death in her wake.
It was all too easy. Disgustingly easy.
Yuzu's lips twisted into a thin, unimpressed line as another hapless fool tried to cross swords with her, only to meet the same fate as the others. She almost yawned mid-slash.
"Tch. Weaklings," she muttered in a bored tone, slashing another enemy without even properly looking at them. The man dropped like a sack of rocks.
Her steps were casual, almost lazy, as she waded through the battlefield. Then, as if the universe were determined to test her patience, a girl with dark blue hair, thick glasses perched on her nose, charged at Yuzu with a shrill, desperate battle cry that scraped against her nerves like nails on glass.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Yuzu barely spared her a glance before ruthlessly kicking the girl in the stomach with a sharp, brutal motion. The girl flew back like a broken doll, crashing into a stack of crates with a pained shriek.
"Bunch of idiots," Yuzu scowled, wiping the blood off her blade with a sharp flick of her wrist. She felt as if she was wasting her time here, dancing around cannon fodder when what she really wanted was something more challenging.
A sudden chill sliced through the air.
Then—
Fsssshk!
Something glinted and lashed toward her neck with deadly speed.
Yuzu's body responded before her mind fully registered it. Twisting elegantly out of harm's way, she barely avoided a string that would have sliced her head clean off. Her eyes lit up, a savage grin spreading across her face as she turned to face the source.
"Well, well, well..." she drawled, her voice dripping with mockery as she looked up. "Good to see you again, dear cousin. I see your taste in fashion has somehow gotten even worse. I mean, seriously, pink feathers?"
Floating midair with that same maddening, self-satisfied grin plastered across his face, Doflamingo looked down at her like a king addressing a pesky ant. But Yuzu knew him too well. Behind that arrogant smirk, he was irritated.
Good. She wanted him pissed.
"I didn't expect you to crawl out of whatever hole you've been hiding in," he said smoothly, his voice oozing that same poisonous charisma. "And here I thought little Dorothy was happily rotting away in Mary Geoise."
Yuzu let out a low, throaty chuckle that did not quite reach her eyes.
"Fufufufufu... It's Yuzu now," she corrected, her voice sweet and sharp like a blade dipped in honey. "Dorothy has been dead for years."
The words were barbed, slicing into the old, festering wound between them.
She stepped forward boldly, batting away another incoming string with a lazy flick of her sword. The movement was casual, but every nerve in her body was coiled, ready to strike.
"Besides," she continued with a smirk, "why would I want to stay caged up in that ivory prison, listening to a bunch of bloated idiots who think they're gods? Out here," she gestured broadly at the battlefield, the chaos, the blood, the freedom, "at least things are honest. You kill, or you get killed. Simple."
Another whip of strings slashed toward her, faster this time, angrier. Yuzu twirled midair, spinning like a dancer through a storm, slicing through them with ease. She laughed, wild and full of spite.
"Oh, but wait..." she said, catching her balance and grinning at Doflamingo like a wolf baring its teeth. "Unlike me... you didn't really have a choice, did you?"
The words hit their mark. She saw it, the subtle tightening of his jaw, the slight narrowing of his glasses-covered eyes.
She lunged forward, blades flashing, slashing at his strings, at anything and everything around her like a cyclone of blood and fury. Deep gouges appeared in the ground, splinters of broken crates and bodies flying as collateral damage.
"Between you and me, Doffy..." Yuzu sneered, her voice practically a snarl now, "you're the one who fell from grace! You're nothing but a disgrace!"
She howled the last word as she drove her sword into the ground, sending a shockwave through the area, rattling the very air around them.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Her laughter rang out, high and unhinged, echoing over the battlefield as Doflamingo hovered above, his face darkening by the second.
This was no ordinary fight. This was two monsters from the same bloodline, both too twisted to be normal, too dangerous to be contained, finally crossing blades.
And only one of them would walk away.
.
.
.
With one admiral already down, Aokiji wasted no further effort on the escaping pirates. He was not concerned with chasing small fry when a far bigger threat loomed right before him.
The Uzukage and her companions.
Honestly, much like Akainu, this was not his first time encountering that unpredictable, infuriating woman. In fact, Aokiji had been involved in several missions over the years that aimed to either capture her or wipe her small, fiercely independent empire from the Grand Line's map altogether.
Obviously, every single one of those missions ended in humiliating failure. The Uzukage had proven time and again that her capabilities far exceeded anything the World Government could throw at her. Her strength alone was terrifying, but it was not just brute power. None of the forces they sent could even touch her little empire, let alone raze it to the ground.
Aokiji could still vividly recall that disastrous day when a full fleet of warships was dispatched to unleash a Buster Call on Uzu. The island's natural defenses were no joke, as true to its name, it was encircled by hundreds of violently swirling whirlpools, each large enough to drag a battleship into the depths. His mission had been to neutralize those whirlpools using his Devil Fruit powers. Thanks to his ability to freeze and manipulate the ocean, combined with the marines' careful ship formations, precise coordination, and expert navigation, they managed to thread their way through the deadly waters with only minimal losses.
But just when they thought the worst was over, chaos struck.
Without warning, giant eagles larger than anything seen on the Grand Line soared high into the skies from the island's center. Riding atop those fearsome creatures were the people of Uzu, each armed to the teeth with bows, guns, and rifles. At the head of this airborne assault, a striking figure stood out.
A woman with long, flowing blond hair, her face obscured behind a fox mask, radiating an aura of cold command.
And if that was not enough, the sea itself suddenly rebelled. The waters below the warships stirred violently, and the marines could only gape in horror as countless monstrous heads that belonged to the Sea Kings and massive Sea Beasts, suddenly emerged from the ocean's depths. Only their heads and their baleful, intelligent eyes broke the surface, but it was more than enough to instill primal fear in even the most seasoned soldiers.
Yet, even amidst the horror, the Admirals had remained calm, stoic as ever. They were made of sterner stuff.
What happened afterward had carved itself permanently into marine history, a series of vivid, shameful memories Aokiji would never forget. The World Government's grand operation ended in utter failure, and the news that a small, rebellious kingdom had survived a full-force Buster Call spread like wildfire. It was an unprecedented stain on the World Government's supposedly invincible reputation.
There was nothing they could do. They had no choice but to begrudgingly leave the Uzukage and her defiant nation alone.
After all, beyond stealing slaves from the World Nobles (a pastime that endeared her to the common folk but enraged the Celestial Dragons) the Uzukage had not outright threatened the world's balance. From Aokiji's point of view, she was not worth the trouble. She was an irritation, yes, but hardly a direct threat to global stability.
Akainu, however, was another story. The man nursed a burning, bitter resentment after being outwitted and beaten by her time and time again, his pride shredded by every defeat.
In the end, the marines had no choice but to turn a blind eye.
But now, it turned out that the infamous Uzukage was none other than the granddaughter of Garp the Hero himself.
Aokiji could hardly believe it. Then again, the more he thought about it, the more it made an uncanny amount of sense. Both grandfather and granddaughter had a knack for causing headaches within the ranks of the marines. Both were unpredictable, uncontainable forces of nature.
Still, he could not help but wonder,
Why reveal herself now? Of all times, why choose today?
Surely it was not just because of her brother. Aokiji doubted such a simple motive.
With the strength she possessed, she could have broken into any prison, crushed any force in her way, and rescued her brother the moment she learned of his capture. There was no need for grandstanding.
No, this was deliberate. She wanted to be seen. She wanted the entire world to watch. Perhaps she had grown tired of the mask and the shadows, tired of hiding her true identity behind whispered rumors and half-truths. She had chosen this moment precisely because she knew the eyes of the world were fixed upon Marineford today.
One thing was now absolutely certain in Aokiji's mind,
Monkey D Naru was not someone they could underestimate.
Shaking off the swirl of thoughts clouding his mind, Aokiji hardened his arms with thick layers of ice and moved forward, cutting through the chaos toward his next target, Barlow.
The hulking man was holding off squadsWith one admiral already down, Aokiji wasted no further effort on the escaping pirates. He was not concerned with chasing small fry when a far bigger threat loomed right before him.
The Uzukage and her companions.
Honestly, much like Akainu, this was not his first time encountering that unpredictable, infuriating woman. In fact, Aokiji had been involved in several missions over the years that aimed to either capture her or wipe her small, fiercely independent empire from the Grand Line's map altogether.
Obviously, every single one of those missions ended in humiliating failure. The Uzukage had proven time and again that her capabilities far exceeded anything the World Government could throw at her. Her strength alone was terrifying, but it was not just brute power. None of the forces they sent could even touch her little empire, let alone raze it to the ground.
Aokiji could still vividly recall that disastrous day when a full fleet of warships was dispatched to unleash a Buster Call on Uzu. The island's natural defenses were no joke; it was encircled by hundreds of violently swirling whirlpools, each large enough to drag a battleship into the depths. His assignment had been to neutralize those whirlpools using his Devil Fruit powers. Thanks to his ability to freeze and manipulate the ocean, combined with the marines' careful ship formations, precise coordination, and expert navigation, they managed to thread their way through the deadly waters with only minimal losses.
But just when they thought the worst was over, chaos struck.
Without warning, giant eagles larger than anything seen on the Grand Line soared high into the skies from the island's center. Riding atop those fearsome creatures were the people of Uzu, each armed to the teeth with bows, guns, and rifles. At the head of this airborne assault, a striking figure stood out—a woman with long, flowing blond hair, her face obscured behind a fox mask, radiating an aura of cold command.
And if that was not enough, the sea itself suddenly rebelled. The waters below the warships stirred violently, and the marines could only gape in horror as countless monstrous heads—belonging to Sea Kings and massive Sea Beasts—emerged from the ocean's depths. Only their heads and their baleful, intelligent eyes broke the surface, but it was more than enough to instill primal fear in even the most seasoned soldiers.
Yet, even amidst the horror, the Admirals had remained calm, stoic as ever. They were made of sterner stuff.
What happened afterward had carved itself permanently into marine history, a series of vivid, shameful memories Aokiji would never forget. The World Government's grand operation ended in utter failure, and the news that a small, rebellious kingdom had survived a full-force Buster Call spread like wildfire. It was an unprecedented stain on the World Government's supposedly invincible reputation.
There was nothing they could do. They had no choice but to begrudgingly leave the Uzukage and her defiant nation alone.
After all, beyond stealing slaves from the World Nobles—a pastime that endeared her to the common folk but enraged the Celestial Dragons—Monkey D. Naru had not outright threatened the world's balance. From Aokiji's point of view, she was not worth the trouble. She was an irritation, yes, but hardly a direct threat to global stability.
Akainu, however, was another story. The man nursed a burning, bitter resentment after being outwitted and beaten by her time and time again, his pride shredded by every defeat.
In the end, the marines had no choice but to turn a blind eye.
But now, it turned out that the infamous Uzukage was none other than the granddaughter of Garp the Hero himself.
Aokiji could hardly believe it. Then again, the more he thought about it, the more it made an uncanny amount of sense. Both grandfather and granddaughter had a knack for causing headaches within the ranks of the marines. Both were unpredictable, uncontainable forces of nature.
Still, he could not help but wonder: why reveal herself now? Of all times, why choose today?
Surely it was not just because of her brother. Aokiji doubted such a simple motive.
With the strength she possessed, she could have broken into any prison, crushed any force in her way, and rescued her brother the moment she learned of his capture. There was no need for grandstanding.
No, this was deliberate. She wanted to be seen. She wanted the entire world to watch. Perhaps she had grown tired of the mask and the shadows, tired of hiding her true identity behind whispered rumors and half-truths. She had chosen this moment precisely because she knew the eyes of the world were fixed upon Marineford today.
One thing was now absolutely certain in Aokiji's mind:
Monkey D. Naru was not someone they could underestimate.
Shaking off the swirl of thoughts clouding his mind, Aokiji hardened his arms with thick layers of ice and moved forward, cutting through the chaos toward his next target, Barlow.
The hulking man was holding off squads of marines with frightening ease, swinging his enormous weapon with a savagery that forced even the elite soldiers to hesitate. If they could not break through him, they would never reach their true objective.
Aokiji launched a swift, precise attack aimed at the back of Barlow's head, hoping to catch him off guard. But at the last second, Barlow calmly turned, his reflexes sharp, and intercepted the strike, his thick, muscular arms hardened with haki clashing against Aokiji's frozen limbs.
The impact cracked the air with a sharp snap, ice crystals scattering everywhere.
Aokiji was not surprised. In fact, he had expected it. His cold gaze flicked down to the enemy's blackened arms, confirming what he already knew. This man had mastered the use of Busoshoku Haki.
There were no words exchanged between them. No witty remarks, no declarations of intent.
Only action.
In the next instant, they clashed in a brutal, no-holds-barred battle, two giants in human form locked in a ferocious one-on-one duel amidst the chaos of the war raging all around them of marines with frightening ease, swinging his enormous weapon with a savagery that forced even the elite soldiers to hesitate. If they could not break through him, they would never reach their true objective.
Aokiji launched a swift, precise attack aimed at the back of Barlow's head, hoping to catch him off guard. But at the last second, Barlow calmly turned, his reflexes sharp, and intercepted the strike, his thick, muscular arms hardened with haki clashing against Aokiji's frozen limbs.
The impact cracked the air with a sharp snap, ice crystals scattering everywhere.
Aokiji was not surprised. In fact, he had expected it. His cold gaze flicked down to the enemy's blackened arms, confirming what he already knew. This man had mastered the use of Busoshoku Haki.
There were no words exchanged between them. No witty remarks, no declarations of intent.
Only action.
In the next instant, they clashed in a brutal, no-holds-barred battle, two giants in human form locked in a ferocious one-on-one duel amidst the chaos of the war raging all around them.