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"Arrogant fools! Today the Jura-Tempest Federation ends! Release Saint Smulet immediately, and perhaps we will show mercy to your civilians. If you refuse..."
A CP0 agent who had come with the Marine fleet called out to Benimaru across the frozen bay, voice carrying the particular confidence of someone who has never once been told no.
Benimaru looked at him with the mild, incurious expression of a man noticing something on the ground.
"If we refuse, what?"
"We kill every last man and take every woman as a slave for the Celestial Dragons!"
Every person from the Jura-Tempest Federation who heard that went cold and quiet in a specific way.
Benimaru simply shook his head. He raised his right hand and pointed at the CP0 agent.
"Come here."
Two words. And with them, something invisible and irresistible reached out and wrapped around the CP0 agent's entire body.
"What... how is this..."
He threw every bit of strength he had against it. It made no difference. His body was moving toward Benimaru whether he wanted it to or not, pulled through the air at a steady, unhurried pace.
Then Benimaru's hand was around his throat.
"Ugh... ugh..."
The kick started almost immediately, legs working against nothing as his body lifted. Benimaru's grip tightened without any apparent effort or emotion.
Crack.
The struggling stopped.
Benimaru looked at what he was holding, and the disgust in his expression deepened. He opened his hand, and black flame rose from his palm without fanfare, consuming the body completely. In moments there was nothing left but ash drifting over the ice.
He produced a white cloth and wiped his hands.
The Marine fleet was completely silent.
That had been a CP0 agent. Each one of them carried strength no less than a Marine Vice Admiral. And he had been choked to death like it was nothing.
Even Akainu and Aokiji, watching from the deck, had gone still.
"Hahaha! I did not expect the Jura-Tempest Federation to have someone like that. Times really have changed."
Rayleigh sat at the bar in Shakky's, drink in hand, eyes on the broadcast, something genuinely appreciative in his expression.
"Heh heh. From what I've been able to find out, that country is quite something." Shakky set down her cigarette. "Apparently not a single CP agent they sent in ever came back out."
Rayleigh looked over at her. "All of them? Has anyone managed to get any real intelligence on their top fighters?"
"Not through any of the usual channels. The CP Organization couldn't get a foothold in there. Everything we know is what the Jura-Tempest Federation chose to release themselves." She nodded toward the screen. "Those few on the platform right now."
Rayleigh turned back to the broadcast.
On the execution platform, someone was getting to his feet.
"Hahaha! Let this great lord make a suitably magnificent entrance!"
Veldora threw his cape back with a sweep that suggested he had been practicing, and his voice rolled out across the entire battlefield.
"Is that... is Veldora-sama actually going to fight?"
"If Veldora-sama fights, won't he just wipe out the entire enemy fleet?"
"Then what's left for the rest of us to do?"
Kaito heard the whispers rippling through the ranks below and turned to Veldora.
"Veldora. Hold back when you attack. Don't end the whole thing in one move. One-thousandth of your full power. Actually no, one ten-thousandth."
The magnificent laugh died mid-note. Veldora went from triumphant to deflated with the speed of a balloon meeting a pin.
"Surely I can..."
He glanced down from the platform and found Sakuya looking up at him from her chair with a perfectly neutral expression.
He closed his mouth. He expressed his firm and sincere commitment to following the Regent's instructions.
Waaaahhh... His feelings about this were extensive and he had nowhere to put them.
He flew off the platform and rose above the battlefield.
The Marines watched him go into the sky.
"He can fly? What is that, Shiki's Float-Float Fruit?"
"We haven't heard anything about Shiki dying though."
"Hmph hmph! Mortals." Veldora placed his hands together, one above and one below, drawn back to his right hip. "Allow this great lord to grant you the honor of a glorious death."
He drew a breath.
"[Kame... hame... ha...]!"
The beam that erupted from his palms was not subtle.
The Marines responded immediately.
"[Ryusei Kazan]!!!"
"[Ice Age]!!!"
"[Fist of Meteor]!!!"
"[Two-Sword Style: Extreme Slash]!"
Every senior officer on the field, every CP0 agent still standing, threw their best techniques at it simultaneously.
The beam continued forward as though nothing had touched it.
Kaito watched the trajectory and made a quiet decision. If the entire fleet went up in one shot, the war he had gone to the trouble of staging would end on a rather anticlimactic note.
He flicked his right hand once, almost casually. A thread of spiritual energy, invisible to everyone present, struck the beam and nudged its path.
Boom.
A mushroom cloud climbed into the sky. Seawater rose and fell in walls. When the spray finally settled and the cloud thinned, a massive vortex had appeared in the middle of the bay, and the seafloor was visible at its center. Every Marine warship that had been within that radius was simply gone.
One improvised attack, slightly redirected, had destroyed a third of the Marine fleet.
Kaito's voice came through Veldora's head.
"Veldora. I told you to hold back. How did this still happen."
Veldora looked genuinely put upon. He had been careful. He had genuinely been careful.
He flew back to the platform in dissatisfied silence, landed, and found everyone nearby looking at him with varying degrees of doubt. He lowered his head under the combined weight of their gazes, affecting the posture of a man who understood the gravity of his error.
Out in the world, the reaction was immediate.
"Who is that? He's more terrifying than Whitebeard!"
"More terrifying than Whitebeard? Honestly at this point I'd say yes."
"The title of the world's strongest man is going to need a new owner after today."
Sengoku, watching from Marineford, felt a profound wave of relief wash through him.
He had made the right call reaching out to Kagaya first. The soldiers aboard those ships had been the ones he'd been wanting to remove for years. If they had been his people, his real people, what just happened would have broken him.
He reached for a Den Den Mushi to warn Akainu and the others, then stopped.
He thought about it.
In reality, even without a warning, none of them were going to do anything rash now. Two combatants deployed, one third of the fleet gone, one CP0 agent dead. And beyond that, five more people sitting in chairs on that platform who looked very much like they could do the same thing and barely notice.
Garp and the others had one thing to say to him through all of this:
"Fleet Admiral. You called it."
The CP0 agents, by contrast, were having a significantly worse time.
The Marines would get a reprimand from the Gorosei if this went badly. CP0 would lose their lives.
"Boss. What do we do?!"
The boss stared out at the carnage on the frozen bay for a long moment.
"What do we do." He let out a slow breath. "Figure it out yourself."