The Heart of the Ancient Ruins, Upper Yard.
The air was thick with the biting, metallic stench of ozone. The sunlight that usually filtered through the canopy had been blotted out by an artificial night of swirling, bruised thunderclouds.
Ace stood his ground. His tall, rugged frame was a silhouette against the ancient moss-covered stone, his dark red coat snapping like a whip in the rising, turbulent winds. He looked up at the jagged remains of a massive stone pillar.
Zzz... Zzzzt!
With a series of harsh electrical pops, the air itself seemed to fracture. A bolt of sapphire lightning lanced down from the vortex above, striking the pillar with pinpoint accuracy. The electricity didn't dissipate; instead, it coiled and knitted together, manifesting into a man with a bare chest, unnaturally long earlobes, and four taiko drums fused to his back.
Enel sat cross-legged atop the pillar, casually crunching into a ripe red apple.
"Yahahaha... To crawl through the dense forest and reach this sanctum... as a bug from the Blue Sea, you've managed to surprise me." Enel chewed thoughtfully, looking down at Ace with eyes that held nothing but bored, supreme arrogance. "However, my Mantra tells me your subordinates have been using rather... barbaric methods to break my toys on the other side of the woods."
Enel flicked the apple core downward. It bounced off the stone slab at Ace's feet.
"Even if they were just playthings to pass the time, damaging the property of a God requires... Divine Punishment."
Ace stared at the apple core, then raised his gaze to Enel. He looked at the "God" the same way one might look at a particularly delusional lunatic.
"A god?" Ace's mouth twitched, his voice dripping with a dry, heavy mockery. "In the Blue Sea, the Celestial Dragons who claim to be creators at least control the world's navies and treasuries. You? You're sitting on a piece of dirt that washed up from the ocean four hundred years ago, lording over a handful of starving sky-dwellers... and you actually think you're omnipotent?"
The playful smirk on Enel's face stiffened.
"Blue Sea dweller... you clearly fail to grasp the nature of the existence before you." Enel stood slowly, blue arcs of high-voltage current dancing between his fingertips. "On this island, I am the beginning and the end! Every breath you take, every whispered curse, even the rhythm of your heartbeat is recorded by my Mantra! I hold the leash of the heavens; my power is the only law!"
"Mantra?" Ace was genuinely amused now. He picked his ear, mercilessly shattering the "God's" self-delusion. "Using Observation Haki to ride the electromagnetic waves of your Devil Fruit is a clever trick for surveillance. But to call that omniscience?"
Ace looked at Enel like a seasoned traveler looking at a backwater bumpkin. "You're nothing but a frog in a well who doesn't even know which way the gate to the New World opens."
"YOU'RE COURTING DEATH!"
Fury erupted in Enel's eyes. As the absolute ruler of Skypiea for six years, no one had ever looked at him with such pity—as if he were nothing but trash.
"EL THOR!!"
Enel snapped his wrist. A pillar of lightning several meters wide shrieked from his palm, instantly engulfing the spot where Ace stood. Two hundred million volts of pressure—enough to vaporize a mountain—turned the ruins into a white-hot world of destruction, blasting a charred, molten crater into the Vearth.
"Yahahaha! That is the price for insulting a God! Ash and cinders!" Enel's laughter rang out across the ruins.
But as the smoke and static cleared, the laughter died in his throat. At the edge of the smoking pit, Ace was still standing. A layer of obsidian Armament Haki coated his right arm.
The lightning strike that should have erased him had been swatted away with one hand. The violent current had simply slid off the black "armor," unable to touch his skin.
"You said your power is the absolute law?" Ace brushed a few stray sparks off his sleeve as the Haki receded. He looked up at the stunned Enel. "In the face of true Haki, a Logia who relies too much on his element is just... fragile."
"Impossible! A human body cannot block Divine Judgment!" Enel's pupils shrank. His entire worldview, built on the invincibility of his lightning, was cracking.
"Stop bluffing!" Enel roared. He transformed into a jagged bolt, vanishing from the pillar.
"Good speed," Ace muttered, his own Observation Haki flaring out. "On your right!"
Enel reappeared like a phantom at Ace's flank. He gripped his pure gold staff, which glowed a lethal, molten crimson under the heat of his electricity.
"THUNDER METALLURGY!"
The white-hot gold staff swung toward Ace's temple. Enel's Mantra had already predicted Ace's "evasion" trajectory; he was certain of the kill.
But Ace didn't dodge. He raised his left arm, coating it in jet-black Haki.
CLANG—!!
The golden staff slammed into the Haki-clad arm, erupting in a shower of blinding sparks. The monstrous strength of the blow didn't even cause Ace's arm to tremble.
"What is this?!" Enel's voice cracked with terror as he tried to yank the staff back.
"Too light."
Ace grabbed the molten staff with his left hand, ignoring the high-voltage current coursing over his palm. He clenched his right fist, and the air around it began to ripple as Advanced Armament flowed and compressed.
"Since you enjoy being a God so much," Ace's eyes flashed with a mocking battle-lust. His fist tore through the air with a sonic boom, aimed straight for Enel's gut. "Let's see if a God bleeds red."
"Don't touch me!" In a desperate reflex, Enel let go of the staff, turning his entire torso into intangible blue lightning the moment the fist arrived.
BOOM!
Ace's punch—capable of shattering tectonic plates—pierced through the lightning-afterimage. The sheer fist-wind plowed a terrifying vacuum trench through the forest for hundreds of meters behind them.
Ten meters away, Enel re-materialized, clutching his midsection. Even though he'd "logia-fied" to avoid the direct hit, the shockwave of the passing fist had made his internal organs churn.
"That... was too close." Enel broke out in a cold sweat. He finally realized the truth: the black power could not only block his lightning but could force his intangible body to become solid.
"In the Blue Sea, people who can use Haki are as common as blades of grass," Ace said, casually tossing the stolen gold staff aside. It hit the stone with a heavy thud. He began walking toward Enel, each step heavy and rhythmic.
"Your Devil Fruit is top-tier, one of the greatest powers on the sea. But you're a baby holding a legendary sword—you don't even know how to swing it." Ace mercilessly stripped away the divine facade. "You rely on your Mantra to dodge and your Logia to run. Your hand-to-hand skills and your durability are pathetic."
Ace stopped, looking at him with condescending scrutiny. "The only reason you're 'invincible' is because you've been hiding in a cloud where no one knows how to fight."
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
The dignity Enel had spent years cultivating was being trampled into the dirt. The veins on his forehead throbbed, and the drums on his back let out a deafening, rhythmic roar.
"I AM A GOD! A GOD IS UNTOUCHABLE!"
The sky turned a bruised violet. Countless silver snakes of lightning coiled around Enel, and the air of Upper Yard began to wail under the extreme pressure.
"Blue Sea bug! If you're so confident," Enel rose into the air, his eyes wide with a manic need for destruction, "try surviving the lightning that will erase this entire island from the sky!"
Watching the "God" prepare his final disaster, a glimmer of genuine excitement sparked in Ace's eyes.
"I guess you can't reason with a frog in a well."
On Ace's fists, alongside the obsidian Haki, a layer of dazzling, crimson-gold Divine Fire ignited.
"The only way you'll see the truth of the world... is if I shatter your 'Heaven' first."
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