New World, Punk Hazard.
The island, buried under dense vegetation and hidden deep within a thunderstorm sea, still teemed with life. Deep in the valley, a fortress of silver-white alloy sprawled like a dormant metal beast.
This was the World Government's highest classified secret: the Punk Hazard Research Institute.
Inside the top-secret core laboratory at the fortress's deepest level.
"Beep beep beep! Dr. Vegapunk! Urgent call from the perimeter monitoring room!"
A bizarrely shaped Transponder Snail was shrieking wildly on a control console packed with precision instruments.
An old man with a comically oversized head, shaped like a giant hot-air balloon, stood in a lab coat, holding a glowing test tube and staring at the chemical reaction inside with total concentration.
"Annoying. Put it through." Vegapunk didn't even turn around, just snapped the order at his assistant.
The snail connected, and a panicked voice from the defense force officer came through:
"Doctor! Perimeter anti-air radar just picked up an unidentified high-speed object descending! It bypassed every layer of our aerial defense grid and already broke through the cloud cover! It's heading straight for the main entrance above your research building!"
"A flying object?"
Vegapunk set down the test tube, a flicker of irritation at the interruption crossing his intelligent eyes.
"Isn't Sentoki outside? Let him deal with the heavy lifting. Don't let whatever mess is going on out there disrupt my experimental flow."
He casually hung up the snail and went back to staring at his test tube, as if the sky falling wouldn't matter more than his experiment.
At the same time, on the massive outer plaza of the research institute.
In the waters surrounding the island, over a dozen heavy warships flying the World Government flag had the entire island locked down tight. Their anti-air cannons swept the lower skies without pause.
"Who's the idiot dumb enough to barge in here?!"
A heavyset man with straight-cut bangs and a red waist sash hoisted a massive double-bladed axe and shot to his feet in the center of the plaza.
He was the captain of the Marines' Science Unit: Sentoki.
Around him stood a full squad of heavily armed Marine Science Defense soldiers with laser rifles, plus several hulking early-model mechanical humanoid soldiers, their frames clad in thick armor plating: PX Test Units.
Sentoki looked up at the sky.
A colossal black shadow, vast enough to blot out the sun, swallowed the entire plaza whole.
"Enemy attack! Defense force! Lasers ready!" Sentoki roared.
The science defense soldiers and the mechanical soldiers around him snapped their weapons up instantly. Blinding yellow cross-shaped laser light gathered frantically at muzzles and cannon barrels.
BOOM.
A super-massive warship forged entirely from deep black metal plunged straight down from the clouds.
Less than fifty meters above the ground, the vector jets on the Eclipse's underside erupted with reverse high-temperature cyclones.
The raging wind blast ripped the vegetation and dust clean off the open ground in an instant. Even the hulking mechanical soldiers were shoved backward by the terrifying air pressure, their charging lasers veering wildly off target and blasting into the distant valley.
THUD.
The Eclipse hovered, dead steady, in midair.
Sentoki gripped his double-bladed axe tight, eyes locked on the prow of the ship. He saw a young man in a dark red coat.
"Portgas D. Ace?!"
Sentoki recognized the infamous rookie who'd been driving Marine Headquarters up the wall lately in an instant. "This is a classified World Government science base! You've got a death wish showing your face here?!"
"Death wish?"
Ace stood at the prow, looking down at Sentoki and the defensive formation behind him, and let out a scoff.
"I'm just here to talk business with the old guy with the big head."
Ace turned toward Bartholomew Kuma, who had been standing silently beside him the whole time.
When Kuma's massive frame emerged from the shadows into the sunlight, Sentoki's pupils shrank to pinpricks. Even his grip on the giant axe trembled.
"Bartholomew Kuma?! What is the Revolutionary Army's Tyrant doing running with a pirate who's got a one and a half billion bounty?!"
In the split second of Sentoki's shock.
"BZZZT CRACKLE!"
A blinding blue lightning bolt shot down from the Eclipse's deck with zero warning, slamming directly into a towering radar monitoring tower at the edge of the plaza.
"Yahahaha! This place has got some fun toys."
In the flash of lightning, Enel materialized, bare-chested, his gold staff in hand. He tapped the butt of the staff lightly against the ground.
"Twenty Million Volts: God's Judgment."
BOOM!
Rampaging thunder surged along the metal pipes buried underground in an instant. The outer perimeter's auto-cannons and radar surveillance network, which had just been locking onto the Eclipse, exploded in a flurry of electrical sparks and collapsed into smoking wreckage.
"You bastard! What did you do to the base's defense systems?!" Sentoki roared and raised his giant axe to charge at Enel.
"Your opponent is me, big guy in the waist sash."
A figure wreathed in searing heat had already launched from behind Ace.
"Flame Explosion: Sky Step!"
The compressed flames at Sabo's boot heels detonated with a thunderous crack, transforming him into a blue rocket. He shattered the sound barrier in an instant. Without a single wasted word, he swung the Flame Dragon Staff, wreathed in high-level Flame-Rend, straight at Sentoki's skull.
"Captain says anyone in the way gets knocked out cold."
"Cocky little brat! Don't underestimate the strongest defense on these seas!"
Sentoki didn't swing his axe. Instead, he thrust both palms forward with a roar.
WHUUM.
An immense, pure, formless shockwave erupted from his palms, forming a transparent wall with near-physical solidity.
Armament Haki: Outward Projection Defense!
CLANG.
The Flame Dragon Staff collided with the invisible Haki wall in midair with explosive force.
Sabo felt the shock rattle through his wrists. An attack that could smash through steel had been stopped dead in the air by Sentoki's Haki alone.
"That level of Flame-Rend, and you dare call it the strongest defense?"
Sabo didn't retreat. Instead, a spark of excitement flared in his blue eyes. After enduring Garp's utterly unreasonable "Fist of Love" beatdowns, this level of defense barely fazed him anymore.
"Siege Breaker!"
Sabo twisted the Flame Dragon Staff with both hands.
The blue plasma flames compressed to their limit inside the staff's core erupted in a violent spiral through the micro-vent ports at the tip!
BOOM!
The high-explosive flames, mixed with Sabo's Flame-Rend, detonated directly against Sentoki's defensive wall.
Sentoki wasn't injured, but the massive recoil sent him skidding back over a dozen meters, his palms going numb.
"Open fire! Shoot that ship out of the sky!"
The science defense soldiers around them finally snapped into action. Hundreds of soldiers raised their laser rifles and fired wildly at the Eclipse hovering in midair.
Blinding yellow laser beams streaked upward like a torrential downpour.
Facing the rain of laser fire, Ace swung his right arm forward.
A mass of violently churning crimson-gold divine flame erupted along his arm, expanding into an enormous fan-shaped wall of fire in midair!
"Fire Fist!"
BOOM!
The massive volley of laser beams slammed into the blazing divine fire wall. Far from piercing through, the impacts triggered violent chain explosions, sending the science defense soldiers below flying like ragdolls.
Ace turned to look at the crew of restless monsters behind him, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Don't worry about the ship. Leonora's ability is active on it. Little Eclipse will dodge and counterattack on its own."
"Now go warm up properly."
"Everyone, move out!"
At Ace's command, the Eclipse Pirates' officers lunged like a pack of starving wolves, leaping straight from the gangplank dozens of meters up and crashing down onto the Marine defensive line below!
"Captain gave the word. Let's warm up."
Leonora drew White Night from her hip and the heavy blade Meteor Fall from her back.
Her figure dissolved into a streak of dark crimson light, charging straight at the mechanical humanoid soldiers that were preparing to charge their lasers again.
"Gravity Collapse!"
Leonora swung the heavy sword with her left hand. The instant it made contact with the lumbering machine, she released her Float-Float Fruit ability.
Terrifying physical weight combined with Armament Haki slammed down like a mountain.
CRUNCH.
The test unit, supposedly built with astronomical cost and an impenetrable armored shell, didn't even get to fire its laser. Its entire upper body was crushed into a twisted heap of scrap metal under the merciless, physics-defying weight.
"Th-That's impossible!"
The science defense soldiers stared at the instantly obliterated test unit, too terrified to even hold their guns steady.
"What a monstrous red-haired devil. She took out a Pacifista in one hit?!"
On the other side of the plaza, Shark materialized silently in front of a squad of Marine soldiers preparing to flank them from behind.
"Five Thousand Tile: Water Prison Dance."
Shark didn't even glance at them properly. He churned his right arm through the air, and before the Marine soldiers could even scream, they were trapped inside a massive spherical water prison formed by violently converging currents around them.
The water pressure inside the prison spiked rapidly under Shark's control. The soldiers' eyes rolled back, and they went limp, unconscious, in seconds.
"Ha! This is boring! Is this place nothing but scrap metal and junk?!"
Urouge, in his five-meter-tall giant Buddha form, was rampaging through the science defense soldiers, a gravity-weighted pillar hoisted on his shoulder. He plowed through them like a bulldozer. One swing of the pillar sent dozens of soldiers flying over a hundred meters, guns and all.
In just a few minutes, the outer defensive line of the Punk Hazard Research Institute, a formation that looked utterly unbreakable on paper, had been torn apart like wet paper against the monsters of the Eclipse Pirates. It was completely crushed.
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