Diamante wanted to retreat.
The thought had barely surfaced before he found it absurd. He was one of the Donquixote Family's top executives. But facing this woman with the dark red ponytail and that newly formed Mud Giant, he felt, for the first time, like prey locked in the gaze of a higher predator.
It wasn't just the gap in power.
From the start, they hadn't treated him as an enemy.
They treated him as spoils.
"Death Stardust!"
Countless light metal confetti strips regained their weight in the blizzard, crashing toward Law and the Polar Tang like a storm. Diamante was aiming to force Leonora onto the defensive. One moment of hesitation was all he needed to escape. Baby 5 and Buffalo could be abandoned. A failed mission could be explained. But he had to get back alive with this intel.
The next instant, a wall of deep brown mud surged up from the earth.
A thick rampart of swamp rose before the Polar Tang. The metal stardust struck it and vanished without a ripple, swallowed whole.
Shack's low voice rumbled from within the Mud Giant. "Stop with the cheap tricks."
Diamante's expression turned ugly.
Leonora strode forward through the air, stepping across floating chunks of ice debris. "You thought you could run?"
Her right hand gripped White Night. The Meteor Greatsword hung loosely in her left. "The captain wants you alive. So don't make this look worse than it has to."
"Arrogant!"
Diamante roared. His whole body flattened like a banner, drifting eerily through the blizzard to evade the silver-black blade light Leonora cut straight at him. At the same time, his sword softened into a ribbon and lashed toward her throat from behind.
"Sword Dance: Serpent!"
Leonora's eyes didn't flicker. In her Observation Haki, Diamante's trajectory was as clear as fish bones on a cutting board.
"White Night: Sever the Dead Line."
Silver-black blade light flashed.
Diamante's ribbon-sword was sliced clean through. He tried to ride the wind and retreat, but the snowfield he had already softened suddenly lifted beneath him. It rose like a giant hand, curling up from below to cut off his escape.
"What?"
Leonora closed the fingers of her left hand.
"Lion's Maw: Ice Prison."
Boom.
Frozen earth, ice rock, and crushed snow crashed together in midair. They formed a massive ice lion's cage, jaws gaping wide, biting down on Diamante and trapping him completely within it. Diamante frantically activated his Hira Hira no Mi, trying to turn the ice cage into a flag and break free. But the moment he softened the ice rock, those banner-like layers were seized by Leonora's Float Float Fruit. They turned back on him, wrapping around his limbs layer after layer.
The more he struggled, the tighter the bindings got.
"Interesting ability you have."
Leonora stopped in front of him and spoke flatly. "Shame you ran into me."
The Meteor Greatsword came crashing down.
Bang!
Diamante's chest caved in. Blood burst from his mouth and nose. His body convulsed violently inside the ice cage, his consciousness almost shattered by that single blow.
On the other side, Baby 5 was half-swallowed by the swamp. Her arms kept morphing into rifles, cannons, and scythes, tearing madly at the mud around her. "Let me go! Let me go!"
Buffalo was spinning frantically too, trying to drill out of the mud hand with his rotation.
But Shack had lost interest in testing techniques.
"The struggles of the weak are too noisy."
The Mud Giant clapped its palms together.
"Swamp Burial Prison."
Boom.
The mud beneath Baby 5 collapsed like a bottomless mouth, swallowing her whole. "Mmph!" Her voice barely sounded before the thick sludge sealed it completely. An instant later, Buffalo was dragged into the swamp by a mud hand as well.
Their struggles lasted maybe a dozen seconds.
Then a few strings of bubbles rose to the swamp's surface.
Glub. Glub.
Everything fell silent.
Law's pupils contracted slightly. Dead? No. He quickly sensed that both of their life forces still flickered. They had been pulled into some deep space within the swamp, air cut off, bodies wrapped in mud, choked unconscious in a matter of moments.
Shack's voice rumbled low. "The captain wants them alive. Let them nap for now."
The mud rolled back, revealing half of Baby 5's and Buffalo's faces just long enough to confirm they were out cold. Then Samehada swallowed them back into its pocket dimension.
Diamante saw this and his face finally broke. "You lunatics..."
"Lunatic? Prey shuts its mouth."
Leonora raised the Meteor Greatsword and smashed him until he spat blood again.
Out on the distant sea, the Donquixote Family's three black warships finally reacted. Their cannons started turning. Masses of black-clad grunts were screaming in panic.
"Open fire!"
"Save Diamante!"
"Sink that submarine!"
Leonora glanced over.
She didn't even bother to speak.
Her left hand rose.
The entire snowfield beneath her feet shuddered. The ice rock fragments she had touched and dominated, along with the scraps of earth Diamante had softened and she had since seized control of, all rose into the sky. Countless chunks of ice gathered in the blizzard, compressing into a colossal ice lion so huge it blotted out half the coast.
"Lion's Maw: Snow Sea Burial."
Boom.
The ice lion descended from the sky. It crashed down onto the stretch of sea where the three warships sat, covering everything in one strike. Cannon fire, masts, hulls, the screams of the grunts. All of it was pulverized under the ice beast's pounce. The sea erupted. Splintered wood, crushed ice, blood, and fire mixed together, then were swiftly swallowed by the blizzard that followed.
Three ships. Every Donquixote Family grunt aboard.
All gone.
Law watched this in silence.
It wasn't that he had never seen killing before. But this casual erasure of an entire pursuing fleet sent a chill into his bones. These were the officers of the Fifth Emperor. Just the officers. What kind of monster, then, was the man himself, Portgas D. Ace?
Leonora paid no attention to Law's shock.
She bound the gravely wounded and unconscious Diamante in ice rock, then turned and walked to the front of the Polar Tang. "Trafalgar Law."
Law braced himself on Kikoku, forcing himself upright. Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin clustered behind him, watching Leonora with wary unease.
Leonora got straight to the point. "Our captain wants to see you."
Law's gaze darkened. "And if I refuse?"
Leonora answered like it was a trivial question. "Then I knock you out and bring you, crew and ship and all."
Bepo's fur practically exploded. "That's completely unreasonable!"
Leonora glanced at him. "We're pirates."
Bepo shut his mouth instantly.
Law was silent for a moment. He looked at the destroyed Donquixote fleet. Looked at Diamante sealed in ice. He had no choice. The Polar Tang was damaged. His stamina was gone. The Donquixote Family had already marked him. Even if Leonora let him go now, Doflamingo's next wave of pursuers would arrive soon. And these people had just saved them.
More importantly, the Fifth Emperor wanted to see him.
This was not an invitation.
This was an emperor's summons.
A smart man didn't put up pointless defiance at a time like this.
Law slowly sheathed Kikoku, his voice low. "I'll go with you. But my crew doesn't get hurt."
Leonora nodded. "Fine. We'll bring your submarine too."
Law stared at her. "What does your captain actually want from me?"
Leonora smiled. "That question, you can ask him yourself."
Shack released the Mud Giant form. Samehada reverted into its mechanical sea beast backplate and clamped onto his back. Leonora touched the damaged Polar Tang and slowly lifted it, setting it beside the floating metal disk. The three captives, Diamante, Baby 5, and Buffalo, rested silently inside Samehada's pocket dimension.
Leonora and the others stepped onto the disk and looked up toward the sky hidden by the blizzard.
"Let's go. Back to the sky island."
The metal disk began to rise under the power of the Float Float Fruit.
Law stood at the disk's edge, looking down at the shrinking North Blue snowfield. The blizzard buried the battlefield. It buried the path of revenge he had planned to walk alone. From this moment, he knew he had been pulled into a much larger maelstrom. Not the North Blue. Not the Donquixote Family.
But the man the world had just named the Fifth Emperor.
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