(Marco POV)
When they had first started their offensive, things had gone rather well. And even now, they were making progress, slowly but steadily pushing the marines back towards the execution platform. Or so it seemed at first glance.
Thing was, Marco was Whitebeard’s first division commander and that came with a higher vantage point than most, both figuratively and often quite literally. Which meant, he was very well aware of how fragile the balance of the battle currently was. What made matters worse was how the marines still hadn’t committed many of their strongest fighters, while on their side only Whitebeard had not yet entered the field. Admittedly, it was his very presence at their backs which held the three admirals, a couple of the seven Warlords, the fleet commander and Garp in check, so in a way his pops was doing more than his own fair share by just standing there.
Sadly, this also meant that as far as reserves went, they were completely spent and all it would take was an additional Warlord or two joining the fight for the fragile balance to tip into some very dangerous territory.
Not to brag, but Marco knew that he was one of the few members of his crew who could fight the Warlords on an even footing. Thus, in order to regain some amount of tactical flexibility, he needed to be freed up and moved to the reserves.
“Just stay down, yoi!”
Thing was that the marine leadership were sadly not comprised of birdbrains and were thus clearly aware of this state of affairs as well. And being their not-birdbrain selves, the marine leadership were doing an effective job at pinning him down by sending in Vice Admiral Onigumo. The senior marine officer was objectively seen far weaker than Marco and that by a long mile, but still constituted too much of a threat to ignore and leave to his thinly stretched crewmates.
At this point, Onigumo wasn’t even trying to win against him any longer. Instead, he had opted to turtle up and devote everything to defending himself against Marco's flames and tenaciously stalling for time. Combined with how Marco was forced to divide his attention between the annoyance and the entire battlefield, the vice admiral was just about managing to hold on.
And whenever Marco even thought of pulling back, Onigumo would make threatening movements towards Whitebeard, drawing the first mate back into the fight. After all, if Marco being forced to engage was a tactical challenge, Whitebeard having to spend his limited stamina prematurely would be an unmitigated disaster Marco and Whitebeard's crew had to avoid at all costs.
“This is getting very annoying, yoi.” Marco complained before spewing out a stream of fire towards the vice admiral. “I don’t have time to waste on you, yoi!”
“Justice shall triumph, pirate!” Onigumo snarled, crisscrossing his many arms to shield his face. “It is inevitable!”
Marco responded by kicking him in the gut instead, launching the marine into several of his comrades. It wasn’t enough and the spider was back moments later with a black sheen slowly receding from his abdomen, but damn if that hadn't felt satisfying.
Still, this was the problem with these marine fanatics. It was always absolute justice this, pirate that…seriously, there was no originality to be found anywhere. Even the way he fought was boring. Block, block, block, block…nothing but blocks. If he thought he could get away with it, Marco was sorely tempted to grab the annoyance, fly over to the ocean and drop him into it. But sadly, the man had a pair of seastone handcuffs conspicuously hanging from his belt, almost as if they were a warning for him to not try precisely that.
And it was such a beautiful day for flying too.
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(Rivers POV)
It was such a beautiful day for flying. If it were any other day in any other place, Rivers would have loved nothing more than to sit on Fuza’s back and enjoy the sky. Unfortunately, it was this day in this very place and Rivers was a man on a mission.
Wiping some nervous sweat from his brow, Rivers refocused on the chaos unfolding below. Nobody seemed to be paying him any real attention, just like Bellamy had said when trying to reassure Rivers that the admirals weren’t going to shoot him out of the sky immediately.
In their eyes, Rivers was a gnat who couldn’t possibly pose a threat and those for whom Rivers did pose a threat wouldn’t be able to hit him up here. Now, if Rivers went around delivering plasma bolts to the marines, the admirals would likely change their minds about his threat level, but Rivers had a different delivery in his back pocket. And in his giant backpack. Something that was going to change the course of this war, drastically. Or at least, so Byron and Bellamy believed.
Tone dials.
Lots and lots of tone dials.
It was difficult to overstate just how many dials they had brought back from Skypiea. For one, vearth was ridiculously valuable before the liberation of Shandia and even afterwards, it was something in short enough supply that Bellamy had seen no issue with the amount they traded their cargo of dirt for. When one added the gifts from the grateful sky dwellers and everything they had scavenged while scouring the place for gold…there was a reason the Black Pearl had a cargo hold significantly larger than their old ship.
And tone dials were some of the most common types available and some of the most useless in combat. Or they had been until a madman (his captain) and a genius (Byron) put their heads together. Add a dash of dial-mechanical competence into the mix à la Laki and the result was the figurative sack of bombs he was about to rain down upon the battlefield.
He wasn’t the only one who was going to be doing this either. Sarquiss was preparing to do the same a ways to his left while Aisa carried a sack three times larger than her body with laughable ease to his right. Bellamy had worried that she would be a target, but she also had monstrous mantra…haki so she’d probably be fine.
“Let’s go, buddy.” Rivers said, patting his partner’s neck and Fuza responded by reducing his speed a little. Just enough that they would get a good spread as Rivers upended his sack in a controlled manner, letting out a steady stream of dials. Fuza just opened his own in a single burst of tone dials, causing them to land in an awfully concentrated manner near Whitebeard’s flagship.
A quick glance told him that Sarquiss had finished distributing his, mainly on the ice where more of those robots Kuma-look-alikes were trying to carve their way through Whitebeard’s allies, while Aisa had seeded hers in an arc spanning the whole frontline.
“Alright, time to return to ship.” Rivers declared in a satisfied manner, dusting off his two hands.
And as they all sped away from Marineford, he could faintly hear the thousands of dials activating…all at once.
Who knew you could install timers on those things?
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(Marco POV)
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For a moment, the entire battlefield froze as every combatant stopped to try and locate the source of the music suddenly filling the air.
Violins, violas, cellos, flutes, clarinets, an array of brass, percussion in half a dozen types with a grand piano to top it all off…it was a veritable symphony orchestra.
It was everywhere, ringing from every direction, loud but not unpleasantly so. Instead, the upbeat melody made his heart pump harder, energizing him and lightening his body. His opponent on the other hand looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Seeing an opening and feeling almost buoyed by the music, Marco shot forward to slug his opponent in the face, the vice admiral’s guard coming up a fraction too late. It wasn’t anything jaw dropping, but Marco had just moved faster.
“Now isn’t this interesting, yoi?” Marco muttered to himself as he inspected his own hands.
Even a cursory glance was enough to let him know that it wasn't just Marco feeling this. All around him he could witness the same phenomenon taking place, his allies having suddenly gotten more energetic and lighter on their feet. By contrast, the marines were ever so slightly more sluggish than before. While this didn't mean that Marco was going to be wrestling Akainu any time soon and come out unscathed, the combined effect was still definitely noticeable.
In a battle between strong individuals, the outcome was often decided by the little things, the normally insignificant details. An unfortunately placed pebble to slightly disturb one’s footing, a flash of light to obscure one’s sight causing the direction of a punch to deviate by a tiny amount…and all the other small variables with a great effect. The music? That clearly qualified as a variable.
Marco couldn't help but let his indifferent mask fall, even as he cracked his knuckles in a promise of pain. Lots and lots of pain.
“Time for round two, yoi.” Marco grinned, stepping towards his opponent, who for the first time in this fight was looking a tad uncertain.
Things were looking up.
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(Bellamy POV)
“Captain, what do you know about music?”
Even before Marineford had risen over the horizon to come into view, it had been obvious that something had changed. Perhaps it was my latent haki or maybe that was just my wishful thinking, but I could feel a shift taking place. It was the air and in the water, almost like an undercurrent heralding some greater storm.
“At its most basic, music is a collection of sounds and tones, arrayed in certain patterns.”
By the time the battle had become visible, even a layman could tell who held the upper hand. True, what I could see were just the outskirts of Aokiji’s glacial plate, but it was here that the marines had dispatched their secret weapons to strike at Whitebeard's unprotected rear.
“Sounds are the consequence of air vibrations reaching your ear, before being transmitted via a complex system of membranes, bones and nerves into your brain.”
I knew firsthand how strong a pacifista was and Eddy would carry a scar his entire life from our encounter with one. Despite Luffy one-shotting a pacifista after the timeskip, these were monsters that even seasoned New World crews had struggled against in the canon timeline.
“But music is more than just the sum of its basic parts. It is the art of combining those sounds to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.”
Whitebeard’s allies were pushing the robots back, displaying the strength of a New World Veteran for all the world to see. Haki was being used very liberally, in some cases allowing captains to cave in the pacifista's armor plating with laughable ease, much to the horror of the marines and the elation of their crews.
“The key word here is emotion. We are led by them, raised by them, and felled by them. Humans are creatures of emotion.”
I imagined that Akainu would be frothing at the mouth, as was whoever had the misfortune of being in charge of the government budget. If my memory wasn't playing tricks on me, the robot having its arms chopped off by Squard cost about as much as a battleship to construct.
“Surely you’ve heard of individuals accomplishing incredible feats of strength in states of heightened emotion.”
Turning my gaze to the side, I found the Moby Dick just in time to see Marco flinging someone straight into the sky. Honestly, I’d be very surprised if anybody other than Kaido could survive that fall. Or Luffy, but Luffy was Luffy.
“Now imagine what could be possible if one could induce, stimulate and manipulate an individual’s emotions at will.”
Similar scenes were playing out all over the frozen bay, pirates regaining a second wind as the increasingly hard-pressed marines tried to doggedly stem the tide. They tried.
“Like I mentioned previously, music is an art. And like all art, it is very subjective. What may set a man alight with intense passion may have the opposite effect on another, sending him spiraling into despair.”
With how obvious their delivery had been, it didn't take a genius to figure out where the music was coming from. Nor was it particularly difficult to connect the dots and point to the dials as the cause of the current shift in balance.
“A good musician is one who can induce a single emotion in his audience.”
Skirmishes broke out all along the frontline as enterprising marines attempted to destroy the dials while the pirates sought to stymie their efforts with everything they had. But as more and more officers broke ranks to destroy any dials they could get their hands upon, the formerly orderly battle lines of the marines dissolved into a chaotic brawl. One, in which individual prowess mattered more than organized teamwork.
“A great musician is one who can tailor his performance to his audience, delivering the emotional experience they truly desire. And hence, the effect is ever greater.”
Prompted perhaps by the rapidly deteriorating situation or mayhaps at Sengoku’s urging, Kizaru was the first of the admirals to take action. A singular leap afforded him the vantage point he needed from whence to rain down pinpoint bolts of light, accurately sniping hundreds of exposed dials out of existence with every volley. Gradually, the music died down into a soft background hum.
“But a master…a master’s music results in a thousand hearts beating with a thousand emotions brought forth by a single spectacular performance.”
Then again, the dials were only meant to buy us time to get into position. Far enough away to be reasonably safe while close enough that our new speakers would have no issue reaching the far reaches of the battlefield. Mikes were set up, as were the lights and mirrors. The orchestra was filled by Byron’s past selves, stored within three dozen tone dials.
“Like a master swordsman only cuts what he intends to cut, one only feels what a master musician desires one to feel.”
Kizaru might have stopped our dials from playing their pre-recorded songs, but those had just been recordings. A pale shadow of what could be. After all, as everybody knew, the best concert was always…
“And I am a master musician.”
…live.