(Bellamy POV)
I ruffled Aisa’s hair affectionately for a job well done while she gave me a tired smile in return. Seriously, having perhaps the most powerful observation haki user on the planet as part of my crew was already paying dividends like you wouldn't believe. I just had to stand where Aisa told me to stand and turn into a polished silver plane spring - which functioned well enough as an improvised mirror - when she gave me the signal.
Seeing her proud but tiredly panting face, I made a mental note to reward her later. Even if her level of control was unrecognizable from just a short few months ago, it still couldn't have been comfortable focusing all of her haki on the three admirals. She had most definitely earned that cookie.
It had been obvious from the beginning that the only admiral who could possibly spare the time to come and sink us was Kizaru. No offense to the other two, but they would have been too slow and would thus have left a giant gap in their own lines for an extended amount of time for Whitebeard to exploit, if they had tried to make the round trip. Additionally, even if they tried I was certain the Black Pearl could outrun them assuming she were given enough of a head start.
And if his past and future actions were anything to go by, most notably on Egghead, Kizaru loved making casual entrances for drama’s sake, instead of doing things simply and efficiently. There had been no reason for him to land behind Dr. Vegapunk and just stand there until the scientist noticed him, when he could have just as easily blown a hole in the man's noggin without prior warning.
In hindsight, maybe it hadn’t been the smartest move to gamble everything on the chance of Kizaru choosing to teleport over to our deck and say hello. If the man had chosen to arrive at some location above our ship instead, we would have been in far bigger trouble. However, with how little threat we could realistically pose to him and because of said behavioural pattern, I had decided the odds were good enough to take the gamble. As it turned out, they had been.
And judging by the rather large splash over there…
“We need to rescue the admiral! Why aren’t we moving yet?”
“The ice is too thick! The ship is stuck!”
“Dive into the water, damn you! Move it!”
“The pirates are coming!”
…I didn't think we were going to be seeing him again any time soon.
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Uhm…I think Kizaru going uh…missing rattled Sengoku quite badly. Like, really badly. To be fair, having your plans be stymied repeatedly with the entire world as your witness, the latter being the case because of one random clown…that was sure to wear on anybody’s nerves. That it took one of his three admirals having an accident to break his composure spoke volumes about Sengoku’s inner stability.
But everybody had a limit and Sengoku had apparently just reached his.
The encirclement walls were activated, trapping the majority of the Whitebeard pirates within and creating a kill zone with dozens upon dozens of overlapping fields of fire from the wall-mounted artillery. Akainu melting the ice from underneath the pirates was just the cherry on top. The astute reader would have no doubt noted, that until this point the situation seemed very much like canon.
What was decidedly unlike canon was the presence of a horde of victorious and motivated pirates on the outside of the encirclement walls, who were, as a whole, masters at clambering up rope ladders and riggings. One had to remember that these pirates didn’t just achieve these feats of agility and dexterity during the fair and sunny weather of the four Blues. Rather, these men and women were veterans of the New World, tempered by the deadliest storms and craziest weather of the likes one could scarcely imagine. Hence, it should have come to no-one's surprise that scaling a steady wall with some lengths of rope under windless conditions was nothing more than child’s play for them.
The marine gunnery crews who had been ensconced within the wall were caught completely off guard by the flood of screaming pirates appearing to their rear. As a result, heavy fighting broke out throughout the walls, with the beleaguered marines desperately attempting to break out and retreat to the safety of their main battle line. Some managed it, some did not, but in either case the guns fell silent nearly as soon as they had fired their first shots.
Was it any wonder then, that when Whitebeard himself took to the field the marines countered by playing their strongest hand? Not sure why Sengoku hadn't simply chosen to quickly execute Ace and be done with it, but instead of taking the smart but conservative path, the marines decided to go for the high risk high reward option.
Which resulted in my crew being an audience to a spectacular performance of martial prowess, one which showcased just why Whitebeard was called the strongest man alive.
To give credit where credit was due, Admiral Aokiji had the home ground advantage and he used it well. The glacial battleground provided prime conditions for traps and ambushes, such as stakes sprouting up out of nowhere to drive themselves into Whitebeard’s back, others attempting to nail the old captain’s feet to the ground. Hundreds more took the long way round, raining down from above and cutting off every possible escape route.
But why seek an existing escape route when one could create their own? To put it a little poetically: the ground did shake, the air did quake as Aokiji’s ice was reduced to dust, a fluttering cloud of a thousand, thousand fragments. Much like the Admiral himself who reformed some distance away while clutching his chest in pain.
It was still a better situation than the one Akainu found himself in mere moments later. His own aerial bombardment had failed to achieve its objective of removing the ice around Whitebeard and depriving the pirate captain of his stable footing. Thus, when the marine’s mad dog timed his approach to take advantage of an opening which never materialised, he discovered firsthand how strong Whitebeard’s grip on his face could be. Shortly thereafter, Akainu’s head was being pressed against the icy floor as quake after quake after quake was launched straight into his brain.
Marco clashed with Doflamingo, one trying to protect his father and the other trying to kill him, with neither willing to give as much as an inch. It was a beautiful display of power and skill, setting the very air alight in a cascade of phoenix flames.
A little to the side, the “Bohemian Knight” Doma was locked in a duel with vice admiral Momonga. He was a veritable whirlwhind of cuts, stabs and lunges and yet, despite Doma's ferocity, the marine officer was a rock, solid and unmovable as he weathered the storm of blades. In fact, dissatisfied with purely defending himself, Momonga occasionally lashed out in a textbook counter, his own sword trying to punch its way through Doma's guard.
It was only when Sengoku could no longer stand to sit on the sidelines, that Whitebeard’s rampage slowed down to a crawl. Like how the clash of two emperors had split the sky, the resulting backlash between the two giants of their age swept hundreds of officers into the sea's icy embrace.
Additionally, doing his best to prove himself more tenacious than a literal zombie, Akainu blanketed the field in magma, most of it focused on hemming in Whitebeard and trying to encase him in molten rock. And with Sengoku pinning the legendary captain in place it worked, much to the alarm of the watching pirates. When the cooling lava was rapidly turned to solid obsidian held within an inch thick shell of ice, that alarm turned into despair.
Yet for all its hardness, obsidian was…brittle. It only took a tiny flex for everything to shatter, sending shards flying everywhere while forcing Doma and Momonga to disengage and begin desperately dancing around in order to avoid being turned into Swiss cheese.
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However, while the pirates and the lesser ranked marines experienced a roller coaster of emotions, running counter to each other and spanning the breadth of despair and elation, the admiralty had watched on in silence. They knew Whitebeard, they knew his strength and yet they had challenged him. They were not fools who believed something as insignificant as a seamless coffin could hold the strongest man alive.
Wordlessly, both sides reengaged and Marineford trembled.
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In the meantime, Trafalgar Law was putting in the final few stitches.
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(Laki POV)
If you had shown the spectacle before her to Laki half a year ago, she would have called the fighters gods. To be honest, after months on the Blue Sea the sheer strength on display boggled her mind, for even at the height of the War in Heaven, Enel had never showcased this level of destructive power. She knew better now. No matter how large the iceberg dropped from the sky, no matter how fiery the vision of hell being crafted, no matter how clearly the quakes could be felt all the way out here…these men were mortal.
Laki wasn't sure whether that made them less or more terrifying.
And as she watched the man, she got to know as Whitebeard, pummel a live volcano into submission, Laki couldn't help but wonder what her legendary ancestors would have thought if they had been present to witness this. Would they have cheered on the towering, golden giant trying to bury Whitebeard beneath his palm? Applauded along as two shining hands started clapping rapidly with the pirate placed between them? Or would they have whooped in excitement as the fleet admiral was taken by the arm and flung headfirst into the marine HQ?
Surely her ancestors wouldn’t have been like her, intimidated by what she was seeing. This was the level of strength she had so naively declared she would reach, back when she had realized the consequences of freeing Marie.
Never mind an admiral, even the likes of the glittering man were astonishing in their resilience. Would she have been able to withstand the barrage of frozen lances the way he was doing? Albeit he was doing so with great difficulty and with the assistance of a crossdressing gunner, who was countering the bombardment with volley after volley of his own.
Bellamy had mentioned that the Blue Sea had many individuals who could have beaten Enel before breakfast and Laki was ashamed to admit that she hadn’t truly believed him. Some part of her refusing to accept that the greatest tyrant her people had known in their entire history, was nothing but an insignificant pebble down here.
Would she ever reach that level? How long would that take, a decade? Two?
Shaking her head violently to clear it of depressive thoughts, Laki opted instead to refocus on the combat, trying her best to glean inspiration and knowledge via observation. Truthfully, not all of the fights were equally useful for her, most of them in fact not matching her preferred style of combat. One example would have to be the deluxe version of Shura, who according to Bellamy also used strings. There was precious little she could do to copy the way he was slicing the phoenix into tiny bits. Meanwhile, Shura looked like he was experiencing a religious revelation.
The thing was, should she attempt to charge recklessly into that web like Marco was doing, she wouldn’t be kicking Doflamingo in the head. On the contrary, she wouldn’t be doing much of anything really, on account of being dead. Though it may be something Aisa might be able to mimic when she was older. Enel had been invulnerable to most things and if her ward had sufficient control…who knew? Either way, the girl was seemingly glued to her side as she stared across the water at the carnage.
Same with Eddy, though his focus was wholly on the duel between two master swordsmen. Flying slashes were used liberally, deep gouges were left in the ice at regular intervals and their rapid strikes were producing enough sparks to be mistaken for fireworks. Ignorant of the art as she was, Laki wasn't quite sure of what was going on all the time, though she could see each blow with ever increasing clarity. Then again, unlike her, who had never used a sword in her life, Eddy was busy taking a small mountain of notes, so he was obviously getting something of value out of studying the duel, even if Laki wasn't.
In her own case, it was obvious on whom she should be focusing her attention on. Izou, the commander of Whitebeard’s sixteenth division.
How was he firing shots so rapidly with two flintlock pistols anyway? His movements were a blur, the only visible signs of a bullet’s existence being the explosion of ice all around him. Though the more she focused, the more she could see. The blur lessened as familiar motions began registering to her retina, though performed at a blistering pace and at a level of mastery she had never seen before.
"AAACCCEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"
Then a wave of something washed over her and her world expanded. Behind her she could hear the sight of Rivers tumbling off his avian perch while clutching his ears. Aisa buried her face into Laki’s side as her legs started to tremble from the pressure. Next, her ears began registering the smells and the sight of the dead and the dying, the screams of angry and fearful men pungent to her olfactory nerves. Nearby, Mani was heaving on the deck, buckets of sweat running down her face like rivulets.
And at the execution platform, the two executioners collapsed like puppets who just had their strings cut.
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(Bellamy POV)
So that’s what conqueror’s haki felt like. No wonder that average people keeled over from the pressure. Several members of my crew were impacted especially badly, though I couldn't help but notice that this group included two of my three haki users. Actually, make that all three. Shura just keeled over too.
Thumbs up to the rest for recovering so quickly though, including Byron who had barely missed a beat and was continuing to play song after song without rest. Though he had stopped singing some time ago, claiming that his voice was beginning to go hoarse. Then again, his music didn’t require lyrics to be amazing.
There had been a brief lull following Luffy’s outburst but soon enough both sides went right back to murdering each other. Bonney, in particular, was leaving a trail of devastation in her wake, any area she vacated no longer having any marines capable of combat left. And as was to be expected, she was making a beeline for Kuma, who was mechanically firing off Ursa Shocks at any groupings of pirates near him.
Internally I wished her luck in getting her father’s body out of there, but I did not get to witness the outcome as a massive roar forcefully redirected my attention to the execution platform, where a mountain began to move.
Next, a lot of things happened almost all at once.
Oars staggered back to his feet, reducing segments of wall to rubble in the process.
Garp remained seated while a giant hand sought to envelop Ace, platform and all.
Akainu abandoned the fight against Whitebeard to fling himself at Oars, only to be blindsided by Sir Crocodile.
Sengoku, distracted and suddenly on his own, failed to stop the formerly beleaguered Whitebeard cleaving through his ankle with a bisento.
Oars was flash frozen into solid ice by Aokiji.
Marco dropkicked Aokiji.
Garp got punched in the face by Luffy and was unceremoniously punted off the platform.
Meanwhile, Doflamingo was laughing like a madman and encasing the immobile Oars in a net, shortly thereafter reducing him to lots of little cubes of frozen meat, all the while vocally inviting Trafalgar Law to a family reunion. On his part, Trafalgar Law gave his former employer the literal finger and ran off to hide in the chaotic melee with the feathered Warlord hot in pursuit.
And while all this was going on, a key was slipped into a lock and turned.
A sun reignited on Marineford.