Isshin, lithe and vibrant, his dark hair falling around a face set with fierce focus.
"Your time is over, monster!" Isshin snarled, his voice a youthful tenor but carrying the conviction of a veteran. He blurred forward, a silver streak, his katana aimed not for a cautious probe but a decisive strike. "ASHINA BLITZ!" A flurry of Haki-infused slashes, too fast for the eye to follow, rained down on Byrnndi World.
"Hoohoohoo! A young, angry whelp!" World cackled, his massive body surprisingly agile. He didn't bother trying to block every strike. "MOA MOA – JUUBAI TAIRYOKU! (Ten Times Resilience!)" His skin took on a rubbery, dense quality. Isshin's blades bit deep, drawing blood, but the blows that would have crippled a lesser man only seemed to enrage World further.
"MY TURN!" World roared, grabbing a colossal stone dragon statue that had somehow survived the previous carnage. "MOA MOA – FIFTY TIMES IMPACT! DRAGON SMASH!" The statue, now weighing hundreds of tons and moving at terrifying speed, hurtled towards Isshin.
Isshin, eyes blazing, didn't retreat. He met the charge head-on, his katana a blur. "SENPŪ KEN! (WHIRLWIND BLADE!)" He spun like a top, his Haki-coated blade creating a vortex of slashing steel that met the amplified statue.
KRA-KRA-BOOOOM!
The statue exploded into a million fragments, the shockwave throwing Isshin back, skidding across the courtyard. He landed on his feet, panting, his arms vibrating from the sheer force. "Damn his cheap tricks!"
Ace & Gunnar vs. Edward Weevil
"Alright, big guy," Ace shouted, flames already engulfing his arms, "let's dance!" He shot forward, a flaming comet. "HIKEN!"
Gunnar, his own Haki flaring black around his fists, charged from the other side. "KAZAN GOUTETSU! (VOLCANIC IRON HAMMER!)"
They aimed for a pincer attack, hoping to overwhelm Weevil with combined elemental fury and Haki.
Weevil simply roared. He met Ace's Fire Fist with a backhand swat from his bisento, the Haki on the weapon so dense it dispersed the flames like irritating smoke. He then pivoted with shocking speed for his size, his bisento whistling as it met Gunnar's Haki-infused lava fist.
CLANG-BOOOOM!
Gunnar felt his bones rattle. Weevil hadn't even flinched. The sheer, unadulterated physical power was an abyss.
"He's… he's just swatting us away!" Ace yelled, launching a volley of HIBASHIRA (FIRE PILLARS) around Weevil, trying to hem him in.
Weevil ignored the flames, his skin charring and smoking but his advance utterly unimpeded. He swung his bisento in a massive, horizontal arc. "KAIJIN BISENTO! (ASHCLEAVER BISENTO!)"
The air itself screamed. Both Ace and Gunnar had to desperately evade. Ace propelled himself upwards with jets of fire, while Gunnar slammed his fists down, creating a rampart of obsidian to take the blow. The rampart shattered like glass, and the force still sent Gunnar tumbling.
The courtyard became a demolition zone. Weevil moved like a force of nature. He smashed through ruined walls, kicked over siege towers, and punched craters into the stone floor with every missed blow, his roars shaking the very foundations of Ashina. Ace's Observation Haki helped him dodge the worst, but he couldn't land a significant hit. Gunnar's Armament Haki allowed him to trade blows, but each exchange left him more battered, his reserves dwindling against Weevil's seemingly limitless stamina.
"This isn't working!" Gunnar roared, after taking a glancing blow from the bisento's pommel that sent him crashing through the remnants of the castle's main gate. "He's too strong! Too damn resilient!"
Gunnar lay in the rubble, dust and blood coating him. Weevil was lumbering towards him, bisento raised. Ace was desperately trying to draw Weevil's attention with a barrage of ENKAI (FLAME COMMANDMENT) blasts, but Weevil seemed fixated.
No… not like this… I have to… PROTECT!
The thought wasn't just will anymore; it was a primal roar from the core of his being, the very essence of his Titan Titan Fruit awakening to its truest, most monstrous potential.
"If I can't beat you as a man…" Gunnar snarled, his voice distorting, deepening, "…THEN I'LL CRUSH YOU AS A TITAN!"
RRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUMMMMMMBBBBBLLLLLLLE!
The ground beneath him didn't just shake; it heaved. His body began to expand at an alarming rate. Bones audibly cracked and reformed, muscles swelled to impossible proportions. Molten lava erupted from his skin, not as an aura, but as actual, flowing rock, forming craggy plates of obsidian armor. Simultaneously, spires of diamond-hard ice, razor-sharp and glinting with deadly cold, burst forth, forming colossal pauldrons, jagged claws, and a horned, demonic visage.
In seconds, where Gunnar the man had stood, now loomed a behemoth.
Two hundred and nineteen feet of raw, elemental fury. A walking volcano wreathed in a personal blizzard. His eyes were twin furnaces of molten gold, and his roar was the sound of continents breaking apart.
"GROOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGH!"
The Titan Gunnar slammed a fist the size of a small house into the ground where Weevil had been about to strike. The entire courtyard buckled, and Weevil, for the first time, looked momentarily surprised, forced to leap back to avoid being crushed.
TITANOMACHY!
The scale of the battle changed instantly.
"HOLY…!" Ace breathed, staring up at the colossal form of his friend. "He actually did it!"
Isshin, locked in a fierce exchange with Byrnndi World – who had just amplified a cannonball to the size of a boulder and hurled it – paused, his young eyes wide with astonishment at the sheer scale of Gunnar's transformation. "By the gods…"
World cackled. "HOOHOOHOO! A BIGGER TARGET! THIS IS GETTING FUN!" He promptly stomped on a large, flat section of wall. "MOA MOA – HUNDRED TIMES FLIGHT SPEED! GIANT FRISBEE!" The slab, now moving like a hypersonic projectile, whistled towards the Titan's head.
Titan Gunnar simply raised a colossal, ice-sheathed arm and backhanded the projectile. It shattered against his Haki-infused ice armor, the debris raining down like deadly hail.
"YOU… ARE… INSECTS!" Titan Gunnar's voice was a chorus of grinding glaciers and volcanic explosions.
He strode forward, each step an earthquake. Weevil, recovering his composure, met the advance with a defiant roar, swinging his bisento, which now looked like a toothpick against the Titan's bulk.
CLANG-BOOM! CRASH!
The Titan's fist, a mountain of ice and lava, met Weevil's Haki-coated bisento. Sparks the size of carriages flew. Weevil was driven back, skidding, his feet carving deep gouges in the stone. He was strong, impossibly so, but the sheer mass and power of the Titan were on another level.
Ace, recovering from his awe, flew upwards, a fiery gnat beside the colossus. "Gunnar! His legs! He's still fast!"
Titan Gunnar responded with a stomp. THOOOOM! The ground around Weevil buckled and fissured, trying to trap him. Weevil leaped, surprisingly agile, avoiding the worst.
Isshin, meanwhile, was having a hellacious time. World, temporarily distracted by the Titan, redoubled his efforts against the young swordsman. "You're not getting away, little sword-boy! MOA MOA – TRIPLE THREAT!" World amplified his own speed, strength, and the density of a broken siege engine he wielded like a club. Isshin was forced into a desperate defense, his youthful agility and Haki pushed to their absolute limits. He was landing cuts, but World's amplified resilience made them superficial.
Titan Gunnar was a walking cataclysm. He swiped at Weevil, who ducked and weaved, his bisento leaving fiery Haki trails as it glanced off the Titan's elemental armor. A missed punch from Gunnar obliterated what was left of a castle tower, sending thousands of tons of stone cascading down.
He then focused on World, who was pressing Isshin hard. With a roar, Titan Gunnar unleashed HYŌKAZAN FUNKA! (ICE VOLCANO ERUPTION!) From his back, massive spires of ice erupted, then shattered, launching refrigerator-sized shards of Haki-infused ice at hypersonic speeds towards World.
"WHOA THERE, BIG FELLA!" World shrieked, abandoning his attack on Isshin to desperately amplify a section of flooring into a makeshift shield. The ice shards hammered against it, cracking and shattering it.
Ace used the opening. "Isshin! Now!" He launched a concentrated ENNETSU JIGOKU (SCALDING HELL), a focused beam of intense heat, at World's exposed side. Isshin, freed for a moment, lunged, his katana a silver flash aimed at World's joints.
"GUAAAAH!" World howled as fire seared him and steel bit into his leg.
But the reprieve was short-lived. Weevil, seeing World in trouble, let out a frustrated, earth-shaking bellow. He wasn't just attacking anymore; he was vibrating with a strange, terrifying energy of Overflowing Haki. It was as if his proximity to Gunnar's earlier attack had awakened something, or perhaps it was a latent aspect of his unknown parentage.
"This ends… NOW!" Byrnndi World screamed, clutching his wounded leg, his eyes burning with manic fury. He looked at Weevil, then at the towering Titan. A desperate, insane idea formed. "WEEVIL! THAT BISENTO! GIVE IT THE JUICE! MOA MOA – ULTIMATE AMPLIFICATION! HUNDRED TIMES POWER! HUNDRED TIMES SIZE! HUNDRED TIMES… DOOM!"
World slammed both his hands onto Weevil's already massive bisento. The weapon began to grow, to swell, pulsing with an unholy light. It expanded to truly colossal proportions, easily matching the Titan's own limbs in size, its blade now as wide as a street, radiating an aura of absolute destruction. Weevil, roaring, hefted the impossibly amplified weapon, his own muscles bulging to an almost comical degree, yet somehow, he managed it.
"THIS… IS THE END, TITAN!" World shrieked, still channeling his power into the weapon.
Titan Gunnar saw the impossible weapon rising, his elemental eyes widening. He tried to bring his own colossal fists up to block, to counter.
But Weevil, wielding the gigantified, super-charged bisento, moved with the speed of a striking viper.
SWOOOOOSH-KRAKA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!
The amplified bisento struck Titan Gunnar mid-torso.
The impact was apocalyptic.
A wave of pure destructive energy erupted outwards, vaporizing a huge swathe of the remaining castle. The sound was a physical blow, knocking Ace from the sky and sending Isshin tumbling.
Titan Gunnar let out a sound that was not a roar, but a fractured scream of pure, elemental agony. His ice armor shattered. His lava plates cracked and exploded. The bisento carved a monstrous, glowing wound across his colossal form.
He staggered, his mountain-sized body swaying like a falling redwood.
One knee buckled. Then the other.
With a deafening, earth-shattering crash that shook the entire island, the 219-foot Titan of Ice and Lava slammed into the ruined courtyard, creating a new, vast crater, sending up a plume of dust and debris that blotted out the sky.
The Titan form flickered, unstable. The colossal limbs began to shrink, the ice and lava receding, sizzling and steaming, until, amidst the settling dust and smoldering wreckage, lay Gunnar, back in his human form, battered, broken, unconscious, smoke rising from his savaged body.
Isshin, struggling to his feet, and Ace, coughing in the dust cloud, stared in horror at the fallen giant and the two monstrous figures standing over him. Weevil, panting heavily, let the now normal-sized bisento fall from his numb fingers. Byrnndi World, despite his injuries, was cackling triumphantly.
"Hoo… hoohoo… HAHAHAHA! DOWN GOES THE BIG ONE! DOWN GOES THE BIG ONE!"