The battlefield was pandemonium. Gunnar stood with Smoothie cradled in his arms.
"Your sentimentality will be your downfall," Kizaru stated, raising his glowing foot.
Gunnar didn't answer with words. He answered with action. With Smoothie held tight to his chest with one arm, he stomped his foot. The deck beneath Kizaru erupted, a localized quake aimed to shatter his footing. Simultaneously, Gunnar's free arm, now a churning river of magma, lashed out like a molten whip.
Kizaru dissolved into light, evading both attacks with insulting ease. He reformed high in the air, looking down like a golden hawk. "Cracks and heat. How primitive."
With a roar of pure rage, Gunnar launched himself into the sky, his feet erupting with controlled bursts of magma that propelled him upward like a human volcano. He was a comet of flesh and fire, closing the distance on the admiral.
They clashed mid-air. It was a battle of opposing absolutes. Gunnar's lava fists, imbued with the concussive force of the Gura Gura no Mi, met Kizaru's light-speed kicks. Each impact was a miniature sun exploding, sending shockwaves that buffeted the ships below.
"HE NEEDS HELP!" Ace roared, seeing Gunnar fighting a one-armed battle while protecting his wife. He and Isshin broke from their own skirmishes, launching themselves toward the aerial duel.
"Hallowed Ash!" Ace unleashed a spiraling vortex of green and white flame, a hotter, more concentrated attack designed to blind and burn. Isshin followed in its wake, leaping from a piece of floating debris, his Haki-clad katana aimed for the infinitesimal moment Kizaru would be forced to solidify to counter Ace's attack.
Kizaru simply angled his body. "Amaterasu."
From his fingers, he fired a precise, curved beam of light that acted as a prism. It caught Ace's fire, bending and refracting it into a blinding, disorienting flare. Isshin, caught in the unexpected flash, was forced to shield his eyes, his attack faltering.
"You children are becoming veeery annoying," Kizaru drawled. He turned his full attention back to Gunnar, his expression stripped of all laziness. It was time to end this.
He brought his hands together, a blinding sphere of condensed light forming between his palms. It pulsed with an energy that made the very air scream. "This is the end of the line. Light of Judgment!"
He unleashed the attack—not a beam, but an expanding, all-consuming sphere of destructive energy. It was too big, too fast. Gunnar knew instantly he couldn't block it and protect Smoothie at the same time.
He made his choice in a nanosecond.
He spun in mid-air, turning his back to the blast. The Sphere of Judgment slammed into him. His Haki flared, his lava armor hardened, but the force was absolute. A raw scream of agony was torn from his throat as the light seared through his defenses, burning his flesh and fracturing his bones. The impact sent him plummeting from the sky like a stone.
The force of the blow jarred his arm. Smoothie, still unconscious, began to slip from his grasp.
"NO!" Gunnar roared, his consciousness flickering. He tried to reach for her, but his body wouldn't respond.
She was falling. A fragile, precious life tumbling through the heart of a warzone.
Kizaru watched from above, a cold, satisfied smile on his face. He began to descend, his finger already glowing, preparing to fire the final, definitive laser beam that would erase her from existence.
"MARCO!" Ace shrieked, his voice raw with panic.
Marco, his blue flames roaring, tried to take flight, but a massive wall of sticky, shimmering candy erupted in front of him, blocking his path.
"I think not, Phoenix!" Perospero cackled, his face annoyed. "We don't need your help,"
Smoothie fell, a silent prayer in a world of screams.
And then, the world shook.
It was not a quake from Gunnar. It was the movement of a god.
From the prow of the Moby Dick, where he was still locked in a stalemate with Big Mom, Whitebeard did the unthinkable. With a deafening roar that was part fury and part paternal terror, he shoved Big Mom back with a world-shattering quake-punch, creating a precious second of separation.
He didn't use that second to attack. He used it to leap.
The King of the Seas, the strongest man in the world, launched his colossal frame from his ship. He was a mountain taking flight, his great white coat billowing behind him like the wings of a vengeful angel. He moved with a speed and agility that defied his age and size.
He fell faster than Smoothie, positioning his immense body beneath her.
She landed softly on the broad, scarred expanse of his back, nestled safely between his shoulder blades, cushioned by the sheer scale of the man who was now her father.
Whitebeard twisted, landing on the deck of the Moby Dick with a ground-shaking THUD that cracked the wood for fifty feet in every direction. He carefully, gently, reached behind him and lifted Smoothie from his back, cradling her in the crook of one arm as if she were a delicate porcelain doll.
He stood there, one arm holding his granddaughter-in-law, the other holding his legendary bisento. He looked up, his gaze locking with Kizaru's. The storm, the war, the chaos—it all faded away, reduced to the silent, hateful stare between an emperor and an admiral.
"You have gone too far, Borsalino," Whitebeard's voice was unnervingly calm, a low rumble that promised a cataclysm worse than any that had come before. "You have forced the hand of an old man."
He looked down at Smoothie's peaceful, unconscious face, then back up at the sky.
"You wished to see the power that could destroy the world?" he asked the heavens. "So be it."
The Gura Gura no Mi flared to life, not just on his fist, but across his entire body. The air fractured. The sea boiled. The sky itself seemed to groan in fear. This was the unrestrained wrath of a father and a grandfather pushed beyond his limit.
***
The rage of Whitebeard was a tectonic event. The unnerving calm in his voice vanished, replaced by a roar that was the sound of the world cracking at its seams.
"BORSALINO!"
His voice was a physical weapon, a shockwave that blasted outward, staggering everyone on the deck. The Gura Gura no Mi flared to life, but this was a different power than before. It wasn't focused in his fists. It was a white, fractured aura of pure, apocalyptic energy that enveloped his entire colossal frame. The air around him visibly shattered like glass.
"You wished to see the power that could destroy the world?" he bellowed, his voice resonating in the bones of every living thing for miles. "Then witness it!"
He wasn't aiming at Kizaru. He wasn't aiming at anything. He slammed the butt of his bisento into the deck of his own ship.
And the world broke.
A white line of pure destruction shot out from the point of impact, cleaving the Moby Dick in two. It didn't stop there. The fracture line raced across the ocean, splitting the very sea. Water was not parted; it was erased, creating a bottomless, yawning chasm that stretched to the horizon. The sky itself seemed to tear, the clouds ripped asunder as the quake traveled up into the atmosphere. The entire island-sized battlefield tilted violently, ships sliding into the newly formed abyss, pirates and Marines alike screaming as they plunged into nothingness.
The floating fortress of Shiki wobbled precariously, the old pirate struggling to maintain control against a force that defied his own. "This old fool… He's going to sink us all!" Shiki roared.
Down on the ground, Gunnar lay in a heap of broken limbs and seared flesh. Marco, his own wounds still healing, knelt beside him, pouring every ounce of his regenerative blue fire into Gunnar's body. "Stay with us, Gunnar! Don't you dare die now!" Marco grunted, the strain immense. Ace lay nearby, his flames extinguished, knocked unconscious by the sheer force of Whitebeard's initial roar.
Kizaru, hovering in the air, watched the cataclysm unfold, his lazy smile finally gone, replaced by a thin, tight line of genuine concern. "Tsk… he's lost his mind."
Whitebeard paid him no heed. With Smoothie still cradled in one arm, he leapt across the chasm he'd created, landing on a stable section of the tilting deck. He looked up at Kizaru, his eyes white with boundless fury.
"Now, you face me."
He swung his bisento, and the very air he swung through became a projectile, a blade of pure concussive force that shot toward Kizaru. The admiral became light, allowing the attack to pass through him, but the force of it slammed into one of Big Mom's ships behind him, shattering it into a million pieces.
"You cannot hit light, Newgate!" Kizaru taunted, reforming.
"Then I will shatter the world you stand on!" Whitebeard roared back. He punched the air, sending a focused quake-bubble directly at Kizaru.
Kizaru fired a laser beam to intercept it. The beam hit the bubble, and a devastating explosion of light and kinetic energy rocked the sky. Kizaru used the brilliant flash to his advantage, rocketing down toward Whitebeard, his leg a glowing sword. "Your reflexes have dulled with age!"
Whitebeard met the light-speed kick with the flat of his bisento, the Haki-infused steel groaning under the impact. The force drove him back a step, but he held firm. He was an immovable mountain of rage.
It was in this moment of locked struggle that Big Mom, her face a mask of incandescent fury, made her move.
"You will not ignore me, NEWGATE!" she shrieked.
Prometheus, now the size of a small sun, swooped down, engulfing both Whitebeard and Kizaru in a sea of hellfire. Whitebeard roared, a bubble of quake energy repelling the flames from himself and Smoothie, but Kizaru was forced to phase through the attack, breaking his engagement.
Big Mom crashed down between them, her massive sword Napoleon swinging wildly. "That child is MINE!"
She wasn't fighting with strategy anymore; she was a whirlwind of pure, avaricious rage. She swung at Whitebeard, who parried, then spun and swung at Kizaru, who dissolved and reappeared. It was a chaotic three-way battle of gods.
In the chaos, a powerful blow from Napoleon, amplified by Zeus's lightning, struck Whitebeard's side. The old emperor grunted, stumbling to one knee. The impact was jarring. Smoothie slipped from his protective grasp, rolling onto the tilting, splintered deck.
"THE CHILD!" Big Mom's eyes lit up with mad glee.
She lumbered toward the unconscious Smoothie, her massive hand reaching down to snatch her prize.
"GET AWAY FROM HER!"
It was not one voice, but a dozen. The Whitebeard Pirates, seeing their family in peril, reacted as one.
Jozu, a diamond cannonball, launched himself at Big Mom's legs, trying to tackle her. Vista and Thatch became a whirlwind of steel, slashing at her extended arm. But she was an Emperor. She swatted them away like flies.
But they had bought a crucial second.
Gunnar, his body still smoldering, forced himself to his feet. Marco's flames had done their work, knitting bone and mending flesh, but he was running on pure, unadulterated will. He saw Big Mom reaching for his wife. He saw his father on one knee.
He raised a trembling hand, the skin still cracked and raw. And he punched the air.
A second quake, smaller but no less potent, erupted from his fist. It didn't aim to destroy the world; it was focused, a concussive blast aimed directly at Big Mom's face.
Simultaneously, Isshin, Marco, and Jozu unleashed everything they had left.
Isshin's katana hummed as he unleashed a Mortal Draw, a Haki-infused slash that traveled across the deck. Marco became a phoenix, firing a torrent of blue flame. Jozu ripped a massive chunk of the deck loose and hurled it like a meteor.
The four attacks—quake, slash, flame, and diamond-hardened debris—converged on Big Mom at the exact same moment.
Her Haki flared, but the combined, desperate assault was too much. The attacks hit her full-force. An earth-shattering explosion engulfed her, sending her stumbling back, roaring in pain and fury. The force of the blast was so immense that it hurled both sides back. Gunnar collapsed to the ground again, his energy spent. Marco and the others were thrown across the deck.
The battlefield was momentarily clear.
And in that moment, a figure descended from the sky, untouched by the chaos. Shiki the Golden Lion, a patient predator, had been waiting.
"A lovely prize for all my trouble," he cackled, his voice cutting through the ringing silence.
He swooped down, his powerful hands grabbing the unconscious Smoothie. Her silk robe billowed as he began to float back up into the stormy sky, a triumphant, wicked grin on his face.
"Thank you for tiring her out for me, Linlin! And thank you for the lovely distraction, Newgate!" he taunted. "I'll be taking my new leverage now! Wororororo!"
Whitebeard, struggling to his feet, watched in horror as his family was stolen from right under his nose.
"SHIKI!" he roared, a sound of pure, helpless fury.
The Golden Lion just laughed, rising higher and higher, disappearing into the dark, swirling clouds with the future of the Whitebeard Pirates in his grasp.