The audacity of the act hung in the air, more shocking than any explosion. Shiki the Golden Lion, a relic from a bygone era, had just snatched the linchpin of the entire war and was ascending into the churning black sky, his laughter echoing like a vulture's cry.
"Wororororo! A lovely prize for all my trouble!"
Below, the battlefield froze. Big Mom, still reeling from the combined assault, looked up, her face contorting from pain into a mask of pleasure. "SHIKI! YOU SHARP MINDED BASTARD! GOOD JOB!"
Her remaining children and homies, Perospero, Daifuku, and the others, began to levitate, Shiki's power lifting them toward their mother's flagship, which now served as a rendezvous point for their chaotic retreat.
But Kizaru was ready.
"Oh no, you don't," he drawled, his voice dangerously calm.
He vanished from the deck of the Moby Dick. A heartbeat later, he materialized in the sky, a golden star appearing directly in Shiki's path. The admiral stood on nothing, his arms crossed, blocking the way to the floating fortress.
"The objective has not changed, Golden Lion," Kizaru stated, a glowing finger already aimed at Smoothie's unconscious form. "The child must be eliminated."
Shiki's triumphant grin faltered. "Get out of my way, Marine!" He tried to float around the admiral, but Kizaru simply reappeared in front of him, a persistent, inescapable.
This was the opening Big Mom needed. With a roar that shook the heavens, she propelled herself upward, a living pink cannonball of rage. She wasn't aiming for Shiki; she was aiming for the man who stood in her way.
Before Kizaru could react to the new, massive threat, Big Mom's enormous hand closed around him. It was like a mountain swallowing a star. She squeezed, her Haki-infused grip powerful enough to crush steel. Kizaru's light form flickered violently, struggling against the sheer physical and spiritual pressure.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" she screamed.
But down below, another god was on the move. Whitebeard, with a roar of paternal fury, bent his knees. The wood of the deck splintered under the strain. He launched himself into the sky, not with grace, but with the raw, explosive power of a volcanic eruption. He was a white comet of vengeance, his bisento held high, aimed directly at Big Mom's back.
She saw him coming. Her eyes were wide with crazed fury. She was caught between a Marine, and a rival Emperor. In a brilliant, malicious move, she didn't try to fight Whitebeard. She used the weapon in her hand.
"HAVE YOUR TOY BACK, NEWGATE!"
With a mighty heave, she threw Kizaru. The admiral, still recovering from her crushing grip, shot like a golden cannonball directly at the ascending Whitebeard.
Two forces of nature were on a collision course. Whitebeard, unable to alter his trajectory, roared and swung his bisento, coating it in a thick, vibrating layer of quake energy, preparing to cleave the admiral in two.
Kizaru, his face a mask of grim focus, knew a physical block was impossible. He brought both hands together, pouring every ounce of his energy into a single, desperate, point-blank attack.
"LIGHT OF DESTRUCTION!"
He unleashed his most powerful attack, not as a sphere, but as a focused, forward-facing laser beam of cataclysmic proportions.
The quake-infused bisento of the World's Strongest Man met the ultimate attack of a Marine Admiral.
KRA-KOOOOM!
The resulting explosion was not sound or light; it was an event that erased both. A silent, expanding sphere of pure white and fractured black energy detonated in the sky. It was a miniature apocalypse. The force of it blew Shiki's floating fortress upward, sending it tumbling through the clouds. It vaporized a dozen of the retreating Big Mom pirate ships.
Whitebeard was blasted downward, crashing onto the deck of his ruined ship with enough force to shatter it further. He was alive, but battered, his great coat torn and smoking.
Kizaru was sent flying in the opposite direction, his suit shredded, his body flickering as he struggled to maintain his Logia form.
The sky was momentarily cleared. And Shiki, stabilizing himself, saw his chance.
"He's getting away!" Ace yelled from the deck. He looked at Marco, his eyes blazing. "We have to go!"
Marco, battered but resolute, nodded. He grabbed Ace, and with a powerful beat of his phoenix wings, they shot into the sky, a blue and orange streak of desperate hope.
They were fast, but Shiki had been waiting for them. As they closed in, he grinned, his eyes gleaming with cunning.
"Wororororo! So eager to join the collection!"
He didn't fight them. With a flick of his wrists, two massive, levitating anchors that had been part of his ship's debris shot out, moving with unnatural speed. Before Marco or Ace could react, the heavy iron anchors slammed into them. The impact was brutal, stunning them both.
Shiki didn't stop there. He manipulated their falling bodies, bringing them closer. He reached out and grabbed both of them by the neck, his grip like iron. Marco struggled, his flames sputtering. Ace tried to turn to fire, but the grip was too strong.
"Two commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates," Shiki mused, holding them up like trophies. "You would have made an excellent bargaining chips." He looked down at the chaos below, at the reeling emperors and the battered admiral. His grin widened. "But first… you need a bath."
With a casual, cruel flick, he threw them. Not at the ship, but far out, into the roiling, violent sea. They hit the water with a massive splash, far from the Moby Dick, lost in the towering, quake-born waves. A Devil Fruit user and a weakened phoenix, swallowed by the ocean.
"NOOOO!" The cry was a collective roar of despair from the remaining Whitebeard Pirates.
Shiki laughed, a triumphant, rolling sound that echoed across the sea. He had the girl. He had neutralized his pursuers. He had played two emperors and an admiral against each other and won.
He turned his floating fortress and, with Smoothie in his arms, began to sail away into the dark, stormy sky, leaving a broken battlefield and two shattered empires in his wake.
The taste of ozone and blood hung heavy in the salt-laced air. On the ravaged deck of the Moby Dick, Gunnar's eyes snapped open. They were not ice-blue or molten gold; they were solid crimson, webbed with broken blood vessels.
"S…Moo…THIE…" The name was a guttural tear, a sound of pure, soul-deep agony.
His body began to contort. Steam hissed from his skin as his muscles bulged and his bones cracked and elongated. He was growing, his form swelling with the primordial power of his Titan fruit. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty. He was becoming a monument of rage, a 219-foot god of vengeance set to rise from the waves.
But his body, already brutalized and pushed far beyond its limits, betrayed him. As he reached a hundred feet, his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees with a deafening crash, his colossal form still enlarging. A torrent of dark, clotted blood erupted from his mouth, a gruesome waterfall that steamed as it hit the deck. His transformation stalled, then began to recede, his body shrinking back to its human form amidst a cloud of dissipating steam. He collapsed, face down, in a pool of his own blood, whispering her name into the splintered wood.
High above, the candy-coated ships of the Big Mom pirates, along with Shiki's floating fortress, vanished into the bruised, angry clouds, leaving behind a broken family.