"Figarland Garling!"
"What was that?!"
"A laser cannon?!"
"Isn't that Admiral Borsalino's power? Something's off!"
"Wait—there's something behind the clouds!"
…
Drawn by the blast and the uproar, ten Knights of God flashed into view, eyes snapping to the young Marine wreathed in blue lightning above. Shock and suspicion warred on their faces.
"Damn it… what kind of strike was that…?"
Garling climbed from the fiery crater, soot-black and seething, his elegant blood-moon coiffure half-charred into ridiculous tufts. He lifted his head, veins reddening his eyes as he glared at the man in the sky.
"You bastard… who are you?"
Below, fire still ravaged the city. With the Holy Land Guard mobilizing, Fisher Tiger's inferno was beginning to be boxed in. CP operatives and Guardsmen poured from every quarter, weapons leveled at the strange Marine floating overhead.
From that height, Momonga surveyed a wasteland of broken ramparts and shattered roofs. Rage, hatred, and fear rose like heat from the masses below—the Knights of God, the CP elites, the self-appointed guardians of this sanctum.
They'd barely deigned to acknowledge a North Blue Marine once. Now they stared up at him, wary and white-knuckled.
So this is Mary Geoise, he thought, and something primal thrilled through him. It isn't special at all.
"I am Momonga, Supreme Commander of the North Blue," he said, voice calm and resonant.
He opened his arms.
Riiip. Riiip. Riiip.
Thunder flared from his outstretched limbs, stitching the storm with a net of blazing veins. Lightning bloomed and guttered in furious succession, swallowing the night in a living tapestry of light. Bolts crashed down in chain reactions, detonating the air.
Terror rippled through the Holy Land. Within the Land of the Gods, Celestial Dragons quaked and stared upward, emptied of thought.
The darkness above thinned, illuminated by the storm. A colossal silhouette surfaced from the clouds.
A prow sheathed in high-strength alloy. Gliding wings balancing a leviathan's bulk. A metal fortress in motion.
Weapon arrays bristled along the hulls—most terrible of all, three main guns aligned at the bow, their black maws like the throats of war-beasts, ancient and hungry. An iron stink spread with their appearance.
"A… flying battleship?!"
Garling's pupils pinpricked. The other Knights of God froze, disbelief carving their faces.
Rogers Darren had built a flying battleship?
That was only the beginning.
As the first warship shook free of the cloudbank, a second followed.
Then a third.
---
Before the eyes of Celestial Dragons, officials, and Guardsmen, ship after ship shouldered out of the clouds—steel behemoths roaring, blue arcs crackling over their skins as they fanned into a battle grid across the sky.
Fifteen fully armed fortresses fixed themselves in a hovering matrix. Engines thundered until the air shook, an oppressive force that made lungs forget how to draw breath.
"This… impossible…"
"An entire flying fleet…"
"Where did Rogers Darren find the wealth for this…?"
"Even stripping the North Blue to bedrock wouldn't pay for it!"
"And the weapons on those hulls…"
…
Cold crept up spines. Scalps tingled. The Knights, the Guard, the CP—every face tilted skyward and blanched.
Drenched in blood, Fisher Tiger forced his head up and grinned through the pain.
"Darren-san… I knew it."
Flame-light flickered over his cheeks. He clenched a fist, eyes blurring. "Let tyranny taste your wrath."
A roar rose from the ground.
"You think scrap iron can destroy the Holy Land? Dream on!"
Garling launched, a streak through the air, Western blade blazing as it cleaved a radiant arc toward Momonga.
Momonga's eyes flashed crimson. He drew his saber and answered with a stroke of his own.
Shrrii—
Thunder bellowed. His cut birthed a blue dragon of lightning, jaws yawning to swallow Garling's strike.
BOOM!!
The mid-air collision blossomed into a shockwave, molten light falling like rain.
Momonga climbed higher, arm lifting in a precise command.
In that instant, the fifteen warships behind him spoke as one—fifty heavy laser cannons, two hundred light laser cannons, five hundred high-altitude grenade and guided missile tubes, and a forest of conventional batteries.
Every barrel spat light. Night turned to day.
Annihilation pressed down from the sky. Hearts clenched across Mary Geoise.
Momonga raised his arm higher; his white cape snapped like a blood-iron standard. His voice carried to every corner of the city as Conqueror's Haki surged from him in dark waves.
"Momonga, Vice Commander of the North Blue Fleet and Second Commander, acting under orders of Supreme Commander Rogers Darren—arrives with the entire North Blue Fleet at the World Government's Holy Land, Mary Geoise, for your esteemed review!"
He leveled his saber at the ancient city.
Garling, the Celestial Dragons, and their hosts watched, faces burning with fury, as Momonga's gaze turned cutting.
"All units—attack!"
For a heartbeat, the world held still.
Then—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Lasers, rockets, missiles, cannon, bullets, lightning—
A storm of incandescent trails poured from the fleet's formation and fell upon Mary Geoise.
Purgatory descended.
To be continued...