Strange gusts of wind howled through the ringed canyons of Namek.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of sulfur.
To Akainu, the smell was entirely too familiar.
He stood atop a pile of charred, blackened rubble. The white Justice coat of the Marine Admiral snapped violently in the green-tinted wind. Dark red magma oozed slowly down the entire right half of his body. The extreme heat seared the rocks beneath his boots, leaving behind a trail of smoking, blackened craters.
Resting in Akainu's broad palm was a vibrant orange orb. Deep within the crystalline sphere, several red stars emitted a faint, pulsing glow.
This was the Dragon Ball that Store Manager Blake had mentioned.
To acquire this single orb, Akainu had just cleansed a village of green-skinned aliens with a flood of molten rock. The cosmic grunts armed with their pathetic energy blasters had been completely powerless to stop the destructive might of his Great Eruption.
He couldn't care less about the lives of these alien locals. As far as he was concerned, as long as he could bring the Dragon Balls back, as long as he could exchange them with the Store Manager for the pinnacle of power needed to enforce Absolute Justice, any sacrifice was necessary.
High above, Donquixote Doflamingo stood balanced on several translucent, razor-thin strings.
Suspended in mid-air, he looked down at the steaming Marine Admiral. His signature red sunglasses perfectly concealed the unbridled greed gleaming in his eyes.
"Fuffuffuffuffu..."
The Heavenly Yaksha's trademark, grating laughter echoed through the desolate canyon. Running into an old acquaintance in this godforsaken alien world was certainly a bizarre twist of fate.
Akainu slowly raised his head. Beneath the brim of his cap, his eyes burned with undisguised disgust.
"Doflamingo," Akainu growled, his voice as rough as grinding sandpaper. "Get out of my way. Or I'll burn you to ash right alongside them."
Doflamingo didn't take the threat seriously in the slightest. He flicked his tongue over his dry lips and casually tossed a flat, circular device up and down in his hand.
It was a prize he had just stolen from a short, bald monk: the Dragon Radar.
When it came to tracking things down, this little gadget was infinitely more useful than Observation Haki.
"Don't be so irritable, Mad Dog of the Marines," Doflamingo sneered, bending backward in a fit of laughter. He pointed a long finger at the glowing orb in Akainu's hand. "A grand Marine Admiral... reduced to playing fetch like an obedient dog. It's enough to make a man die laughing."
Akainu's expression darkened into a lethal scowl. The magma on his right arm began to boil violently, the surrounding air warping and distorting from the sheer, radiating heat.
Doflamingo's laughter finally subsided. He waved the radar in the air. On the small green screen, several overlapping dots were flashing steadily.
"How about a trade?" Doflamingo offered, dangling the bait. "This little toy can track down the rest of the orbs. You hand over the one you've got, and I'll gladly let you borrow this."
A pirate's bargain was never to be trusted.
Before Doflamingo even finished his sentence, his fingers twitched.
Five impossibly thin strings, coated in ultra-dense Armament Haki, tore through the air. It was his signature technique—Penta-Chromatic Strings. The lethal threads closed in silently on Akainu's throat, moving so fast that the sheer velocity produced a high-pitched, screaming whistle.
Akainu had never intended to listen to the pirate's garbage in the first place.
"Pirates are pirates. Always relying on the same sickening, underhanded tricks."
Akainu's right arm expanded massively. The boiling magma shaped itself into a gigantic, molten fist that violently surged forward to meet the incoming, lethal threads.
"Great Eruption!"
Extreme heat and razor-sharp strings collided brutally in mid-air. The Armament Haki violently hissed and crackled under the searing temperature. The rock face ahead was instantly swallowed by the magma fist, melting the threads and the cliff itself into a bubbling lake of dark red lava.
Riding the shockwave generated by the blast, Doflamingo gracefully launched himself dozens of meters higher into the sky.
He gazed down at the boiling caldera beneath him, his ten fingers dancing as rapidly as a concert pianist's.
"Furuito!"
Hundreds, thousands of threads rained down from the sky like a torrential downpour. Every single string was sharp enough to slice through solid steel. They wove together into an airtight net of death, completely sealing off every possible avenue of escape.
Akainu stood his ground. He didn't take a single step back, nor did he even attempt to dodge.
His Justice coat was shredded into thousands of white ribbons that scattered into the howling wind. His entire body elementalized, fully transforming into pure, fluid magma.
The strings effortlessly shredded Akainu's body into countless, burning chunks. Lumps of dark red lava hit the ground with heavy, wet splatters.
Yet, Doflamingo showed no signs of triumph. He knew all too well how irritating Logia-types could be. Purely physical slashing attacks on this level wouldn't even come close to killing the man.
As expected, the scattered magma began to writhe and pool together.
From within the intense heat, Akainu's figure reformed. Aside from his shredded clothing, he hadn't spilled a single drop of blood.
The reconstructed Akainu was truly enraged now. He didn't have time to play games with this Warlord. He needed to end this battle immediately so he could gather the remaining Dragon Balls and claim his reward from the Store Manager.
Akainu reached out with his left hand and gripped the hilt of a seemingly ordinary katana strapped to his waist.
It was a prize he had earned from a previous high-tier dungeon—an Asauchi, a soul-cutting blade from the world of Bleach. After being tempered day and night by the extreme heat of his Mag-Mag Fruit, the blade had undergone a qualitative evolution.
Akainu slowly drew the long sword from its sheath.
"All things in the universe... turn to ashes."
The low, resonant chant echoed through the canyons of Namek.
"Ryujin Jakka!"
The exact instant the blade cleared its scabbard, a terrifying, all-consuming inferno erupted. The already stifling air of Namek was instantly converted into a literal hellscape.
Akainu perfectly merged the power of the Mag-Mag Fruit with the Zanpakuto's apocalyptic flames. The fire wreathing the blade turned a blinding, dark crimson. The temperature spiked so high that physical cracks began to web across the very fabric of space.
Gripping the hilt with both hands, he swung the blade downward with all his might toward Doflamingo.
A dark red, crescent-shaped wave of fire, stretching over a hundred meters long, ripped through the sky. It instantly vaporized the moisture in the air, creating a horrifying, screeching vacuum.
Even from a distance, Doflamingo could feel the world-ending heat threatening to incinerate his very soul.
The arrogant smirk vanished from his face completely. His red sunglasses reflected the rapidly expanding arc of dark crimson fire. That was absolutely not an attack that could be produced by the Mag-Mag Fruit alone.
Refusing to underestimate the strike, Doflamingo frantically pushed his String-String Fruit powers to their absolute limit.
Devil Fruit Awakening.
The rocky walls of the canyon beneath him began to mutate. The scattered debris began to mutate. Even the unique, blue-tinted grass of Namek was instantly assimilated, transforming into pure white strings.
In the blink of an eye, the dark green canyon became an ocean of writhing white threads.
"Ever-White!" Doflamingo roared, thick veins bulging across his forehead.
He threw both hands upward. Tens of thousands of white strings surged into the sky. They twisted, coiled, and braided themselves together into an impossibly thick, towering shield of compacted thread.
He poured his Armament Haki into the defense without holding anything back, staining the massive wall a deep, glossy black.
The dark red blade of fire slammed violently into the black shield.
There was no deafening explosion. Only the horrifying, skin-crawling hiss of absolute dissolution.
A blinding light bleached all color from the surroundings. The heat ravenously devoured the strings, while the hardened threads desperately tried to hold the inferno at bay.
Two of the absolute highest-tier powers from the pirate world were locked in a pure, grinding war of attrition on an alien planet.
Violent arcs of black-and-red lightning tore through the collision point—the devastating shockwaves of clashing Haki. The sheer magnitude of their power fundamentally permanently altered the landscape of the canyon. Rocks were ground into fine powder. Deep abysses tore open in the earth.
And right as the two men were tearing the sky apart...
High above the atmosphere of Namek, an event occurred that would shatter the entire battlefield.
A spherical spaceship was approaching at a speed that defied all logic. The outer hull violently subjected to atmospheric friction, trailing a massive, incandescent tail of exhaust.
Like a true meteor, it viciously ripped through Namek's dark green clouds.
The deafening sonic boom easily eclipsed the roaring sounds of the battle below. The pod plummeted directly toward the scarred surface of the planet, aiming straight for the war-torn continent.
Inside the sealed pod sat a man with wild, spiky hair, wearing a bright orange martial arts gi.
His ki was skyrocketing at a truly terrifying rate.
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