The sound of hundreds of synchronized combat boots marching across the stone plateau shattered the temporary silence left by Lucky Roux's devastating impact.
From the edge of the dust cloud, a massive vanguard of Marine soldiers erupted onto the battlefield. They were the elite security forces assigned to Admiral Borsalino's warship, moving in tight, disciplined tactical formations. Their weapons were raised, their bayonets gleaming coldly beneath the moonlight.
"Secure the perimeter!" a Marine captain roared, waving his sabre frantically toward the smoking pile of rubble where Kizaru had been buried. "Protect the Admiral! Open fire on the pirate scum! Do not let them advance!"
A deafening volley of rifle fire cut through the night air. Hundreds of flintlock musket balls and high-caliber lead slugs tore through the smoke, creating a literal wall of flying metal aimed directly at the grouped members of the Red Hair Pirates and the fallen commanders.
Shanks didn't move a single inch. He stood alongside Benn Beckman, Lucky Roux, and the newly arrived Limejuice, his face perfectly calm despite the incoming hail of lead.
A few yards away, Giovanni stood tall, his hands resting on the hilt of Ace, the legendary cutlass, while the exhausted Charlotte Katakuri watched silently from the side.
"They really are noisy, aren't they?" Beckman muttered, calmly blowing a ring of gray smoke from his cigar as the bullets drew closer.
"Let's quiet them down," Shanks replied smoothly.
In the exact same millisecond, four distinct, colossal waves of invisible pressure detonated from the center of the pirate vanguard.
It wasn't a physical strike, but the literal fabric of the atmosphere violently buckled. Shanks, Charlotte Katakuri, Benn Beckman, and Giovanni simultaneously unleashed their Conqueror's Haki.
The overlapping spiritual pressure was so immense that it transformed into a visible, dome-like distortion in the air. Thick, jagged ropes of black, crimson, and golden lightning splintered outward in every direction, raking across the stone floor and vaporizing the incoming bullets into molten iron droplets before they could even hit the ground.
The sheer weight of the kingly ambition rolling off the four men generated a localized gravity well, cracking the bedrock and sending a massive physical shockwave rippling across the plateau.
The effect on the charging Marine soldiers was instantaneous and absolute.
The Marine captain's voice choked mid-shout, his eyes instantly rolling back into his head as his consciousness was completely snuffed out. The rifles slipped from the limp fingers of the soldiers. One by one, by the dozens, and then by the hundreds, the elite Marine vanguard collapsed face-first into the dirt like a field of wheat harvested by an invisible scythe.
Their bodies hit the ground in heavy, unceremonious thuds, their minds utterly shattered by the combined spiritual rejection of four conquerors.
Within three seconds, the entire army of fodder lay completely motionless, turned into a vast sea of unconscious bodies stretching all the way back to the shoreline.
From the center of the massive, collapsed mountain of rubble on the edge of the crater, a deep, shifting rumble echoed.
A single, brilliant beam of golden light shot straight up into the sky, cleanly piercing through the cloud deck before dissolving into scattered photons.
The heavy rocks exploded outward, raining down onto the empty field. Admiral Kizaru stepped out from the debris, casually brushing a thick layer of gray stone dust off his yellow pinstriped shoulders. His suit was scuffed, and his left cheek was still painted with a thin line of dried blood, but his posture remained entirely unbothered.
Kizaru reached into his interior vest pocket, pulling out a slim, white cigarette. He placed it between his lips, then raised his right index finger, letting a tiny, hyper-concentrated spark of laser energy flare at the tip to light the tobacco. He took a long, slow drag, exhaling a thin cloud of white smoke into the cold night air.
"My, my..." Kizaru drawled, his nasal voice returning to its signature, maddeningly slow cadence as he looked across the field of face-planted soldiers. "You boys really didn't have to be so mean to my poor subordinates. They were only doing their jobs, you know. Now I'm going to have to write a terribly long report about why my entire vanguard is taking a nap on the battlefield."
Giovanni's pupils dilated to the size of pinpricks the moment his eyes locked onto Kizaru's face.
'That face... it really is him,' Giovanni thought to himself, his fingers tightening against the leather wrap of his cutlass until his knuckles turned white. 'Borsalino. The Light Human. That terrifying Admiral from the Navy headquarters. What the hell is a monster of that caliber doing out here in the waters of Dressrosa? Is the World Government really this desperate? Is it because of the Fenrir fruit? They must have tracked the transmission the moment the fruit appeared on the black market.'
Kizaru shifted his gaze away from the unconscious Marines, his amber-tinted sunglasses reflecting the four high commanders who were now arrayed against him. He reached up, casually adjusting his cracked lenses with a slow, dramatic sigh.
"Well... it doesn't really matter," Kizaru murmured, his lazy smirk returning to his face. "I don't actually need to defeat all of you monsters right this second. I just have to keep you boys nice and busy out here for about... five minutes~"
"Five minutes is more than enough time to take your head, Marine," Benn Beckman said coldly.
The battlefield erupted into a cacophony of light and kinetic violence. Kizaru didn't wait a single millisecond; his body completely dissolved into a blinding cluster of golden photons, executing a light-speed teleportation line that split into three separate directions simultaneously.
"Yata no Kagami!"
Three beams of solid light bounced off the surrounding rock formations, converging on Shanks, Beckman, and Lucky Roux from three distinct blind spots.
But this time, the pirates were perfectly prepared. Limejuice leaped forward from the rear vanguard, his eyes locked onto the northern light beam. He spun his heavy, skull-patterned staff with blinding speed, channeling thousands of volts of high-frequency green electricity through the steel core.
Limejuice roared, slamming the electrified tip of his staff directly into the ground at the exact coordinate where Kizaru's light beam was about to materialize.
The massive discharge of lightning created a highly volatile electromagnetic field, violently disrupting the photon trajectory. Kizaru was forced to prematurely materialize out of his light form, his yellow shoe skidding across the electrified dirt as he parried Limejuice's follow-up staff strike with a quickly generated blade of solid light.
CLANG!
While Kizaru was locked in a physical clash with Limejuice, Lucky Roux appeared directly behind him. Despite his massive, rounded frame, Roux moved with that same impossible, physics-defying speed, his body turning into a black blur coated in maximum Armament Haki. He delivered a brutal, low-angle spinning kick aimed straight at Kizaru's knee joint.
Sensing the incoming displacement of air, Kizaru didn't break his clash with Limejuice. Instead, he simply liquefied his lower torso into pure light, allowing Lucky Roux's Haki-clad leg to pass harmlessly through his empty pinstriped trousers. In the exact same motion, Kizaru pointed his left index finger directly at Roux's chest.
"Laser Finger," Kizaru whispered.
A brilliant beam of concentrated energy shot from his fingertip at point-blank range. But before the laser could pierce Roux's flesh, a heavy steel rifle barrel slammed into Kizaru's wrist from the side, forcefully redirecting the trajectory of the shot upward. The laser beam shot harmlessly into the sky, exploding against a distant cloud layer with the force of a thunderclap.
Beckman had closed the distance, his face cold and expressionless as he used the butt of his rifle to lock Kizaru's arm in place.
"Don't forget about me, Admiral," Beckman muttered.
From above, Shanks descended like a falling star. Gryphon was fully unsheathed, the steel completely consumed by a roaring, crackling shroud of crimson Conqueror's Haki lightning. Despite the blood leaking from his mouth and the white-hot pain tearing through his broken ribs, Shanks' downward swing carried the absolute, unyielding weight of an Emperor's ambition.
Kizaru's eyes sharpened behind his lenses. Realizing the extreme danger of the combined assault, he completely disengaged from Limejuice and Beckman, exploding his entire body into a colossal flash of blinding, golden light particles.
The sheer illumination was so intense that it momentarily blinded the entire plateau, forcing Limejuice and Roux to shield their eyes. Shanks' descending cutlass sliced cleanly through the empty light particles, the shockwave of his Haki cutting a massive, hundred-foot trench into the bedrock below, but the Admiral had already reconstructed his physical body thirty feet away in the air.
While the high-altitude high commanders were completely locked in a frantic, earth-shattering melee with the Marine Admiral, Giovanni saw his opening.
He didn't join the front-line clash. His eyes had never left the sea-stone alloy case that Kizaru had casually placed behind the large block of bedrock before the fight resumed. The battlefield was completely consumed by flashes of golden lasers, gelectricity, and black Haki static, creating the perfect web of chaotic distraction.
Giovanni dropped low, utilizing his advanced Observation Haki to map out the blind spots in Kizaru's active perception field. He moved like a shadow, his boots making absolutely no sound as he darted from one broken spire to the next, entirely bypassing the blast zone of the main battle.
Within seconds, Giovanni slid behind the massive block of bedrock. His hands reached down, grabbing the cold handles of the sea-stone alloy case. He popped the heavy golden latches, throwing the lid open.
There it sat. The Mythical Zoan Dog-Dog Fruit, Model: Fenrir. The fruit was shaped like a multi-layered, silver-furred pear, covered in intricate, swirling cosmic patterns that seemed to pulse with a faint, wild energy of its own.
Giovanni closed the case, swung the strap over his shoulder, and sprinted back to the edge of the crater where Caribou was still curled up into a terrified ball, weeping openly.
"Caribou! Get up!" Giovanni hissed, grabbing the swamp-logia user by the back of his collar and yanking him to his feet.
"Noooo! Please don't throw me into the lasers!" Caribou wailed, his nose running as he squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm just a small-time pirate! I don't want to die here!"
"Shut up and open your mouth!" Giovanni ordered fiercely.
Without waiting for a response, Giovanni grabbed Caribou's lower jaw, forcefully prying his mouth open to an unnatural degree. Because Caribou was a Swamp-Swamp Fruit user, his physical body wasn't governed by normal human anatomy. Giovanni hoisted the entire sea-stone alloy case and jammed it straight down Caribou's throat.
Caribou's eyes bulged in pure shock as his throat liquefied into a thick, dark, and bubbling pool of swamp mud. The heavy case slid smoothly down his esophagus, sinking deep into the infinite, bottomless dimension of his internal swamp storage body. The mud bubbled once, twice, and then solidified back into his normal, pale throat.
"Listen to me carefully," Giovanni growled, leaning in close so only Caribou could hear his voice over the roaring sounds of the battle behind them. "The World Government is here for that fruit. If they find it on any of us, we're done. It is officially hidden inside your swamp. If a single person sees you bring it out, or if you try to steal it for yourself... I will personally cut you into pieces and feed you to the Sea Kings. Do you understand me?"
Caribou swallowed hard, his entire body shaking as he looked into Giovanni's fierce, golden eyes. He nodded his head frantically, his long tongue flapping in terror. "I understand! I understand! It's completely buried in the mud! No one will ever find it, I swear!"
Back in the center of the plateau, the high-speed melee finally ground to a temporary halt.
Kizaru landed smoothly on a broken pillar, his breathing slightly elevated, his yellow suit coat bearing several new singe marks from Limejuice's electricity and a small tear on the sleeve from Beckman's rifle.
Shanks stood twenty feet away, leaning slightly on Gryphon, his chest heaving as he fought through the agonizing strain of his internal injuries. Beckman, Roux, and Limejuice stood flanking their captain, their weapons raised and ready for the next round.
Purupurupurupuru...
The sudden, high-pitched ringing of a transponder snail broke the tension.
Kizaru blinked, reaching into his interior coat pocket to pull out the highly unique, mahogany-shelled snail with the molded black beard and tiny flat hat. He clicked the receiver open, holding it lazily up to his ear.
"Moshi moshi~ This is Borsalino," he drawled.
"Borsalino."
The voice that emerged from the snail's speaker was cold, heavy, and dripping with an ancient, terrifying authority that made the surrounding air feel instantly stagnant.
It was Saint Jaygarcia Saturn. The background audio of the transmission was filled with the distinct, thunderous sound of heavy iron anchors dropping and the rhythmic roaring of steam engines.
"My personal vessel has just breached the territorial waters of Dressrosa," Saturn commanded, the snail's face twisting into a harsh, unyielding scowl. "The military blockade is fully established. I am preparing to make landfall on the plateau within the minute."
Saturn paused, his voice dropping into a stern, absolute rasp that carried a chilling warning.
"Listen to me carefully, Borsalino. Ensure that every single Marine soldier under your command immediately averts their eyes. No common soldier is permitted to look upon my true form when I descend. Clear their vision entirely."
Kizaru looked up from the transponder snail, his amber-tinted sunglasses sweeping across the vast, rolling landscape of the plateau. He looked at the hundreds of elite Marine soldiers who lay completely face-first in the dirt, their bodies piled on top of one another, totally unconscious from the massive Conqueror's Haki blast unleashed moments ago.
A slow, lazy smile played on Kizaru's lips as he turned back to the mouthpiece, his voice filled with that same mocking, relaxed tone.
"Well, Lord Saturn..." Kizaru drawled smoothly, blowing a final ring of smoke into the night air. "You really don't have to worry about that at all. There isn't a single conscious Marine left on this island to look at you in the first place~"
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