The transponder snail clicked shut, its little wooden receiver resting silently against the mahogany shell. Admiral Kizaru let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain the remaining tension from his towering framework. He slumped his shoulders slightly, running a gloved hand over his short, curly black hair, thoroughly exhausted by the sheer weight of the command he had just received.
"My, my... what a relief," Kizaru drawled to himself, his nasal voice echoing softly over the field of unconscious Marine soldiers. "Dealing with the higher-ups is always such an incredibly tedious chore. And those kids out there... they really are completely terrifying. To force an old man like me to exert himself this much, the youth of today truly have no respect for their elders."
Suddenly, the frantic sound of small, hurried footsteps broke the quiet of the outer ridges. Running out from the cover of the shattered stone buildings was a young girl, barely twelve years old. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was messy from the wind, and her breathing was ragged. It was Nico Robin. After being rescued from the ruthless clutches of Cipher Pol agents by Giovanni, she had been staying safely aboard the ship as an honorary member of the Red Hair Pirates. But the cataclysmic, earth-shattering sounds of the battle had driven her out of hiding, her heart consumed with worry for her savior and the rest of the crew.
"Giovanni! Shanks!" Robin called out, her voice small and trembling as she reached the edge of the plateau.
But her voice choked completely in her throat. Her tracks froze instantly, her boots skidding slightly in the dust as her eyes locked onto the tall man wearing the yellow pinstriped suit and the Marine justice coat. Her face drained of all color, turning an ashen, horrified white.
The terrifying memories of the Buster Call on Ohara, the roaring flames, and the absolute power of the Navy high command flashed through her mind like a nightmare. She recognized the uniform, the overwhelming presence, and the sheer authority instantly.
"A... Navy Admiral..." Robin whispered, her entire body shaking with a primal, deeply rooted terror.
Kizaru turned his head slowly, the cracked amber lens of his sunglasses catching her small reflection. His lazy, unbothered expression suddenly vanished, replaced by a cold, razor-sharp focus as a spark of recognition flared within his eyes.
"Oh? Well, now... look who decided to show her face," Kizaru murmured, his tone dropping every trace of its usual playful cadence. "The Demon Child, Nico Robin. To think the most wanted survivor of the scholars of Ohara would be hiding right here under the wings of the Red Hair Pirates. This is quite an unexpected bonus for the World Government."
In a literal microsecond, Kizaru's entire physical form dissolved into a brilliant, linear beam of golden light particles.
"Yata no Kagami," his voice drifted through the air like a death knell.
He materialized directly in front of the frozen, terrified girl. His right arm was already thrusting forward like a spear, his index finger glowing with a hyper-concentrated, blinding point of laser energy aimed directly at her chest, intending to pierce right through her tiny frame before she could even blink.
"Robin, run!" Shanks screamed from across the crater, his voice filled with raw, unbridled panic. He tried to leap forward, to throw himself into the path of the light, but his shattered, agonizing ribs violently gave out, forcing him to stumble hard against the stone floor.
"Get out of there!" Benn Beckman roars, his rifle already snapping up to his shoulder, but even his incredible reactions were a millisecond too slow against the absolute speed of light.
Robin squeezed her eyes shut, pulling her arms tightly against her chest as she braced for the inevitable, burning flash of death.
But the white-hot flash never touched her. Instead, a massive, unyielding shadow blocked out the light completely.
Giovanni appeared out of thin air, his movement defying his own physical exhaustion. Using his Haki, he had anticipated the exact trajectory of Kizaru's absolute justice. He threw his entire body directly into the path of the laser spear, shielding the young girl with his own flesh.
SPURT.
Kizaru's light-infused arm drove cleanly and mercilessly straight through Giovanni's chest, exiting out of his back in a violent, brilliant spray of dark crimson blood.
Giovanni gasped, his vision momentarily flickering to black as a thick stream of blood erupted from his lips, splattering across the fractured bedrock below.
Robin opened her eyes, her pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks as she looked up. Her breath hitched, a soft, strangled cry escaping her throat as tears instantly welled up in her eyes, spilling down her pale cheeks. She reached out with trembling, blood-stained hands, her voice cracking with an unbearable, suffocating horror. "Giovanni... No... Giovanni!"
Despite the agonizing, smoking hole tearing through his torso, Giovanni forced his lips to curve into a warm, gentle smile. He looked down into the eyes of the crying girl, his voice raspy, bubbling with blood, but completely filled with reassurance.
"Don't... don't worry, Robin," Giovanni whispered, coughing up another dark splatter of crimson. "I... I got him too."
Admiral Kizaru's lazy smirk completely stiffened. He blinked, a sharp, unyielding expression of shock and genuine pain crossing his features for the first time in the entire campaign. His breath caught, and his amber glasses tilted precariously as he slowly looked down between their pressed bodies.
Pierced cleanly and deeply straight through Kizaru's own stomach was a legendary, beautifully crafted blade. It was Ace, the Supreme Grade cutlass that once belonged to the legendary King of the Pirates, Gol D. Roger. Giovanni had drawn the weapon and thrust it forward in the exact same microsecond he took the hit, sacrificing his own body to lock the Admiral in place, embedding the blade with every single drop of his desperate, maximum Armament Haki to bypass the Logia elemental defense entirely.
Spurt.
Kizaru coughed up a thick, heavy glob of blood, the dark fluid staining the pristine yellow fabric of his pinstriped vest. The golden light particles surrounding his piercing arm flickered violently, losing their cohesion and stability as the pure, concentrated Haki within the Supreme Grade sword sapped his strength and pinned his elemental form to the physical world.
"You... you really are a terrifying brat," Kizaru gasps out, his nasal voice cracking with genuine, agonizing strain. "To willingly take a lethal blow just to ensure a counter-attack could land... Are all the members associated with the Red-Haired Pirates going to make my ability to turn into light seem entirely meaningless out here?"
Giovanni ground his teeth together so hard they threatened to shatter, keeping his grip on Ace absolutely solid, refusing to let the Marine Admiral dissolve or retreat. 'I didn't die in my original world and get transmigrated into this crazy universe just to watch a main character get slaughtered in front of me,' Giovanni thought fiercely to himself, his vision blurring rapidly from the massive blood loss.
Before any of the gathering pirates could move to capitalize on the brutal, locked stalemate, the entire sky above Dressrosa turned a deep, unnatural shade of pitch black. The clouds did not just swirl; they seemed to rot in real-time, turning into a bruised, violent purple that completely blotted out the silver moonlight.
Directly in the center of the ruined plateau, a massive, geometric magic circle began to etch itself into the stone floor. It was an Abyss Transportation circle, glowing with a sinister, deep red-and-black runic light that bled directly into the cracks of the bedrock like liquid shadow.
Suddenly, a tidal wave of sheer, unbridled Haki exploded from the forming circle. It was completely unlike the kingly, defiant aura of Shanks or Giovanni; this Haki was entirely poisoned, dripping with an ancient, absolute malice, an unforgiving cruelty, and a suffocating, demonic weight that physically crushed the surrounding atmosphere.
The gathered pirates gasped, many of the weaker crew members falling straight to their knees, their lungs straining for oxygen under the sheer, oppressive gravity of the dark aura.
Shanks dropped his hand onto the hilt of Gryphon, his teeth chattering slightly as a thick layer of cold sweat poured down the back of his neck. His golden eyes dilated in pure, instinctual alarm. "This Haki... it can't be. This isn't the presence of a Marine Admiral. The Elders... One of the Five Elder Planets is actually making a personal descent?!"
Giovanni looked over at the glowing, bleeding runes of the Abyss Circle, his heart dropping straight into his stomach. As a transmigrator, he possessed the forbidden knowledge of the true horrors hidden within the World Government, but experiencing the physical, crushing reality of their ancient malice was something no manga page or anime episode could ever truly prepare him for. 'The Abyss Circle... an elder is actually here.'
Miles away, within the towering walls of the Royal Palace of Dressrosa, the physical manifestation of this absolute evil echoed through the corridors. King Riku stood out on the royal balcony, his hands gripping the stone railing so tightly that the white marble began to crack and splinter under his palms. He could not sense the intricacies of Haki clearly like the seasoned pirates of the New World, but the sheer, primitive terror making his heart hammer against his ribs was undeniable.
Beside him, his beautiful daughter, Scarlett Riku, clutched her chest tightly, her breath hitching as she looked toward the distant plateau where the black clouds were gathering like a vortex of death. Her thoughts instantly raced to Giovanni, the man who had captured her heart, and a deep, sickening knot of dread formed in her stomach.
"Father... what is this awful, suffocating feeling?" Scarlett whispered, her voice trembling violently as she tried to maintain her footing. "The very air... it feels like it's turning to poison."
"I do not know, my daughter," King Riku said, his expression dark with an unprecedented dread as the wind began to howl fiercely through the city streets below. "What in god's name is happening to my country right now?"
Back on the bleeding plateau, the Abyss Circle flared with a final, blinding burst of negative, pitch-black energy. From the bubbling black slime and rising sheets of dark smoke, a colossal, monstrous entity fully manifested before their eyes.
It was Saint Jaygarcia Saturn in his full, terrifying Yokai form. His upper torso remained that of a stern, bearded old man wearing a dark, formal coat, but his lower body had completely transformed into a massive, multi-legged, spider-taur abomination. His sharp, chitinous legs stabbed deep into the solid stone floor, shattering the bedrock with every subtle shift of his weight. A thick, swirling wreath of black, cloud-like vapor wrapped around his broad shoulders, and his eyes glowed with a lethal, crimson light that completely lacked any human empathy.
"What the hell is that thing?!" Limejuice yelled, taking a defensive step backward, his electric staff shaking slightly in his grip.
"Is that a Devil Fruit transformation... or something else entirely?!" Lucky Roux muttered, dropping his meat bone into the dirt as his advanced perception screamed at him that the entity standing in front of them was an absolute anomaly to the laws of nature.
Saint Saturn slowly raised his head, his cold, ancient gaze sweeping across the gathered rookies with absolute, unbothered disdain. When he spoke, his voice was like grinding mountain stones, echoing with a heavy, authoritarian absolute power that demanded immediate submission from all living things.
"Insignificant insects," Saturn spoke down to them, his words carrying a terrifying, crushing weight. "You scurry across the vast seas, playing at being kings and conquerors, yet you understand absolutely nothing of the true order of this world. You are nothing but temporary ripples in an eternal ocean. Bring the Mythical fruit to me immediately, and perhaps your executions will be swift and merciful."
Saturn's glowing crimson eyes then shifted, locking directly onto the red-haired youth holding Gryphon. His heavy brow furrowed slightly in recognition.
"So, you are the one..." Saturn automated coldly. "Figarland Shanks. To think a child possessing that sacred bloodline would be groveling in the dirt alongside common thieves and pirates. How utterly disappointing."
Shanks narrowed his eyes into razor slits, his own conqueror's spirit flaring up in fierce defiance despite the suffocating pressure of the Elder. "I don't care about whatever name or bloodline you try to give me, old man. You aren't taking a single thing from us today."
"Fuffuffuffuffu!"
A sharp, maniacal, and deeply arrogant laughter suddenly cut through Saturn's oppressive, god-like monologue, echoing sharply across the ruined plain.
From the shadows of the outer ridges, a heavily injured Donquixote Doflamingo stumbles out into the open moonlight. His signature pink feather coat was shredded, burnt, and covered in thick layers of soot.
His face was masked in fresh lines of blood from his previous brutal encounters, but the chaotic, dangerous grin on his face remained fully intact. He reached up, adjusting his unbroken, curved sunglasses as he stared directly at the colossal spider-yokai with absolute, unbridled amusement.
"Well, well, well... look what kind of ancient fossil decided to crawl out from the Holy Land of Mary Geoise," Doflamingo mocked, his voice dripping with venomous entertainment. "Saint Saturn himself! To think a member of the Gorosei would personally soil his expensive shoes in the mud of the lower world. You must be truly, deeply terrified right now, aren't you? You found out that a certain Devil Fruit has appeared on the black market. A fruit that poses a genuine, existential threat to your precious, fragile throne!"
Saturn's massive spider legs twitched, a deep crack forming in the stone beneath his chitinous claws as his aura sharpened into deadly needles. "Watch your tongue, heavenly brat. You are nothing but a fallen celestial piece of trash. Do not mistake my current patience for an inability to erase you from history."
Doflamingo simply laughed louder, taking a bold step closer despite the overwhelming, suffocating Haki rolling off the Elder. "Fuffuffu! Oh, I know exactly what you are capable of, Saturn! But you won't kill me out here on this plateau. You can't. Because unlike these ignorant, simple-minded pirates standing around us, I know the dark, rotting national treasure hidden deep within the center of Mary Geoise! If I die here today, that secret spills to the entire world, and your precious world order comes crashing down around your ears!"
Saturn regarded Doflamingo for a long, silent moment, his crimson eyes narrowing into slits of pure, calculated coldness. "You are an annoying, buzzing fly, Donquixote. Do not get in my way today, or I will ensure your silence is made permanent, regardless of whatever leverage you think you possess."
Beside the deep subterranean crater, the thick dust shifted as two more powerful figures slowly dragged themselves back to their feet. Charlotte Katakuri braced his weight against his heavy spear, his jaw set in quiet determination, while Marco the Phoenix stretched his arms, the blue and yellow flames of regeneration flickering weakly but steadily across his heavily wounded torso. King the Wildfire stood tall right beside them, the flame on his back burning bright and fierce against the darkness.
"Yare yare..." Marco said, a weary but determined smirk appearing on his face as he looked at the colossal spider-god and the bleeding Admiral locked in place. "I guess this is absolutely no time for us to be lying down for a nap. If we don't start moving right now, we're all going to end up as spider food."
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