The colossal abomination that was Saint Jaygarcia Saturn shifted its massive spider legs, the sharp chitinous tips gouging deep tracks into the solid stone of the Dressrosa plateau.
His glowing crimson eyes slowly rotated away from Shanks, pinning the trembling, twelve-year-old Nico Robin with a gaze that felt like a physical weight pressing down on her skull.
"The survivor of Ohara," Saturn spoke, his voice carrying a hollow, resonant echo that seemed to vibrate the very air inside her lungs. "A cursed spark of a broken lineage. You have managed to crawl a fair distance from your burning home, little demon child. But all insects eventually meet the same heel."
Robin fell back onto her hands, her breath coming in short, terrified gasps as the sheer malice of the Elder Planet paralyzed her limbs.
Before Saturn could unleash his invisible crushing force upon her, a wet, metallic sound tore through the immediate silence. Giovanni ground his teeth together, planting his boot firmly against Admiral Kizaru's yellow-pinstriped chest, and violently yanked the Supreme Grade cutlass, Ace, out of the Admiral's torso.
Kizaru let out a sharp, ragged groan, his light particles flickering wildly as he simultaneously withdrew his piercing laser arm from Giovanni's chest. A massive geyser of blood erupted from both men. Kizaru stumbled backward, his usual lazy posture entirely shattered as he dropped to one knee, his hand clutching the massive, Haki-burned puncture wound in his stomach.
Giovanni didn't waste a single millisecond. Clutching his smoking chest with his left hand and holding Ace tightly in his right, he turned and sprinted toward the rear vanguard where Hongo was stationed.
His vision was spinning, dark spots dancing at the edges of his consciousness, but his transmigrator mind refused to let his body collapse until he reached safety.
"Don't let him escape!" a few distant, recovering Marines shouted, but their voices were instantly drowned out by the roar of the front-line fighters moving out.
The elite vanguard of the pirate alliance stepped forward, forming a defensive wall of pure muscle and absolute will between the monstrous Elder and the retreating Giovanni. Shanks stood at the center, Gryphon held loosely in his right hand, his eyes completely locked onto the spider-yokai. Flanking him were Charlotte Katakuri, Marco the Phoenix, King the Wildfire, Benn Beckman, Limejuice, and Lucky Roux.
"Hey, Red-Hair," Marco said, his arms transforming into brilliant blue and yellow wings of fire as he hovered slightly above the shattered bedrock. "I have seen some bizarre Zoan transformations in my time with Pops, but this presence... it feels completely wrong. It is like looking at a walking corpse that refuses to rot."
Katakuri narrowed his eyes, his advanced Observation Haki flaring to its absolute limit as his scarf rippled in the wind. "My foresight is showing me nothing but a blank wall of absolute malice. Every future path I see involves our immediate destruction. What exactly is this monstrosity?"
Shanks did not look back. His face was set in a grim, unyielding expression as red-and-black arcs of Conqueror's Haki began to wrap around his blade.
"That monstrosity is Saint Jaygarcia Saturn," Shanks revealed, his voice dropping into a deep, authoritative register. "One of the Five Elder Planets who sit at the absolute peak of the World Government. Listen to me carefully, all of you. Normal physical or elemental attacks are completely useless against them. If you cut off his head, it will just snap back. If you burn him to ash, he will reform in seconds. The only way to disrupt their unnatural immortality and actually carve a wound that sticks is to saturate your attacks with the raw, absolute force of advanced Conqueror's Haki."
"An immortal god from the Holy Land?" King muttered, the massive flame on his back exploding into a towering inferno of pure magma-like heat. "Let us see if his godhood can withstand the fire of the Lunarians."
Saturn let out a low, guttural roar that shook the very foundations of the plateau. The battle commenced in a flash of blinding kinetic violence.
Benn Beckman reacted first. With practiced, lightning-fast coordination, he brought his flintlock rifle to his shoulder and unleashed a rapid succession of three heavy lead slugs. Each bullet was completely wrapped in a dense, swirling shroud of pitch-black Armament Haki. The projectiles struck Saturn directly in his broad, bearded chest, tearing gaping holes through his formal coat and flesh. But just as Shanks had warned, the wounds instantly bubbled with thick, black slime and snapped shut within a fraction of a second, leaving no trace of damage.
Saturn's crimson eyes flashed. An invisible, concussive wave of force erupted from his gaze, targeting Beckman.
Beckman's advanced perception saved him. He violently twisted his torso to the side, but the sheer atmospheric pressure of the invisible strike still caught his left shoulder, tearing the fabric of his shirt and sending him skidding fifty feet across the melting stone floor.
"Take this, you oversized spider!" Limejuice roared, leaping high into the air from Saturn's blind spot. He spun his heavy, steel-core staff with blinding velocity, channeling thousands of volts of high-frequency green electricity through the air. "Thunder Smash!"
He brought the electrified tip of his staff down directly onto Saturn's horned head. A massive explosion of lightning detonated across the Elder's skull, cracking the stone beneath his spider legs. Yet, Saturn didn't even flinch. Before Limejuice could pull his weapon back, one of Saturn's massive, chitinous legs swung outward like a giant club, striking Limejuice squarely in the ribs and swatting him through the air like a fly. Limejuice crashed heavily through a distant stone pillar, buried under a shower of debris.
"Roux! Now!" Marco yelled.
Lucky Roux burst forward with his signature, physics-defying speed, turning into a massive, spinning ball of black-clad Haki that broke the sound barrier. He slammed directly into Saturn's front left leg joint, the immense kinetic force of the blow cracking the thick exoskeleton. Simultaneously, Marco soared down from the heavens, his body fully wreathed in the blue flames of rebirth. He spun mid-air, delivering a devastating, flame-infused kick straight into Saturn's face. "Phoenix Brand!"
The combined momentum of the two commanders forced Saturn's colossal bulk to tilt heavily to the side. But the Elder merely growled, his mouth opening to spit a massive torrent of dark, acidic venom directly at them.
"Get back!" Roux shouted, grabbing Marco by the ankle and using his immense leg strength to fling the Phoenix backward out of the trajectory. The venom struck the bedrock where they had been standing a millisecond prior, instantly melting the solid stone into a sizzling, bubbling pool of toxic vapor that stripped the skin from the unconscious Marines lying nearby.
King the Wildfire seized the opening. Hovering high above the acidic smoke, he drew his massive blade, channeling his Lunarian flames entirely into the steel until it glowed with the blinding intensity of a miniature sun.
"Imperial Flame!" King roared, swinging his sword in a massive horizontal arc. A colossal dragon of pure, white-hot magma-fire erupted from the blade, rushing across the plateau and completely engulfing Saturn's massive form in a towering pillar of apocalyptic heat.
For a moment, it looked like the assault had succeeded. The heat was immense enough to turn the surrounding rock into glass.
But then, Saturn's voice boomed from the center of the flames, completely unbothered by the Lunarian heat. "Insignificant rookies. Your efforts are entirely meaningless."
A sudden, violent explosion of negative black Haki erupted from Saturn's body, completely blowing away King's magma dragon and shattering Katakuri's mochi into flying fragments of ash.
Shanks saw the split-second window where Saturn's defensive aura was resetting. Planting his feet firmly into the fractured dirt, he channeled every single drop of his kingly ambition into Gryphon. The blade did not just crackle; it became completely consumed by a roaring, tempestuous storm of black and red lightning that parted the clouds above the island.
With a single, explosive burst of speed, Shanks executed a flawless aerial dash, appearing directly in front of Saturn's exposed chest.
"Divine Departure!" Shanks screamed.
He swung Gryphon in a massive, horizontal crescent of advanced Conqueror's Haki. The strike cut cleanly through Saturn's dark formal coat and deep into his torso. A massive spray of thick, black fluid erupted from the wound. Unlike the previous attacks from Beckman and King, this deep, smoking laceration did not instantly snap shut. The raw force of Shanks' Conqueror's Haki was actively burning against the Elder's unnatural biology, forcing Saturn to let out a low, genuine grunt of anger as he stumbled back two paces.
"It works!" Marco shouted, his blue flames flaring. "Keep the pressure on him!"
On the far edge of the plateau, safely away from the cataclysmic shockwaves of the main battle, Giovanni collapsed heavily onto his back.
The smoking hole in his chest from Kizaru's laser arm was severely cauterized, but blood was still leaking heavily from the jagged edges of the wound. His Supreme Grade cutlass, Ace, slipped from his numb fingers, clattering onto the dirt.
Robin dropped to her knees beside him, her entire body shaking violently as tears streamed down her face. She reached out, her small hands hovering over his blood-stained shirt, terrified to touch him for fear of causing more pain.
"Giovanni... please! Open your eyes!" Robin sobbed, her voice cracking with a raw, suffocating sorrow. "Don't leave me... please don't leave me like Saul did! Don't leave me like my mother did! You promised... you promised I would be safe with you! You can't die here!"
Giovanni forced his heavy eyelids open, coughing up a fresh splatter of crimson that stained his lips. He looked up at the crying girl, and despite the agonizing, white-hot pain tearing through his lungs, he forced his lips to curve into a weak, reassuring smile.
"Hey... don't cry, Robin," Giovanni whispered, his voice raspy and bubbling. "I told you, didn't I? I'm strong. I'm far too stubborn to let a simple hole in my chest finish me off."
Hongo rushed over, dropping his massive medical pack onto the stone floor with a heavy thud. He immediately pulled out specialized styptic pads and began wrapping thick layers of medicated gauze tightly around Giovanni's torso.
"Stop talking, you complete idiot!" Hongo scolded fiercely, his professional hands working with practiced, frantic speed. "An Admiral of the Navy put a literal laser through your right lung. If you keep moving your jaw and agitating your chest, you're going to bleed out internally before I can even close the main vessels! Stay completely still!"
Giovanni groaned as Hongo pulled the bandages tight, the pressure sending a wave of agony through his nervous system. He looked over at the center of the plateau, where flashes of electricity, and massive arcs of red Conqueror's Haki were illuminating the sky. Shanks and the others were fighting desperately, but Saturn's presence was still completely overwhelming. They were losing ground.
To break the suffocating tension, and grasping at a desperate memory from his past life's knowledge of the One Piece future, Giovanni let out a weak, self-deprecating chuckle.
"Hey... Hongo..." Giovanni gasped out, his eyes tracking the doctor's movements. "This is going to sound like a crazy joke... but you wouldn't happen to have some of that incredible Mink medicine from Zou, would you? You know... the secret drug that instantly restores a broken body back to one hundred percent... in exchange for suffering double the pain later on?"
He was thinking of the Wano Arc, remembering how the Mink doctors had used that exact miraculous medicine to heal Roronoa Zoro after he broke every bone in his body fighting Big Mom and Kaido, allowing him to stand up and defeat King.
Hongo's hands froze instantly. The roll of gauze slipped from his fingers, tumbling onto the dirt. He slowly raised his head, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as he stared down at Giovanni with an expression of absolute, unadultered shock.
"What... How on earth do you know about that medicine, Giovanni?" Hongo demanded, his voice dropping into a tense, disbelieving whisper. "That is a closely guarded, sacred secret of the Mink Tribe! No outsider is ever supposed to know of its existence!"
Giovanni blinked, his own eyes widening in genuine surprise through his pain. 'Wait... he actually has it?'
Hongo reached deep into the hidden, inner lining of his medical bag. His fingers searched through a secret compartment before pulling out a small, intricately carved wooden vial sealed with a heavy, dark red wax stamp.
"During the three years that you were away training on that isolated island with Silvers Rayleigh," Hongo revealed, holding the vial tightly in his hand, "the rest of us sailed deep into the New World. Shanks wanted to visit some old friends from his days as an apprentice on Gol D. Roger's ship. We traveled to the phantom island of Zou and met the two rulers of the Mokomo Dukedom, Nekomamushi and Inuarashi. While I was studying their local medical herbs, their chief doctors gifted me this pack of their sacred recovery drug. I have never used it because the side effects are completely barbaric. It doesn't heal you; it merely forces your cells to ignore the damage, and when it wears off, the pain returns twice as severe. It can literally kill a normal man from shock."
Giovanni's smile widened, a dangerous, defiant spark returning to his eyes as he looked toward the cataclysmic battle where his captain was currently bleeding against a god.
"Hongo..." Giovanni said, his voice regaining a fraction of its strength. "Pop that wax seal. Give it to me right now."
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