The Marines were not a force to be broken so easily.
The initial shock of the failure had already started receding.
Monkey D. Luffy had freed Ace.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku's voice, exposing Luffy's heritage as the son of Dragon, echoed continuously in their minds.
The brothers would die today.
"HRNNN..."
Step.
Slishhhhhhhh.
Vice Admiral Doberman, his face covered in cross-shaped scars, stepped on a dead pirate's chest and pulled his katana from his bloodied chest cavity.
He wiped the blood from his brow and looked across the frozen expanse at the two brothers making their way across the ice.
The execution scaffold was gone.
The symbolic, highly publicized execution to be watched by the world was ruined.
"GRRHNNN..."
"Do they think they can live?"
"Ha!"
He scoffed.
It was a done deal.
The targets were no longer protected by height, distance, or the impenetrable shield wall of the giant squad.
They were right there, on the ground level, surrounded by tens of thousands of armed men.
Portgas D. Ace was still in seastone shackles.
Every big shot with a good enough Observation Haki knew, it was the Pirate King's son's most vulnerable moment.
A good aim would do the job!
"ATTENTION!!"
"MARINES!"
Doberman roared, his voice cutting through the cheers of the pirates.
"TARGET IS ON THE ICE!"
He pointed his blood-stained katana directly at Luffy and Ace.
"LOOK AT THEM!"
"THEY ARE NOTHING!"
"THEY ARE EXHAUSTED, BLEEDING MEAT!"
The surviving Marines, shaken from their stupor by the Vice Admiral's battle cry, turned their rifles and swords toward the brothers.
"That's right!"
"The Fleet Admiral's orders are absolute!" Vice Admiral Onigumo hissed, his eight spider-arms drawing eight separate, Haki-coated sabers.
"The bloodline of the Pirate King and the bloodline of the Revolutionary Dragon are standing side-by-side!"
"If they leave this island alive, the world will never know peace!"
"Shift priority!"
"ALL FORCES!"
"CONVERGE ON THE BROTHERS!"
The pivot was instantaneous and terrifying.
""UNDERSTOOD! VICE-ADMIRAL ONIGUMO-SAN!!""
""OHHHHHH!""
""CATCH THE BROTHERS!!"
The massive Marine army stopped treating the Paramount War as a defensive siege. The execution was no longer a stationary objective.
It was now an active, desperate hunt.
"KILL!!!"
"DON'T LET THEM REACH THE SHIPS!"
Thousands of Marine infantrymen, elite snipers, and decorated Captains swarmed like a massive, white-coated plague of locusts.
They abandoned their skirmishes with the pirate vanguard, ignoring the Whitebeard commanders, and flooded the central plaza, their weapons trained entirely on Monkey D. Luffy and Portgas D. Ace.
Ruffle.
"Ha..."
Luffy hoisted Ace higher on his shoulder, his boots slipping slightly on the blood-slicked ice.
"We have to go, Ace!" Luffy panted, his lungs burning with every syllable.
The situation was taking a turn for the worse, from the looks of it.
"I told you... I'm too heavy, Luffy" Ace groaned, his head lolling against Luffy's neck.
Clink. Clink.
The heavy chunk of splintered wood still attached to the Seastone shackles dragged painfully against the ice behind them. The ocean-forged metal was actively draining the strength from Luffy's rubbery body just by proximity.
"Put me down. You can't fight like this."
"Shut up!" Luffy gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with absolute defiance. He remembered how Ace had slipped right through his fingers in Impel Down.
This was his second chance.
This might be his only chance.
"I'm not letting you go!"
"Not again!"
"Not ever again!"
Ace better believe that!
Clink.
"Oye, Fire Fist."
"Keep your mouth shut and let us do the work," Zoro growled, stepping up to Luffy's left side.
The swordsman was a horrific sight. Blood coated the entire left side of his face, his green hair matted and dark. His chest heaved, but his grip on Wado Ichimonji and Sandai Kitetsu was as steady as a mountain. He coated the chipped steel in a dark sheen of basic Armament Haki.
"Fuuuuuuu...."
Sanji stepped up to Luffy's right side, exhaling a thick plume of smoke.
"Yeah, if you listen to him and drop him now, Luffy, I'll kick your ass myself."
FLARE!
The cook's black suit was ruined, but his right leg spontaneously ignited with the searing heat of Diable Jambe.
"We'll make the path," Zoro stated, crouching in a predatory position.
"Yeah, you just focus on putting one foot in front of the other, Captain," Sanji added, bringing his flaming leg up.
The two rookies had no business interfering in a war of this scale.
Ace looked at his brother's crew continuously risking their lives for himself staight from Impel Down to here, the centre of the world where the apex clashed.
But they were here.
He accepted it. Ace had actually already made up his mind.
"You're right."
"From now..."
"My life is no longer my own!"
"I will dedicate it... for everyone who has sacrificed!"
A massive wave of heavily armored Marine infantry charged them, their spears leveled, their rifles raised.
Zoro grinned.
"Finally right in the head!"
"FIRE!" the Marine Captain screamed.
BA-BA-BA-BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
A volley of lead bullets tore through the air.
"Tatsu... Maki!" (Dragon Twister!)
Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Whoosh!
"Flange... Strike!"
BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BAM! BAM!
Zoro spun like a bladed hurricane, generating a massive, twisting tornado of compressed air that caught the bullets and redirected them violently into the charging Marines.
Simultaneously, Sanji launched himself forward in a blur of motion, his flaming leg striking the shields of the heavy infantry with the force of an exploding cannon shell.
BOOOM!
The front line of the Marines was instantly shattered, bodies flying backward into the chaotic swarm.
Luffy didn't hesitate. He surged forward through the opening his commanders created, his sandals pounding against the ice.
The desperate retreat had officially begun.
For every ten yards they gained, it felt like they were forced to fight through a hundred men. The sheer volume of the Marine forces was suffocating. Bullets whizzed past Luffy's ears and he did his utter best to defend the defenceless Ace on his shoulders.
Swords clashed against Zoro's blades. The heat of Sanji's kicks was the only thing keeping the freezing cold of the ice from settling into their bones.
Luffy's vision was tunneling. The edges of the world were turning black. The Seastone shackles near his neck felt like they weighed a thousand tons. Every step was pure, unadulterated agony.
But he didn't stop.
He wouldn't stop.
...
From a high vantage point, miles away from the grueling, bloody slog of the infantry, a pair of yellow-tinted glasses glinted in the dim light.
Admiral Kizaru's true body, using one of his clones, temporarily running far from the Dark King's relentless pressure, floated high above the plaza.
He looked down at the massive swarm of white coats failing to stop the tiny, moving knot of pirates.
"Oooooh... they are surprisingly persistent, ne~" Kizaru drawled, his voice carrying a lazy, yet incredibly lethal cadence.
"It seems infantry isn't enough for these rookies."
Kizaru had seen these rookies for the first time in his life. He thought they wouldn't be able to make a splash but the fish were surprisingly nimble.
"Then."
Kizaru crossed his arms in front of his chest, pinching his fingers together. The air around the Admiral began to glow with a blinding, incandescent radiance.
"If they reach the bay, my salary might actually get cut."
"I can't have that."
"Brave rookies... die, please."
The sky above the retreating brothers suddenly turned a blinding, apocalyptic yellow.
"Yasakani no..."
Thousands of deadly, highly concentrated particles of light began to mass in the atmosphere, preparing to rain down upon Luffy, Ace, Zoro, and Sanji in a devastating attack that would devastate them to ruins.
"Magatama."
.
.
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