"Yes." Kizaru whispered softly.
He removed himself from the gang-beating of the False Deity.
Marco the Phoenix was five yards away but suddenly the world turned blindingly yellow.
FLASH.
Admiral Kizaru materialized directly above the First Commander, completely intercepting the flight path, hovering right in front of Whitebeard's headless corpse.
Kizaru's leg was raised high above his head, glowing with an incandescent, terrifyingly concentrated mass of photons. His eyes, hidden behind his yellow-tinted glasses, were narrowed in quiet, mourning fury.
He brought his glowing leg down in a devastating, full-power axe kick.
KRA-KOOOOOOOM!
The heel of the Admiral's shiny black shoe slammed directly into the back of Marco's fiery phoenix head.
The air shattered as Marco was violently blasted out of the sky.
He plummeted downward like a shot bird, crashing into the solid bedrock of the plaza.
CRUNCH. BOOM!
The sound of Marco's skull impacting the concrete was sickeningly visceral. The bedrock violently cratered around him, spiderwebbing for dozens of yards. Marco's blue flames sputtered and died, his body returning to its human form. He lay face-down in the rubble, completely paralyzed, blood pouring profusely from his nose, mouth, and forehead.
Thud.
Kizaru landed softly on the ice.
"All you pirates treating HQ as your backyard..."
PRESS.
He lifted his black shoe and placed it heavily, ruthlessly onto the back of Marco's bleeding head, pinning the First Commander face-first into the concrete.
Kizaru looked down at the broken pirate, then looked up at the towering, headless monument of Edward Newgate.
"You think you are Whitebeard?" Kizaru said, his voice flat and uncompromising.
'Chance!'
In the center of the maelstrom, Light Yagami seized the microsecond.
The immediate removal of Kizaru from the pincer attack relieved exactly one-third of the apocalyptic pressure crushing him. It wasn't much, but for a mind that processed time in fractions of a second, it was the only opening he was going to get.
'Now!'
Light intentionally dropped his guard.
Sengoku's golden fist slammed directly into Light's chest, shattering two more ribs. But Light used the catastrophic momentum of the blow to spin his body, entirely bypassing Aokiji's incoming ice-hook.
Light threw his blood-stained hands down toward the permafrost.
He aimed his Force completely downward, and pushed.
He inverted the gravity of the earth beneath him to its absolute, self-destructive maximum, combining it with a repulsive blast fueled by every single drop of his Life Force.
FOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The repulsive blast shattered the frost ground.
Boom!
The bedrock violently exploded outward, creating a shockwave of inverted gravity that momentarily threw Sengoku and Aokiji off balance, pushing the enraged monsters back by a mere ten feet.
But it was enough.
The blast launched Light Yagami vertically into the air.
He broke the sound barrier ascending. He shot upward like a fired cannonball, escaping the immediate, enclosed meat grinder of the ground forces.
"HE'S ESCAPING!" Vice Admiral Onigumo shrieked, looking up at the pitch-black streak tearing through the sky.
"I WILL NOT LET YOU LEAVE!" Sengoku roared, entirely consumed by madness.
Boom!
The Fleet Admiral immediately engaged Geppo, kicking off the air with explosive force. His massive golden body rocketed upward in pursuit. Below him, Admiral Aokiji mirrored the movement, his boots slamming against the air as he launched himself into the sky to drag the False Deity back down to hell.
Light controlled himself back to flight and broke through the first layer of ash-choked clouds.
"Too slow!"
Sengoku, pursuing furiously, launched a massive golden shockwave upward. Light used his Future Sight, effortlessly tilting his trajectory mid-air. The shockwave soared past him, detonating harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.
Light continued to climb. One mile. Two miles.
The air was becoming incredibly thin, the temperature dropping to freezing extremes.
Below him, the pursuit began to falter.
Sengoku, massive and heavily injured, was burning tremendous amounts of stamina just to maintain his Geppo at this altitude. His upward momentum was slowing. Aokiji, equally exhausted and bleeding, found the air too thin to efficiently thrust into footholds.
Geppo increasingly became useless at high altitudes.
The two apex monsters of the ground forces were forced to halt their ascent.
"HA... HA..."
Light hovered high in the sky, his chest heaving violently. His white dress shirt was soaked in crimson. His face was a bruised, battered mess.
Ptu!
He spat another glob of blood into the wind.
He looked down at the world below.
His eyes met with Kizaru's who was stepping on the head of a struggling Marco.
'If I try to fly away...'
'... you won't let me go, will you?'
The situation was unspeakably grim.
The False Deity was trapped in the sky above Marineford.
As if to make his suspicion come true, the man of light started to glow.
FLASH!
...
Down below, a sea of clouds separated him from the shattered plaza. Sengoku the Buddha and Admiral Aokiji were hovering just beneath that cloud layer, their Haki signatures burning like twin suns of unyielding wrath. They had created an impassable blockade, but now slowly dropping as...
SHINE!
The ambient light of the high atmosphere began to distort. The photons hummed with a lethal, vibrating intensity.
He was already above Light.
As Light looked above at the blinding light glow brighter in his eyes, he viewed his situation in detachment and tried to think of a solution.
'Well. I cannot outrun light it seems.'
Light sighed.
'Fighting Kizaru off would lead to Sengoku and Aokiji coming to gang up on me again.'
Light concluded, his mind operating with terrifying detachment.
'Just the Force alone won't be enough.'
'In open airspace, with no terrain to manipulate and no gravity to invert against a solid surface, I can't effectively neutralize their attacks.'
"Ha..."
Something.
Anything.
He needed to look for a solution.
Light closed his eyes.
He focused his Observation into full drive, looking into the future, and utilizing it to its utmost. Consequently, his focus range was included in this drive as well.
VHOOM.
Marineford encompassed.
VHOOM.
The waters beyond. Miles beyond.
VHOOM!
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. The abyssal black pupils contracted into tight pinpricks.
He saw it.
Piercing through the thick sea fog on the horizon, moving with a silent, imposing majesty, was a massive galleon with a dragon figurehead.
One of the most famous ships on the sea.
'The Red Force-'
CRACKLE-ZZZZZZZTH!
BOOM!
To Light's shock, a pair of eyes opened on the said ship and Light's Observation was suddenly cut off.
...
[ Red Force ]
"What happened, Boss?" Lucky Rouge, asked.
"Ah... it's nothing." Shanks replied as he looked in the direction of the island they were sailing towards.
....
'Conqueror's Haki?!'
'It can cut off my Observation?!'
Light was shocked.
It was a Conqueror's Haki that was undoubtedly at the apex. Perhaps, even at the fabled Level 5 (MAX) in the System's terms.
Light's thoughts exploaded.
Red-Haired Shanks had arrived.
'Shanks is a diplomat of the old era.'
Light deduced, his mind racing through a billion possibilities a second.
'His actions advocate balance.He must be here to stop the bloodshed.'
But Light also saw the absolute danger in this new variable.
Kizaru was done charging and was about to smash his head to the ground.
There was only one way to survive.
'Just a little more time!'
At this point, Light welcomed any situation change.
He had to drag the fight back to the ground and hold on for dear life until the Emperor intervened.
A dark, incredibly focused smile curled across Light Yagami's battered face.
"Gods don't run, Kizaru!"
...
Down below, now closer to the ground, Fleet Admiral Sengoku and Admiral Aokiji were scanning the sky when suddenly-
Boom!
Light bypassed the Admirals entirely, plummeting the remaining few hundred meters toward the shattered permafrost of the northern plaza.
He struck the center of Marineford.
"He didn't run...?" Vice Admiral Doberman yelled over the roaring wind, shielding his scarred face from the flying debris.
Sengoku did not speak. His golden eyes narrowed, his Supreme King's Haki flaring as he descended rapidly toward the crater, Aokiji right beside him.
The dust began to settle.
Sengoku landed on the edge of the crater, his massive fists clenched. Aokiji touched down beside him, the air around the ice-man immediately dropping to absolute zero.
A figure slowly walked out of the thick, choking smoke.
Light Yagami's white dress shirt was completely gone, incinerated by the plasma of his descent. His torso was exposed—a terrifying landscape of hyper-dense, corded muscle wrapped in an impossibly thick, visible layer of pitch-black Armament Haki that looked like cracked obsidian armor.
Sometimes, the most simple plans were the best plans.
He had a simple one too.
He would pull some flashy moves, make them hesitate to re-assess the situation by acting crazy and buy himself some time.
He couldn't let them know he was stalling. He needed them to engage him in a messy, chaotic brawl on the ground.
'And anyway...'
'Watching Sengoku go crazy is pretty interesting.'
Light tilted his head, his neck popping violently. He looked at the golden Buddha and the Admiral of Ice standing on the rim of the crater.
He needed to look like a madman who wanted to drag them to hell with him. Perhaps, he was too good of an actor or he wasn't acting, but suddenly- he slipped.
"Say..."
He genuinely started to enjoy it.
GRINNN.
An entirely feral grin stretched across Light Yagami's face.
He raised his bare, Haki-coated fists.
"LOVELYYYY!" Light roared, his voice a feral rasp that sent a cold shiver down the spines of the watching Vice Admirals.
"I felt LOVELY killing that dog you know!"
"WHICH ONE SHOULD I KILL NEXT SENGOKU HAHAHAHA!"
"YOUR ICY BOY?"
His hand held his face as he hyperventilated in pure ecstasy and looked above at the sky directly in Kizaru's eyes.
"OR YOUR MONKEY?"
"HAHAHAHAHAA!"
.
.
.
A/N: He's mental. That's the whole goddamned problem this whole time. I love him though, no homo.
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