The Boundary of the Grand Line and the East Blue, The Calm Belt.
No wind stirred the heavy atmosphere, and no current rippled the water; the vast surface of the sea lay as perfectly still as a colossal sheet of glass.
The Eclipse hovered within the lower sky, suspended a few hundred meters above the mirrored water.
"Jeno, prepare to push the velocity," Ace said from the bow, his dark red windbreaker snapping in the faint draft of their movement as his eyes scanned the empty horizon.
"Understood, Captain!"
Jeno stood before the primary navigation terminal. He remained in his standard human profile, his mechanical fusion states dormant. Recently, his processing power had been entirely dedicated to analyzing the fragmented artificial intelligence nodes recovered from the lunar ruins, attempting to map an automated weapons array directly into his central nervous system.
"Ventral boost matrix... full output!"
Boom!
The moment Jeno threw the primary red lever forward, the stern of the Eclipse erupted with a brilliant, blinding torrent of high-temperature exhaust. The massive black warship surged forward like an intercontinental ballistic missile, the sudden, crushing weight of the acceleration forcing the breath from the lungs as it streaked across the glass plains of the Calm Belt, driving a straight course toward the sector where the landmasses had vanished.
"Waaaaah—too fast!"
Chopper clung desperately to the thick timber of the main mast, the skin of his face shifting under the sudden wall of air, though his round eyes remained glued to the sea below. "Are those... the Sea Kings of the Calm Belt? They're larger than the mountains!"
Deep within the luminous blue water, silhouettes of colossal Sea Kings—masses of flesh resembling continuous, sunken mountain ranges—stirred uncomfortably, startled by the deep rumble of the passing warship.
"I've never processed the meat of an apex Sea King before," Ace remarked, walking over to trace a hand over Chopper's top hat. "When the schedule clears, we'll harvest one for the kitchen."
Under the continuous propulsion of the core, the Eclipse entered the exact coordinates flagged by the intelligence grid. Yet, looking across the sky, there was only the vast expanse of blue and scattered banks of white mist; the missing landmasses were nowhere to be seen.
"If the target can alter its altitude, Shiki won't be lingering in a static quadrant," Ace noted, turning back toward the lightning sovereign. "Enel. Scan the field."
"Yahahaha! The rhythm of the atmosphere belongs to me!"
Enel let out a sharp sneer, blue sparks dancing along his dark shoulders. Flaring his Observation Haki, he channeled his perception through the high-frequency electromagnetic waves generated by his own current, expanding his scanning radius geometrically into the upper stratosphere. In terms of pure lateral breadth, even Ace's Voice of All Things couldn't match the broadcast network of the lightning fruit.
The crew waited in silence as the ship drifted. Within minutes, a wild, sharp line touched Enel's lips.
"Located. Northeast quadrant, roughly two hundred nautical miles out, hanging at ten thousand meters above the cloud deck. There's a massive cluster of displaced floating mass... and the air up there is thick with the bloodlust of mutant beasts."
"Little Eclipse, lock the matrix," Ace ordered flatly. "Maximum ascent. Take us straight through the canopy."
Northeast Quadrant, Ten Thousand Meters Up.
Above the dense, rolling fields of cumulonimbus clouds, dozens of islands of varying dimensions floated in a silent, impossible orbit. Towering ancient trees choked the valleys, and several peaks still bore the ruined foundations of stone towns torn cleanly from the East Blue.
This was the stronghold Golden Lion Shiki had maintained for twenty winters: the Floating Island Merveille.
Outside the grand stone palace on the primary central landmass, a frantic figure moved. Dr. Indigo, a clownish scientist in oversized spectacles, scrambled across the courtyard, his boots making a high-pitched squeaking sound against the stone.
"Admiral! A breach! A breach in the perimeter!" Indigo waddled in a panic toward the center of the terrace. "An unidentified flying vessel has punched through the cloud deck! Its velocity is off the charts, and it's heading directly for our coordinate!"
"A flying vessel? Have those fools at Marineford finally built something with real timber?"
Golden Lion Shiki exhaled a heavy cloud of gray cigar smoke, rising slowly from his massive iron throne. Due to the jagged ship's rudder lodged deep within his skull, a flicker of erratic, bloodshot violence danced constantly in his eyes. His long golden mane trailed down to his ankles, and his missing legs had been replaced by a pair of pristine, double-edged Excellent Grade Swords—Oto and Kogarashi.
But as the colossal black hull of the Eclipse sheared through the sea of clouds and settled before his palace, Shiki froze. Then, his head snapped back, a boisterous, unruly roar of laughter tearing from his throat.
"Jiehahahaha! I wondered what kind of ghost had found its way into my sky! If it isn't the noisy little brat from the newspapers!"
Shiki stepped off the stone edge, utilizing his fruit to tread upon the empty air as he drifted toward the warship. Having read the recent propaganda sheets, he believed the consensus: that the 1.5 billion berry rookie had been thoroughly broken by Kizaru's light-speed assault at Sabaody. To the old titan, the boy before him was merely a lucky child who had run into a wall.
"Portgas D. Ace, isn't it?" Shiki hovered a hundred meters from the bow, looking down with the haughty disdain of an elder. "What's the matter, boy? Did a high bounty give you the illusion that you could challenge the sky? Listen well... whether in the old age or this stagnant world, these high winds are my domain alone!"
Facing the legendary remnant of the past era, Ace remained still at the prow. He didn't bother to release a drop of his Haki; his dark eyes held nothing but an undisguised, freezing contempt.
"Your domain?" Ace's voice was quiet, yet each word cut through the wind like a razor. "The great Flying Pirate who once vied with Roger for the world... after breaking out of Impel Down, this is what you became? A cowering cat hiding in the weakest sea, spending twenty years breeding mutated dogs because you no longer have the spine to face the New World?"
Shiki's features contorted into a mask of pure, bloodshot fury. His entire twenty-year plot—his grand vengeance against the East Blue—had just been dismissed as a petty laboratory game by a child who had been at sea for less than a year.
"Arrogant, brainless whelp! I'll carve your flesh from your bones and drop your iron toy into the sea to rust! Lion's Threat: Imperial Earth Bind!"
The old pirate threw his arms upward.
Rumble!
Under the absolute authority of the Float-Float Fruit, the soil, ancient rock, and packed snow of three neighboring islands ruptured. Millions of tons of earth converged in the empty air, shaping themselves into several colossal lions, hundreds of meters tall, their rocky jaws gaping as they descended with the weight of an collapsing mountain range.
"That's all he has left?" Enel snorted, his fingers flexing as static began to gather along his staff.
Clang—!
A peerless, diamond-sharp sword chime severed the wind before the lightning could strike. A crimson flash streaked from the deck, passing directly over Ace's position.
White Night left its scaphoid scabbard in a single, fluid arc. In Leona's amber, feline vertical pupils, the descending mountains of stone were nothing more than targets on a line.
"One Sword Style: Void Sever!"
Swish!
A colossal crescent of pure, blinding sword-qi cut into the heavens. The moment the white edge met the earth constructs, the mountain-sized lions were cleaved cleanly in two like soft curd. They broke apart with a deafening crash, dissolving into a harmless shower of loose gravel that cascaded through the clouds below.
Stepping through the empty air with Moonwalk, Leona stabilized her position in the sky, the tip of her blade pointed straight at Shiki's throat. Her lips thinned, a fanatical, hungry line showing her teeth as she licked the edge of her mouth.
"Old man... if your greatest trick is playing with mud, you should have stayed in your grave," the swordswoman whispered, her pupils locked on her target. "Your life, and the engine in your chest... I'm harvesting them today."
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