On the battlefield where the Rocks Pirates clashed with the navy's main force, a thunderous roar echoed across the shattered island.
Dust rolled away in waves, revealing Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp standing tall. His navy cloak and tattered suit lay discarded on the ground. Only a bloodstained white shirt clung to him, torn in several places, exposing the bronzed muscles of a body carved by decades of battle.
"Vomit—"
Garp spat out a mouthful of blood, wiping it away with the back of his hand. His eyes burned fiercely.
Opposite him, the drug-fueled warrior monk Scorpion Dragon bared his teeth, his body thrumming with the unnatural vitality of the mythical beast Double-Winged Unicorn Holy Horse. Fueled by the ES drug, his power surged past Garp's own, if only slightly.
But Garp saw through it. He noticed the pale eyebrows, the twitching muscles, the unstable aura. This strength wouldn't last forever.
Even so, the beast's recovery rate was terrifying. The holy horse's regenerative ability allowed Scorpion Dragon to maintain this unnatural state far longer than any human should.
"I'M THE STRONGEST!!"
With eyes red as blood, Scorpion Dragon hurled himself at Garp again, fists swinging wildly. Every strike was suicidal, exchanging injury for injury, relying on his recovery to endure what Garp could not.
The ground shook with each impact. Two titans, refusing to yield, trading blow for blow until one of them fell for good.
Nearby, the great swordsman Wang Zhi, having swallowed an ES dose, pressed Black Arm Zephyr back with vicious swings of his Supreme Blade. The Monkey King Wizz, swollen with five doses of poison, raged like a monster, teaming with Silver Axe to suppress Sengoku in his Buddha form.
One after another, Rocks' cadres had taken the drug. Their bodies screamed, but their power surged.
Rocks himself watched grimly, realization hardening in his heart. The battle had reached its second half. There would be no reinforcements. The New World's other pirates had abandoned him, and Brook's Hell Pirates had deliberately stayed away.
If he wanted his crew to survive, he needed to think of retreat.
These drug-fueled cadres would soon collapse into weakness. He couldn't afford to drag this fight out.
Facing the combined might of Kong and two Knights of God, Rocks was unable to crush them. He had already burned through his clan's secret techniques. Now, there was only one path left.
He reached into his cloak, pulled free a small black pill, and swallowed it whole.
"Sooner or later, Navy… I will drive you out of the New World!"
His voice boomed like thunder. Rage twisted his face. The World Government's depth of power was staggering—Knights of God, CP elites, reinforcements from across the seas. Again and again, they brought overwhelming force.
His cadres were strong, but not strong enough. Not like Brook's commanders—monsters who could rival overlords. If his crew were built like that, they wouldn't need drugs. They could crush the navy outright.
But now? Now he had no choice.
A violent, terrifying aura exploded from his body. Veins bulged along his arms as they doubled in size, and his blade, the legendary Jibek, quivered as if struggling to contain the power coursing through its master.
"Power… endless power!!"
Dark matter erupted, flooding the battlefield. The island trembled. Vice admirals and captains collapsed instantly, their minds drowned by the sheer force of Rocks' Conqueror's Haki.
"Hahaha!! This pill surpasses even the secret arts of my clan!"
Rocks' laughter rang across the ruins. Darkness surged, swallowing buildings and corpses whole.
He lunged forward like a demon unleashed, his blade flashing black, and set his sights on one target—the Knight of God Raphael.
Kong and Mintaro roared, rushing to intercept, but Rocks ignored them. Every strike, every ounce of his madness, was aimed solely at the user of the Imprisonment Fruit.
If he could slay Raphael, rip his power from him, he could drag his crew back to safety. Even at the cost of his own body, he would tear down the enemy's linchpin.
"Retreat if you want, Rocks!" Kong bellowed, his arms clad in Haki as he tanked the brunt of Rocks' swings. "But you won't take one of ours!"
Darkness met light in a storm of shattered stone and thunderous impact.
Elsewhere, on the Hell Pirates' side of the battlefield…
The storms raged. Quetzalcoatl soared high, its massive wings stirring hurricanes under Gabriel's control. Lightning speared downward, battering Brook's fleet.
Yet Brook's grin never faltered.
"Yohohoho! Fleet Admiral Kukulkan… you think you can pen us in forever?" His skeletal face gleamed with eerie confidence. "Let's see how long human effort can resist the inevitable!"
As if on cue, strange, metallic silhouettes appeared on the horizon. Dozens of oddly shaped ships cut through the waves, sleek and bristling with weapons.
Vegapunk had arrived.
At Brook's command, he had deployed PX-weather ships—replicas of Visalia's legendary weather vessels, upgraded and weaponized with science only Vegapunk could produce.
The decks of the flying fleet erupted in cheers. With these reinforcements, the storm was no longer one-sided.
Vegapunk himself stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with pride. "Hiruba!" he barked, thrusting a massive rifle into the sniper's hands. "This is my latest invention—a seastone cluster cannon. And these—" he handed over a crate of gleaming shells, "are seastone cluster bombs. Designed specifically for your marksmanship."
The cannon gleamed under the stormlight, humming with restrained power.
"Brother Brook requested these for you alone," Vegapunk said. "If Quetzalcoatl is to fall, it will be by your bullet."
Hiruba's hands trembled slightly as he cradled the weapon, then steadied. He looked skyward at the massive serpent-dragon, wings blotting out the sun.
One shot. That was all it would take. One perfect shot to bring a god down from the heavens.
Brook's laugh rose again, carried on the storm.
"Let the hunt begin."
-----------
Hiruba's hands trembled with excitement as he gripped the weapon Vegapunk had entrusted to him. His heart pounded. If he could bring down the Navy Fleet Admiral with this shot, his name would spread across every sea.
"Dr. Vegapunk, Brother Brook—leave it to me! I'll find my moment and shoot that Quetzalcoatl out of the sky. One clean hit, and Kukulkan will be nothing more than an old man again!"
He adjusted the massive sniper cannon, the unfamiliar weight quickly becoming part of him. With the aid of his Glare Fruit, his gaze sharpened like a hawk's, locking onto the distant serpent-dragon writhing amidst storm clouds. The beast's colossal wings stirred the heavens, whipping gales and torrents into the battlefield below.
Brook's laugh rattled across the decks, eerie and calm. "Yohohoho~! Everyone, prepare for the counterattack. Pour your will into your Haki. Let your Conqueror's spirit tear into the skies!"
He knew Observation Haki that foresaw the future was a deadly threat. If Kukulkan—or one of his allies—had such mastery, Hiruba's shot might be predicted and avoided. But numbers had power. The Hell Pirates boasted seven Conqueror's Haki users. Even if one conqueror's aura could not disrupt foresight, seven unleashed together would twist the battlefield itself, shaking the calm needed to peer into tomorrow.
On Brook's signal, waves of will surged upward, crashing like thunder against the storm. Even sea kings deep beneath the waves shuddered and surfaced, unable to bear the pressure.
Meanwhile, the PX-weather ships—Vegapunk's latest creations—turned their cannons skyward. Lightning crackled from their hulls as they wrestled with Gabriel's storms, their engineered thunder clashing with the Knight of God's fruit-born squalls. Brook didn't pretend to understand the science, but he didn't need to. The weather ships of Visalia had long been able to command lightning and rain. Vegapunk had turned that power into weapons of war.
"Bring out the Wind Shells and Wind Knots!" Brook barked. "Store the storm's fury—then give it back to me when I call for it!"
Sky Island's shells and Visalia's knots absorbed the rushing gales, preparing to hurl them back as bursts of speed for the fleet. Against a creature like Quetzalcoatl, every edge mattered.
High above, Gabriel wiped sweat from his brow. "Fleet Admiral Kukulkan… those new ships are draining me faster than expected. My Weather Fruit's consumption has multiplied!"
Kukulkan's serpentine body twisted in the sky. "Then we destroy those ships. No matter what it takes, we hold the Hell Pirates here until Kong secures victory against Rocks."
Neither of them knew the reality—that Rocks and his commanders had already dosed themselves with ES, fighting like cornered beasts against the navy.
"But if we close the distance," warned CP0 Commander Eagle, "Brook will attack directly. He knows our strategy now. He won't allow Quetzalcoatl to retreat again. If we overextend, they'll pounce."
Before Kukulkan could respond, a golden ship separated from the fleet, struggling slowly against the storm, its engines straining.
Kukulkan's laughter rumbled like thunder. "Hah! So this is their desperate gambit? Sending out a lone golden ship? I'll crush it—then their fleet will crumble!"
Quetzalcoatl flapped its wings with hurricane force, circling wide. In a sweeping arc, it bypassed Brook's flagship and the core of the Hell Pirates' forces, barreling instead toward the exposed vessels at the fleet's rear.
"Fleet Admiral! Wait!" Gabriel's shout was lost in the wind.
Brook's eyes narrowed. "So, you're aiming for my fleet after all. Tch… predictable."
The serpent dove, victory glinting in Kukulkan's mind. The Knights of God and CP0 agents readied their storm-kicks, blades of wind swirling around them, prepared to annihilate the clustered ships.
Seven rays of will exploded from the fleet, bathing the storm in the brilliance of conquerors. The sea boiled, beasts fled, and the sky itself seemed to scream.
Kukulkan only laughed. "You think this frightens me? Your Haki won't break me. Justice will prevail—I'll tear your fleet from the sky!"
Brook stood at the bow of the golden ship, his voice sharp as a curse. "Kukulkan! Face me if you dare! Or will you hide behind storms forever? You cowardly snake! Navy justice my ass—this is just bullying!"
"Justice is crushing evil like you!" Kukulkan bellowed, jaws yawning wide. His fangs gleamed, ready to snap the ships in two.
But then—
A chill shiver of danger clawed through his instincts. Not foresight. Not Observation. Something deeper. The primal warning of a mythical beast.
Trap…!
The thought came too late.
"NOW!" Hiruba's roar echoed, his eye unblinking as he pulled the trigger.
The seastone cluster shell erupted just meters from Quetzalcoatl's head. The mother round shattered midair, releasing a storm of seastone fragments—hundreds of bullets glowing faintly blue as they tore through the storm with impossible precision.
Even the Light Fruit could not have evaded it. Even lightning itself would have been pierced.
The cluster swallowed the serpent whole.
"GYAAAAAAAHHHHH!!"
The roar ripped across the heavens as seastone bit deep into scale and flesh. Quetzalcoatl's massive form convulsed, wings faltering. In a blinding flash of light, the serpent's body collapsed, scales melting away into human form.
Fleet Admiral Kukulkan plummeted.
Gabriel and the CP0 agents screamed as the beast they had clung to vanished beneath them. With nothing left to stand on, they too were hurled from the skies, tumbling into the raging sea below.
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