The female assistant who had been following Corbett from a safe distance saw the detonator in her boss's hands and immediately released a piercing, terrified scream.
Seeing this extreme reaction, Ace stopped his advance and blinked in confusion, unsure of what exactly he was looking at.
"What the hell is that thing?" he asked, his guard still up but his immediate attack postponed.
"Pafafafa, this little device is capable of sending everything on this entire island straight up to the sky," Corbett explained with manic glee, seizing the opportunity to roughly outline his bargaining position before attempting to negotiate his way out of the situation.
"How do you like that? This is the ultimate weapon that threatens not only every innocent civilian on this island, but also your own precious lives," he continued with obvious satisfaction.
"I think we can have a reasonable discussion now. As long as you allow me to leave peacefully, I promise never to return to this place or touch a single Berry of business here ever again."
"Wow! That sounds amazing! I want to get a closer look at it," came an unexpected voice.
Before Ace could fully process what the device was or formulate an appropriate response to Corbett's threat, Carrot suddenly appeared seemingly from nowhere. With her characteristic mink speed and agility, she had already snatched the remote control from Corbett's grasp and was now examining it with obvious curiosity, turning it over in her hands like an interesting toy.
The middle-aged female assistant was so terrified by this development that she immediately burst into panicked tears. When she saw Carrot casually handling the deadly device, she managed to catch her breath long enough to shout a desperate warning:
"Little girl, please don't press any buttons randomly! That's the control switch for explosives planted all over the island! If you accidentally activate it, everything will be destroyed in a massive explosion!"
Carrot nodded politely to acknowledge the woman's warning, then immediately returned her attention to helping clear out the remaining criminal minions, apparently treating the world-threatening device as just another interesting object she had encountered.
Ace, who had paused his attack upon seeing the detonator, now heard the assistant's terrified explanation clearly. He looked at Corbett, who had fallen into complete madness after losing his trump card, and his eyes hardened with renewed determination. Raging flames immediately ignited around both of his hands.
"It seems I can't afford to let you escape so easily after all!" he declared with righteous fury.
With a powerful roar that echoed through the entire performance hall, Ace launched himself forward with his signature technique that Jerry and the others hadn't seen him use in far too long.
"Fire Fist!" Ace shouted, his attack blazing toward his target with devastating intensity.
Corbett looked utterly deflated as he realized his situation had become hopeless. He had just revealed his ultimate trump card, but he had never actually intended to use it immediately—his plan had been to negotiate from a position of strength and try to create some opportunity for escape.
Instead, his threatening display had lasted barely a second before some random little girl had appeared out of nowhere and casually stolen his only leverage, forcing him to face Ace's full power in direct combat without any protection.
"This is a complete disaster! I'm not going to make any profit from this transaction!" Corbett complained bitterly as he desperately increased his speed to barely avoid Ace's blazing attack.
Touching the singed hair on his face where the flames had passed uncomfortably close, he glanced around at his subordinates, who were retreating step by step under the relentless assault from the Whitebeard Pirates crew. He could also see the liberated slaves being systematically rescued by Jerry and his friends. The harsh reality was undeniable—he had no bargaining chips remaining and absolutely no avenue for retreat.
Ace's initial Fire Fist attack missed its target as Corbett dodged, but he immediately took to the air to continue his relentless pursuit of the criminal.
After using his Armament Haki to defend against several more fiery assaults, Corbett managed to launch a counterattack that briefly forced Ace back, creating a momentary separation between the two.
Although Corbett had been recruited and manipulated by someone from an unknown criminal organization, the reason they had been able to approach him in the first place was that he genuinely possessed some degree of fighting ability—certainly more than an ordinary civilian, even if he was far outclassed by a Whitebeard Pirates division commander.
After taking one last longing look at Banshee, who was still helping coordinate the liberation of the imprisoned slaves, Corbett produced yet another remote control device from his jacket and gripped it tightly in his remaining functional hand.
"It looks like I'll have to try my backup plan," he muttered grimly.
Taking advantage of the brief separation that his counterattack had created, Corbett leaped backward toward the performance hall's main entrance and pressed one of the buttons on his second remote control.
He could be seen flying through the air as he passed through the stadium's main gate. Immediately afterward, thick metal security plates began slowly rising from hidden compartments, sealing all the doors and windows of the venue with heavy barriers.
"Trying to escape, are you?" Ace called out, chasing after his fleeing opponent.
Just as Ace was preparing to blast through the metal barriers with his fire powers, he didn't expect the venue's hidden systems to activate. Multiple high-pressure nozzles suddenly began spraying streams of water down from the ceiling throughout the performance area. Simultaneously, a large doorway opened in the left wall, and massive amounts of water came rushing out with tremendous force.
Ace was caught completely off guard by this development. His body immediately went limp as his Devil Fruit powers were neutralized, and he instantly realized that all of this was seawater—specifically designed to incapacitate Devil Fruit users like himself.
As if anticipating exactly this kind of emergency, Jerry took control of all the water flows the moment the flooding began. Using his advanced mastery of Fishman Karate and his Spirit of the Sea ability, he gathered every drop of seawater into a massive, continuously rotating sphere that hovered in the air at the center of the venue.
"There you go! I'll handle the water situation for you," Jerry called out to his friend.
With all the debilitating seawater safely removed from his vicinity, Ace immediately felt his strength return. He nodded his appreciation to Jerry, then blasted a hole straight through the metal barrier and rushed out in pursuit of Corbett.
The remaining criminal minions who were still conscious found themselves staring in terror at the enormous water sphere spinning ominously above their heads. They quickly discovered that as the massive orb rotated, countless small water droplets were continuously emerging from its surface and shooting toward them with deadly accuracy.
Screams of pain and fear rang out throughout the venue, and within a very short period of time, every single criminal present had collapsed unconscious or groaning on the floor.
The only people still standing in the performance hall were Jerry and his Whitebeard Pirates friends, along with all the civilian slaves who had been rescued under Jerry's protection and guidance.
"The fighting on our end is finished," Jerry announced to the Whitebeard Pirates members around him. "Please handle the cleanup operations."
He then carefully directed all the remaining seawater back through the doorway from which it had originally emerged. That particular area housed the circus's water performance equipment, including the huge storage tanks that had been used to flood the venue as part of Corbett's desperate escape plan.
"Wow! Sister Carina, what's all that stuff?" Carrot asked with innocent curiosity.
Having emerged from the battle completely unharmed, the young mink had approached Carina and noticed that the thief was now carrying an enormous backpack that seemed to have appeared from nowhere during the chaos.
"Oh, this? It's nothing important—everyone should just focus on getting back to work," Carina replied with obvious evasiveness, interrupting Carrot's question while smiling broadly at the people around her.
Meanwhile, after Corbett had fled from the performance venue and reached the central square of the town, he found himself temporarily blinded by brightness that seemed as intense as daylight.
Ace, completely surrounded by dancing flames that illuminated the entire area, was already standing directly in front of him with his eyes narrowed in deadly focus.
"All right, Lord Peacock," Ace said with cold determination. "You don't have any more tricks up your sleeve out here, do you?"
"Pafafafa! It looks like I'm really not going to make money from this!" Corbett replied with increasingly unhinged laughter.
Not giving Corbett any opportunity to attempt another desperate scheme, Ace's legs exploded with fiery propulsion as he launched forward with a blazing punch aimed directly at his opponent's center mass.
Although Corbett attempted to mount some kind of defense, he was still struck solidly by the attack and sent flying across the square to crash painfully on the cobblestones.
"Ugh! That really hurts!" Corbett groaned, struggling to get back to his feet.
His expensive suit was now charred and smoking, and his right arm was clearly broken and hanging at an unnatural angle. Despite his injuries, he noticed that Ace was already rushing toward him again and managed to launch a desperate kick in retaliation.
Rather than responding with another Fire Fist technique, Ace instead coated both his arms with Armament Haki and caught Corbett's attacking foot with his left hand. He used the momentum of the kick to pull his opponent forward while taking a half-step ahead, then raised his right arm and drove his elbow directly into Corbett's abdomen with devastating precision.
The elbow strike landed exactly on target, causing Corbett to double over and vomit large amounts of blood. Ace immediately followed up by grabbing the back of Corbett's head with one hand and slamming his face into the cobblestones. The impact immediately drew blood, and Corbett lost all ability to continue resisting.
"Making... money..." Corbett mumbled weakly, his obsession with profit persisting even as he lost consciousness and collapsed completely.
To be perfectly honest, Corbett's fighting ability was only marginally above average. He was capable of using violence to suppress ordinary pirates and weak Marine officers, but anything beyond that level was completely outside his capabilities.
If he had possessed genuinely formidable strength, he wouldn't have needed to rely on Whitebeard's protective flag to intimidate his enemies. At this point, it seemed obvious that he had been manipulated and used by other criminal forces as part of some larger scheme.
The mysterious organization had probably been planning to use Corbett to create chaos and conflict on this island, hoping to divide and weaken the Whitebeard Pirates' territorial control through manufactured incidents.
Ace didn't spend too much time analyzing these political implications. After all, when Corbett was brought back to the main pirate crew, there would be plenty of interrogation specialists available to extract more detailed information about his backers and their ultimate goals.
"They should have finished cleaning up by now," Ace said to himself, grabbing the unconscious Corbett by his suit collar and beginning to drag the criminal's body back toward the circus venue.
A few minutes later, he had returned to the performance hall where Jerry and his friends were standing near the entrance. Everyone inside the building was busy sorting through the rescued slaves and securing the captured criminals for transport.
Seeing Ace returning with his prisoner in tow, Jerry waved from his position with Kotatsu lying contentedly at his feet.
"Hey there, Fire Fist! Welcome back," Jerry called out with a friendly grin.