The detonation shook the world.
From three thousand meters up, the meteor slammed down with repulsion layered over raw gravity, a force no weaker than anything hurled from the heavens. It crushed straight into the Red Line.
Mary Geoise was gone. Nothing left but ruin. The once-gleaming Holy Land had been pounded to dust.
Aside from the Celestial Dragons, everyone there perished.
Even the Five Elders were no exception.
Against a power this overwhelming, nothing mortal could stand.
Unless you were a god.
Perhaps a Logia user, dissolving into light or fluid, might have a sliver of a chance. Perhaps.
The meteor's descent pushed at the limits of speed, flirting with light.
Even then, escape would not be easy.
A roar rolled out across the seas. Shockwaves tore from the Red Line, heaving the ocean up by thousands of meters. The blazing stone churned the waters into walls of foam and spray.
Thunder rolled on and on.
Where Mary Geoise had stood, only Rakuya's summoned star remained.
The Red Line collapsed inward. The meteor sat half-buried in the continent's cracked ribs.
From afar, the red cloud sigil flared like a wound in the earth.
Then the world's screens flickered, blurred, and went black.
Marineford.
The broadcast cut. Steel Bone Kong's face went hard as iron. His fists clenched until the knuckles blanched. A tremor ran through him he could not master.
Fear. Of a rock.
In all his years he had never seen a meteor like that, never imagined destruction so obscene.
With the image gone, the war room stood frozen, officers staring at nothing, still trapped inside the memory of that impossible moment.
Half a minute of silence. Then someone whispered.
"What do we do?"
Steel Bone Kong looked as though someone had pulled the core from him. "What do we do?"
He was not alone in the question.
The World Government lay in rubble. Mary Geoise had been erased. In their minds the Celestial Dragons were certainly dead, the Five Elders likely as well.
The Marines, sworn to that government, sank into a fog of doubt.
Uphold justice against evil, as always, or yield beneath it?
A moment ago they had been an army without rival.
Above them, the Five Elders held absolute power.
Beneath them, the marshal Steel Bone Kong commanded the three forces.
Under his banner stood Garp, Zephyr, Sengoku, Borsalino, Sakazuki and a cadre of monsters.
A dozen vice admirals besides.
Against any single power in the world, that should have been enough.
Now?
The Five Elders were missing or dead. Supreme authority and the strongest shields had been shattered by a single catastrophe.
And in Rakuya's hands still struggled Sengoku, Zephyr, Borsalino, and Sakazuki.
It was enough to gut the Marines.
From unassailable to surrounded in a breath.
In the New World, Whitebeard, Roger, and Shiki watched for weakness. And above even that storm loomed a force that made even a marshal feel small.
Flowing Cloud.
The name carved itself into every mind, a brand that would not fade.
Wolves before, tigers behind.
Headquarters stood at the brink.
If the Five Elders were truly dead, Marine Headquarters would not stand long.
And then the seas would belong to pirates.
"What do we do?" Steel Bone Kong asked again. No one answered.
Not unwilling. Unable.
At last he straightened, forcing iron back into his voice. "All Marines to Mary Geoise. Find the Five Elders. Alive if possible. If not, bring back proof. Reward, five billion Beli."
"Marshal, do you think they're alive?" Garp's eyes were dark. The scale of that blast beggared belief. If the Five Elders had lived through it, then their power was something close to divine.
If they lived, there was hope.
If they died, there was none.
"Alive or dead, we bring them back. All hands to the Holy Land. Find them." Steel Bone Kong's face was stone as he gave the order.
Even here, he groped for a sliver of daylight. A marshal's burden.
"Yes, sir."
The chorus snapped together. The room's dead flame sparked again.
Then the ground lurched. A pressure wave scythed across Marineford, howling winds and clawing grit ripping up the parade grounds. Glass burst in showers. Many Marines bled from eyes and ears.
Vice admirals and admirals braced, eardrums screaming, bodies ringing, holding the line with brute force.
That was only the aftershock. What then of the Holy Land itself?
When the tremors passed, Steel Bone Kong stared toward Mary Geoise, grim to the core.
Across the world, pandemonium.
The falling star had crushed the Holy Land. Many took it as fact that the Five Elders had died under that calamity.
"Gone. It's really gone."
"Flowing Cloud destroyed Mary Geoise alone?" It was so far beyond reason that people wondered if they were dreaming.
"With power like that, the Five Elders can't have survived."
"Hahaha. If they're dead, the seas are ours."
"Down with the Marines. Pirates rule. From today, the Great Pirate Era."
"I'm joining the Flowing Cloud Pirates. We take the world."
"I'm already crew. Back off."
On the Sabaody Archipelago the roar rose like a stadium crowd, a wild tangle of shock and awe and boiling blood.
The Holy Land has fallen. The Government is no more.
What can a lone Headquarters do to stop me now?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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