Sensory perception sharpened to a razor's edge.
Even without looking, Dragon knew every incoming strike was lethal. Aps was manifesting chains in a relentless storm, his intent to kill as clear as day. It was a power that defied the standard definitions of a Paramecia; Dragon had never seen a user convert external matter into another substance with such ease.
Unless he maintained absolute focus—reading the enemy's emotions and predicting exactly where the next link would manifest—he would be skewered in a heartbeat.
"Still not dead?" Aps snarled, his voice tight with irritation. "You're starting to annoy me!"
He blocked Junxi's spear with a Haki-hardened forearm while a tsunami of chains surged around him, circling back to strike at Dragon's blind spot. Dragon twisted his body, narrowly avoiding a lethal puncture, but as he moved to retreat, Aps was already on him.
Fists collided once, twice. Then, a chain snaked around Dragon's ankle, pinning him to the deck. Aps lunged forward, his fingers rigid in a piercing palm strike aimed directly at Dragon's heart.
"Gugh—!"
Dragon braced for the impact, cold sweat beading on his brow—until a blade flashed from the side, stopping Aps's arm dead in its tracks.
"I can't let you kill her friends," a calm voice said.
"Silvers Rayleigh..." Aps hissed. "Why are you interfering?!"
"Because today, we're on Kanata's side," the blonde man replied with a breezy smile.
Rayleigh stepped between them, his sword leveled at the Grand Commander. Their Haki-clad weapons clashed, sending ripples of black lightning through the air. Dragon was caught in the middle, still unable to move with his foot bound by the chains.
Even for the Dark King, Aps was no easy opponent. He was one of the Golden Lion's elite, and his Haki-infused chains were nearly indestructible.
"Sorry about this," Rayleigh noted, "but I'm going to have to be a little rough."
CRASH!!
Rayleigh didn't strike Aps. He cut the ship.
The chains were anchoring themselves into the wood of the subordinate vessel they were standing on. Since he couldn't easily snap the Haki-chains themselves, Rayleigh simply destroyed the foundation they were built upon. The ship was a Golden Lion vessel anyway; he had no reason to show mercy to the hull.
The deck buckled and split, the tension on the chains snapping as the wood gave way. Dragon wrenched his foot free and put distance between himself and the commander.
"Thanks for the save," Dragon panted. "But why are you here?"
"A bit of history with Kanata," Rayleigh said, his eyes never leaving Aps. "A series of coincidences brought us to the same stretch of water. Lucky for you, I suppose."
Dragon felt a surge of exasperated relief. That girl has connections everywhere.
The ship was slowly beginning to founder, but the three of them maintained their balance, dodging Aps's continuing assault.
"We should fall back," Rayleigh advised. "Trading blows head-on with Shiki's armada is a losing game of attrition."
"If we leave him, he'll go for our flagship," Dragon countered.
"That's where your skills come in. You have to be the shield."
The battle was growing too intense for the surrounding fleet to survive. In the distance, the three-way duel between Shiki, Roger, and Kanata was reaching a level of violence that threatened to swallow everything within miles.
"We can't be a burden to Roger," Rayleigh said. "Fall back for now."
"You think I'm just going to let you walk away?" Aps shouted.
A massive wave of chains erupted from the deck, seeking to ensnare all three of them. Rayleigh's sword became a silver blur as he parried the links, while Dragon and Junxi used the opening to leap off the sinking vessel and head back toward the Sombrero.
Their primary objective was to inflict maximum damage on the Golden Lion while minimizing their own losses. In that regard, they had already won. To stay longer was to invite needless sacrifice.
"We're heading back!" Dragon called out. "What about you?"
"I'll buy you the time you need," Rayleigh replied, his aura calm and immovable even against the raging commander. "Go help the survivors on that burning escort ship."
Rayleigh stood his ground as Aps drove his chains into the hull, attempting to corner the Dark King. It was a brutal, high-level stalemate. Rayleigh was Roger's right hand, a man of legendary strength—but Aps was no amateur.
It was a grueling task, but Rayleigh didn't complain. Supporting his captain's reckless whims was simply part of the job.
***
Zen found himself incredibly grateful for the arrival of Scopper Gaban. Every member of the Roger Pirates was a legend in their own right, and Gaban was proving why. He was trading heavy blows with Lelampago, his dual hand-axes sparking against the commander's lightning-clad halberds.
"The Roger Pirates... they really are something else," Zen noted, wiping blood from his chin.
Zen struck out, parrying Lelampago's right-hand halberd, while Gaban intercepted the left. In the split second the beast-man was pinned, a rain of Haki-infused arrows descended from the sky like a mortar strike, blowing Lelampago backward.
"Whoa! That's nasty!" Gaban laughed. "I appreciate the backup!"
"That would be our archer," Zen said, gesturing toward the Sombrero. "She's the best in the business. Let's use the opening to retreat."
Dragon and Junxi were already making their way back. Zen knew it was time to consolidate their defenses. Shiki had lost dozens of ships already; they could break contact now if they were smart.
Zen hoisted Gaban onto his back—the Mink's speed making him a perfect transport—and they sprinted through the air using Sky Walk. As a parting gift, Zen slashed through the masts of two nearby ships, further slowing the pursuit.
"Kanata's got a strange crew," Gaban remarked. "A lot of different faces on that deck."
"She doesn't care about race," Zen replied. "Giants, Minks, Longarms... if you can follow orders and hold a line, you're welcome. Of course, if you cause trouble, she'll 're-educate' you personally."
They reached the Sombrero, where Lelampago was currently being kept at bay by Gloriosa's relentless sniping.
"We're back! Status report!" Zen shouted as they hit the deck.
"Terrible!" George yelled over the roar of cannons. "The wounded are in the infirmary, but the enemy fire is getting even more concentrated!"
Despite having lost a significant portion of their fleet, the Golden Lion's remaining ships were closing in, their barrages becoming more coordinated. Even the Sombrero was struggling to repel every shell.
"They're coming again!"
"David! Be the wall!" Scotch ordered.
"On it!"
David leaped from the ship into the path of a dozen incoming cannonballs. He triggered a series of massive explosions in mid-air, using his own body as a detonator. Because he was a user of the Bomb-Bomb Fruit, the resulting blasts didn't harm him, but they neutralized the incoming fire in a wall of smoke and heat.
Gaban watched the "human shield" tactic with a look of impressed disbelief. Meanwhile, Dragon and Junxi landed on the deck.
"Where's Rayleigh?" Gaban asked.
"Buying time," Dragon replied. "He told us to get clear."
"Hah. Typical. I'm sure he'll be fine."
Now, the problem was Shiki.
"Roger and the Golden Lion are going at it head-on," George noted. "If we get too close, the collateral damage will sink us. But we have to pick them up."
"And Kanata is just as heated as Shiki is," Scotch added. "I don't know if she'll listen if we tell her to run."
Kanata was usually the voice of reason, but when her crew was threatened, she became a different person. She had faced an Admiral alone to let them escape once; facing Shiki was no different.
"Can those two even work together?" Gaban wondered aloud.
A heavy silence followed. Roger and Kanata were both individual monsters. They were used to being the strongest person on the field. The idea of them performing a coordinated pincer attack seemed... unlikely.
"This is going to be a disaster, isn't it?" Gaban sighed, a cold sweat breaking out.
***
"SINK, ROGER!!"
"WAHAHAHA! YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT!!"
Shiki and Roger's Haki-clad weapons collided with the force of a nuclear detonation. The ice platform beneath them shattered, and Roger was forced to leap between floating fragments of frozen sea to stay above the water.
Shiki used his powers to manipulate the ocean, sending gargantuan water-lions to pursue the Pirate King.
"Kanata! A little help here!"
"I'm not your personal maid, Roger!"
Despite the retort, Kanata flicked her wrist, flash-freezing the water-lions into statues mid-leap. Roger swung his sword, shattering the ice-beasts into dust, and used the new ice path she created to sprint back into the fray.
It had been like this for an hour. On the unstable surface of the sea, Roger's mobility was hindered, forcing him to rely on Kanata's environmental manipulation.
"Damn it! This is a pain!" Roger shouted. "Can't you just drag him down here?"
"If I could, I would have done it already!" Kanata snapped.
Shiki dove from the clouds, his twin blades whistling. Kanata met the strike, her spear locking against his steel. At this level, it wasn't about the weapons anymore—it was a contest of whose Armament Haki was denser.
Kanata's Haki had turned a deep, shimmering blue-purple, reinforced by her absolute focus. She didn't budge an inch against the Great Admiral's strength.
"Clever brat," Shiki sneered. "How long can you maintain that pressure?!"
"Longer than you can stay in the air!"
Kanata was a target for many legends. Shiki, Big Mom, the Navy—even potentially Whitebeard through the Rocks connection. She was surrounded by the strongest beings in the world, and she knew that if she didn't prune their ranks now, they would eventually drown her in numbers.
It was all Rocks's fault.
Though I suppose the Celestial Dragon thing was on me, she admitted silently.
"I'm taking your head today," Kanata said. "And Linlin is next."
"Hah! You've got spirit! But Whitebeard is twice as strong as I am—he'll crush you like a bug!"
Shiki disengaged, launching a flurry of slashes. Kanata parried them with a cold, bored expression. She had seen his style enough to memorize the rhythm.
"You're all the same," she whispered. "You all hate my mother, so you take it out on me."
"JIHAHAHA! Of course! If we hate the Echo, we silence the daughter!!"
"Then I'll just have to end the conversation."
Kanata combined her Haki with the absolute zero of her fruit. The air around her black spear turned so cold it created a shimmering field of diamond dust.
This was a move she had seen her mother, Octavia, perform—though Octavia's version had used lightning. Kanata's version used the void of winter.
"Divine Slaughter."
It was a strike that ignored defense. The moment it touched, it didn't just cut; it erased heat, life, and motion.
"WHAT—?!"
The diamond dust sparkled as the strike lunged for Shiki's throat. Shiki brought his blades up in a desperate cross-guard, his Haki flared to the limit. The weapons collided with a high-pitched scream of metal, but the cold bypassed his steel, flash-freezing his arms and torso instantly.
Frozen in place, Shiki was defenseless. Kanata lunged for his neck.
"ROGER!! NOW!!"
"I'm already there!!"
Shiki managed to burst the ice from the inside using a massive surge of Haki, bringing his swords up just in time to block Kanata's follow-up. But in doing so, he left himself wide open for Roger.
Roger swung his blade in a massive, horizontal arc.
"Tch—!"
Shiki realized he couldn't block. He twisted his body mid-air, coating his forehead in a dense layer of Haki. Standard Haki would have held against a normal pirate, but Roger was no normal pirate.
The blade punched through Shiki's defense, carving a deep, vertical gash across the Great Admiral's forehead.
"GUGAAAAAAH!! DAMN YOU!!"
Blood sprayed from the wound, half-freezing before it could even hit the ice below. Shiki retreated, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. For the second time in recent history, he had been humiliated by this girl and her "friends."
Kanata and Roger stood side-by-side on the ice, staring him down.
"We could finish him if we push now," Kanata noted.
"I don't think so," Roger said, pointing a thumb back at the ships. "Our crews are in trouble. A cornered Lion is still a Lion, and your ships won't survive his final rampage."
Kanata glanced back. One of her subordinate ships was already sinking, and the Sombrero was being swarmed. She was a captain before she was a warrior. She couldn't trade her crew's lives for Shiki's head.
"The retreat is yours," Kanata said. "I'll make the path."
"You got it!"
Kanata froze the sea into a solid highway leading away from the battle. Shiki roared and triggered a massive tsunami, intending to swallow his own fleet if it meant killing them.
"Roger, it's about to get cold. Hold your Haki."
"Huh? Oh, right!"
Kanata raised her hand. The tsunami flash-froze into a mountain of jagged ice. Then, she reached toward the sky. The clouds turned obsidian, and a heavy, red snow began to fall. Each flake was a crystalline blade that froze anything it touched—ship, man, or sea.
"Whoa... that's terrifying!" Roger laughed, reaching out to touch a flake before Kanata slapped his hand away.
"Don't. It doesn't distinguish between friends and enemies. You'll freeze solid."
"You're a scary one, Kanata!"
They sprinted toward their ships. Shiki's pursuit was sluggish; the unnatural cold was draining the energy from his armada, and his own wound was making it hard to focus.
"Where are we heading?" Roger asked.
"Fullalead," Kanata replied. "It's a ghost island. Easy to lose a fleet there."
"Works for me!"
They reached their respective flagships. Kanata boarded the Sombrero and found Rayleigh on the deck, currently being targeted by Aps's chains.
"Rayleigh! Time to go!"
"Kanata! What about Shiki?"
"He's preoccupied," she said, looking at Aps. "Are you still trying to play with my guest?"
Aps manifested a forest of chains to skewer her. Kanata didn't even draw her spear. She simply walked into the reach of the chains, her body turning to mist to let them pass through, and then slammed a Haki-infused palm into the commander's chest.
"Begone."
Aps was sent hurtling off the ship, crashing into a distant galleon. Rayleigh stared in shock. He knew Aps was a monster, yet Kanata had handled him like a common deckhand.
"She... might actually be stronger than me now," Rayleigh whispered with a melancholy smile.
Kanata didn't hear him. She was already at the helm.
"CHASE THEM!!" Shiki's voice echoed over the sea, but it was useless. Between the ice, the snow, and the chaotic currents of the Mobejumul Sea, his armada was paralyzed.
"This round is mine, Shiki," Kanata whispered.
***
The casualty report was staggering.
Kanata had lost one ship and several dozen men. Shiki had lost nearly half of his legendary armada. The news of the "Pirate Alliance" between the King of the Pirates and the Dragon-Slaying Witch sent shockwaves through Marineford.
The balance of the New World had shifted.
***
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