The days following their escape from Lieutenant Isuka were a welcome respite. To celebrate their new bounties and a successful getaway, the Spade Pirates had anchored their ship, the Piece of Spadille, in the calm cove of a lush, uninhabited island. A roaring bonfire crackled on the beach, sending sparks into the twilight sky as the crew partied. Music played, Mihar and Wallace engaged in a ridiculous dance-off, and Ace, a massive roasted meat in hand, laughed louder than anyone. For a fleeting moment, they were just a group of friends enjoying a feast, the dangers of the Grand Line a distant thought.
The celebration was cut short by the ominous shadow that fell over the beach. Anchored just beyond their own vessel was a monstrous ship of dark wood and iron, flying the flag of a Warlord—a stylized lizard skull. Before the crew could scramble for their weapons, two figures landed on the sandy shore with a heavy thud, their arrival sending a spray of sand and shells that hissed as they struck the bonfire.
The first was impossibly tall and muscular, his face obscured by a dark, pointed hat, and he carried a massive kusarigama over his shoulder. The second man, whom the crew recognized with disgust as a slaver from Gunnas Island, immediately pointed a trembling finger at Ace.
"That's him, Lord Hanafuda!" the trafficker cried, his voice shrill with a mix of fear and greed. "He's 'Fire Fist' Ace! He murdered Boss Gorman in cold blood and boasted about taking the Ancient Zoan fruit you were searching for!"
Hanafuda, the Warlord known as the "King of Lizards," planted his feet in the sand. His interest was in collecting powerful Devil Fruits, and this upstart rookie had apparently killed one of his business associates to steal a prize. "I have no tolerance for thieves," Hanafuda growled, his voice a low rumble of stone on stone. "Especially those who tried to take my prize."
Ace tossed the giant bird leg aside, his carefree grin vanishing as his expression hardened into flint. "I don't know anything about some fruit," he shot back, smoke beginning to wisp from his shoulders as his anger simmered. "But the only thing that man was dealing in was human lives. If you stand with a slaver, then you stand against me!"
"Insolent brat!" Hanafuda roared, and in a flash of movement that defied his size, the battle exploded on the beach.
The Warlord's kusarigama became a steel whirlwind. The heavy, spiked weight at the end of the chain blurred through the air, whistling like a banshee as it carved a deep trench in the sand where Ace had stood a split second before. Ace, already transformed into his Logia form, danced backward on jets of flame, the sand beneath him turning to glass from the heat.
"You're fast, rookie," Hanafuda grunted, reeling the chain back in with practiced ease. "But you can't outrun your sins!"
"I told you," Ace said, his hands igniting, "I don't know what you're talking about!" He thrust his fist forward.
"Fire Fist!"
A colossal projectile of roaring flame erupted from his knuckles, illuminating the entire cove and boiling the very air as it shot toward the Warlord. Hanafuda simply smirked, spinning the shaft of his kusarigama to meet the attack head-on. With a deafening CLANG, the fire fist impacted the weapon, splashing harmlessly around Hanafuda in a shower of embers. He hadn't even budged.
"A flashy trick. Is that all you got rookie?" Hanafuda sneered. He let the kusarigama fall to the sand. "If so then i'll show you true power!"
A guttural cry tore from his throat as his body began to twist and swell. His bones cracked and reset with sickening crunches, his muscles bulged, and his skin hardened into thick, pebbled scales of gray and brown. A massive, bony dome, nearly a meter thick, formed over his head, and his legs thickened into powerful hindlimbs built for devastation. In moments, the man was gone, replaced by a monstrous bipedal dinosaur from a forgotten age: a Pachycephalosaurus.
"An Ancient Zoan!" Skull yelled, frantically pulling other crew members back from the escalating conflict. "That's one of the toughest types! Get clear! This whole beach is the battlefield now!"
Hanafuda, now a towering beast, let out a bellow that shook the very island. He lowered his head and charged, his movements a symphony of destruction. He wasn't just running; he was obliterating everything in his path. A line of palm trees that stood between him and Ace were pulverized into splinters on impact.
Ace retaliated instantly. "Fire Gun!" He pointed his index and middle fingers like a pistol, unleashing a rapid-fire barrage of flame bullets. The fiery projectiles hammered against the Warlord's hide, but they ricocheted off the ancient scales with dull pings, doing no more damage than thrown rocks.
His hide... it's like armor! My fire isn't burning him! Ace thought, his eyes widening in shock.
"RAAAAGH!" Hanafuda roared, closing the distance. He swung his newly armored head in a vicious arc.
"Dome Rock!"
Ace propelled himself sideways with a burst of fire, narrowly avoiding the attack. The domed skull smashed into a massive rock formation behind him, and the granite shattered into a thousand pieces, sending shrapnel flying across the beach. The sheer force of the shockwave threw Ace through the air.
He twisted, landing on his feet, but Hanafuda was already in motion again. The Warlord's thick, powerful tail whipped around.
"Ancient Dragon's Great Scythe!"
The tail moved faster than a striking snake, kicking up a tidal wave of sand and debris. Ace threw up a wall of flame to defend himself, but the tail crashed through it like paper, the force of the blow catching him and sending him tumbling across the shore, crashing into the remnants of their bonfire and scattering the feast.
While the titans fought, devastating the peaceful landscape, Jerry focused his Observation Haki on the subordinate cowering near the tree line. The man's intent was a putrid mix of terror and deceit. "He's lying to you, Hanafuda!" Jerry shouted over the din of battle. "The man on Gunnas was a slaver! Your man there was his partner!"
In his enraged Zoan state, the Warlord barely registered the words, his mind consumed by primal fury. "SILENCE!" he bellowed, smashing his head into the ground and sending a tremor through the beach. "I will deal with the killer first, then his noisy crew!"
He redoubled his assault on Ace, who was now clearly on the defensive. He was being overpowered, blow by bone-crushing blow. Each charge was faster, each strike heavier. Ace was dodging and weaving, but he couldn't find an opening. His flames weren't penetrating that ancient, hardened hide.
Damn it! Ace thought, gritting his teeth as another attack sent him skidding across the beach, the sand scraping against his back.
Is this the power of a Warlord of the Sea? It's on a completely different level! It's not enough. I'm still not enough!
The specter of his father, the Pirate King, loomed in his mind—a shadow he was desperately trying to outrun. To prove he could stand on his own, he had to win this. He had to.
Fueled by a burning desperation, Ace's fire began to change. The wild, roaring orange flames that wreathed his body started to compress, pulling inward with a low, humming sound. The chaotic roar of combustion fell silent, replaced by an intense, focused pressure. The flames around him were drawn into the single point of his outstretched finger, and the color shifted from raging orange to a blinding, silent, white-hot light. The heat became so concentrated that the air itself seemed to warp and shimmer around his hand.
"You want to see real power?" Ace roared, his voice raw with effort as he poured every ounce of his will, his ambition, and his rage into the attack. "Then I'll show you the sun itself!"
Hanafuda saw his opening. The boy was standing still, gathering energy. The perfect target. He let out a final, triumphant roar and charged for the finishing blow, lowering his massive domed head like a living, unstoppable battering ram. "I WILL CRUSH YOU!"
"Flame Commandment: Sun Spear!"
Ace unleashed the technique. It wasn't a wide blast of fire or an explosion. It was a focused, piercing beam of pure solar energy, a lance of white flame that shot forward with the speed of light.
The spear of fire met Hanafuda's charging skull.
For a breathtaking moment, there was no sound, only a blinding, overwhelming light that bleached all color from the world. A deafening HISSSSSSSS filled the air as fire of unimaginable temperature warred against nigh-unbreakable ancient bone. A pressure wave exploded outward, flattening the remaining trees and sending the Spade Pirates skidding back.
Then, with a sound like a mountain shattering, a web of brilliant white cracks spiderwebbed across the Warlord's "unbreakable" dome. The cracks spread in an instant, and the Sun Spear punched clean through, striking the Warlord with its full, concentrated might.
Hanafuda let out a strangled, gurgling roar of pure pain and disbelief. His charge was stopped dead. The momentum threw him backward, his massive body tumbling end over end, carving a deep furrow in the sand before coming to a stop in a heap. The transformation receded in a cloud of steam, leaving him in his human form, beaten, burned, and unconscious.
Silence fell upon the ravaged beach. The subordinate stared, paralyzed with fear, at his defeated master.
Jerry walked calmly toward him, his knuckles cracking. "Now," he said, his voice laced with ice. "Why don't you tell us the real story?"
The man broke instantly, confessing everything—the slavery, the lies about the Devil Fruit, the cowardly attempt to use his captain's wrath as a shield for his own despicable crimes.
When Hanafuda finally stirred, his rage had been replaced by a deep, burning shame. He struggled to his feet, clutching his cracked and bleeding head. He looked at Ace, who was breathing heavily, his arm still smoking, but standing tall and victorious. "You fight with honor," the Warlord admitted, his voice hoarse. "I was a fool to believe that coward."
He seized his treacherous subordinate by the collar, dragging him effortlessly. "This is not over for you," he promised, hauling the whimpering man back toward the water's edge and his waiting ship. Before he left, he gave Ace one last look, a complex mix of anger and newfound respect. "You have earned this victory, Fire Fist."
As the Warlord's ship departed into the darkness, the Spade Pirates erupted in a deafening cheer, swarming their captain on the now-wrecked beach. Ace, exhausted but triumphant, flashed a wide, tired grin. He had faced a Warlord of the Sea and won.
{GT: There is missing content, in future chapter it reference Ace defeating a Warlord, but never show in any chapter, so I decided to make it myself, the only reference I got to Ace vs Warlords of the sea was with Hanafuda, who was Ulti and Page One father, and since it never said what was his Devil Fruit, based on context I gave him Ulti Devil Fruit, because I read that after this, he got remove from the Shichibukai, and he got attack and killed by another pirate as he was going home to see Ulti and Page One, making it possible for Ulti to have this fruit later in the future, at least on this timeline}