Watching the chaos below, Bullet threw his head back and roared with laughter.
The sound rolled across the sky like thunder.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, his massive body launched from Kaido's back.
He dropped hundreds of meters straight toward Marineford.
The air screamed around him as he fell, his enormous frame tearing through it like a meteor.
BOOOOOOM!!!
Bullet crashed into the center of Marineford's plaza with terrifying force.
The ground beneath him shattered instantly.
A crater dozens of meters wide spread outward from the point of impact, cracks racing across the stone in every direction like a gigantic spiderweb.
Chunks of debris blasted away like cannonballs.
A towering cloud of dust erupted into the air and swallowed much of the plaza.
The shock wave alone knocked nearby Marines off their feet, sending soldiers tumbling across the ground before they could even muster the courage to attack.
Bullet slowly straightened.
He rolled his neck.
Crack. Crack.
The sound of his joints carried through the settling dust.
Dense Armament Haki covered both of his arms, while the already monstrous muscles beneath his skin swelled even further.
Then the aura surrounding him changed.
The power of the Clank-Clank Fruit intertwined with the Magma-Magma Fruit inside his body, releasing an oppressive wave of heat and raw force in every direction.
The air warped around him.
Black scorch marks spread across the ground beneath his feet.
Nearby Marines instinctively backed away.
Bullet grinned.
"Marine brats!"
His booming voice rolled across the battlefield.
"You've had enough of Kaido's warm-up, haven't you?"
His smile became even more vicious.
"Now it's my turn to play with you."
He gave them no opportunity to reorganize.
Bullet stepped forward.
The ground trembled beneath his foot.
Then he raised both enormous hands, coating them in top-tier Armament Haki.
"Clank-Clank—"
His palms slammed down against Marineford.
"Fortress Devourer!"
VMMMMM—!
An invisible pulse exploded outward from beneath his hands.
The power of the Clank-Clank Fruit spread across the fortress like a shock wave.
And then—
Marineford itself began to move.
Every inorganic object touched by that power seemed to suddenly lose its attachment to the world around it.
Stone.
Metal.
Weapons.
Fortifications.
All of it was pulled toward Bullet.
The thick paving stones covering the plaza tore free from the ground one after another.
Huge slabs spun through the air, colliding and stacking as they surged toward him.
Walls began cracking apart.
Metal supports groaned.
Collapsed buildings were ripped into fragments and dragged into the growing mass.
The entire harbor descended into chaos.
Fragments of destroyed warships rose from the sea and came hurtling toward Marineford like a raging flood of steel and timber.
Broken planks.
Twisted armor plating.
Bent support beams.
Shattered artillery pieces.
All of it collided together with shrieking metallic screeches.
Across the battlefield, ruined defensive structures began coming apart as well.
Massive chunks of concrete were torn loose.
Cannons that had once guarded Marine Headquarters lifted from their mounts.
Even the swords and weapons dropped by injured Marines began sliding across the ground before suddenly flying toward Bullet.
Then the Marines realized what else his power had reached.
The Gate of Justice.
A structure that symbolized the authority and security of Marine Headquarters.
Built from enormous stone foundations and reinforced with special alloy, it had always stood like an unshakable mountain guarding the harbor.
Now—
it began to tremble.
A deep metallic groan rolled across Marineford.
CREEEEEAK—!
The sound made countless Marines turn pale.
The enormous gate twisted under the pull of Bullet's power.
Bolts tore loose.
Stone cracked.
Metal supports bent.
Then, before everyone's horrified eyes, the massive structure was ripped directly away from its foundation.
"What?!"
"The Gate of Justice!"
"It's being torn apart!"
Huge sections of stone and alloy broke free.
The once-majestic gate rapidly disintegrated into enormous fragments.
And those fragments did not simply fall.
They were dragged toward Bullet.
Stone and metal converged into the largest stream of material yet, joining the violent vortex already spinning around him.
The mass grew larger by the second.
Marineford's walls.
Its weapons.
Its ruined ships.
Its defenses.
Even its Gate of Justice.
Everything within reach was being consumed.
Merged.
Reassembled.
The fortress itself was becoming material for Bullet's power.
And the nightmare had only just begun.
...
Everything inorganic within Bullet's reach—steel, stone, concrete, wreckage—lost its original rigid form beneath the overwhelming power of the Clank-Clank Fruit.
The materials seemed to soften into something almost fluid and malleable as they surged toward his magma-covered body, crashing together with the debris he had already absorbed.
Metal twisted around stone.
Concrete fused into armor.
Magma flowed through the gaps like molten blood.
Everything collided, merged, reassembled, and reshaped itself around Bullet in a bizarre yet terrifying spectacle.
"ROAAAAAR!!!"
A primal roar erupted across Marineford.
Under the horrified gazes of countless Marines, Bullet's body began expanding at a terrifying rate.
Fifty meters.
Eighty.
One hundred.
Then even higher.
His frame continued swelling as more and more material was pulled into the fusion. Metal, rock, and concrete layered themselves over his body, while blazing magma flowed through the enormous construct and bound everything together.
At last—
a colossal destroyer rose in the heart of Marineford.
The towering giant loomed over the plaza like a Titan descended from myth.
Its body was an unnatural fusion of dark-red molten magma, pitch-black metal, and enormous slabs of gray-white stone, all twisted together into a form that somehow looked both crude and overwhelmingly powerful.
It stood taller than many of Marine Headquarters' largest buildings.
Its immense shadow swallowed a huge section of the plaza, plunging the Marines beneath it into darkness.
The giant's arms had been built partly from the shattered remains of the Gate of Justice and the heavy armor plating torn from Marine warships.
Between those layers of metal and stone, magma raced like fiery serpents, radiating enough heat to visibly distort the surrounding air.
Its torso was even more terrifying.
Countless fragments of stone, steel, artillery, and fortress debris had been compressed together into a massive armored core.
Every section looked impossibly dense.
Impossibly heavy.
As though ordinary attacks would accomplish no more than insects throwing themselves against a mountain.
Then there was its head.
It was enormous, almost like a small peak rising above the battlefield.
Two blazing magma-filled eyes opened within its face.
They looked down upon the Marines below.
Hundreds of soldiers suddenly seemed no larger than ants.
The battle had already ceased to resemble anything remotely fair.
This was no longer two sides exchanging blows.
It had become a spectacle of destruction—
a performance staged entirely for monsters.
"WORORORORORO!"
Kaido's laughter thundered down from the sky.
"Now that's more like it, Bullet!"
The enormous Azure Dragon stared down at the newly formed giant with obvious excitement.
His grin widened.
The sheer scale of the destruction seemed to delight him even more.
Meanwhile, every Marine unfortunate enough to witness Bullet's transformation was thinking the exact same thing.
Vice Admirals.
Captains.
Ordinary soldiers.
New recruits.
All of them stared upward.
'How the hell are we supposed to fight that?'
Marineford fell silent.
Only moments earlier, the fortress had been filled with shouts, orders, clashing weapons, and the relentless noise of battle.
Now almost none of that remained.
Even veteran Vice Admirals who had survived countless battles stood frozen.
They slowly raised their heads, eyes widening as their pupils contracted.
What filled their vision was an enormous silhouette that seemed capable of blocking out the sky itself.
Magma.
Metal.
Stone.
All fused into one monstrous body.
The pressure radiating from it was suffocating.
It looked less like a living opponent and more like some demon of destruction that had climbed out of the depths of hell.
The younger Marines reacted even worse.
Only recently enlisted, many of them had entered Marineford carrying dreams of battle, justice, and glory.
Those dreams vanished beneath Bullet's shadow.
Their faces turned pale.
Their bodies trembled uncontrollably.
The rifles in their hands suddenly felt absurdly small.
Meaningless.
What good could ordinary bullets possibly do against something like this?
Despair swept through the Marines like an icy tide.
It froze their thoughts.
Their bodies.
Even their ability to imagine what they were supposed to do next.
Then, in the middle of that suffocating silence, one young Marine finally broke.
His legs gave out.
Thud.
He collapsed onto the ground.
The rifle slipped from his hands and struck the stone with a sharp metallic clatter.
The soldier did not even seem to notice.
His eyes remained fixed on the towering monster above him.
"M-Monster…"
The word barely escaped his trembling lips.
There was nothing else he could say.