[Third-person perspective]
"No... way..."
"You're... kidding, right...!?"
"I can't believe it...! A-Admiral Akainu was...!"
Most likely, no one could believe it at first. They could only stand there, utterly speechless.
But as time passed and nothing about the scene before them changed, it became impossible to dismiss what they were seeing as some trick of the eye. Everyone was looking at the same thing. Reality forced itself upon them whether they liked it or not.
"...How... how could this happen...!!"
"For real...?"
"This was... not part of the plan..."
Sengoku and Aokiji wore expressions of open shock, an uncharacteristic edge of panic in their voices.
Kizaru's tone still carried its usual languid drawl, but the voice beneath it was laced with agitation. Cold sweat traced a line down his cheek.
The shock rippled outward through the Visual Den Den Mushi's crossed signal, spreading to the citizens watching the scene unfold.
The Marines. The force of Justice meant to protect them. Their supreme fighting power: the Three Admirals.
And now, right before everyone's eyes, one of them had sunk, quite literally, into the depths of the earth.
In stark contrast, the voices trembling for an entirely different reason, swelling with elation, belonged to the pirates watching it happen.
The Whitebeard Pirates and their allied crews on the battlefield, and beyond them, the pirates on Sabaody Archipelago and across the world watching through their own Den Den Mushi.
"He... he actually did it...!!"
"Yeah... are you serious, that's incredible...! Akainu, of all people..."
"Pops, are you watching...! Commander Ace pulled it off...!!"
Some had tears in their eyes. The hellscape spread before them felt like something out of a dream. They confirmed again and again that it was no dream. And then...!
"Akainu has been... taken dooooown!!!"
"""YEAAAAHHH!! AAAAACE!!"""
Cheers erupted.
Screams erupted.
Both rang out with enough force to rival, perhaps even surpass, all the clamor of the war that had come before. They echoed across the battlefield and beyond, through every screen broadcasting the scene.
At the center of it all, breathing hard, stood Ace and Sue.
The two of them were also staring at the sight before them, their expressions still carrying a trace of disbelief.
"...For the record, I worked pretty hard too, you know... but somehow it's all about Ace..."
"Yeah, uh... sorry about that."
"No, I mean, it's fine. That last Spirit Bo... er, that big finishing move of yours, the impact was just that strong, I guess. ...More importantly though, Ace, could you maybe put those flames out already? It's hot."
Sue said this with a wry smile, gesturing at Ace, who was still gushing Mera-Mera flames from his body right beside her. In response, Ace replied with a troubled look.
"Ah, yeah, about that... sorry, I've been trying to, but... the control's not really working right. The flames just keep pouring out from inside me..."
"Huh? Wait, are you okay?"
"No, it's like... it doesn't feel bad. If anything, it's like power is surging through me, overflowing. I've never felt anything like this before. My body is burning up...! It's like these flames aren't even mine."
Ace himself seemed bewildered, murmuring as he stared at both hands still wreathed in fire. Sue tilted her head with a curious 'Really?' and thought for a moment.
"...Maybe your powers grew?"
"Huh? Grew...? My powers?"
"It's happened to me a few times. It's hard to explain, but the whole feeling of your abilities suddenly shifts, except it doesn't feel wrong. It's more like you've broken through a wall, and suddenly you can do more, or your power just jumps up all at once. Like you've surpassed who you were before and got hammered up to a whole new stage. Everything you've built up suddenly starts working for you all at once. You were exposed to insane levels of heat way beyond anything before, and you managed to control it and channel it into an attack, so maybe that triggered it?"
"Heh... as expected from a writer Sensei, that's some pretty fancy way of putting it."
Ace said this in a teasing tone, still gazing at his hands as they burned with fierce, vigorous flames.
A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth.
"If that's true, then I'm glad. Means I've taken another step closer to the top...!"
"Ha ha ha, yeah. And with this, getting away should be even easier..."
BOOM!
"...Hm?"
No one could tell whose gun that shot had come from.
No one could tell where it had been fired from, either.
Ace and Sue both blinked in surprise at the sudden noise. After a moment, they realized it had been fired by a single pirate.
That pirate had been locked in combat with a Marine just moments ago. Between fighting and retreating at the same time, the pirate had been on the losing end. But after witnessing what just happened, the tide had turned.
Or more accurately, the Marine had frozen solid in shock and despair, completely drained of the will to fight, and the pirate had simply put a bullet in the man to finish it.
"You see that, Marines!? This is our power... the power of the Whitebeard Pirates!"
That single cry, blazing with battle fervor, and the heat packed into those words, began to spread to the pirates around him.
The grief and despair of losing Whitebeard. The anguish and helplessness of having to flee and leave him behind. All of it was transforming into furious rage and fighting spirit, igniting with hundreds of times the intensity.
"That's right... we haven't lost yet! The fight isn't over!"
"You think we can just end it like this!? They killed Pops, they trampled on everything he stood for, and we're supposed to just walk away!?"
'W-Wait... the mood is getting really bad here...'
Sue felt the swelling heat against her skin and shuddered.
Right before her eyes, the cheers were transforming into war cries.
"Ugh, ahh..."
"Eek...!"
"Th-these guys... w-what do we do...!!"
The Marines on the front line felt that momentum too. Combined with the shock of what had just happened, they shrank back, fear written plainly on their faces.
And that sight became fuel for the pirates' growing fervor. It couldn't be helped.
"That's right, avenge Pops!! Settle the score!"
"You think we're done here!? Pay them back a hundred times over for what they did!!"
"Destroy the Marines!"
"Not just the Marines... that traitor Teach and his crew too!"
"Everyone who underestimated us... we'll make them regret it!!"
"W-Wait, hold on...! What are you people doing!?"
"Hey, what the hell are you guys doing!? Pops told us to retreat...!"
"Don't stop us, Commander Marco! If we just run away and call it done, Pops' name stays dragged through the mud!"
"Yeah, and we can't just leave Pops here with these people... we have to take him back! We need to give him a proper send-off with our own hands..."
"And then we'll report at his grave... that the score's been settled!!"
Even the cooler-headed commanders like Marco and Vista tried desperately to hold them back, but no one was listening. The fervor only kept building.
'This is bad... we won too hard!!'
Sue realized the truth. The fact of defeating the enemy's greatest weapon, a Marine Admiral, had been too powerful a shock, for better and for worse.
Just moments ago, she had been overjoyed and relieved at their victory. Now the unintended consequences drained the color from her face. She could see what was about to happen, and she could tell there was no stopping it.
Ignoring the commanders' attempts to restrain them, the pirates grabbed their weapons and turned on the Marines one after another.
But the Marines weren't simply taking it lying down.
Several gunshots rang out. Pirates screamed.
A one-eyed General Officer had just followed through on a sword swing, and behind him, Marines with raised rifles had cut down the charging pirates in a counterattack.
"V-Vice Admiral Doberman!"
"What are you doing!? Don't falter! Stand and fight!"
Kicking aside the pirate he had just struck down and sending the body tumbling, Vice Admiral Doberman bellowed across the entire battlefield.
"There shouldn't be a single coward in this Navy who'd cower just because some pirates got a little momentum! Is that how you'd face Admiral Akainu!? You should be ashamed! Advance! Fight! Kill every pirate!"
"Y-Yeah... we have to fight...!"
"We're the Marines! We are Justice...!"
"Pirates are Evil... and we must not let Evil go unpunished!"
"Admiral Akainu never gave up until the very end! We're going too! Settle the score!"
"Don't get cocky, pirates... we'll teach you that Justice, that the Marines, are unbreakable!"
Like a violent rebound from their moment of fear, the Marine side ratcheted up their own fighting spirit.
Confusion and screams turned to fury and battle cries, slamming head-on into the pirates' own rage.
And then there were those who poured oil on the fire.
"Zehahahaha... now it's getting interesting! Can't get enough of this feeling... being right in the middle of the world's turning point! What a lively funeral, eh? Pops is probably thrilled, watching from the other side!!"
"...What did you just say...!?"
Ace's eyes blazed with undisguised fury as he turned his murderous glare on his sworn enemy.
Anyone could see the rage boiling up from deep inside him.
"You... Teach...!! You must really want me to kill you right here and now...!"
"Zehahahaha... can you really do it, Commander Ace!? You lost pathetically on Banaro Island, got handed over to the Marines... became the spark for this whole war. Don't you think piling more shame on top would be a bad idea? In the afterlife, Pops would"
Cutting off Blackbeard mid-sentence, hellfire erupted from Ace's body, becoming a pillar of flame that reached toward the heavens.
The heat that radiated outward was enough to make Sue and everyone nearby recoil in shock.
'HOT!! This feeling... it really is...!'
'That bastard Ace, the heat of his flames really has gone up... no, more importantly, if he takes the bait here, we're truly done for!!'
"When I think about it, you were where it all began... Teach...!! I still owe you for Thatch... and now I'll settle that debt too, for everything Pops couldn't finish...!"
"Zehahahaha... always picking at the past, little by little... fine then, Ace, come at me if you want! Sure, you seem a bit tougher now... but even so, you can't stop me anymore!! Not you... not anyone!"
"Shut up...! That smart mouth of yours... I'll make sure you never open it again!!"
Battles erupted everywhere.
The clash of steel, gunfire, war cries, screams.
The battlefield was reverting to what it had been, both sides colliding with even greater ferocity than before.
In the mounting chaos, with no idea where to even begin, and no real hope of stopping any of it, Marco, Vista, and Sue were in a state of desperate panic.
"This is bad. Any more of this and there's really no coming back..."
"But there's nothing anyone can say that'll stop them now! They can barely even hear us anymore...!"
"We still have to do something, or this really will go on until one side is completely wiped... WHOA!?"
Sue sensed the incoming attack just in time, swinging her sword to deflect a Laser blast.
"Kizaru!"
"Well, well, Pirate Literary Master. Now that things have gone this far... we can't exactly back down either, can we? We simply can't afford to let this end as it stands..."
The realization that another supreme fighting force on par with Akainu was on the move again only deepened Sue and her allies' anxiety.
The fighting around them kept escalating. Pirates and Marines alike crashed into each other with tremendous force, falling one after another.
'...We need to force an end to this fighting and get out of here, or we're truly done for...! But words won't reach anyone anymore! I need something that makes it physically impossible to keep fighting, regardless of morale or battle spirit... and if that's the case, then the answer is... ugh, I really didn't want to do this! I thought of it as an option but was hoping I wouldn't have to...!'
"Don't hold this against me, gentlemen of the Marines... your side started this war, your side dragged everyone into it...!"
At around the same time, a short distance away.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku the Buddha had been fighting Blackbeard just moments ago, but now that Blackbeard was about to engage Ace, he found himself with nothing immediately demanding his attention.
Striking from behind was one option, but he prioritized something else first. He'd been neglecting the bigger picture for too long. Scanning the battlefield as a whole, he took stock of the overall situation.
As he surveyed the fighting, now intensifying further in the wake of Akainu's defeat...
"...Hm...?"
Something caught his eye.
Fires were breaking out across the battlefield.
That in itself was nothing unusual. With cannonballs and all manner of projectiles flying around, fires could spring up anywhere, at any time.
But what Sengoku saw was different. Wisps of smoke rising from empty ground. Flames igniting where nothing had struck. No cannonball had landed there. No embers had drifted down from elsewhere.
'Spontaneous combustion...!?'
The realization hit him. He whipped his gaze around and saw the same thing happening in dozens of places.
The individual fires weren't the problem. What was dangerous was the implication: the environment of this entire battlefield had, most likely in its entirety, reached a state where this could happen.
'This is bad. If things go wrong... no, at this rate, it's not "if"...!'
Sengoku immediately began checking the faces of several enemies, the pirates.
Ace. He didn't appear to have noticed. But given the nature of his powers, the danger was self-evident.
Ivankov. Unaware. Simply bewildered by the escalating battlefield.
Crocodile. Surveying the area with a knowing smirk.
Most likely aware. And he wouldn't hesitate to exploit it.
The Whitebeard Pirates' division commanders, Marco and Vista among them. Unaware. Like Ivankov, they were preoccupied with figuring out how to rein in their overheated subordinates.
And then, the most dangerous person in this situation: Pirate Literary Master Sue.
Her face bore the look of someone who had made a decision. Paper Flakes were already forming in her hands. She knew. And she was about to do it, right now.
A short distance from her, Crocodile was generating a sandstorm. He intended to make full use of the kindling Sue was about to provide.
'No, I have to stop this... but if I shout it out loud, the other pirates will learn about the conditions too! That would only accelerate the spread of ignition sources... but if I do nothing, this becomes irreversible...!'
Sengoku possessed the intellect that had earned him the title of The Strategist, but in the current chaos with no time and no room to maneuver, he racked his brain desperately for a way to prevent the disaster that would surely unfold within mere seconds, and found no answer.
Meanwhile, Sue was already sending her Paper Flakes swirling vigorously into the air, and...
"THAT'S ENOUGH!!!!"
"""...!?"""
In that instant,
what rang out across the entire battlefield was the scream-like cry of a single young Marine.
To be continued...