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The CP0 boss looked up at the execution platform. One of the ornate chairs was empty. Someone had slipped away while he wasn't watching.
He looked down at the short green figure standing in front of him.
"Well. Today might be my lucky day after all."
He straightened up. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm nothing like that useless man who just got killed. Within CP0, I am among the very best. My name is Gish. When you reach hell, try to remember who sent you."
"[Soru!]"
He closed the distance in an instant.
"I... I... Ahhh! Someone help me!"
Bang.
Gish's fist connected. Gobta had thrown his arm up in a blind panic to block it.
He hadn't moved an inch.
Gish looked at him. Something careful settled into his expression. Nobody who had earned a seat in one of those chairs was going to be simple.
He pulled back and then his body began to change.
"Awaken! [Howling Moon Werewolf]!!!"
The transformation hit him like a wave. His frame swelled and stretched, human proportions giving way to something colossal, five meters of muscle and mass and fury. His face dissolved and reformed around a wolf's skull, jaw distending, fangs pushing through his lips and gleaming with a cold, pale light.
Gobta stared up at it.
He sent a message immediately.
'Kaito-sama! This thing is terrifying and I genuinely do not think I can win!'
Kaito received it, smiled to himself, and replied.
'Oh no, how terrible. Just so you know, Sakuya has been watching you the whole time.'
'Also, if you actually lose, I'm going to message Shion and tell her Gobta has been asking to try her new recipe.'
'NANI!!!'
Gobta looked down from the platform. Sakuya was indeed looking directly at him, expression completely neutral, which somehow made it worse.
Then Kaito's second message landed.
Shion's cooking. The memory of what it had done to him rose up with perfect clarity. He had heard she had some kind of chef skill now, something that was supposed to have improved things, but he was not about to find out. He knew exactly how he had developed his poison resistance attribute, and he would like to keep that particular story from having a sequel.
"Kaito-sama! Do not worry about me! This man will not survive the day!!!"
Gish looked at him, puzzled. The panic had been completely real a moment ago. Where had this come from?
He decided it didn't matter. Under his Devil Fruit, the outcome was already written.
"Roar! Take this!"
He swept his clawed hand forward. An invisible claw mark tore through the air toward Gobta.
Gobta pulled the short blade from his waist and blocked.
Clang.
"Okay, that is genuinely terrifying." He looked up at the giant wolf looming over him. "But I am absolutely not eating Shion's cooking. [Shadow Movement]!"
His figure dropped into the shadow at his feet and came back up behind Gish.
Thud.
His foot connected with the wolf's skull without hesitation. Gish, with no time to react, was launched several hundred meters across the ice.
Bang.
He hit the warship behind him hard enough to leave an impression.
"Cough... how... my Observation Haki tracked him perfectly. My body just couldn't follow."
He spat blood and took stock of himself. He was not finishing this alone.
"Hey! Aka—"
He pulled himself out of the wreckage and turned to call for Akainu.
Akainu was busy.
Benimaru, the same man who had choked one of Gish's subordinates to death at the start of all this, had Akainu fully engaged and was not letting up. Akainu was not losing, exactly, but he was not winning either.
Gish scanned the rest of the field. Garp, intercepted. Every Marine general he could see, intercepted, all of them locked into their own fights, ability against ability, technique against technique, the whole battlefield blazing with it.
Strangely, for all the spectacle of it, the actual damage seemed remarkably low. He squinted.
Were they pulling their punches?
He looked for his own people. Eight CP0 agents, his best, the ones he had brought specifically for a situation like this.
They were lined up against a wall somewhere, very much out of the fight, while several Jura-Tempest Federation soldiers stood in front of them comparing something.
Whoosh.
"Kaito-sama! The photos you asked for!"
"Heh heh! Good work, Gobuzo." Kaito took the camera with a smile. "How is it going with Rigur? Settling in alright?"
"It's good, sir. Rigur-san looks after us well!"
"Glad to hear it. Go on, get back out there."
"Yes, sir!"
Gobuzo vanished from the platform and returned to the field.
"Kai-chan, this is nearly over, isn't it."
Kaito looked out across the ice and counted the Marine figures still standing.
"Almost." He nodded. "And then we go straight to Mary Geoise and deal with the fat pigs at the top. Once this is wrapped up, I'll open the teleportation array. The other Legions haven't even gotten started yet."
Below, the soldiers of the Second, Third, and other Legions who had been standing in formation watching the First Legion fight had been radiating the particular energy of people who are trying very hard not to show how envious they were.
"Hehe! Then I want to come too!"
"Everyone comes! The fall of the World Government needs witnesses!"
The people on the execution platform all nodded with considerable satisfaction.
On the ice, Benimaru ducked under a wave of magma and came back upright without a crease in his clothes.
Akainu looked at him.
"Your strength is genuinely impressive. I'll say that directly." He held the magma in his palm. "[Hellhound]!"
"Admiral Akainu, you flatter me." Benimaru raised his hand and sent Black Flame curling out, consuming the magma completely. "Your own strength is nothing to overlook either."
Akainu's jaw tightened very slightly. He had been fighting this man for a while now, and he could tell, with the instinct of someone who had spent his life measuring opponents, that Benimaru had not been fighting seriously. If he had been, this would have been over already.
"I know my own level. The fact that you're stronger than me is simply the truth."
Benimaru looked at him. He shook his head slightly.
He really did not know how to handle someone this relentlessly honest about themselves.
He did not dislike it.
"Useless! Every last one of them, useless trash!"
Gish looked around at his subordinates being photographed and found nothing useful to work with. He cursed their memories with the efficiency of a man who had already written them off.
"Aren't they your companions? Is that really how you want to talk about them?"
He spun around.
Gobta was standing right in front of him.
"Sorry about this." Gobta's expression had changed entirely. The nervous, comedic energy was gone. What replaced it was something quiet and completely settled. "But... [Ruin Tornado]!!!"
He raised his right hand.
A massive tornado formed above it, threaded through with black lightning, and the pressure of it rolled outward across the ice like a shockwave. Every fight on the battlefield paused. Everyone looked.
"Sayonara."
Gobta's eyes were cold. He flicked his wrist.
The tornado came down on Gish. He threw everything he had into his Armament Haki and braced.
It made no difference at all. The tornado took him apart.