Cough, cough.
Sabo dragged himself out of the shattered cliffside rubble, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand. His stomach still ached, but the fire in his eyes only burned hotter.
"That was a hell of a kick, Ace."
His voice was hoarse, yet a grin cracked his lips.
"That's what makes this fun."
Sabo glanced down at the Flame Dragon Staff in his grip. The pink scale patterns along its shaft were pulsing fast, the living weapon resonating with its master's surging battle spirit.
"Pinky, can you keep going?"
"Grrraww!"
A pink dragon head burst from the front of the staff, unleashing a roar that was still young but dripping with wild ferocity. Its whiskers thrashed in the wind, and its amber slit pupils locked onto Ace in the distance. It knew the weight of that kick. It wanted to help its master pay it back.
"Good."
Sabo tightened his grip and drew a deep breath.
"Then show him what you can do."
He let go.
RAAAHHH!
The Flame Dragon Staff erupted in a brilliant flash of pink light. In seconds, the dark crimson shaft swelled, stretched, and reshaped itself into a full eastern dragon, over a hundred meters long.
Horns, whiskers, claws, every detail made terrifyingly real by the power of a Mythical Zoan. Blazing orange flame clouds coiled around its body, the secret to its high-altitude flight. The sheer pressure of a top predator's dragon presence flooded the entire valley.
The pink dragon roared and spiraled upward. Inside its gaping maw, the searing orange ball of light began to change.
Whum. Whum.
The micro-physical compression airways hidden throughout its body kicked into maximum load. Jeno's black tech had fused flawlessly with the biological structure of the Mythical Zoan's heat breath. Already violent flame energy was forcibly compressed hundreds, thousands of times over in the instant before it erupted from that throat.
At the same time, the flame clouds around the dragon shifted from orange to red. A hurricane laced with electrical arcs whipped into existence around it. The Azure Dragon's innate command of wind and lightning, still raw, but already baring its teeth.
At the edge of the battlefield.
"It actually inherited the full authority of the Azure Dragon?" Shark's predatory eyes grew heavy with shock. The weapon's existence defied all common sense.
"Yahahaha!" Enel sat cross-legged atop his drum. "The color is still ridiculous, but that dragon pressure is the real deal." He watched the pink serpent twisting the sky, a rare note of acknowledgment in his voice.
High above, Sabo stood on empty air. No more jet flames beneath his soles. Instead, he launched himself straight onto the pink dragon's spine, clamping both hands around its horns. His sky-blue eyes reflected the dark crimson figure far below.
"Pinky! Maximum firepower, full output!"
The dragon threw its head back and roared. Inside its mouth, a plasma beam so deep blue it verged on violet took its final shape. The compression was so extreme that the instant the heat breath erupted, the core temperature was high enough to ionize the surrounding air.
But that was not all.
The same moment the pink dragon loosed its breath, Sabo's arms exploded with towering orange and crimson flames.
Mera Mera no Mi, max load.
He did not simply layer the flames on top. He attempted something utterly reckless. He wrapped his own fire around the fringe of the dragon's breath like a shell, forcing two heat sources born of the same root but of different natures into a violent catalytic reaction.
The outer layer was Sabo's orange-red blaze, built to spread and burn white-hot. The inner core was the dragon's violet plasma, built to pierce and shatter in an instant.
The twin fires wove together in midair, two dragons of flame plunging in a single spiraling column. The air itself warped and buckled in their wake.
"Two completely independent flame systems amplifying each other." Leonora's Observation Haki traced the terrifying energy structure with perfect clarity. "That is not simple addition."
"Sabo really is a genius," Jeno murmured.
Ace stood on the scorched earth, looking up at the heaven-scouring column of entwined color.
A serious light kindled in his eyes.
"Forcing two kinds of fire into this kind of coordination."
The corner of his mouth tugged upward.
"Sabo, you really have gotten stronger."
"If that's everything you've got, I'd better show you the respect it deserves."
CRACKLE.
A burst of crimson-gold Vermilion Bird divine fire erupted from Ace's right arm.
The instant that divine flame appeared, the surrounding rock began to glaze into glass on a massive scale. He tightened his right fist. The crimson-gold flames around his knuckles compressed, spiraled, and condensed with maniacal intensity. No longer spreading outward, the fire was forced into a conical shockwave.
"Divine Flame: Vermilion Bird Sky-Rending Wave!"
Ace punched upward, straight into the falling hybrid breath.
A cone of crimson-gold flame shockwave tore from his fist.
BOOM.
The two infernos collided head-on in midair.
In that moment, the entire sky over Punk Hazard was stained three brilliant colors.
The lower half was Ace's crimson-gold, like a sun climbing out of the earth.
The upper half was the violet-blue and orange-red of Sabo and the dragon, like sunset bleeding into the sea.
At the point of impact, space itself seemed to buckle under the heat. Shockwaves flattened outward in ripples, shearing off every nearby peak. Countless chunks of stone never even hit the ground. They were vaporized into white dust in the gaps between the three flames.
"Whoa!" Buggy was blasted hundreds of meters backward by the heat wave, tumbling across the ground. "Are those two trying to burn a hole through the island?!"
At the heart of the clash, the three torrents of fire bit into each other, a deadlock that lasted five full seconds.
Ace's Vermilion Bird divine fire held firm against the combined assault of a Mythical Zoan's breath and a Logia-class Mera Mera no Mi.
"Right there!"
The instant the lock held, Ace's left foot shattered the ground.
He did not stay in place trading beams. His whole body became a streak of crimson-gold lightning, charging straight into the sea of flame above.
Second Form, Local Deployment.
Over the skin of Ace's fists, intricate crimson-gold divine flame patterns surfaced. The violent power compressed inside his body poured into his knuckles, solidifying into a semi-transparent layer of flame bone armor.
Sabo moved too. He did not stay on the dragon's head. He dove straight down, and the hundred-meter dragon suddenly contracted, coiling around him.
The dragon's two foreclaws merged with Sabo's arms, forming four savage talons.
"Four Gods: Dragon's Claw!"
Sabo lunged with all the brute force of the dragon and his own Armament Haki. All four claws lashed out simultaneously, crashing into Ace as he erupted from the inferno.
"Sabo!"
"Ace!"
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Their afterimages blurred through the air in a frenzy. Every fist and claw collision spat out jet-black Haki lightning, the friction of high-grade Ryuo grinding against itself at unreal speeds.
Sabo had four dragon claws attacking in combination. Every tearing strike howled with wind and thunder. But Ace's speed and punching power were outright unreasonable. Every blow carried the internal destruction of Vermilion Bird Ryuo.
"Sabo."
Ace found the tiniest gap between the four converging claws, a space less than three centimeters wide. His right fist threaded straight through it and slammed solidly into the underside of the pink dragon's jaw.
"Bone Fist: Penetrating Shockwave."
No flashy explosion.
Just a single, impossibly deep toll, like the inside of a bell.
That brute force, saturated with internal destruction, cracked the dragon's defense.
"GRRAAW!"
The dragon let out a pained cry. It could no longer hold its form. Starting from the tail, it unraveled, segment by segment, collapsing back into staff shape.
Clang. The Flame Dragon Staff hit the ground, once again dark crimson metal. Sabo, caught by the same penetrating strike, plummeted out of the sky.
Zzzzt.
A bolt of lightning flashed.
Enel appeared in midair, seizing Sabo by the back of his collar with one hand and snatching the falling staff with the other. He glanced down at the bruised, battered chief of staff who was still grinning, and a trace of acknowledgment flickered through his golden eyes, nearly imperceptible.
"Going toe to toe with a monster like Ace," Enel said. "You're not half bad, strategist."
He dumped Sabo and the Flame Dragon Staff onto the soft sand and drifted back to his drum as though nothing had happened.
Sabo lay on the ground, dragging in huge breaths.
His right arm still trembled, the aftereffect of pushing himself past his limits. His ribs ached with every inhale, the taste of blood filling his chest.
But he smiled up at Ace as he walked over. No shadow of defeat in his sky-blue eyes, only a fierce, burning light.
"So, Ace. Was that enough... to prove myself?"
Ace stopped in front of him, looking down at the brother he had grown up beside.
With a sweep of his right hand, a gentle cloud of crimson-gold divine flame enveloped the fallen Sabo.
Inside that warm, sacred fire, his fractured ribs and torn muscle reknit with impossible speed.
Ace extended his left hand, a smile touching his lips.
"That staff's Mythical Zoan vitality perfectly covers your close-combat defensive gaps. Its independent consciousness lets it handle multi-angle threats, and its scale regeneration absorbs fatal damage for you. Your control of wind and lightning isn't stable yet, but paired with that amplified heat breath, your firepower already outstrips most Logia."
He pulled Sabo to his feet.
"Right now, you have already touched the threshold of the top fighters on this sea."
Sabo grinned. "But I still couldn't force out your real full strength."
"Of course not. This wasn't a death match." Ace rolled his eyes, a rare gesture. "And you think I became captain just for show?"
Laughter broke out around them.
"Still, you've got a long road ahead. Your Armament Haki isn't strong enough yet. Against a true admiral, they'd power straight through your flames to hit you. From here on, besides pushing your Haki harder, you need to master that staff completely. Not just fire. The dragon's built-in control of wind, lightning, and flame clouds, you've got to figure out how to fuse all of it into your martial arts."
He clapped Sabo on the shoulder. "When you can command that power freely, you'll stand among the elite of this sea."
Sabo picked up the Flame Dragon Staff. He felt the faint, rhythmic pulse traveling through its shaft and gave a solid nod.
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