Vista staggered backward, blocking two simultaneous strikes from a Pacifista unit. His twin blades, renowned throughout the Grand Line for their precision and deadliness, sparked against the reinforced alloy as he bared his teeth in frustration. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes and soaking into his immaculate mustache. Three bodies of his division members lay at his feet, good men who had followed him into hell without question.
"Fall back! Regroup with Marco!" he shouted to the surviving captains, his voice hoarse from hours of combat and the acrid smoke that filled his lungs. "Go on the defensive! Protect the wounded!"
But retreat meant nothing now. The enemy had turned their battlefield into a maze of walls, traps, and ambushes. What had once been open plazas and broad avenues had been systematically destroyed and rebuilt into killing grounds. The paths had been deliberately narrowed, corridors of blue and gray, flanked by Marines and machines, designed to funnel pirates into zones where they could be efficiently eliminated.
Vista parried another beam attack, the energy dissipating along his Haki-infused blade. His arms burned with fatigue. Somewhere to his left, he heard the screams of more Division Three members as they encountered Akainu's advance.
Jozu had not returned after being frozen solid during his clash with Aokiji. Marco hadn't responded to Den Den Mushi communications in minutes, his last transmission cut short by what sounded like Kizaru's mocking laughter. Ace still knelt in chains atop the execution platform, his head now bowed in despair rather than defiance. And Whitebeard…
Vista didn't dare look back again.
He could hear the old man's breathing from across the field. Every inhale was a rasping wheeze that seemed to shake the very stones. Every exhale sounded like a dying tide, growing weaker with each passing minute. Blood pooled beneath the Yonko's massive frame, spreading across the shattered plaza like a crimson carpet.
Their pillar was breaking.
"Flower Sword Vista," a monotone voice announced from behind him. Vista turned to find himself facing three Pacifista units, their mouths already opening in unison, energy gathering. "Target priority: elimination."
Vista raised his blades, crossing them before his chest. His mustache twitched in grim determination.
"Come then," he said quietly. "Let's dance one last time."
**************************************
High above the battlefield, Marco's wings blazed like twin suns, scattering flame into a sky of mist and chaos. Blue fire trailed behind him as he banked sharply, avoiding another barrage of light beams that tore through the clouds where he had been moments before. He'd broken off from direct engagement with Kizaru, barely. His flames healed a long cut across his side, the phoenix power knitting flesh together even as he flew, but his stamina was waning.
Four hours of continuous battle had taken their toll. Regeneration consumed energy, and Marco had been pushed to his limits and beyond. His mind raced as he surveyed the battlefield below, searching desperately for a strategy that might salvage this catastrophe.
Kizaru was too erratic. Too fast. The Admiral moved with a precision that belied his lazy demeanor, anticipating Marco's maneuvers with unsettling accuracy. And too strategic, unlike the version Marco had studied in the past. This wasn't the Kizaru who dawdled and played with his opponents, this was a focused weapon, deployed with clear purpose.
"Are you sure you're a bird of healing~?" Kizaru taunted, reappearing above him in a flash of blinding light, forming another laser in his palm. His glasses gleamed in the strange half-light of the battlefield. "Cause you're looking more like chicken these days… All this flying around and nothing to show for it, hmm~?"
Marco narrowed his eyes, wings pulling close as he prepared for another evasive maneuver. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, internal damage that his powers hadn't yet addressed, the result of a direct hit he'd taken protecting Jozu earlier.
"Yaki-tori this!"
He launched a spiral of blue flame upward, the attack expanding into a vortex of azure fire that consumed the space where Kizaru hovered. The Admiral blurred away in particles of light, forced to scatter rather than maintain his form, but Marco didn't follow. He couldn't afford it. His crew needed him on the ground.
He dropped like a meteor, wings folded tight against his body, plummeting toward the remains of Division Seven. As he descended, he transformed his arms back to human form, already preparing to triage the wounded. His medical knowledge would be more valuable than his combat abilities now.
He landed hard near a cluster of fallen pirates, the impact cracking the ice beneath his feet. Bodies littered the frozen ground, some still moving, others terribly still. The wounded screamed for help, clutching at severed limbs or pressing makeshift bandages against laser wounds. The smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder hung heavy in the air.
Marco clenched his jaw as he knelt beside a young pirate whose chest had been pierced clean through. The boy couldn't have been more than seventeen, probably a new recruit who had never imagined his adventure would end in this frozen hell.
Above them, the sky flashed again as Kizaru resumed his search pattern. Marco glanced up briefly, calculating how much longer he could keep the Admiral distracted.
Not long enough.
**************************************
A Marine turned at the edge of the central plaza, only to be slammed aside by a blur of red and blue. Another followed, lifted into the air by a gnarled fishman fist that broke his ribs through armor. Screams followed, weapons drawn, but the two figures did not stop.
"Jinbe!" Luffy shouted, breathless, "Don't slow down!"
"I ain't the one slowing!" Jinbe growled, blood dripping from his mouth, half-limping but still surging forward with terrifying strength. His left arm hung broken at the elbow, bone protruding through blue flesh. Burns covered his chest from a direct blast earlier, possibly from Kizaru or one of the Pacifistas. Yet he pressed on, feet pounding through blood-soaked stone and shattered Marine fortifications.
Behind them, the last remnants of Whitebeard's center line fell like dominoes. The battlefield had become a slaughterhouse, the pirates penned in by walls of ice and barrages of coordinated fire. But this, this was their last gambit. Their only shot.
Luffy's breath came in short, ragged gasps. His shirt was gone, torn from his body during the last skirmish. His chest was marked with bruises, scrapes, and the beginnings of deeper wounds, but his eyes burned. Ace was in sight now, chained, kneeling, head bowed. Luffy's hands trembled.
"I see him," he muttered. "I see Ace..."
And then the snipers opened fire.
From the top of a crumbled tower near the plaza's edge, Marines in black-issue coats knelt in perfect formation. Rifles barked in synchrony. Jinbe threw himself in front of Luffy, roaring, "GET LOW!" as bullets peppered his back and shoulder. He staggered but did not fall.
Blood sprayed across Luffy's face.
"No!" the rubber boy shouted, catching Jinbe before he dropped. "Hang on, Jinbe!"
Jinbe coughed harshly. "Don't stop, Luffy. He needs you more than I do now."
"I'm not leaving you!"
"You will, damn it! You're his little brother! I swore to bring you both out alive, but if I can't, you better damn well make sure one of you walks away!"
A shadow fell across them as a Marine giant raised a club the size of a mast and brought it down with a war cry. Luffy barely had time to twist, his body snapped into a spring-loaded coil, and he launched upward with a Gear Second burst. Steam exploded around him.
"JET GATLING!"
The fists came fast and furious, pummeling the giant's face into the ground in a flurry of blood and broken teeth. Luffy landed in a crouch, panting. The ground cracked beneath him.
He turned to Jinbe. "I'm gonna clear the way," he said, voice tight. "Just… hold on."
Jinbe met his gaze and nodded weakly. "Go."
Luffy turned and sprinted.
Atop the execution platform, Ace lifted his head.
Through bloodied eyes, he saw it: the red vest, the straw hat long lost, the frantic, furious movement that could only belong to one person.
"Luffy…" he whispered.
The sound was drowned beneath the renewed thunder of cannons. The Marines saw it too. From all sides, the lines shifted, pivoting like an organism sensing infection. Pacifista units recalibrated. Vice-Admirals barked orders. A wall of steel and fire prepared to crush the charging Straw Hat.
But Luffy didn't flinch.
He launched himself from shattered stone to frozen wall, bouncing off wreckage, dodging gunfire by instinct and madness. "Gum-Gum Rocket!" he cried, flinging himself toward the scaffold, only for a laser to explode beneath him, sending him crashing back down.
"Shit!"
He landed hard, tumbling through smoke and ash. A trio of Marines closed in, one wielding a bisento, another a net crackling with Sea Prism Stone. Luffy spun into Gear Second again, his body steaming from the strain, and roared.
"Get outta my way!!"
He blitzed the first with a Jet Bazooka, then twisted around the second's net and kicked the third into the air with a scissor-flip. Blood flew. Bones snapped. But more were coming.
Jinbe surged up again from behind, his one good arm extended, blood still pouring from his back. "FISH-MAN KARATE: VAGABOND DRILL!"
The shockwave cracked the earth itself, hurling a pack of Marines backward in a tidal blast of compressed water. Jinbe nearly fell after the attack, dropping to one knee and groaning in pain, but he had cleared the path.
Luffy raced forward again. His vision was narrowing. Everything outside of that towering scaffold, those chains, that bowed head, everything was noise.
Ace looked down, chains clinking as he strained against them.
"Damn it, Luffy… why… why'd you come here…?"
Luffy didn't answer. He just kept running.
On the other side of the plaza, Sengoku stood watching.
He touched his Den Den Mushi again. "Divert Unit Twelve. Block the eastern approach. Send Admiral Akainu to reinforce the scaffold. The boy is making his move."