The world was ending. Or at least, Marineford was, and for the thousands of souls trapped on its four crumbling quadrants, it felt like the same thing. The sea, once a battlefield, was now a ravenous beast, churning and boiling, its waves crashing against the sinking foundations of the island.
On one of these rapidly shrinking pieces of land, Blackbeard stared across the newly formed abyss, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated desperation. Whitebeard's body, the vessel of the Gura Gura no Mi, the key to his entire ambition, was on the other side, slowly drifting further away as the island broke apart.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!" Teach roared, his voice cracking with a rage that bordered on panic. "THE QUAKE FRUIT! IT'S MINE! I'VE WAITED TOO LONG! PLANNED TOO MUCH! IT'S MY DESTINY!"
He looked at his monstrous crew. "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, YOU IDIOTS?! GET ME OVER THERE!"
But even they, the legends of Level 6, could only stare helplessly across the hundred-meter gap of churning, violent water.
On another quadrant, Fleet Admiral Sengoku watched the apocalypse unfold, the horror of the situation dawning on him.
"It's sinking!" he thundered, his golden form radiating a frantic energy. "The foundations are gone! The entire island is going to be swallowed by the sea!" His gaze swept over the thousands of Marines, many wounded, many unconscious from Gunnar's Haki blast. "ALL FORCES, TO THE HIGHEST GROUND! ADMIRALS, STABILIZE THE QUADRANTS! PREVENT A TOTAL COLLAPSE!"
The Admirals, their own battles momentarily forgotten in the face of this existential threat, became forces of desperate preservation.
Aokiji, his face grim, slammed his palms onto the churning water in the chasms. "ICE AGE: FISSURE LOCK!" He attempted to freeze the violent sea, to create massive pillars of ice to act as supports, to weld the sinking pieces of the island together. But for every chasm he froze, the relentless quakes from Gunnar's earlier assault sent fresh tremors, cracking his desperate creations.
Kizaru became a golden blur of rescue, zipping from one crumbling section to another, grabbing injured and panicked Marines and depositing them on the more stable central plaza around the main fortress, his light-speed movements a desperate evacuation effort.
Akainu, roaring in fury, was forced to act as a demented civil engineer, unleashing streams of magma not to kill, but to weld the fractured bedrock, to create molten plugs in a futile attempt to stop the island from completely disintegrating beneath their feet.
Blackbeard, however, was not a man to be deterred by geography. With a guttural roar of pure avarice, he leaped. He propelled himself across the chasm with all his immense strength, a cannonball of dark ambition, landing heavily on the quadrant.
"THE FRUIT IS MINE!" he bellowed.
Gunnar, his golden eyes blazing, didn't move from his spot. He simply raised a hand, and from the ground before him, a solid wall of seething magma erupted, a fiery shield between Blackbeard and Whitebeard.
"Zehahahaha! A little fire? Pathetic!" Blackbeard snarled. "KURŌZU!" He thrust his hand forward, and the dark vortex of his Yami Yami no Mi began to absorb the magma wall, sucking the heat, the light, the very substance of it into a swirling void.
But just as Blackbeard smashed through the last vestiges of the dissipating magma wall, a shriek tore through the air. Kirin, the Thunderbird, its form still crackling with residual lightning, dove with breathtaking speed. Its talons, unerring and swift, clamped onto Whitebeard's still, colossal form.
"NO!" Blackbeard roared, seeing his prize about to be snatched away. He reached up, his darkness coiling. "BLACK VORTEX!" Dark tendrils shot into the sky, attempting to ensnare Kirin, to drag the mythical beast and its precious cargo down from the sky.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
The voice was a roar from hell itself. Gunnar, seeing his father's body about to be desecrated, threw his head back. A torrent of pure, annihilating energy – not just lava and ice, but combined burning Ice – erupted from his mouth.
The blast breathe, focused and absolute, slammed directly into Blackbeard.
Teach screamed, a sound of pure agony, as the elemental fury washed over him. His darkness was momentarily blown away. He was sent flying backwards, his body smoking and charred, crashing into a pile of rubble, his triumphant laughter finally silenced.
Gunnar swayed, blood now trickling from his eyes and mouth, his body steaming. The cost of that attack was immense. He took a staggering step forward, then another, walking slowly, deliberately, towards the groaning, struggling form of Blackbeard. Every step was an agony, his body a ruin held together by sheer willpower and the Endurance he inherited from his Father.
He stopped a few feet from the fallen betrayer, his shadow falling over him.
"To get to my father's legacy," Gunnar rasped, his voice a low, dangerous growl, his golden eyes burning with the light of a vengeful king. "...you'll have to go through the son."
Sengoku, Garp, and the remaining Marines watched, horrified. The war they had meticulously planned had been utterly hijacked, devolving into a personal, monstrous feud on a sinking island.
And across the globe, on every island with a broadcast screen, the world watched in stunned, terrified silence. They saw the island fortress of justice crumble. They saw a dead man return as a god of destruction.
They saw a new, terrifying prince who was crowning himself king. The era of Whitebeard was over. The era of Gunnar had just begun.
***
The world was watching.
On every island with a broadcast Den Den Mushi, from the opulent parlors of nobles in the Four Blues to the rowdiest pirate dens in the New World, civilization had ground to a halt. Work stopped. Markets fell silent. Every eye was glued to the flickering, chaotic images coming from Marineford. They had seen wars before, skirmishes, executions. They had never seen an apocalypse.
Sabaody Archipelago - Grove 13, A Crowded Bar
The bar was silent, a rare and deeply unsettling phenomenon. Mugs of ale sat untouched. The air, usually thick with boasts and cigar smoke, was now thick with a collective, suffocating tension. A massive screen, projected from a special Visual Den Den Mushi, dominated the room.
"He… he split the island," a young, brash pirate with a new, pathetic bounty poster whispered, his voice trembling. "He tore the whole damn island apart…"
An old, one-eyed veteran pirate next to him, his face a roadmap of scars, slowly shook his head, his gaze never leaving the screen. "That ain't just a Devil Fruit, kid," he rasped, his voice rough with awe and terror. "That's… that's something else. That's the end of the world, bottled up in one man. He is no doubt the son of Whitebeard!"
The bartender, a portly man who had seen his share of trouble, was hiding behind his counter, peeking over the top. "Whitebeard… At least they killed Whitebeard… And now his son… Mother of the seas, protect us. Surely, Whitebeard is dead, Right?"
On the screen, Gunnar stood, a demigod of destruction, facing down Blackbeard and the Admirals.
"Look at his eyes…" a woman in the corner gasped. "It's like he's not even human anymore. He's... ."
In Shakky's Rip-Off Bar, Rayleigh sat alone at the counter, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He hadn't touched it. His usual relaxed demeanor was gone, replaced by an expression of profound, grim seriousness as he watched the unfolding catastrophe.
"So, this is the result…" he murmured to himself. "The old era, torn down not by time, but by rage. Roger… your son started a fire… and it seems another has unleashed a deluge. This new age… it's going to be a apocalypse."
World Economic Journal - Headquarters
"MORE! I NEED MORE ANGLES!" the massive bird-like figure of "Big News" Morgans shrieked, his wings flapping in a frenzy of journalistic excitement. "GET ME A DEN DEN MUSHI FOCUSED ON BLACKBEARD! GET ME ANOTHER ON THE ADMIRALS! IS WHITEBEARD'S BODY STILL THERE?! ZOOM IN ON THE SON'S FACE! KUWAHAHAHA! THIS IS THE SCOOP OF THE MILLENNIUM!"
His newsroom was in chaos. Reporters were screaming into Den Den Mushi, printers were churning out frantic headlines.
"Confirmed! The fortress of Marineford is sinking!"
"The Warlord Ragnar is Edward Gunnar, the lost son of Whitebeard!"
"He possesses powers similar to the Gura Gura no Mi, AND his own Mythical Zoan!"
"Charlotte Smoothie of the Big Mom Pirates is on site! What is her involvement?!"
"They're calling it… the 'War of the Best' is over… this is now… the 'War of the Monsters'!"
Morgans cackled, his eyes gleaming. "No, no, you fools! This isn't just a war! This is history being violently, beautifully, profitability rewritten before our very eyes! KEEP ROLLING!"
A Kingdom in the Grand Line
A noble king, his crown slightly askew, stared at the broadcast screen in his throne room, his hands gripping the arms of his throne so tightly his knuckles were white. His advisors and ministers stood around him, their faces pale with terror.
"It… it can't be," the king stammered. "Marineford… the symbol of Absolute Justice… sinking…?"
"Your Majesty," his prime minister said, his voice trembling, "the Admirals… they are fighting to save the island itself! They are on the defensive!"
"Against one man?!" the king cried, gesturing at the screen where Gunnar stood, a figure of apocalyptic power. "That… that is the son of Whitebeard? The World Government hid this from us? They hid a monster of this magnitude?"
The king's face, once filled with fear, began to harden with a dawning, dangerous realization. The absolute power he had always believed in, the might of the Marines, was not so absolute after all. The world was far more fragile than he had ever imagined. "What hope do we have… if even their fortress can fall?"
Revolutionary Army - Somewhere in the World
Koala and Hack watched a screen in a darkened room, their expressions grim.
"Luffy-kun… he got away," Koala said, a sigh of profound relief escaping her. "But Jinbe-san… and Ivankov-san…"
"They are strong," Hack rumbled. "But this… this is beyond anyone's predictions." His gaze was fixed on Gunnar. "The son of Whitebeard… to have awakened such power… Haoshoku Haki of that magnitude, and a Devil Fruit that rivals his father's… a power like that, unleashed by such rage… it's not a tool of liberation. It's a tool of annihilation."
A shadowed figure in the corner of the room spoke, his voice calm but carrying an immense weight. "Every great storm begins with a single, violent shift in pressure," said Monkey D. Dragon. "The world has just experienced its shift. The balance is broken. Now… we will see what winds begin to blow."
The World Over
On a winter island, a child pointed at a screen in a shop window and began to cry, not understanding, but feeling the sheer terror radiating from the image.
In a dusty cantina, a bounty hunter licked his lips, his eyes gleaming. "Forget the small fry. The bounties that are about to come out of this… they'll be legendary."
In the New World, a rival pirate captain watched from the deck of his ship, a grim smile on his face. "So, the old whale is finally gone. And his whelp has shattered the cage. The feeding frenzy… is about to begin."
In a convent, nuns prayed, not for victory, but for a swift end to the suffering displayed so graphically on their small screen.
The war at Marineford wasn't over. It had simply changed. It was no longer a battle of pirates versus Marines. It was a clash of kings, old and new, on a sinking stage, with the entire world as their horrified, captive audience. The screen showed Gunnar, a demigod of grief, facing down the sneering ambition of Blackbeard and the full, desperate fury of the Admirals.
The world held its breath, waiting to see which of these monsters would be left standing when the dust finally, if ever, settled.