The silent judgment of Marco and Smoothie from afar was an unheard prayer. On the battlefield, there was no room for anything but the thunderous symphony of destruction composed by two men who were more than human.
Gunnar's roar was the sound of a volcano erupting. "TEACH!"
"ZEHAHAHAHA! COME ON! SHOW ME THE POWER OF A TITAN!" Blackbeard bellowed, his eyes gleaming with a mad, avaricious light.
Gunnar gave him his wish. The ground hissed and steamed around him as he unleashed the full, terrifying potential of his lineage. His body became a canvas of raw, elemental power. He grew, not just in size, but in presence, his muscles tearing and reforming into something monstrous. Bones cracked and elongated, stretching his form to a towering fifty feet.
When the transformation was complete, he was an asymmetrical horror of nature's fury. His right side was a jagged landscape of obsidian rock, with rivers of molten lava flowing through deep cracks. A single, brutal horn of glowing magma curved from his brow. His left side was the opposite: a glacier of translucent, razor-sharp blue ice, so cold it created a constant mist of condensation. A matching horn of pure ice spiraled from his other temple. His bicolored hair was no longer hair, but a mane of living fire and crackling frost.
He was a walking cataclysm.
"WONDERFUL!" Blackbeard screamed in ecstasy, his greed overriding any fear.
Gunnar didn't reply with words. He attacked. He took a single, colossal step, and the ground for a hundred yards cracked, the Gura Gura no Mi's power amplified by his titan mass. He swung his lava arm, not even as a punch, but as a casual swipe. The air it passed through superheated, melting a nearby gingerbread house into a puddle of bubbling slag before the fist even connected with the earth, where it left a crater of molten rock.
Blackbeard, for all his bulk, was surprisingly nimble. He leaped back, spreading his darkness on the ground to absorb the shockwave. "Black Hole!"
Gunnar retaliated with his other side. A swing of his ice arm created a blizzard, firing a volley of house-sized ice shards at Blackbeard.
"Zehahaha! Useless!" Teach roared, his darkness swallowing the projectiles whole. He was a void, an answer to every physical attack.
But Gunnar wasn't just physical. He opened his maw, and from his throat erupted a horrifying, dual-stream breath attack. A torrent of liquid magma spewed from the right side of his mouth, while a blizzard of razor-sharp ice crystals shot from the left.
The combined attack was too wide, too chaotic for the Black Hole to swallow entirely. Blackbeard was forced to abandon his anchor, leaping away as the ground around him was simultaneously melted into glass and flash-frozen, shattering under the thermal stress.
"YOU'RE JUST A BIG TARGET!" Blackbeard yelled, slamming his hands on the ground. "Gloom Hands!" The very earth, infused with his dark, stolen souls, came alive. Dozens of massive, grasping hands made of mud, frosting, and screaming soul-energy erupted, latching onto Gunnar's legs, trying to immobilize the titan.
"GET OFF!" Gunnar roared. He stomped his foot, the quake shattering the hands, but more erupted to take their place. He was being bogged down.
This was the opening Blackbeard needed. He charged forward, his fist swirling with an overwhelming vortex of darkness. He aimed not for Gunnar's head or chest, but for his knee. He was going to cripple the giant.
Gunnar saw the attack coming. He couldn't move his legs in time. So he did the only thing he could. He fell.
He deliberately let his knees buckle, collapsing forward, transforming his fall into his most devastating attack yet. He pulled both fists together, a sphere of white, world-shattering quake energy forming between them. The lava and ice of his body poured into the attack, a fusion of elements and physics.
"JOTUNHEIM: WORLD ENDER!"
His colossal, two-handed hammer-fist slammed down. It wasn't aimed at Blackbeard, but at the entire area in front of him. Blackbeard's darkness, his gloom hands, the very ground itself—it all met the epicenter of an attack that could tear an island in half.
The Black Hole imploded. The darkness was shattered by a force it could not contain. The shockwave hit Blackbeard head-on. The sound was not a boom, but a deafening, final CRACK, as if the world itself had broken.
Blackbeard's massive body was flung backward like a toy, his ribs caving in with an audible crunch. He flew for a full city block, crashing through the ruins of the Whole Cake Chateau and plowing a trench deep into the island's crust.
Gunnar pushed himself up, his titan form panting, steam and embers pouring from his mouth. He had landed a decisive blow.
But from the rubble came a sound. Not a groan. A wheezing, broken, but unmistakable laugh. "Ze...ha... ZEHahahahaHA! THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE POWER!"
Blackbeard emerged, his chest a ruin, blood pouring from his mouth. He clutched his side, his body screaming in agony, but his eyes were alight with pure, undiluted madness. He had felt that power, and now he wanted it more than ever.
"My turn," Blackbeard gurgled, and his body sank into the shadows. He reappeared instantly, a product of his Logia-like darkness, directly on Gunnar's massive back. The titan was too large to pivot in time.
Blackbeard pressed both hands against Gunnar's spine. "Soul Vortex: Black Harvest!"
It was a terrifying combination. The Yami Yami no Mi began to nullify Gunnar's titan form, weakening its integrity, while the Soru Soru no Mi, twisted by Blackbeard's ambition, tried to rip the very soul from his body.
Gunnar let out a roar of pure, inhuman agony. He could feel his power being drained, his life force being siphoned. Viscous pink energy began to pull free from his back, drawn into Blackbeard's greedy palms. A wave of Conqueror's Haki erupted from Gunnar, fighting off the soul extraction, but he couldn't stop the darkness.
The Yami Yami no Mi didn't just nullify. It corrupted. It burned. Where Blackbeard's hands touched him, Gunnar's rocky, lava-filled hide didn't just cool; it turned a dead, necrotic black, the stone crumbling into dust. His ice side didn't just melt; it cracked and fissured, turning a sickly, grey color.
With a final, desperate roar, Gunnar threw himself backward, dislodging Blackbeard and crashing his own fifty-foot frame onto the ground to crush his foe. But Blackbeard had already melted into the shadows, reappearing a safe distance away, panting and clutching the wisps of soul-energy he'd managed to steal, absorbing them to mend his broken ribs.
Gunnar staggered back to his feet. His titan form was failing, flickering. Across his back were two massive, hand-shaped scars of dead, black earth and shattered, grey ice—wounds that would never heal, brands of absolute darkness.
The titan form receded, steam pouring off Gunnar as he shrank back to his human size, landing on one knee, panting and bleeding.
"You broke my crew," Gunnar growled, his voice a low, guttural rasp. He touched the raw, burning scars on his back. "You scarred me."
"Zehahaha! I'll take more than your scars!" Blackbeard roared, charging again.
"You defiled my family," Gunnar whispered, and he met the charge.
It was no longer a battle of titans and powers. It was a dogfight. Gunnar, his body battered, threw a punch that carried the ghost of a quake, cracking the air. Blackbeard met it with a darkness-shrouded fist. They traded blows, each impact a sonic boom.
Gunnar's fist smashed into Blackbeard's jaw, sending a tooth flying. Blackbeard's claws raked across Gunnar's chest, leaving four deep, bleeding gouges. Gunnar drove an elbow into Blackbeard's already broken ribs, eliciting a wet scream of pain. Blackbeard headbutted Gunnar, and the world swam for a moment.
They broke apart, two ruined men standing in a ruined world. They were panting, bleeding, swaying on their feet.
"I'm tired of your laugh," Gunnar spat, wiping blood from his lips.
"I'm tired of your face," Blackbeard snarled back.
They summoned the last of their strength, the dregs of their Haki, the final embers of their will. They didn't even yell. Their gazes locked, a silent promise of mutual annihilation.
Gunnar's right fist ignited, not just with the white aura of a quake, but with the swirling fury of lava and ice, a microcosm of his titan form concentrated into a single point. "Caldera Crash!"
Blackbeard's fist was engulfed in a perfect sphere of absolute darkness, a miniature black hole that promised nothingness. "Abyssal End!"
They threw the final punch.
There was a moment of perfect, terrifying silence as the two fists met.
Then the world ended.
A dome of pure, silent energy—black and white, fire and ice—erupted from the point of impact. It didn't make a sound; it simply erased everything it touched. The ground, the sky, the air itself—it all vaporized into non-existence. The shockwave that followed was a physical thing, a wave of force that sent even Marco and Smoothie, miles away, tumbling to the ground.
In the newly formed, perfectly smooth, glass-lined crater, two figures lay broken.
A minute passed. Then another.
Slowly, painfully, one figure stirred. With a groan that was the sound of a thousand broken bones grinding together, Gunnar pushed himself to his hands and knees. His body was a tapestry of blood and bruises, the black scars on his back a stark testament to his ordeal. He trembled, every muscle screaming, but he pushed. He got one foot under him. Then the other.
He stood. Swaying, bleeding, but standing.
He looked down. Marshall D. Teach lay unconscious, his face frozen in a silent snarl, his darkness extinguished. For the first time in a long time, the world was quiet of his laughter.
Gunnar looked at the broken Emperor, then up at the fractured sky. He took a single, ragged breath.
"The age of thieves," he rasped to the wind, "is over."
The cold was a tangible thing, a violation that seeped past skin and muscle to settle deep in Ace's bones. He lay broken on the frozen ground, his arm a shattered wreck, his flames a pathetic flicker. Above him, Kuzan stood, an impassive god of winter, the victor looking down at the vanquished.
"I have others to deal with," Kuzan's voice was flat, devoid of the lazy drawl it held before. It was the voice of a man finishing a task. "Your fire has gone out, Portgas D. Ace. This will end now."
He raised his good arm, and the air around his hand condensed into a long, brutally sharp blade of black ice, imbued with a Haki so potent it seemed to suck the very light from the air. He was going to execute him.
Ace stared up at the descending blade, and something inside him didn't just break—it shattered into incandescent rage. It wasn't the fear of death. He'd faced that before. It was the humiliation. The powerlessness. He had failed. He had failed Gunnar, failed Katakuri who had sacrificed himself, failed Jozu and Vista who lay defeated. He was going to die here as an afterthought, a footnote in a bigger battle.
No.
The thought was not a word, but a primal scream in his soul.
My fire... has NOT gone out.
He remembered his father, a man he never knew but whose blood sang a song of defiance in his veins. He remembered his other father, Whitebeard, who taught him the meaning of family. He remembered Gunnar, his brother, who had placed his faith in him.
I REFUSE TO BE AN OBSTACLE! I AM A WILDFIRE! I AM THE SON OF WHITEBEARD! I AM A COMMANDER OF THE BLOODLINE PIRATES!
"I REFUSE!"
The scream tore from his throat, and the world ignited.
It was not a normal flame. The ground beneath Ace didn't just scorch; it liquefied, turning into a swirling vortex of pure, white-hot magma. The air didn't just heat up; it became a shimmering haze of plasma. The pathetic embers on Ace's body erupted into a sun.
His broken arm, encased in a prison of ice, exploded in a shower of steam as the bones were forcibly welded back together by a fire so hot it defied nature. His body rose from the ground, no longer just coated in fire, but seemingly made of it. His flames were a terrifying, brilliant white, with a core of pure, shimmering black. This was not the Mera Mera no Mi. This was its soul, unleashed.
This was his Awakening.
Kuzan, whose ice blade was inches from Ace's neck, was thrown back by a wave of pure thermal energy. He landed fifty feet away, his expression of cold finality replaced by one of utter, stunned disbelief. The ground around Ace was no longer ice; it was a miniature volcano, a personal hell that was actively unmaking the frozen landscape.
"Ara ra..." Kuzan breathed, a genuine shock in his voice for the first time. "What is this?"
Ace stood, his body now a terrifying avatar of solar fury. His eyes were no longer black, but glowing, white-hot orbs. "This," his voice echoed, layered and distorted by the sheer power radiating from him, "is my answer."
The battle of equals began.
"You want cold?" Ace roared, slamming his hand on the ground. A wave of molten rock, a tsunami of magma, surged towards Kuzan. "Great Eruption: Purgatory!"
Kuzan's face hardened. He was no longer fighting a reckless youth; he was fighting a natural disaster. He met the magma wave with his own ultimate power. He plunged his hands into the ice. "Deep Freeze: Black Ice."
The ice that surged forward to meet the magma was no longer white or clear. It was a deep, glossy, obsidian black, a manifestation of absolute zero. The two elemental tides crashed into each other with a sound like the world tearing in half. Magma flash-hardened into jagged spires of obsidian. Black ice was instantly vaporized into clouds of scalding steam so dense it blotted out the sky.
The battlefield became a chaotic warzone of hissing steam, glowing magma flows, and creeping black glaciers.
"Not bad," Kuzan stated, his voice now grim and focused. He launched himself forward, skating on a path of his own ice. "Ice Blade: Zero Kelvin." His arm became a blade of his new black ice, and he swung it at Ace's head.
Ace didn't dodge. He raised his own arm, which became a whip of black-and-white solar fire. "Solar Flare: Sun-Eater."
The whip met the blade. The clash created no sound, only a flash of blinding light and a shockwave of pure, contradictory energy that vaporized everything in a fifty-foot radius.
They were equals. A living sun against a walking ice age.
Kuzan stomped his foot, and a dozen colossal golems of black ice, each one thirty feet tall, clawed their way from the ground, their eyes glowing with a cold, blue light. They charged Ace in unison.
Ace laughed, a sound like cracking embers. He didn't fire a single projectile. He simply spread his arms, and the very ground the golems walked on turned to magma, swallowing them whole. They sank into the molten earth, their forms melting and dissolving before they could take another step.
"My turn!" Ace bellowed. He pointed a finger at Kuzan. "Black Sun: Starfall."
From the sky, spheres of black and white fire began to rain down, each one a miniature sun that detonated with cataclysmic force. The battlefield was carpeted in explosions, each one powerful enough to level a fortress.
Kuzan was forced into a full-body defense. "Ice Dome: Absolute." He created a massive, multi-layered dome of black ice over himself, the star-blasts hammering against it, sending cracks spiderwebbing across its surface but failing to break through.
They broke apart, panting, standing in the ruin they had created. Ace's Solaris form was a massive drain, and Kuzan's black ice took a similar toll. They could hurt each other. They could match each other. But neither could land the final blow. Ace's fire was too hot to be frozen completely. Kuzan's ice was too absolute to be melted entirely. It was a perfect, infuriating stalemate.
Why? Ace thought, his rage cooling into a sharp, focused frustration. I have this power... I've awakened it! Why can't I break him?! Why isn't this enough?!
His flames pulsed, and he prepared for another charge, ready to throw himself against that unbreakable wall of ice until one of them ceased to exist.
And in that moment of desperation, a memory surfaced. A quiet night on the deck of the Moby Dick, the stars bright above. He was sparring with Gunnar, and had been complaining about hitting a plateau.
"Your fire is strong, Ace," Gunnar had said, taking a long swallow of sake. "Stronger than almost anyone's. But you're just making it hotter. Bigger. That's only one way to grow."
"What other way is there?" Ace had asked, frustrated.
Gunnar had looked at him then, his golden eyes serious. "You have it. The Conqueror's Haki. The disposition of a king. Right now, you use it to make fodder faint. But that's like using a cannon to swat a fly. Its true purpose... is something else entirely."
He had held up his own fist, and for a split second, an invisible, overwhelming pressure had coated it, so dense Ace could almost see it.
"One day, you'll learn to take that will... your ambition... and wrap it around your fists. Infuse it into your attacks. It's not Haki on top of a punch. The Haki is the punch. It bypasses defenses. It attacks with a force that has nothing to do with heat or cold or sharpness. It's an attack of pure will. It's another level of power, Ace. A level where true emperors fight."
The memory ended. Ace stood in the heart of his inferno, his awakened flames a testament to his immense power. He looked at his own hands, wreathed in solar fire. Then he looked at Kuzan, the man he could not defeat.
He had the heat. He had the power. But he was missing the will. He didn't know how to take that final step, how to infuse his very soul into his fire.
He had reached the summit, only to see another, impossibly higher peak shrouded in the clouds. And he didn't know how to climb it.