Chapter Text
The war echoed in Edward Newgate's chest like the beating of a dying heart.
Marineford was nothing more than a charnel house of shattered ice, pulverized stone, and boiling blood. The air smelled of sulfur, burned flesh, and sea salt. Whitebeard, his fist clenched tightly around the shaft of his bisento, spat a dark clot of blood onto the devastated ground of the square. His body was now nothing but an assembly of searing pain. Squard's betrayal burned in his guts, and Akainu's magma had torn away part of his torso. He knew this was his final journey. He had accepted it the moment the Moby Dick had pierced the waters of the bay.
But victory was there. His tired but piercing golden eyes fixed on the silhouette of fire dancing amid the ruins.
Ace was free.
The kid with the straw hat, Dragon's son, the heir to the Will of D., that insolent little prodigy, had done it. Through the chaos, the Admirals, the Warlords, and the failed executions, he had broken the chains of his big brother. Whitebeard let a faint smile stretch his cracked lips. The future was safe. His sons would live.
"Get out of here!" roared the old Emperor, his voice amplified by his Devil Fruit to cover the roar of the cannons. "Don't look back! This is my final order!"
He struck the air with his fist, cracking space itself. The shockwave devastated what remained of the Marine fortress, cutting off the pursuers' path. He was ready to sink with this island.
Then, the world tilted.
It all started with a provocation. A miserable sentence spat by Sakazuki amid the flames and smoke. Whitebeard couldn't hear the exact words, but he saw Ace stop dead in his tracks.
*No, you idiot. Don't turn around,* thought Newgate, anguish gripping what was left of his heart.
But Roger's blood flowed in Ace's veins. A cursed blood that refused to flee in the face of an insult. The young commander threw himself at the Red Dog. The confrontation was brief. Fire could do nothing against magma. Ace was thrown backward, burned by his own natural element.
That was when disaster struck. The little straw-hat boy, at the end of his strength, his muscles destroyed by Ivankov's hormones and exhaustion, collapsed to his knees. Ace's life card slipped from his trembling fingers.
Akainu no longer sought Ace. His eyes had settled on a far more dangerous target for the future of the Marine. The boiling magma on his arm stretched, forming a gigantic, incandescent fist radiating deadly heat.
"The Devil's son first!" roared the Admiral as he propelled his fist toward the kneeling boy.
Whitebeard wanted to move. He tensed his legs to leap, to interpose himself, to crush Akainu's skull before the irreparable happened. But his body betrayed him. A searing pain, like an invisible blade, pierced his chest. His heart stopped for a fraction of a second, paralyzing him and forcing him to drop to one knee while spitting out a pool of blood.
Too far.
He saw Ace scream, his face twisted in terror, and dive to interpose himself. But Ace's exhaustion and surprise made him too slow. A fraction of a second too slow.
There was a dull, wet, sickening sound. The sound of flesh vaporized and bones reduced to ashes.
Silence fell over Marineford. A silence so heavy it seemed to suck in the sound of the cannons, the pirates' cries, and the crash of the ocean.
Admiral Akainu's magma fist had pierced Monkey D. Luffy's chest straight through.
The straw hat flew off slowly, almost gracefully, before falling into a pool of steaming blood. The young boy, eyes wide open and gaze empty, spat a fountain of blood onto Ace's face as he finally reached him, hands outstretched into emptiness.
Whitebeard stopped breathing. Jinbe screamed something unintelligible. Garp, at the top of the ruined scaffolding, let out a guttural cry of agony before being pinned to the ground by Sengoku.
Akainu withdrew his arm with cold contempt. The frail body of the young pirate collapsed heavily into Ace's trembling arms.
"L... Luffy?" murmured Ace. His voice was nothing but a hoarse breath, pathetic in the immensity of the battlefield.
He cradled his little brother's body. His hands, covered in Luffy's blood, pressed uselessly on the gaping hole where the organs had been consumed.
"Luffy, hey... stop your bullshit. Open your eyes."
Whitebeard looked at his adoptive son. What he saw no longer resembled a man. Ace was frozen. Whitebeard felt a burning tear slide down his wrinkled cheek.
Then, the temperature of the air changed.
Whitebeard, though accustomed to the extreme elements of the Grand Line, felt his skin suddenly dry out. The ice from Aokiji that still covered the bay began to melt at a terrifying speed, turning into hissing steam.
Around Ace, the fire awakened. But it was no longer the joyful, warm, and solar flames the crew knew.
The orange turned to blue, then, in a shrill scream that sounded like an overheated engine, the flames became pure white. A blinding, incandescent, monstrous white.
An invisible shockwave swept across the square. But it was not the domineering will of a king seeking to reign. It was a heavy, suffocating Haki, imbued with a hatred so deep that several Marines and pirates around him died on the spot, their hearts literally stopped by terror before they even fainted.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Ace's scream tore through the heavens. It was not human. It was the cry of a beast being disemboweled alive. The white fire exploded in the form of a titanic pillar, piercing the clouds. The heat was such that the stone of Marineford began to glow red before liquefying. The sand turned to glass. The air became deadly toxic to breathe.
Akainu himself, the magma man, had to step back, protecting his face with his arms. The heat emitted by Ace exceeded the temperature of molten rock. It was the heat of a dying star.
"Ace!" shouted Marco as he dove from the sky, his blue phoenix flames struggling not to be consumed by the immaculate inferno ravaging the square.
But Ace did not hear him. He gently laid Luffy's body on the vitrified ground, where, curiously, the flames refused to burn. Then he stood up. His eyes had lost all pupils, all humanity. There were only two wells of white light, of pure madness.
He raised a hand toward Akainu, and a condensed beam of light shot out at lightning speed. There was no explosion, just a high-pitched whistle. The beam pierced the Admiral's shoulder, instantly cauterizing the wound while carbonizing the flesh around the molten rock. Sakazuki screamed in pain, shocked to see his Logia pierced so easily.
Whitebeard understood with horror that death had not claimed only one life today.
He raised his bisento to intervene, to stop his son before he destroyed what remained of the crew in his madness, when the sky cracked.
Long red and black lightning tore through the celestial vault, streaking the clouds like scars. The ocean itself seemed to groan under a sudden and crushing pressure. The wind died, replaced by an aura of unprecedented violence.
A ship had just broken the blockade line. The Red Force.
On the figurehead, a man stood upright. His black coat fluttered heavily. His red hair hid his eyes. Shanks had arrived.
Whitebeard felt the pressure even before the Red-Hair set foot on land. Shanks' Conqueror's Haki was not desperate like Ace's. It was directed, absolute, and of a glacial fury. The moment Shanks saw the corpse of the boy he had saved years earlier, the boy to whom he had entrusted an Emperor's arm and his own captain's hat... the world held its breath.
Shanks descended from the ship. Each of his steps made the earth tremble. The buildings of Marineford, already weakened by Whitebeard, began to collapse under the mere physical presence of his aura. Hundreds, then thousands of Marines fell, foam at their lips, felled by a will far too powerful for mortals. Even the Vice Admirals had to drop to one knee, struggling to breathe.
He walked past Whitebeard's commanders, ignoring the war, ignoring the Admirals, to stop a few meters from Ace's white fire. Shanks knelt near Luffy's body. His hands trembled slightly as he picked up the blood-stained straw hat.
He brushed it with a gentleness that contrasted horribly with the murderous aura emanating from him. He placed the hat on the young boy's motionless chest.
Then Shanks stood up and turned his single arm toward the scaffold. His eyes were not sad. They were black with rage. An ancient, deep rage, a rage capable of drowning the entire world.
"Sengoku."
The voice of the red-haired Emperor was not loud, but it resonated in the skull of every living being present on the island.
"You have just crossed a point of no return," declared Shanks, his sword Griffon halfway out of its sheath. His Haki thickened, cracking the air like glass.
Kizaru and Aokiji froze. Even Akainu, his hand on his shoulder mutilated by Ace, hesitated.
"I came to end this war," Shanks continued, his gaze sweeping over the Marine executives. "But the time for diplomacy just died with this boy. If you want to keep fighting... then come. We will be your opponents."
He drew his sword fully. The Red-Hair's crew deployed behind him. Benn Beckman aimed his rifle at Kizaru, Yasopp at the Marine snipers, Lucky Roux placed a hand on his weapon. They were not smiling. They had come for an execution.
"And the World Government will hear my declaration," added Shanks, his voice vibrating. "You killed him. You will pay the price. I declare war on you. On all of you."
Sengoku, the Buddha, clenching his teeth hard enough to bleed his gums, surveyed the battlefield. Marineford was destroyed. His men were exhausted. Whitebeard was gravely wounded but still capable of destroying the island. And now Shanks the Red-Hair, in a murderous anger he had never seen before, threatened to annihilate what remained of the world order.
But Sengoku especially looked at Ace. The young pirate with the white flames continued advancing toward the Marines, incinerating everything that dared enter his field of vision. He paid attention to no one. He walked, crying tears that evaporated instantly, and killed.
"It's over!" shouted Sengoku. "All wounded are to be evacuated! The Marine is withdrawing! The war is finished!"
A stunned silence followed this order, quickly replaced by the chaos of the retreat.
Shanks did not sheath his weapon. He turned toward Whitebeard, his face still closed.
"Leave, Edward," spat the Red-Hair. "Your era ends today. Don't waste the little life you have left. Get on that damned ship with your sons."
Whitebeard gritted his teeth. The Emperor's instinct screamed at him to stay, to crush the island until nothing remained, to avenge the boy who had stood up to him with such audacity. But his body reminded him of the order of things. And more importantly, he saw his own sons — Marco, Jozu, Vista — bloodied, exhausted, broken by grief. If he continued, they would all die.
"Pops..." murmured Marco, landing near him, his wings trembling. "We have to leave."
Marco stopped. His eyes were fixed on Ace. The young commander, haloed by his spectral flames, had just pulverized a group of Pacifistas with a single sweep of his hand. He was moving away from the square, walking toward the interior of the burned lands, sinking into the toxic mist of his own creation. He was abandoning his crew. He was abandoning his father.
"Ace..." murmured Whitebeard.
He took a step, but his knees buckled. A bloody cough shook him violently. Death hovered near him, delayed only by his legendary stubbornness.
Shanks approached Marco.
"Let him go for now. You can't approach him without getting incinerated. His mind is gone, Marco. He wouldn't even recognize you."
"Shut up, Red-Hair!" snapped the Phoenix, tears of frustration flowing down his soot-covered cheeks. "He's my little brother! I won't leave him alone in this hell!"
Whitebeard placed a massive hand on Marco's shoulder, stopping the argument. The Emperor raised his head, his gaze heavy with all the sadness in the world. He had just lost. Not the war. But he had lost his dream. The family he had built was crumbling under the ashes of Marineford.
"Listen to me, Marco," growled Whitebeard softly.
Marco froze, struck by the weakness in the voice of the strongest man in the world.
"Help the others board. Bring my sons to safety. Once you are far from this cursed place..."
The Emperor planted the handle of his bisento into the ground and stared straight into his second commander's eyes.
"Go find him. Bring him back to me. Bring my son home, Marco. Don't let him get lost in the darkness."
Marco swallowed a sob and nodded, his fists clenched so tightly his palms bled.
Whitebeard cast one last look at Ace's incandescent silhouette disappearing into the smoke, an immaculate angel of death mourning a lost brother. Then he looked at the corpse of the straw-hat boy, now covered with a Marine coat hastily placed there by a certain white-haired Vice Admiral who was crying in silence.
The era would not change today. It had just burned. And from its ashes, only madness would be reborn.
---
The Moby Dick, once the symbol of uncontested power reigning over the seas, was fleeing.
Its immense paddle wheels beat the boiling water of Marineford Bay with the energy of despair. On deck, the air was saturated with the metallic smell of blood, the acrid scent of gunpowder, and the groans of agony. Marco the Phoenix ran from one end of the ship to the other, breathing hard, his hands covered in his brothers' blood. He had just helped Jozu hoist an unconscious Haruta over the railing. Everywhere his gaze fell, there were only mutilated bodies, faces blackened by soot, and tears streaking dirty cheeks.
Whitebeard was sitting heavily near the main mast, surrounded by a close guard of commanders terrified by his pallor. The old Emperor was breathing with a wet rattle, his torso horrifically hollowed out by Akainu's magma. Yet his eyes remained fixed on the distant shore, where a blinding, unnatural white glow continued to pierce the thick toxic smoke.
"All clear! Everyone's on board!" shouted Vista, his chipped swords in hand. "Prepare to dive!"
Marco nodded. He felt his own wounds burning, but his Devil Fruit slowly regenerated his flesh under a soft bluish halo. He approached the edge of the ship, his arms covering themselves with brilliant azure feathers.
"Marco!"
A firm hand grabbed his wrist. Izou looked at him, his face twisted by an anguish the samurai rarely showed. Izou's makeup had run with sweat and tears, giving him a spectral appearance.
"You're going back, aren't you?" asked the 16th division commander, his voice trembling.
"It's Pops' order," replied Marco in a hollow voice. "And it's my duty. I'm the second in command of this ship. I bring everyone home."
"You saw him, Marco..." murmured Izou, tightening his grip painfully. "That's no longer Ace's fire. That's no longer... him. Don't die for a ghost. Please."
Marco forced a sad smile, gently patting his brother-in-arms' hand to free himself.
"If I don't come back, take care of the old man."
Without waiting for a reply, Marco leaped into the air. His blue flame wings deployed majestically, beating the heavy air of Marineford. He gained altitude, flying over the war zone they were leaving behind.
Shanks the Red-Hair's ship, the Red Force, still blocked the bay, holding the remaining Marine ships in check by the sole pressure of its captain's aura. Marco desperately searched for a familiar silhouette on the execution square, where the world had tilted.
He saw only the steaming pool of blood.
The body of the little straw-hat boy was no longer there. Marco narrowed his eyes through the smoke. Garp. That was the only logical explanation. Sengoku must have let him take his grandson's remains before the battle degenerated further. The very idea of that family mourning crushed Marco's heart, but he had to stay focused.
He pivoted mid-flight, following the trail of destruction. The temperature rose sharply as he plunged toward the rear of Marineford, where the troops had retreated under Sengoku's order.
What he saw from the sky froze him with dread, despite the surrounding inferno.
Marineford was not merely destroyed, it was erased. The trail left by Ace was not a line of ashes, but a road of glass. Stone, brick, and steel had melted and solidified under the effect of a heat beyond comprehension.
Marco dove toward a grouping of white tents marked with blue crosses. The Marine field hospital. Where doctors were desperately trying to save the thousands of soldiers wounded by Whitebeard's earthquakes.
An explosion of immaculate light burst from one of the tents, vaporizing it instantly.
Marco landed heavily on the vitrified ground, his talons scraping the smooth surface. He froze.
Before him, Ace walked among the overturned camp beds. But this was no longer the proud man who wore Whitebeard's symbol. His skin was cracked, as if cooked from within. His dark hair seemed to float in inverted gravity due to the overheated air. From his body emanated a silent, deadly white blaze. There was no longer any joyful crackling, just a high-pitched hum, the sound of unstable and destructive energy.
At his feet lay dozens of bodies. They were not combatants. They were Marine doctors, tearful nurses, and amputated or unconscious soldiers who had had no chance to flee.
"No..." murmured Marco, his throat tight. "Ace, no..."
A Marine doctor, his face covered in blood, crawled on the ground screaming in terror. He reached out, begging for his life. Ace slowly turned his head toward him. His eyes were nothing more than two wells of white light, devoid of irises, pupils, or soul.
Ace raised a finger. A condensed beam of light shot out at rifle-bullet speed. It pierced the doctor's skull in a silent flash, leaving a perfect hole with carbonized edges. The man collapsed, dead before he even hit the ground.
"ACE!" shouted Marco, his voice breaking with despair.
The young pirate stopped. He slowly pivoted toward the first division commander. There was no spark of recognition in that immaculate gaze. Ace tilted his head slightly to the side, as if observing a noisy insect.
"It's over!" cried Marco, reverting to human form and advancing with a slow step, hands raised to show he was not a threat. "The war is over, little brother. Sengoku ordered the retreat. Shanks is here, he covered our escape. Pops is alive, Ace. He's waiting for you. We're all waiting for you. Come with me. We're going home."
Ace remained motionless. Then his lips cracked, bleeding from the heat of his own skin, forming a smile that had nothing human about it. It was the rictus of a damned soul.
"Home?"
Ace's voice was unrecognizable. It was double, resonating with a metallic echo, distorted by the inferno consuming his vocal cords.
"My home is dead."
He raised both hands. The air around Marco suddenly became so heavy that he felt as if his lungs were being crushed. The oxygen was literally being consumed.
"Ace, listen to me!" Marco almost sobbed, feeling panic take hold. "Don't do this! Don't cross that line! If you kill these innocents, if you kill these wounded, you are no longer a pirate, you are no longer one of us! You become what they have always said you were! You become a monster!"
"Then let the world burn with the monster," replied the voice from beyond the grave.
A wave of white flames crashed down on Marco.
The Phoenix reacted on instinct. He crossed his arms and surrounded himself with his curative blue flames, forming a spherical shield. The impact was hellish. The ground beneath Marco's feet liquefied instantly.
An indescribable pain tore a scream from him.
His blue flames, supposed to protect him from any physical attack, did not heal the burn. Ace's fire heat was so absolute that it consumed the regeneration power itself. Marco felt his flesh blister, melt, and rebuild at a frantic speed, creating an unbearable cyclic agony.
"Stop!" roared Marco, pushing back the wave of fire with a beat of his wings.
He had to subdue him. He had to knock him out and carry him by force.
Marco dove. His speed was dizzying. He concentrated his Observation Haki to the maximum to anticipate Ace's movements. He extended his right talon, coated in powerful Armament Haki, aiming for the back of his brother's neck to plunge him into unconsciousness.
Ace didn't even try to dodge. He let himself be struck.
Marco's talon struck Ace's nape with the force of a cannonball. But instead of sinking into the flesh or knocking the young man out, the impact triggered an explosion of Conqueror's Haki. A discharge of red and black energy crackled around Ace's incandescent body.
Marco felt his Armament Haki give way. His talon, though reinforced, began to melt. The pain hit him like a stab to the skull. He screamed and retreated hastily, looking at his hand in horror. The blue feathers had disappeared, replaced by blackened bones that struggled terribly to regenerate.
"What... what have you become?" murmured Marco, panting, cold sweats running down his feverish forehead.
Ace turned toward him. His face was impassive, a statue of incandescent porcelain shedding tears that evaporated before touching his chin.
"You're in my way, blue bird," declared Ace.
He extended his arm. From his index finger shot a thread of white light, thin as a silk strand. Marco beat his wings to rise, but the beam followed him with precision. The thread of light pierced Marco's right wing.
Marco looked at his wing. A perfect hole the size of an apple had gone through it. And the flesh around it was not regenerating. The edges of the wound were cauterized, dead.
Panic seized the commander. He lost his balance and crashed heavily onto the vitrified ground, rolling several meters among the corpses of the doctors. He spat a mouthful of black blood.
He heard slow footsteps. Ace's boots, spared by a subconscious manipulation of his fruit, trod the ground. He stopped above Marco. The heat radiating from his body burned the Phoenix's clothes, singeing his skin.
Marco, lying on his back, looked up at the silhouette of light. He no longer saw his brother.
Ace raised his foot, enveloping it in Haki and white flames, ready to crush the skull of the man who had welcomed him aboard the Moby Dick years earlier. Marco closed his eyes. He had failed. He had not been able to protect the crew's little brother.
Forgive me, Pops.
"ROOM."
A bluish, translucent bubble suddenly appeared, encompassing the destroyed square, the corpses, Marco, and Ace. The air vibrated with a strange, almost medical energy, different from the surrounding chaos.
Ace lowered his foot with titanic force.
"Shambles."
The world pivoted.
Ace's incandescent boot crushed a carbonized rock, atomizing it in an explosion of light. Marco opened his eyes. He was no longer under Ace's foot. He was twenty meters away, slumped against the ruins of a stone wall, his wing dangling and bloody.
Before him stood an unexpected figure.
A tall man, wearing a yellow and black hooded sweatshirt, with a long katana slung over his shoulder. His spotted hat cast an ominous shadow over his face with pronounced dark circles.
Trafalgar Law, the Surgeon of Death, slowly sheathed his nodachi, Kikoku, by an inch.
Ace turned his head, his wells of light fixed on the intruder. An inhuman growl emerged from his throat, like a wild beast just deprived of its prey. The temperature rose another notch. The ground around Ace began to liquefy again, forming a pool of glassy magma.
"You're crashing the wrong dance, Supernova," spat Marco through gritted teeth, struggling to get up. "Run. He'll kill you in a second."
Law did not look at Marco. His cold, gray, calculating eyes remained fixed on the human torch that threatened to vaporize them. He showed no fear, only an almost clinical observation of the anomaly standing before him.
"Portgas-ya," Law called calmly, his voice resonating in the blue dome of his Room.
Ace did not respond, but he raised a hand, preparing another concentrated beam of light aimed directly at the surgeon's heart.
"I knew the Straw Hat kid," continued Law, his tone remarkably flat in the face of imminent death.
Ace's hand trembled imperceptibly. The mention of that name seemed to pierce the fog of his madness for a fraction of a second. The light in his eyes flickered, briefly revealing pupils dilated by madness and grief.
"He was a noisy and reckless idiot," continued Law, keeping his hands in his pockets except for the one maintaining the balance of his technique. "But he had a certain... dignity."
Ace let out a heart-wrenching cry. It was not rage, it was the pure expression of intolerable suffering. His fire flared, forming a terrifying aura around him.
"I'm not your enemy, Portgas-ya," declared Law in a louder voice, cutting off the beast's lamentations.
Law raised his free hand, palm turned toward Ace in a sign of appeasement, or perhaps silent defiance.
"I don't care what you do to this island. I don't care about the corpses you leave behind. I hate the Marine and everything this rotten Government represents just as deeply."
Law tilted his head, his piercing gaze probing the inner darkness of Ace.
"If you want to burn this world down to the last clay brick, I won't stop you. But your former crew is dying. That guy over there," Law said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward Marco, "needs a doctor before his power consumes him completely. I'm taking him with me."
Ace stared at Law for long seconds. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the hiss of molten rock. Marco held his breath, ready to use his last ounce of strength to propel Law out of the way if Ace decided to attack.
But the attack did not come.
Ace lowered his arm. His face closed again, losing all trace of human emotion. He let out a low growl, a deep rumble that shook the ruins around them.
Then he turned away.
He completely ignored the existence of Marco and Trafalgar Law. He resumed his slow, heavy walk, sinking deeper into the lands of Marineford. His white flames stretched toward new buildings, toward distant screams of Marines who had not yet been able to flee. He was returning to his work of death, an exterminating angel obsessed with a mission only he understood.
Law watched the silhouette disappear into a cloud of toxic ashes before releasing his technique. The blue dome vanished. He turned to Marco with an impassive expression.
"Impressive," commented the Surgeon of Death dryly as he looked at the commander's injured wing. "A fire capable of canceling the effects of the Mythical Zoan. His psychological trauma forced a pathological evolution of his Devil Fruit. It's fascinating from a medical point of view. And terrifying from a survival point of view."
"Why...?" panted Marco, holding his ribs as he fell to his knees. "Why are you here, Trafalgar? Why did you let him go?"
"I came looking for potential allies or opportunities in the chaos," replied Law as he approached Marco and knelt beside him. "The Straw Hat kid interested me. His death changes my plans. As for your brother..."
Law looked at the road of molten glass left by Ace.
"You don't stop a natural disaster, Phoenix-ya. You step aside. Now shut up. If I don't stitch this wing and excise the necrotic tissue, you'll end up one-armed."
"I can't leave him..." murmured Marco, tears finally flowing down his cheeks, a mix of physical pain and devastating grief. "I promised him... to Pops..."
"Whitebeard is a dying old man clinging to ghosts," Law cut in with a glacial tone, opening his medical kit that seemed to have appeared from nowhere thanks to his power. "The Portgas D. Ace you knew died on that square, along with Monkey D. Luffy. The body you just fought is nothing but a burning coffin that refuses to close."
Marco wanted to protest, to strike this arrogant doctor, but exhaustion and blood loss got the better of him. His vision blurred, obscured by tears and pain. The last thing he saw before sinking into unconsciousness was the cold gleam of Trafalgar Law's scalpel, and in the distance, the monstrous glow of a white fire consuming the hope of the world.