The fall of Byrnndi World and Isshin Ashina cast a grim pallor over the ravaged courtyard, but it also narrowed the focus to a singular, terrifying point: Edward Weevil. He stood amidst the rubble, a mountain of muscle and rage, his eyes fixed on Ace and Gunnar with an intensity of utter annihilation. He was seemingly unfazed by the demigods falling around him.
Ace, Haki-flames blazing, was being systematically dismantled. Weevil's attacks were not just strong; they were crushing. Each blow from Weevil's Haki-coated fists carried the concussive force of a cannonball, and he swung with a relentless, terrifying speed. Ace's Observation Haki was the only thing keeping him from being instantly pulped, allowing him to make micro-dodges, to turn lethal blows into merely crippling ones.
"FLAME FENCE!" Ace roared, creating a circular wall of fire around himself, trying to buy a microsecond.
Weevil simply charged through it. The flames, even Haki-infused, parted around his immense, Haki-protected form like water around a boulder. He emerged, singed but undeterred, and delivered a thunderous right hook.
BOOM!
Ace, despite raising a Haki-flame guard, was sent flying, smashing through the already ruined remnants of a pagoda, coughing blood, his vision blurring. "Damn… it… he just… walks through… everything!"
Gunnar, witnessing Ace's desperate struggle, grit his teeth, forcing himself to his feet. The icy stitches in his midsection screamed in protest, threatening to tear anew. His Armament Haki was a flickering candle, his reserves almost dry. But Ace was fighting for him. He couldn't stay down.
"Weevil!" Gunnar bellowed, his voice hoarse. He slammed a fist, coated in a pathetic, sputtering layer of frost and weak Haki, into the ground. "ICE SPIKE TRAP!"
Jagged, man-sized icicles erupted from the stone around Weevil's feet. A normal opponent would have been impaled or at least severely hindered.
Weevil merely stomped.
CRACK-CRUNCH!
The Haki-infused strength in his legs shattered the ice spikes into powder. He didn't even break stride, his gaze fixed on the downed Ace, then shifting to Gunnar with a low, guttural growl that promised retribution.
"He's… he's a juggernaut…" Gunnar breathed, watching Weevil effortlessly negate his attack.
This was beyond anything they'd faced. Crocodile was cunning, World was tricky, but Weevil was raw, indomitable, apocalyptic power. The ground around him cracked and splintered with every step, his fists displaced air with visible force. He punched a looming section of wall that threatened to fall on him, and it disintegrated into dust.
Ace pushed himself out of the pagoda rubble, his body a symphony of pain. He saw Weevil advancing on Gunnar. No! Not again!
"Hey, Whiskers!" Ace yelled, launching a desperate HIKEN (FIRE FIST), smaller than usual, but infused with every last scrap of Haki he could muster.
Weevil, without even looking, backhanded the Fire Fist, extinguishing it with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. He then turned back to Gunnar, raising a fist the size of a small boulder, black Haki swirling around it like a vortex of doom.
This was it. Gunnar closed his eyes, bracing for the inevitable.
"NOT… ON… MY… WATCH!" Ace screamed, in rage and frustration. He didn't have the strength for another grand technique. He didn't have the reserves for a prolonged Haki battle. But he had will. And he had an idea, a desperate gamble.
He flashed towards Weevil, not with an attack, but with a burst of speed, placing himself directly between Weevil's descending fist and Gunnar. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, pouring every last iota of his Haki, his life force, into them. His flames erupted, not offensively, but defensively, compressing, hardening, forming a desperate, blazing shield. "GUNNAR! NOW! WHATEVER YOU HAVE LEFT!"
Weevil's fist, carrying the weight of a falling mountain, slammed into Ace's Haki-flame shield.
KRA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound was sickening. Ace's arms shattered, bones turning to powder. His Haki-flames were extinguished like a snuffed candle. Blood erupted from his mouth. He was driven into the ground, creating a new crater, his body broken. But he had bought Gunnar a second. A single, precious second.
Gunnar's eyes snapped open. Ace… broken… for him. The sight ignited a firestorm in his soul, a fusion of unimaginable grief and incandescent rage. The last vestiges of his strength, drawn from the deepest well of his being, surged. The faint, pale blue energy of the Gura Gura mimicry, resonated within him, catalyzed by his bond with Ace and the sheer injustice of Weevil's monstrous power.
His one good arm, coated in a final, desperate flare of black Armament Haki, crackled with that terrifying, world-breaking energy. He didn't aim for Weevil's body. He aimed for the ground beneath Weevil, focusing all his remaining power into that single, apocalyptic point.
Simultaneously, Ace, somehow, through sheer, inhuman willpower, lifted one shattered, flaming hand. It was a tiny flame, a mere flicker, but it was aimed directly at Weevil's eyes, infused with the last dregs of his Haki. Not to damage, but to distract. "BLINDING CINDER!"
The tiny, Haki-infused spark shot towards Weevil's face just as Gunnar's fist descended.
"THIS… IS FOR… ACE! FOR WHITEBEARD! GURA GURA… OBLIVION STRIKE!" Gunnar roared, his voice tearing.
Weevil, momentarily flinching from Ace's desperate spark, looked down just as Gunnar's fist connected with the stone directly beneath his feet.
CRACK-KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**
This wasn't just an earthquake. It was an unmaking.
The very fabric of the courtyard beneath Weevil shattered. Not into chunks, but into something resembling a gravitational implosion followed by an explosive, upward eruption. The air itself fractured, space warping around Gunnar's fist. The sky, already scarred, seemed to scream.
Weevil, standing directly on ground zero, was caught in the epicenter of a force that could shatter islands. His incredible Haki-infused resilience, his monstrous strength, was pitted against a power that defied conventional physics.
He roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony and surprise, as the ground beneath him turned into a maelstrom of destructive energy. His Haki flared, trying to protect him, but the concentrated Gura-force was too focused, too overwhelming.
His legs, despite their immense power, buckled. Fissures of pure destructive energy raced up his body. His Haki flickered and shattered like glass under a sledgehammer.
For the first time, Edward Weevil, the self-proclaimed son of Whitebeard, the monster who had walked through everything, was lifted off his feet, not by a punch, but by the very world beneath him betraying him, tearing him apart from below.
He was tossed into the air like a broken doll, spinning amidst a vortex of shattered earth and screaming air. The destructive Gura-energy pulsed one final time, a concentrated blast that struck him directly mid-air.
THWACK-BOOM!
Weevil's roar was cut short. His eyes, for the first time, showed not just rage, but a flicker of vacant shock. His colossal body went limp.
He crashed down into the epicenter of the devastation his own feet had occupied moments before, landing with a sickening, final thud amidst the pulverized stone and settling dust.
Silence.
A profound, echoing silence, broken only by Gunnar's ragged, choked gasps and the soft, almost inaudible whimpers of pain from the broken form of Ace.
Gunnar, his arm a mangled wreck, his vision fading to black, stared at Weevil's unmoving form. The monster… was still.
He had done it. They had done it.
Teamwork. Sacrifice. Sheer, bloody-minded refusal to die.
He collapsed fully, his consciousness winking out, a single, exhausted thought echoing in his mind: Ace… we… won…
The Great Courtyard of Ashina Castle, now a landscape of almost lunar devastation, was finally, truly, quiet. Three champions lay unconscious. Three invading warlords lay defeated.
The battle for Ashina Castle was over.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy, a suffocating blanket over the utter devastation of Ashina Castle's Great Courtyard. Dust, fine as powdered bone, drifted down like a macabre snowfall, coating the fallen warriors and the shattered remnants of a once-proud fortress.
Slowly, agonizingly, Ace pushed himself up. Every movement was an explosion of pain. His arms were mangled, his ribs felt like a bag of shattered glass, and his vision swam in and out of focus. He looked at Gunnar's still form, then at Isshin's, then at the truly silent behemoth that was Edward Weevil. A grim, bloody smile touched his lips.
"We… we actually did it…" he rasped, his voice barely a whisper.
He staggered to his feet, using a jagged piece of stone for support. His gaze swept over the wider courtyard. Below, the fighting had completely ceased. The remaining pirates of Crocodile's and World's crews, having witnessed the cataclysmic defeat of their seemingly invincible leaders, were frozen in terror. The straw hat ronins, battered and bloodied but still standing, stared up in awed disbelief.
Ace took a deep, shuddering breath, ignoring the daggers of pain. He channeled the last vestiges of his strength, his Devil Fruit flickering weakly, giving his voice an unnatural, echoing projection that carried across the silent battlefield.
"HEAR ME, INVADERS!" His voice, though strained, cut through the silence like a whip.
Every head snapped towards him.
"YOUR ALLIANCE… IS FINISHED!**"
A collective gasp rippled through the pirates.
"BYRNNDI WORLD… IS DEFEATED!"
More murmurs, now laced with panic.
"AND WEEVIL… HAS FALLEN!"
This last pronouncement, accompanied by a weak gesture towards Weevil's colossal, unmoving form, was the final nail in the coffin of the pirates' morale.
Ace straightened as much as his broken body would allow, his eyes, though shadowed with pain, blazing with a defiant fire.
"YOUR ALLIANCE IS BROKEN! YOUR LEADERS ARE GONE! THIS INVASION… IS OVER!"
For a moment, stunned silence. Then, chaos erupted among the pirate ranks.
"They're… they're all gone?"
"We're doomed!"
"Run! Every man for himself!"
The pirates, their chain of command shattered, their most powerful figures neutralized, broke. They turned to flee, a disorganized, terrified mob scrambling over the rubble, desperate to escape the cursed castle.
"DO NOT LET A SINGLE ONE ESCAPE!" Takeshi's voice roared from below, instantly galvanizing the straw hat ronins. "FOR ASHINA! FOR OUR FALLEN! CAPTURE THEM!"
The ronins, their weariness forgotten in the flush of impending victory, surged forward, cutting off escape routes, their katanas flashing as they began to systematically subdue the fleeing pirates. Shouts, clashes, and cries of surrender filled the air.
Ace watched, a grim satisfaction on his face. Then, his eyes, scanning the chaos, landed on a figure near the edge of the main dais, previously unnoticed in the larger conflagration.
Stussy.
She hadn't fled. She stood calmly, almost serenely, amidst the unfolding pandemonium, observing the scene with an unreadable, almost amused expression. She was surrounded, however. A tight circle of elite straw hat ronins, their blades glinting, had her pinned, their expressions wary but resolute.
"Guh…"
Ace pitched forward, his consciousness spiraling into blackness, the image of Stussy's enigmatic smile the last thing he saw before oblivion claimed him. He collapsed onto the bloodstained, ash-covered stones, another fallen champion in a battle that had claimed them all, one way or another.