"Jingengiri…!!!"
The blade screamed as it tore through the air, the sound like the world itself being split apart. A black ripple of lightning surged outward, a crescent slash so vast it seemed to sever heaven and earth. The skies shuddered—then cracked—parting into two as the circular wave of annihilation raced forward.
Rocks' instincts flared. His massive frame twisted at the last possible heartbeat, the slash carving past him and grazing the side of his neck. Though shallow, the strike forced him back, his saber ringing violently from the endless storm of clashes it had already endured.
"Not bad… not bad at all," Rocks growled, lips curling into a grin. Yet before he could spew his usual arrogance, a searing pain shot through his spine. His free hand flew to the back of his neck, where blood trickled from the graze Akatsuki had left.
The wound was minor. For a man like Rocks, such injuries normally closed within seconds, erased by his monstrous vitality and the unnatural powers of his Devil Fruit. But this time—the blood lingered. The flesh refused to knit. Something was interfering.
His eyes narrowed, that predatory glare finally shifting to the blade in my hand. Akatsuki pulsed with black lightning, threads of Conqueror's Haki writhing over its crimson-hued steel. He had suspected its peculiarity from the first clash, but now… now he understood. That weapon was not of this world. It was something other.
"Where did you get that cursed blade…?" Rocks demanded, his voice low and dangerous, his saber still coiled with abyssal mist and his own Haoshoku surging in response.
"Why?" I replied evenly, my smirk cutting through the air. "Is your Devil Fruit having trouble healing a scratch?"
The truth was simple—the cut meant nothing to his body. A shallow graze could never kill a monster like Rocks. But the fact it resisted his regeneration—that alone was enough to seed caution in him.
His gaze sharpened, analyzing every inch of Akatsuki. He knew steel when he saw it—and this was no ordinary metal. He recognized seastone infused into the blade, but worse… far worse, it reminded him of something he had seen before. That same unnatural crimson hue. That same unyielding texture.
It was like the Road Poneglyphs themselves—the four sacred stones that even the gods of the sea could not destroy. Ordinary Poneglyphs were indestructible, but the Road Poneglyphs were something beyond even that. And now here I stood, wielding a blade forged of that same impossible substance.
Rocks forced the thought aside, though the weight of it lingered at the back of his mind. For now, he had more important answers to rip from the young man standing defiantly before him.
Both of us hovered in the air, casually supported by our abilities. Below, the battlefield stretched far from Dressrosa, the blind swordsman's intervention having hurled us hundreds of miles away toward a neighboring chain of islands. Rocks turned slightly, his keen eye observing the carnage below.
The island chain had already become a molten wasteland. Linlin and Doflamingo were locked in a clash of monsters, their twin infernos—soul-flame and hell-flame—reducing everything in their path to ash.
"Tch…" Rocks grunted, irritation bleeding through his tone. He would've preferred to keep the battle closer to Dressrosa. That way, the brat would've been forced to split his attention—protecting his home while fighting. But the blind swordsman had performed a maneuver even Rocks hadn't foreseen. He had ripped the battlefield itself away. Rocks had planned to unleash his Haoshoku to counter the swordsman's gravity before the island was hurled, but his opponent hadn't given him a single opening.
"Just tell me what I want to know, Rosinante," Rocks finally said, his voice booming over the constant detonations from below. "Maybe it isn't too late for us to join hands. Tell me—how is it that you know about my son…?"
My eyes narrowed, but I said nothing. Down below, Linlin was proving more dangerous than ever. Last time, I had beaten her because she underestimated Akatsuki, never realizing the blade could bypass her defenses until it was too late. But now, her bloated frame had shed its sloth, moving lithe and sharp.
With the cursed regeneration of the Soul-Soul Fruit in tandem with the regeneration provided by Xebec's abilities, combined with her monstrous vitality, she was an unkillable titan. Against her, my brother was forced to match fire with fire, every clash splitting land and sea. Anyone without mastery of Haoshoku would already be ashes.
My attention shifted back to Rocks. His hawk-like eyes never left me. He was cautious now, restrained. If I had been any weaker, there would be no dialogue, no questions. My head would already be rolling at his feet. But the moment I spoke of his son—I had struck a nerve.
He still didn't know that I not only knew Xebec had a son—I knew exactly who he was, and where.
"You're testing my patience, brat…!" Rocks growled, his aura pressing outward like a storm front. I smirked back, unflinching. His threat rolled over me like a wave against a cliff.
Suddenly, I felt it—Xebec's observation haki flickered, just for the briefest fraction of a second. To anyone else, it might have been imperceptible. But in a duel of this scale, even a single wavering heartbeat was fatal.
Xebec faltered, his jaw tightening as he shook his head, trying to steady himself. But by then, I was already there. Using Soru, I closed the distance in a blur, both my blades drenched in crackling torrents of Conqueror's Haki.
"Two-Sword Style: Twin Dragons' Descent…!!!"
Akatsuki and Shusui came down in unison, their shrieking edges splitting not just air, but reality itself. The storm above howled and tore apart as two colossal black eastern dragons erupted into existence—one tracing the path of Akatsuki, its scales alight with searing black lightning, the other trailing Shusui, its body shrouded in a writhing fog of cursed steel. The dragons spiraled downward, descending from the heavens with open maws, their roars shaking the world as they sought to rend Xebec apart.
The sky itself seemed to recoil, the chaotic storm clouds splitting as if the heavens feared to touch the descent.
Xebec, who had faltered for a moment, snapped back with monstrous composure. His abyssal saber swung in a wide horizontal arc, abyssal mist and Haoshoku bursting outward like the maw of the void itself.
"Abyssal Severance!!!"
The blades did not even touch. Instead, at the exact point where their wills collided, a black halo exploded into existence. It pulsed violently, devouring sound, light, and matter alike. A miniature black hole of raw willpower hung in the air, pulling everything into its abyss.
The sea below buckled inward, spiraling upward like water dragged into the void. The sky above split apart in jagged streaks, lightning fracturing into unnatural geometries. The land trembled as if rejecting reality itself.
From the clash, black lightning erupted outward in jagged veins, crackling violently against the abyssal fog spewing from Xebec's blade. The world around us had become a dead zone—a sphere of annihilation where nothing could exist except our wills grinding against each other.
Every inch was destruction incarnate: lightning tearing, fog corroding, air screaming.
For what felt like an eternity, neither of us yielded. The dragons roared and pressed downward, their colossal bodies clawing at Xebec's void. The abyss writhed and lashed back, seeking to consume them. The sky warped, the sea recoiled, reality itself bent and screamed.
But then— Xebec buckled. His hastily mounted defense, monstrous though it was, could not withstand the full brunt of the descending world-rending strike. The abyss shattered, folding inward with a soundless implosion before detonating outward.
The shockwave hurled Xebec's massive frame through the sky like a broken kite, his body trailing abyssal mist as he was sent careening downward. He slammed into the nearest island with catastrophic force.
"BOOOOM!!!"
The impact was apocalyptic. The massive island cracked like porcelain beneath the blow, its core shattering as shockwaves radiated outward. Mountains crumbled, forests atomized, the very foundation of the land splintered. The sea surged in violent tsunamis as a cloud of pulverized stone and black lightning erupted into the sky.
And then—with a sound like the earth itself splitting—half the island collapsed in on itself, breaking apart into drifting slabs of rock that sank into the raging sea.
In the heart of the cataclysm, Xebec rose from the crater, his saber still clutched in hand, abyssal mist swirling furiously around him like a living storm. His body bore the scars of the clash, but his grin was still wide, feral, and hungry.
"Vohahahaha…!" Xebec's roar echoed from the depths of the crater, his laughter booming like thunder, shaking loose boulders from the fractured cliffs around him. He shrugged off dust and debris as though they were nothing more than cobwebs, his monstrous frame still radiating a suffocating aura of dominance. "It reminds me… of the time I fought Newgate. Perhaps he's the only other pirate alive who could cross blades with you…!"
His grin was wild, his eyes gleaming with feral joy. But I did not smile back. My frown deepened. Because I had felt it. Not through Observation Haki—no, this was different. This was my voice of all things. The resonance of my very soul had touched something within Xebec for the briefest heartbeat when he faltered earlier.
And in that fleeting moment, what I sensed was not Xebec.
Something else… someone else… was clawing at his essence, tearing at his soul in a violent struggle for dominance. It was like hearing two voices speaking at once from the same throat, two wills gnashing against each other, vying for control of the same body.
The Xebec before me was powerful, monstrous, but also unstable—like a man chained to a demon, straining to keep it from devouring him whole. He must have realized I noticed, for the gleam in his eye dimmed just slightly, his laughter cutting shorter than usual. His smirk twitched at the edges.
"So…" Xebec finally spoke, his voice steady, but I could hear the faint tremor beneath the abyssal bravado. He had already sheathed his saber, a deliberate gesture, as if continuing this clash risked more than either of us could afford. "I take it there'll be no cooperation between us…?"
His boots crunched against shattered stone as I landed softly at the crater's rim, my blades still at the ready. The abyss below him gaped like the mouth of the world itself.
"Well then," Xebec continued, flashing that feral grin again, though now it looked more like armor than truth. "How about… an agreement? You and I don't interfere with each other. The seas are wide enough, Rosinante. We share a mutual enemy—the World Government. Surely you don't want me as your enemy while you're busy trying to topple the gods, do you?"
His words slithered across the distance, calculated, probing. But I wasn't listening to his tongue. I was watching his soul. And I could see it—clear as day—that he was stalling.
Xebec's immense will was locked in a silent war against the invader clawing at him from within. His haki rippled unevenly, flashes of abyssal darkness cracking into distorted fragments, like a man bleeding power in a storm. His smile hid the strain, but his clenched jaw betrayed it.
I tightened my grip on Akatsuki and Shusui. Every battle instinct in me screamed to strike now—to carve open this fleeting weakness and end Rocks D. Xebec before he became the greatest hurdle we would ever face. My blades trembled with the hunger to finish it. But then—my other instincts surged louder. A primal warning.
Do not interfere.
Because if I struck now, if I shattered the fragile balance holding him together, I wouldn't just be killing a man. I would be unleashing something far more monstrous. Something that even Rocks himself was struggling to contain. So I held my ground, blades humming with restrained violence, my eyes locked onto his. I said nothing. I simply watched.
Xebec smirked wider, as though he could feel my hesitation—yet even then, behind that grin, I saw the flicker of desperation in his gaze. The abyss inside him was hungry. And it was not him.
****
The sky cracked open.
"Black Pulsar…!"
Doflamingo's roar cut through the storm as he hurled the miniature black sun high into the heavens. It spun and pulsed, a sphere of compressed threads ignited with his near-awakened black flames, each rotation devouring the very light around it. Then, with a soundless flash that ripped through the air, it detonated.
The explosion resembled a newborn star collapsing upon itself—blinding light followed by abyssal darkness. A shockwave howled outward as black firestorms surged in every direction, consuming stone, sea, and air with equal hunger. The very fabric of the island began to unravel, its core groaning as cracks webbed out like shattered glass.
Linlin's eyes gleamed with unhinged delight. Madness twinkled in those pupils, the same madness that had crowned her among the sea's strongest. Her chest heaved, lips curling into that devilish grin.
"Ma..mamama…!"
Her laughter boomed like a cannon as she raised Napoleon high, Conqueror's Haki erupting from her body in jagged torrents. The sky bled red and black as her will surged into the blade. The weight of her haki alone splintered the fractured island further, boulders the size of battleships rising and collapsing under the strain.
"Ikkoku… Sovereignty!"
She swung. The saber cleaved the world, releasing a radiant slash of incandescent energy. The sheer force split the clouds and churned the sea into whirlpools, meeting Doflamingo's Black Pulsar head-on.
The collision was cataclysmic. The island shuddered as though the earth itself were screaming. Black and pink flames fused into a howling storm that rose upward like a pillar connecting sea to sky. A tornado of annihilation was born—thousands of meters tall, hundreds wide. Its vortex devoured everything: sea spray, boulders, and even chunks of the island were ripped into the cyclone's maw.
The sky dimmed. The sea boiled. The atmosphere howled. Linlin stood at the heart of the destruction, face illuminated by the dance of black and pink fire. Her hair whipped wildly, her grin stretching as her heartbeat synced with the storm's pulse.
"Magnificent…" she whispered, though her voice was nearly drowned by the screaming winds. Then, louder, eyes gleaming with mania:
"Mamamama! Yes! This is it…! This is what I've been waiting for!"
A memory flickered—her frustration when her Soul-Soul Fruit had failed to turn the power of Xebec and Rosinante's clash into homies. Their wills had been too great, their haki too absolute, crushing her power to dust before it could take root.
But now… oh, now! Before her swirled an elemental cataclysm, a tornado of chaos imbued with black flames that seemed eternal, unquenchable. Flames that devoured even the sea itself.
"This… this will be mine."
Linlin bit her lip until blood spilled, then tore a piece of her own soul free, wrenching it from her chest with a guttural cry. The essence of her being writhed in her palm, a fragment of her will condensed into raw, trembling light. With a feral roar, she thrust it into the storm.
"LIVE!"
The tornado convulsed. The pink and black flames coiled tighter, writhing as though something monstrous within was clawing its way out. A grotesque face began to form in the storm's eye, teeth gnashing, eyes blazing with the soul Linlin had torn from herself. The winds shrieked louder, carrying a warped, infantile laugh.
A new Homie—one that dwarfed Prometheus, Zeus, Hera, even Napoleon—was on the cusp of being born. A colossus of storm and fire, forged from destruction itself. But Doflamingo was already moving.
"Fufufufu…!" His laughter was sharp, cruel, venomous, slicing through the howling winds like a dagger. His flames lashed around him, black with haki, forming wings and a crown as his aura surged. His body pulsed with Conqueror's Haki, the air distorting as if the world itself recoiled from his presence.
"You think I'll stand by… and watch you twist my flames into your plaything? Over my dead body, hag!"
His will surged like a tidal wave, slamming into the tornado itself. Black lightning crackled across the sky as his haki invaded the vortex, slamming into Linlin's soul energy with raw force. The newborn Homie howled, its half-formed face splitting into two—one side laughing with Linlin's madness, the other snarling with Doflamingo's sadism.
Linlin's grin vanished. Her eyes went wide with rage.
"YOU… DARE…?!"
She poured more of herself into the storm, her veins bulging as she screamed, "IT'S MINE! MY CREATION!"
Her haki slammed outward, a tidal wave of raw will that pressed against Doflamingo's. The skies themselves groaned as the heavens split between two colors—crimson and abyssal black.
The tornado quaked, its flames twisting violently, torn between two masters. Linlin's soul screamed, demanding dominion, while Doflamingo's haki refused, his threads wrapping around the vortex, strangling it, denying her claim.
The Homie shrieked louder, its half-formed body writhing, stretched between two wills. The air warped. The sea receded in waves miles high. The earth split into trenches glowing with molten fire. Linlin's fury boiled over. Her eyes turned bloodshot as she bellowed with madness.
"MAMAMAMAMA! DO NOT DENY ME!" Her haki sharpened, violent, desperate, gnashing with the hunger of a predator robbed of its kill.
Doflamingo only laughed, the sound cruel and mocking even as blood dripped from his lips from the strain. His aura grew sharper, darker, his threads weaving into the storm itself, dragging the black flames back under his control.
"Fufufufufu…! You're not the only one who can bend monsters to your will, Linlin. These flames—they're mine!"
The clash wasn't just power—it was about dominance. Linlin, the former empress of the sea who believed all creation existed to be hers, raging at being denied her cravings. Doflamingo, the tyrant who bent everything—people, kingdoms, even nature—to his unyielding will, refusing to yield.
The storm between them became an arena of wills. Every second the tornado shifted forms: one heartbeat a monstrous Homie with Linlin's laugh, the next a writhing black flame dragon bound by hellish flames. The heavens screamed as the two forces collided again and again, each clash carving the very air with black lightning.
Linlin's roar grew more frenzied. She tore at her own chest, ripping more fragments of her soul, feeding them to the tornado with rabid obsession.
"MINE! MINE! MINE!"
Doflamingo's eyes glowed crimson, his grin splitting wider, blood staining his teeth. His wings of black flame beat violently, his aura swelling into a demonic majesty that surpassed even a Yonko's.
"Fufufufu! You greedy hag—you'll take nothing from me!"
The tornado screamed louder, the heavens convulsing, the earth quaking, as two wills too monstrous to coexist tore the world asunder. And in that chaos, the New World trembled.
The world-shattering tug-of-war dragged on, neither titan yielding an inch. The heavens screamed, torn asunder by the clash of wills. The sea boiled into steam, the fractured island chain collapsing into magma-laced chasms.
Minutes bled away, yet still they fought. Every second was an eternity, every heartbeat a thunderclap. The cyclone of black and pink fire writhed, twisted, split apart and reformed, caught in the deathgrip of two monstrous spirits.
Then—suddenly. The cacophony ceased.
The vortex stilled, not vanishing but solidifying, condensing into form. The winds fell silent, the flames froze into shape, and an oppressive calm fell upon the battlefield. For the first time since the clash began, the world exhaled.
And standing where the storm once raged was something new. A Homie—a towering abomination of fire and storm, nearly the size of the island itself. Its body was formed from Linlin's Sovereignty slash, its arms like blades of pink fire, its torso swirling with living stormclouds. Its head was malformed, a grotesque mask of flame with jagged teeth and eyes burning like suns. It let out a warped bellow, the voice of the storm itself given flesh.
"GUUUUUUHHHHHH…!"
The sound was so deep it rattled bone and churned the sea. Linlin's chest heaved, eyes widening with anticipation. For a moment, there was silence. For a moment, she almost smiled.
Then her face contorted with fury. Her gaze scanned the Homie and saw it for what it was. Wrong. Flawed. Empty. There were no black flames.
Those cursed flames she craved, the eternal inferno that had lured her greed—gone. Twisted away, stolen. What remained was nothing more than a hollow husk, an echo of her own Sovereignty slash. A bastard child of power she despised.
"DOFLAMINGO…!"
Her roar split the air, rattling the marrow of every living thing for miles. Her eyes, bloodshot and gleaming with madness, turned back to the malformed Homie. Her lips peeled into a snarl, spittle flying as she hissed, "You're not what I wanted… worthless trash!"
The towering Homie, barely newborn, looked down upon her with wide, confused eyes. It shuddered, as if sensing its mother's rage. It reached out a hand of flame, whining with a child's warped voice, "Mama…?"
Linlin's face twisted with revulsion. Without hesitation, she tore into the newly born homie, ripping the fragment of her soul from its chest—the homie's face twisted, malformed, brimming not with the joy of new life but with endless pain. She slammed her hand deeper into it, not to give it strength but to tear it apart from within.
The Homie shrieked in agony as Linlin's aura smothered its spark. Its storm-body convulsed, flames sputtering as cracks of black lightning split its form. It reached for her again, its voice warping from a child's cry into a distorted wail.
"Ma…maaa… why…?"
"BECAUSE YOU'RE USELESS TO ME!" Linlin bellowed, her saber flashing upward. Napoleon, wreathed in Conqueror's Haki, split the air with a scream of steel. She brought the blade down mercilessly.
"IKKOKU… SOVEREIGNTY!"
The Homie's body was torn asunder in one strike. Flames and storm scattered into the sky, shredded like paper. Its scream cut short, vanishing into a thousand dying sparks that rained across the sea. But Linlin wasn't done.
She stomped forward into the collapsing remnants, her massive hand clawing at the dissipating core of the Homie's soul. With a beast's ferocity, she ripped it free, the glowing essence writhing in her grip like a struggling insect.
The Homie's fading voice whimpered, "Mama… it hurts…"
Linlin sneered, her face contorted into pure malice. "I don't need broken toys."
And with a savage squeeze, she crushed the soul into nothingness, snuffing it out as though it had never been. The glow shattered into fragments that dissolved into the storm-choked air.
The silence that followed was worse than the storm. Oppressive. Suffocating. The aura of a monster who could destroy her own creation without hesitation, not out of necessity, but out of disgust.
Linlin turned, chest heaving, face lit with raw fury. Her eyes locked onto Doflamingo, who stood amidst the chaos, his grin sharp and mocking even as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Her voice came low at first, trembling with suppressed rage.
"You… robbed me. You stole what was mine." Then she roared, voice booming across the broken seas.
"DOFLAMINGO… I'LL RIP YOUR SOUL OUT NEXT!"
The very air bent under her rage, the remains of the island cracking and sinking further into the abyss. The seas surged as if recoiling from her madness, and black lightning once again carved the heavens.
For all her cruelty, all her hunger, all her madness—this was Linlin at her most terrifying. A Yonko stripped of patience. A beast denied her craving. And now, nothing else would sate her but blood.
Doflamingo's grin widened, his voice dripping with venomous glee as the black inferno surged around him—"Do your worst, Charlotte Linlin...!"