Faced with the charge of several roaring stone lions, Garp did not even bother to change his stance. He simply stepped forward and threw a plain, straight punch into the foremost beast's gaping maw.
Boom.
A blunt, heart-thudding report. From its head downward the lion crazed with spiderweb cracks.
The fractures raced across its bulk. An instant later the whole construct came apart with a crash, bursting into shards and dust that the gale tore away.
On the other flank, Sengoku brought his hands together and thrust.
A golden ring of force leapt from his palms, swelling as it flew, locking cleanly over the remaining stone beasts.
Under an invisible, crushing pressure they hit an unseen wall, froze mid-lunge, then crumbled inch by inch into gravel under violent vibration.
"Ze ha ha ha. That's more like you two." The Golden Lion laughed instead of raging. He shot skyward, both blades wrapped in keening Haki, and went on the attack. "Now we can have some fun."
"Lion's Thousand-Cleave Ravine."
Light from his blades wove into a tight-meshed net that fell over Garp and Sengoku together.
"Quit looking down on us, Shiki."
Garp met him in midair, fists drowned in the densest Armament Haki. Sengoku's outline swelled, light poured from him, and in a breath he stood as a colossal golden Buddha.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
At the heart of Marineford's plaza, three legends crashed together with the most primitive savagery.
Every clash of iron fist and edge detonated with a drum-splitting thunder.
Shockwaves and flying cuts scythed outward, plowing the already broken square into new trenches that ran black and deep.
Buildings around the plaza looked gnawed by giants. Walls crazed, then folded and fell.
The Marine officers could not enter the melee at all.
They ringed the battlefield, dragging survivors to safety and raising layered cordons to blunt the doomsday backlash of the fight.
"So this is a legend's battlefield." A young rear admiral braced against the wind wall, terror plain on his face.
Even at a distance his organs quivered like leaves.
"All officers below vice admiral, fall back at once. This fight is not yours." Vice Admiral Tsuru's orders remained cool. Her eyes never left the three blurred figures at the center, and her face had gone as grave as stone.
The ferocity outstripped imagination.
At some point the rain thickened.
A whispering drizzle became a downpour in a blink. Bean-sized drops hammered the shattered flagstones, kicking up muddy fans that ran together with the blood.
Wind twisted sheets of rain until the edges of the world went soft.
"Ze ha ha ha." Shiki hung in the storm, his twin blades spinning a screen so dense the water could not draw near. "This is the best stage to see legends off. Garp. Sengoku. Let the squall put a period on your age."
He turned. Two enormous airborne slashes rode wind and thunder, one from the left, one from the right.
The golden Buddha wore a serene face. Sengoku merely raised one great hand.
"Shockwave."
A golden halo expanded and smashed one of the cuts to mist midair.
The other met Garp head on.
"Bone Fist."
No flourish, only a Haki-drowned punch.
The impact tore a circular void in the rain. Steam blew white where a lake of droplets flashed away.
A sword-white bolt ripped the sky.
For a heartbeat the three looked like gods and demons in relief.
Then the thunder came down in a bellow that made the heavens shiver.
Wind howled. Rain sheeted. Thunder roared.
Marineford felt like it had slid into the end of days.
What unsettled the most, though, was the water in the bay.
What had been only chop from stray shockwaves now looked stirred by a giant's hand. It ran wild.
Waves several meters high rose without warning and smashed at the seawall with cannon-blast booms.
Warships at anchor pitched like leaves in a gale. Mooring lines sang tight enough to snap.
"What is this. The currents are completely broken." A watch captain on harbor duty stared at the warped sea and shouted, voice gone thin.
This was no natural tantrum. The water felt like it had grown a will and was raging.
While everyone's attention was chained to the storm in the sky and the clash at center field, a sentry high in a watchtower rubbed his eyes, certain he'd imagined what he had glimpsed.
He raised his spyglass and steadied it on the mouth of the furious bay.
The lenses jittered. Rain veiled the view.
He saw it.
Out on the black, boiling surface, a figure was walking in.
Under his feet the raging waves went docile.
Each time he lifted a leg, the sea knit into a solid step to bear him forward.
Each time he set his foot down, the step dissolved again into the swell.
Waves tall enough to roll a battleship calmed and split as they neared him, opening an absolutely still corridor.
He came like that, strolling a garden path through gale and surge, deaf to thunder, step by step toward the sea fortress trapped in fire and panic.
Another bolt tore the low sky.
In that flash every eye could make out the figure.
He wore a simple black coat. A black-and-gold naginata was slung over his back. His frame was straight, his face unreadable.
Only his eyes burned, two points of hammered gold that outshone the storm.
Kael Grylls.
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