"108 Pound Phoenix!"
"Mouton Shot!"
A twisting, Haki-laced blue flying slash and a devastating, flaming kick converged perfectly on Garp's chest.
Garp didn't dodge. He didn't even shift his stance.
He just brought his Haki-coated fists forward, meeting the desperate attacks with raw, unadulterated physical power.
CLANG! BOOM!
Garp swatted Zoro's flying slash away with the back of his hand, shattering the compressed air into a harmless breeze that cut a deep groove into the wooden floor.
Simultaneously, he caught Sanji's flaming kick directly against his heavily armored forearm. The impact sent a shockwave across the platform, but Garp didn't yield a single millimeter.
"You brats are a hundred years too early to take my head!" Garp bellowed, his voice filled with a desperate, tragic ferocity.
With a brutal twist of his arm, Garp deflected Sanji's leg, throwing the cook entirely off balance. Without missing a beat, the Vice Admiral followed up with a lightning-fast, sweeping backhand that caught Zoro squarely in the ribs.
CRACK.
The Monster Trio's commanders were violently thrown backward. They crashed hard onto the wooden planks, tumbling head over heels until they hit the railing, coughing up blood and looked back at their opponent!
Damn it!
The old man was absurdly strong!
"Zoro! Sanji!" Luffy yelled.
Luffy gritted his teeth, his dark eyes burning. He knew his crewmates were right.
"Grandpa… move!" Luffy looked directly at his grandfather.
He shifted his body into Gear Second and Gear Third one final, agonizing time. The steam violently hissed from his pores, his skin flushing a deep, angry red.
His red hands became those of a giant's and stretched back.
"GOMU GOMU NO…" Luffy screamed, and those giant red hands turned black.
The pirate in red shirt launched himself directly at the Hero of the Marines.
Garp watched the boy charge.
The world around the Vice Admiral seemed to slow to an excruciating crawl. The deafening roar of Light and Sengoku's clash above them faded into silence.
He saw the dried blood covering Luffy's face. He saw the sheer, unbreakable determination in the boy's dark eyes.
He heard the agonizing, muffled sobs of Ace kneeling just a few feet behind him.
You absolute idiots, Garp thought, the internal monologue a symphony of pure, unbearable grief.
Why couldn't you have just become Marines?
Why did you have to choose this path?
Why do you make me choose?
Garp pulled his own massive fist back.
The black Haki on his knuckles pulsed with the power to level a city block. He aimed the strike directly at Luffy's incoming face, fully intending to knock the boy unconscious and away from the battlefield.
But as their fists closed the distance, the memories violently surfaced, drowning out his duty.
He saw Luffy as a toddler, laughing wildly as Garp dangled him over a bottomless ravine. He saw Ace, defensive and angry, slowly learning to smile alongside his sworn brother in the forests of Mt. Corvo. He saw the fragile, beautiful family he had built in secret—the family the world was now demanding he destroy with his own two hands.
I am a Marine, Garp's duty screamed in his mind, echoing the Justice he had served for fifty years.
But I am also a grandfather, his heart wept.
In the final, defining second before impact, Monkey D. Garp closed his eyes.
He intentionally, imperceptibly softened the Armament Haki coating his knuckles. He deliberately mistimed his forward momentum, allowing his massive fist to swing just a fraction of an inch wide of Luffy's cheek.
Luffy's fists did not miss.
"ELEPHANT…"
"MAGNUM!!!"
BAAAAAAM!
The jet-fast Haki-coated giant rubber fists slammed squarely, devastatingly into Garp.
The impact echoed across the scaffold like a cannon shot. The Hero of the Marines, a man who had fought Gol D. Roger to a standstill countless times, a man who had shattered eight mountains for warmup, was entirely lifted off his feet by the rookie's punch.
Garp plummeted backward and flew. He crashed violently through the wooden guardrail of the platform, the thick timber splintering like twigs.
And flew hundreds of metres straight into the massive battleship still embedded on the Marine HQ building. The Vice Admiral smashed through into the lower, structural levels of the battleship, disappearing in a cloud of shattered wood and dust.
Luffy stood panting heavily, his fist still extended.
Zoro and Sanji got up, still staring at the place Garp had disappeared to.
They stared at the broken railing, thier eyes wide. They had fully realized what had just happened.
'Luffy's grandpa…'
High above them, fighting the False Deity in the freezing air, Fleet Admiral Sengoku witnessed the fall.
Sengoku's golden eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated outrage.
He knew Garp's strength intimately.
He'd be a damn fool to believe Garp right now!
"GARP!" Sengoku roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of absolute fury and profound, betrayed sorrow.
"You fool!"
Sengoku's distraction lasted for exactly one tenth of a second.
Against an opponent like Light Yagami, a tenth of a second was a fatal eternity.
"Gone senile or something?!" Light hissed, his voice cold and terrifyingly close.
Capitalizing on the Fleet Admiral's momentary lapse in concentration, Light utilized Soru to violently shift his trajectory in mid-air. He slipped entirely under Sengoku's massive, golden, Conqueror-infused palm, stepping directly into the Buddha's guard.
"Pay attention, old man!"
Light swung his pitch-black saber in a devastating, two-handed upward diagonal slash aimed directly at the center of Sengoku's golden chest.
Sengoku was distracted for a little too long.
He desperately flared his Conqueror's Haki, trying to repel the incoming blade, but Light's Level 5 Weapon Arts found the absolute path of least resistance through the thickness.
The dark steel bit deeply into the indestructible golden flesh.
It didn't just cut. As the blade made contact, Light unleashed the full, violent payload of his Level 4 Internal Destruction Haki directly into the wound.
SLASH.
BOOM!
The explosive spiritual energy bypassed Sengoku's hardened golden exterior completely, detonating deep within the Fleet Admiral's massive chest cavity.
Sengoku let out a booming, agonizing roar that shook the very clouds above Marineford.
"GAAAAAAH!"
.
.
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A/N: F.