At that moment, Lieutenant Isuka arrived with a squad of Marine reinforcements.
She froze in her tracks when she saw the weapon Zaraki was using as a cane.
The guard was damaged and the hilt wrapping was frayed, but the iconic lion-head pattern at the pommel was unmistakable to a sword fanatic who had memorized the famous blade catalog.
"That… that's…" Isuka pointed a trembling finger, her voice pitching up in shock. "Oto?!"
"Hm?" Zaraki glanced down at the long sword propping him up. "Oh, you mean this? Yeah, it's pretty sturdy. Works perfectly as a landing cushion."
Every eye in the plaza zeroed in on the famous blade jammed into the cracked stone.
Zaraki dug at his ear, flicking away a speck of dust.
The post-battle adrenaline of the Kenpachi template was still rampaging through his veins, making it hard to care about the rigid military atmosphere.
He frowned impatiently at the female Marine who was staring so hard she had forgotten to salute.
"Are you trying to glue your eyeballs to it?"
"This… this is genuine…" Isuka muttered, deaf to his teasing.
Ignoring the Admirals, the Fleet Admiral, and basic military hierarchy, she took two stiff steps closer.
Despite the dirt on the scabbard and the heavy damage to the golden guard, the sharp, cold aura of a weapon forged across countless battlefields was impossible to fake.
"Oto… This is the famous blade that once belonged to the Flying Pirate himself. How could it…"
She snapped her head up to meet Zaraki's carefree gaze.
If the sword was here, where was the man who wielded it?
That unvoiced question hit the surrounding Marines like an electric shock.
"Zaraki!" Sengoku roared from upstairs, stripped of his previous anger and replaced by an urgency that nearly shattered his composure.
"Answer me! What is Golden Lion Shiki's current status?!"
Sengoku gripped the window frame.
Having personally sent the Golden Lion to Impel Down years ago, he understood the pirate's pride.
For a great swordsman, where the sword remained, the swordsman remained.
If the swords were lost... a staggering possibility surfaced in the Fleet Admiral's mind.
The wind died down across the plaza as every gaze—shocked, doubtful, feverish, and Akainu's darkly scrutinizing stare—pinned the young man in the ruins.
Zaraki found it hilarious.
He casually ripped the priceless blade from the cracked stone with a screeching scrape that made Isuka wince in heartache.
"Status?" He twirled the blade in a sloppy flourish, grinning wildly as his gaze drifted past the dust, back to the battlefield tens of thousands of meters above.
"Well, probably…" He dragged the word out, highly amused by the comical way the old men upstairs stretched their necks in anticipation.
He shrugged.
"He fell. I didn't see his corpse."
The plaza fell dead silent.
Zaraki lifted Oto and Kogarashi slightly. "But he won't be kicking anyone for a while."
Isuka's face went blank while Sengoku's pupils contracted and Garp froze for a split second before his laughter exploded across Marineford.
"Bwahahahaha! Good! Very good! As expected of my brat!"
....
"He fell. I didn't see a corpse, but he won't be kicking anyone for a while."
Those words made every heart in the plaza sink.
The answer was far too vague, yet the two famous blades in Zaraki's possession made the implication impossible to ignore.
Dead silence blanketed Marineford, making the distant cries of seagulls sound piercing.
Sengoku tightened his grip on the window frame until his knuckles turned white.
As the Golden Lion's old opponent, the Fleet Admiral knew exactly how tenacious that madman's vitality was.
Neither the torture of Impel Down nor the agony of severing his own legs had broken him, and the ridiculous ship's wheel lodged in his skull was a permanent testament to his frenzied era.
A missing corpse meant no confirmed kill, but Oto and Kogarashi resting in Zaraki's hands meant something almost as shocking.
The Golden Lion had lost.
"Zaraki," Sengoku rasped, ignoring his dignity as Fleet Admiral to leap directly from the shattered window.
He hit the plaza with a heavy impact, the wind pressure knocking the surrounding Marines off balance, and strode straight up to the young swordsman.
He released the crushing pressure of a man who had long stood at the pinnacle of the world, though it couldn't mask the sheer urgency in his eyes.
"This is a serious military inquiry. Is Golden Lion Shiki dead or alive?"
An invisible hand seemed to choke the breath from everyone present.
Second Lieutenant Isuka hugged the clipboard to her chest like a lifeline.
Not far away, Kizaru kept his hands tucked in his pockets, but beneath his signature sunglasses, his gaze sharpened for the first time.
Zaraki didn't answer immediately.
Bored, he adjusted Oto at his belt before digging at his ear with his pinky, acting completely oblivious to the historic tension in the air.
The Kenpachi template was still stirring in his blood, leaving him irritated by a reporting session that only involved moving mouths instead of crossing blades.
"Old man, you're really long-winded." Zaraki blew nonexistent earwax from his fingertip and raised his heavy eyelids, revealing eyes that still held a faint, lingering red glow.
"I already told you, I don't know if he's completely dead. He lost control of his island and fell from the sky. Maybe he hit the sea, maybe the clouds swallowed him, or maybe he's still floating around somewhere cursing my name."
Before the Marines could process the shock, Zaraki's tone shifted into pure disgust—the disappointment of a predator whose prey hadn't put up enough of a fight.
"But that old guy was a letdown. His Haki had declined until he was like a shrimp with weak legs. Aside from his Devil Fruit being annoying, he wasn't even worth cutting. If he had been in his prime twenty years ago, maybe he could have entertained me a little longer."
Gasps rippled through the crowd as the Marines stared at Zaraki like he was a complete lunatic.
This was the Golden Lion, a legendary pirate who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with Roger and Whitebeard, yet this rookie was calling him a weak-legged shrimp.
"Hahahahahaha! Good! Excellent!"
A burst of wild laughter shattered the stunned silence.
Garp clutched his stomach, laughing so hard that tears sprang to his eyes.
He spun around and threw his arms wide, his weathered face filled with unconcealable pride.
"Listen to that! Sengoku, did you hear him? This is the soldier I trained! Who cares if it's some legend or relic of the old era? If he wasn't strong enough, then he wasn't strong enough!" Garp pointed a thick finger at the Fleet Admiral.
"With this kind of achievement and spirit, what are you hesitating for? Put him on the Admiral Candidate track immediately! The youngest Admiral Candidate in Marine history!"
Admiral Candidate.
The title dropped like a bomb, blasting everyone's minds into a buzzing daze.
Sengoku froze, defeating or even forcing back the Golden Lion was a feat undeniably worthy of exceptional promotion.
Despite his shallow experience, the kid's raw strength was staggering.
"Utter nonsense."
Akainu's voice poured over the plaza like a basin of ice water just as the atmosphere reached a boiling point.
Sakazuki crunched over the rubble in his heavy leather shoes, the brim of his Marine cap pulled low to cast his face in shadow.
Only his tight lips and a surging, magma-like killing intent remained visible.
"Based on nothing but one-sided words and two damaged blades, you want to place a rookie on the reserve list for the Marines' highest combat power?" Akainu stopped three paces from Zaraki, looking down at the newcomer with total disdain.
"Vice Admiral Garp, has your brain been clogged by doughnuts? Who saw the Golden Lion fall? Where is the confirmed report? Where is the battlefield record?"
Akainu snapped his head toward Zaraki, his gaze scraping across the boy's face like a rusted blade.
"If this is an exaggerated claim and the Golden Lion reappears, what happens to the dignity of the Marines? The majesty of justice cannot be tainted by childish arrogance!"
The ambient temperature spiked as the acrid stench of sulfur rolled off Akainu.
His emotional agitation was causing the Magma-Magma Fruit to leak uncontrollably.
"Sakazuki! You bastard, are you questioning my judgment?!" Garp's smile vanished as he stepped in front of the Admiral like an old lion protecting its cub, nearly spitting in the man's face.
"Open your eyes and look at those swords! Oto and Kogarashi were his lifelines—the swords he used as legs! Unless that brat beat him until he couldn't keep them, how else would he have them?!"
"There are plenty of coincidences on the battlefield." Akainu refused to yield an inch, ignoring Garp entirely to keep his eyes locked on Zaraki.
"Perhaps he discarded them, or perhaps they were scavenged after the island collapsed. Until we have confirmation, everything remains uncertain. Justice does not need luck, and it certainly does not need a hero built on suspicious claims."
Their powerful auras clashed, warping the air between them.
Yet Zaraki, standing dead center in the crossfire, was the calmest person in the plaza.
He stared at Akainu's face—a mask of rigid rules and iron-blooded pride—and found it hilarious.
Being doubted didn't anger him; it only made his blood pump faster. He recognized that lofty stare, the look of a man who looked down on the weak.
Zaraki rubbed his thumb over his rough hilt, a slow, terrifying smile spreading across his face.
It was the joy of a butcher finding fresh meat, and it sent a collective chill down the spines of the surrounding Marines.
"Hey, Admiral Red dog."
His voice wasn't loud, but it sliced cleanly through the suffocating tension.
"Do you think I'm like that old lion? A weakling who belongs in the trash heap?"
Sakazuki's shadowed face stiffened.
Red Dog.
The insulting literal translation of his codename stabbed directly into his most sensitive nerve.
In an instant, the sulfur stench became choking.
A sickening sizzle echoed from Sakazuki's shoulder as his Justice coat carbonized from the extreme heat.
Dark-red magma flowed down his arm to drip onto the plaza, burning smoking holes straight through the stone bricks.
The blistering heat wave washed over Zaraki, but the burning sensation didn't trigger fear.
Instead, goosebumps erupted across his skin as the soul of Kenpachi cheered.
Every cell in his body screamed for him to draw his sword and carve open that surging mass of magma.
"It seems Vice Admiral Garp really did teach you well," Sakazuki murmured, his eyes overflowing with chilling malice.
His suppressed calm was infinitely more suffocating than a roaring outburst.
"So well that you cannot tell the difference between bravery and seeking death."
Sakazuki's magma-transformed arm twitched upward—
"Enough!"
A golden shockwave violently cleaved the space between them, forcibly scattering the black smoke and blistering heat.
Sengoku stood in the center, his chest heaving like a bellows while the veins on his forehead throbbed dangerously.
"This is Marine Headquarters, not a pirate arena!" Sengoku's roar shook the eardrums of the silent Marines.
"Sakazuki, put your ability away! And you, Zaraki, leash that damned killing intent!"
Having his fun ruined, Zaraki curled his lip and reluctantly loosened his grip on his hilt, looking genuinely listless over losing the chance to fight.
Sengoku took a deep breath, fighting the urge to punch them both.
He pushed up his glasses, the lenses catching the cold sunlight. "As for Golden Lion Shiki's status, intelligence and reconnaissance ships will deploy immediately to verify it. Until a corpse or living trace is found, he is classified as missing in action."
The cautious classification hung heavy over the quiet plaza, but everyone understood the sheer weight behind it. Sengoku shifted his intense gaze back to Zaraki.
"If the report is verified, this will be a tremendous achievement capable of changing the structure of this era," Sengoku said, his tone grim.
"But achievement alone does not make a Marine, and strength alone does not make justice."