One Piece – Halfway Broken

Summary: Reviewing the War...

Chapter 76: Marineford War

Luffy found his crew gathered together not in the lounge as he’d initially expected, but out on the ‘deck.’ The ship might have already been under the waves before they even left for their various parts of the plan, but it was still a novel experience to walk out onto the deck of the ship, only to find that the Discovery had grown a wooden canopy that covered everything but the mast. Which was itself, of course, currently without any sort of sail or rigging. Mentally noting it might be time to do away with the idea of a permanent mast, since the ship had effectively infinite power and they weren’t exactly hiding anymore, he tucked the thought away and focused on scanning for any issues.

The current design was a rush job which, frankly, made the ship builder in Luffy cringe a bit. The vast majority of the new canopy’s construction was solid, blank Adam wood. Which meant the only actual visibility outside the ship was from either a periscope at the main helm, or a set of small and extremely thick double-paned portholes he’d managed to get embedded crudely into the wood as it grew into place. Thankfully, primitive sonar had been something he’d properly figured out for the ship after it ‘ate’ the Goro Goro no Mi, so they weren’t sailing completely blind down here save those small views.

Frowning, he was surprised to see Nami out on deck with the others, though before he could ask just who was watching where they were going, his girlfriend spotted him. Seeming to practically teleport without Soru, Nami was abruptly in his arms.

“You’re okay! Thank fuck! We all felt whatever that awful presence was when it was fighting you, even half the archipelago away! What the fuck was that?! Yamato said she thought it was probably one of the Five Elders, but admitted she didn’t know much about them beyond the fact her father is wary of them…”

Smiling gently as he felt Nami tremble against him as she rambled, he rubbed her back reassuringly.

“That’s more than I know. But Rayliegh knew his name. We can call Shakky’s bar with the White Mushi later and find out more, hopefully. Yamato really thinks it was one of the five old farts? Gramps complained about them once or twice, but never said much. Come to think about it, he clammed up really fast whenever he realized he’d said something about them…”

He felt Nami frown against his chest, even as Yamato nodded entirely too cheerfully from where she was sitting.

“I’m almost certain of it! Kaidou once said they were the only reason he hadn’t attacked Mary Geoise! Though he was really drunk when he said that, so I don’t know much else about them!”

That was…concerning. Kaidou wasn’t titled the ‘Strongest Creature’ in the world for no reason. It was very rare for the Yonko to clash personally, so it was hard to say which of them was the strongest. But none of them were jokes. They were each at least on par with someone like Kizaru, or they’d have long since been eliminated. Worse, Kaidou actually had the largest number of men of any of the Yonko, and only recruited the strong. If the reason he specifically, a known warmonger, stayed away from the World Government was these Five Elders rather than the Marines…

Luffy shook his head. Not enough information.

Unless another of them could somehow reach them under the ocean, they could figure out what was up with that mess later. For now, there was a reason his crew had brought a massive Snail Projector out onto the deck and rigged a screen to one side of the deck. He could see the logic in having done so, the crew was large enough now that squeezing them all into the lounge in positions they could see a single screen would have been hard. Pushing Nami just far enough away to look into her eyes, he took care of one small detail first.

“Nami? I can tell we are moving? Who’s…”

Nami looked confused for a moment, then realization lit in her eyes and she laughed.

“She’s got her own wheel, Captain~! She is the ship, so she can basically run everything on her own.”

His girlfriend had freed one had to point at…Dis. Who was cheerfully nodding and threw him a sloppy salute. Okay, yeah, that both made sense and could be very, very useful in the future.

“Ah. Right then. You have the video from the battle ready?”

Nami nodded, reluctantly pulling away, though she grabbed his hand and towed him to the chairs they’d set up. She refused to let go even as she spoke up, waving toward where Robin and Hina were standing beside a Projector Snail nearly as large as they were.

“Yep. Multiple recordings, actually. Robin and Vivi managed to grab the Marine main receiver snail and their Projector Snail before the base went up, as planned. When we checked after the battle and realized it had recording from, like, a dozen different perspectives, we decided to bring it out here. We have everything that was transmitted to the Marines and can project it all at once because of Mr. Massive Projector Snail there. We just need to finish setting it up. Robin, Hina?”

Robin gestured for Hina to speak, which Luffy supposed made sense. Hina was by far the most familiar with Marine equipment of anyone aboard.

“Hina hasn’t had to run a Snail Projector herself in some time, let alone one of this size, but she still remembers how and the basics are the same. It’s ready now, if everyone will sit down, Hina will start the projections. Robin can pause it or direct us to watch something specific when needed, since she saw what happened live and has a decent idea of anything important to point out on our first pass.”

Ah. That’s why Robin had been at the Snail too. It made sense, so Luffy nodded. Everyone rushed to get seats, overwhelmingly curious just what had gone down at Marineford. As soon as the last person was seated, Hina started the projector up, and they all saw the horseshoe bay of the Marines’ greatest stronghold. As promised, it wasn’t just one broadcast image, but a dozen views being projected at once, something Luffy hadn’t even known such Snails could do.

Of the many angles shown, Luffy paid the most attention to just two. One must have been at the very top of Marineford’s main building, as it showed just how large both the bay out towards the Gates of Justice was, and the massive Marine Fleet that was waiting. The second showed a closer in view of the muster of the Marines. Hundreds of Captains, dozens of Commadores and Admirals. There had to be at least 100,000 Marines present, if not far more. Though at least a third of that number were manning the ships in that massive Fleet.

Conspicuous by their absence was the complete lack of any of the Warlords.

He knew Kuma would show, of course, guarding Jozu. Yet it was somewhat telling that the Marines hadn’t been able to convince Hancock or Mihawk to be present. There was a truly grand gathering of Marine strength. Likely as much as they could spare safely and a bit more besides if Luffy was any judge. But that’s all that was present. Just the Marines, with no backup from the Warlords, supposedly another of the ‘powers’ of the sea. Of course, three of them were dead. Hancock had legitimate reasons to tell the WG to go fuck itself as much as she could get away with, and Jinbe would never have gone against Whitebeard.

The Marines were on their own, and the tension in them was easy to see as they all waited, staring out at the Gates of Justice. Hina had cut to moments just before everything had kicked off, and a third viewpoint showing Sengoku speaking abruptly had him cutting off mid-word. He looked back at a Marine that had run up the steps of the execution platform halfway before shouting something that the Snail didn’t catch. Even as the Fleet Admiral shouted something back, the Snail shut off to not carry what he was saying…the Gates of Justice began to move. In the spray of their opening a fleet of eclectic pirate ships, every crew allied to Whitebeard, was abruptly highlighted as a silhouette. Yet, not a single one of Whitebeard’s own ships appeared, and Luffy focused on the center of the bay. Any moment now…

There. A shadow in the water, lasting only seconds before four absolutely mammoth Battleships, dwarfing any of the Navy’s, appeared already within the bay. Their bubble coating had allowed them to bypass the Navy Fleet completely, and they took full advantage of the surprise. They came up firing, remaining coating popping as rippling waves of brutal cannon fire lanced out at the major cannon emplacements within the Marine defensive ring. Right along with the cannons lanced out dozens of blasts from different Devil Fruits, including the signature blue flames of Marco’s Phoenix form, which utterly slagged one entire massive defensive battery all on their own.

The attack had been flawlessly coordinated. Seventy-five plus percent of the island’s defensive guns stripped in a single alpha strike, even as the fleet of other pirate ships used the sudden distraction of the Battleship crews to slam into the Marine Fleet like a hammer. With no choice but to engage that fleet, the Marine Battleships maneuvered against them, instead of turning to take the Moby Dick and its companions under fire. Answering shots began to come in from the remaining defensive batteries and numerous Devil Fruit users among the Marines…

Only to be stopped cold as Whitebeard himself took a single ponderous step forward and punched the air. The air cracked and every cannonball, every Devil Fruit power, smashed into a shock front that annihilated the attacks…and then the wave carried right on to hammer the island. Only fast reactions by Sengoku and the three Logia Admirals stopped the shock front from wiping out the lower-ranks as they returned fire to disrupt it in turn.

This was no anime. It was a war, and Whitebeard hadn’t cared to pause and trade words with fools who threatened the life of one of his Sons. The enraged looking man didn’t look old at all as his hands flashed out to either size, and this time the very sea on both sides of Marineford shuddered with seaquakes. Massive tsunamis rose to crush the island, only for Aokiji to leap forward, power flowing out of him in waves to freeze not just the tsunamis, but the entire bay. His intent to lock the ships in place might have been well reasoned in one sense, but it was disastrous stupidity in another, as proven when Whitebeard’s crew took full advantage to leap out onto the frozen bay and charge the island. A cry and a counter charge from the Marines kicked things into full gear, even as the heavy hitters all began to hammer each other from range.

For a moment, the battles, both between the Fleets and in the bay, seemed to stall as hundreds died but neither side gained ground. Then, Kizaru froze, flashed backward from where he’d been raining blasts on one flank from range, and held his hand up to his ear. He’d doubtlessly just gotten the call from the Human Auction House. A flash of indecision and anger…then he vanished in a beam of light.

His absence was immediately noticed.

Right up until he’d darted back, he’d been directly stalling Marco on that flank. Now, unopposed, Marco hammered the remaining defensive guns one after the other. As the Moby Dick and her companions kept up the fire from their own below-decks gun crews that had stayed behind, and as those of the commanders that had been forced to play defense suddenly didn’t need to any longer, the battle tipped. Marines, important ones rather than just the fodder, began to die. A Commodore here, a Vice-Admiral there. Garp stopped holding back and the momentum shifted again, only for Whitebeard to do the same and cause the see-saw to tilt yet again.

“Watch the Fleets.”

Robin’s simple statement caught all of their attention. The fight in the bay itself had drawn most of their focus, but at her words the rest of the crew turned their attention to the Navy versus Pirate fleet engagement and realized immediately what she meant. The fight inside the Bay was seesawing back and forth.

The fight between the two Fleets was not.

The Marines had clearly intended to support their Fleet from Marineford, many of the guns being capable of facing both out and in. But those guns were gone, and the Marines hadn’t placed enough high-level officers among their battleships, leaving them to the various Buster Call Vice Admirals normally assigned to such ships. Every single one of the assaulting pirate crews were New World crews, the sorts of crews that had faced Marine battleships before and come out on top. Without aid from the battlement artillery, those crews were hammering the battleship fleet hard.

Already, the Marine Navy had lost enough ships that they were outnumbered, where they’d started out with a numerical advantage. Even as they watched, Robin slowing down the action so they could see both engagements, the outcome was already becoming clear. While ships of that size were hard to sink, far harder than most realized due to the sheer buoyancy involved, many more of the Marine vessels were ruined or on fire.

A lot of them were on fire, in fact.

Oh…

That was Ace.

Luffy had looked for him among the commanders but dismissed not seeing him. He’d passively assumed that wherever Kuma had sent him, he’d simply not been able to return in time. Now, it was obvious that idea was misplaced. In a momentary flash of insight, Luffy realized that it wasn’t an accident, either. No, this was calculation. Whitebeard had known he’d get the first strike in, but he’d also known the Marines weren’t fucking around any more than he was. He’d assumed the four ships he could coat would get stalled in the Bay, bogged down by the sheer numbers disparity. So he’d assigned Ace to the allied ships, with the specific goal of him racing through the battleships and decimating them.

Which is exactly what he was doing.

Ace was using his Devil Fruit for flight, racing through the formations of ships, and with every pass he left another Marine ship completely decimated. There were strong Marines aboard some of those ships, but not strong enough to keep Ace from simply targeting the places where they weren’t. Anyone that tried to intercept him either lost quickly as Ace let his own Conqueror’s Haki hammer their will then hammered them into the ocean, or else was intercepted by an allied crew.

At this rate, the Marine Navy was going to lose. Quickly.

The moment it did, all the surviving allied crews that made it through the meatgrinder were going to hit Marineford. Either by charging into the bay, or hitting the outer walls. Even if the fight in the bay wasn’t going decisively in Whitebeard’s favor…the moment that happened, the Marines would be in deep shit as the allied crews reinforced the main Whitebeard crew.

Worse, in a way, for the Marines…those battleships being lost in such numbers meant this was already heading toward a strategic loss. Even if they executed Jozu. Even if the killed Whitebeard, too. If they lost very many more of the most powerful ships they had access too, they were going to struggle to hold onto Paradise, let alone make any headway in the New World. Which, of course, meant that they had to respond to fix the situation. Luffy spotted the response incoming in the form of something he’d been expecting to see already.

Pacifista.

Led by Kuma, who had vanished from his guard duty, thirty identical copies of the warlord flooded out of Marineford. Not into the battle of the bay, but aimed out at reinforcing their flagging fleet. Laser beams erupted from their mouths, lancing into and through a dozen different pirate ships, as well as targeting Ace. Unlike the ships, Ace could and did weave around the shots, his own Haki more than good enough to detect the incoming fire. Cyborgs they might be, but they were still human clones under the modifications, and none of them had Haki of their own. Two of them went down dogfighting Ace, before the Warlord himself engaged him in person, with the other cyborgs all zeroing in on the pirate fleet.

Of course, despite the Pacifistas’ power, the crews on those ships were all New World crews. A dozen of the Pacifista died almost immediately, picked off by Captains who were more than powerful enough to killed the cyborgs in single hits. Still others were stalled out by lesser officers working together. Despite that, a solid dozen got through to start doing immense damage to the ships and more regular crew. Worse, the Pirate Crews all being temporarily forced on the defensive gave the remaining Marine ships time to rally. What had been a fight leaning decisively in the Pirate’s favor abruptly became something far more even.

“Pay attention to the base of the HQ main tower. East side.”

Robin spoke again, and the entire crew shifted their attention to the feed she’d described. Luffy blinked, surprised as what could only be described as some sort of mechs, each easily 25 feet tall, burst out of a service entrance. There were a dozen of them and, unlike the Pacifista who had super-jumped, these outright took off into rocket-assisted flight. The Squadron of mechs hit the main battle in the bay from one flank, igniting some sort of beam saber in one hand while firing a gatling-like gun from their other arm.

The mechs made an immediate impact, folding in that flank of the fight, and when Whitebeard tried to move to eliminate them, Sengoku shifted into his Golden Budda form. For a long instant, the entire battlefield seemed to still as the golden light overwhelmed anyone…and then Whitebeard was visible as a massive golden fist clashed with the crackling tip of his giant naginata. The two blows meeting created a shockwave that knocked even Marco and Akainu spiraling away from where they’d been dueling near the execution platform, and it hit the average Marine and Pirate far worse. The battle virtually stopped as the two juggernauts exchanged more blows, before Whitebeard kicked off in his own version of Geppo and leveraged a strike that knocked Sengoku’s giant form high up into the air.

For a moment, the Den Den Mushis all lost track of them as they ascended out of view. Then, someone proved that the Mushis were being actively monitored as the one on the roof of the Marine HQ panned upward to catch the fight. Sort of. Den Den Mushi didn’t normally suffer from frame rate issues, the species having far better eyes than humans, but the speed with which the two powerful men were exchanging blows over Marineford was so great that even the Mushi couldn’t keep up. Only flickers of their movements, afterimages more than the real thing, were seen as they both seemed to stutter across the sky. Then that particular Den Den Mushi outright paused and Robin spoke up again.

“The ice in the bay.”

Startled, they all shifted focus…just in time to see that ice shatter over a good third of the bay, and another massive ship surface. Abruptly, Luffy realized he’d missed something. Among all the crews that had answered Whitebeard’s call, one of them had been missing. He should have realized it, but there was enough chaos that even the rather big presence had slipped his mind.

Little Oars Jr. hadn’t taken the field.

It seemed that, much like the Marines, the Whitebeard alliance had decided to hold back a hole card or two. Which they called in now with the Little Pirates massive galleon, easily on par size-wise with the Moby Dick, breaking through the shattered ice right below the flank where the mechs were. Clearly, Oars Jr. had been in direct communication with someone. That same someone had managed to use the chaos of Sengoku and Whitebeard’s initial fight to pull back the entire flank that had been threatened by the mechs. Now, Little Oars Jr. roared as he stepped off his ship…and replaced that entire flank. Mechs began to die, not quickly, but die they did, and the stillness that had briefly fallen over the battle was fully broken. Worse, the Marine morale clearly started collapsing and the Pirates broke the lines in multiple places. Only Garp seeming to be everywhere at once, pinballing about the battlefield to shore up holes, kept the Marines lines from breaking entirely.

To the crew’s surprise Robin paused all the snails, flipping the one watching Whitebeard and Sengoku back on to catch up, then paused it too. She then directed their attention to the central projection, the one covering the execution platform, and set it to play. Jozu, held in seastone cuffs and chained down, was guarded only by the pair of executioners at this point.

Kuma had been drawn off and was still dueling with Ace, who had learned from fighting him once before. The last line of Admirals originally surrounding the platform had each been drawn off in turn, Sengoku having been the last when Whitebeard forced him away from the fight. Aokiji had been in the thick of it from the start, then their own efforts had lured off Kizaru, and Akainu had been forced to step in to drive Marco off when the Pheonix had made a solo attempt to reach the platform. Now no one but the two perfectly-ordinary executioners were left.

Abruptly, those executors both died.

Izou, 16^th division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, had somehow slipped through the chaos of battle and killed both of them with a pair of flintlocks. An instant later, before anyone could react, the man struck out with both pistols blackened to pitch with Haki, shattering the seastone cuffs keeping Jozu suppressed. Jozu, beaten and starved as he was, proved he was far from unable to fight as he instantly turned to diamond and dove off the execution platform, Izou riding his back.

For a moment, it looked like they would escape.

Then Garp appeared and hammered them both down into the sea of Marines.

Garp had fought half-heartedly, at best, until now. Defending numerous Marines and taking on anyone stupid enough to attack him as he pinballed around the battle, but not truly pushing. Now was a different story. He might not approve of this war, but without Ace being the one threatened with execution, he wasn’t truly unwilling to see the battle through either. Abruptly, both Division Commanders were hard-pressed, even as the power of Garp’s attacks caused the more normal Marines to back off.

Pause.

The projector paused with a glow of blue fire outlining Garp, and another began playing to explain what was about to happen. Focused on Marco and Akainu, seconds into the video Marco got the upper hand. Same-element matchups were almost always dicey when it came to Devil Fruits. Unless the two fruits had been recorded interacting before, no one could be sure which would come out on top. It was something only made more complicated by Armament Haki and how it interacted with Devil Fruits, and both of these fighters were fully versed in Haki. Between eyeblinks, however, Marco proved that this time it was his Fruit and skill that came out on top…as one of his talons made contact and Admiral Akainu lost a leg.

Proving that either his Fruit or Haki had won the pissing match, the Admiral’s leg didn’t regenerate and his Geppo failed, causing him to fall into the battle below. Marco moved at almost the same instant as Garp, being only bare instants behind him as all the projectors synced up and the results became obvious. Marco took the blow meant for Jozu and flinched, but didn’t falter. Despite how utterly bullshit Garp’s own Haki was, Marco’s combination of Armament and his Devil Fruit was apparently enough to offset at least most of the damage. An instant after that first blow, all three Division Commanders were drawn into the brutal fight with Garp, but this time it was far more even, with his Grandfather actually taking blows for the first time Luffy could remember.

Not that it seemed to bother Garp.

In fact, his grandfather appeared delighted, throwing his head back and laughing even as he upped the ante and put them all on the defensive again. All while the rest of the battle, momentarily stalled again by the unexpected release of the prisoner, immediately turned back into a bloodbath. The Marines, bolstered by Garp’s laugh, reputation, and sheer presence, rallied. They pushed back…but without Garp pinballing through the battle, they couldn’t close the breaches that had already been made in their lines. No matter that their morale had revived, they were still losing both ground and people.

Not that the Marines were running out of bodies.

No, despite massive losses, the Marines had so far only lost a handful of truly important fighters and a lot of lower rankers. There were still plenty of lower rankers to throw themselves into the gaps, something that was going to become a big issue for the Whitebeard crew if they didn’t finish this up quickly. Individually, the Whitebeard Pirates core crew were far stronger than any average Marine…but there had been less than five thousand of them crammed into those four massive battleships. The sheer quantity of Marine reinforcements available to throw into the meat grinder was going to wear them down, fast.

That might not have been true if the Marines pulled in to man the defenses hadn’t all been some iteration of elites. But they were, since the Marines had been well aware that regular low-rank Marines would be near useless. The lowest rankers present in the entire fight had been those manning the various artillery pieces…and those were mostly very dead from the open salvos and Marco’s rampage. That only meant that those feeding into the main conflict were more skilled, however. Skilled enough to make the average Whitebeard pirate at least make an effort on them.

Attrition wasn’t how the Marines had wanted to win this, but they’d been prepared for it.

Something which meant the Whitebeard Pirates were on the clock. That they had, in fact, been on the clock since the moment they first opened the Gates of Justice and breached the bay with their coated ships. They had to get in, retrieve Jozu, and get back out before the numbers advantage whittled away at their own crew and they either failed outright or gained a barely pyrrhic victory.

On the flip side, the Marines were having a legitimate problem which Luffy was cheerful to note was largely his own crew’s fault. They just flat out didn’t have enough high-level fighters. Between them stripping away multiple Warlords over the last few months, then drawing off Kizaru, the Marines were lacking the number of heavies they would have wanted for this operation. Aokiji had been tied up almost from the moment he acted against the tsunamis by a combination of Vista, Haruto, and Rakuyo. The three weapon users were working remarkably well together to seal the Admiral away from the bulk of the fighting. Meanwhile, Akainu was now down, possibly dead, after his duel with Marco.

Even with Jozo, Izou, and Ace separated into their own battles, that left fully half of Whitebeard’s division commanders running amuck among Marines that frankly weren’t able to handle them. Each of them was tying up multiple Commodores or Rear Admirals, with the Giant Squad having moved in to try and help contain Oars Jr., something which wasn’t going well. Even the Mechs and Pacifista had mostly fallen flat, the Mechs chewed up by Oars and the Little Pirates while the Pacifistas flat out hadn’t fared very well against over forty New World Captains, most of which had bounties in the 500 million plus range. The current Pacifista model was suitable to take on any Paradise crew, but far from strong enough to handle New World veterans in bulk numbers.

The overall battle was balanced on a knife edge, and the only thing Luffy was certain of was that, regardless of who ‘won,’ both sides were going to come out weakened horribly. Something which only got more true as the battle continued to play out. A Whitebeard Division Commander finally went down…but had taken Rear Admiral Yukimura and a pair of Commodores with him. Akainu had popped back up, hovering with his Devil Fruit, only to trade an arm for the death of Blamenco. Fossa had managed to get the arm with a Haki-and-Flame covered sword, though the sword was a goner afterward, the blade melted and tossed aside. The momentarily disarmed 15^th division commander only survived as the pain of losing another limb was enough to finally put Akainu out of fight. The Admiral was rescued by a group of Captains and two Commodores, but only the single Commodore carrying him survived that action.

“The deciding point is coming up, execution platform and Whitebeard.”

Robin hadn’t paused this time, letting everything keep playing, but her terse statement had every eye locked on the two projections showing the relevant perspectives she’d named. Then, between one invisible instant and the next, a titanic blow came down…and a broken Fleet Admiral Sengoku was slammed through the execution platform. The action shook the entire island so badly that even Oars Jr. stumbled, many of the battlements outright cracking and massive chunks of the ice everyone was fighting on breaking up.

Whitebeard appeared over the broken body of the Fleet Admiral an instant later, his weapon sinking through Sengoku’s heart to definitively prove the man wasn’t getting back up again. Yet…Whitebeard was barely looking better. He’d lost one hand, an eye, half his mustache, and the wound on his chest had reopened and expanded. His breathing was ragged even as his distinctive ‘Gu ra ra ra ra’ laugh silenced the entire battlefield.

“Gu ra ra ra ra. You old bastard, you just had to take me with you, huh?”

Such was his sheer presence that his words failed to compute for anyone, even the once-removed Strawhat crew, for several long seconds. Then, Whitebeard coughed up blood, still smiling as he reached up…and pulled a seastone dagger long enough to nearly be a short sword for a more regularly sized person out of his own heart.

“…the fuck is he still standing…”

The whispered half-question was the first time anyone had broken the silence save Robin, but Sanji’s awed question echoed in all of them. Yet, Whitebeard wasn’t done. He threw his head back and laughed, long and loud, no trace of his bloody cough present as he spoke so loud a clear that every broadcasting Mushi picked up what he said.

“ONE PIECE... THE ONE PIECE IS REAL. Someday, someone will find it again…and the world will turn upside down."

His sheer, commanding presence faded to an unexpected softness as he pulled out his weapon and planted it firmly in the stone instead of the Fleet Admiral’s heart, visibly starting to fade as he spoke once more. His now free hand began to crack the air around it again, the obvious strain of summoning in Devil Fruit at death’s door clear as he gasped.

“Goodbye, my sons. There has been no greater honor than to have been your father, to have sailed with you all for so long. May you find peace in this life, or adventure in another.”

Whitebeard moved, tossing Murakumogiri away with a strike of his arm-missing-a-hand, sending it sailing back toward the Moby Dick. Following that sweeping motion, he went down to one knee, slamming his crackling hand down into the bedrock of the island. An instant later, the light flicked out of his eyes…but the island itself heaved. It split, everything beyond the plaza where Garp had been delaying Jozu, Izou and Marco shattering into hundreds of pieces. Much of it, including Whitebeard’s own position, simply vanished into the sea. Yet, somehow, with a precision that should have been impossible, the same tremors caught all four of those fighters, flinging his sons out onto the ice and Garp back into the destruction.

For an instant, the world seemed to hold still.

Then, with an inhuman cry of horrible anguish and rage, Marco threw a massive wave of fire over the remaining Marines before grabbing Jozu and Izou and booking it for the Moby Dick.

The action was followed by more anguished cries, but the remaining Division Commanders obeyed the unspoken order. Last, vicious and rage fueled attacks took their toll on the Marines remaining before they pulled back, dragging their underlings with them. Sometimes literally when crew too overcome wouldn’t move. Some of the Marines started to fight back…only to stop as Garp returned to the field, seemingly barely scratched.

“Enough. This has cost enough. The next one to fire on either side will face me.”

Luffy shivered, never having seen his grandfather looking that serious before. Between his reputation and his own presence of command…he was obeyed. Aokiji was the only one to move on the Marines side, and that only to jump back and raise an Ice Barrier between the two sides. Garp barked orders, and the Marines obeyed again, fanning out to try and recover as many of their wounded as they could.

Two minutes later, Robin cut out the very few remaining projections, most having died with Whitebeard’s last act, and spoke into the dead silence.

“Kizaru returned from fighting you just a few minutes later, but all the Pirate Ships were already withdrawing and he didn’t pursue. We’ll need to go over all the videos individually to attempt an accounting of just what and who was lost on both sides…but one thing remains unquestionably true. Both Fleet Admiral Sengoku and Edward Newgate are dead. Akainu is crippled, possibly outright dead if that collapse dumped him into the ocean. Whatever else happens, there’s going to be chaos for a long time as the various powers try to figure out what the losses even mean for both sides ability to hold what they have. Even ignoring however important that monster you killed might have been, Captain.”

There were several long moments of solemn silence…before chaos erupted as everyone tried to speak at once.

... ... ... ... ... ...

A/N 1: Something I've made clear (I think) from the start is that this is a slightly less anime, more realistic (sorta, not quite the right word, I think) version of One Piece. People actually die, and Words no Jutsu is not engaged in every 17 seconds. Battles don't stop for people to talk, and people like Whitebeard aren't going to give up a surprise attack just to try to negotiate. The Marines deliberately and intentionally provoked him into a war, far more clearly and obviously than in canon. He was never going to stop and talk, letting the whole battle be insanely bloodless for something that was supposed to be world-shifting.

Nope. People died here. Lots and lots and lots of people. The majority of them Marines. Between the hits they'd already taken, the closing of the Alabasta trade route to the WG, and the fact Whitebeards final Fuck You likely killed 20,000+ Marines? The Marines and WG are NOT coming out of this fight with the same strongish position they had in canon. They were hurt MUCH worse, and the Whitebeard Pirates aren't quite as leaderless either. Marco was never really driven to try and hold the crew together, for whatever reason, despite being strong enough. Ace, on the other hand? He's an entirely different matter. He's still the second division commander and considerably stronger than he was in canon. Remember, he wiped most of Blackbeard's crew and seriously injured Blackbeard, enough for Teach to run from him. He's AT LEAST on Blackbeard's level, meaning Warlord level at minimum. He'll actively try to hold the Whitebeard Pirates together in a way that Marco never attempted, though how successful he is will remain to be seen.

A/N 2: Once per release, I remind people that...I have a Page! Nothing I write, fanfiction wise, is ever permanently paywalled. That said, I do have Early Access chapters. There is, in fact, currently another 14,000 words of One Piece - Halfway Broken in Early Access (Chapters 77-81). Also, of course, you also get access to my other Early Access chapters for my other stories. There is typically around 45-65k words of various works in early access at any one time. I always appreciate any support, since it helps me free up more writing time...but most of all I hope you just enjoy the stories!