_{(DISCLAIMER: Note that this story will be incorporating some fanon abilities and characterization details for some of the characters. Generally the goal was to keep things in line with the three series while taking some creative liberties when appropriate, for the sake of an entertaining narrative. So please do not expect everything to be strictly 100% canon-compliant. Of course, it was still important to us that we stay in line with the characters as they are established. Basically, just have fun with it!)}

Chapter 4

“As Old and as True as the Sky”

_{(Chapter art by Cabbage)}

The darkness of Hueco Mundo seemed to stretch endlessly to the horizon. In the light of the perpetual moon, the Hollow’s powerful legs carried him across the sprawling sand dunes, the cold stinging slightly against his sleek white body. In the far distance, a tiny speck appeared on the horizon, which seemed to slowly grow larger and larger as he approached it, until-

Fwoosh!

He sank his sharp teeth into its head, gouging out a chunk of it. But where he might have normally tasted blood, he found only the bitter, coarse taste of sand in his mouth.

“Pheh!” he spat furiously, shaking his head in disgust, as the sand creature howled and sank beneath the sand. He felt a low growl rise up from his chest, frustration and bitterness mixing together.

“Grimmjow.”

Materializing behind him, a humanoid Hollow touched down. Shawlong. Grimmjow turned his head away and didn’t acknowledge him.

“That was Runuganga, guardian of the white sands,” Shawlong continued. “He won’t kill Hollows, but his body is made of sand. You’ll need water if you want to defeat him.”

“Feh. He’s weak, so he doesn’t interest me.”

Shawlong was silent. Then, “The others grow hungry, Grimmjow. Sometimes hunting weak Hollows is necessary. Do not forget why we have chosen to follow you.”

“If you’re all too weak to survive on your own, then I don’t need you. I’ll become king all on my own.”

“The strength of the pack may be the wolf, but the strength of the wolf is the pack. A king without followers is just playing pretend.”

But Grimmjow ignored him, tail whipping as he stalked off, his mind already on his next prey.

“Hngh…”

Grimmjow’s eyes slid open. He blinked a few times, drearily, the dream becoming murky in his mind. His back ached; the chair that he was sitting in was stiff and uncomfortable. As he stood up and stretched, he let out a long yawn. 

That dream… he hadn’t thought about Shawlong in a long time.

“A king without followers is just playing pretend.”

Grimmjow’s nose twitched with irritation, and he pushed the thought from his mind and wrenched open the door. It was showtime.

—

[Day 9 – Present]

The wind whistled sharply in the man’s ears as he gazed down at the clouds below. A wide, self-satisfied smile stretched across his face as he gazed out toward the morning sun. He had never been much of a morning person, for he never slept and so the time held no special significance. But now, as a new energy and vitality flowed through every inch of his body, snuffing out every trace of the exhaustion that usually gripped him, Marshall D. Teach felt as though the day marked the dawn of something new.

“Zehahahaha!” He allowed his gravelly laugh to ring out through the open air. “Good morning, world! Up and at ‘em, cuz I’m done waiting for anyone!”

“I take it that you’re recovering from the operation well, sire?”

Blackbeard turned to face the man who had spoken to him… well, actually, “man” wasn’t quite right. Though it wore the face of Trafalgar Law, the being who now served him was much older and less human.

“Recovering? It’s like I’m a new man, Zetsu! It isn’t just that I can’t die… I feel like I could run to the ends of the earth! Win any fight and seize any treasure!” He thrust his arms toward the sky in glee. “No one will stand in my way now!”

“Right you are, sire.”

Blackbeard focused his attention on Zetsu and regarded him with greater seriousness. “What about you? Law holding up alright?”

“He’s stable, and regaining strength by the minute. Of course, having performed the operation, he would die if I were to separate from him.”

“Then you’d better hold onto him as tight as you can.” Blackbeard nodded. “If he dies, his fruit will pop up somewhere else, and who knows what could happen then?”

“Could you not simply claim his fruit yourself?”

“I could, I guess. But it would be a waste of a fruit, since I wouldn’t be able to use it without Law’s medical know-how.”

Though the Ope Ope no Mi could normally only be wielded by a user with the requisite skill set, Zetsu could call upon the memories and abilities of those whom he possessed, and so unlike Blackbeard, could use the fruit’s power without trouble.

“As long as we have Law’s fruit, my victory is guaranteed.” Blackbeard grinned as he continued. “I was a bit worried about the other Warlords messing with me, which is why I went after Marineford, to split ‘em up. But now that I’ve beaten Mihawk, I have nothing to worry about. None of ‘em would dare come after me anymore, and they’d die trying if they did.”

As he spoke, shadows began to ooze out from his body, spreading across the wood beneath his feet and then through the air to cover the surrounding clouds. As Moria’s power passed through them, their puffy whiteness turned to a deep, angry grey. Thunder began to rumble.

Through the clouds, the massive structure upon which Blackbeard stood pushed into vision. Hundreds of meters from bow to stern, the giant pirate ship was carried through the air by gigantic bat wings extending from either side, its wood composed of twisted dead wood – a monstrous creation of Shadow’s Helheim. 

“It’s time, Zetsu. Time for my wrath to roll across this arena and reduce everything to rubble!”

Pushed forth by the wind, the ship’s sail bore Blackbeard’s jolly roger, and it passed over the ocean below, toward the mainland in the north. Leaping up to perch on the towering crow’s nest, Blackbeard gazed out with hungry eyes, his mind only on one thing: conquest.

“Sail forth, my Queen Anne’s Revenge!”

He thrust his hand out, and shadows rippled forth from him. On either side of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, new pirate ships materialized in midair, twisting into existence from pure shadow, until dozens and dozens of ships sailed together in a dark armada.

“Now… every pirate captain needs a crew, no?”

Atop every ship, from the dead wood, bodies began to rip up – zombies, hundreds of them, their bodies gnarled and rotted. But at the front of the two closest ships on either side, bigger bodies emerged: the vanguards of Blackbeard’s fleet. 

“Rise… my new Titanic Captains!”

Gecko Moria.

Donquixote Doflamingo.

Jinbe.

Bartholomew Kuma.

Their eyes were empty. Their bodies were vacant of the souls and the lives that had once inhabited them. But they were unmistakably the deceased Warlords of the Sea.

“Oh, my…” Zetsu purred, surprised. “I had no idea that your power over Moria’s fruit had grown to this extent.”

“There are still limitations,” Blackbeard admitted as he dropped down to land next to Zetsu. “Weevil’s body is at the bottom of the sea, so Devil Fruit power can’t reach him. I was fortunate enough to pull Doffy from the lava before he was lost too.”

“And Crocodile?”

“Sealed away, by that Itachi boy. That’s what Mihawk said, at least.”

“Ahh. The Totsuka Blade, of course. He’s trapped in the gourd that Itachi summons.”

“Gourd?” Blackbeard grinned. “Well now, I didn’t know it was like that!”

“There are many things you don’t know, Teach.” It wasn’t Zetsu who spoke.

Blackbeard turned in surprise. Atop the ship’s bow, arm resting on his knee, a man sat. Dressed in all purple, a white mask with a spiral pattern adorned his head. Though he was different than he had appeared previously, he was indisputably recognizable.

“Tobi!” Blackbeard greeted. “Zetsu’s told me all about you!”

“I don’t doubt that,” Tobi replied, his red and purple eyes narrowing as they met Zetsu’s gaze, who stared back with a sharp-toothed grin. “But I’m not here to discuss Zetsu’s treachery. I want to speak to you.”

“Oh? Little old me?”

“This fleet of yours. Did you expect it to be taken as anything other than a challenge? I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I imagine that the entire arena’s eyes are on you right now.”

“Zehaha! I wouldn’t have it any other way!” Blackbeard spoke jovially, no fear of Tobi in his words at all.

“Am I to assume that you’re determined to use that wish at the end of this war?”

“Of course! Can’t hate a man for that, can ya?”

“What will you use that wish for?”

“Hm…?”

“I profess myself curious. I want to know what the strongest of you Warlords desires so dearly that you would tear down your supposed allies to acquire.”

Blackbeard grinned. “That’s easy. I want to become King.”

“King of…?”

“King of everything.”

“…Ah.”

Blackbeard spread his arms wide, as though inviting a hug. “Most men would be satisfied with less. To be the strongest. The richest. The King of the Pirates! I have the enterprise to think bigger than that.”

Tobi listened silently. His mask made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“To live out my dream, to be free and to be happy, to see it through until the end and then to pass everything on to the next generation… I can’t tolerate thinking like that! A dream that ends is too small, and I’m not the type to dream small!” Malice flashed in Blackbeard’s eyes. “Which is why I’ll become the king that reigns forever. A party that never ends, with a host that never dies! A dream that never dies… that’s what I want.”

For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then Tobi chuckled, and it grew into full-blown laughter. He raised his hands, and clapped them together several times.

“I commend your ambition, Blackbeard. I wasn’t expecting such an answer. If that’s the case, I daresay we want the same thing. The difference is, though, I disagree with you. You’re still dreaming too small.”

“Oh?” Blackbeard blinked. “Do tell.”

“I dream of a world where no man’s dream shall ever die. Where everyone is happy and everything is peaceful, within an unending world where everyone has exactly what they want. The end of pain, the end of suffering, the end of endings. That is what I desire.”

Now it was Blackbeard’s turn to laugh. He threw his head back and belted out a cackle, tears forming in his eyes. But as he settled down, there was no respect in his voice, only scorn.

“Boring. Don’t make me laugh.”

“…Pardon?”

“A world where all dreams are realized? That’s just boring. We don’t want the same thing at all.”

“I assure you-”

“No, I don’t want your excuses. Dreams are things that people fight and die for. If no one ever failed and suffered and despaired, then success would be worthless! If I’m not crushing other people’s happiness underfoot for the sake of my own, then I’ll never be happy! I refuse to live in a world where dreams are commodities! That’s a world for soft fools who can’t stand things being hard!”

“…Crushing other people underfoot…?” Tobi questioned, eyes narrowing behind his mask. “I don’t understand. To say that you wouldn’t be satisfied with happiness unless others are unhappy… that’s not a dream. It’s greed, and nothing more.”

“Exactly.” Blackbeard’s body shimmered slightly, shadows and darkness emanating from him. “I’ll drown the world in my greed.”

Tobi sat in silence for a moment, mulling over Blackbeard’s words.

“And there’s nothing that could be said to persuade you from this path?”

“Nothing,” Blackbeard responded without hesitation. “I would sooner die than give up on it.”

Slowly, Obito nodded and pulled himself to his feet. “You’re right, then. We don’t want the same thing.” He raised a hand, and then brought it down, pointing directly toward Blackbeard’s chest. “I will see your dreams crumble away, and so achieve perfection for everyone else.”

Blackbeard grinned. The conversation, he could tell, had been more theatrical than anything… after all, for either of them to win the other would have to die. This was always going to be the outcome. 

“I wouldn’t want it any other way!”

Around Tobi’s right eye, a vortex swirled, and from it a large mass was hurled as Tobi’s own body twisted inward, sucked back into Kamui until he disappeared into thin air. Across from Blackbeard, the person that had been expelled stood, his singular good eye regarding Blackbeard coldly.

“Well,” Baraggan growled, pulling Arrogante from his back. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where the hell I am?”

—

[Land of Snow]

In the center of a clearing, the snow sizzled as powerful energy scorched it, steam wafting up into the air. The source of the energy stood at the center of a twenty-foot clear area, where the snow had all been melted away.

“Hah! Hah! Hah!” Mihawk swung Yoru, cleaving through the air with microscopic precision, and the trees to the right of the clearing split in half, toppling to the ground with a crash. Swinging Samehada to the other side, Haki spat from the giant sword’s mouth in large globs, eating through snow and shrubbery on the edge of the clearing with a hiss.

As Haki swelled around Mihawk, sweat poured down his bare chest in spite of the frigid air. He breathed in and out heavily, and redoubled his efforts.

Lounging on a large boulder nearby, Buggy snored openly, hands behind his head, a snot bubble inflating and deflating from his nose.

“Zzzz… mimimimimi… zzzz… mimimimimi…”

Crack!

As Mihawk swung Yoru in his direction, the boulder under Buggy split in two, his snot bubble popped and his eyes shot open as he leapt into the air with a shriek, limbs flailing.

“WATCH IT! …er, please, M-Mihawk sir…”

“Sorry.” Mihawk rasped out as his aura discorporated. He stabbed Yoru into the ground and leaned Samehada against a nearby tree, sinking down to take a breather.

Buggy stared.

‘…D…Did he just say sorry…?’

“It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to train. I’m not accustomed to pushing myself.”

“Is it…” Buggy swallowed. “…going alright?”

“Samehada is an excellent tool for this, as it turns out.” Mihawk glanced at the massive sword. “But it may not be fast enough. Blackbeard will surely be getting stronger too.”

“S-So…” Buggy scratched his chin. “Is it basically just us VS Blackbeard now? We’re not gonna try to beat the other teams?”

“I’ll fight whoever challenges me,” Mihawk replied. “But Blackbeard is my priority. He cannot be allowed to survive.”

“R-Right…”

“He-” Mihawk’s eyes widened sharply and he sat up straight. “He’s coming.”

“Huh?!”

Mihawk pulled himself up, seizing his button-up from where it had been hung on a nearby tree branch and quickly pulling it on. “From the south… an entire armada of flying ships have set sail. Blackbeard’s power is swelling. He’s making his move right now.”

As he pushed past the sputtering Buggy, he seized Samehada, and then Yoru.

“We have to-”

In the air ahead of him, a vortex opened, and Mihawk halted, extending an arm to keep Buggy behind him. From the center of the vortex, a body emerged until Tobi stood before them. Mihawk’s eyes narrowed.

“Hello there, Mihawk.” Tobi greeted, eyes gleaming behind his mask. “Let’s chat.”

—

[Day 3 – Las Noches]
[During the First Conflict]

“It would be in our best interest to keep the strongest of our cards close to the chest, so to speak.”

Grimmjow couldn’t help himself from letting out a scoff at Harribel’s words. He had hardly been paying attention to their “leader’s” bickering with Luppi, but the notion of Luppi being one of their strongest fighters… pathetic.

He allowed the argument to fade into white background noise once again, paying it no mind as his thoughts wandered. A moment later, however, he felt a light tug on his collar and turned in annoyance. Nel had moved to stand behind him while the others were busy arguing, and was now glaring down at him.

“What?” he muttered, low enough that the others couldn’t hear it.

“Could you at least try to help?” Nel hissed quietly. “Harribel is doing her best to keep these people together, the least you can do is back her up.”

“She wanted to be the leader. Why should I help her?”

A couple chairs down from where Grimmjow was sitting, Starrk’s head turned slightly. It seemed that he alone had noticed their hushed conversation.

“Because you want that wish,” Nel snapped softly. “To become king. I know you do.” Grimmjow was silent.

“If that is what her majesty decrees,” Szayel was saying, “I see no reason to argue. After all, Lord Aizen is not here to direct our movements, and his shoes are impossible to fill. Our dear Tres Espada has elected to step into his role, an immeasurable burden.”

Grimmjow’s gaze flickered toward Harribel as Nel moved back over to stand next to their leader. Not for the first time, Grimmjow registered the thin, dark circles under Harribel’s eyes, the way her face was thinner than it had been just days prior. She had taken on a lot of pressure.

‘…Feh.’

“Thus, any blame for mistaken actions will fall onto her shoulders,” Szayel continued. “A deeply noble sacrifice, fitting of she who once bore the third rank.”

“Not ‘her majesty’,” Grimmjow interjected, and now all of their eyes turned to him. Unlike Harribel, he enjoyed the feeling. He let his gaze turn toward Baraggan. “And not ‘a king’. Don’t get it wrong again. The only king who’ll rule Hueco Mundo is me.”

“Don’t get cocky, brat,” Baraggan growled. “You may be powerful, but I am the only king here.” Grimmjow shot him a grin. 

“Oh yeah? Wanna fight for that throne, old man? Or are ya worried you might throw out your back?”

“Enough,” Harribel reprimanded him, and Grimmjow pretended to be annoyed. He met Harribel’s gaze momentarily, and understanding passed between the two of them. The heat was off her now, and she had the opportunity to retake control of the conversation.

She breathed a sigh of relief that might have come off like exasperation to the others. “Grimmjow is correct, of course. I am not your king, I am simply your leader. And as the one who has taken on that burden, I am asking that you trust my judgment.”

Grimmjow turned his head away, allowing his eyes to slide closed and their conversation to continue as he tuned them out. It was almost too easy sometimes. Before he could get too lost in his thoughts, however, he felt Nel brush against his shoulder again.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Harribel would owe him for this.

—

[Present – Queen Anne’s Revenge]

Blackbeard and Baraggan faced each other, darkness oozing from Blackbeard and Respira mist from Baraggan.

“Nice to meet you, stranger!” Blackbeard cawed. “Welcome to the Queen Anne’s Revenge!”

Baraggan turned his head from side to side, surveying the ships on either side of them. Behind Blackbeard, Zetsu spoke under his breath.

“Sire, this is King Baraggan of the Espada. His power lets him age things that touch it into dust.”

“Oh?” Blackbeard cawed. “A king? Then we’re two birds of a feather!” Baraggan’s gaze turned back toward Blackbeard, and his eye narrowed.

“He shouldn’t be able to move.” Zetsu growled. “Itachi trapped him in a mental time loop… It should have been impossible to escape, unless….”

“You say you’re a king?” Baraggan called out, cutting Zetsu off. “Over what kingdom do you rule?”

“Well, I suppose I’m not king just yet,” Blackbeard laughed. “Dress for the job you want, ya know!”

Baraggan scoffed. “So you’re just a faker. I see. Die, then.”

With a swing of Arrogante, a Respira wave washed out and slammed into Blackbeard head-on, consuming him. 

“Sire!” Zetsu cried in alarm as he leapt backward, drawing Law’s sword and teleporting up to the top of the crow’s nest, out of the wave’s reach. Below him, however, the Respira parted, and underneath it Blackbeard stood, unharmed.

“H-!” Baraggan’s eye widened. “Impossible!”

“Zehahahaha! I hope you didn’t think that would work!” Blackbeard rolled his shoulder, crouching in place. “I’m immortal! Aging won’t kill me, not even in a million years!”

“Immortal…” Baraggan’s face began to smolder, the skin around his eyes stretching as he raised an arm to point at Blackbeard in accusation. “What arrogance! To think that a mere human would dare attempt to defy the laws of nature!”

Zetsu’s eyes widened.

‘I see… he’s changed. He escaped the Izanami by accepting fate…’

“Aw, come on!” Blackbeard complained. “Don’t be like that! Defying nature… having the arrogance to decide how things should be… isn’t that how a king should behave?”

Baraggan sneered. “Men like you… who think that they alone understand how things should be…” A certain man’s face flashed in his mind’s eye. “I loathe men like that more than anything!”

He spun Arrogante in his hand, pointing it downward.

“Rot… Arrogante!!”

—

[Land of Snow]

“You’re a powerful fighter, Mihawk,” Tobi said, his eyes landing on Samehada. “Defeating Kisame is no mean feat. You’re very nearly as strong as Blackbeard.”

“And?” Mihawk challenged him, not relaxing in the slightest. “What are you getting at?”

“I was hoping to continue our little truce,” Tobi replied lightly. “You know, the one that you were trying to negotiate with Konan. The one that led your little underling Law to fight by our side yesterday. We both know that Blackbeard is a powerful threat, more so than either of us. But together, we can stamp him out.”

‘He’s lying.’ Mihawk thought silently, appraising Tobi’s strength. ‘He’s no weaker than Blackbeard. If anything, he might even be stronger.’

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.” He spun both swords deftly and crossed them in front of his chest. “The devil I know is no worse than the devil I don’t.”

Tobi was silent, and then sighed. “Disappointingly short-sighted.” He reached up and pulled his Gunbai from where it hung on his back, angling it toward Mihawk in challenge. “But not unexpected. Let’s have at it, then.”

—

[Tobi’s Hideout – Some Time Prior]

As the White Mask slid down around his ears, Tobi seized the Gunbai and prepared to set off for battle. The Rinnegan that he had implanted from Nagato the day before possessed unbelievable chakra… the chakra of the legendary Madara Uchiha. Tobi was still growing accustomed to it, but even already he was certain that his powers exceeded anyone whom he had encountered. Well, anyone except…

“Going somewhere, Obito?”

Tobi paused, his hand raising to grasp the hilt of his Gunbai. His head turned to glance over his shoulder as the shadows in his hideout appeared to thicken, whispers echoing throughout the room as if in response to Orochimaru’s voice.

“I thought I had told you not to use that name.” Tobi’s voice was calm, but had a dangerous edge to it.

“Oh, but why not?” Orochimaru said, teasingly. “It’s your name, is it not?”

“It’s the name of a child, whose life and light were stolen long ago. It means nothing to me anymore.”

“Oh, please,” Orochimaru chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic, it’s not like you’re the only one who’s ever suffered. Case in point…”

The shadows seemed to merge together, into the shape of shadowy birds and then into a person, whose visage emerged into the light. Even the normally-composed Tobi sucked in breath sharply, and stepped backward.

“Itachi…?”

“Kehehehehe… no, not quite.” Orochimaru’s slitted eyes gleamed from under the bangs of Itachi’s hair. His teeth had sharpened into fangs, and purple face markings stretched down the length of his pronounced tear-troughs.

For as much as he still resembled Itachi, the man standing before Tobi was undeniably Orochimaru.

“…So, you finally got your wish.” Tobi’s voice was tight with displeasure. “I hope I don’t need to tell you that this is treachery.”

“Spare me,” Orochimaru yawned, Itachi’s face stretching unnaturally. “This is a net positive. I’m stronger now than Itachi and I ever were separately.”

“And yet you’re still less than half the shinobi he was.”

“That’s a matter of perspective.” When Tobi didn’t respond, Orochimaru continued. “I’ll admit, I never thought I’d see the day… Itachi’s body is a dream I gave up on decades ago. But I’ve grown strong in his absence. Been biding my time, waiting to strike… and now look at me. I’ve reached the point where I can seize whatever I like.”

Tobi’s hand remained clenched around the hilt of the Gunbai. Orochimaru eyed it with amusement.

“The question is, Obito… are you with me, or against me?”

“…With you, I suppose.” Tobi finally responded, his grip reluctantly loosening around the Gunbai. “Our goals can… coexist.”

“Good.” Orochimaru formed hand seals, and with a sudden grinding sound the ground began to rumble, before rupturing as six coffins rose from the dirt around him. Obito tensed, and then the coffins fell open and his eyes widened.

“This is…”

“I hope they’re to your liking.” Orochimaru remarked. “I’ve been preparing them for some time now.”

Tobi angled his head down, and his Sharingan and Rinnegan gleamed out from the holes in his mask.

“They are.”

—

[Land of Snow – Present]

Six puffs of smoke poofed into existence around Tobi, and Mihawk took a step back, prepared to face whatever was about to emerge. Tobi’s voice rang out.

“May I introduce you to…” 

The smoke dissipated, and six figures were revealed around him, each of them with ringed Rinnegan eyes glowing purple.

Deidara. Sasori. Kakuzu. Kisame. Konan. Nagato.

Behind them, the ground under Tobi ruptured, and a wooden root ripped up from the ground, lifting Tobi up into the air, where he gazed down at Mihawk and his six opponents.

“…The Six Paths of Pain!”

—

[Day 6 – Las Noches]
[Two Days Before the Espada Invasion]

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Nel froze, the Descorrer that had opened in front of her humming faintly as it shimmered in the air. Arms crossed, Grimmjow leaned against the door frame, eyes narrowed as she met his gaze from under the hood she was wearing. No guilt registered in her expression, only guardedness and the slightest bit of anxiety.

“Recon mission. Harribel ordered me.”

“Bullshit.” Nel didn’t even flinch at the sharpness of the response.

“It’s the truth. Just because she trusts me more than you-”

“Stop.” Slowly, Grimmjow approached her, and she stood her ground until they stood face to face. Then, Grimmjow reached up and patted her on the shoulder. “Must be getting to ya, being cooped up in here after so many years wandering the desert. I get it.”

Nel blinked. “…Huh?”

Grimmjow turned away, and waved as he stalked out from the room. “I won’t tell Harribel, but don’t be gone too long, cuz I ain’t covering for you either.”

Puzzled, Nel reached up and rubbed her shoulder, then shook her head slightly, turned, and disappeared into the Descorrer.

—

“…but that’s not the most unusual part…”

Grimmjow paused, and quickly pressed himself against the wall outside of Szayel’s lab, perfectly suppressing his own Reiatsu. He had planned on coming to speak to Szayel, but it seemed that the Octava Espada wasn’t alone.

“The most unusual part is…?” Luppi was sitting on the counter, kicking his legs aimlessly, as Szayel poured over his monitors, complex energy readings scrolling across their surfaces. He licked his lips.

“The most unusual part is that the Garganta here isn’t empty. There are Kyōgoku here.”

“Oh?” Though he couldn’t see it, Grimmjow could envision Luppi’s eyes widening. “Valleys of Screams, you mean?”

“Precisely.” Szayel tapped away at his keyboard with excitement. “And far more massive than any I’ve seen before; they’re practically overflowing with energy. I suspect that they may be congregations of countless Konpaku that have died in this arena before. Without any afterlife to pass on to, they can only remain floating in the void until they congeal.”

Luppi was silent for a moment. “If someone were to harness that power…”

“I imagine they would be more powerful than any Espada.”

Grimmjow’s anger flared. It was obvious what Szayel was doing. Luppi had always been unstable, and now he could practically sense the younger Arrancar salivating with glee at the thought.

“Of course, energy so destructive is far too dangerous to handle lightly.” Szayel continued. “Even for someone as strong as Grimmjow, it would be difficult to manage.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course.” Luppi replied with poorly-feigned seriousness. “Very difficult.”

“If someone were to sneak off to a Valley while out on patrol one of these days, and take advantage of our current lack of sensory powers… Well, that would be quite the disaster, wouldn’t it? We would have no way of noticing.”

“Quite the disaster.” Luppi hopped from the countertop, grinning. “I’m on patrol duty two days from now. I’ll make sure to ah, keep an eye out then, for anyone who might… take advantage.”

“Much appreciated, Luppi.”

Luppi strolled from the room leisurely, hands behind his head. He turned to the left and right, and when he saw no one present, he sauntered off down the hall, a slight bounce in his step.

Behind him, Grimmjow dropped from above, landing silently in the spot he had been standing moments before. His hand twitched toward the sword at his side as he considered pursuing Luppi… and then he allowed it to drop. From what Szayel had described, it didn’t seem like Luppi would be able to handle the Valley’s power. If he wanted to run off and blow himself up… Well, that was none of Grimmjow’s business.

Turning on his heel, Grimmjow knocked sharply on the doorframe of Szayel’s lab, and the mad scientist looked up from his work, startled.

“Oi, poindexter. Need your help.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Grimmjow?” Szayel’s voice didn’t have a hint of concern in it, despite the fact that he had just been conspiring against the Espada. Grimmjow felt a stab of annoyance, but didn’t call him out. He could hold on to that little tidbit for later.

“Those spirit-recording bugs you lent me. Could you get ‘em up on the monitor?”

“Oh?” Szayel turned and began tapping away, bringing up a video feed with just a few clicks. “And what are we looking at, here?”

“…certain you weren’t followed?” Nel’s voice crackled clearly through the speakers.

“My ability to evade detection has never failed me.” A man spoke, his pale face coming into focus, red eyes gleaming. Szayel’s eyebrows shot up, and Grimmjow smirked slightly.

‘Knew it.’

“Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck,” Nel introduced herself. “You can call me Nelliel or Nel. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

The footage crackled for a split second, and then refocused.

“Itachi Uchiha. We have much to discuss.”

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge – Present]

As a Hollow’s screech filled the air, Respira flowed out of Baraggan’s skeletal form and solidified, taking form as countless specters of smoke. Some advanced on two legs, others on four, others still winged down from the sky toward Blackbeard, whose zombies surged past him to meet the oncoming swarm.

Immediately, it was apparent that the two sides were not of equal constitution. Upon contact with Baraggan’s Hollow army, the Warlord’s footsoldiers quickly crumbled away into dust. However, what the zombies lacked in personal power they made up in numbers. For every creature that Baraggan’s energy spawned, a dozen tore their way up from the deck of the ghost ship and piled forth, keeping the Hollows from advancing through sheer numbers.

Baraggan leapt into the air, his bony hand latching onto the wing of a draconic creature as he pulled himself up on its back. As they took to the sky, the surrounding airborne Hollows assailed the other ships in Blackbeard’s fleet.

Immediately, however, the sky was riddled with bullets of compressed air from the zombified Kuma, who stood at the helm of the ship to Blackbeard’s immediate right, hands outstretched. Though his robotic eyes were abnormally empty even by his standards, Kuma had lost none of his speed as a zombie, and many of the Hollow King’s minions found themselves shot out of the air before they could make sufficient headway.

Baraggan sneered. “Fast little insect.” Respira flowed from his mouth and formed into a gnarled staff in his hand. “Let’s see you fly.”

Raising the staff to the sky, a mass of Respira shot up from his body and exploded outward like a bomb, dissipating into mist that flowed out into the dark storm clouds all around. As thunder rumbled, the bright white light flashing within the clouds became a bright purple. 

Below, Blackbeard’s eyes widened, and his jaw went slack. He turned sharply.

“Jinbe! Get off your butt!”

CRASH!

From the clouds, a dozen bolts of purple lightning split the sky, ripping the air clean in half as they blasted down toward the deck of every ship. In a split second, however, the zombie Jinbe leapt up and whirled both arms in swooshing arcs. From the ocean surface kilometers below, water shot upward and twisted in front of the lightning like a shield. As the bolts met their mark, the electrical energy fired down the length of the water spouts, discharged into the ocean. 

FWOOOM!

The water violently split, exploding into vapor as the lightning seared through it. Atop the Queen Anne’s crow’s nest, Zetsu looked dismayed.

‘He can imbue even lightning with his Respira? Those would have destroyed half our fleet in one go, had they met their mark. A dangerous foe indeed…’

Jinbe landed on the dock next to Blackbeard, and the Emperor patted his shoulder to no acknowledgement. Above him, Baraggan spun his staff, and it morphed into a swirling ball of Respira miasma, which grew in size above his head as he raised it toward the sky.

“No earthly providence shall keep you safe forever, False King.” Baraggan growled as the growing ball of Respira began to eat away at the clouds.

Blackbeard laughed. “I don’t do safe!”

Cocking a fist back, the air behind Blackbeard quivered around his hand, and with a bellow of glee and effort, the Emperor leapt into the sky. Swinging his arm outward in a backhand motion, Blackbeard slammed his fist into the air.

CRACK!

Space itself splintered violently as his hand slammed into it, and a massive shockwave exploded outward toward Baraggan and his swarm of flying creatures. Force and wind buffeted the Hollow King, and he groaned as he was pushed backward, his Hollows dissipating under the sheer force of the quake that Blackbeard had unleashed. The giant orb of Respira above trembled, but didn’t lose cohesion.

“Fool!” Baraggan spat as he staggered slightly atop his perch. “There’s nothing you can throw at me that time can’t overcome!”

“Zehahaha…”

Blackbeard’s laughter filled the air. Before the quake had time to dissipate, without giving Baraggan an opportunity to regain his balance, Blackbeard’s body began to shimmer with pitch-black energy, which boiled upward into a twister of darkness above his head.

“I’ll show you just how eternal my darkness is!”

In the air between them, Respira and darkness collided, and an enormous explosion – half purple and half pitch black – split the sky.

—

[Land of Snow]

KER-CRUNCH!

Dozens of trees ripped in half from the force of a massive shockwave, hurled into the air. In a blur of motion, Mihawk sprang between the airborne chunks of wood, so quickly they appeared suspended. Each time he dove from one to the next, the wood behind him exploded, flames licking outward and searing the snow-covered ground. 

Gritting his teeth, he tried to pivot midair, but it was all he could do to keep ahead of the blasts. Beneath his feet, a projectile slammed into the tree – a small mass of bubbling clay.

BOOM!

The clay detonated, and Mihawk barely managed to clear the explosion. On the ground below, Deidara followed him with blank, purple-ringed eyes, his arm morphed into some kind of grenade launcher with which he fired his explosive clay.

‘He’s faster than he was when he was alive.’

Still, Mihawk didn’t lose his composure. Pivoting midair, he swung the black Samehada around, and Deidara’s next volley of clay struck the side of the sword and found themselves absorbed harmlessly into the blade. A moment later, Samehada puffed out sharply, its food having detonated within it. Smoke curled from its mouth as it let out a snarl of disgust.

‘Tch!’

Behind Mihawk, Kisame seemed to materialize midair – he too was far faster than he had been before. As the world’s strongest swordsman swung Samehada around in a wide arc toward its former owner, Kisame launched a fist forward and slammed it into the sword head-on. For a split second, the two strained against each other, chakra from Kisame’s muscular body being tugged toward the blade, and the Haki coating Samehada being pulled in return… until with a crack, the two separated, knocked backward and skidding across the ground.

‘He can absorb energy without Samehada now…?’

Mihawk had no time to contemplate the thought, as strings of chakra wrapped suddenly around his body, binding him tight. Hurling him up into the air, Sasori swung him around and brought him down hard on the soil, crunching him into the ground.

The chakra strings went taut. Previously wrapped around Mihawk’s shoulders, they constricted inward and fastened around something deeper, at the core of his very being. Mihawk gritted his teeth and let out a sharp gasp as his very spirit tried to wrench itself from his body – tugged by Sasori’s strings.

“Enough!” Swinging Yoru, he carved through the chakra strings, and with sheer force of will, he wrenched his soul back. His entire body shuddered momentarily as his very essence realigned itself, settling back into place. Just in time, too, as he whirled Yoru around, and with a powerful surge of Conqueror’s Haki, repelled another volley of clay bombs from Deidara.

His Observation Haki flared sharply. Without hesitation, he leapt into the air, and a massive appendage slammed into the ground where he had stood moments prior.

Turning his gaze toward the source of the attack, Konan floated in midair, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. Large purple-ringed eyes lined her arms, and one opened wide on her forehead – not unlike the form that she had taken against Nnoitra.

Mihawk felt a flicker of anger. That girl… he had watched her die a painful death at Blackbeard’s hand. For the masked man to use the dead so crassly…

He had no time to linger on the thought, as large puffs of smoke appeared around Konan, and giant paper birds soared forward, spearing down through the air toward him; their eyes, like hers, were bright purple.

“Kurogatana Hasami!” Twirling Yoru, Mihawk swung it in a wide arc, decapitating the birds long before they could reach him. In that moment, however, a hand closed around his throat and with a grunt he was ripped through the air, the disembodied hand reattaching to the arm it had been fired from: Kakuzu’s.

Behind Kakuzu, magenta flames materialized, but before anything could emerge from them-

“Kurogatana Kazaguruma!”

Mihawk spun Yoru up in a circular arc, carving clean through the threads that held Kakuzu’s hand to his arm. An instant later, another strike from the blade tore through Kakuzu’s mask, carving the top of his head off at the mouth.

As Kakuzu’s body collapsed backward, Mihawk’s hand shot out, and his fingers closed around a thin, hard implant within Kakuzu’s mouth that had been exposed by the slash. Pain flared through Mihawk’s body as energy rippled up through his arm. With a flick of his wrist, he ripped out the Black Receiver and hurled it toward Tobi, who had been watching the fight from a distance with bemusement. Though Mihawk’s aim was perfect, the receiver passed through the man’s chest harmlessly and embedded itself into a tree behind him.

‘Those rods are how he’s controlling their bodies,’ Mihawk surmised as he repelled the remaining Paths of Pain swarming him. ‘No doubt about it. He’s channeling his energy through them, enhancing their natural powers with his own. Which means…’

He met another strike from Kisame head-on with Yoru. This time, his sword slash carved up the length of Kisame’s arm, splitting it in half down the center. With a flick, Mihawk jerked Yoru upward and dislodged a Black Receiver that was embedded in the bone of Kisame’s arm.

‘…I can either take out the rods…’

The Path’s eyes flickered sharply, and in its moment of disruption, Mihawk leapt up, springing off of Kisame’s head and into the air. His gaze met Tobi’s, watching from afar. Armament and Conqueror’s Haki flowed into Yoru’s blade, mixing together in a mighty crescendo.

‘…or take out the energy source!’

“Kurogatana Kubikiri!”

Swinging Yoru, a bright blue energy slash ripped through the air and carved through Tobi’s throat… and again passed right through, splitting a massive chasm into the earth behind him. A moment later, lava exploded up from the ground, which had ruptured many kilometers deep. What remained of the snow melted away for miles around. But even as magma flowed over him, Tobi was unbothered.

With a chuckle, he strolled forward, swinging his gunbai back and forth in front of him, as though to fan off the heat as he waded through the lava like it wasn’t even there. Forming several hand seals, he casually called out:

“Earth Style: Sealing Stone.”

The ground behind him swelled, and the lava was pushed back, thrust down into the deep pit as silt and clay poured in, sealing up the wound in the earth like putty. Within moments, the ground had been repaired as though it had never ruptured, and Tobi stood, unharmed. Mihawk landed across from him in a crouched position, lips pressed together grimly. Around him, Konan, Sasori, and Deidara hovered.

Tobi moved forward to stand next to the motionless Nagato, who had not yet begun to attack since the fight had started.

“I certainly hope you didn’t expect that to be enough.” Tobi chuckled. He snapped his fingers, and Nagato formed several hand seals. From the ground, the mutilated Kisame and Kakuzu corpses dragged themselves up, Kisame’s arm slowly repairing itself and Kakuzu’s threads stitching the top of his head back on.

Mihawk raised both his blades in preparation as the two rejoined their allies. His eyes narrowed.

“Your strength isn’t bad at all,” Tobi continued. “But you can’t even touch me.” He raised the hand not holding his gunbai and pointed at Mihawk, confidence in his voice as he spoke. “You’ll tire out eventually. It’s only a matter of time.”

—

[Day 7 – Las Noches]
[One Day Before the Espada Invasion]

Harribel paced back and forth, cloak swirling behind her as she stalked up and down Szayel’s lab. Anxiety rolled off her in waves, the countless beakers, bottles, and instruments on Szayel’s work desks quivering slightly as she moved past.

“Calm down.” Grimmjow spoke calmly, though his shoulders were tense.

Harribel snarled and swung her arm around, sweeping vials of liquid off the nearby shelf. They shattered against the hard floor, and the chemicals within sizzled sharply.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” she said, her pacing unceasing. “Why is she doing this?”

“She thinks the others can’t be trusted, and honestly she’s not fuckin’ wrong. Szayel and Luppi-”

“That’s entirely beside the point!” Harribel cried as she finally halted, whirling on Grimmjow, uncharacteristic anger and distress lining her normally stoic features. “The others can’t be trusted, but I always thought that she could! And now you’re telling me she’s doing this behind my back, when I’ve been trying so hard to keep us unified-!”

“Calm down.” Grimmjow repeated, reaching out and clamping a hand down on her shoulder to reduce her frantic movements. “I get it. You’ve been under a lot of pressure-”

Harribel scoffed and shook him off.

“-but freaking out isn’t gonna solve anything. Take a deep breath and think, Harribel. This isn’t bad for us.”

Harribel went silent. Grimmjow continued.

“In fact, we can use this. We have a bead on what Nel’s up to, and thanks to her little chats with Itachi and that Law guy from down south, we’ve got some basic intel on both of the other teams. They’re all meeting up tomorrow, and from there we can lock down a strategy.” He grinned. “We’re in a good spot, we just need to make sure-”

“Tomorrow,” Harribel interrupted him. She was suddenly staring off into the distance, as though seeing something he wasn’t. “Itachi will be down south for the meeting. The Akatsuki Hideout will be undefended.”

Grimmjow blinked. “You wanna-?”

“It will be the perfect time for a strike.” She shook off his grip and began pacing again. “Starrk, Baraggan and I can take point… if we can get Nnoitra to attack Marine headquarters at the same time, we can ensure the people down south are occupied…”

“Hold on,” Grimmjow interjected. “If you’re planning to attack around the time of Nel’s meeting, you won’t be able to use whatever intel she gets from that.”

“That’s fine. We won’t need it.”

“Eh…?!” Grimmjow started to protest, but Harribel was already speaking again as she brushed past him toward the door.

“Contact Nnoitra, see if you can convince him to attack Marine Headquarters tomorrow. I’d do it myself, but he’d much more likely listen to a man like you. Make sure you don’t mention that this is my idea.”

“Now, hold on-”

But Harribel had already swept out of the room, and Grimmjow found himself alone with his words. He stood silently for a moment.

“…Shit.”

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge – Present]

From the enormous cloud of darkness and smog that blotted out the sky, Baraggan soared, tumbling head over foot, his cloak badly torn. His bones, which had already been left damaged by the battle in the Rain Village, cracked even further, chips of white flaking off toward the sea below.

“Urrrghhh…” he groaned. His grip on Gran Caída had gone slack, but he just barely managed to keep his fingers wrapped around its hilt. Reishi in the air congealed around him, slowing his fall until finally, he managed to land just above the ocean’s stirring surface. Above, Blackbeard’s cawing laugh rang out of the smoke cloud, and as lightning flashed from within, his enormous, grinning silhouette flickered through the smoke, towering and overpowering.

“What’s the matter, Hollow King? Falling apart already?!”

From the center of the smoke, the Queen Anne’s Revenge soared forth, Blackbeard perched atop its mast, both hands raised, palms up and crackling with power as his fleet followed him. In mere moments, the gigantic ship reached sea level and leveled out, soaring across the surface toward his foe.

“Then I’ll finish the job quickly!”

Baraggan raised his axe, preparing an assault… and then paused. Below his feet, the water began to ripple sharply, as though disturbed by some powerful force. His eyes widened.

CRASH!

Behind Baraggan, the water’s surface exploded upward as a massive shape rose from its depths. White and blue foam sloughed off the sides of the enormous, shimmering mass of orange – Itachi’s Perfect Susanoo, halfway emerged from the ocean.

“Kh!” Baraggan spun and raised his axe, which crackled with Respira. The oncoming Queen Anne slowed, startled by the sudden emergence of the Susanoo.

“Wh-?!” Zetsu gasped, Law’s face contorting in shock. “Itachi?!”

Wham! The Susanoo’s fist swung upward and slammed into Baraggan, smashing clean through his Respira aura and sending him spinning into the sky, up to eye level. An instant later, Amaterasu flames exploded into existence, and Baraggan’s howl split the air as he was flung away by the sheer force of the sudden heat wave. He crashed into one of Blackbeard’s ships, which crumbled away into dust upon contact as he plummeted toward the sea below, flames licking his scorched bones.

As Blackbeard’s eyebrows shot up in dismay, Zetsu ground his teeth. “Since when could Itachi use a Perfect Susanoo…?”

The Totsuka Blade split the air, carving through three more ships as it slashed inward toward the fleet’s flagship. Without missing a beat, however, Blackbeard leapt into the air and swung a bubble-coated arm around. With a massive impact, his quake met the blade head-on, and deflected the swing backward, long before it had a chance to touch his ship.

“Zehahaha!” With a swing of his other arm, Blackbeard mentally commanded his fleet to scatter, and the ships soared skyward once more, spreading out as many of them split apart, forming new ghost ships as though through some strange mitosis. “Orochimaru, yeah? That was a good swing!”

“Orochimaru?!” Zetsu blanched. ‘How the hell could Orochimaru have-?’ …But now that Blackbeard mentioned it… the Susanoo looked different. Its enormous orange face had become more angular and its eyes narrow slits. Long gashes were scored down its face, not unlike Orochimaru’s eye paint, and two long, fang-like grooves extended down its chin from either side of its mouth.  Most strikingly, around its waist was a thick orange rope belt – its shape identical to the one Orochimaru always wore.

Where he stood within the Susanoo’s forehead, Orochimaru laughed, his eyes gleaming red.

“The Sharingan…” he hissed. “Its power is everything I’ve ever imagined and more. This…”

In a flash, the Susanoo blasted the rest of the way out of the water, and within a split second had soared up to where the ships of Blackbeard’s fleet had made their retreat. The Totsuka Blade flashed through the air, and half a dozen of the ships split cleanly in half, before being consumed in an inferno of black fire.

“This was worth the wait!”

In his moment of revelry, an immense power gripped the Susanoo and ripped it back down through the air. Swirling around Blackbeard’s body, thick darkness had begun intensifying the gravity, and the Susanoo crashed back down to sea level, but didn’t sink below the waves. Together, Orochimaru and Blackbeard both grinned.

“Let’s try… Fujitora style!” Blackbeard raised a hand to the sky, and darkness swirled around his fingers, crushed inward into a powerful well of gravity. Casting out his Observation Haki as far as he could…

Fwoom! Through the clouds above, massive meteors cloaked in fire ripped down through the air, pulled down in an instant by Blackbeard’s gravity and descending upon the sea between the two foes.

“Heh!” Orochimaru let out a raspy chuckle, and the Perfect Susanoo soared forth toward Blackbeard. As it approached the descending meteor shower, the Susanoo’s massive mouth opened, and from its depths, an enormous serpent of blazing orange slithered, twisting into the air like a dragon and sinking its fangs into a meteor, which split into massive chunks from the sheer force of its bite.

The next meteor, the Totsuka Blade cleaved into pieces. The next, the Yata Mirror bashed into smithereens. Finally, as the largest meteor of all descended from the heavens, three beads of orange materialized in the Susanoo’s grip and were chained together by a thin chord.

“Yasaka Magatama!” Orochimaru hurled the Magatama into the sky, and as it struck the meteor, the giant chunk of cosmic stone exploded, pulverized into tiny pieces from the sheer concussive force. As the shards of every meteor rained down, Orochimaru’s gaze snapped toward each of them one by one, and they were burned from the air by Itachi’s gaze.

“Room!”

In the air around the Susanoo, Blackbeard’s zombified warlords materialized, teleported by the power of Law’s Room. As the Totsuka Blade struck out toward Jinbe, Kuma materialized in front of him and thrust a palm out, repelling the sword as it struck.

“Amaterasu!”

Fire burned through the air toward Kuma, but as the devilish fire blocked the sun’s light from above, casting long shadows along the surface of the water below…

“Tsuno Tokage!”

Willed upward by Moria’s power, the shadows ripped up through the air and crisscrossed in front of Kuma, forming a massive barrier that held firm as the Amaterasu flames burned against it. 

The Susanoo raised the Totsuka Blade above its head and grasped its hilt with both hands, preparing to bring it down and carve through the shadow barrier with sheer force, but suddenly the sword froze. Though the Susanoo strained, it was held firm by thin strings that had wrapped around the shimmering blade. In the sky above, perched atop his strings, the zombified Doflamingo stared down, his emotionless face in stark contrast with his usual grin.

With a snarl of effort, Orochimaru wrenched the sword around, and dragged Doffy through the air by the strings, before hurling him into the distance, the strings around the blade loosening. Immediately, though, Doffy vanished and reappeared above the Susanoo, teleported by Zetsu.

“Get under his skin!” Blackbeard called. Doflamingo thrust out his hand, and colored strings shot down toward the Susanoo, snaking into the chinks in its armor and beginning to rip them off like shingles being peeled away. From the center of the Susanoo, however, black flames burst out, searing through the gaps in the armor and burning Doffy’s strings away.

Within the Susanoo, Orochimaru smiled.

“Little gnats.”

—

[Bottom of the Ocean]

Amaterasu flames licked away at the water around Baraggan, bubbles violently bursting up from the sheer heat emanating from the unquenchable flames. Though his Reiatsu wavered, exhaustion setting into Baraggan’s bones, it was still strong enough to keep the fire from killing him.

He felt his back touch down against the cold sand. The grains, likely millions of years old and capable of enduring for another million, were one of the only things that could touch him temporarily without decaying. The water around him, boiling from the Amaterasu, didn’t quite reach his skin, for it was aged into vapor upon contact.

Baraggan’s empty eyes gazed up into the darkness above. Though as a Hollow he could not drown, he found himself suffocated by the water pressing down on him. To continue to fight… was it really worth it?

His mind wandered back to Aizen. To the man who had humiliated him, who had made him bend the knee and serve him… It used to anger him so greatly.

And yet, after the time he had spent within Izanami’s grasp, millions upon millions of loops, in which he had gone mad and then sane and then mad again, grappling with his own helplessness and mortality… he could barely bring himself to muster the energy. Although he had regained his seething rage momentarily, when he had spoken to Blackbeard, the feeling had quickly faded. It seemed so very long ago.

What would he even use that wish for, if he won it? As the king, he had never wanted for anything. As the Segunda Espada, he had never thought of anything but revenge. Was there a point in getting up? In taking up his axe?

All of a sudden, gleaming yellow lights pierced through the water, and Baraggan became aware that he was not alone. Two large eyes gazed down at him, and as he cast his senses outward, he realized they were not the only ones.

He was surrounded by Sea Kings.

Slowly, he pulled himself up. They made no move to attack him. If they had, they would have died. But as he reached a skeletal hand out toward the creatures, they neither flinched nor moved away. They gazed upon him with absolute calm.

Respect.

Trust.

For some reason, for the first time in years and years, the Hollows that had served in Baraggan’s court flashed in his mind. The ones he had forced to fight for his own entertainment. They had looked at him with eyes like those, too.

…Was that what their hosts were doing, with this arena? Making armies fight a war with no purpose? It seemed so very childish to him now.

…An action unworthy of a king.

“…Feh.” 

Baraggan reached out and touched the nearest Sea King. From where his bony fingers pressed against the beast’s snout, Respira spread out and burned away its skin. The creature didn’t howl, or even flinch as its body transformed – and then so did the Sea King behind it, and the Sea King behind that one. In moments, the entire horde of Sea Kings had turned into massive, skeletal wraiths, transformed by the power of the king.

Baraggan had made up his mind. And as his fingers curled around the Sea King’s horn, he spoke one word to his new legion, a word which would see them rise to the surface.

“Onward.”

—

The water exploded up as the Sea Wraiths rose into the sky, skeletal wings unfurling from their bodies as Baraggan’s power carried them upward. Atop the massive sea serpent at the front, Baraggan stood, his axe pointed forward as his newfound army swarmed the battlefield.

“Charge! Charge for Hueco Mundo!”

Atop the Queen Anne, Blackbeard balked as new zombies materialized around him. From his perch on the mast, Zetsu forced Law’s Room outward to encompass a larger area, in preparation for the coming threat. As the first Sea King tore through a ghost ship. Baraggan leapt from its head and cleaved through another with Gran Caída, soaring between ships as Respira surged from his body. 

Within the hovering Susanoo, Orochimaru laughed, pulling off the Akatsuki robe adorning him. Previously, Itachi’s body would have appeared thin and pale, his body wracked by illness, but with the increased vitality of Orochimaru’s Hashirama Cells, he had put on muscle and was nearly indistinguishable from the sickly man he had once been.

However, as Orochimaru formed a hand seal, his flesh rippled, and white mass began to ooze outward, growing massively in size as it filled up the Susanoo’s frame, which began to change shape to accommodate his new transformation.

Blackbeard, whose attention had been diverted by Baraggan, turned sharply back toward Orochimaru as a massive shadow came to tower over him. One head, two, three… nine. Orochimaru had transformed into a hydra, ten times larger than the one he had taken before, and the Susanoo’s plating coated the long necks that stretched hundreds of meters into the sky. From either side of the Hydra’s body, massive wings unfurled – the wings of a dragon.

A Susanoo-Clad Hydra had emerged.

As Blackbeard looked up at it, for the first time he found he couldn’t manage a confident smile.

“…Aw, hell.”

Orochimaru laughed, and as Baraggan’s Respira surged forward, ripping through dozens of Blackbeard’s ghost ships, each of the hydra’s gigantic maws opened, and black flames spewed forth, boiling the air and meeting the Respira head-on. Plowing right through, and consuming ships and Sea Wraiths alike in unquenchable flame.

As Baraggan’s army reeled and regrouped, Zetsu was the first to react. With a thrust of Law’s sword, he teleported Kuma up toward one of the creature’s heads, and with a thrust of his palm the zombified Warlord knocked the head to the side… just barely. A moment later, the hydra whipped its head around and smacked Kuma away, before opening its jaws and clamping down on him.

The zombie Kuma didn’t cry out, but as long orange fangs pierced down through his shoulder, his body began to warp, twisting down the hydra’s throat. The creature’s fangs were made of the same unblockable miasma as the Totsuka Blade, and they were threatening to absorb Kuma entirely!

“Shambles!”

Kuma vanished, and the zombified Jinbe appeared in his place. Though the fangs pierced down into the Fish-Man’s shoulder all the same, Jinbe reached out and seized the flow of energy pouring down the beast’s throat, as though it were made of water. With a heave, he twisted out of the grip of the hydra’s jaw, and with it pulled the Totsuka Blade’s liquid up through its throat, finally ripping it out entirely and hurling it toward the Queen Anne.

Crash! A large object slammed down into the ship’s deck, ripped clean from the body of the hydra. As wood chips rained down around it, the giant orange gourd that accompanied the Totsuka Blade shimmered faintly. Jinbe materialized next to it, and several feet away, Blackbeard grinned.

“Atta boy, Jinbe!” The Fish-Man did not respond. “Just as planned!”

The hydra huffed puffs of smoke from its nostrils. When it spoke, Orochimaru’s hissing voice seemed to rumble out like thunder.

“Whatever feeble plans you’ve constructed will amount to nothing. You will all die, here.”

“We’ll see.” Blackbeard leered. “But first, let’s get the band back together! Jinbe!”

The zombie Jinbe brought his palm down and slammed it into the gourd, smashing it into thin fragments.

“Kh-!” 

The swirling liquid and energy within the gourd spilled out, soaking into the dark wood of the Queen Anne’s deck. From its center, a shape solidified, congealing together. As the figure staggered up, coughed sharply and spat Totsuka phlegm from his mouth, bloodshot eyes flickered from Blackbeard and Zetsu, to the Susanoo-Clad Hydra, to the Sea Wraiths circling above.

“Where…” Crocodile rasped, hoarsely. “Where the hell am I?”

—

[Land of Snow]

‘Come on…’

Mihawk moved like a blur, blades clashing with Kakuzu’s punches one second and Deidara’s clay projectiles the next.

‘Come on…!’

He sliced through several of Sasori’s puppets, which soared in with arms outstretched, then kicked Kisame away, and then leapt over a strike from a massive paper dog from Konan.

‘Come on, Mihawk-!’

From where he sat crouched behind a tree, peeking out in terror, Buggy the Clown chewed furiously at his fingernails. He wasn’t built for this, the stress of desperately hoping that a foe like this wouldn’t notice him, that Mihawk would emerge the victor…

Contrary to popular belief, Buggy wasn’t stupid, and had no illusions about himself: he knew that by every account, he should have died a long time ago. It was only thanks to luck, circumstance, and powerful allies that he was here now, and he knew he wasn’t built to fight this war.

…

Even so… he found himself wishing he could do something to help Mihawk.

—

[Before the Arena]

“Why don’t you take the lead?”

“Eh?” Mihawk looked up from the small book he was reading, fixing Buggy with an annoyed look. Outside the window of the Big Top Blaster, Cross Guild’s mighty flagship, open ocean extended as far as the eye can see. Buggy swallowed, and pressed on.

“I mean… this is gonna be a pretty dangerous fight, isn’t it? These guys are nasty. I’m not exactly-”

“You’ll be wonderful bait.”

“…A-Ah.” Buggy gulped again.

“It’s like I said, Buggy. I don’t want to be an Emperor, and don’t like attention much. Your being the leader is quite convenient for me. I have ample reason to see to it that you survive.”

“But…” Buggy cast his mind out, looking for a counterargument. “I don’t like it very much.”

Mihawk frowned in consternation, and Buggy winced, wringing his hands.

“S-Sorry! I don’t mean to complain, sir, but… I sure don’t feel like I’m convenient for you. You and Crocodile don’t treat me very well or anything. N-Not that I’m complaining about being rich and famous, I mean-”

“Okay.”

Buggy blinked. “E…Eh?”

Mihawk shrugged.

“Make no mistake, I have absolutely no respect for you as a person, and I think it’s ridiculous you expect Crocodile and I to carry you to some grand triumph…”

Buggy hung his head lower and lower with every word.

“…But what you’re asking isn’t terribly inconvenient, so I don’t care.”

Buggy’s head snapped up, and he gaped at Mihawk, who rolled his eyes at the reaction.

“Next time, though,” he added, “and the time after that, you do what I say when I say it. No questions asked. Are we clear?”

“Y-Yes.” Buggy nodded frantically. “Crystal!”

Mihawk strolled toward the door. “Good. Now come on.”

—

Mihawk… Mihawk had always been there. Ever since the start of the war, even when he demeaned Buggy or dragged him along on dangerous missions, he had never put his own safety above the clown’s.

He was Buggy’s friend.

Mihawk probably would have disagreed venomously with the assessment, but as Buggy came to the conclusion, he was surprised by how strongly he believed it. Somehow, the strongest swordsman in the world had become his friend. And as Mihawk repelled three undead Akatsuki at once, Buggy came to a second realization.

Eventually, Mihawk was going to lose.

As panic welled in Buggy’s chest, he began to tremble violently behind his tree, and all the time he had spent relying on Mihawk’s strength replayed in his mind, another memory cut through his consciousness, unbeckoned.

“Say what you will about Blackbeard. He has convictions. You have none.”

‘…I don’t want Mihawk to die.’

It started small. A tiny, burning flame in the clown’s chest. And then it grew bigger, and hotter, and louder. It was a feeling that Buggy was unfamiliar with, but one had recognized all the same.

Resolve.

Buggy pulled himself to his feet.

Mihawk wasn’t going to die.

He wouldn’t let him.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Buggy let out a guttural battle cry as he leapt from behind the tree and charged forward, drawing knives from his pockets and holding them between his fingers as he dashed in toward the skirmish at the center of the clearing. Startled by the sudden battle cry, Mihawk and Tobi both turned to stare in alarm at the incoming clown.

“B-Buggy!” Mihawk bellowed. “Get the hell out-!”

“I won’t let you DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!” Buggy wailed as he hurled the knives in his hands.

One of them embedded in Kakuzu’s shoulder with no visual reaction, three missed, and the other two passed harmlessly through Tobi’s body. Tobi chuckled and raised his palm leisurely toward the charging Buggy.

“Shinra-”

As Buggy’s wail sharpened in pitch, all of a sudden the cold air grew warm and the wind seemed to freeze. From the very core of Buggy’s being, in his first ever moment of true bravery, power bubbled forward.

A wave of Conqueror’s Haki rippled out of him and engulfed the clearing.

Tobi didn’t flinch. Mihawk didn’t either. But the Six Paths of Pain toppled where they stood, the purple draining from their eyes as they crumpled to the ground.

Mihawk’s eyes widened as he glanced between them. ‘Wh-?! Was that…?!’

Buggy didn’t slow down as he rushed Tobi, winding up his left arm like a windmill.

“TAKE THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS! LEFT HOOK!”

As he skidded to a halt in front of Tobi, Buggy swung a mighty, Haki-charged punch directly into Tobi’s mask.

Bonk!

The punch bounced harmlessly off the mask.

Tobi stared at Buggy. Buggy stared back. Mihawk stared at both of them.

Crickets chirped.

Sweat formed on Buggy’s brow.

“A…hahaha… let’s, uh… let’s talk about this-”

Tobi reached out and grabbed Buggy’s face, and in a swirling vortex, the clown vanished into his right eye, as though he was never there to begin with.

Mihawk sweatdropped, and pinched his nose in annoyance, letting out a soft groan.

“Well,” Tobi said. “That was certainly interesting. Now, where were we…?”

He formed a hand seal, paused, and then tilted his head downward, annoyance flickering in his eyes.

‘I can’t control them…?’

The Six Paths of Pain lay prone on the ground. It seemed that somehow, the Haki wave that Buggy had released had disrupted Tobi’s ability to control them – indeed, the Black Receivers that had embedded their bodies had entirely dissolved.

Tobi’s hand clenched around his gunbai. He pushed down the wave of annoyance he felt. These fools could surely never irritate him.

“My, my,” he said, after composing himself. “It seems your clown friend was a bit more bothersome than expected. I may actually need to fight you myself.”

—

[Day 8 – Las Noches]
[After the Espada Invasion]

As Grimmjow marched down toward Szayel’s lab, he found himself wishing he had approached the conversation differently. It was obvious, especially now, that Harribel had been straining under the pressure of leadership, and then finally cracked with Nel’s betrayal. She had latched on to the only silver lining that could be found with all her might, and pushed far too hastily toward a course of action that could have produced results.

And she had paid the price for that haste.

Pushing the thought from his mind, Grimmjow threw the doors open, and Szayel swiveled around in his chair to greet him, a twinkle in his eye.

“Grimmjow!” he greeted, far too cheerfully. “Glad to see you alive and well!”

“As if I’d die.”

“Would I be correct in assuming our dear leader has died in battle?”

“…Yeah.”

“Such a shame. Though it was always inevitable, I’m afraid. I must say, Grimmjow, I think it was a mistake to place our trust in her instead of you, from the beginning. The strongest wolf ought to lead the pack, as they say.”

“Funny how you didn’t have this opinion two hours ago.”

Szayel flashed a self-deprecating smile. “These glasses sharpen my hindsight too, as it were.”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow shook his head. “How are your little pet projects going?”

Szayel grinned, and grabbed a vial of bubbling orange liquid from the desk in front of him, waving it with a slight flourish. “Splendidly!”

“Good. Glad you’re done with that, cuz I need you to work a miracle.”

“Oh?”

“How familiar are you with Mayuri Kurotsuchi?”

Szayel’s smile froze, and then his face sank into an annoyed scowl. His eyes twitched.

“Quite.”

Grimmjow raised an eyebrow, but didn’t linger on the odd reaction. “Well, a while after all of you died, he was able to bring a few Arrancars back from the dead as zombies, to fight against the Quincy. Luppi was one of ‘em.”

“Ah, yes, Luppi told me about this. In fact, I was examining his stitches just a few days ago. When you, ah, overheard us. Quite remarkable craftsmanship, even if it was the work of a hack like Kurotsuchi.” Szayel’s tone was deeply sour.

“Was wondering if you could replicate it.”

Szayel fell silent, regarding Grimmjow over the top of his glasses. “…Bring Arrancars back from the dead.” His tone was flat.

“Yeah. Not completely, but as a zombie. Like Luppi.”

“…You want me to bring Harribel back? I must confess that I’m disappointed, to think that you-”

“No.” Grimmjow interrupted. “I want you to bring back all of ‘em.”

Szayel’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he closed it. Slowly, he reached up, and pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose. “And just why on earth should I do that?”

“It’s our best shot at winning.”

“And if I don’t want the dead back? If I don’t want them winning alongside us? What then, Grimmjow?”

“Then you’ll do it anyway, because I said so.” Grimmjow smirked. “You said it yourself. I’m in charge now. So that’s an order.”

Szayel met his gaze evenly. Then, slowly, his lips curled upward into a smile.

“I’m impressed. You pass.”

“…Eh?”

Szayel spun his chair around. “Harribel would have tried to persuade me. Appeal to logic and pragmatism and only order me once she had lost the argument. It would have been truly pathetic. But you’re different, Grimmjow, I like you. You may not have my intellect either, but you don’t ever forget what it means to be a Hollow.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Oh, my dear Grimmjow…” Szayel grinned, flashed a remote, and pressed the button. At the side of the laboratory, a shutter door rumbled upward. Grimmjow’s eyes widened, as he saw what was hanging from the ceiling within.

“…I’ve already started.”

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge – Present]

A massive storm of sand swirled above the surface of the ocean. Atop Blackbeard’s flagship, the newly-reformed Crocodile ground his teeth together, sand flowing from his body. He had been having such a nice dream… and he had always been the type who was grouchy after waking up.

‘Where the hell am I…?’ He shook his head, dazed as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Slowly, it came back to him; the arena, the battle with Deidara, the flood…

His death, at the hands of the man with the orange blade.

As the memory resurfaced in his mind, he felt a deep, growing anger, and his gaze landed on the Hydra in front of him. Though there was certainly much that was different about him, the person he was facing now was undeniably…

“You…” he growled out, as his Observation Haki recognized Itachi. “I’ll drain you dry.”

As the sandstorm swelled in size and sand consumed the air, the Queen Anne’s Revenge within the eye of the storm was suddenly the only place of calm. The hydra’s bright red Sharingan narrowed in annoyance, sand biting into his eyes with a sharp sting.

“Amaterasu!”

Intending to burn away the sand with the black flame, it became immediately apparent that Orochimaru had made an error. Though the Sharingan possessed incredible dynamic sight and could see through the sand veil, the sand itself was still blocking the focal point of its vision.

As the flames exploded into existence just centimeters in front of the hydra’s eyes, it let out an agonized roar and jerked its heads back, but it was too late. The white fluid in the hydra’s eyes had sharply begun to boil, and all nine heads found their vision violently blurred at once. As he reeled from his own attack, Crocodile’s sand bit into his flesh.

In the air above, Baraggan wasn’t faring much better. Much like the sand at the bottom of the ocean, Crocodile’s sand could last for millions of years, and so ate into his bones through his Respira barrier, aged too slowly to be destroyed. With a snarl, the Hollow king willed his Sea Wraiths to fly higher, further out of Crocodile’s reach.

Below, on the deck of the Queen Anne, Blackbeard laughed heartily and clapped Crocodile on the shoulder.

“Well played, chum! I knew bringing you back was a good idea!”

Crocodile jerked his arm and swatted Blackbeard’s hand away.

“Don’t mistake us for allies, Blackbeard. This is a grudge match between me and that Akatsuki bastard.”

“Ha! Fair enough!”

His smile widened slightly, and the cheerfulness morphed into something more sinister. Unhinged.

“Let’s finish this up, then.”

He raised a hand up toward the sky, and darkness shot upward like a spear, intent upon bringing down the heavens above. Kilometers upward, it twisted inward into a sphere, which swelled in size and then contracted. Far below, the sandstorm began to twist upward, grains sucked in by the well of gravity. The Respira cloaking Baraggan and his forces began to shift as well, and streams of water shot up from the ocean below, all absorbed inward by the darkness.

Orochimaru let out a sputtering snarl as he blinked his scorched eyes sharply, trying to clear his vision. Baraggan thrust his axe upward and more Respira flowed toward the faux black hole, but it was quickly absorbed without struggle.

Crocodile grunted, and as sand grains began to tug themselves loose from his body, he willed himself back to normal, allowing powerful Armament Haki to flow through his body to keep himself in place.

“The hell’re you-?”

“Zetsu!” Blackbeard barked.

“Yes, sire!”

Zetsu thrust Kikoku upward, angling it toward the gravity well in the sky. Concentrating Law’s power, he willed the darkness to twist and condense, the space around it pressing violently inward. A high-pitched whine filled the air, and then…

POP!

Space ruptured. The sand, Respira, water and flames being absorbed in by the gravity well stretched outward like spaghetti, the sheer intensity of Blackbeard’s gravity enhanced a billionfold by Law’s power.

It had been transformed into a real black hole.

Orochimaru let out a screech of alarm, red eyes going wide as Susanoo scales peeled away from his body, flesh beneath ripping from him as his enormous torso was lifted into the air by the force of gravity. With a furious flap of his wings, he pushed himself in the opposite direction, but found it was futile as he was slowly drawn in.

Baraggan roared, and his bones splintered as he forced more Respira from his body, but the black hole sucked it in too – still completely unaffected. All around Baraggan, the Sea Wraiths were ripped upward, their skeletal bodies stretching and crumbling apart as they were pulled toward the center of the black hole.

Below, Blackbeard’s darkness swirled around the Queen Anne and the rest of his fleet, forming an impenetrable barrier that kept them unaffected by the gravity. Next to Teach, Crocodile balked, alarmed.

“The hell are you doing?! You trying to kill everyone in the arena?!”

“Everyone but us three,” Blackbeard sneered, gesturing at Zetsu as he spoke. “That’ll be game-set-match for us.”

“And game over for the rest-!”

“Sire!”

Blackbeard’s gaze jerked toward Zetsu, who was looking to the sky in alarm.

Far above them, as the hydra was slowly ripped apart by the pull of the black hole, all nine sets of its eyes gleamed. The right eye, a bright red, but the left…

In front of the hydra, space unfurled, an enormous purple circle opening up in the middle of the sky, even larger in width than the black hole.

“I-Impossible…! Itachi’s body shouldn’t…”

But it was not just Itachi’s body that Orochimaru possessed. Thanks to his prior assimilation of White Zetsu’s cells, his hydra body contained the DNA of the mighty Senju Clan. As the Hydra’s flesh was stripped away to reveal the humanoid form beneath, Orochimaru gazed up at the black hole, his nine left eyes all shining bright purple.

Shining with the light of the Rinnegan. A power only achievable by the combination of Uchiha and Senju DNA.

The portal that unfurled in front of him rippled forward through the air and passed over top of the black hole, as though swallowing it up in a massive maw.

“No!” 

Zetsu thrust Law’s sword into the air, but as he willed space to bend to his will-

Shing!

Blood exploded through the air. Law’s left arm spun through the air, carved off by Itachi’s sword as Orochimaru materialized in front of him, in the spot Crocodile had stood moments prior. Thousands of feet above, the portal slid closed, the black hole disappearing into another dimension.

“Guh-!”

Zetsu staggered backward, registering wildly that somehow, Orochimaru had switched places with Crocodile. Was this some power of the Rinnegan?

“Kehehe…” Orochimaru rasped as he landed between Blackbeard and the bleeding Zetsu, red and purple eyes gleaming bright. “It seems I’m still evolving!”

He thrust a palm out toward Blackbeard, who was momentarily taken aback.

“Shinra Tensei!”

With an immense wave of concussive force, Blackbeard was blasted off the deck of the ship, into the far distance and out of sight.

—

[Land of Snow]

Sparks flew as Yoru grinded across the edge of Tobi’s gunbai, which held firm against the powerful cutting force of the black blade. One, two, three strikes with Yoru. A powerful swing of Samehada. A flick of both wrists, instantly swapping the two swords between his hands. Strike. Swing. Stab. Switch hands.

Mihawk’s strength was incredible, but it was his technique that had earned him his reputation as the world’s strongest swordsman.

Even so, Tobi held his ground. Behind his white mask, the Sharingan gleamed, following every single one of Mihawk’s movements with perfect precision. Even when a stab managed to pierce his defenses, it passed harmlessly through Tobi’s body, as though he weren’t even there.

CLANG!

Yoru struck downward, but angling the flat of the gunbai toward Mihawk, Tobi caught the blade against its breadth. Haki crackled against the gunbai, but then…

“Uchiha Return!”

An explosion of air pressure blasted back out of the gunbai, turning the force of Mihawk’s attack against him and hurling him backward across the clearing, and he skidded across the ground.

Tobi twirled the gunbai around and stowed it on his back, forming hand seals quickly as soon as his hands were freed. 

“Fire Style: Scorching Blast!”

Thrusting a hand toward the ground, geysers of flames exploded up from the soil in front of him, one after the other approaching Mihawk’s location. Without missing a beat, Mihawk drove Yoru down into the ground, and the geyser that exploded beneath him was split in half, parting around Yoru and missing Mihawk.

With his other hand, the swordsman raised Samehada into the wave of flames, and they were absorbed into the shimmering black blade, which swelled sharply.

Tobi’s head rose, his hand still pressed down against the ground. Magenta flames erupted behind him, and the King of Hell rose from the ground, towering overhead.

‘This man is incredibly strong…’ he mused. ‘Even if he can’t touch me… I’ve yet to truly harm him. And with my Paths of Pain out of the picture already… I might need to use that jutsu…’

—

Some time earlier…

The sun beat down overhead. In a vortex, Tobi had emerged into an open plain of stone that extended as far as the eye could see. Though he was not fully privy to the battle that had taken place here not long prior, he knew that it was called a Valley of Screams. It was Orochimaru that had informed him of this place’s existence, having learned about it thanks to the various snakes he had spread throughout the arena. And now that nearly the entire rest of the Akatsuki had died…

He approached a shimmering ball of light, floating a short distance above the ground. Since Luppi had cleared out the Valley of most of its souls, there were only a few left over. Souls that had died recently – still powerful enough, tethered closely enough to the life they’d lost, that they had not been as easily subsumed.

Tobi raised one of his hands and concentrated. In his mind’s eye, mirage images of the soul’s life shone through. Iwa. Sasori. Itachi. Sasuke.

“Hello there, Deidara.”

Tobi closed his hand around the soul, and with the power of the Rinnegan he willed the soul away. Into the stomach of the King of Hell. In an instant, it dissolved, sealed away. A surprise tool that would help him later.

Turning his gaze away, Tobi spotted a handful of other souls floating in the distance. Behind his mask, he smiled, and began to move toward them.

—

Within the stomach of the King of Hell, the dead souls of every Akatsuki dwelled, sealed and safe, gathered by Tobi’s power.

‘I can’t use Rinne Rebirth without dying myself… not that I would want to, of course. But now that my control over their corpses have been severed… that leaves Impure World Reincarnation.’

Tobi formed several hand seals sharply.

‘I’ll restore their souls to their bodies!’

Shing!

Mihawk’s sword slashed through Tobi’s chest, passing right through, and scored a long slash across the King of Hell.

“Tch-!” Tobi turned and formed a hand seal, fire erupting up and propelling Mihawk up into the air, where he flipped over, angling his body toward the King of Hell and readying his sword.

In that moment, from Mihawk’s perspective, the world appeared muted. To his Observation Haki, the ground and the trees were a murky grey, Tobi a glimmering red, and the King of Hell a sharp purple. Within the center of the massive creature, masses of blue bubbled, hundreds of souls barely managing to maintain their individuality within its belly.

Between Tobi and the King of Hell, thin threads of chakra flickered, connecting him to it like a tether… those threads, Mihawk could tell, were the means by which he controlled whatever this thing was.

“Chi o Hau Zangeki!”

With a swing of Yoru, a pulse of blue energy shot down and carved through two of the chakra threads connecting Tobi to the King of Hell. Three thin threads remained connected.

“!”

Tobi thrust a hand out, and a shimmering purple chain shot from his palm, wrapping around Yoru’s blade as Mihawk landed some distance away, pulling taut as Mihawk strained against it.

“Now, now, that wasn’t very nice.” Tobi chided, darkly. “I’ll have to put you on a leash if you keep misbehaving.”

‘He’s using that thing to manipulate souls… I don’t know what for, but it’s not terribly unlike her power…’

Intuitively, though he couldn’t be sure what Tobi was planning, he understood: he could not allow him to utilize the King of Hell. But even more pressingly, stirring at the heart of the creature…

“…Well, now. That is interesting.”

“Hm?” Tobi tilted his head. “Whatever do you mean-?”

Without answering, Mihawk drew Samehada back and then hurled it forward. Spinning through the air, its spikes flared out, but as it reached Tobi it passed harmlessly through his body. A moment later, it became clear that Tobi had not been its target: the last three chakra threads broke, absorbed into the blade.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!” Disconnected from Tobi, the King of Hell let out a rumbling roar, shuddering slightly, its massive tongue lolling out.

Mihawk dashed forward, drawing Yoru back and channeling Haki through the blade as he leapt into the air, and with both hands slashed it down, carving through the King’s forehead. Within the creature, the souls went wild, though although the large gash had opened a hole up to the open air, they remained where they were, as though locked in place by some kind of natural magnetism. 

However, those souls were not Mihawk’s primary concern. Without Tobi’s chakra connecting him to the King of Hell, he could not call upon them for his own means. Mihawk drew a hand back, and then plunged it down into the monster’s open forehead, not flinching at all as its blood soaked into his sleeve and the surrounding flames intensified.

His hand closed around something solid. Surrounded by souls on every side, it was a mass of… something. Mihawk wasn’t sure what it was, but he could tell from his Haki that it had a powerful energy to it. He tugged, and the object resisted, so with Yoru he carved once, twice, thrice more into the creature, and pulled again. This time, he managed to wrench it free from the souls that clung to it, and ripped it clean out.

The King of Hell roared again, and Mihawk leapt off it, landing a short distance away. Tobi, for his part, appeared thoroughly unconcerned, having passively watched Mihawk’s attempt without making any effort to intervene. Now, the swordsman managed to get a good look at the thing he had grabbed, for the first time.

The mass of energy in his hand was a soul, there was no doubt about that. Larger and brighter than the others, however, it was a shimmering green rather than bright blue, and was throbbing with power.

‘A particularly powerful spirit…?’

Tobi chuckled dryly.

“Well, now,” he tilted his head. “I suppose that’s not too surprising, that my King of Hell would retain the souls that Nagato stole… it is the same Rinnegan, after all.”

“Hm?” Mihawk glanced up at him. Nagato, Rinnegan… the terms were unfamiliar to him. But he didn’t have much time to think about it as the soul in his hand swelled, as though reacting to Tobi’s words, and then took shape and solidified.

Hanging limply from Mihawk’s hand, which was clenched around her wrist, was a small girl, head bowed and eyes half-lidded. Mihawk didn’t recognize her.

“To think she could retain physical coherence, in spite of the King of Hell’s powerful digestive enzymes…” Tobi murmured, more to himself than Mihawk. “These Arrancars are truly of remarkable constitution.”

Slowly, the girl’s eye cracked open, and her unfocused gaze flickered across Tobi, and the writhing King of Hell behind him.

“Wh…wha…?”

“Tch.” Mihawk dropped her, and she crumpled to the ground in a heap, coughing sharply on her hands and knees.

“Wh-?! A-Asshole-!”

“Get up.”

“Eh?!”

“I don’t have time to babysit. Get up, and tell me your name.”

Silently, the girl glanced between Tobi and Mihawk. Then, she slowly pulled herself to her feet, only swaying slightly.

“L… Lilynette… Gingerbuck…” She paused, and her eyes went slightly wide as she finally seemed to recognize Tobi. “…Starrk! Where’s Starrk?”

“Dead, I’m afraid.” Tobi remarked uncaringly, and Lilynette gasped.

“N… No way… that’s gotta be wrong!”

“Pull yourself together.” Mihawk spoke sharply. “And listen. You were sealed inside that giant creature a few moments ago, and I rescued you. Do you know this man?”

“…” Lilynette trembled slightly, glancing between Mihawk and Tobi anxiously. “W… Why should I help you? You’re a Warlord, aren’t you? You helped kill Yammy.”

For the first time, Mihawk, who had kept his gaze locked on Tobi, allowed his eyes to shift toward Lilynette. As they met each other’s eyes, Lilynette froze and stepped backward. For a moment, just a moment… it was as though Mihawk was holding a sword to her neck.

She swallowed, a bead of sweat trickling from her brow.

“…Protect me.”

“Hm?”

“Protect me from him, promise you’ll get me home, and I’ll tell you what I know. Swear to it.”

Though she shook like a leaf, she met Mihawk’s gaze evenly, defiantly. His lips twisted into an annoyed frown, but he nodded curtly.

“Fine. Now talk. Quickly.”

“He can turn intangible.”

“I know.”

“But not really.”

“Eh?”

“Starrk and me… we’re Hollows. We eat stuff that’s intangible all the time, touching konpaku is like second nature to us. But we couldn’t touch this guy. Whatever it is, it’s not really intangibility. It’s something else.”

Mihawk silently absorbed this information. With Tobi’s face hidden behind his mask, Mihawk could not gauge his reaction to the declaration. Was he bothered? Amused? Worried? Impossible to say.

That was annoying.

“I see.” He finally replied. “Anything else?”

“Fire. Big wood dragons that can absorb energy. Uhhhhh.” Lilynette balked slightly, appearing suddenly afraid that her intel would be insufficient, and floundering for more. “He healed a guy’s eye, I think?”

Mihawk nodded, making note of the energy absorption and discarding the rest. It wasn’t much, but that detail about the intangibility… that was interesting.

“If the two of you are done cheating,” Tobi remarked, his deep voice becoming slightly higher pitched for a moment, “I’d like to get back to killing you, now.”

He snapped his fingers, and the mutilated King of Hell descended into the ground, vanishing as though it had never been there to begin with.

However, as his hand closed on the hilt of his Gunbai once again…

CRASH!

Debris exploded up from the edge of the clearing, as something massive impacted. Tobi and Mihawk both turned sharply to look at it, and grim recognition registered on Mihawk’s face.

From the resulting smoke cloud, a massive figure rose. Rubbing his neck, Blackbeard stepped out, grinning.

“Whew! That Orochimaru really threw me a long way! How serendipitous, though, to run into the two of you again!”

Tobi tilted his head down, reproachful eyes flickering with annoyance.

‘Orochimaru… with Itachi’s Sharingan, he can see further than any normal man. If he sent Blackbeard my way, it was almost certainly on purpose. What is he playing at?’

Cracking his knuckles and then his neck, Blackbeard planted his feet, facing both of his foes at once. Tobi drew his gunbai, and Mihawk readied Yoru. 

“Both at once, what a bother…” the swordsman muttered under his breath. “Why must I always be pulled into these tiresome matters…?”

Lilynette whimpered and dashed over to stand behind Mihawk, as three of the most powerful fighters in the arena faced off.

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge]

An instant after Blackbeard was launched away by Orochimaru’s Shinra Tensei, a wave of sand blasted down and consumed the deck of the Queen Anne. Crocodile, who had been teleported far above by Orochimaru’s Rinnegan, hurled sand downward at blinding speed. However, in the split second before it could strike Orochimaru, Crocodile materialized on the deck where Orochimaru had stood just a moment before, and his own attack slammed down into him. He let out a grunt of shock, which turned into a strained groan.

In the air far above, where Crocodile had just been, Orochimaru plummeted. He raised his left hand to his face, his fingers probing and tugging at the skin around his new purple eye.

‘So my theory wasn’t wrong… Itachi’s eye can manifest the same Rinnegan ability as Sasuke. Amenotejikara – the power to translocate objects through space! Of course, it was Itachi’s eye that Sasuke used, after all… kehehe…’

In the air below, having leapt clear of the sand tsunami, Blackbeard’s zombies scrambled. Even with their master kilometers away already, they had not lost their autonomy. However, their focus was not on Orochimaru or Baraggan.

Fwoosh!

Kuma’s palm struck Doflamingo in midair, and he vanished, launched at the speed of light in the same direction as Teach. A moment later, Jinbe vanished as well.

“O-Oi!” Crocodile bellowed as he absorbed his own sand back into his body, gritting his teeth. “Where do you all think you’re going?! We still have a fight to win here!”

The zombie Kuma did not respond, of course, for he had no life or personality of his own. If he had, perhaps he would have reminded Crocodile of his earlier assertion, that he and Blackbeard were not allies. With a wordless thrust of Kuma’s palm, however, Moria disappeared into the distance. A moment later, Kuma disappeared too.

The Queen Anne lurched to the right, and Crocodile staggered. Though the zombies could act independently, it seemed Blackbeard had been the one steering the ship, and without him at the helm…

Shing!

Kikoku hurtled through the air and drove through one of the gaps in the ship’s steering wheel, pinning it in place. The ship leveled out, temporarily prevented from spinning out of control. Behind Crocodile, Zetsu panted. He seemed to have staunched the bleeding from Law’s severed arm, and now stood with his remaining hand outstretched, anchoring the wheel in its current position. An instant later, the sword returned to his hand, having successfully secured the wheel.

“Baraggan and Orochimaru are both badly wounded. This battle will be up to us!”

As he spoke, Zetsu’s eyes flickered toward where Baraggan was hovering in the distance, atop his Sea Kings. Hanging back and letting the fight play out, waiting for a chance to strike. Crocodile didn’t seem to notice. He only glowered at Zetsu.

“Oh, what great comfort it will be to have you on my side, mold man! What the hell did you even do to Law, anyway?”

Before Zetsu could answer, Orochimaru slammed down into the deck, and the ship tilted once more. Eyes snapping open, Itachi’s Rinnegan morphed back into a Sharingan.

“Tsukuyomi!”

Reality around Crocodile seemed to crack, and spears of blood ripped through his chest, splintering out either side of him. He howled in pain, only to be cut off a moment later as his own blood swelled up and poured down his throat, choking him on his own ichor…

He staggered, reaching up and clutching his throbbing head, eyes sliding in and out of focus. With an insane laugh, Orochimaru closed his left eye, and his right went wide.

“Amaterasu: Great Python!”

Fire exploded across Zetsu’s body, and he let out a wail of pain as it twisted into an enormous serpent, squeezing in, suffocating him with smoke and heat-!

“Sh-Shambles!”

Orochimaru and Zetsu switched places instantly, and the flaming snake discorporated instantly, to avoid searing its master’s flesh. Stumbling, the translocated Zetsu quickly recovered and raised a finger.

“Takt!”

Behind him, the Queen Anne’s towering mast split from the deck of the ship, launched up into the air and spinning top over bottom. Like an enormous golf club, it struck Orochimaru as it spun around, hurling him over the ship’s railing with a crunch!

Fwoosh!

In an instant, Orochimaru rematerialized, chakra oozing from his reactivated Rinnegan. A single, tiny scrap of wood was all it took to change his own position… not for the first time, he marveled at how incredible the Uchiha were.

Thrusting a hand out, a snake split off from his flesh and lunged toward Zetsu, but in an instant it was cleaved into tiny chunks and scattered across the deck. However, each chunk mutated into a new, rapidly growing snake of its own and twisted around Zetsu, squeezing violently and causing Law’s chest to let out a slight cracking sound. Zetsu cried out in pain, his voice mixing with Law’s.

Fwoom!

Sand consumed the spot where Orochimaru stood, but much too fast, he leapt into the air, avoiding it. Forming hand signs faster than eyesight, he raised his fingers up to his lips.

“Water Style: Liquid Bullet!”

A slew of concussive water blasts tore from his mouth and bombarded the sand below, melting it into mud. From where he had launched the attack, Crocodile grit his teeth. Fast enough that Orochimaru couldn’t dodge, two spears of mud spewed up from the deck and pierced clean through his body.

However, Itachi’s lips parted, and from his mouth a new mucus-covered body slithered forth, like a snake shedding its skin. A moment later, the deflated sack of skin vanished, and Crocodile materialized in its place, their positions swapped by Amenotejikara, spears of mud now piercing the Warlord’s stomach!

Crocodile gagged, and coughed blood. Normally, sand wouldn’t be able to hurt him, but when it was soaked with water…

“Ha!” Orochimaru’s eye went wide, and black flames engulfed Crocodile’s body. He screamed in agony, as the water touching his body forcibly solidified him, and flames seared every inch of him. It was hotter than Deidara’s explosives had been – far hotter – and he felt his limbs hardening into crystalized glass.

The flames vanished, teleported away by Zetsu. Crocodile’s body shattered, his remaining sand grains working overtime to grind the glass into powder and render his body movable again. Thanks to Amaterasu’s heat, the water that he had been inundated with had dried entirely, and he could once again transform into sand freely.

As Orochimaru pivoted toward Zetsu, Crocodile let out a roar, sand billowing out from his body in a cyclone.

“Sables!”

The sand twister expanded, engulfing Orochimaru’s vision range, and he gritted his teeth in annoyance.

‘Ugh… to think sand could be so very irritating…’

Of course, Orochimaru was no stranger to sand-based techniques. He had, after all, fought a difficult battle against the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa of the Sand, who had manipulated powerful golden sand for his own purposes. However, he had fought that battle as merely Orochimaru, the Sannin. Now that he had acquired Itachi’s transcendent abilities, he recognized that Crocodile’s sand was an unfavorable matchup for him.

‘The Sharingan’s kinetic vision is incredible… It allows me to see every single grain with perfect clarity. But with so many targets all at once, it’s preventing me from accurately locking on to a target and shifting position.’

Thousands, millions, trillions of grains… there was no doubt about it: using Amenotejikara now was next to impossible. And even if he could pull it off…

‘If I were to shift places within the range of this sandstorm, I would end up teleporting on top of numerous sand grains… There’s no telling what could happen then.’

Orochimaru grimaced in annoyance. He was still getting used to the Sharingan and Rinnegan, it seemed. He still couldn’t use them as effectively as Itachi would have been able to… how bothersome.

But that was fine. Even discarding his newer, more imperfect abilities…

He was still Orochimaru.

Raising a hand, he slid his sharp fingernails across his own chest, tearing apart his own flesh. From the wound, his blood met the air and boiled instantly, pungent gas filling the air. Every sand grain it came into contact with sizzled, burned into nothing by the powerful acids mixed with Orochimaru’s blood.

Zetsu’s eyes widened. He swung his hand up, and space twisted in front of him like a curtain. The acid cloud warped around it, not coming anywhere near Zetsu’s body. Some distance away, through the smog that was now obscuring Zetsu’s vision, Crocodile’s howl made it clear he hadn’t been so lucky.

“Kh-! Orochimaru…! To think you’ve become such an overwhelming foe…!”

‘You call this overwhelming?’

“?!” Zetsu started, his bright yellow eye going wide at the sudden voice cutting through his mind.

Deep within Zetsu’s psyche, the man who had spoken sat cross-legged, arms folded across his chest, bitter annoyance in his expression.

‘Come on, now,’ Law scoffed. ‘If you’re going to steal my body, at least use it right.’

‘I am able to perceive and draw upon all of your memories-’

‘And you still suck shit? Impressive.’

In front of Law, within the mental plane through which they were communicating, an enormous, mirage image of Black Zetsu’s face materialized, sharp teeth pulled backward in an irritated scowl.

‘Who do you think you’re talking to like that, boy? Do you even comprehend how ancient–’

‘What I comprehend is that you’re getting your ass kicked. Let me take over, I can do it better.’

On the outside of their body, the curtain began to change color, slowly eroding under Orochimaru’s acid. Zetsu’s eyes flickered toward it in alarm.

‘Chop chop. We ain’t got all day, we’re both gonna die if you don’t give me control.’

‘His majesty gave specific orders-’

‘And he’s not here, is he?! Give me control!’

‘Guh?! …F…Fine! But I’ll retake-’

Law’s eye – the single eye that wasn’t covered by Black Zetsu – snapped open. Without a moment’s rest, he swung Kikoku upward, cleaving through the curtain and the acid smog beyond in one strike. Raising two fingers, his severed arm materialized in front of him, pulled from some faraway corner of the deck. A moment later, it had stitched itself back onto his arm stump.

Even with the power to access Law’s memories, Zetsu’s command of the Ope Ope no Mi had been rudimentary in comparison. Such was the capability of the Surgeon of Death.

—

In the air far above them, Baraggan floated. Since the disappearance of the black hole, he had hung back, observing the battle from afar… and building up powerful Reiatsu.

He had no other Espada behind him.

No army of Hollows.

Even the Sea Wraiths that he had created were almost entirely wiped out.

But, he thought, as he amassed as much power as he could muster into his worn-down body…

He was Baraggan Louisenbairn, the King of Hueco Mundo.

He was enough.

A burst of Sonído pushed him past the sound barrier. Down, down, down toward the fleet of ships floating below, Respira building up within his body. Acid and sand swirled around the Queen Anne. That was his target.

The cloud of acid split in half from Law’s strike. Orochimaru was exposed, for just a moment.

Baraggan slammed into him. His skeletal fingers closed around Orochimaru’s throat as he smashed him through the ship’s railing, carrying him out above the sea. Orochimaru grunted, surprise twisting Itachi’s features as his skin began to flake off beneath Baraggan’s fingers, aged by the physical contact.

“Burn away to nothingness!” Baraggan commanded, Respira billowing from his mouth toward Orochimaru’s face.

“Wind Style: Forceful Gale!”

Wind burst from Orochimaru’s mouth, and blew the Respira back up into Baraggan’s face. He recoiled sharply, letting out a shuddering sound that was something like a cough, and dropped Orochimaru, who plummeted toward the water below like a stone. Around his body, a Susanoo rib cage formed, then armor, and then a full body, the Perfect Susanoo expanding to full size as its wings caught him midair.

“You ought to have run away when you had the chance!” Orochimaru taunted confidently.

In the air behind Baraggan, Law-Zetsu materialized, and brought a K-Room empowered slash down onto the back of the Hollow’s head. Part of his crown split off, and Baraggan whirled around toward Law, hurling a wave of Respira toward him, more powerful than any previously.

Shing!

Law and Baraggan switched places in midair, Baraggan teleported directly in the path of his Respira! 

The attack split. Half the Respira wave flowed to the right, the other to the left, steering well clear of its master.

In unison, Law and Orochimaru’s eyes widened.

Law was the one to react first. With a swing of Kikoku, he scored a long gash across Baraggan’s shoulder from a distance, but the cut didn’t go deep enough to do damage beyond the cosmetic. He gritted his teeth.

‘Oi, muck-man.’

‘Fh?! Wh-where do you get off-?!’

‘You did the immortality operation on Teach, right? But I’m still alive.’

‘My vitality is keeping you alive. If we were to separate-’

‘So if I push my powers a bit, you can keep me in good shape? Forever?’

‘Theoretically, I suppose. But I’m not your-’

With a powerful Fwoom!, Law willed his Room to expand outward, past Blackbeard’s fleet in the far distance, past the shore to the north, deep below the sea. Under normal circumstances, his range was limited, but with no need to worry about the strain on his body…

“Takt!”

With a flick of his finger, he ripped one- three- five of the flying ships through the air toward them, closing the kilometer-spanning gap in seconds. The first one crashed directly into Baraggan, and its hull crumbled, ripped apart under the effects of his Respira.

“Sterben!”

The sword in his hand hurtled from his grip, spinning in a propeller pattern through the air and impaling itself in the disintegrating ship’s side.

“Stechen!”

Bang! From a distance, the sword expanded, piercing directly through the ship into which it had been embedded. With the ship blocking Baraggan’s sight, the blade pierced cleanly through the space in its path, puncturing even through Respira as it drove through Baraggan’s chest.

“Counter Shock!”

Electricity exploded through Baraggan’s body, and he let out a roar of pain and anger, lightning crackling around him. He swung his arm around, intent on smashing clean through the blade that had been extended through him-

“Shambles!”

In an instant, Baraggan and Orochimaru switched places. Teleported directly onto Law’s blade, Orochimaru sputtered in shock, the electricity rippling across Itachi’s skin. In the center of the Susanoo where Orochimaru had floated moments prior, Baraggan materialized, and his Respira tore apart the enormous mass of chakra, the Susanoo disintegrating around him…

“Gamma Knife!”

The sword blade piercing through Orochimaru’s chest turned bright green, converted to energy in an instant. With an explosion of green light, Orochimaru howled in pain, gamma energy coursing through his internal organs, wreaking havoc on each and every one of them.

Shing!

Without allowing even a split second to pass, Orochimaru’s Rinnegan activated, and he switched with Baraggan once more. Now, it was the Espada’s turn to roar out, for though he lacked internal organs, the very marrow of his bones boiled under Law’s attack.

Beside Law, Orochimaru descended, skeletal wings protruding from each side of the Susanoo rib cage that he had hastily materialized.

“That was a cheap trick…” he clicked his tongue in disapproval. “I thought we were friends, Law.”

“Save it.” Law snapped, not looking at him as he concentrated on pumping more and more energy into Baraggan. “I know you aren’t Itachi.”

“Be that as it may, we ought to be working together. This fellow isn’t terribly strong, but his power is dangerous. We can’t afford to let him live, else he’ll only keep getting stronger.”

Law was silent. In his head, Zetsu’s voice growled.

‘You can’t trust him. He’d say or do anything to get what he wants.’

‘I don’t. But I can worry about that later.’

“Alright,” Law verbalized as Baraggan’s Reiatsu finally managed to blow away the Gamma Knife. Without missing a beat, Law hurled his two remaining ships in toward Baraggan, crushing him between them, to buy a few more moments. “What did you have in mind?”

Respira burst out of Baraggan in a wave, consuming the two ships entirely and freeing him. A low growl of frustration rose from him, and as Law and Orochimaru popped in and out of reality around him, using their teleportation to circle him, he slowly began to spin Gran Caída at his side, getting faster and faster until it reached the speed of a buzz saw, Respira gathering around the blade.

“Gran Géiser!”

Baraggan swung the axe upward, and an enormous geyser of Respira smoke tore through the air, consuming the spot where Orochimaru had been a moment prior. Spinning in place he swung his axe around, and the column of smoke tore to the side, circling him like a tornado, forcing the two of them away from him.

Shing!

Law’s blade carved into his shoulder, and he twisted to attack, but struck only air. 

Shing!

The Totsuka Blade raked across his side, but with a swing of Gran Caída, it was knocked away. Their attacks were too shallow.

‘They can’t kill me… they’re like cockroaches, annoyingly hard to crush, but they can’t kill me… All I need to do is keep attacking. Time is on my side!’

Respira swirled around Baraggan, and ripped outward in an omnidirectional wave, consuming the air in all directions. With all his will, he focused his Reiatsu on amplifying the attack as much as possible, attacking harder, farther, stronger… there would be nowhere for either of them to-

Shlock!

Law’s sword, shimmering, carved down through the Respira wave and slammed into Baraggan’s shoulder blade. The power of K-Room grinding sharply against his Reiatsu barrier. But even with the surge of Haki that accompanied it…

“Still too weak!”

Shrrrrrrk!

From below, the Totsuka Blade swung upward and carved into the underside of his skeletal arm, like the second half in a pair of scissors, pushing up into Baraggan’s armpit and up toward the blade grinding down from above.

And with an explosion of Reiatsu and Respira, the pincer attack sheared Baraggan’s arm off at the shoulder!

“Gah-!”

Shock flared through the Hollow’s system. His severed arm spun into the air, Respira shimmering around it. If Baraggan had eyes, they would have widened.

‘No…!’

Baraggan roared and thrust his remaining hand toward Orochimaru, but in an instant, the Yata Mirror materialized and weathered the assault. From Baraggan’s mouth, a Cero began to charge, and as his wave pushed Orochimaru back, he whipped around and fired the Cero full force toward his own arm.

He needed it gone. Destroyed, before…!

Faster than the Cero could reach the arm and destroy it, however, the arm vanished and Law materialized in its place, swinging Kikoku to the side and warping space, bending the Cero off course.

“Takt!”

Law flicked his fingers to the side, and in an instant, Baraggan felt a blow strike directly against his rib cage. He jerked back through the air, staggered by the hit. If he had lungs, it would have knocked the wind out of him. As he reeled, he registered the nature of the projectile: a chunk of sand, no doubt pulled from Crocodile, where he remained atop the faraway Queen Anne’s Revenge. His Respira chewed at the sand, but for a few seconds, it remained intact against his chest.

Just long enough for the sand to force itself through the gaps in his ribs.

Into his chest cavity.

Baraggan’s eyes widened.

‘NO-!’

Within the Susanoo, as the Respira wave abated, Orochimaru’s eyes shot wide, and his Rinnegan activated. The chunk of sand in Baraggan’s chest vanished, and in its place, Baraggan’s own severed arm materialized.

‘Not again-!’

CRUNCH!

At that moment, Baraggan’s torso exploded. The bones from his neck down below his hip splintered into dust. Reduced to nothing by the power of his own Respira.

Law smirked. Orochimaru smiled serenely.

“You…!” Baraggan rasped as cracks spread up his disembodied head. “Hooooooow daaaaare youuuuuu!”

His arm, crumbling as well, moved with final, righteous fury, and he hurled Gran Caída. The axe spun through the air, aimed directly at the head of the Susanoo. Prepared to bury itself directly into Orochimaru.

The Susanoo leaned to the side. The axe struck nothing but air, hurtling past the Susanoo and plummeting into the water below. Behind it, flakes of ash fluttered through the air – all that remained of the Segunda Espada.

“ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS! ONE OF THE ESPADA HAVE DIED! THREE REMAIN!”

Under different circumstances, Law would have felt relief and satisfaction at Baraggan’s death. He and Itachi had fought so very hard to kill him, after all… but there was no time. He couldn’t waste time reveling in their victory, not with Orochimaru just meters away from him, and Blackbeard still alive. Without delay, the world around him vanished, and the deck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge materialized beneath his feet. 

From where he held the wheel in place with his hook, Crocodile turned sharply, glancing over his shoulder, and then relaxed slightly upon recognizing Law.

“The skeleton dead?”

“Yeah,” Law responded. “Steer us north. We gotta-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. A wave of orange energy descended from the sky, and carved through the air in front of the ship, halting the Queen Anne in place, and carving a huge trench into the ocean surface below.

‘…Shit.’

In front of the Queen Anne, the Perfect Susanoo rose, its wings unfurled wide. The Totsuka Blade in one hand, and the Yata Mirror in the other. Orochimaru’s voice carried down from its head, his arms crossed as he spoke.

“Tsk, tsk… I hope you didn’t think that we were done here.” His eyes gleamed. “You won’t be reaching the mainland alive, I’m afraid.”

—

[Land of Snow]

The ground beneath Tobi’s feet shattered, debris flying through the air as the zombified Kuma thrust his palm down, repelling the earth with immense concussive force. Even still, as Tobi leapt into the air, he remained entirely unharmed. Untouched. Unconcerned.

His hand thrust down toward Kuma, intent on pulling him into the Kamui Dimension, but before he could grasp his foe, Doflamingo’s strings passed through his body from behind, and his fingers phased right through Kuma’s face. 

Jinbe’s hand closed around Kuma’s collar, and dragged him off to the side, away from Tobi’s fingers, and then thrust a palm forward, a shockwave rippling through the air and passing through Tobi, who remained unbothered as Doflamingo’s strings exited his body. Before they could retract, his hand shot out and grasped the strings. With a heave, he swung Doflamingo around and hurled him into Jinbe’s chest. Before they could recover…

“Shinra Tensei!”

Tobi thrust a palm forward, and the three Warlords were blasted violently away, the ground beneath them ripping up as the wave of force tore through the forest behind them.

Shing!

Moria’s massive scissors closed around Tobi’s body. But rather than shear him in half at the waist, they too passed through him as though he wasn’t even there. Slowly, Tobi turned in place, gazing up toward the gigantic zombie. He scoffed and raised a hand.

“Bow your head.”

From his palm, a ghostly purple chain fired out, and wrapped around Moria’s throat before snapping taut. Moria let out a snarling growl as he let go of his scissors and clawed at the rapidly constricting chain. Leisurely, Tobi strolled to the side, passing through the scissors until his body was no longer overlapping with them.

“I said, bow.” He wrenched the chain to the side, and Moria toppled over, dragged off balance and crashing to the ground, still struggling against the chain.

In the distance, Mihawk watched, his sharp eyes taking in the fight with perfect acuity. Even more than that, however, his Observation Haki could detect details imperceptible to mortal man, as though every aspect of the world were visible in shimmering colors outside the visible spectrum. And now that he wasn’t the one fighting, and could pay attention more carefully…

‘There’s no doubt about it.’

When Doflamingo’s strings had passed through Tobi… When Tobi’s fingers had passed through Kuma… When Moria’s scissors had closed around him… To the untrained eye, it would appear that Tobi was phasing through them, as though his body were massless.

But that wasn’t the case. Each time, the portions of his body that had overlapped with those attacks had vanished. As though removed from the very world itself, they had disappeared for as long as they remained in contact with something, and returned as soon as they weren’t. Through that mechanic, the man was simulating true intangibility.

Unfortunately, understanding (to an extent) the mechanics of the ability brought little comfort to Mihawk. He knew why he couldn’t touch Tobi, more or less, but the fact of the matter remained the same. He couldn’t touch him. Blackbeard couldn’t either.

Their opponent was invincible.

For his part, Blackbeard seemed unconcerned with the issue. As he cackled, shadows flowed from his body and passed into his zombies, imbuing them with more and more power by the second, as they rallied and recovered from Tobi’s attacks. Moria seized the chain and crushed it into pieces in his grip. Doflamingo spun his thread into several clones of himself, which each fired burning threads that passed cleanly through Tobi’s body. Kuma fired a barrage of air palms, which Tobi calmly absorbed with a wave of his hand.

Mihawk hesitated. Blackbeard was his enemy, there was no doubt about that. If Tobi were to kill the man, it would hardly cause Mihawk any grief. Even so, the facts of the matter were clear: Mihawk could possibly beat Blackbeard, if it came down to it. He could not beat Tobi.

“Teach!” he called sharply, and the Arrancar girl behind him flinched, startled. “He’s removing parts of his body! The parts that overlap with other objects!”

As though he hadn’t heard, Blackbeard vaulted over Kuma’s head, and swung a fist around, slamming a quake through the center of Tobi’s body – and like every attack beforehand, it passed right through, upheaving the ground for kilometers to the west. As Tobi lunged for Blackbeard, the massive man leapt backward with too much dexterity for a man his size.

“Zehaha! So it would seem!” Blackbeard finally responded, eyes gleaming. “You’re perceptive, Hawk-Eyes! I never would have noticed. It’s a little like Buggy’s Devil Fruit, eh?”

Mihawk made a face. He… wasn’t sure if he liked that comparison very much.

“Removing body parts…?” Lilynette mumbled, behind Mihawk. “That’s why we couldn’t touch him? Cuz his body parts were gone? Where do they go?”

Though she was speaking mostly to herself, Mihawk contemplated her words. It wasn’t a bad question, all things considered.

“I would assume… they probably just stop existing for a few moments, and then pop back in once they stop overlapping. It’s not like his body parts are physically separating, after all.”

“…No.” Lilynette murmured, her single eye fixed squarely on Tobi, a strange fierceness in her gaze. One moment, Tobi phased through an attack from the zombies, the next, they clashed furiously against his Gunbai. “No, that’s not it.”

“Oh?”

“The way his energy shifts when he phases… bweh, I’ve never been great at Pesquisa… but it’s the same as when he teleports.”

Mihawk’s eyes widened as he recognized her meaning. “You think he’s teleporting his body parts somewhere else? But where?”

Lilynette shook her head. She recalled the masked man transporting Baraggan somewhere else, but she and Starrk had never-

“ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS! ONE OF THE ESPADA HAVE DIED! THREE REMAIN!”

Lilynette gasped, her eye going wide and the color draining from her face as she turned to look at the sky in dismay. Though none of them knew it, Baraggan had just died, miles to the south.

“Th… three?!” Lilynette quivered. Her eye took on a slight shimmer. Silently, Mihawk took note of the fact that retrieving Lilynette from the King of Hell had not caused a number to be added back to the Espada’s count.

‘Does she not count as one of the Espada, then? Or does revival in general not count?’

With the battle momentarily paused by the distraction from the announcement, Tobi lunged forward, passing through the zombies in front of him effortlessly, diving for Mihawk with an arm outstretched-!

“Oh, no ya don’t!” Blackbeard’s gravity took hold of Tobi, and yanked him back through the air toward Teach’s outstretched hand. “Mihawk’s mine to kill!”

As he met the oncoming Tobi head-on, Blackbeard swung an arm forward, intent on clotheslining him from the air. But despite the fact that his hand was cloaked in darkness that could consume even Devil Fruit abilities, it still passed through Tobi harmlessly.

“Eh?!” Blackbeard’s grin faltered, replaced by dismay. ‘Even my darkness can’t touch him?’

As Tobi phased through Blackbeard’s arm, he hurled his Gunbai into the air. Flipping over, Tobi pivoted his body around to face his opponent, who whirled around in place to face him. Raising two fingers in front of his mask…

“Wind Style: Air Bullet Barrage!”

A volley of wind blasts exploded forth, arcing around Blackbeard without hitting him, and slamming into the Gunbai behind him as it plummeted toward the ground. One, two, three, four – each one absorbed into the Gunbai one by one, and then-

BOOM!

A massive explosive shockwave blasted from the Gunbai, the force of all the air bullets combined amplified and rebounded, slamming down into Blackbeard’s back and bringing him down to one knee, the ground around him crushed beneath him. He groaned heavily.

Tobi tugged on the Gunbai’s chain and it retracted, returning toward his hand without a single wasted moment. Before it could return to his grip, however, the chain was suddenly sheared in half! As the Gunbai spun away, Tobi turned in dismay toward Mihawk, whose sword was still crackling slightly from the attack he had just launched.

“Butt out, Hawk-Eyes!” Blackbeard spat, a dark expression twisting his face as he pulled himself to his feet. “We can continue our little lovers’ quarrel some other time! Kuma!”

A shadow loomed over Mihawk, who turned with a start. The zombified Kuma raised a wide palm, prepared to banish Mihawk far away. The swordsman had time only to reach out and seize Lilynette by the horn, before the palm came down, and he disappeared from sight.

Slowly, Tobi turned his gaze away from where Mihawk had stood moments prior, back toward Blackbeard.

“You must be awfully confident, to think you can defeat me alone.”

Blackbeard laughed. “Well… let’s just say if I actually went all-out and killed Mihawk by accident, that wouldn’t sit right with me, eh? He’s the sort of enemy whose death I wanna savor.”

Tobi chuckled darkly. “I understand the sentiment. But am I to take that to mean you haven’t been going all out?”

Blackbeard grinned. “Well… I do have old pops’ Devil Fruit. They say he could destroy the world itself with this power. Fortunately for you, I’m a nice guy! If it’s just little ol’ me…” His grin widened. “They’ll probably only need to redraw the maps a little bit.”

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge]

Blackbeard’s ghost fleet had been decimated by the battles with Baraggan and Orochimaru, dozens of ships blasted from the sky, crumbled to dust, or sent careening into the water. But as Law and Crocodile faced off against the Perfect Susanoo, the fleet was anything but defeated. Even in the absence of Blackbeard’s power, they remained aloft, and from the massive flagship, gnarled ships continued to sprout and split off to replace those that had been lost. It was as though they were a massive, living organism, self-sustained and eternally replicating, even without their captain’s presence.

Above the surface of the ocean in the distance, the Perfect Susanoo soared, its wings folded inward to increase its speed, like a torpedo. Down from the sky, spears of dark energy skewered down at blinding speed, fired from ballistae that had sprouted from the sides of the flying ships. Each one narrowly missed, however, as the Susanoo rolled out of their path, and they slammed into the ocean below, kicking up a massive spray of water each time.

Leaping up atop the Queen Anne’s mast, Crocodile spread his arms wide, his cloak billowing up as sand surged from his body.

“Desert Metsubo!”

The sand formed into six distinct streams, firing up into the air and then arcing downward, descending upon the Susanoo and spearing through it. Though the attack wouldn’t normally have been strong enough to penetrate the Susanoo’s armor, Crocodile’s Observation Haki allowed him to find chinks in the armor, forcing the sand grains in…

‘It’s not enough.’

The Susanoo twisted itself around, spinning like a drill in midair and dislodging the sand that had pierced it. Swinging the Totsuka Blade down, the massive goliath sliced through the water below, and then brought its sword up sharply, launching a massive wave of water into the air that rained down upon Blackbeard’s fleet. Crocodile’s eyes widened in alarm, and a barrier of sand rose just in time to shield him from the deluge, chunks of it melting into mud as the water struck it.

Within his mindscape, Law grimaced, eyes closed and arms folded. In the swirling red around him, Black Zetsu’s face loomed, bright yellow eyes narrowed and sharp teeth pulled back into a grimace.

“Orochimaru is still getting used to Itachi’s powers… that is the only reason we aren’t already dead.”

Law didn’t respond. Loathe as he was to admit it, Zetsu was most likely correct. He and Itachi had been relatively on par with one another before he had cured Itachi’s illness. Now… it was hard to say that Zetsu bolstering his stamina was in any way comparable to the power boost that Itachi had received. If only he hadn’t cured Itachi’s illness…!

‘Damn it, Mihawk… is this really a better outcome than if we had just allowed the Akatsuki to be wiped out by the Espada?’

He didn’t linger on the thought. A more pressing question had occurred to him.

“Zetsu. Do you think there’s any chance that Itachi might be able to fight off Orochimaru’s possession, the way I’ve been fighting off yours?”

Zetsu’s eyes flickered with annoyance. “I hope you don’t think that’s what’s been happening, brat. I could retake control at any time.”

Law resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“But… no.” Zetsu continued. “It’s probably unlikely. Orochimaru’s possession isn’t like mine, it doesn’t just control the body. He consumes the very souls of those he possesses, within the mental universe at the very core of his being. To be reduced to formlessness within such a mindscape, and still retain one’s own individuality… no, that would be a superhuman feat of willpower. Even for Itachi.”

As he spoke, mental images flashed through Law’s mind – though whether it was his imagination, Observation Haki, or if Zetsu was showing him, he couldn’t be sure. Regardless, he saw Itachi, slowly consumed by flesh crawling up his body, Orochimaru’s piercing gaze never leaving him all the while…

Law shook his head, and the images faded.

“Got it. So we can’t count on his help, then.”

“In all likelihood, no.”

In the outside world, the Susanoo’s blade descended toward the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and instantly, the ship and the Susanoo switched positions in space, translocated by Law’s Shambles. Redirected, the Totsuka Blade struck only the ocean below, and shadow ballistae peppered its back with powerful spears.

“Can’t do a damn thing to it!” Crocodile’s voice rang out, sand swirling around the Susanoo and bombarding it, to no effect. “You got a plan, Law?”

“If I can touch him, I can kill him, but that’s easier said than done. Don’t suppose you’ve got anything, Zetsu?”

Zetsu was silent, contemplative. Then…

“I may have an idea. But… being Devil Fruit users, the two of you can’t swim, can you?”

Law winced. “That’s a definite no.”

“Feh. Then we’ll need to get a bit creative. We need Baraggan’s axe.”

“The axe…?”

“I have an idea, but I can’t use your powers well enough to take on a Susanoo without dying. The two of us are going to need to work together.”

Law shrugged, a humorless grin spreading across his face. “Fair enough. I’ve worked with worse.”

“I doubt that.”

Law was silent for a moment. Then…

“Why the hell are you working with us, anyway? You’re an Akatsuki, right? Why join Blackbeard?”

Zetsu grunted. “The Akatsuki… are no longer aligned with my desires. Blackbeard is my best chance at getting what I want… that’s all.”

“So, what? You plan to help us wipe out the Akatsuki and then turn on us in the end?”

“Something along those lines.” Zetsu’s tone was blasé, detached almost. “We can talk about this later. Crocodile won’t be able to keep Orochimaru busy much longer.”

“Right.”

Law’s eyes snapped open, and he leapt up onto the bow of the ship, pointing his sword down toward the Susanoo, which was still being bombarded with ballistae and sand.

“Let’s do this! Room!”

With immense force of will, Law expanded his Room outward, across the surface of the ocean in all directions, stretching its range as far as possible. Though using his ability in this manner would ordinarily have shortened his life span, if not killed him, he could take advantage of Zetsu’s presence to push his abilities even further beyond his limits.

Still, however, as his Room stretched out toward the far edges of Warlord territory, he felt a familiar fatigue enter his muscles, accompanied by dull, aching pain.

‘I still can’t cover the full arena… but this’ll have to do!’

“Takt!”

Mentally, he called out to every island within range. Not far away, chunks of ice and globs of lava ripped up from the shores of Punk Hazard and shot through the sky like bullets. In moments, they had crossed the distance and assailed the Perfect Susanoo, chipping into its armor with searing heat and freezing cold.

Orochimaru laughed, and the Yata Mirror materialized to swat the projectiles away. As he did so, however, Law pulled harder, and enormous chunks of other islands soared across miles of ocean toward them. The giant snake heads of Amazon Lily, the sugar-filled hills of Whole Cake Island, the gnarled trees of Thriller Bark… soon, the air was filled with debris of all shapes and sizes, a swirling maelstrom on every side.

Orochimaru felt a stab of annoyance as the debris battered the Susanoo, though inflicted little damage. Surely Law wouldn’t use such a feeble attack with no plan…?

“What kind of trick do you have in mind, boy? Trying to confuse my eyesight again…?”

Law dashed forward and leapt from the bow of the Queen Anne, dematerializing midair and reappearing far above the Susanoo. He raised Kikoku above his head and willed it to become much larger in his hands, the blade extending and expanding sharply until it was gigantic.

“Kiri Oroshi!”

In spite of the blade’s newfound size, the speed of the slash was near-instant, but the Susanoo’s response was equally so. The Totsuka Blade shot up to meet the descending Kikoku, and the two slammed together midair, Haki and chakra rippling from the collision point with such force that the floating land masses around them cracked.

“Shambles!”

Law vanished, and the Totsuka Blade shot forward, no longer opposed, and carved through the debris behind where Law had been moments before. Behind the Susanoo, Law rematerialized, having swapped places with a chunk of debris. Wasting no time, he swung Kikoku again, and once more it expanded to great size.

“Nagiharai!”

This time, the slash swept across horizontally, but Orochimaru again reacted, swinging the Totsuka Blade up over his head and then down behind his back, forcefully deflecting Law’s strike. An instant later, a strike came from his left, then his right, then from above and then from below, and each time he managed to meet the swings head-on.

‘Heh.’ Orochimaru sneered to himself, forming hand seals within the Susanoo. ‘I see, so he’s using the inferno of debris to translocate himself unpredictably and attack from many angles. I suppose it’s not a terrible strategy. Still… child’s play!’

His flesh rippled. His chest stretched forward unnaturally, as though it were a sheet cover being pushed outward by a person hiding underneath, and then took shape. From Orochimaru’s skin, another body seemed to emerge: a young boy with dark hair tied in a ponytail, six arms all grasping white fluid as it flowed from his mouth into his hands, forming a sphere.

“Kidomaru! Spiral Web!”

As the false Kidomaru splayed his arms outward, the sphere of spider silk exploded outward, long threads passing through the Susanoo and fastening themselves to the debris all around. As the silk pierced through chunks of stone and cake and earth, it fastened them in place, halting the maelstrom in an enormous spider web, with the Susanoo at the center.

Atop the Queen Anne, Crocodile staggered as the spider silk drove through the ship’s hull, halting it in midair the same way. His eyes narrowed as he watched, sand swirling around him.

Orochimaru chuckled darkly as Law halted in midair above him, startled by the web’s sudden appearance. Instantly, Kidomaru’s face warped, and the partial body that emerged from Orochimaru’s chest morphed, its hair bleaching white and its six arms folding into two. He now bore the appearance of Kimimaro, the bone user.

From Kimimaro’s palm, a long, thin bone tore from his skin, grooves appearing in its surface as he snapped it off. Raising it to his lips, his appearance morphed again, white hair becoming pink as more feminine facial features emerged.

“Tayuya! Musical Genjutsu: Chains of Fantasia!”

Blowing into the makeshift flute, the false Tayuya’s music ripped forth in an enormous wave of sound, traveling along the threads of Kidomaru’s web as it blazed toward the airborne Law at mach speed.

‘Don’t let it reach you!’ Zetsu cried from within Law’s mind, but the Warlord needed no warning. Surrounded by his Room, he had complete control.

“Silence!”

Instantly, the deadly sound waves were obliterated, extinguished entirely as all noise within the vicinity of Law’s Room was snuffed out. An ability inspired by an old friend.

Silently, Crocodile’s sand swirled around his body. Thankfully, though he was far from Law, Crocodile remained within the scope of his ally’s Room, and thus he too was protected from the genjutsu. Without wasting time, the sand shot up, before arcing downward and striking the strand of spider silk piercing the Queen Anne. 

Up the length of the thread, the fluid within the spider silk seemed to drain away as it solidified, hardened, and then cracked, dried in an instant and then fragmented, suddenly left brittle. Moments later, the web began to dissolve, crumbling away into sand thanks to the power of Crocodile’s awakened fruit.

Law swung his arm around, and the debris that had previously been fastened in place ripped free, spinning around the Susanoo once again, switching places at disorienting speed. In an instant, the silencing effect broke, and a cacophony of noises filled the air. The Susanoo, dislodged from the destroyed web, tilted backward in the air as Tayuya was reabsorbed into Orochimaru’s flesh, the shinobi clearly disoriented by the sudden sound and movement.

“Tch!” Orochimaru swung the Totsuka Blade, and the air split, debris cleaved apart on every side of him, but if anything that seemed to make the swirling vortex faster. His Sharingan flickered back and forth, irritation registering on his face as Law swung Kikoku again, raking it across the side of the Susanoo’s chest.

“Enough!” Orochimaru formed hand seals rapidly, and an enormous puff of smoke filled the air. Around the Susanoo’s enormous body, a giant serpent materialized, draped over the chakra avatar’s shoulders. “Manda! Seize that ship!”

Manda’s body seemed to wind up, the immensely powerful muscles in his giant frame tensing, before he lunged, shooting forth from the Susanoo’s shoulders like a bullet and fastening his gigantic fangs into the side of the Queen Anne. The ship shuddered as it was slammed to the side, Crocodile staggering where he stood atop its deck. Twisting his body around, Manda wrapped himself around the ship, constricting inward, the dead wood of the boat creaking terribly under the force.

Alarm flickered in Law’s eyes. The majority of Blackbeard’s fleet could be reproduced, but if the flagship itself was destroyed, would the rest of the ships remain aloft? Though he could keep himself in the air for quite some time with the Ope Ope no Mi, still, fighting above the ocean with no ship to take refuge on…

‘We’ve got bigger problems…!’

Immediately, Law realized what Zetsu meant. From where Manda’s jaws bit down on the Queen Anne’s side, the wood sizzled and melted, acidic venom seeping into the deck from the snake’s fangs and evaporating into the air. Not far away, Crocodile backed up, alarmed, as a cloud of gas quickly expanded toward him, too fast to dodge.

‘Shit…!’

“Scan!”

His attention diverted from Orochimaru, Law focused both Haki and Devil Fruit on the venom, the proteins, peptides, and enzymes comprising it laid bare under his Scan. Though he was no expert on snakes, their venom was a biological agent, and thus not outside the range of what he could examine. In fact, as the fight progressed he had been trying to make use of lulls in the action to study it, but now he was on the clock and had to work fast.

Within a split second, Law understood the venom’s exact composition. Within another instant, he took measure of Orochimaru’s body from a distance and committed its biological structure to memory, mentally racing through the countless unnatural antibodies in the man’s blood until he found a match. Finally, he seized hold of Crocodile, and…!

The gas engulfed Crocodile. He staggered, and although his sand could weather the acidic effects, he coughed violently as he inhaled the poison concoction. Orochimaru let out a cawing laugh as Crocodile crumpled against the bannister at the edge of the Queen Anne, hacking and convulsing. Slowly, he sank toward the deck, his breathing ragged.

‘Come on…!’ Law urged, gritting his teeth. ‘Be in time…!’

For several moments that felt like eternity, Crocodile didn’t move. Then, with immense effort and clear agony, he raised his arm, and seized the bannister on the end of his hook, slowly dragging himself to his feet, his coughs coming slower and slower.

Orochimaru’s eyebrows shot up. Law breathed a sigh of relief. To replicate Orochimaru’s antibodies within Crocodile’s body in such a short time… that had been a challenge, even for his medical talents.

Crocodile let out a hacking cough, and spat out a glob of venomous phlegm, which sizzled and ate through the deck where it landed. From his body, a dehydration wave expanded and seared the venomous mist from the air, the vapor dissolving away into nothing.

“You’re gonna pay for that, shithead,” he rasped. Across from him, even Manda began to shrivel, his grip on the Queen Anne’s deck loosening.

“Desert Spada!”

Across the deck, a blade of sand shot forward from Crocodile’s position and bore into Manda’s skull, carving into it with a shower of blood. With a roar of pain, the partially emaciated snake’s jaw went slack, and he unwound from his position, wrapped around the Queen Anne, his body plummeting down into the ocean below.

Orochimaru’s eyes widened, his mouth opening slightly at the sudden death of his summon. Manda, for all his arrogance, had been the largest snake in the world, the king of Ryūchi Cave. He had not been as strong as Orochimaru himself, but…

Orochimaru’s mouth closed, and his expression of surprise became a gleeful sneer.

‘I didn’t know he was so weak.’

“Transsection!”

A vertical slash from Law assailed the Susanoo, but the Totsuka Blade swung down and carved cleanly through it. Orochimaru’s gaze turned toward Law, and his Sharingan gleamed. Bloodlust seeped from his body. Rage at Manda for dying so easily, and at these two cockroaches who just wouldn’t die when they were supposed to.

He’d had enough of it.

“Tsukuyomi.”

The instant Orochimaru had made eye contact, Law had been ready for it. Disconnecting his own optic nerves instantly, he forced Armament Haki up into his eyes, ready to repel the chakra that Tsukuyomi would pour through his eyes and into his mind, to tear his spirit apart…

It never came.

Within Law’s mindscape, Itachi’s Sharingan materialized, seeming to fill the space in an instant. Law’s eyes widened and he staggered backward, but it was too late. Every muscle in his body was paralyzed, his mind subjugated by the power of Tsukuyomi-

An instant later, the genjutsu’s hold broke. His mind returned to him, and after a moment of disorientation, he understood why. Zetsu’s enormous black face had materialized in front of him, shielding him from the genjutsu and taking its effects in full.

“Wh-?!”

Zetsu groaned, his yellow eyes overtaken by the Sharingan’s patterning, his jaw going slack as he endured the full mental toll of the Tsukuyomi.

“Z-Zetsu?! Why…!?”

“Itachi’s… contingency plan…” Zetsu groaned.

It took Law a moment to understand what Zetsu meant, and as soon as he did he felt his stomach drop. He had prepared defenses against Tsukuyomi, in case Orochimaru tried it, but the attack had gotten through anyway… a moment flashed in his mind’s eye, of him meeting Itachi in the snow, of meeting his gaze and having his stamina restored.

“No way… all the way back then…?”

“Itachi must have placed a time-delayed genjutsu upon you, that he could activate in case he needed to eliminate you. That irritating fool always had some kind of plan. Of course, he wasn’t expecting to be commandeered by Orochimaru like this.”

Law opened his mouth and then closed it again. The possibility of Itachi being able to do something like that had never even occurred to him. If it hadn’t been for Zetsu being there to take the hit…

“Is it gonna kill you?” He inquired sharply, alarm flaring up. “If you die, then I die too, remember!”

Zetsu chuckled weakly, his eyes still gleaming red. “It will take more than a few decades of pain to bother me… I’ve endured far longer.”

Despite his words, he sounded pained.

In the real world, Orochimaru concentrated, a trickle of blood dribbling from Itachi’s eye as thin red veins bulged within his sclera.

“Annoying little piece of Kāma…” he hissed. “It won’t take me long to break you.” As he spoke, he willed the time dilation within Zetsu’s mind to increase, milliseconds stretching into months, years. As much agony as he could manage. Within Law’s mind, Zetsu’s astral visage spasmed.

“Hurry up and kill him, Law!” Zetsu hissed, eyes twitching under the strain. “I’ll keep your mind free as long as I can!”

“Right!”

In reality, Law drew Kikoku back, but before he could swing it, Orochimaru made an annoyed sound, and with a flap of the Susanoo’s wings, shot up into the sky like a bullet, ascending toward the clouds overhead. In his hand, three Magatama beads materialized, strung together by a thin membrane. With a flare of the Susanoo’s eyes, they became engulfed in black flames.

Below Law’s gaze sharpened at the sight of the flames.

‘There! Amaterasu, finally!’

“Crocodile!” he cried over his shoulder toward the Queen Anne, and his fellow Warlord tensed in acknowledgement. “Get ready!”

“For what?!” Crocodile snapped, irritated. “You know I can’t read your mind, right?”

Without responding, Law slid his hand along the flat of Kikoku, coating it in energy. Far above him, the Susanoo raised its arm skyward, the Yasaka Magatama spinning in its palm and growing larger by the second.

With a cry, Law hurled Kikoku downward, and it shot toward the ocean below like a javelin. At the same time, the Susanoo brought its arm down, and the flame-covered Magatama spun through the air at blinding speed, descending on the scattered remains of Blackbeard’s fleet.

An instant before it struck, Law raised two fingers.

“Shambles!”

The Magatama vanished. Kikoku materialized in its place and dropped into Law’s grasp.

Far below, swapped with the sword, the Magatama rematerialized and struck the surface of the ocean.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

In an enormous spray of vapor, the water was rent apart, the force of the Magatama combined with the extreme heat of Amaterasu. An enormous gulf opened as the sea disintegrated, a hole hundreds of meters across, and so deep that it bore all the way to the sand at the ocean floor.

“Crocodile! The axe!”

Sand tore forth from Crocodile’s body and shot down into the ocean gap like a bullet. Though Devil Fruit powers couldn’t normally reach below sea level, Orochimaru’s attack had created a gap.

Crocodile’s sand found its target in moments. Lying on the ocean floor, still wreathed in shimmering Respira miasma, Baraggan’s Gran Caída lay, unperturbed by the force and heat that had eradicated the water around it. The sand wrapped around the handle, enduring the Respira as it tugged the axe free from the sand, and shot back upward just fast enough to clear the ocean surface before the water crashed back together.

Flying above them, Orochimaru looked bemused.

‘The Espada’s axe? They had some kind of plan to retrieve it? For what?’

As Law materialized on the deck of the Queen Anne, Crocodile seemed to share Orochimaru’s sentiment. 

“I hope there’s some reason you wanted this thing. My sand can touch it, but not forever.” As he spoke, his sand swirled around the axe, and as Respira slowly decayed the grains touching it, more flowed in to take their place.

Law nodded. “That’s fine. I need you to use your Awakening on it.”

“Eh?” Crocodile’s eyebrow cocked upward. “Turn it to sand?”

“Yeah. If I’m guessing right, the Respira aura around the axe should endure even if it’s transformed into sand. You’ll be able to use that.”

Slowly, Crocodile uncrossed his arms, which had previously been folded across his chest.

“You’re saying…”

“It’ll be temporary, before you need to remove it for your own safety, but… yeah.”

After a moment, the former ruler of Alabasta grinned.

“What the hell. Let’s try it.”

His hand morphed, becoming a mass of sand grains, and he reached out to touch the floating axe. Under his touch, the axe quivered, before crumbling away into black sand grains. As predicted, the energy surrounding them didn’t dissipate, even as they mixed in with Crocodile’s other sand.

Crocodile watched with fascination. “I’ll be damned…” he muttered.

Above, Orochimaru leered down, amused.

“Oh, please… They must truly be desperate, to rely on a power that I bested already.”

In the Susanoo’s hands, energy flowed outward, up and down simultaneously, congealing into a long, curved staff, the ends of which were subsequently connected by an additional strand: an archer’s bow. As he drew back an arrow of pure energy, the Susanoo’s eyes ignited, and the arrow became cloaked in black flame.

“Let’s finish this, then!”

He loosed the arrow, and it speared down into the center of the Queen Anne, piercing through the deck and out the bottom of the hull, the flames licking at the dead wood on the edges of the resulting hole. Law and Crocodile, however, had vanished from the deck entirely.

Chunks of debris that still floated in the air hurtled up toward the Susanoo, so quickly they caught fire, like a reverse meteor shower. With the Sharingan’s perfect precision, however, Orochimaru shot each of them out of the air with an arrow. The chunks shattered into powder with every strike, long before they could reach him.

Materializing into and out of existence, Law blitzed up through the air toward the Susanoo, Kikoku firmly in hand. Each time an arrow pierced the air where he was, he vanished a split second too soon, and reappeared a dozen meters up.

Behind him, black sand spread through the air, Crocodile’s body unfurled, his billowing cloak appearing dozens of meters wide as he propelled himself up through the air after Law.

Amaterasu arrows pierced his sand, punching holes clear through it. Though the arrows themselves could not withstand the Respira aura, the black flames they were cloaked with could not be extinguished by time, and each portion of sand penetrated needed to be cut off to prevent the flames from spreading.

“Law!” Crocodile bellowed as an arrow took a chunk out of his head, and he pushed the molten sand away to reform. “I’m gonna run out of black sand quickly if this keeps up!”

Above him, Law cursed inwardly and swung Kikoku, manifesting a veil a hundred meters up, to divert the arrows as he reassessed the situation. Crocodile could always produce more sand, but the black sand was in limited supply… every chunk Orochimaru took out was a chunk that couldn’t be used.

“Make sure at least one sand grain stays intact!” he cried down. “I don’t need a thousand, or a million, or anything – just one!”

Crocodile didn’t respond. Law wasn’t sure if he had heard, but he had no time to repeat himself as he pushed past his own veil and had to focus on dodging once again.

Above them, Orochimaru thrust out a palm.

“Ban’sho Ten’in!”

In the air below Law and Crocodile, the dozens of arrows that had missed their mark halted in place. They shuddered in midair momentarily, before whipping around and hurtling upward at breakneck speed, pulled by the gravity of the Deva Path.

Law spun in midair and tried to parry an arrow with his sword, but as a black arrow struck Kikoku head-on, the sword liquefied and Law cried out, tossing the useless hilt away as the heat seared his palm.

‘Shit!’

He thrust a hand out, and the next arrow warped to the side, missing him by only a foot. Not allowing Kikoku’s loss to slow him, Law kept teleporting upward, as Crocodile pulled even with him, his sand veil now noticeably browner than black.

“Behind him!” Law cried, as they at last approached the Susanoo. Crocodile nodded sharply, and split off.

Law teleported upward, materializing in front of Orochimaru’s eye level and landing on a platform of ordinary sand that Crocodile created. At the same time, Crocodile swooped underneath the Susanoo’s feet, soaring up behind it in an enormous plume of sand.

“Pitiful!” Orochimaru’s voice rang out as he spun the bow in his grip, its shaft whipping around backward and carving a gash through the cloud of sand that was Crocodile’s body. As the bow whipped around, it morphed and became the Totsuka Blade, carving horizontally toward Law. With no sword to parry, Law leapt into the air and twisted his body, barely managing to spin over the flat of the blade as it carved through the air.

As he landed back on the sand platform, he drew an arm back, wincing as he closed his eyes and grasped his right forearm with his left hand.

“Guh, I hate doing this…”

In his mind’s eye, a certain pirate’s face flashed. He forced himself not to scowl too deeply.

“Fassen!”

He thrust his hand forward, cloaked by K-Room, and the space around his arm elongated, stretching to lengths much too far to be normal. His fist closed the distance between himself and the Susanoo, slamming into its chest plate and transmitting K-Room through it. Law cried out in pain as every joint in his arm dislocated simultaneously.

The attack did its job, however. Energy expanded outward across the surface of the Susanoo, its armor buckling, scales popping out of alignment as Law’s power dislodged them. With a snarl, Orochimaru spun the Totsuka Blade around in his grip, so that the blade was aimed toward the back of his hand.

“Your tactics are feeble, boy!”

He stabbed the Totsuka Blade backward, spearing it through the K-Room energy that engulfed the Susanoo’s chest, all the way through the Susanoo and out the back. Like a sponge, Law’s energy was absorbed up the length of the blade – but it wasn’t the only thing. The Susanoo’s orange energy crackled as well, sucked into its own blade. Orochimaru’s eyes widened slightly.

“Feh-! Stupid thing, that’s not-!”

The Susanoo ripped out the Totsuka Blade and discorporated it, but the damage had already been done. Much of its armor had been stripped away by the hasty attack, leaving its massive rib cage bare. As the Susanoo struggled to repair itself, both of Orochimaru’s eyes twitched, and then snapped toward Law, who was preoccupied with popping the bones of his own arm back into place.

“Amater-!”

Fwoom!

The path cleared thanks to the destruction of the Susanoo’s armor, Crocodile’s sand blazed inward, spearing between the gaps in the behemoth’s ribs, and then upward into its head, driving up through Orochimaru’s chest. Blood gushed from the man’s mouth, and for a moment he gurgled, but then his lips curled upward into an insane grin.

“Not enough!”

He drove a chakra-cloaked hand down through the sand, severing the spears that pierced him, and then ripped the sand out. The wounds in his body closed quickly, his White Zetsu cells more than sufficient for the task.

“Your Respira can’t hurt me,” he hissed. “Even assuming I haven’t cleared it all away already… I’m as immortal as Blackbeard. Time means nothing to me! Death means nothing to me!”

Across from him, Law closed his eyes and concentrated, casting out his Observation Haki, scouring the sand grains touching Orochimaru, inside and out of his body.

‘Come on… come on… just one…!’

The Susanoo’s armor materialized back around its bones, and the Totsuka Blade reappeared in its hand.

“I am Orochimaru! And I shall never die!”

‘There.’

Pain exploded through him. His eyes went wide. His muscles spasmed. His chest hurt. His vision blurred.

‘W…what…?’

A cough ripped from his lips. He tasted blood. He raised a hand to his mouth and it came back red.

“W…what is… this…?”

Across from him, Law’s eyes slid open. He grinned, and Zetsu’s face grinned with him.

“If you think Itachi’s the only one who could come up with contingency plans, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Orochimaru coughed again, more violently this time, and the Susanoo began to dissipate around him. His vision blurred even further, the Sharingan’s kinetic vision fleeing him.

“What is this?! What did you do to me?!”

His chest spasmed, and he reached up to clutch at it, as though hoping he could rip out whatever the problem was.

“When I cured Itachi’s illness,” Law replied calmly, as though he were not talking to someone in agony, “I left a bit of it in his heart. Just a small cluster of cells, so little that it’d probably take years to even make him uncomfortable again. But enough that I could reinvigorate the illness, if I needed to.”

“Ill… ness…?”

“Of course,” Law continued, amicably, “I would need to touch you to do anything that complicated, normally, which would’ve been pretty difficult. So I took a shortcut. One grain of black sand, teleported right on top of that cluster of cells.” He grinned. “It sped those years up pretty quick.”

“Y-You…!” Orochimaru hissed, blood gurgling from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, the vision quickly fading from them as Itachi’s illness stole his vision away. “After all that time… seeking this body… I’ll kill you for that…!”

“You still think you’re going to live?” Law laughed humorlessly. “Have you really convinced yourself that you’re immortal?”

Orochimaru froze, eyes wide as he glared at Law, processing his words.

“You… you’re saying… I’m going to die?” He laughed, blood spraying from his mouth. The Susanoo around him had shrunk to a rib cage, barely larger than his own body. “Don’t make me laugh! You think I haven’t planned for this? I’ll be back. I always come back.”

As he spoke, the whites of his eyes were overtaken by sickly yellow. His pale flesh became specked with blue and purple. His veins ruptured one at a time like fireworks. Blood gushed freely from his mouth and he let out a sputtering gagged sound, his long tongue lolling out.

SHING!

Through the crumbling Susanoo, a scythe of sand sheared, and the moisture was ripped from his body. With one last gurgling gasp, Orochimaru’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he toppled from the air, plummeting toward the sea below. As he became a pinprick and struck the churning waves, the announcer’s voice sounded.

“ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS! ONE OF THE AKATSUKI HAVE DIED! THREE REMAIN!”

Law closed his eyes. His opinion of Itachi… well, he hadn’t had much time to decide on it. It was hard to know whether he would have liked the man had they met in different circumstances. Somehow, he felt it was unlikely… but even so, he felt a twinge of sorrow for the man. In the brief time they had known each other, it seemed as though he had regained his drive. He hadn’t deserved to die the way he had.

Allowing the feeling to pass, he opened his eyes. Across from him, Crocodile flicked his wrist a few times, shaking the last few remaining specks of Respira out of his sand. For his part, he looked entirely remorseless.

“Three Akatsuki, three Espada,” Crocodile remarked. “By my count, that leaves us in the lead.”

“…Yeah.” Law pursed his lips. He was not at all pleased that Blackbeard was still alive. In that moment, however, he felt a searing pain in his head as he was wrenched back into his subconscious, swirling red surrounding him once again.

“Your contributions have been appreciated, Law.” Zetsu growled. “My turn again.”

Law gritted his teeth. “And here I was getting my hopes up that Tsukuyomi had killed you. You’re really determined to serve Blackbeard?”

“I am. His majesty is the one who will see me to the finish.”

“The hell do you even want anyway?”

Zetsu was silent.

“What? Not gonna tell me? If you’re gonna use my body to get what you want, don’t I at least deserve that much?”

Zetsu chuckled. “You humans are all so very arrogant. You don’t care to understand me until it affects you. No, Law, you don’t deserve to know a thing about me.”

Silence stretched between the two of them. Then…

“Tell me anyway.”

—

[Hueco Mundo]

Footsteps crunched softly against the endless desert sand. The light of the sun beat down harshly, though the brim of Mihawk’s hat kept the light out of his eyes as he trudged up the side of a massive dune. Some distance in front of him, scampering back and forth, Lilynette glanced back impatiently.

“Hurry up already, slowpoke! We’re almost there!”

Mihawk sighed. “I am considerably less eager to reach your abode than you are. Believe it or not, I don’t particularly enjoy all this running around.”

Lilynette stuck her tongue out at him. “You promised to get me home! No backsies!”

“Indeed I did, and so I shall. What I do after we get there, however, I’ve made no promises about.”

As he spoke, Mihawk reached the top of the gigantic dune where Lilynette stood. Towering in the distance, Las Noches stood massive and imposing atop the horizon. Unlike the home bases of the other two teams, it remained remarkably pristine and untouched.

‘Not for long.’ Mihawk thought. Lilynette fidgeted next to him, clearly unnerved by his prior comment. Not for the first time that day, he wondered how such a naive little girl had ended up with the Espada.

“You… really plan to fight them?”

He sighed. “We are at war, and if your friends do not die then I will, eventually. I’d much prefer to live quietly, but alas I have been afforded no such recourse.”

“They’ll kill you.” Lilynette spoke quietly, and surprisingly, there was a flicker of genuine sadness in her expression. “Grimmjow… he’s so strong now. I can’t even imagine him losing.”

Mihawk smiled humorlessly. “Many have said the same about me.”

Without waiting for Lilynette’s response, he slid down the side of the sand dune, and she let out an indignant cry behind him as all of a sudden she was left to catch up. As he reached the bottom and began to march with purpose across flatter sand, he contemplated silently.

Grimmjow… the name was unfamiliar to him. But his final exchange with Luppi from days prior echoed in his mind.

“I just wanted to be good enough. Good enough to kill that blue-haired bastard.”

“But if it means anything, I’ll kill that rival of yours.”

Though he had never heard of Grimmjow by name, instinctively he understood that this was who Luppi had been referring to. For the other Espada to hold his strength in such high regard, he must have been the greatest among their ranks. Even beyond Luppi, who himself had gone to such great lengths to surpass him…

For the first time in a long time, a mild flicker of excitement sparked in Mihawk’s mind. It had been years since he had truly found himself looking forward to a fight. Not since…

“Halt.”

As the commanding voice echoed across the sand, Mihawk slowed to a stop. Las Noches still loomed in the distance; he supposed that they must have gotten close enough for their presence to be noticed.

Shing!

From behind him, a sword pierced the air overtop of his shoulder, angled inward so that the edge of the blade was inches from his neck. The same voice from before – a woman’s voice – spoke more softly this time, but just as steely.

“State your business.”

“I am Dracule Mihawk,” he replied without fear.

“I know who you are.”

“I am returning a lost soul to your doorstep.”

“A lost soul?”

“Nel!” Lilynette’s voice yelped out from behind him. “He’s with me! Don’t cut him up!”

The person behind him – Nel – shifted, startled.

“Lilynette?”

Taking advantage of Nel’s momentary distraction, Mihawk turned in place and with a swipe of his hand, a burst of Haki knocked her sword aside. A moment later, he had drawn Yoru and brought it down toward Nel’s head, but with inhuman speed she recovered and parried, Mihawk’s Haki crackling across the edge of her sword as their blades clashed.

Crack!

The two parted. Nel skidded back across the sand, trenches gouged out by her feet as she slid to a halt a dozen meters away. Her sword crackled slightly. A thin crack appeared along one of the horns on her helmet. Her eyes narrowed as she regarded Mihawk, who stared coldly back.

‘Weaker than Luppi.’ Mihawk surmised. ‘But not by much.’

‘Stronger than Luppi.’ Nel assessed. ‘But not by much.’

“Oi! Hope you aren’t starting without me!”

Hands in his pockets, Grimmjow seemed to materialize into existence, touching down gently as he dropped out of Sonído, his jacket flapping lightly in the wind. Wearing a cocky grin, no concern registered on his face, even as Mihawk’s gaze turned toward him.

“You’re Mihawk, eh?” Grimmjow leered at him. “You’ve been making waves. Been hoping I’d get to fight you.”

“Grimmjow, I presume?” Mihawk replied, cautiously.

“In the flesh.”

Grimmjow shifted his weight from foot to foot. Though he made no move to draw his sword, it was clear from his expression that he was itching for a fight.

“G… Grimmjow… Nel…” Lilynette spoke up, her gaze flickering back and forth between the two of them anxiously. “The announcer said there were only three of us left. S-So Starrk really is…?”

Grimmjow didn’t take his eyes off Mihawk, but Nel turned sympathetically toward the younger Arrancar.

“I’m sorry, Lilynette. Most of us were wiped out in the raid on the Akatsuki fortress. That announcement earlier was for Baraggan, though we don’t know how he died.”

Lilynette’s eye shimmered.

“B…But-! What am I supposed to do, then?! I c-can’t fight without…”

“Don’t worry about that.” Grimmjow spoke confidently, though he still kept his eyes on Mihawk.

“E-Eh?”

“We’ll take care of you, don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.” He glanced toward her, grinning. “No more Espada die on my watch.”

Lilynette stared at him, mouth slightly open. Grimmjow turned his attention back toward Mihawk.

“Not that I’m complaining, but I’m surprised you didn’t kill her.”

“I’m not in the business of killing children.”

“Heh! She’s probably older than you, dumbass.”

Mihawk shrugged, head tilting slightly. “Be that as it may. We have bigger things to worry about.”

Grimmjow cocked an eyebrow. “We?”

“Blackbeard. I’m sure you must have sensed him.”

“Ah. Trouble in paradise?”

“Something like that. He’s a monster. He cannot be allowed to win.”

“Well, I hate to break it to ya, but you’re surrounded by monsters.”

“Somehow I don’t think so.” Mihawk crossed his arms. “You talk down to me, but I have seen many things and fought many foes. I can tell just by looking that you are incredibly strong. But even still, I don’t see you defeating Blackbeard. I doubt you could even defeat me.”

Grimmjow smirked and cracked his neck, then his knuckles.

“I’ll take that bet.”

The two of them met each other’s gaze evenly, fearlessly.

“You wish to fight me?”

“I never turn down a challenge.”

“You had better be certain about what you’re doing. I am the World’s Strongest Swordsman. When I duel someone, it’s to the death.”

“I’m fine with that.” Grimmjow laughed. “Winner kills Blackbeard, and that masked guy while we’re at it. Deal?”

“Grimmjow.” Nel interjected. “I don’t mean to question your abilities, but-”

“Then don’t.” Grimmjow spared her a glance. “I got this. Take Lilynette, get a safe distance away.”

He turned back toward Mihawk, who drew Yoru wordlessly. Grimmjow raised both hands into a boxing position, hopping from foot to foot as he jabbed the air, excitement in his eyes.

“This’ll get grisly!”

Fwoosh!

Mihawk materialized behind Grimmjow, as though he had teleported. Grimmjow’s eyes widened slightly, as he turned and raised his arm just in time for-

KRR-CRUNCH!

Yoru, cloaked in Haki, slashed across the back side of Grimmjow’s forearm, sparks flying as it grinded against his Hierro. With a clang, Mihawk was knocked backward into the air, landing in a crouched position some distance away. Grimmjow glanced down at his arm, a thin trickle of blood dripping down from where Mihawk had struck.

“Heh! Not bad!”

“Hmph.” Mihawk straightened up. “I hope you intend to get serious. I didn’t come here to hunt rabbits.”

Drawing Yoru back, Mihawk blitzed forward again. This time, Grimmjow was ready for him, and leapt into the air, the blade scoring a long trench into the ground where he had stood a moment prior. Without missing a beat, Mihawk was on him again, sword flashing forward like a blur.

Stab, stab, slash, stab, swap hands…

Grimmjow ducked, dodged, and weaved, pushing his Sonído as Mihawk’s speed increased with every strike.

‘Heh! Every time it seems like I’ve gotten used to his pattern…’

Yoru glanced against Grimmjow’s left cheek, scoring a tiny cut and slashing through a strand of his hair.

‘…he switches up!’

As the next stab came, Grimmjow raised a hand and seized Yoru by the blade, sparks flying as it ground to a halt in his grip, to the side of his face. Mihawk’s eyes widened slightly.

“Let’s go for a ride!”

Turning in place, Grimmjow swung Mihawk around by his sword and hurled him into the distance. The sand dunes passed like a blur underneath, until Mihawk slammed across the side of a white tower some distance from Las Noches, taking a chunk out of its side.

‘Ugh-!’

Righting himself in midair, Mihawk barely managed to regain his bearings before…

WHAM!

Grimmjow’s fist exploded across his face, the Arrancar having closed the gap between them in an instant. Fast enough, however, a sheen of black Haki formed across the side of Mihawk’s head, absorbing the impact. Yoru swung around in a wide arc and Grimmjow barely backed up in time, a slash opening across the lapels on the front of his jacket, but missing his chest by an inch.

Mihawk stabbed forward with blinding speed, each jab aimed for vital spots across Grimmjow’s torso. Each time, however, Grimmjow’s arms shot up to deflect the strikes, managing to angle the side of his forearms along the flat of Yoru’s blade, sending every stab glancing harmlessly to the side.

WHAM!

Grimmjow’s foot came up and slammed into Mihawk’s chin. Again, however, his Haki absorbed the blow. Mihawk spun Yoru backward, before bringing it up in a powerful vertical slash, a blue shockwave tearing forth that drove into Grimmjow’s arms as he raised both of them to block.

CRUUUUNCH!

Blasted from the air by the shockwave, Grimmjow sheared clean through the tower that he had knocked Mihawk into. Its base shattered as he hurtled across the desert, kicking up a massive amount of dust as he slid along the ground, before finally slowing to a halt.

For a few moments, he lay spread eagle on the sand. Then, flexing his back muscles against the ground, he leapfrogged to his feet, hands back in his pockets. Unphased, he blew a strand of blue hair from his eyes.

Across from him, Mihawk landed, sand puffing up from the ground around his feet as he twirled Yoru. Though he wasn’t smiling, he held an air of confidence.

“Everything alright? If you’re struggling…” He cocked his head slightly, his expression unchanging. “…we can stop.”

Grimmjow laughed and leaned his legs to one side, then the other, then stretched his arms and rolled his neck.

“Hell nah. I’m barely even warmed up!”

Without ceremony, he seized Pantera by the hilt, drawing it from his waistband for the first time since the war had begun, and launched forward so fast that the ground behind him was pulverized. He swung his sword down, and Mihawk raised Yoru to parry, blue energy crackling against black as they impacted one another.

WHAM!

Again, Grimmjow’s foot came up and caught Mihawk across the chin, but though his Haki again protected him, the strike launched him skyward once more, and Grimmjow leapt into the air in hot pursuit.

Metal grinded against metal, as Grimmjow went on the offensive, his sword strikes wild and crazed in comparison to Mihawk’s surgical precision, but just as deadly. Mihawk managed to parry each of them, his sharp eyes following the flurry of strikes perfectly.

“Sloppy.”

Grimmjow laughed and twisted his entire body around, his own momentum hurling Mihawk even further from the point where their swords collided. He drew back the hand that wasn’t holding Pantera, and it glowed with blue energy.

“How’s this for sloppy?!”

A Cero exploded from his palm, blasting down toward the sand below, and he swept it upward toward the airborne Mihawk in a deadly path of devastation.

Quickly, however, Mihawk seized Samehada’s hilt and drew his second sword from his back. Swinging the black, spiked blade downward, he positioned it in front of himself, and as the Cero swept up, its spiritual energy struck the flat of the sword and was absorbed.

From the gaping mouth at the end of Samehada’s blade, shimmering light began to emit. Swinging it around, Mihawk angled it down to point the blade back toward Grimmjow.

“Catch.”

From Samehada’s mouth, Grimmjow’s Cero exploded out, returning to sender in an instant. Grimmjow let out a barking laugh and swung Pantera upward, cleaving the Cero in half. Split in two, the blast sheared seething molten trenches into the ground below.

The instant the attack abated, Grimmjow hurled Pantera toward Mihawk. It spun through the air, but the swordsman deftly deflected it, and it whirled into the sky behind him, harmlessly.

Without wasting a second, Grimmjow charged his palm with red energy, and much faster than the preceding Cero, hurled a Bala toward Mihawk. The mass of red energy plowed through the air, and although Mihawk again raised Samehada to parry, it went wide, blazing past his shoulder harmlessly.

Mihawk had only a moment to question why Grimmjow had missed, before a moment later, pain exploded across his back. The Bala had slammed into Pantera, having caught up to it, midair, and bounced back, deflected into Mihawk from behind. With immense concussive force, he was blasted downward, slamming into the ground with a massive plume of sand.

Casually, Grimmjow reached out his hand, and Pantera zoomed back through the air toward him, conjured back with the slightest exertion of will. He caught it, and touched down a distance away from Mihawk, who pulled himself to his feet slowly, brushing sand from his clothing.

“Hey, now.” Grimmjow sneered. “If you’re struggling…”

His eyes followed Mihawk’s hand as he raised it to his forehead, and wiped away a trickle of blood that dripped from his brow.

“…we can stop.”

Mihawk let out a soft breath, chuckling to himself.

“Don’t get too proud of yourself, now.”

He raised Yoru and Samehada, crossing them in front of himself. A moment later, the two of them blitzed in toward one another, sword clashing against sword, shockwaves ripping away at the sand around them, slash after blazing slash tearing at one another fiercely.

Falling back, Grimmjow charged a Cero in the hand that wasn’t clutching his sword, and thrusted his hand forward, but Mihawk swung Yoru around, and as the Cero was loosed, the beam of light was reflected off the flat of the blade, rays firing out in all directions, each one carving through a marble tower in the distance.

Grimmjow grunted, and clenched his fingers down, closing them around Yoru and ripping the sword from Mihawk’s hand, hurling it into the distance. With the other hand, he swung Pantera down, but Samehada rose to block it. Grinding against the side of the blade, Samehada screeched as dozens of scales were carved off of its edge by Grimmjow’s blade. 

Still, as Pantera skidded to the side, Mihawk thrust Samehada forward like a javelin, and its teeth sank into Grimmjow’s shoulder. Though not sharp enough to pierce his skin, Reiryoku flowed from his body into the blade, and it swelled dangerously, purring deeply at the sudden influx of energy.

‘Tch!’

Grimmjow drove Pantera upward, piercing through one side of Samehada all the way to the other, and blood gushed from the living sword, which let out a snarling wail of pain.

Seizing Samehada’s hilt with both hands, Mihawk swung it with all his might, and Grimmjow was hurled away, Pantera dislodged from Samehada as he flew, skidding across the ground.

Grimmjow panted slightly. He staggered, the absorption having taken a lot out of him.

‘Tch… didn’t take that freaky thing seriously enough…’

Leisurely, keeping his eyes on the motionless Grimmjow, Mihawk strode around him in a wide circle, soon reaching the spot where Yoru had landed, embedded blade-down into the sand. He grabbed the hilt and pulled it out, turning toward Grimmjow.

“You look a bit worse for wear. I certainly hope you aren’t getting tired already.”

Grimmjow laughed, and angled his sword downward at his waist, placing his fingernails against its blade as though he were about to scrape them along its side.

“Hell no! Grind… Pantera!!”

Blue energy crackling from his fingertips, he raked his fingers down the length of the blade, and a pulse of energy surged along its edge. Power exploded from Grimmjow, and the sand around his feet erupted upward in a massive geyser, obscuring him from view.

Across from him, Mihawk’s feet slid backward ever so slightly, his cape billowing in the wind. Raising an arm, he shielded his eyes from the sand buffeting outward against him.

‘This energy… he’s stronger than Luppi was, no doubt about it.’

The billowing cloud of sand split in two, a black appendage slicing out horizontally and dispersing the plume. From its center, Grimmjow emerged, his appearance transformed by the release of his Zanpakuto.

Splaying his arms wide, Grimmjow let out a howling cackle that sounded almost more like a screech, Reiatsu emitting from him in waves.

“Why so serious, Mihawk?! Show some spirit!”

In an instant, the palm of his hand slammed into Mihawk’s face, and he clenched his fingers like iron as the two of them hurtled into the sky, the man dragged along at blinding speed. Mihawk let out a grunt of shock at Grimmjow’s speed, and slashed Yoru across his chest in an attempt to dislodge himself.

KER-LUNCH!

Sparks flew, and the sword raked harmlessly across the sturdy outer shell that now coated Grimmjow’s body. 

“Ha!” Grimmjow laughed and spun in midair, whipping Mihawk around by the face and hurling him away. He bounced once, twice off the sand and then Grimmjow was on him again, and the Hollow’s foot slammed into his side with a crunch.

“Hrk!” Mihawk coughed and tasted blood as he was blasted even further, through three white towers in a row. Before he could catch himself, Grimmjow materialized behind him, so fast now that he had managed to outpace the man he had knocked away.

He cackled, baring razor-sharp teeth, and swung a clawed hand around. Sharp talons of blue energy extended from each of his fingers, and he slashed down into Mihawk’s chest, scoring five long gashes into his skin in a spray of blood.

BOOOM!

Mihawk was hurled down by the attack and slammed into the ground with such force that the dune beneath him became a crater. Somehow, however, he had managed to land on his feet, bracing his legs with Haki to weather the impact.

Wordlessly, Mihawk reached up and tore off his dress shirt, which had been left in tatters by the slashing blow. In spite of the beating he had just taken, he remained unconcerned.

“That was tailored.”

Above him, Grimmjow grinned and beckoned him. Bending his knees, Mihawk leapt off the ground and swung Yoru in a wide arc.

“Kokuto Issen!”

An enormous slash split the air. Grimmjow jerked backward just in time, and the slash only struck the bone-like crown on his forehead, splitting off a chunk. Leaning back forward, he slammed his head down into the approaching Mihawk’s, their skulls cracking against each other in a shower of sparks.

SHING!

Mihawk swung Yoru, again slashing across Grimmjow’s chest and again drawing no blood, but propelling himself backward into the air. An instant later, blue slashing attacks assailed the Espada, but Grimmjow danced between them with the litheness of a panther.

“Too slow!”

He lunged, and his clawed hand jabbed with deadly intent toward Mihawk’s face, but Mihawk jerked to the side and it only scored a gash across his cheek. Slashing Yoru upward, he knocked Grimmjow’s arm away, and then spun in midair, bringing the sword down with such force that he hurled Grimmjow downward.

In an instant, however, the Arrancar had closed the gap again, his own body whirling around to deliver powerful kicks and punches. With the razor-sharp claws on his hands and feet, every strike had the potential to be as deadly as a sword swing.

Fortunately for Mihawk, swordsmanship was his specialty. To use one’s body like a sword… Well, that wasn’t so different from someone like him, who had always viewed his sword as an extension of his body. As his sharp eyes grew accustomed to Grimmjow’s new speed, got used to his patterns, his blows became easier to parry.

‘Just like any swordsman.’

Just as the thought passed through his mind, however, Grimmjow changed tack. Striking out with his foot, he caught Yoru across the flat of its blade, knocking Mihawk away from himself. In the same moment, he raised his arm, angling his elbow toward Mihawk as though lining up a shot.

From the grooves in his arm, green spikes emerged, and a moment later they shot from his elbow with a BANG!, like bullets fired from a gun. Mihawk dodged the first, second, third, and then brought Yoru up to carve through the fourth. For a moment, as the spiked projectile impacted the edge of Yoru’s blade, it struggled against the sword, uncut, the two grinding furiously against one another.

Then, the spike split in half lengthwise, and the two halves shot to the left and right of Mihawk, not robbed of their momentum at all. One half struck a sand dune and blasted a gigantic hole through it, while the other half struck a large tower in the distance and shattered it into rubble.

Wide-eyed, Mihawk turned to glance backward, unnerved momentarily by the sheer force that the projectiles had struck with. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Grimmjow leapt forward, hand outstretched.

SHIIIIIING!

Mihawk ducked the slashing blow that Grimmjow had launched, and with a surge of Haki, swung Yoru point-blank into Grimmjow’s side. This time, as Mihawk’s energy swelled in the heat of battle, the blade finally drew blood, leaving a gash across the Hollow’s side.

With his other hand, Mihawk slammed his fist across Grimmjow’s face. Though it didn’t inflict much damage, it sent him hurtling backward, putting distance between the two of them once again.

“Heh!” Grimmjow didn’t waste time hesitating. Swiping a hand across the gash in his side, he swung his bloodied fingers around to point at Mihawk, energy already emitting from his palm and condensing inward.

‘!!!’

Mihawk dashed backwards across the ground, putting as much distance between himself and Grimmjow as he could, within the few seconds available to him. He had seen this attack before, launched forth by weaker Arrancars, and it hadn’t been pretty, even then.

Grimmjow bared his teeth.

“Cut this.”

Space in front of him warped, and a Gran Ray Cero exploded out toward Mihawk, who drew Samehada to parry. The attack struck the sword head-on, and for a moment, Samehada swelled, the energy of the attack absorbed into it…

…and then, Samehada exploded, shattering into a thousand pieces, the black sheen of Haki coating it flaking away and chunks of blood and scales tearing away before being consumed by the Cero entirely. The desert sand turned to glass, and dozens of dunes were blown away, flattened by the sheer force of the attack.

Far away, atop a white marble spire, Nel and Lilynette braced themselves as they were buffeted by the wind released by the blast. The stone beneath their feet cracked under the sheer spiritual pressure that the attack emitted. Many kilometers in the distance behind them, Las Noches trembled slightly.

Nel gritted her teeth.

“As reckless and bloodthirsty as ever…” she muttered, eyes narrowing as she raised an arm to prevent herself from being blinded by billowing sand.

“You think?” Lilynette chirped to the right of her, her singular eye transfixed on the battle in the distance. “That Gran Rey Cero… doesn’t it seem kind of weak to you?”

“Hm?” Nel shot the smaller Hollow an inquisitive look.

“I mean… I’m no good at Pesquisa. But even from far away, a Gran Rey Cero from someone like Grimmjow… there’s no way we’d be safe from this distance.”

Nel’s gaze shifted back toward the distant battle.

‘Could he be… restraining himself…?’

That hardly seemed possible. For Grimmjow, the thrill of battle was everything. Even among the monsters of the Espada, he had been chosen to embody destruction itself. In the time since his defeat against Ichigo, he had seen a marked change, undoubtedly, but even so…

‘Grimmjow… you’ve always wanted more than anything to become king… have you truly dedicated yourself to that mission, finally? Is that why…?’

Beside Nel, Lilynette’s eye shimmered slightly as she stared, transfixed at the distant battle.

“Even holding back, he really is… a Hollow stronger than Starrk and me… I never thought this would ever…” She trailed off, her throat seemingly closing with emotion.

Nel glanced over at her, wordlessly appraising her ally. Shifting her attention back toward Grimmjow, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Even after everything, the thought of bowing to a king like Grimmjow…

‘Show me, Grimmjow. Show me that you’re worth following into battle. That you have what it takes to lead us to victory!’

—

Days prior…

At the heart of the Akatsuki hideout, a figure sat, leaning back in his stone chair, legs crossed and hands folded in front of him, his face hidden behind his orange spiral mask. It had been mere hours since he had woken up in the arena, and Tobi found himself deep in thought.

A war to win his heart’s desire, with the entire Akatsuki at his beck and call… Well, it wasn’t so different from what he was used to. The Akatsuki had been formed in the first place to serve as unwitting emissaries of his will – to bring about the world that he wanted, and that Madara had wanted before him. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit uneasy about it all. For as far as he could remember, he had been plucked from a point in time where nearly all of his fellow Akatsuki were dead.

That on its own would not have unnerved him. Retrieving the dead from the Pure Lands was hardly unheard of, albeit only achievable through complex and widely forbidden ninjutsu. It was Pain’s testimony that concerned him. The false head of the Akatsuki – Pain, Nagato, whatever one chose to call him – had died a traitor who spent his final moments defying Tobi’s will. And yet, he recalled none of it. He remembered Deidara’s demise, and Sasori’s, and even Itachi’s – but his own death eluded him.

‘It’s the same for me.’

That singular thought filled Tobi’s mind like a persistent buzz. He, like Pain, could not remember dying, the only other Akatsuki who had made such testimony… of course, it was feasible to believe that he simply may not have died. But it was Kisame that threw a wrench in things. Kisame remembered dying as well… a death that Tobi also had no memory of.

‘The Gokage Summit…’ Tobi mused. ‘That’s the furthest I can recall, and yet Kisame remembers beyond that… Why? What changed, that our overseers don’t want me to know about…?’

Was it treachery? A betrayal of the Akatsuki? Kisame hadn’t seemed to think so, from the peeks Tobi had taken into his mind, but he was a mere pawn – his knowledge was limited. The thought of turning his back on the Eye of the Moon Plan…

Tobi shuddered. No, it couldn’t be that… to abandon the plan would be to abandon light itself. Salvation itself. It was unthinkable. And yet…

“Madara.” Emerging from the corridor at the far end of the room, Itachi seemed to melt from the shadows, eyes hard and cold, crows perched on his shoulders. “We need to talk.”

Tobi tilted his head down and regarded the approaching shinobi cautiously through his mask’s eye hole as Itachi took a seat at the table across from him. From his shoulder, a crow hopped down onto the table, and he raised a hand to stroke its head gently.

‘Another traitor.’

“About?” Tobi replied out loud, raising a hand to rest the side of his mask against. “Oughtn’t you be patrolling with Kisame, now? That was Pain’s order, no?”

“About the wish at the end of this war.”

Tobi was silent. Itachi continued.

“I want to know what it is you intend to use it for.”

Tobi remained silent for a few more moments, and then let out a low chuckle, straightening up in his seat.

“I see no need to share my goals with you, any more than I ever have, Itachi. We both know perfectly well where your loyalties lie. Especially considering you spent your last moments trying to kill me.”

Itachi was silent. Then, quietly, “I suppose that gambit failed, then.”

“It was a valiant attempt. Unfortunately, for all your genius, I’ve still managed to keep my cards close to the chest. Worry not. I didn’t harm a single hair on your little brother’s head.”

“No… no I don’t imagine you did. You most likely poisoned him against the Hidden Leaf, no?”

Tobi laughed again. “Right in one. You’re as shrewd as always.”

“I’m not so sure that’s the word I would use.”

Tobi tilted his head, surprised at the detached calmness on Itachi’s face.

“Your tone doesn’t match your words, Itachi. I would have expected you to be more…” he paused. “…defeated, I suppose.”

Itachi laughed humorlessly. “I have more contingencies. I always do.”

Tobi sighed. “Always an answer for everything. That’s what I find so very annoying about you, Itachi.”

“Hm?”

“You can truly never accept when you don’t have an answer. When you’re backed against the wall and have nothing left but to immerse yourself in the deepest pits of hell to escape. To lose everything just so that you can find an answer. Never willing to think that perhaps, the question was never for you to begin with.”

Itachi was silent, processing his words. 

“…You’re saying I should give up? Leave things to those who have the answer?”

“Accept that this world is broken and that no one has the answer. You would be far less miserable that way. You might even find salvation in the Eye of the Moon, as I have.”

Itachi was silent, and then slowly shook his head.

“I cannot accept that.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose…” Itachi continued to stroke the crow’s head. “It’s because I believe in the Will of Fire. And fire always finds a way.”

In that moment, red filled Tobi’s vision, and all of a sudden his mind was clear. He lurched back in his chair and let out a gasp of shock, the gleam of a Sharingan filling his vision. But it wasn’t Itachi’s Sharingan or even his own. It was the eye of the crow that glowed a blinding red. In that moment, through the power of Shisui Uchiha’s Kotoamatsukami, one singular mission filled his mind.

“Protect the Hidden Leaf Village.”

—

[Land of Snow]

The Land of Snow had been thoroughly transformed. Ice-covered mountains had been leveled to the ground, upheavals in the earth had melted nearly all of the snow, trees had been ripped up, rivers rerouted… and at the center of it all stood one man. A living force of nature, three Devil Fruits in one being.

“ZEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

Blackbeard laughed, hands splayed wide. Though his zombies were long-defeated, strewn motionless across the ground, the Emperor himself stood unharmed at the center of the devastation. Screeching roars filled the air as a dozen wood dragons descended on him, their maws opening wide as they sought to sink their fangs into his ample flesh.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Without a moment’s hesitation or delay, quake punch after quake punch slammed each dragon aside, one at a time. Each blow, upon impact, cracked the air and sent shockwaves across the ground, long-since destabilized earth churning like an ocean with every blow.

“Fire Style: Divine Dragon!!!”

Tobi’s deep, booming voice echoed through the air as he materialized above Blackbeard, his body twisting into existence from his dark vortex. His hands moving so fast they appeared to blur, an enormous dragon made purely of fire exploded forth, twisting down through the air toward Blackbeard, weaving between the still-oncoming wood dragons.

Changing tack immediately, however, Blackbeard thrust a hand upward and darkness materialized, expanding outward as it engulfed the draconic flame, smothering it under pure gravitational force.

“Chump change!” Blackbeard sneered. “Even that pathetic little Fire Fist burned hotter!”

He thrust his other palm outward, and from the shadows beneath him, spears of shade erupted, skewering through the air toward the descending Tobi.

Harmlessly, however, they passed right through him, and as he dove downward a vortex materialized around his mask’s right eye hole. Enormous Fūma shuriken rippled outward, spinning through the air down toward Blackbeard and scoring long gashes across his chest and shoulders.

Blackbeard howled in pain and staggered, the pain from his wounds amplified by his own Yami Yami no Mi. Still, though, he recovered. As Tobi plummeted toward him, he shot a hand outward, darkness pulling the masked shinobi down toward him at even greater speed.

Blackbeard’s fingers touched Tobi’s mask… and again passed cleanly through. Tobi slid right through Blackbeard’s body, emerging from his back side untouched.

“Hgh!” Before Tobi could fully pass through, Blackbeard spun in place and swung his fist down, slamming a quake punch into the air where Tobi occupied. Cracks split outward from the point of impact, rippling across the still-permeable Tobi… and inflicting no damage.

“Tsk, tsk,” Tobi tutted as Blackbeard’s strike continued onward, meeting no resistance and passing through him harmlessly. “You’re like a child. When brute force doesn’t work, the only thing you can think to do is hit harder!”

He lunged forward and seized Blackbeard by the face, fingers clenching inward around the much larger man’s jaw. Blackbeard grunted, eyes widening as he found himself in physical contact with his opponent for the first time.

“Sleep.”

Tobi’s right eye flashed red from the eye hole of his mask, a genjutsu taking hold of Blackbeard’s mind instantaneously. A moment later, a vortex rippled from the eye, spinning outward and engulfing the emperor, ready to absorb him as it had Baraggan.

CRACK!

Blackbeard’s hand shot up and slammed into the bottom of Tobi’s mask with such force that it splintered! An instant later, a quake exploded outward and the mask shattered, Tobi hurled backward head over heel, eyes bulging as he righted himself midair, skidding along the ground as he landed on his feet.

Shaken, he raised a hand to his face, eyes widening as he registered that he had been unmasked. Slowly, Obito Uchiha’s eyes rose to meet Blackbeard’s. Across from him, the Yonko’s lips curled into a wide grin.

“Sorry, chum… but I don’t sleep.”

Obito’s hand clenched ever so slightly tighter around his gunbai’s hilt. In spite of himself, he managed a dry chuckle, his voice more raspy now than it had been before.

“You managed to hit me. Congratulations. Not many have succeeded at doing that.”

“When you’re touching me, I can touch you.” Blackbeard sneered. “Even a child like me can figure out that much!”

From the ground around him, new zombies tore themselves upward, warbling roars filling the air as a small army surged forth all at once. Obito’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t think you’ve won with such a simple deduction!”

With a swing of his arm, a purple chain shot from his palm like a bullet and swept around, tearing through zombies by the dozen and wrapping around dozens more, freezing them in place. Each one that the chain passed through became wreathed in purple bindings and tethered to the ground, dragged down as if by a powerful weight.

As the chain extending from his hand discorporated, Obito thrust his palm out and another one fired forth directly toward Blackbeard. With blinding reflexes, the emperor’s hand shot up and seized the chain, and it quivered in his grip as purple energy waves rippled across his body. Blackbeard let out a low groan as the chain pushed forward, straining to bind him tight.

‘The paralytic effect of these chains is on par with that of the Rinnegan’s Black Receivers…’ Obito thought calmly as he advanced on Blackbeard, pressing his advantage. ‘No… it’s much stronger.’

With his remaining free hand, Obito formed hand seals at blinding speed, then raised two fingers to his lips as a vortex swirled around his eye.

“Fire Style: Bomb Blast Dance!”

From his mouth, a spiral of flames erupted, twisting around the chain and blazing toward Blackbeard in a wave of searing heat. This time, paralyzed by the chain, Blackbeard had no time to defend with darkness, and the flame slammed into his chest unimpeded. He howled and staggered backward through the wave of fire, the hairs all over his body sizzling under the inferno.

Obito’s eyes flashed, and the jutsu expanded in size, an even larger plume of flame exploding from his mouth and hurling Blackbeard off his feet, slamming him backward along the ground as his wails of agony got louder. Finally, the attack ceased and Obito lowered his fingers.

The ground in front of him sizzled, the top layer of soil for over a hundred yards vaporized by the intense heat. At the far end of the trench he had burned into the ground, Blackbeard lay, his wails of pain still filling the air as he rolled back and forth, his chest and face badly burned. Finally, he slumped down onto his back, panting heavily as he gasped for breath.

Obito scoffed. “Hot enough for you?”

Slowly, as he caught his breath, Blackbeard let out a dry chuckle, his chapped lips cracking as he forced himself to grin.

“That little comment got to you, eh? You’re a lot less intimidating with the mask off.” He dragged himself up to a sitting position, leering at Obito. “Not as easy to pretend you’re something inhuman.”

Obito sneered. “I’ve never made any claims about being human or not. I’m merely a shadow, cast by a light long-since extinguished.” He paused, and then cocked his head slightly, grinning. “I stopped believing in that light a long time ago… but I’ve been thinking about it more, lately. Was there ever a light for your shadow, Teach?”

Blackbeard chuckled. “There was.”

“And?”

“I snuffed it out.”

Obito let out a soft, raspy laugh.

“We really are different, then.”

Without another word he thrust his hand out, and a purple chain lashed itself around the downed Blackbeard’s torso, binding his arms. He grunted in surprise, and then-

“Ha!”

Obito twisted in place and wrenched the chain around, hurling Blackbeard into the air and swinging him into the far distance. As he flew, the chain loosened and he slammed into the side of a partially deformed mountain, the ground cratering beneath him and blood spitting from his mouth.

Wham!

Catching up at blazing speed, Obito brought the gunbai down toward Blackbeard’s head, and the emperor barely managed to raise both arms and cross them over his head, the fan slamming to a halt against his forearms. For a moment, the two struggled against one another, a trickle of blood dripping from where the gunbai’s edge had carved down into Blackbeard’s arms. Then, an enormous blast of wind exploded from the fan and sent Blackbeard flying again, skipping along the ground as he tumbled head over heels.

Obito drew two fingers up to his lips as a vortex swirled around his right eye. All at once, dozens of shuriken burst from his Kamui, and searing globs of flame spat from his mouth, converging on the shuriken and turning them into spinning bullets of razor-sharp flame. As they caught up to the still-flying Blackbeard, they slammed into his chest, arms and stomach, gouging chunks out of him.

Blackbeard cried out and recovered in midair. With a swing of his hand a wave of darkness drew a number of the shuriken to the side with their gravity. With a punch of the other, a quake blasted the rest of the barrage off course. Slamming down into the ground finally, Blackbeard skidded to a halt, his fingers carving into the ground and clenching down, as if gripping the very land itself.

“Come on now… can’t we talk this out like gentlemen?!”

He ripped his hand up and the ground moved with it, as if it were a carpet pulled upward by the power of Blackbeard’s Gura Gura no Mi. A moment later, he slammed his hand back down, and a shockwave rippled forward through the earth from his location, a massive tidal wave of dirt and stone surging forward and decimating the land for kilometers in front of him.

“I have nothing to say to you! Accept damnation, and die!”

Obito dashed along the surging ground so fast he appeared a blur. Shards of jagged rock assailed him, but each and every one of them passed through his body like he wasn’t there. Forming hand seals as he sprinted toward the distant Blackbeard at breakneck speed, chunks of soil ripped from the ground around him and shot forward like missiles.

“Earth Style: Bedrock Barrage!!”

Blackbeard thrust his arm into the air, and a veil of darkness materialized in front of him. The earthen projectiles struck the darkness and were crushed into nothing by sheer gravity, only dust emerging from the opposite side and raining down around Blackbeard.

Crunch!

The ground around Blackbeard’s feet ruptured and he gave a start, his eyes widening as hands shot up and seized his ankles.

CRACK!

With a bellow of surprise, Blackbeard was dragged down into the ground, his massive frame ripping through the earth until he had been dragged below the surface. A moment later, he was ripped back out again, Obito dragging him through the ground and into the air by the ankles, before spinning around and hurling him through the air. He slammed into a boulder, which fractured under his weight, and more blood gushed from his mouth.

“Hah!”

With a bellow, Blackbeard spat blood from his mouth and swung a quake punch toward the descending Obito. In the same moment, Obito swung the gunbai, and the flat of the weapon struck Blackbeard’s fist head-on.

Space between the two of them seemed to compress. The power of the Gura Gura no Mi combined with Blackbeard’s swelling Conqueror’s Haki clashed violently against the reflective power of the gunbai, which struggled to send the force of the attack back to sender.

…BOOOOOOOM!

In an instant, an explosion blasted out, the two sides meeting in equal measure. The gunbai shattered in Obito’s grip, its fan split by the sheer force of Blackbeard’s attack, and even as Blackbeard himself was buffeted by the intense winds, he let out a roar of effort and forced his attack forward, slamming his quake-empowered fist into Obito’s chest…!

…And once again, it merely passed right through, harmlessly. The quake’s power exploded behind Obito, tearing apart the ground for miles. The few trees that remained hurled into the air and were torn apart… but the man himself stood, unharmed even by the fist that appeared lodged in the center of his chest.

As Blackbeard let out shuddering heaves and the rubble rained down around them, the sound ringing, Obito only let out a wry chuckle.

“An impressive effort, Blackbeard. But this battle is a foregone conclusion. Even with all your power… you can’t even touch me.”

Blackbeard coughed, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat as he swayed, struggling to stand as his exertion caught up to him. However, in spite of his exhaustion, he managed to rasp out a few words.

“Wasn’t… trying to…”

SHINK!

Obito’s eyes bulged. Blood spurted from his mouth and he staggered.

“Hrk!” He coughed, and more blood gurgled forth.

‘What…?! How did he-?!’

It was impossible. Not with Haki, not with the Gura Gura or the Yami Yami, or with Moria’s Kage Kage fruit… one by one they had all failed to harm him through his Kamui, so how…?!

Obito’s eyes widened. It couldn’t be… there was no way…!

—

[Kamui Dimension]

An entire dimension away, a faint dripping sound filling the silent void. Whenever Obito used his power to slip through things, he transported parts of his body to this space automatically. To anyone in the physical world, it appeared as though he was passing through objects, when in reality he was simply shifting his body mass out of the main dimension.

Without the power to access Kamui, even abilities that could bypass intangibility failed against him, so there had been truly no way for Blackbeard to hit him. But still… he had been struck.

The chunk of Obito’s chest that had been teleported away when Blackbeard’s fist had overlapped with his body dripped with blood, a steady trickle gushing from the puncture wound in its side and tapping against the smooth stone below. The wound had been inflicted not by Blackbeard’s quake, but by a simple, metal knife, the owner of which clutched it tightly, trembling violently, sweat pouring from his brow.

Turning the tide of the battle from another dimension… It was Buggy the Clown who had pierced Obito’s heart.

—

‘Impudent…!’

Rage filled Obito as blood gurgled from his mouth and he slammed a fist into Blackbeard’s face. The larger man’s arm was dislodged from Obito, and the pierced portion of his chest resolidified in the real world, blood now gushing from the open wound.

Kamui’s vortex exploded from Obito’s right eye, and Buggy was hurled out of it, expelled from the Kamui Dimension instantaneously, letting out a shriek of terror. He landed some distance away and scrambled to his feet, dashing away as fast as he could move.  Before the Kamui vortex could dissipate, Blackbeard lunged in and swung his fist back down toward Obito. The shinobi’s eyes widened. In the moments that Kamui’s vortex was active, he couldn’t use the ability to pass through matter.

‘Damn you, clown…!’

WHAM!

For the first time, one of Blackbeard’s quakes found its mark, as his fist slammed lengthwise into Obito’s chest. The space at the point of impact cracked, and the ground surged upward for miles around. Obito let out a scream of agony as his eyes bulged and his ribs cracked, a much larger torrent of blood spewing from his mouth as cracks racked up the full length of his body.

—

Days prior…

“What are you saying, Madara?!” White Zetsu wailed, wide-eyed and fearful. “This is nothing like you!” His other half, Black Zetsu, trembled against him, his eye narrowed in anger and disbelief as he regarded the man standing before him.

“Don’t call me that,” Obito scoffed, placing his mask down on the tabletop to his side. “You know that I’m not Madara. He left his will with me, but I’m not him. Call me Tobi, if you must.”

“It is imperative that you continue to operate as Madara.” Black Zetsu growled. “The Eye of the Moon Plan-”

“Is antiquated.” Obito cut him off, and Black Zetsu bristled furiously. “I can use the wish at the end of the war to fix this world without it. The Leaf Village will be safe.”

“Since when was this only about the Leaf Village?! The entire world-”

“Is none of my concern.” Obito sighed and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands under his nose. “The rest of the Akatsuki can die for all I care. None of them are to be trusted with victory. Except for Itachi, I suppose. He and I have come to an understanding… on what’s important.”

“You would betray our cause?!” Black Zetsu spat. “You have become Itachi’s puppet! He’s placed you under Kotoamatsukami!”

“And if he has? Does that change the facts of the situation?”

Zetsu was silent for several long moments.

“Itachi woke me up. For the first time in years, I feel like myself again. That’s all.”

“…You killed the Fourth Hokage. You conjured the Nine-Tails. You are responsible for the Akatsuki, and every death they’ve ever wrought upon the world. You think that the ninja world will welcome you back with open arms? Do you think any of them will ever forgive you?”

Obito considered the question, and then slowly shrugged, letting out a sigh.

“I don’t need any of them to forgive me. As long as I do enough that I can forgive myself.”

—

Obito let out a roar, blood spewing from his mouth as he seized Blackbeard by the wrist, the force of the quake wreaking havoc on his body. From his eye, a swirling vortex materialized, spinning outward and engulfing Blackbeard.

‘I’ll suck him up… banish him into Kamui…! I can still-’

CRACK!

Blackbeard ripped his arm away, and slammed his other fist forward, cloaked in darkness, across the right side of Obito’s face. His head snapped back and his right eye was forced closed, black and blue already forming a deep bruise around it. The vortex faltered.

‘Ugh-!’

“ZEHAHA!”

Blackbeard’s hand shot out again and seized him by the face, darkness oozing from him like sheer malice, his bloodied face bared into a wide, manic grin.

WHAM!

Obito’s face clenched in his grip, he hurled his other fist forward and slammed a second quake punch into Obito’s chest.

WHAM!

A third. 

WHAM!

A fourth. 

CRUNCH!

On the fifth strike, his fist plowed through the shinobi’s chest and drove clean through the other side. Barely conscious, Obito still managed to struggle furiously in his grasp, trying to will his ruined eye to function properly again.

‘I can’t… die here…! I can’t…!’

The Valley of Screams flashed in his mind’s eye. A barren wasteland of lost souls… that was the only thing that awaited those who died in the arena. If he died here, he wouldn’t ever see the Pure Lands… he wouldn’t ever see…

His eyes closed. Complete defeat settled in his chest.

There would be no peace for him in the next life.

Blackbeard hurled Obito’s limp form into the air, and with a cry of triumph, he fired a column of pure darkness from his body, which erupted upward and engulfed Obito, twisting inward into a black sphere around his body.

SQUELCH!

With a sickening noise, crimson blood exploded out from the pseudo black hole, showering downward all around the Emperor of the Sea. The only remains of that which was crushed under the force of his infinite gravity. There was a moment of silence, and then…

“ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS! ONE OF THE AKATSUKI HAVE DIED! TWO REMAIN!”

The announcer’s voice echoed across the decimated wasteland that had formerly been the Land of Snow, and then silence fell. 

The leader of the Akatsuki was dead.

Slowly, Blackbeard started to chuckle, and his chuckle became a laugh, and then an insane cackle. He thrust both fists to the sky, in utter triumph.

“What was that about seeing my dreams crumble away?! Huh? Huh?!”

He threw his head back and laughed until he cried, the light of the setting sun shining down on the ruined battlefield, drenching the clouds above in red light. All around Blackbeard, the ground began to crack and zombies began to drag themselves up to stand at his side. At last, the man calmed down, and bowed his head, his grin still wide and mad.

“Today, the Akatsuki… tomorrow, the world.”

—

[Hueco Mundo]

As the sun set on Las Noches, wind swept the sand dunes as the battle between Grimmjow and Mihawk raged on. For hours the two had fought, and as their attacks grew more ferocious and violent, it appeared from the outside more like a fight between two starving wolves.

“Hah! Hah! Hah!”

Through the air above the massive fortress, the two hurtled, bursts of Haki propelling a disheveled Mihawk as he advanced on a rapidly retreating Grimmjow, black and blue energy crackling through the sky.

With each snarling breath, Mihawk carved Yoru across Grimmjow’s blood-soaked chest, his normally razor-precise strikes jagged and powerful, sparks of Haki spraying out with every strike. The Warlord’s hair was unkempt, one of his eyes had been gouged out, and slashes covered his chest. Burn marks covered his body, the Cero from earlier having done a horrific number on him, but still he kept going.

CRASH!

Grimmjow slammed through one of the massive marble spires atop the fortress, and then twisted through the air to weave between the others. Slashes of pressurized Haki split the air around him, just barely missing their mark.

His condition wasn’t much better than that of his opponent. His pristine white body armor had been almost entirely shredded, his mane of blue hair had become chopped and uneven, and the razor sharp blades on his legs and forearms had nearly all been snapped off. Still, as he parried Mihawk’s blows and struck back with all the ferocity of a panther, he let out a roar of determination.

“I… ain’t… done…!”

His fist sheared across Mihawk’s chest, and though Armament Haki blunted the force of the blow, a gash still opened under his claws. Mihawk spat out a growl and slammed Yoru’s blade against the side of Grimmjow’s head, opening a slash across the front of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Grimmjow’s head snapped back from the strike, and he spun back through the air, grinding against the roof of the fortress and hurling up massive chunks of rubble.

With a roar, he leapt to his feet and blasted back upward, reaching Mihawk’s location again in an instant and raking his claws up against the side of Yoru’s blade. Without giving the swordsman a moment to recover, he lurched forward and slammed his head down into Mihawk’s forehead, Haki and Reiatsu exploding outward from the point of impact as they strained against each other, face to face.

Mihawk spat a wad of blood onto Grimmjow’s cheek and bared crimson teeth, rage in his glare.

“I’ll put you down, dog.”

Grimmjow leered back at him, gleeful bloodlust in his eyes.

“Not before I rip yer fuckin’ throat out.”

BANG!

With another surge of energy, the two separated, falling back until there was distance between the two of them once again. Mihawk drew Yoru back, Haki pouring into the blade. Grimmjow raised a hand, and from his clawed fingers, enormous blue blades of energy materialized behind his nails, expanding to massive size.

“Kokuto ‘Mu’!”

“Desgarron!”

Mihawk swung his sword, and Grimmjow his arm, and enormous scythes of black and blue energy ripped forth. They met in the middle, and the fortress roof beneath them was sheared down the middle. Arcs of light ripped up toward the sky and split the swirling clouds above, the shockwave rippling outward and stirring up massive amounts of sand across the desert.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

Grimmjow blitzed forward through the cascading energy and sheared blue-covered claws down the length of Yoru’s blade. Blow after blow rained down and Mihawk ferociously parried each one, and then-

CRUNCH!

Grimmjow’s claws drove inward and Yoru’s blade cracked sharply. With an explosion of energy, it shattered. Grimmjow howled in pain and staggered backward, his own claws violently cracked and torn from the force of the impact. Mihawk too reeled, shards of black metal from Yoru’s broken blade now embedded in his chest and shoulders. Haki seeped out of them, dissipating into the air like smoke.

Grimmjow let out a screeching howl and lunged again, declawed hands raining wild, gashing blows on Mihawk, who slashed back with his own broken sword. He swung a fist across Grimmjow’s face, wildly punching and stabbing. The white marble around the two cracked and crumbled from the force of their blows.

Mihawk’s hand shot out and fastened around Grimmjow’s throat, and the Hollow howled and swiped at his arm. Mihawk drew the broken Yoru back and swung it, smashing the flat of it into Grimmjow’s forehead and breaking off more shards of metal. Grimmjow yowled and shook his head, disoriented, blinking blood and shards of metal from his eyes.

Mihawk drew Yoru’s hilt back, his hand still clenched around Grimmjow’s throat. Only a few inches of blade remained above the hilt, but with pitch-black Haki crackling through it, it was every bit as deadly as an intact sword.

“Return to hell, monster!”

He drove the blade downward, aimed directly toward Grimmjow’s throat. With a roar of defiance, Grimmjow drew his head back… and then lunged forward, sinking his teeth down into the blade and crushing it into broken shards within his powerful jaw.

“Hngh!” Mihawk flinched backward, shocked by the ferocious response, and in that moment Grimmjow spat the shards directly into the swordsman’s face. With a spray of blood, one of them buried itself deep in the swordsman’s single remaining eye.

He opened his mouth to cry out in pain and shock, but as his grip loosened on Grimmjow’s throat, the Hollow lunged forward, and sank his razor-sharp fangs bone deep into Mihawk’s throat.

Mihawk’s jaw went slack. Both of his eyes ruined beyond repair, he stood frozen. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. As rays of moonlight descended from the split clouds above, and the rubble torn up from their powerful clash rained down around them, Yoru’s hilt dropped from his hand and clattered against the rooftop with finality.

Grimmjow let out a low, rumbling growl as he unfastened his teeth from Mihawk’s throat. Blood dribbled down his chin as he extricated himself, breathing heavily as the animalistic fury slowly left his eyes.

Mihawk let out a weak, gurgling chuckle, and toppled backward, collapsing to the ground, spread-eagled.

Slowly, Grimmjow raised a bloodied hand to his chin and wiped away the blood, but it only smeared. He gazed down at Mihawk, his body armor retracting as he reverted to his base form.

“Good… show…” the swordsman managed, his voice weak as he hacked up blood. “You really are strong… that’s good…”

“…You’re a lunatic,” Grimmjow rasped, approval in his voice. “Fought like a damn Hollow.”

“Well… I was the world’s strongest swordsman. I couldn’t exactly… go gently into the night…”

“Was?”

Mihawk managed a wry smile. “Well, that’s you now, isn’t it?”

Grimmjow snorted and looked away. As Mihawk continued, he sounded almost wistful.

“To meet a swordsman stronger than me… I never thought it would happen. I’m strangely glad.” He paused and frowned. “Though, I would have preferred to have won. There’s a promise… that it seems I won’t be able to keep… that’s bothersome…”

Grimmjow continued to gaze to the side, letting the swordsman speak without interruption, but listening intently.

“I have a student, you see… I told him I would remain the strongest swordsman until he surpassed me…” he paused. “…I suppose he’ll likely come after you someday, then, in search of a fight. I have no right to ask you for anything, as nothing more than a man who was defeated… but you had best not die before that happens.”

Grimmjow scoffed. “I ain’t exactly planning to die.” He paused, and then his tone softened. “But… yeah. I’ll fight him someday. You were tough as hell, I can at least do that much.”

Mihawk smiled again, and when he spoke his voice had become softer, weaker. “In that case, if you’re willing… I have one more request…”

“…Yeah?”

“I’m not normally one to feel spiteful, so it may be unlike me, but…”

He coughed weakly, and paused for several long moments, thinking. Then…

“…The Pirate King died laughing. See to it that Blackbeard does not.”

Grimmjow was silent. Mihawk let out one last shuddering sigh, and fell silent.

“ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS! ONE OF THE WARLORDS OF THE SEA HAVE DIED! FOUR REMAIN!”

Grimmjow turned, gaze angling up toward the sky at the sound of the announcement.

‘Four left… They have the lead… but not for long.’

Before he could consider the question, Nel touched down near him, Lilynette trailing behind her, wringing her hands anxiously.

“He’s really dead, then…?” Her voice was shaky, her eye fixed on Mihawk’s prone form.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow replied, letting out a deep breath he hadn’t known he was holding, shoulders relaxing as he slid his hands into the pockets of his tattered pants. “It was tough, but he’s dead.”

Lilynette was silent for a moment, and then softly whispered, “Thank you for saving me.”

For a moment, Grimmjow was confused, and then he realized she hadn’t been speaking to him, but to Mihawk’s dead body. The smaller Hollow looked miserable, and he felt a stab of pity for her.

“Oi, don’t be like that,” he said, and Lilynette flinched.

“S-Sorry! I know he was an enemy, it’s just-!”

“No, I mean you don’t need to cry for him. He was a worthy foe who died honorably. Nothin’ to be sad about.” Grimmjow didn’t look at her as he spoke, scratching his ear nonchalantly. He glanced over. “I know you don’t have Starrk anymore, but Nel and me will look after you. So… chin up and shit.”

Lilynette looked at him wide-eyed, and a moment later she burst into tears, and whirled around to cover her face. Grimmjow jumped.

“H-Hey! I just said you don’t gotta-!”

Nel laughed, and he turned sharply to look at her, annoyance on his face.

“The hell’re you laughin’ at?”

Nel giggled for a few more moments, and then slowly calmed down, closing her eyes.

“You really have changed a lot, haven’t you, Grimmjow? You actually care.”

“Wh-?! I… I haven’t changed for shit!” Grimmjow snapped, flustered. “I’ll still kill the hell out of you, so don’t piss me off, broad!” Nel only laughed harder.

“It’s just…” Lilynette’s wobbly voice interrupted the two of them, and they turned to look at her, startled. “…Starrk and I… we always saw the Espada like a family… but Hollows aren’t meant to feel things like that… so even then, we were all alone.” Tears streamed down her face. “I never thought…”

She trailed off, and Grimmjow looked even more flustered.

“H-Hey, knock it the hell off, will ya?! It’s not that deep!” He floundered for a moment, looking away from both Nel and Lilynette as he struggled to compose himself. Finally, he took a deep breath and exhaled, scowling. “Don’t get all sentimental about family now. The Akatsuki are almost wiped out, it sounds like, but we’ve still got a lot of Warlords left to beat. The endgame is coming up soon.”

He paused, and then slowly his frown became a grin.

“Lucky for us, I’ve got a plan.”

—

[Queen Anne’s Revenge]

Crocodile stood at the helm, his hook steering the flagship’s wheel as the Queen Anne sailed over the mainland. Most of the Akatsuki’s territory had been decimated, either by the Nine Tails, the battle in the Rain Village or by the upheaval from Blackbeard’s battle with Obito. Standing at the edge of the ship, Law-Zetsu gazed out at the carnage, a wicked grin on his face.

“Blackbeard won the battle…” Zetsu hissed, his yellow eye widening. “The traitor is no more…!”

Within his subconscious, Law scowled grimly, arms folded and eyes closed.

‘Tch… so that scum really survived… this is gonna be a shitshow.’

Crocodile leered down at the decimated land that soared underneath them.

“Four Warlords left…” he mused. “…and you said that it was five last time?”

“Correct.”

“So they haven’t re-added me then… that’s annoying. Does that mean that people who’ve been eliminated are out for good, even if they come back?”

“I suppose… it must be something like that.”

Crocodile’s lips curled in displeasure. If that was the case… Did that mean he wouldn’t get a wish if the Warlords won? Plus…

“And who is it who just died? Teach is alive since we’re still in the air, plus Law makes two…”

“Mihawk, Hancock, or Buggy.” Zetsu supplied. “The rest perished already.”

Crocodile chewed on his cigar, thinking. “Mihawk’s not dead for sure, and Buggy’s a damn cockroach. I’ll believe he’s gone when I see it.”

“Then you feel Boa Hancock is the one dead?”

Crocodile shrugged carelessly. “Seems likely.”

Zetsu fell silent, contemplative. “Truthfully, I’m more concerned about the Akatsuki announcement. Two left… other than I, only Obito, Itachi, and Orochimaru still remained.”

Crocodile took a moment, and then stiffened when he realized the issue.

“And you’re sure that Obito guy’s dead?”

Zetsu didn’t answer for a moment, then answered slowly.

“I fear that if one of those three is still alive… it would probably be…”

—

[Underground Hideout]

Boa Hancock stirred, her eyes slowly opening. The oppressive, surrounding darkness pressed inward, and it took her a moment to adjust to the dim light. The faint sound of dripping liquid was all that could be heard, horrible artifacts and contraptions lining the shelves and desks throughout the decrepit laboratory.

For a few bleary moments, she wondered what had awoken her.

And then searing, agonizing pain shot through her entire body from her neck.

Her vision blurred sharply. Across every inch of her skin, black patterning rippled as though tar was coursing through her veins. On the side of her neck, the source of the pain was a tiny circular patterning which now glowed bright orange.

Her vision started to dim. Panic filled her chest, but was already rapidly fading as her entire body began to grow numb. The side of her neck felt as though it was being branded by a white-hot poker, but she couldn’t manage to scream. She squeezed her eyes closed, willing it to stop…

And then it stopped. In fact, everything stopped. Her consciousness faded away, as if lulled to sleep.

Her eyes opened again.

Her hand reached up, seized the edge of the counter she had been leaned against, and pulled her unsteadily to her feet.

She stumbled, swaying in place as she raised a hand to rub her eyes.

“Heh… hehehehe…”

A low chuckle reverberated from her throat. She pulled her hand away, to reveal thin purple markings extending down her cheeks from the inner corner of her eyes.

“It seems,” Orochimaru rasped, “that I survived.”

He chuckled darkly and started to move, then stumbled, catching himself on the counter. Faintly, he registered that Boa’s heels were uncomfortable.

He chuckled again.

And then he swept an arm across the counter, hurling dozens of vials and beakers to the ground where they violently shattered, chemicals sizzling as they ate into the earthen floor.

Orochimaru clenched his teeth – no, her teeth – so hard that they creaked. Her chest heaved as she breathed heavily, eyes bloodshot with rage.

‘Normal eyes.’

Her contingency plan had worked. She was alive. But she had lost Itachi’s body.

The prize she had desired for so many years, won and then lost in less than a day.

She seethed, and slammed Boa’s fists – her fists – down into the counter so hard that it cracked.

‘This is fine… this is fine, I can work with this…’ she reassured herself. She had known, after all, that losing Itachi’s body was a possibility. That was why she had placed a Curse Mark on Boa in the first place, for insurance.

The Warlord was a good consolation prize, she reminded herself. After all, she had the uncanny power to channel energy that turned things to stone. With that in mind, her body needed to have certain resilience to it… the kind of resilience he would need to finally master that power…

Losing Itachi’s body was indisputably a terrible blow.

But one that Orochimaru could recover from.

She allowed her eyes to sweep across the counter and land on the assortment of bits and pieces that she had collected from the other Akatsuki. Kakuzu’s severed arm, Hidan’s blood-soaked spear, Obito’s discarded left eye, and so many more…

She forced her face to contort into an unnatural smile.

She could still turn this around.

Only two Akatsuki were left…

But not for long.

—

[Land of Snow (Formerly)]

Blackbeard gazed to the south, his eyes surveying the massive fleet of ships that now dotted the horizon. In the time since Orochimaru had been defeated, they had multiplied dramatically, and now formed an armada of hundreds.

All sailing to his aid.

Blackbeard let out a laugh. All around him, zombies had continued to rip from the ground by the dozens, amassing an enormous army.

An army that served him, and only him.

Around him, his Titanic Captains stood, recovered thanks to his power. Jinbe, Moria, Kuma, Doflamingo. Law and Crocodile were coming from the south. Boa Hancock was missing in action. And…

From the ground to Blackbeard’s side, a hand ripped up. Slowly, the man tore himself from the ground, dragging himself up until he found his footing. Conjured all the way from Las Noches, Blackbeard gazed into the lifeless eyes of Dracule Mihawk. The strongest swordsman in the world.

His to command.

Blackbeard could only laugh harder. As he turned to face the desert to the far west, casting his Haki out until he could see the grand fortress beyond the horizon, only one thought dominated his mind.

He had won.

—

[Las Noches]

Grimmjow pulled on a new jacket, zipping up the front and rolling his shoulder before tugging out the IVs that had been pumping regenerative enzymes through his system. All the exhaustion he had felt after his battle with Mihawk was gone, his wounds had faded…

He was ready to rumble.

As he strolled through the door, he didn’t even glance at Nel, who stood off to the side, waiting for him to emerge.

“Szayel’s got everything ready?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

“Well, let’s go then.”

Without another word, he marched off down the hall, and Nel followed close behind him, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade, quiet determination in her eyes.

‘It’s all going to come down to this battle… let it be enough…’

As the two of them emerged onto the balcony overlooking the vast desert below, Szayel stood waiting for them, arms folded behind his back, a simpering smile on his face.

“Feeling battle-ready, your majesty?” he addressed Grimmjow.

“Cut the shit.” Grimmjow snapped. “I ain’t king yet. Not till I get my wish.”

“Of course.”

“What about the rest of them?”

Szayel smiled wider, and snapped his fingers. Around the three of them, figures seemed to materialize – nine in total – their bodies covered in stitches.

“It was difficult work, retrieving some of them. There was very nearly nothing left of three of them. But I hope you’ll find them to your liking.”

Grimmjow grinned as he glanced between them, and every Espada glowered back at him, most of their expressions thoroughly sour.

“Hell yeah.”

“Grimmjow…” the zombified Harribel growled, her voice tight as she glared at him. “To turn us into your own personal weapons like this…”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Luppi cut in with a snarl, his teeth grinding together.

“Weapons?” Grimmjow quirked an eyebrow, grinning back at Harribel and ignoring Luppi. “You’re my soldiers. Get it right.”

He turned away, and moved to the edge of the balcony, looking out across the sand at the storm clouds Blackbeard was amassing in the far distance.

“The strength of the pack may be the wolf,” he said, without looking back at the other Arrancars, “but the strength of the wolf is the pack. A king without followers is just playing pretend.”

Slowly, the other Espada moved to stand behind him. As Grimmjow’s eyes remained fixed on the horizon, he cracked his neck and grinned.

“Let’s rock and roll.”

…

…

…

…

…

END OF CHAPTER 4

(1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10)