"Big Mom, cut the grand talk! Your objective has already failed!"
Enel hovered in mid-air, his entire body maintaining its crackling, elemental lightning form. He pointed a finger downward, gesturing mockingly at the Emperor below.
"Is that so—?!"
"Zeus!"
Charlotte Linlin's expression twisted into something utterly demonic. She abruptly crouched and launched herself into the sky like a cannonball, leaving behind a heavily collapsed crater in the solid gold street.
In the blink of an eye, she vaulted dozens of meters high. The dark storm cloud Zeus zipped down from the upper atmosphere like a streak of pitch-black lightning, catching her beneath her feet before rocketing back upward toward the heavens.
"Come on then!"
Enel let out a thunderous shout, gripping his golden staff tightly before swinging it forward to meet Big Mom's incoming assault head-on.
CLANG—!!!
Blade and staff collided in a brilliant shower of sparks. A shockwave of condensed force, interwoven with jagged arcs of stray electricity, erupted outward in a violent ring.
In that instant, Enel felt a monumental, earth-shattering wave of pure physical strength crash into him. The sheer force threatened to tear the webbing of his thumbs apart, nearly sending him careening through the sky.
"One Hundred Million Volts: Discharge!!!"
Grit-faced, Enel managed to stabilize his frame. He roared as lightning flared wildly across his skin, unleashing a blinding electrical current that surged directly down the golden staff, conducting straight through Napoleon and onto Charlotte Linlin's body.
"Aaaaargh—!!!"
Caught off guard by the sheer voltage of the counterattack, Charlotte Linlin screamed in agony as the brilliant, blinding current completely enveloped her massive frame.
"Mama!"
Below her feet, Zeus panicked. The sentient cloud unleashed his own blinding discharge of lightning, using his core electrical energy to forcibly repel and drive away Enel's current.
"Tch!"
Seeing his opening vanish, Enel spat in annoyance. In a flash of light, he transformed into a streak of lightning, repositioning himself directly behind Charlotte Linlin's blind spot.
"Lightning Kick: Thunderbolt Saber!!!"
A leg forged entirely of crackling electricity materialized first. Shapeshifting into a jagged blade of pure lightning, it whipped through the air, executing a devastating horizontal sweep aimed right at her back.
Yet, in that split second, Charlotte Linlin spun around with unnatural agility. Her left arm, completely hardened by a layer of pitch-black Armament Haki, was already raised defensively.
BOOM—
With a heavy, muffled impact, she blocked Enel's strike dead in its tracks.
A powerful atmospheric shockwave erupted from the point of contact, rolling outward in all directions. The air itself vibrated and hummed violently under the pressure, radiating the sheer kinetic force of the clash.
"Die, you brat!"
Charlotte Linlin shrieked, swinging her giant blade downward with a ferocious, unrestrained arc that whipped up a razor-sharp tempest of wind.
In that critical instant, Enel elementally split his body, proactively separating his form to let her blade pass cleanly through the self-inflicted gap, forcing Charlotte Linlin's devastating slash to bite nothing but empty air.
BOOM—
An instant later, the terrifying wind from her slash tore into the earth hundreds of meters below. It sliced a massive, gaping fissure over a hundred meters long directly into the boulevard, sending a towering wall of dirt and debris flying into the sky.
"Get out of my face! Flame Strike!!!"
Without a single moment's pause, Charlotte Linlin roared again. Her fist shot forward like a lightning bolt, smashing squarely into Enel's torso just as his elemental body was reforming.
BANG—
A violent explosion of scorching flames and highly compressed electricity erupted. Enel barely had time to cough up a mouthful of blood before his body was sent hurtling downward like a bullet. He broke the sound barrier instantly, leaving a succession of white, ring-shaped sonic booms hanging in the air behind him.
KABOOM—!!!
The earth shuddered violently as a monumental shockwave rippled outward. Impacting the ground like a fallen meteorite, Enel smashed a deep, cratered depression over a dozen meters wide directly into the street. Interlocking fissures webbed across the surrounding terrain as a massive, dust-colored curtain of debris rose into the sky, blanketing the area for over a hundred meters.
"Enel!"
Seeing this, Zephyr couldn't help but shout out in shock.
"The Thunder God, Enel? Ma-ma-ma-ma—!!!" Charlotte Linlin laughed savagely. "Let me deliver your final rites!"
The moment the words left her mouth, she steered Zeus into a steep, high-speed dive toward the crater. The massive saber Napoleon in her grip was already cloaked in a raging torrent of blazing inferno.
"Cognac: Ikoku!!!"
"Don't you dare—!!!"
Just as Charlotte Linlin was about to close the distance to the ground, a dark blur intercepted her trajectory. Zephyr appeared out of nowhere, planting himself directly in her path.
"Zephyr!"
Charlotte Linlin roared in pure fury. Without a second thought, she swung the flaming giant saber in her hands, driving it downward with everything she had.
"Life Return: Hardened Black God Body!!!"
Zephyr bellowed. His muscles expanded exponentially as his stature swelled into a towering, muscular juggernaut nearly four meters tall. A brief, almost imperceptible glint of metallic light flashed across his form as the Armament Haki enveloping his body condensed even further, transforming his entire physical frame into a piece of thoroughly tempered, pitch-black obsidian steel.
CLANG—!!!
The flaming saber slammed brutally against Zephyr's crossed, pitch-black forearms. A massive, ring-shaped shockwave of displaced air exploded outward, while the searing heat of the flames and the violent electrical discharge clawed relentlessly at his defenses.
CRACK—
With a sharp fracture, Zephyr's frame sank heavily. The ground beneath his feet splintered into a web of deep fractures before completely caving in, forming a massive crater several meters wide.
"You stubborn bastard!"
Seeing that Zephyr had actually succeeded in blocking her full-force slash, Charlotte Linlin's rage hit a boiling point. She drove her shifting weight forward, applying an immense surge of raw physical strength into Napoleon's burning blade, forcing Zephyr backward inch by agonizing inch.
BOOM—
With a thunderous groan from the earth, a powerful shockwave tore through the pavement, splitting the ground apart piece by piece.
This old monster's strength is completely absurd...
Zephyr gritted his teeth, pouring every ounce of his power into holding the line. Yet, under the oppressive weight of that monstrous strength, his feet were forced backward, plowing two deep, jagged trenches over ten meters long into the solid ground.
Suddenly, a brilliant flare of lightning erupted from the deep crater directly behind Zephyr. Even through the suffocating curtain of dust that had rendered visibility absolutely zero, the intense, crackling radiance cut cleanly through the gloom.
"Move out of the way! I'm going to rip this old hag to shreds!!!" Enel's exasperated, furious roar echoed from the depths of the crater.
The blinding glare of his lightning grew increasingly volatile and intense by the second.
"Hold your ground, Enel!"
Zephyr slowly lowered his numbed arms, his expression deeply grave as he spoke, explicitly halting Enel's reckless charge.
Gesticulating toward the distant harbor, Zephyr said in a low, heavy tone, "Go support the docks. Backan and Shuzo cannot possibly hold the line on their own against Big Mom's top officers and children!"
He understood the strategic reality perfectly. Big Mom's sudden ambush meant she had undoubtedly mobilized the core elite of her entire fleet. Relying solely on Backan, Ain, Shuzo, Binz, and a handful of subordinate pirate captains under their banner was nowhere near enough to counter the full might of the Big Mom Pirates. They would be entirely overwhelmed, at best managing to buy a few fleeting moments before being wiped out.
Against a monster of Charlotte Katakuri's caliber, if their own high-ranking combatants didn't intervene immediately, let alone Backan, even someone like Vito or Betilla wouldn't stand a chance against that man.
Within the crater, the blinding lightning slowly receded, and the settling dust began to clear. Enel stepped forward out of the haze, his bare feet treading lightly on the debris as he gripped his golden staff.
"And what about you? Try not to drop dead while I'm gone."
Enel raised a hand, wiping a streak of fresh blood from the corner of his mouth as his cold gaze locked onto Big Mom, who was currently stepping off Zeus's back.
Having operated within the New World for so many years, he was acutely aware of exactly what kind of terrifying aberration a person had to be to bear the title of 'Yonko'.
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Zephyr shot a sideways glance, eyeing Enel with a cold, thoroughly unamused expression as he barked, "Now move out! Big Mom is my assignment!"
"Hmph." Enel let out a cold snort. Transforming his body into a singular bolt of lightning, he rocketed through the sky, tracing a path directly toward the harbor.
"A seventy-year-old geezer, stubbornly flaunting his strength!"