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The moment Admiral Gin broke free from Doflamingo's stranglehold, Luffy's desperate voice reached him: "Buy me a few minutes—I need time!"
Time. Such a simple request, yet the weight of it pressed against Gin's chest like an anchor. The Straw Hat boy was at his most vulnerable during preparation phases, completely exposed to attack. And Gin knew—with absolute certainty—that he couldn't defeat Doflamingo alone. A prolonged duel between them could stretch for hours, perhaps days, with no clear victor.
But the innocent people drowning beneath the Rumbling's footsteps didn't have hours. Every second of delay meant more lives crushed into bloody pulp.
The alternative flickered through Gin's tactical mind: bypass Doflamingo entirely, strike at Eren Yeager directly, stop the Founding Titan at its source. But if that first strike failed—if he couldn't bring down that colossal skeletal monster in one devastating assault—he'd be caught between two enemies with his back exposed. The risk was incalculable.
A memory surfaced unbidden: Monkey D. Luffy, battered and broken, somehow defeating Don Krieg when every rational analysis said he should have died. That impossible victory born from pure willpower.
Gin's decision crystallized. He would trust his instincts. He would gamble everything on this man who made miracles look routine.
Even if he lost this bet, he'd have no regrets.
And so Admiral Gin revealed his final trump card—the true awakening of his Logia-type Devil Fruit. The three-headed water dragon surrounding him began spawning smaller creatures at an accelerating pace, each one a condensed knot of elemental fury. The moment they wrapped around Doflamingo, they detonated.
This was a strategy of mutual destruction: damage the enemy for ten thousand, harm yourself for eight thousand. But it was the only way to delay the Heavenly Yaksha's advance, to deny him even a second to interfere with Luffy's preparation.
Doflamingo's laughter cut through the chaos of explosions. "Gin, is this truly all you can manage? How pitiful." His voice dripped condescension despite the cracks spreading across his Armament coating. "These creatures you've birthed are nothing but fireworks."
He wasn't entirely wrong. While the continuous detonations caused damage, none proved fatal. The Ame Ame no Mi (Rain-Rain Fruit) lacked the raw offensive potential of the Magu Magu no Mi (Magma-Magma Fruit) or the Hie Hie no Mi (Ice-Ice Fruit). Acid and water could only accomplish so much against a man who'd transcended normal physiology.
Moreover, Logia awakening carried a terrible price. Maintain the transformation too long, and the boundary between human and element dissolved permanently. The user would lose themselves, becoming a natural phenomenon rather than a person.
Gin understood the risk intimately. But he'd already committed to this path. Because Luffy trusted him—and he trusted Luffy in return. That mutual faith was worth any cost.
The instant Luffy escaped Doflamingo's threads, he didn't shift into Gear Fourth. Instead, his hands went to his head, removing the straw hat with reverent care.
To outside observers, it appeared to be simply the iconic hat inherited from Red-Haired Shanks—a symbol of promise and dreams. But Luffy had discovered something extraordinary about this particular hat: its quality exceeded any normal fabric. Five years of adventure had taught him its secret function.
The hat was a storage space. A portable pocket woven from materials that defied conventional physics.
"Found it," Luffy muttered, his fingers withdrawing a sealed syringe from within the hat's hidden depths. "Didn't think I'd need this here."
He'd been saving this trump card for a Yonko—Kaido or Big Mom, adversaries who warranted such an extreme measure. But Doflamingo's resurrection had forced his hand. The Heavenly Yaksha had become a threat that demanded everything.
Before the Sky Screen's countless viewers, Monkey D. Luffy raised the needle to his neck. The red liquid inside caught the light, seeming to pulse with its own heartbeat. He took one deep breath—then two—steeling himself for what came next.
Then he plunged the needle directly into his carotid artery.
The injection took three seconds. Three seconds of crimson liquid flooding into his bloodstream, dispersing through his cardiovascular system at impossible speed. When the syringe emptied, Luffy discarded it without ceremony, the glass casing tumbling away into the void below.
The effects manifested immediately.
His heart rate exploded—from sixty beats per minute to six hundred, then higher. Blood flow accelerated to match, transforming his circulatory system into a pressure cooker. The burden on his internal organs was catastrophic. His body began cannibalizing its own stored energy, burning through the massive quantities of food he'd consumed earlier at a terrifying rate. Without that pre-loaded fuel, the transformation would have killed him instantly.
Then his rubber body began to bulge.
Not evenly—not like Gear Third's controlled inflation. This was chaotic, violent, as if something alive writhed beneath his skin trying to claw its way out. His chest swelled grotesquely. His arms distended at random intervals. Muscles tore and reformed in rapid succession.
The pain was extraordinary.
Luffy's teeth clenched so hard they cracked. Veins across his forehead and neck stood out like ropes about to snap. His vision tunneled, the world reducing to a pinpoint of agonizing clarity. Time seemed to dilate—each second stretching into an eternity of suffering.
Then his skin began to split.
Blood erupted from dozens of fissures opening across his body. His rubber flesh, normally so resilient, couldn't contain the force transforming him from within. Deep lacerations exposed muscle tissue, then bone, then glimpses of organs that shouldn't be visible while their owner still lived.
"Ghhh—AAAAHHHH!" The scream ripped from Luffy's throat involuntarily, a primal sound of agony that echoed across the battlefield.
Gin glanced back at his friend—and immediately wished he hadn't. Luffy's body was tearing itself apart, a grotesque sculpture of exposed anatomy held together by sheer willpower. His rubber properties seemed to be attacking him, his own Devil Fruit turning hostile.
But in that moment of distraction, Doflamingo struck.
White threads shot through the gaps between elemental creatures, moving with serpentine precision. They wrapped around the water dragon's three mouths, pulling tight, attempting to seal them shut and end the flood of reinforcements.
"Once I've disposed of you, Gin, I'll send Luffy to join you on the road to death." Doflamingo's grin was audible in his voice. "Perhaps even Law will make it a trio. Won't that be cozy?"
The invisible threads coating his body began multiplying exponentially, spreading outward like a tsunami.
"Haōshoku Hachō: Taikai Sen (Conqueror's Covering: Great Ocean Thread)!"
The technique manifested as exactly its name suggested—threads infused with Conqueror's Haki erupting in wave formations, sweeping across the battlefield in overlapping crests. Every elemental creature caught in that tide froze mid-motion, their explosive cores suddenly inert. Within Doflamingo's Conqueror's domain, even Logia abilities bent to his will.
The compression continued. Gin's living space shrank meter by meter as the thread-waves advanced. His ability to generate new creatures diminished proportionally. This was the decisive advantage Conqueror's Haki provided—the king's qualification wasn't merely symbolic. In battles between relative equals, it tilted the scales absolutely.
"Did I... lose this gamble?" The thought whispered through Gin's consciousness. He was a mage with deep reserves but limited tools—water, acid, pressure. Facing a melee fighter who'd achieved invincibility at close range, his options had evaporated.
"Fuffuffuffuffu! This farce ends now!" Doflamingo closed the distance, his thread-tsunami having completely encircled the three-headed water dragon. "Go to hell, Admiral!"
"Haōshoku Sen: Kamiguroshi (Conqueror's Thread: God-Slaying Strike)!"
From every direction simultaneously, threads wrapped in Conqueror's Haki converged on Gin's position. The water dragon had nowhere to flee—the sky above was sealed, the ground below was death. The encirclement was absolute.
Every observer believed they were about to witness an Admiral's execution.
Then a red-skinned figure erupted into the battlefield, straw hat bouncing against his back.
"DOFLAMINGO! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S GOING TO HELL!"
The Heavenly Yaksha's eyes widened behind his sunglasses. That voice—that presence—it shouldn't be possible. His sixth sense screamed danger, but his rational mind rejected it. How could Monkey D. Luffy, whose body had been literally falling apart moments ago, pose any threat?
The Straw Hat boy's form had changed dramatically. His skin had shifted to deep crimson—not the pink of Gear Second, but something darker, more primal. Steam poured from his body in thick columns. And his eyes... his eyes held something new. Something that transcended determination and entered the realm of absolute certainty.
Luffy's right arm pulled back, the rubber extending impossibly far. All his strength concentrated into that single fist. Then it snapped forward, released like a ballista bolt, rocketing toward Doflamingo's center mass.
The attack carried no Armament Haki—not even a trace of black coating.
Doflamingo's lips curled with contempt. He swung his left fist to intercept, confident in his ability to shatter Luffy's unprotected attack with overwhelming Haki superiority.
Their fists connected.
For a microsecond, Doflamingo felt triumph—then his expression froze. Something was transferring through the point of contact, something that bypassed Haki entirely. A strange, invasive force that penetrated his defenses as if they didn't exist.
He tried to pull back, to sever the connection immediately.
Too late.
"Domain Expansion."
Luffy's voice was quiet, almost gentle, completely at odds with his blood-soaked appearance.
"Gomu Gomu no Shūen Dansei (Rubber-Rubber: Elasticity at the End of All Things)."
The third stage of Devil Fruit mastery—the technique beyond Awakening, beyond Liberation.
The ultimate trump card.