"Warden Columbus!"
Kuzan froze for a hiccup of time at the sight of the prison chief cleaved in two—then a pirate captain seized the moment and hammered him across the ice.
"Go! Don't stop! Save Shakky!"
Morale spiked. The mobs thundered toward the courthouse—until the ice ahead blushed red.
With a roar, magma geysered up, fire pillars painting the plaza. A Marine in a cap walked out of the inferno, each step turning ground to molten rock.
"Don't get cocky, gutter pirates."
Sakazuki's arm swelled into living lava, the fist jetting forward like a cannon.
"Great Eruption!"
Screams tore the air.
"It's that magma brat—Sakazuki! Dammit—another Logia?!"
"Don't panic! There's thousands of us and half their line is snoring!"
The New World fleets forked: some slammed into Sakazuki's wall; more skated wide, angling to slip around him for the courthouse. A few who knew Rokushiki sprang skyward, moon-stepping over Sakazuki's crown—
"First to rescue Shakky gets her smile! Make way for me, the hell-scarred captain 'Oni' Bill!"
A gold flare stitched the sky. Light congealed beside him—and Borsalino's heel scissored sideways, volley-kicking Bill back to earth.
"No can do—if I just let you pass, I'll get in so much trouble."
Arms crossing, the lieutenant colonel's hands flickered like shutters.
"Yasakani no Magatama!"
A radiant cross bloomed above. A storm of light bullets sheeted down, hundreds a second, unrelenting.
Boom-boom-boom-boom—
"Outta my way, Marine!"
Another captain vaulted, ringing blade batting light aside, then carved the glowing cross in two.
"Kowai ne… 'Golden Sword' Azel…"
Borsalino split neatly at the waist—top half still drawling oh-so-scary—then both halves refracted, becoming two Borsalinos. Twin light-speed kicks stitched Azel out of the air and spiked him through a frozen hull; the ship shattered into ice-shrapnel.
On a rooftop, Dimon glanced over, unimpressed. Future Admirals or not, they were still green. For these captains, Logias were monsters; for him, appetizers.
His real appetite tracked Columbus.
"…Did he drink the wine?"
At the plaza's edge, the Warden's sundered halves re-wove from capillary threads. That wasn't just Blood-Blood trickery—and even a 'true' Logia should've felt Armament bite on Oden's last slash.
"You can hurt me," Columbus said, dead-eyed, "but you'll still pay."
Blood-beasts—wolves, tigers, leopards—fountained from his palms and lunged at Kozuki Oden. Blades flashed; every kill multiplied the pack.
[Cut the leash at the tail.]
Dimon's order rang through the link. Oden let a tiger clamp his shoulder, then swept right—one wind-shear stroke clipping the umbilical blood-cords. The pack stuttered.
"Oh? You're undying too."
Columbus's eyes narrowed as Oden's wound knitted on the spot. Two conjured blood-sabers locked his twin blades.
"Immortal against immortal—no one dies. But strength still decides the—"
A finger leveled. A blood arrow, Armament-hardened, drilled through Oden's chest and carried him skyward like a skewer.
Dimon's brows rose. The Warden outmuscled a baseline, mindless Oden—in fruit mastery and in Haki. And he'd clearly tasted Eternal Wine.
Perfect.
"No syringe needed then," Dimon chuckled—and swapped hosts.
Black wings burst from Oden's back. He snapped the blood-spike in his fist and crushed it to mist.
"You look fun. Different stage."
One blink—gone.
Columbus's Future-Sight snagged on a flash a few seconds ahead—too late. A hand palmed his face and dragged him off the tower, off the island, out over the roaring sea.
"Who are you!?"
"Call me Dio."
Dimon flung him ocean-ward. Blood boiled from Columbus's spine, weaving into wings just before the drink. He hung there, panting, eyes tracking the black-winged silhouette above, riffling through every face he knew.
No match found.
"Flight too? Good. Saves me the fetch."
Dimon stooped. Columbus juked, but his wings were constructs—fast, not free. The demon blurred in and let his fists do the talking.
"Ora-ora-ora-ora-ora!"
Blackened knuckles machine-gunned his jaw, cheeks, brow, chin—each impact a thunderclap—before a hook hurled him skidding across the chop.
"What's wrong? Not fighting back?"
Blood geysered. It webbed the air into a lattice, every filament barbed with Armament. The net cinched, a crimson cube snapping shut around Dimon's charge.
"Blood Marionette: Cage."
The sea inside the cube turned syrup-red. Spikes thrust from every plane, converging to pulp the prey within—
The crimson prison imploded, a vacuum pop snapping the ocean flat. A shadow punched out of the collapsing cube, wings scissoring spray into spears.
Dimon's smile sharpened. "Good regeneration. Great control. Wide-area suppression. You'll season nicely."
Columbus threw both arms wide. "Blood Typhoon!"
A cyclone of gore climbed the sky, fletched with blade-thin currents; even the spray became razors. Far behind them, the plaza detonated again—Sakazuki's magma tide met Borsalino's starlight rain, Kuzan's permafrost screaming where it touched.
And over the Bridge of Hesitation, steel rang—Roger's laugh pealed—Sengoku's golden palm fell—Garp's fist broke thunder.
Between sea and storm, the demon and the Warden crossed a heartbeat of silence.
Dimon tilted his head, right fist cocking back, forearm sheathing in a deeper night.
"Round two—"
The ocean blinked, pressure dropping like a trapdoor as something vast—someone—stepped onto the air behind Columbus and said, almost lazily:
"—Behind you."
Columbus's pupils pinholed.
Who—?!
To be continued…
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