Between the town of Marineford and Marine Headquarters.
The place no longer bore any resemblance to its original appearance. It was riddled with craters and filled with billowing smoke, as though it had been carpet-bombed by thousands of missiles.
Three figures lay on the ground, looking at one another... Each saw a trace of bitterness on the others' faces.
They had lost.
Lost completely and utterly.
When they had first heard they were being asked to join forces and stop some brat of a colonel, none of them had been willing.
But now, it seemed...
The Fleet Admiral had actually underestimated that brat's strength.
"We've really embarrassed ourselves this time!" a middle-aged man in an earth-yellow suit and an officer's cape said with a bitter smile.
The sword-wielding woman beside him merely shook her head. "There's nothing embarrassing about it. We were simply outmatched!"
"Yeah!"
The remaining man was a familiar face—Vice Admiral Onigumo from Headquarters. He nodded. "Unlike you two, who just returned from the New World, I know a little about that brat. I had considered that we might lose, but I never imagined we'd lose this thoroughly."
The other two said nothing upon hearing this, merely looking at him with utter disdain.
"Hey, hey, hey! I know I can't compare to the two of you, who are both candidates for admiral. Can you stop looking at me like that...?"
The two smiled, then struggled to sit up from the ground. But the moment he sat up, the middle-aged man looked lustfully at the woman beside him. "I like you. Marry me!"
The completely unprompted confession made Onigumo, who had been about to sit up, slip and fall straight back down.
The woman remained calm. "I refuse!"
"Why?!"
"You can't even beat a brat."
"...That's the ninety-eighth reason