A Trap! An Ambush!

Ace kept his head down, the brim of his hat obscuring most of his face. His shoulders were trembling slightly.

"Join forces with you?" He slowly raised his head, his eyes unwavering, filled only with pure, burning rage.

"Who do you think I am? I am Portgas D. Ace, the Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates."

"Even if I die here, I will never betray Pops Pops, and I would never make any deal with scum like you!"

"Hahaha! Is that so?" Teach's maniacal laughter erupted again, this time even more arrogant and unrestrained than before.

He tossed aside the half-eaten beast leg, caught the Sawtooth broadsword thrown to him by Jesus Burgess, and his single eye gleamed with undisguised killing intent. "That's a real shame, Captain Ace. I was thinking that having more teammates is better than having more enemies. But since you're refusing to listen to reason—"

His smile vanished abruptly, and a ring of pitch-black dark matter exploded around him. The dark matter spread out beneath his feet like a living thing, swallowing up even the light in its path. For the first time, the power of the Dark-Dark Fruit revealed its true fangs before Ace.

"Then I'll use you as a pledge of allegiance to the World Government! Hehehe! Now that I've captured the Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, those old fogies from the Five Elders should give me a position as Shichibukai, right?!"

Ace didn't say another word.

He answered Teach's arrogance with his actions.

The flames around him suddenly compressed to their maximum, and his right fist, carrying a temperature high enough to melt steel, slammed towards Teach's head like a fire dragon.

"Fire Fist!!!"

Flame and darkness collided violently on this forgotten desert island.

Flame and darkness collided violently in the sky Banaro Island.

The first wave of impact overturned half a street of ruins.

The orange-red fire dragon roared as it plowed across the ground. Wherever it passed, the ruins melted silently in the intense heat, and even the rubble was burned into viscous lava before it could even fly.

Teach stood in the very center of the darkness, grinning broadly. The surging dark matter around him resembled a greedy maw, swallowing the oncoming flames whole.

The flames crashed into the darkness, like a clay ox sinking into the sea; not even a ray of light could escape.

"Hahaha! Useless, Captain Ace!" Teach laughed wildly, his massive body advancing instead of retreating amidst the darkness.

"The Dark-Dark Fruit can devour everything! No matter how fierce your flames are, they can't burn through my darkness!"

Ace did not answer.

His response was a second Fire Fist. Then came the third, the fourth—he no longer focused on single-point attacks, but instead unleashed flames as freely as splashed ink.

The entire ruins beneath his feet transformed into a sea of fire, the orange-red flames spreading in all directions like a living thing, devouring broken walls, withered trees, and everything on the island that could burn. This was not a duel; it was a natural disaster.

It was the unbridled rage of the Flame-Flame Devil Fruit User, the hatred that Portgas D. Ace had been holding back for half a year, all poured out onto this deserted island at this moment.

The first to give up were not Teach, but his crew.

Van Oka crouched behind a section of red-hot steel beam; his sniping position had been vaporized three seconds earlier by a sweeping column of fire.

He rolled more than ten meters away with his beloved gun "Senriku" in his arms, his back hitting a hot rock. Before he could get up, another tongue of fire grazed the brim of his hat, and the smell of half of his hair being singed filled the air.

He raised his gun, aimed it at Ace's forehead, and his finger was already on the trigger.

A wave of fire crashed in from the side, forcing him to holster his gun and roll away again, without even getting a chance to fire a single shot.

"Damn it... there's no firing window at all." He cursed under his breath, his eyes scanning the battlefield from behind his mask, trying to find a corner where he could catch his breath.

Jesus Burgess was in a much worse situation than him.

This fighting champion, known for his brute strength, was like a bull trapped in a cage of fire, possessing immense power but unable to get close to Ace.

He tried to rush in from the side, but ended up stepping into the rubble of a building burned through by flames. Half of his leg sank into the scorching rubble, and by the time he pulled it out, the sole of his boot had melted into a lump of charred rubber.

He tried charging head-on, but was hit squarely in the chest by a pillar of fire as thick as a bucket. He was sent flying like a cannonball, crashing through two walls before coming to a stop.

When he got up, the armor on his chest was burning red, and the smell of burning flesh wafted from his body.

"Damn it! This guy's flame range is too big!" Jesus Burgess spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, his usual arrogance gone, replaced by the frustration of being suppressed.

He clenched his fists, still trying to charge forward, but Lafitte grabbed his arm from the side.

"Save your energy, Jesus Burgess." Lafitte's voice remained polite, but his knuckles gripping his cane were white, clearly indicating he wasn't as composed as he appeared.

"With this kind of wide-area, indiscriminate attack, rushing in is pointless except making you a target. Let him burn—I want to see how long he can keep burning like this."

Doc Q huddled behind a giant rock at the farthest point, holding Stronger in his arms. He was coughing even more violently than usual, each cough sounding like his lungs were being ripped out of his throat.

He stared with his cloudy eyes at the figure wreaking havoc in the distant inferno, a cryptic smile playing on his lips, and muttered to himself, "Fate... never favors fools who only charge forward..."

Teach, however, remained standing in the center of the darkness.

Beneath his feet lay a pitch-black swamp—his Dark-Dark Fruit powers were fully activated, dark matter surging and spreading around him like a living thing, silently devouring all the flames it touched.

Ace's Fire Fist slammed in and vanished;

The pillar of fire swept over and disappeared;

Even the overwhelming, inescapable sea of fire, when it touched the edge of that darkness, seemed to hit an invisible wall, being sucked in, crushed, and swallowed bit by bit.

There was no explosion, no recoil, only devouring. With each devouring, the darkness expanded a little further, like a monster fed by flames, growing fatter and fatter, more and more greedy.

"Zehahaha! Zehahahaha!" Teach's maniacal laughter echoed from the depths of darkness, shaking the very air. "See that, Captain Ace! This is the power of the Dark-Dark Fruit! Your flames are nothing but nourishment to me! The fiercer you burn, the stronger I become!"

Ace didn't stop.

He kept throwing out his fists, using every attack method he could think of: Fire Fist, fire pillars, fire rain, fire sea.