His strength was already more than half spent.
Decades of battle had left too many hidden injuries in his eighty-odd-year-old body. Resisting the meteor with everything he had had pushed his remaining strength to its limit.
But Garp could no longer afford to care.
He knew only one thing: Madara Uchiha had to be stopped, even if it cost Garp his life.
He kicked off the ground. The rubble beneath him burst into a ring of cracks, and he shot toward the sky like a black cannonball.
Armament Haki coated both fists. Black currents of Conqueror's Haki churned around him, trailing through the air.
He raised a fist toward Madara Uchiha.
"Madara Uchiha—!!!"
His roar shook the sky.
But before he could throw his punch, a razor-sharp slash split the sea before him without warning.
It swept in from the side, a blue-green blade of light hundreds of meters wide. It parted the surging water cleanly, exposing a trench hundreds of meters deep.
Garp stopped dead in midair. The blade's force, carrying a massive shockwave of Chakra, struck him head-on like an invisible wall and drove him backward.
He tumbled several times before barely steadying himself, arms crossed in front of him. Fine cracks covered the black Armament Haki coating them.
His arms trembled. Between the force of that blow and his already depleted strength, his eighty-odd-year-old body was finally beginning to fail him.
The marines froze.
Akainu snapped his head around. Kizaru took off his shattered sunglasses. Aokiji's ice-blue pupils contracted, and the vines beneath Aramaki's feet halted midair. Chaton and Momousagi exchanged a glance, each seeing the sudden gravity in the other's eyes.
The Vice Admirals stopped what they were doing and looked up toward the source of the slash.
A figure slowly emerged on the horizon.
He