The sea breeze carried choking smoke through Marineford's shattered ruins.
The steel barricades meant to trap the Whitebeard Pirates now lay in a scattered heap of rubble.
Seawater kept pouring into the deep crater Zhao Hai had blasted open with the Heavy Cannons, sending up murky bubbles with a gurgle.
Behind a shaded rock less than five hundred meters from the inner bay's ruins, several enormous figures huddled together.
Marshall D. Teach crouched on the ground, his eyes wide.
His gap-toothed mouth hung half-open, and the black beard on his chin trembled slightly.
Behind him, the fierce expressions on the Impel Down convicts' faces had frozen.
Shiryu of the Rain held an unlit cigar between his lips, his hand resting on Murasame's hilt, his entire body as stiff as a wooden post.
The Corrupt King, Avalo Pizarro, rubbed his protruding ears, wondering whether something was wrong with his hearing.
The Giant Battleship, Sanjuan Wolf, lowered his massive body, trying to hide behind the coral reefs in the shallows.
Catarina Devon clutched half a broken spike, the corner of her mouth twitching nonstop.
Burgess sat on the ground clutching his severed arm, tears and snot streaming down his face from the pain, not even daring to groan loudly.
Just minutes earlier, they had all been brimming with ambition.
Teach had devised a perfect plan: wait until Whitebeard and the Marines had battered each other half to death, then emerge to reap the rewards.
He would personally send that old man to his grave in front of the whole world.
He would seize the Tremor-Tremor Fruit and become the sea's undisputed overlord.
But now, the scene before him had smashed his plan to dust.
Whitebeard, who had been on his last breath and needed his subordinates to support him just to walk,