Just as Garp was about to step forward, a pink figure landed on the other side of the dock, light as a feather.
Momousagi Gion rested one hand on her sword hilt, her long black hair streaming in the sea breeze.
"Garp-chan, need a hand?"
Gion calmly surveyed the scene, her gaze lingering on Ace for a moment before settling on Norton.
Garp waved a large hand. "Leave these two brats to me! Gion, take care of that fleet out there! Don't let them get away!"
The East Blue hadn't seen such a massive pirate fleet in a long time. The Krieg Pirates had once had thirty ships too, but those thirty ships hadn't been led by someone as terrifying as Silver-Haired!
Momousagi nodded slightly. "Understood."
She turned and kicked off with Geppo, streaking across the sea like pink lightning. A few bounds brought her onto the deck of a Marine warship.
Almost simultaneously, the ten warships outside the harbor adjusted their cannons, aiming at the gathering pirate fleet.
"Fire!"
At the command, the cannons roared!
But a flash of sword light outpaced the cannonballs.
Gion swung her sword, its clear ring drowning out the cannon fire!
A pink-and-gold flying slash erupted from the blade. It began as a thin line, but after traveling ten meters, it swelled to a hundred meters wide!
Wherever the slash passed, the sea split cleanly apart, exposing a trench dozens of meters deep, with seawater towering like walls on either side!
"What is that..."
A lookout on one pirate ship had barely cried out before the entire vessel split in two down its center.
It was an utterly smooth cut, like a hot knife through butter!
Hull, masts, sails, even the cannons aboard-everything fell into two halves before that sword light, their severed surfaces smooth as mirrors.
The two halves slowly tilted, sinking into the sea amid deafening cracks!
The pirates thrown into the water didn't even have time to call for help before the slash's aftershock swept them beneath the waves.
A deathly silence fell over the entire pirate fleet.
Then panic erupted.
"One swing... she cut a whole ship apart with one swing?!"
"A monster! That woman's a monster!"
"Retreat! Retreat!"
"Tch." Norton frowned. "What a troublesome woman."
If someone of Gion's caliber was allowed to intervene in the naval battle, the Norton Pirates would undoubtedly suffer devastating losses, perhaps even total annihilation!
Norton would never allow that. He moved to charge out, but Garp was faster.
"Brat, your opponent is me!"
An iron fist coated in jet-black Armament Haki tore through the air, driving straight toward Norton's face!
There were no tricks to that punch, only the ultimate concentration of strength, speed, and Haki. Even the light warped in its path!
Facing Garp's full-force punch, Norton's gaze sharpened.
He answered with a punch of his own!
It was nothing more than a simple straight punch, unprotected by Armament Haki, yet still terrifying!
BOOM!!!
The instant their fists collided, the stone paving within a radius of over a hundred meters exploded into dust!
A ring-shaped shock wave spread outward. The dock's wooden posts snapped like toothpicks, and surging waves hurled the moored boats into the sky.
Dust billowed upward!
When it cleared a little, everyone watching sucked in a breath.
Norton and Garp still held their fists together. Neither had retreated half a step.
Yet the ground beneath their feet... remained completely undamaged!
"Ahem..." Garp coughed lightly, withdrew his fist, and curled his lips into a grin.
That hurt!
He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd felt that. This silver-haired brat's fist clearly lacked Haki, yet it had hurt his thoroughly tempered fist bones!
It wasn't a flesh wound. It was genuine pain from deep within his bones, something he hadn't felt in decades!
When had he last felt this?
Garp couldn't quite remember. Perhaps it went back to Roger's era, or even Rocks's?
Norton, meanwhile, looked down at his fist, a strange light flickering in his eyes.
He could feel some sort of "shackle" loosening deep within his body!
Ever since breaking through his limiter, his body had remained at its peak, unchanged for a long time.
Norton simply couldn't find an opponent who would let him fight to his heart's content. With no opportunity to use his strength to the fullest, there had been no need to advance further.
Garp's appearance had changed that!
To adapt to Garp's strength, this body that had remained unchanged since breaking its limiter was quietly growing stronger!
Still... he had yet to sense any Haki.
"Interesting..." Norton murmured. Then he raised his head, a wild grin spreading across his face. "Old man, you're a pretty good punching bag!"
"Punching bag?!" Garp laughed in outrage. "Brat, you've got some nerve-"
Before he finished, Norton moved!
This wasn't his earlier casual movement, but a true, all-out burst!
No one saw him move. They only saw the ground beneath his feet explode as his figure left a sonic boom cloud behind. His fist tore through the air with a piercing, ear-splitting crack!
"But stay out of my way, old man!!"
Feeling the pressure Garp exerted, Norton's blood boiled, every cell in his body surging with unprecedented activity.
Combined with the changes brought by adapting to Garp's strength...
Norton unleashed a punch with more power than ever before! Serious Punch!
Garp's pupils abruptly contracted. Decades of combat instincts screamed a warning!
He crossed his arms before his chest and drove his Armament Haki to its limit. The ink-black Haki almost took physical form!
Fist met arms.
There was no sound.
Before the sound could arrive, a visible shock wave had already expanded into a hemisphere!
Every building within a hundred meters of the collision-stone houses, wooden buildings, warehouses-shattered instantly!
The sea was pressed into an enormous depression two hundred meters across. Moored ships flew into the sky like toys!
Then the sound arrived.
It was a tremendous crash beyond the limits of human hearing, as though the world itself were breaking apart!
Everyone watching, pirate and Marine alike, lost their hearing that instant. They could only see those beside them screaming, unable to hear a thing.
At the center of the shock wave, Garp flew backward like a cannonball!
He smashed through the entire shopping street behind the dock. One building, two, three... after crashing through seventeen buildings in succession, he finally slammed into the base of a stone clock tower.
With a teeth-grating crack, the clock tower slowly tilted, then collapsed with a thunderous crash, burying him beneath dozens of tons of rubble!
Silence.
Deathly silence.
"You've got to be kidding... the old man..." Ace's pupils seemed ready to dilate completely.
In his entire life, he had never seen Garp in such a sorry state!
"Hey! Ace! Let's get out of here! We don't belong on a battlefield full of monsters like these!" Deuce tugged at Ace's clothes.
Ace took several deep breaths, then abruptly turned toward Deuce, his eyes blazing.
"Deuce, you go first! I'm staying to see who wins this fight!"
Ace had never witnessed a clash of this magnitude. For the first time, he felt how weak he was! If Whitebeard was as strong as Garp and Norton, or even stronger, how could he face him?
Suddenly, Ace felt that Norton had been right. Passion alone wasn't enough to reach the summit!
Out at sea, the cannon fire abruptly stopped.
Marines and pirates alike stared blankly at the flattened harbor ruins, the fallen clock tower, and Norton.
The Marine Hero... Monkey D. Garp...
Had been sent flying with one punch?
"N-no... impossible..." A young soldier collapsed on the deck of a Marine warship. "Vice Admiral Garp..."
"A monster..." A former member of the Krieg Pirates chattered his teeth aboard another pirate ship. "Is that guy... really human?"
Was this King? Every time they thought they had overestimated his strength enough, King redefined their understanding of the strongest!
Meanwhile, a squad of Marines had just reached the entrance to Loguetown's main street.
Smoker led the way, the two cigars in his mouth burning fiercely with his rapid breathing. He had rushed over at full speed after receiving a report of an attack on the harbor, but the sight before him froze him in place.
The whole street... no, nearly a quarter of the entire harbor district had collapsed into ruins!
Buildings, paving, dock facilities-everything had become rubble.
At the far end of those ruins, that familiar silver-haired man was slowly withdrawing his fist!
Farther away, the wreckage of a collapsed clock tower suddenly exploded outward.
Garp rose from the rubble. His white Marine coat was in tatters, and fine cuts covered his muscular torso. Most alarming of all was the unstoppable line of blood running from the corner of his mouth.
He coughed and spat out a mouthful of bloody foam.
"Cough... hahaha..." Garp laughed, his voice hoarse but exhilarated. "I've never tasted... anything like this!"
Even legendary pirates like Roger, Rocks, and Whitebeard had never made Garp feel this way... the feeling that continuing to fight would only lead to defeat!
"I really have gotten old!"
"Or maybe this silver-haired brat really is a once-in-a-century monster!"
Seeing Garp's battered state, Smoker's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Vice Admiral Garp... was wounded?
Monkey D. Garp, the man who had roamed the seas for decades, clashed with the Pirate King countless times, and been hailed as the Marines' strongest combatant, had actually been injured in a head-on clash?
"Captain Smoker!"
Behind him, Tashigi cried out as well.
Smoker snapped out of his daze. Smoke erupted beneath his feet as he prepared to rush over.
But Garp's voice reached him first, ringing clearly in everyone's ears. "Stay back!"
Garp wiped the blood from his mouth, his eyes fixed on Norton in the distance. "This is my fight! Your assignment-"
Garp pointed at Ace and Deuce. "Is that brat in the orange hat! The captain of the Spade Pirates, Portgas D. Ace! Capture him!"
Smoker gritted his teeth. "But Mr. Garp, you're..."
"That's an order!" Garp growled with unquestionable authority. "Leave that brat to me! I'll beat him! Who do you think I am?"
Smoker stared at Garp for two seconds. Seeing the veteran's resolve and his inviolable pride, he finally clenched his teeth. "...Understood!"
He turned and unleashed his Smoke-Smoke Fruit power, transforming into a pillar of white smoke that rushed toward Ace.
"Tashigi! Take some men and seal off the streets! Everyone else, follow me!"
Tashigi drew the famous sword Shigure, but her gaze involuntarily drifted toward the harbor.
Out at sea, Momousagi Gion had just unleashed her second slash!
Another pirate ship split down the middle, its crew screaming as they fell into the water. Her expression remained calm, but her sword hand tightened slightly-not from fatigue, but from an ominous premonition.
Then that premonition came true!
Gion didn't even see what happened. She only felt the light above her dim.
The next second, a large hand pressed down on her head!
"Woman, have you had your fun?"
Norton's voice sounded beside her ear, so calm it was chilling.
Gion reacted with incredible speed. Kompira flashed fully out of its sheath, and she swung backward! It was a slash worthy of an Admiral candidate, powerful enough to cleave steel and rip apart a warship!
But the blade struck empty air. No, not empty air-just before it could hit Norton's arm, he gently caught it between two fingers of his other hand!
Momousagi's pupils shrank to pinpoints, and she instinctively tried to dodge.
"You-"
Before Gion could finish, Norton abruptly drove down the hand on her head!
BOOM!!
Momousagi was smashed into the sea headfirst! The instant her body broke the surface, it sent a towering wave a hundred meters high into the air!
Along the way, Gion's body smashed through a warship, breaking it in two!
Deathly silence fell over the sea once more.
Norton landed on a pirate ship's bulwark, shook the seawater off his hand, and addressed the pirates. "What are you standing around for? Retreat."
Only then did the pirates snap out of their daze.
"R-retreat!"
"All ships, turn!"
"Follow the White Pearl!"
Every pirate ship raised its sails at once. Under cover of the thick fog spewed by the Mist Whale, they began breaking out toward the open sea.
However, the Marines' ironclad encirclement had already taken shape.
Aside from the severed warship, the remaining nine elite warships had completed their tactical deployment before Momousagi attacked. Now they closed in from three directions, their cannon fire weaving a vast net of death!
"Trying to run? Geppo!"
"Stop them! Buy Vice Admiral Gion some time!"
Amid fierce shouts, more than ten figures wearing Justice Coats shot skyward from the warships' decks!
They kicked off the air with explosive bangs, sweeping across the sea at astonishing speed like sea eagles diving on prey. Their target was the vanguard of the pirate fleet, its formation slightly disordered as it turned!
A true boarding battle erupted over the raging waves!
The White Pearl bore the brunt of it.
Three Marine lieutenants landed almost simultaneously on the broad deck. Their leader wore a colonel's epaulets and had a stern face.
The instant he landed, the colonel fixed his gaze on Nami and Funing beside the wheel at the stern.
"Secure the wheel and the navigator!" the colonel growled, charging forward in a triangular formation with the two majors.
But a green figure stood like a boulder between them and the wheel.
"You're not getting through."
Zoro clenched Wado Ichimonji between his teeth and slowly drew Yubashiri and Kitetsu with both hands.
To Zoro, the clear ring of his new blades leaving their sheaths drowned out the surrounding cannon fire.
"Nami, keep doing your job. Leave this to me."
"Three against one, you arrogant pirate!" the colonel sneered, his fist already cutting through the air toward him.
Zoro said nothing. He crouched slightly, arranging his three swords in an unusual stance, a demonic aura seeming to burn in his eyes.
"Three-Sword Style: Bull Demon: Brave Claws!"
He shot forward like a phantom, tearing straight through the force of the colonel's punch. Horrified, the colonel tried to shift into a block, but Zoro's blades slammed into his chest like the horns of a charging bull!
Blood sprayed as the tremendous force sent the colonel flying backward, smashing through the railing and into the sea.
The other two majors' attacks were already closing in from either side. Without even turning his head, Zoro spun like a top.
"Three-Sword Style: Dragon Twister!"
A vicious storm of blades sprang up in an instant, shredding their weapons and sweeping aside their attacks as it hurled both men away.
"So... so strong!" Funing exclaimed despite herself, tightening her grip on the wheel.
But Nami looked anxiously toward the sea. "Don't let your guard down! Another ship's coming!"