"What... what the hell happened here?"
The earth was shattered beyond recognition. A massive crater stretched for a kilometer, littered with scorched debris and fragments of what once were Marine officers, rear admirals and vice admirals alike, now reduced to molten shrapnel falling from the sky. Akainu's face was twisted in fury and disbelief as he surveyed the destruction.
"Kh… koff koff…"
From within the ruins, a faint cough echoed out a wet, ragged sound of blood bubbling in the throat. Someone was still alive beneath the rubble.
Akainu rushed forward, pushing aside heaps of broken stone and scorched earth. What he uncovered made his pupils contract.
Kuzan.
The first one to step onto the island, now half-buried in stone and ash, was barely conscious. The sheer volume of blood pouring from his body, his deathly pale face there was no mistaking how close to death he was. The injuries he'd sustained were catastrophic.
Thousands of meters away, standing at the edge of the chaos, Ozz appeared beside Mihawk.
"You can already take down a Vice Admiral-level Marine in a single hit now?"
Mihawk's hawk-like eyes had seen it all. From this distance, he had watched Kuzan fall, grievously wounded. And yet something about it didn't sit right with him.
He had faced that attack himself once. Yes, it was overwhelming. But someone at Kuzan's level? Wounded, maybe but knocked out cold? That didn't add up.
Ozz gave a faint, helpless smile at the question.
"C'mon, now… once you hit the level of Admiral, it's not like one clean hit is enough to finish the fight. I'm not Captain Roger, you know."
He exhaled and slowly flexed his fingers still stiff and numb from the cold.
"Kuzan took that hit full-on… but that's not because he had to. It's because he chose to."
When Ozz had glimpsed into the future, he'd seen the man's chance to dodge seen the shift in stance, the direction of movement, the instinctive tells.
But in that future... Kuzan didn't move. He just stood there, fists raised, and prepared to meet Ozz's descending blow head-on.
Two warriors old grudges and raw pride between them abandoned every trick, every defense, every scrap of elemental or strategic advantage. No fancy teleportation from Ozz. No ice shields or logia intangibility from Kuzan.
Just one punch. No guards, no gimmicks.
A man's punch.
It wasn't a matter of overwhelming power or a one-sided beatdown.
It was two men laying it all on the line for a single decisive blow.
And Kuzan had overestimated his fused Haki-and-fruit fist.
He underestimated the monster Ozz had become.
That's all.
If you had to pin down why they'd both chosen to fight that way...
It was simple.
Whoever dodged first… lost the right to call himself a real pirate or Marine.
If they'd gone all out, trading blows and techniques, the island of Ohara wouldn't have lasted the first hour. Hell, it would've taken days just to reach a conclusion.
But just as the dust began to settle…
Akainu arrived.
A volcano in human form, molten fury dripping from every pore.
Ozz honestly figured this was where the fight ended. He'd made his point. But this was no time for pulling punches. Not when you were announcing yourself to the new age. Not when the whole world would be watching your first true battle cry.
"Akainu… looking for me?"
Just as Akainu turned to retrieve Kuzan's body, a voice, that voice slithered like magma into his ear.
He didn't even hesitate. Kuzan's half-dead body was flung aside like dead weight.
A blazing fist surged up.
"Great Eruption!!"
A volcanic punch thundered forward like an exploding mountain, aiming squarely at the source of the voice.
But it hit nothing.
The molten blow crashed into the sea instead, vaporizing the last shards of ice on the water's surface. Steam burst skyward as the ocean boiled.
"So passionate."
BOOM!
Another lava punch detonated the space beside him again, nothing but air.
"Don't get cocky, Dotor Ozz!!" Akainu roared, molten fists crackling.
"Justice is not some toy for pirates like you to play with!!"
The most brutal of the Admirals, body radiating searing heat he was a red-hot tempest now, magma dripping from him like sweat.
An actual Red Mode maniac.
"Justice?" Ozz's voice was colder than Kuzan's ice. "Slaughtering civilians is justice now?"
He tilted his head, mock curious.
"Wasn't there a refugee ship earlier? You vaporized it, didn't you, Akainu?"
Akainu's naturally grim face contorted in wrath.
"Shut your mouth, pirate! What right do you have to question Marine justice?!"
There had been scholars aboard that ship.
And if they'd escaped, the Buster Call might've spread like wildfire across the world.
Orders were orders. As a soldier, obedience was paramount.
He didn't owe this scum an explanation.
He didn't deserve one.
And as Akainu entered full bloodhound mode, any chance at words vanished.
Unlike the earlier bout with Kuzan, Ozz wasn't in the mood for jokes anymore.
He flashed away in a blink several hundred meters back.
The black sniper rifle once slung at his waist, now gleamed in his hands its once-proud bandages fluttering in the wind.
"…This thing's starting to feel a bit beneath me, huh?" he muttered.
"I've gotten so used to blades and fists lately. Everyone probably forgot by now that even though I'm world-class with both…"
He clicked the weapon into place.
"…I'm still a sniper."
From his coat, he drew a special round a seastone bullet, glinting with deadly promise. Black-red lightning crackled over its surface, mingling with flowing Armament Haki and the divine shimmer of Conqueror's.
As Ozz took aim, a deep instinct screamed inside Akainu's gut.
He froze. Spine chilled.
Was this man… really aiming a gun at him?
He almost laughed.
Did Ozz think this was mockery?
Had he forgotten who he was up against?
But had Kuzan been conscious, he would've screamed.
He would've shouted to run. To hide.
Because Ozz with a gun… was a nightmare incarnate.
Not his fists. Not his sword.
His rifle was the true terror.
"Left shoulder," Ozz murmured.
His eyes flashed crimson, future-piercing light burning within.
Then.
The seastone bullet, swaddled in pure fury, tore through the air like a red comet.
"NANI?!"
Akainu's instincts flared. He felt the death in that bullet.
He hurled a magma beast Hellhound! to intercept it.
But.
CRACK!
A burst of blood exploded from his left shoulder.
The bullet had vanished for just a split second
and reappeared inside him.
The wound sizzled under molten magma, but even that couldn't knit it back together. The Haki had buried itself too deep.
"What the hell?! That bullet… it disappeared?!"
Snarling, Akainu cauterized the wound himself with flowing lava, sealing it shut through sheer agony.
"You still don't get it, do you?" came Ozz's voice again now from above, floating in midair like a judgmental god with burning red eyes.
"This… is the price tag of being the World's Greatest Sniper."
He adjusted his aim, lazily shifting his gaze downward.
"Now then…"
"…where should I hit next?"
"WAIT!!!"
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