AN: What's up everybody, it's been two and a half years since this story last updated.

Minor retcons were had, a fox was shoved into chapter 23, an entire other crossover came and went, and here we are after some serious delays due to points one and two. But hey, it's 10,000 words and we're rolling again!

Naruto is gone, Isobu said, which is your cue to run.

One distraction, coming right up.

Once you got past the sheer number of naval cannons belching smoke and iron every which way, big battles at sea were just another day at the office.

To some degree, anyway. It was hard to tell if anything was really an old hat for the participants who weren't Tailed Beasts (and therefore able to attack everything with near-impunity). For all that Genma used to give me grief for being on a team that attracted weirdness like he picked up cat hair, this was a new record even for me. Most of my missions tended to mean uncovering conspiracies or participating in at least one local revolution—with a few explosions to keep things fresh—but no one in history thus far had united this many Tailed Beasts since the Sage of Six Paths. Certainly not of their free will.

I was discounting Hashirama, because he hadn't wanted to bring them together to fling them at a single target. No, instead he just wanted living bribes for the then-new Elemental Nations so they wouldn't all kill each other the instant he turned his back. That'd sure worked out great for everyone involved, because enslaving people was the solution to all the world's evils.

But, speaking of the First Hokage and the misplaced confidence necessary to consider Uchiha Madara a best friend, the Tailed Beasts were having a field day. I couldn't see all of them, mainly because Isobu's remix of Hidden Mist was getting a lot of mileage anywhere Matatabi, Yugito, and Ace weren't turning saltwater into horrible steam clouds of doom, but I didn't really have to.

My mental map of this place, thanks to my chakra sense, was a spectacular rainbow of death and destruction.

And anyway—

"FIST OF JUSTICE!"

—Garp was still on my tail. My literal tails, actually. Best not to risk dragging anyone else into that fight.

Seawater exploded upward in a fountain as I shot across the water's surface, with Monkey D. Garp hot on my heels.

Bursts of information from the other Tailed Beasts, filtered through Isobu, meant I knew why the man could seemingly run across the air to get in my face. The Marines had a special trick—called "Moonwalk," of all things—that meant they could kick physics in the ass and basically achieve foot-powered flight. Getting attacked from above was definitely on today's to-do list.

Like right now.

It didn't make it any less weird. I was almost sure seeing Garp hurl himself the entire intervening distance would have been less weird. A little more Superman and a little less a shōnen take on Howl's Moving Castle .

But no. Walking on air was a thing here.

Isobu's head vanished in a flurry of sea spray and hastily-aimed iron cannonballs, leaving me in the center of a widening circle of shattered wood and broken bodies. My feet hardly made ripples at all in a mess like that.

It would last exactly as long as it took for Garp to send that pocket flail of his careening into my chakra-cloaked head.

So, to try and head him off, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted with Isobu's volume, "What exactly do you think you're accomplishing here?!"

"REVENGE! GET BACK HERE, YOU GRANDSON-KILLING PIRATE!"

Oh, so he did think I'd killed Ace. I had to wonder how the hell he thought the Whitebeards would accept my presence if that was the case, but Garp clearly wasn't in the mood for lengthy explanations.

I whipped an arm around and pointed in the direction of the miniature sun Ace brought out to play on special occasions. Like parties, baby showers, and vigilante executions. Wordlessly, I jabbed my finger twice more at the growing ball of flame, heat, and what would soon become its own gravity well if Ace kept going. Even better, the occasional burst of lightning followed its terrible path through the center of the Marine fleet.

From the size of those flashes, Yugito seemed happy to be here.

Garp looked at it, at least. He even stopped barking at my heels and hovered in the air, kicking like a swimmer treading water. Due to entirely too much experience (failing at) wrangling his grandsons, I could almost see the hamster wheel in his head start turning.

"Your family is fine," I told him, the thrum of my voice and Isobu's resonating through the sea.

Garp's gaze fixed on me again, a stubborn set to his jaw that was a dead ringer for Luffy when he got in a mood. "You destroyed Impel Down. Why should I believe a word you say?"

"Do you really think Captain Whitebeard would stand for it?" Ultimately, he could believe what he wanted to, but I knew the old pirate would have killed me stone dead if I'd hurt Ace. It was one of the reasons I liked him. Seeing that kind of protective instinct in the old eyes across a sake cup was better than looking in a mirror. "The whole world knows him better than that."

Garp didn't do much for a few seconds. I saw his teeth grind as his eyes darted everywhere, taking in the turtle-shadow below our feet, the shrieking slug still putting water-drill holes in Marine ships over yonder, and the second giant fireball even farther off in the distance. Garp's gaze landed on Marco and Thatch's pocket rave from hell—with fog, lasers, flames, gravity fuckery, and squawking going on in the middle as Kizaru fired lasers at random.

When he finally turned his attention back to me about five seconds later, I could only shrug. I didn't know exactly what was happening in there and in fact treasured my ignorance.

"Question," I said to Garp, in a much more normal voice. I hoped, however vainly, that if I chose my words and tone correctly, that I wouldn't have to run around the battlefield for the next hundred or so years. I didn't anticipate Garp getting bored, giving up, or keeling over until then, the old bastard was tenacious.

"Ask," was the snapped response, which was probably warranted.

My list of crimes against the World Government was…rather long, all told. If I had to compose a list of everything I'd done, it would start at petty theft, jump several tiers upward to grand larceny, include several acts of what they'd call terrorism, loop back around to espionage for flavor, and finally land on "We've run out of ink." Possibly twice, for all that I'd only caused local mayhem for a few months. Most of which was concentrated into the past two weeks.

If it wasn't a record-setting run, Utakata and Yugito were the two likeliest reasons why.

Garp, meanwhile, had put away the last rising star of our caliber. That he knew of. Given what little I knew of the former Pirate King and of Ace's upbringing, that story had more omissions than an ANBU report sanitized for publication.

I could have gone with any question, really. I could've done the whole Dirty Harry thing with rhetorical questions and then blasted him into the next postal code. But for all that I had a mostly-unearned fearsome reputation, I was still ruled by curiosity. By the need to know, and to protect.

Instead, I said, "I'm looking for someone. Someone who's important to getting people like me out of your hair forever."

Rōshi was still the last of us. I'd long since started to wonder if he just fell down a pit to the center of the earth, never to return.

Garp ceased his endless kicking. Instead, he landed on a ship close to the little ripples I'd caused when I hit the ocean's surface. While the waves rolled under both of us, and while I made a finger gun gesture at the other nearby Marines to keep them cowed, Garp crossed his arms over his barrel chest and said, "And I want to know what happened in Impel Down."

I could give him my canned explanation, and at that point he'd probably punch me over the horizon. While I doubted it would do much damage, the delay could cause an unacceptable risk to my allies. Even if they could handle themselves, I hadn't liked the look of Whitebeard's tangle of IV lines and liked even less the amount of non-Matatabi chakra Yugito was throwing around. I didn't have much room to throw accusations of waste when it came to chakra, but I was making use of every scrap of high ground I had.

"Your grandson's a Whitebeard Pirate," I said instead. "So my crew and I went after him, Whitebeard-style."

And no protégé of the world's most infamous old man would leave a place like that intact. That mess of battleships hadn't been there because the Marines expected a nice, easy trip to Marineford.

Garp harrumphed. "I know the look of the Whitebeard Pirates. Whatever you are, you're only one of them as far as that Teach character was."

Wow, rude. "Considering I killed him, that's almost praise."

I did that.

Not while I'm trying to talk down Ace's grandpa, please.

And I can see how well that is going. Isobu rolled his eye, making sure I could tell based on his annoyance levels alone. Speaking of, Yang Kurama was summoned away with Naruto. There was the briefest pause as we both processed that. Relatively. I was already a space cadet. I would love to know why it took some six months to determine two halves of the same Tailed Beast could do such a thing.

You and me both, buddy. At least Naruto was out of striking distance. Han was still heading our way with Kokuō, some forty minutes out, so it wasn't like we were strategically shorthanded.

Garp noticed my long pause, because most people did. An opponent staring off into space in the middle of a fight was hard not to spot after some fifty years punching things that needed punching.

He opened his mouth to reply to my earlier comment, or maybe to shout something so our brawl could resume, when one of the nearby admiral fights spilled its borders in the fogbank.

Some four hundred yards away from Kei's confrontation with Vice Admiral Garp, Saiken's huge bulk shifted and shattered at least two of the Marine ships that had made the mistake of getting close to him. Despite his silliness, his wrath was no less terrible than that of any other Tailed Beast. The circle of floating wrecks around him served as proof.

"I'll smash you!" Saiken screamed, rounding on the last ship to hit him with a cannonball. It bounced off without doing any damage, but attracted his attention. "And you!"

And Utakata, the member of the assault team with the most reason to despise the Marines, egged him on without a scrap of restraint.

Let's see if these people enjoy melting, Utakata told him, from the top of a different ship. As Marines scrambled up the rigging in an attempt to reach him, Utakata waved his bubble staff toward the next battleship in line. Start there.

Saiken's head whipped around and deformed like a balloon losing lift. Then all of the holes in his face spewed pale pink gas that spread across the surface of the water. Of all the Tailed Beasts, Saiken had the most experience fighting ships. He also had some of the widest-reaching ninjutsu that never touched his Water Release specialty.

The next screams were not from Saiken. They also didn't last very long. Breathing while Saiken's Acid Scattering technique drowned the field was a terrible way to die.

Before Utakata could search for Akainu's flaming face among the fleet—having briefly lost him in the intermittent clouds of steam—an arc of magma cut through the worst of the caustic cloud and engulfed the lower part of the main mast. Utakata kicked off the wood as the ship keeled over, with its hull melting and burning at once, scattering the Marines who made the mistake of existing where Akainu aimed.

Body Flicker.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Utakata shot from the listing ship to the railing of the Marine flagship. While there was no hierarchy between Admirals, putting the living volcano on the vessel least likely to explode was one of the better decisions the Marines could have made under the circumstances.

The deck was lined with soldiers, most of them brandishing guns. With his V1 cloak active, Utakata merely pushed the nearest two Marines aside with a bubble apiece to reach the center of the deck.

Akainu stood with his arms crossed at the front of the ship, though one of them was nothing but a mass of heat, melted rock, and intermittent flames. Everything about him, other than the intensity of his hateful scowl, was the same was the day they'd first met. He was even as jaundiced as Utakata remembered.

"Had I known you were going to become a thorn in the side of Justice," the admiral said, in a voice that bubbled like an impending eruption, "I would have made sure I killed you on our first encounter."

Utakata pointed his bubble staff at the man's hat. Tailed Beast chakra gathered just past its pointed tip, darkening into a miniature bomb.

"Letting you live was a mistake I will not repeat, Carnation Prince," Akainu growled, upper lip curling at the name like it left a bad taste.

"Feeling's mutual," Utakata said coldly. "And you'll regret everything you've done to give me that name."

The magma projectile was already formed by the time Akainu shouted, "Great Eruption!"

Water Release: Surging Sea.

A jet of seawater hit the flying chunk of magma head-on, releasing gouts of steam at the same time as it hardened the outer edge of the magma into obsidian. The inner part could remain molten, but after losing its liquid properties, bouncing the worst of the attack off his V1 cloak was an easier prospect.

If not for the presence of a ship below him, Utakata guessed Akainu's magma attacks would be much nastier. However, even a man-shaped volcano needed a foothold more than he needed Utakata dead.

His mistake.

Water Release: Stormy Blockade.

Water cascaded from the sky as though dropped by an unseen breached dam, slamming into every inch of battlefield within Utakata's broad range. He ducked out of Akainu's line of sight, letting the ocean do the bulk of the work through sheer mass, and rushed out of immediate melting range.

Molten rock spewed upward, staving off the bulk of the water like an umbrella. The water bucked, bubbling and hissing as it changed state and exploded upward.

Akainu emerged, smoke and steam pouring off him in equal measure. Once again, he landed on a miraculously intact battleship. Utakata followed, landing on the railing.

New ship, same dance.

"Meteor Volcano!"

Click went Utakata's staff as he dodged to the side, magma raining down where he'd just been, Bubbles exploded from its entire length and coating the deck in a soapy film. While the bulk of the ship caught fire behind him, thanks to its own commanding officer, Utakata never took his eyes off his enemy.

Admiral Akainu glared down at the mess, as though nothing Utakata did would matter. "Justice is best served swiftly to upstarts like you. If not for orders to put you and your pet monster down properly, you'd be long dead."

Rather than answering, Utakata whipped his bubble staff around and slammed its butt to the soapy deck. Acid Permeation.

While among the Whitebeard Pirates, Utakata spent an afternoon asking around for more information about the World Government forces, on the basis that they'd likely clashed more with the Marines as a crew than he had. According to Vista and the remainder of the Whitebeards' collective knowledge, there was a chance Admiral Akainu was immune to the standard seawater weakness solely because his tremendous magma output insulated him from anything short of drowning. Plain water near him would just evaporate on contact.

Acid was a different story. Everywhere Utakata's bubbles touched started to hiss and burn, with the deck under their feet developing ominous holes. The strength of his hatred alone sped the decay along in a chakra-fueled parody of Magellan's signature technique.

Utakata wanted him dead.

As the battleship split in two beneath their feet, both of them kicked off the sagging deck. The Marines could handle their own fates, not that Utakata cared about their continued existence. Apparently, neither did their commander.

Utakata made a one-handed seal within his long sleeve. Bubble Clone.

Magma sprang from Akainu's fist, forming the shape of a snarling dog's mouth. All around him, the lava flowing all around him burned and hissed in the sea. "Hound Blaze!"

Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique.

A maelstrom exploded around them, centered just behind Utakata. As his clone exploded and allowed him to escape line of sight, the weight of the water under his control slammed into the ship and tossed it through the raging battlefield. The feral hiss of steam followed the jutsu's trajectory for its entire length as it swallowed the magma through sheer mass and carried it away.

When the storm died, Akainu stood on yet another half-broken battleship, arms still boiling water near him. Utakata bounded from the crest of one wave to the next, flinging himself out of the way of magma shots aimed in his direction. The V1 cloak was not the peak of his power output, but Kei had demonstrated its versatility well enough.

All the while, Akainu watched Utakata with greater calculation.

Even if plain seawater couldn't ruin him, chakra was as potent as haki in terms of stopping power.

Saiken emerged from the sea behind Akainu like a breaching whale, burbling unpleasantly. Slime crept across the sea from his presence alone, hissing the same way as every nightmarish substance Utakata had ever seen in a chemistry lab. Though the caustic fluid was not the same as what made up Utakata's bubbles, that was Saiken's choice.

Quit running and take your beating like a man, Utakata thought, feeling Saiken's aggression reinforcing his own.

"You're no different then the first time I fought you, boy," Akainu sneered.

As the red descended and V2 rolled over his chakra cloak, shoving his center of balance forward, Utakata howled, "Die!"

The bulk of the next few minutes were just reflex and instinct.

Unable to swim, the admiral was forced to rely on the remaining half-broken ships, Utakata himself, and the slowly spreading ice layer from the nearby fight forcing the sea into unnatural stillness for footing. Though Saiken's power bequeathed neither claws or fangs, he had enough acid leaking from his second skin to making simply touching the man a lethal prospect. Utakata, rage incarnate, treated the ocean's surface like solid ground and refused to be put off, no matter how much molten rock spewed in his direction.

"Meteor Volcano!" Once again, fist-shaped lava projectiles rained from the sky. The moisture in the air hissed away into steam again. Ice buckled under the assault, throwing yet more steam into the air that would scorch any normal person who'd survived the assault.

Utakata's entire body warped, Saiken's physicality allowing him to slip through the gaps between each meteor like his body was made of slime. The sensation of squashing his body in such a way never got any less disturbing—even something as minor as changing the distance between his eyes made him briefly motion-sick—but it was short-lived. The V2 chakra cloak was impervious enough that no amount of heat slowed his attack.

Water Release: Surging Sea.

Akainu kicked off the air to dodge the sudden waterspout, face twisted with hate.

He was just in time to be swatted into the ice pack by one of Utakata's six whirling tails. A long stripe of alkali liquid ate away at Akainu's red suit from even the briefest impact. He bore the admiral to the ground in a nearly serpentine constriction, trying to melt him into chemical slag.

Both of them landed on the ice, cracking it on impact despite accumulation strong enough to freeze entire ships in place.

In some places, it's all the way to the bottom. Saiken bobbed his head to and fro, eyestalks locked on his target. Don't slow down, Uta. You'll stick if I do.

Akainu slipped out of his grip only because of the ice giving him some traction.

Utakata spat a long line of acid in his wake, but missed.

Akainu was more careful about preserving his footing and avoiding too much lava production. Utakata's footsteps still bubbled as his caustic slime layer dripped all around him. Their breath formed fog in the cold, though Akainu's was more opaque from the sheer difference in their core temperatures.

Saiken rounded on the admiral, despite the ice slowing him as his slime started freezing. While his arms were too short to be of use in battle, his head slammed to the icy cap of the ocean and deformed almost pancake-flat. Corrosive gas spewed from his mouth like before, but faster as it spilled across the ice without sinking at all. "Choke on your own lungs!"

Succinct.

Utakata dove into the gas without a care. Saiken's choice of attack was weaker in the cold, but it was distinctly acidic this time. Utakata shifted his slime output from acid to alkali, feeling the outside of the V2 cloak fizzle as they canceled out. Water dripped down the outside of his chakra cloak alongside other waste products from that chemical reaction.

And just as Utakata was close enough to launch an attack on the doubled-over Admiral, who couldn't coat his lungs with haki if he wanted to breathe at all, everything stopped.

Yugito's extended claws came to an abrupt stop, stabbing harmlessly into the ice shield Aokiji brought up to defend himself. With a hiss of anger, Yugito slashed instead of stabbing and freed her arm before the ice could creep up to her chakra cloak. Whether or not it would actually hurt her, being immobilized was not in her favor.

Then Aokiji punched her chakra cloak with ice coating his knuckles, sending Yugito spinning across the ice until she could dig her claws into it for traction again. The admiral bought himself a bit of breathing room with that trick, though Yugito barely felt the impact.

"Ice Age," said Admiral Aokiji, exhaling frost like some fell spirit of winter.

All around him, the sea froze. Waves went still in long tubes or steep inclines, immobilizing ships in an icy grip. The shockwave of cold was nearly solid as it spread beneath Aokiji's feet. The ocean all around them cracked and shuddered as the temperature plummeted to polar lows, sounding like a landslide in slow motion. Or like persistent gunshots, magnified by a thousand.

Ace exploded into a firestorm, disappearing entirely as he matched Aokiji strength for strength. A widening ring of flames drove back the roughest parts of the frozen sea, even as cold continued to seep in underneath and freeze the water where it settled afterward.

"Now!" Ace yelled, from somewhere in all the conflicting heat and haze.

"On it!"

Yugito noticed the spreading wave of cold, retracted her claws, and dove straight for the admiral. When she shattered him this time, there was no blood. It seemed he'd learned from the first time he tried the logia dodge and decided to actually get out of the way of her attacks before he could get a second stabbing to match the first.

Aokiji reformed within the ring of fire and raised a hand in Yugito's direction.

"Ice Ball."

When Yugito exhaled, her breath formed a thick fog that blew back into her face. Mostly because she was suddenly stuck in a little ice tomb. Irritated at her own slow reaction, Yugito punched her way out of her personalized icy prison with her V1 cloak spitting blue flames.

Did he think that would work? Matatabi wondered, her voice creeping into Yugito's thoughts. Yugito more felt than heard her smacking Marine ships aside like errant rats.

While Admiral Aokiji's ice trap was great for keeping people in place, and perhaps even for live capture, fire was her first trick. The fact that she'd been playing with lightning was just to be polite. There was only so much oxygen to go around when Ace was fighting so close by.

And speaking of Ace, Aokiji's attempts to double down on the freezing effect were chased off by a second burst of fire, giving Yugito time to chip her way free. Yugito emerged in an icy wasteland not unlike Luffy's disjointed, rambling stories about Impel Down's Level Five. Which, due to the efforts of her friends, would never be a trial again.

Aokiji was out of sight, but certainly not defeated.

"Gotcha," Ace said, offering her a hand up as she kicked the last of the ice away.

Arriving in a nearly literal blaze of glory like he had was an intriguing idea. Except for the arm stretched her way, the rest of him was on fire and steadily melting the ice near them. Soon enough, he'd need her help keeping from drowning, which didn't dampen his ferocious grin at all.

Yugito retracted her V1 cloak long enough to accept his help, then peered off into the distance. While she'd only been under for a few seconds, it appeared Ace hadn't at all. And that Aokiji had bigger problems than either of them.

Across the way, Matatabi chased Aokiji like a particularly clever rat. Huge tails slammed against the ice with each landing, breaking the solid layer into pressure cracks. Everywhere she touched, a steam cloud so obscuring it was nearly solid followed in her wake. Ice bounced off her to no effect or melted instantly where it struck her flaming fur,

Going to save his subordinates from her was a good moral choice, but there was a price. The price today was becoming a cat toy.

"Take the left," Yugito suggested. "Matatabi won't mind being in the middle of a proper fire whirl."

Ace bowed, but only just. "Ladies first."

Matatabi, toss him our way. Yugito bared her fangs as she molded chakra into her legs.

And within a minute, from opposite ends of the massive ice field just as Admiral Aokiji landed back inside, two voices shouted in unison:

"Fire Fist!"

"Lightning Release: Indignation!"

Sparks flew, of both the fiery and the electrical kind, as the heat from the techniques hit cool air from the ice field. Far overhead, the clashing air currents started to spin. Between the fog bank created by Saiken and maintained by Isobu, the hissing steam clouds wafting away from both Utakata's match with Akainu and the Fire-and-Ice drama going on in the middle, no one could see anything worth writing home about. Matatabi's unfettered roar provided a backing track where a bass line might've been needed, offsetting screams and cracks as both sides clashed.

It looked, most of all, like someone had dropped a bad-tempered thunderstorm too low to the ground and stomped on its tail, enraging the resulting mess into something that almost had a life of its own.

At sea level was a different story. Almost a four hundred meters of ice formed a broad, flattened bowl shape. The slope and smooth sides were a result of Ace's fire slamming headlong into the ice as it formed, preventing any buildup near her or Ace, but Aokiji himself was nowhere in sight. The surface stirred like a distant earthquake, though there was no land for miles.

Wind howled over the lip of the bowl, carrying with it a dusting of snow flurries.

"Where the hell did he go?" Ace asked, confining the bulk of his flames to his back and shoulders to stave off the inevitable melting. Relying on Yugito to stay alive on the open sea wasn't his style.

Yugito tilted her head to one side, wishing she had a true chakra sensor ability. It was probably useless here, but she couldn't grow whiskers sensitive enough to air currents to be useful without turning into her full Tailed Beast form. "As a Logia, he's technically everywhere if we don't find a body, isn't he?"

"Not a bad guess for a rookie."

Aokiji's voice came from directly between them.

With Yugito's V1 cloak active, she didn't blink when Ace reflexively set the immediate four meters on fire to banish the ice problem. She did, however, grab Ace's arm and yank him out of the hole he'd melted before dropping into his own man-made lake.

Using Yugito's arm as a lever, he launched a Fire Fist after Aokiji's disappearing form even before he let go.

"Thanks," Ace said in a rush, before leaping after Aokiji as the admiral popped up again, still farther away. "Hey, Capsicle, where do you think you're going?!"

Ace went just far enough into the air that he exploded into a second firestorm, pushing Aokiji's next attack off to a slightly later time. Yugito lost track of both of them as the fire ate all the oxygen nearby, forcing her to dart away from the elemental wrestling match.

The far end of the ice field cracked like glass.

Yugito jerked her head in that direction, barely picking out magma flowing down the side of the ice arena and cutting a deep channel through the walls. The thick cloud of steam was as impervious as Isobu's modified Hidden Mist, but more likely to do active harm. To most people.

Utakata failed.

What? How?

Yugito's claws came out again. V1 cloak or not, getting pinned between Akainu and Aokiji sounded like a situation Yugito wanted no part of. But between Yugito and Ace, there was no contest as to which of them would be better-suited for taking on a man who spewed magma and hate in equal proportions.

Matatabi growled in Yugito's mind, That foolish Saiken—

Yugito didn't wait to hear the rest, feeling her chakra rush in anticipation of pain. Dammit, dammit, dammit—

Ace went back to a human shape, just barely, amid the flames he'd been using to keep Aokiji at bay. His only solid arm was black with armament haki, batting an icicle shot away from his chest. But he had ears again.

"Akainu incoming!" Yugito roared as she charged, using Matatabi's chakra to enhance her voice. She thought she saw Ace's head turn, but there was no way to be sure and still catch her new opponent. Ace's observation haki wasn't good enough to be reliable in this kind of high level melee—

With Akainu and Yugito on a collision course, their sheer combined speed brought them crashing into each other before the next blink. Raw chakra bristling with blue flames hit lava and haki, but the deciding factor was not entirely within either combatant's control.

Yugito, for all her strength, was still about half her opponent's size and a quarter his mass. She had less reach in every arena besides her chakra cloak's catlike shape and her claws. Furthermore, deflecting damage through Matatabi's chakra didn't come as easily to Yugito as it did to jinchūriki with partners like Isobu and Saiken. If she couldn't ward an opponent away with fire, it came down to just a direct strength contest.

Yugito was sent skidding back around the ice, intermittent flames deepening the gouge she left in the surface. Her arms ached like taking that haki hit had rattled her bones, and her chakra cloak hadn't shrugged off the lava either.

"Great Eruption!" With both arms made of lava, Akainu punched like a nightmarish version of Ace's little brother's rubber powers. Where lava dripped, the ice melted all too quickly.

Across the way, Ace and Aokiji were still locked in their duel. Ice sabers forged, stabbed, and were shot to pieces by Ace's Fire Gun sniping, and the two of them circled like a pair of rams. Separate, crash together, separate to do it again. Ice spikes slammed wholesale through the circling flames when Ace dodged, faster than Aokiji solely due to his element. The ice arena itself was molded more by their ebb and flow than anyone else's.

"Ice Block: Pheasant Beak!" Bird-shaped projectile—

"Flame Mirror!" And there went the bird, instantly melted.

Yugito shot to her feet, angling the tails of her chakra cloak around each side, and reached for Matabi's trickery as Akainu closed in.

He's mine now.

When Akainu lurched left, Yugito ducked right. Missing him by inches, she saw the deep acid pockmarks that were the signs of Utakata's nastier attacks. Then, feeling the urge to pounce deep in her brain, Yugito followed the admiral's retreating back with the Body Flicker ninjutsu fueling her speed. If he could chase phantoms, she could chase prey.

It won't interfere with Isobu's, will it?

If he figures out how dispel it, perhaps.

Akainu's step stuttered, stopped, and shifted.

Yugito's genjutsu was simple, owing to its quick construction. While she'd faked directionality from Akainu's perception and made him think her movements were mirrored, she hadn't moved Ace.

"Fire Fist!" Akainu roared, one arm pulled back and entirely made of molten rock. "You die here today! Hound Blaze!"

Shit!

Like a volcanic vent collapsing, lava shot sideways across the ice in a great, goopy surge that devoured all it touched. The head of the wave was shaped like a snarling canine head, jaws slavering with flames instead of foam.

Under such an assault, the arena split. Ice cracked in great springs and twangs from the heat, shattering into separate floes that shot up and out, destabilizing their platform and exploding in a wave of steam. Hundreds of icebergs crashed back into the water melted by Akainu's heat, separate and steaming uncertainly. The sea boiled around them as lava continued to rain down, fueled by Akainu's determination to see "justice" done.

I can dig Saiken out, Matatabi said urgently, so if you can keep them busy—

Yugito snapped back with, Tell Kei to stop playing with the old man! Even while they argued, she tore across the ice in the direction of Ace's last burst of fire, heart in her throat.

All Matatabi had to say in response was a wordless yowl of frustration.

Body Flicker.

Yugito blurred through the ice field, treating the water's surface like solid earth. Claws out, she slammed into Akainu hard enough to drive her nails straight through the side of his suit. While catching sight of acid burns on a man made of magma was difficult going, Yugito's eyes always searched for weakness.

Akainu whirled on her, kicking her squarely in the stomach with a haki-backed foot she could feel even through her chakra cloak. As she coughed at the sudden pain, she heard him snap, "If you're so keen to die, Lioness, let me help you!"

Lightning Clone. Replacement!

On the second strike—a lava-coated kick that might have engulfed almost anyone else—Yugito's clone writhed convincingly while "dying" until it burst under the strain, flash-blinding Akainu and blasting him with a solid dose of electricity.

"Doesn't it just burn you up, " Yugito whispered in the admiral's ear as she appeared before him again, nails raking through his shoulder, "to have your prey snatched away?"

Muscles still twitching, the admiral lunged at her.

Once again, Yugito fled the volcanic onslaught. If trickery led to victory, then she'd toss the rules of honorable combat out the window.

Akainu and Yugito exchanged blows that shook the air. Haki knocked Yugito's chakra cloak inward again and again, until her very bones ached like she'd been training with Killer Bee for two straight days. Even when she introduced uncertainty through simple genjutsu and Replacement distractions, her chaka reserves slowly depleted.

Matatabi was chakra, all the way through. But Yugito was human.

At the same time, lightning born from Yugito's clawed hands introduced a twitchiness and uncertainty to Akainu's movements that hadn't been there before. If she had to short out his brain to get him to stop, she'd dig her fingers in through his eyeballs with or without her claws intact.

Akainu's fist cracked across Yugito's jaw, stunning her long enough for a lava-punch to send her spinning through the air and through the top of an ice floe. The ice broke across her back, knocking the air out of her lungs. She rolled across its blasted surface and hit the water, refusing to go under from sheer stubbornness.

Yugito—

Yugito heaved a breath through cracked ribs, forcing herself up on her elbows on the water's roiling surface. I'm more a gnat than a threat, she told Matatabi, even as her bones tried to knit back together, but I will not die here. Neither will he. Get me back in there.

I almost have Saiken thawed, Matatabi told her, protesting and reassuring at once.

Despite her tone, the hot rush of chakra through Yugito's coils was a welcome relief. It soothed her pain and amped up the strength of her adrenaline at the same time. Even if the burning sensation that accompanied that second wind was still a dire warning.

Go.

She shot across the icebergs, throwing a great rooster tail of freezing water in her wake. While she couldn't use haki or sense chakra, the chaos of the ice and magma and fire all together had a center. She charged for it, driven half by instinct and half by desperation.

She was just in time to see Ace fall.

Caught between Aokiji and Akainu, Ace could only balance one opponent at a time. While his Logia type was faster than either, defeating two horrifyingly powerful opponents at once required some advantage. Rapid regeneration, absurd durability, or even combat experience stretching back decades of brutal warfare.

A chakra cloak.

Ace had none of them. He just had his bright, stubborn grin and a flame that was about to be snuffed out. In all other arenas, he was outclassed.

Aokiji's power gave Akainu a platform of ice sunk deep enough for stability, and enough of an ice wall to prevent an easy escape. And Akainu, one of the few people Yugito could not kill easily, launched his lava attack on his hemmed-in opponent.

Ace dodged almost all of them, owing to the injuries Akainu had taken from Utakata and Saiken and Yugito before this moment. He even melted his way backward through Aokiji's wall, sending icy water spilling down over the admirals' feet. But just as Yugito reached the outer edge of this new ice platform, his luck failed him.

A meteor clipped his side, a long string splattering across his ribs, and sent him slamming into the ice as every inch of him seized in stunned pain.

The lava caught and held fast, sizzling and eating into him and—

He didn't get up.

He was still moving, unable to scream, but he didn't get up.

Yugito's next lungful of air stank of smoke and burning blood, but she could draw a full breath.

The one after that was a panther's unearthly scream.

Yugito hauled on Matatabi's power like she never had before. To protect instead of to hunt. The first steps of her V2 cloak smashed the still-solid ice beneath her into a crater, clawed hands and feet carving deep gouges for grip. Then she went past it. The blue-black flames that were Matatabi's signature covered from head to toe to new tail tips. This half-sized Tailed Beast Mode—so close, yet so far—was enough to remind primordial man that death came equipped with teeth and claws for ripping him apart.

Long-fingered hands and feet, now black as night and tipped with razor-sharp claws perfect for shredding, were all that remained of her human body. Distantly, like through a fog of the mind, Yugito might have heard a voice calling her back, beseeching that one thread of humanity that remained.

It fell on deaf ears.

And she lunged.

A V2 chakra cloak activation was hard to miss at the best of times, cratering anything near it and often knocking the user's mind into something so full of bloodlust that anyone with basic sensitivity to intent would see coming a mile away. It was not the first resort of a shinobi, because it blew a hole in the idea of "stealth" faster than most people could get the air to scream. It was for heavy combat specialists.

I oriented on it like a compass on magnetic north, pulling my chakra sense to something like sonar. Though Isobu's unmoving genjutsu-spreading fog didn't respond to the wind, it was cold as all hell over in his direction. Ice creeped out from under the gray that kept the battles separated, surging across the sea and locking even the ocean nearest me into an artificial glacier.

It goes all the way to the seabed, said Isobu, shocked.

And then Utakata's chakra went absolutely still. Not dead, not destroyed or canceled out. Just stuck.

What in the actual— In that direction lay Aokiji. Ice. Utakata must have strayed into the other combat zone somehow. We'd specifically all agreed not to do that or else we'd tangle each other up. It was way too dangerous to engage any admiral but the ones we could finagle into an elemental disadvantage.

Saiken is also stunned, Isobu reported. Nothing would kill a Tailed Beast, but "stunned" was every bit as dangerous right now. Being unable to act would throw the careful balance of this strategy into utter ruin.

Fuck! I made to run toward the problem, despite knowing somewhere under the primal urge to act that if Utakata was frozen, I wasn't going to be any more useful. He had most of the same elemental affinities I did and a Tailed Beast three ranks higher, and he had access to transformations above my incomplete V2 chakra cloak.

Perhaps fortunately, Garp got in my way. "You're not going anywhere, Tidal Blade. You still have a lot to answer for, both to me and to the law."

Rage boiled in my veins alongside Isobu's chakra. Only my partner was able to go on unopposed, swimming around the ice in an attempt to figure out a way closer to the problem without alerting anyone else to his presence. And despite how much strength I could pull on, fighting angry was only as useful as the thought process behind it. Outright recklessness would ruin everything.

"I don't think so." I made a few hand signs, though with only one hand and with it behind my back.

Water Clone. Replacement. Hiding in Water.

By the time Garp punched my clone into sea spray, I was nowhere in reach. And though I was a quick swimmer in V1, Isobu summoning me folded space-time better than anything I would have managed anyway.

Shaking off water immediately to avoid freezing, I emerged onto a blindingly white icefield that hadn't existed before. My sandals crunched icicles and snow flat, because once again the Logia class of Devil Fruits were utter overpowered bullshit.

You say that as though you are not.

You can make that argument if this thing isn't Saiken frozen solid, I told him, staring up a lump of ice the size of a Tailed Beast with little eyestalks, nubby arms, and six wiggly tails. Or what would have been such a creature, if not for the sheet of foggy ice that swallowed him like a bug caught in a pond during winter. I was on the tip of the lowest-placed tail, half-expecting it to move under my feet.

It is him, and he is aware. Isobu hauled himself partly out of the water to knock on the thick sheet ice, it crackled dangerously under his hand. He is just complaining about the cold.

He kind of needs to do something about it! I dropped off his tail and landed in a snowdrift.

With a second's thought, I drew my sword and chipped into a different ice stalagmite that stood out to my chakra sense. By the time the sound of massive paws on snow became audible, I'd managed to dig a V2 Utakata's head free of the worst of it. He didn't move due to being frozen through, but those hollow white eyes were piercing even when as still as a statue.

"There you are," said Isobu.

"I can take it from here, dears," said Matatabi, and placed a flaming tail each on Saiken and on Utakata's frozen forms. Steam started to flow immediately. At the same time, she set a paw right in front of Isobu and me, then added, "Three, two, one—"

Utakata shook himself free of the ice first, falling to all fours because his legs were the last to thaw after Matatabi removed her immense heat. His V2 shape shattered around him as his concentration skipped like a bad record, but he didn't object or smack me aside when I helped him back to his feet. His Usopp-made staff also popped into view, though I had no earthly idea how his V2 cloak had swallowed and preserved it until now.

Sure, my V1 chakra cloak smoked a little when a bit of the residual foam got on it, but what were a few harmless acid burns between friends?

"What the hell happened?" I demanded, stooping a little so I could catch his single visible eye. His hair was pasted to his face with meltwater. "I thought this whole thing was handled?"

"The last thing I remember is being baited onto this ice," Utakata snapped, jerking his head away. Then, as though realizing his tone was uncalled for, his follow-up question was a lot less hostile: "What happened to Akainu?"

Saiken, still frozen up to his arms, said, "I don't know where he went, but he left!"

Utakata let out a frustrated growl that resonated like it had access to a far deeper chest than his, then stood to make his way back across the ice. He didn't trip, but it was a close thing. He was still soaked to the skin and wearing sandals. Even bringing V1 back up as armor seemed to take a bit of thought.

I picked up his staff and looked it over. There was a crack in the base that looked a little like heat stress, so I summoned the sliver of V2 I needed to cover the damage in coral. After a second's thought, I covered the back edge of my katana with the stuff, too.

Utakata was being an ass, but he had his reasons. I was not going to fling this thing overhand at his head. Either thing, but especially not his.

Focusing on Utakata—who was unharmed despite everything—turned out to be a mistake.

Utakata had only been under for maybe a minute. He wasn't a real concern.

The fact that his opponent had gotten away was the actual problem.

As Yugito's wild rage and withering chakra pressure washed over us, it served as a reminder as sharp as a lightning strike.

Two minutes in a fight was the next best thing to forever.

They represented a half-baked plan folding in on itself, the total loss of objectivity, and a berserk jinchūriki I couldn't overpower anymore.

Utakata snatched the staff from me before I clocked him with it in my rush. Not a split second later, he was hot on my heels before a question even formed in either of our heads. That was the kind of coordination that many shinobi teams bled for.

Hadn't we, though?

I was heading for what was half a distress signal and half a warning—the sign that Yugito was beyond control—at a dead run over the icebergs.

No teammate got left behind, no matter what was going on with them.

The waves of hate that rushed over us as we approached was the kind of killing intent that sent most opponents into a paroxysm of primal terror and hallucinations of their own deaths. It rolled in like the tide, as inevitable as death itself, and chilled to the bone. Under it all was a current of deep, all-consuming grief that gave the resulting cocktail a twist that leeched in under mental defenses.

I shook it off by focusing on my connection to Isobu, whose mind projected concern instead of murder. Utataka momentarily stumbled before Saiken knocked him out of it, too.

We exchanged looks for a split second.

As a genjutsu-type Tailed Beast and a nekomata, Matatabi easily bestowed that kind of power where she chose to. I wasn't sure she'd chosen, then.

Matatabi is finished with Saiken. She is heading your way.

If she can't stop Yugito, I thought grimly, I don't even want to know what set her off.

…You will.

At that point, I hit the edge of an ice construct that was designed like an ancient coliseum. With the tips of my shoes barely gripping the ice, I waved a hand to slow Utakata. Though not all villages used the same hand signals, " Go around" wasn't hard to figure out from context clues. With Yugito pinballing around in there in a murderous berserker rage, it would be better if I was the distraction to everyone until Utakata could jump them.

Utakata's customary frown almost turned into a scowl, but stopped. His visible eye flicked toward the ice with distaste, then he vanished around the corner. Once he was gone, I climbed straight up the wall.

At the top, I peeked over the edge to make an assessment before getting myself in the middle of something I couldn't begin to control.

There was blood everywhere.

Ace was down, crumpled in the corner. Not moving and coated in ice, but I knew the shape of that hat anywhere. It looked like Aokiji had put him out, which was either going to be something I killed him for or potentially a life-saving move. The Straw Hats had gotten iced before, and Ace was fire .

Yugito, though? She'd apparently discovered a brand new Tailed Beast transformation, turning her into a lanky, flaming werecat. The mess of flaming fur had sprouted a second spine and ribs like Naruto's six-tailed form would someday, while her hands remained human enough to grasp and strangle.

Aokiji was out of sight at first, but not for long. He emerged behind Yugito, both arms a mess of meat and cloth. Not out of the fight, just bleeding so badly that he automatically iced both arms over as he appeared, forming a medically-unsound tourniquet from his own powers.

Akainu was miraculously also not down, despite almost certainly being the cause of the situation in in the pit. It didn't take a surveyor to recognize meltwater and cooling lava. His hat was long gone, exposing his close-shaved head and the long lines of blood that ran from claw gouges.

As I watched, Aokiji got swatted into scenery by Yugito's bone-club left tail, shattering and merging with the wall. He left a bloodstain in his wake.

Akainu, instead, got the full fire cat to the face. Going by what little of him wasn't spitting lava, Yugito's attacks had opened actual wounds in his neck, legs, and almost removed his ear from his head. His arms were too covered to tell, and the lava was doing absolutely nothing to keep Yugito at bay. She was too intent on shredding him to care.

Calculating, I stayed low to the top of the ice, absolutely still. It probably didn't do much against observation haki, especially since I didn't dare lower my chakra levels so far that I lost V1 cloak.

And because I was on his ice, Aokiji appeared next to me.

My V1 cloak clocked him immediately, with Isobu's control running at the speed of thought even if the rest of him was achingly slow on ice. Always having a friend at my back was a trick no normal shinobi could match.

Aokiji managed to block, because haki hadn't become less real just because he was bleeding, but his arms were a mess regardless. Yugito had done a number on him.

As a result, he winced and I attacked in earnest.

Curve of the Moon. I pushed a monstrous amount of Wind chakra into the strike so I could be sure he felt it, in spite of both his Devil Fruit power and the experience advantage he had on me. If I could kill him with it, even better.

He caught the strike on a sword made of ice, haki-coated black and spawned from nothing just like my coral swords.

Behind him and despite that block, ice cracked in a semicircle that extended the better part of a hundred meters when the shockwave hit. In the distance, bits of the glacier field he'd made of the ocean started to shift like an impending tsunami. The fact that the crack shifted such a massive area would've been baffling back home. I hadn't been able to access the Tailed Beast transformation levels that let me do that since I was a teenager.

Just in time.

"The only reason that you're still alive," I said in a low voice, locking eyes with Aokiji as we locked blades, "is because they don't want you dead enough."

Despite what had happened to Ace, and despite the ripple of unhappiness I could feel spread across the ranks of our partners like a contagious disease, Aokiji wasn't the main target of their rage.

No, Matatabi had them zeroed in on one person for Tailed Beast wrath.

Aokiji opened his mouth to ask me the obvious question, and that was when Matatabi's paw slapped him out of melee with me and out to sea. While her claws had been sheathed and she'd carefully avoided ripping my sword out of my hands, Aokiji was going to feel that one in the morning.

There was a distant crash, somewhere in the fog. If I had my angles correct, Matatabi had smacked Aokiji in a perfect arc to hit Garp's position.

"Where is he," Matatabi said in a dreadful, soft voice that I'd never heard from her.

I waved at her to follow, then dropped backward off the icy ledge.

Yugito, slamming Akainu into the bottom of the ice bowl and wailing on him like a mouse in need of gutting, didn't look up as I landed. She could beat him to death as far as I was concerned, though Utakata would have some objections. My immediate goal was getting Ace out of the line of fire despite him being cryogenically frozen to the floor.

And he was frozen. Looking through the ice as I knelt next to him, there was a black glob of what was probably obsidian stuck to his side. I couldn't do a realistic assessment on him, but the sight of a clear hit from the lava made my stomach do a somersault. I was not qualified to be a surgeon. Even if I could thaw him, there was no guarantee the wound wasn't ten times worse than what I could actually see. There was always a chance this was a piercing attack that had fried his organs while no one was looking.

At least if Utakata's example was anything to go by, Ace couldn't feel anything at the moment. He wouldn't even know time had passed when he woke up.

If he woke up.

It is not a matter of if,Isobu said. His refusal to give up hope was endearing.

At that point, Matatabi peered over the top of the arena, odd-colored eyes taking in the carnage.

Point taken.

As much carnage splattered the walls and melted the environment, it wasn't until Matatabi rested her bulk against the ice wall that it genuinely developed some give. Her blue flames burned hotter than they had any right to, and the front half of her long body slipped through the hole she'd made, as cats were wont to do.

Just wait.

She lowered her head, pressing her dark nose to Yugito's bent back, despite the flying blood and still-slashing claws. The contact had Yugito freeze in place despite her blood rage, and Matatabi took that opportunity to scoop her up by the scruff.

Yugito went completely still in the giant cat's grip.

See?

As I watched, dumbfounded, Yugito slowly started to shed the twitching blue-black haze of rage and hate that had powered her one-woman assault on the two admirals. She powered down through that, through V2 and its opaque darkness, and down through V1 until she finally just drooped wearily in place. When the last of the chakra dispersed, Matatabi lowered her like a limp kitten and let Yugito collapse atop her paws, already in a deep, exhausted sleep.

Even from where I sat, I could see the telltale signs of intense chakra burns. All of her skin was cracked, bleeding, and peeling. I had a few ideas how to deal with that, but they were not quick techniques.

Matatabi gave her wayward partner a cursory sniff of concern, whiskers twitching, then turned her attention to the crater that supposedly contained an admiral. All around her, ice started to steam.

Utakata cleared his throat, drawing my attention and one turned ear from Matatabi. Still bearing his own V1 cloak, he strode to the center of the arena and peered down the slope once his toes barely poked over the edge.

I couldn't see what was left of Akainu from where I was.

Wait for it, Isobu suggested, because he was the worst.

And despite the quiet, despite Matatabi lying right there , Akainu lurched up out of the pit.

All lava, no person. In another context, he'd be the worst thing anybody could face. A living volcano, even weakened by a murdercat mauling, was still too much for anyone to take. He wasn't even recognizable as a person to anyone who didn't already know.

I didn't get to my feet. I knelt there between Akainu and Ace, hand on my sword only in case I was needed.

Utakata body-blocked him from moving one step closer to me or to anyone else. His entire body lit up with the orange-red glow of the V1 cloak as he stared into what was probably left of Akainu's head. His tails fanned out behind him like coiling serpents.

Flames licked the figure uncertainly. I couldn't tell if the once-admiral was even breathing, or if Yugito had made a mess of literally everything she could in her berserk state. The air here stank of blood and burning flesh.

Without a word, Utakata flipped the bubble staff around in one smooth motion and drove its coral-coated end straight through Akainu's forehead. It punched through the back of where his skull ought to have been, burbling faintly as the liquid soap inside it boiled off in a chemical mess. Utakata let go of it, shoving its spigot end one-handed to force the burning corpse back.

Akainu sank to what was supposed to have been his knees, the weapon embedded firmly. He kept sinking, the leftover lava melting the ice beneath him and forming a pool that almost immediately started boiling off, too.

Matatabi reached out with one paw, leaving it hovering over the body with her claws out.

Utakata nodded.

Matatabi slammed her paw down like a hammer, driving corpse, weapon, and the entire grudge out of sight into the ice. While the new pit continued to bubble ominously, no figure emerged.

Utakata's knees went out from under him, dropping him to the ice with a jolt. There wasn't anyone else who could act, at least not for a little while. With Yugito unconscious in Matatabi's care and Ace still frozen, I hesitated for a second before I slipped to Utakata's side and opened my arms.

Even if I wasn't his favorite person, I could do this.

"Come here," I whispered.

Though we'd had our differences and some of them had been murderous, he leaned into my offered hug without making a sound. Even when I could feel my shoulder get damp in the cold, I kept my silence. This moment needed a second to settle.

For Utakata, this iteration of hell was finally over.

AN: Sorry again about the delay. There were literally eleven pages of writing cut from this chapter, so at least the next one has a head start!

Next time: Marco and Thatch versus Kizaru, Whitebeard shenanigans, and Where Oh Where Did The Fox Pair Go.