The high-pitched whine from the Aegis Sentinel's chest cavity reached an unbearable crescendo. Simultaneously, Akainu, with a roar of "ABSOLUTE JUSTICE!", unleashed his most devastating attack yet: "Ryusei Kazan: Inferno!" A relentless storm of massive magma meteors, larger and more numerous than before, rained down upon the entire chamber, targeting both the pirates and the Sentinel.
The Aegis Sentinel responded in kind. Its chest core flashed, and a colossal, white-hot beam of pure energy erupted – its "star-beam" amplified to an apocalyptic degree. It lanced across the chamber, not as a cutting tool, but as a wave of pure, annihilating force.
The combined assault was cataclysmic. The metallic chamber screamed, buckled, and began to tear apart. Walls vaporized under the dual onslaught of magma and energy. The floor cracked and split, revealing a fiery, chthonic abyss beneath. It was a vision of hell.
"The core! The tablet mentioned the mechanism!" Gunnar yelled over the deafening roar, his eyes fixed on the glowing, now exposed, core of the Aegis Sentinel where its chest plate had been blown open by one of Akainu's meteors. "That's where the lever must be!"
It was a suicidal notion, but it was their only chance. The chamber was becoming their tomb.
"Cracker! Perospero! Cover me!" Smoothie commanded, her voice tight with urgency. She saw it too – the exposed, pulsating mechanism within the Sentinel's ravaged chest, just as the tablet described. "Gunnar, with me!"
With a desperate, coordinated lunge, they charged towards the reeling, heavily damaged Sentinel. Cracker's remaining biscuit soldiers formed a desperate, crumbling shield against Akainu's magma rain. Perospero, wincing from his wounds, flung hardened candy spears to deflect smaller debris and distract the still-firing, though now erratic, laser eyes of the Sentinel.
Smoothie, using her incredible agility, leaped onto the Sentinel's smoking chassis, Gunnar scrambling after her, his smaller frame allowing him to navigate the wreckage. They reached the exposed core – a complex array of glowing conduits and, yes, a single, obsidian lever.
"Now!" Smoothie yelled.
Together, they threw their weight against it. The lever groaned, then clicked into place.
The effect was instantaneous and island-wide. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the very bedrock of the Isle of Shifting Sands. Far above, on the surface, the earth trembled violently. Then, with a sound like mountains being born, a colossal, golden pyramid, the Sky-Piercing Spire, began to rise from the sands in the center of the island, its peak glinting in the hazy sunlight.
Simultaneously, within their collapsing chamber, a section of the far wall, previously unnoticed, slid open with a grinding hiss, revealing a narrow, dark escape tunnel – a lifeline.
"The exit!" Perospero shrieked, his eyes wide with relief and terror.
But their escape was not to be so easy. Akainu, enraged at their defiance, redoubled his assault, magma flooding the collapsing floor. And the Aegis Sentinel, though critically damaged, its movements now jerky and erratic, made one final, desperate move. Its massive, clamp-like hand, partially melted but still functional, shot out, aiming to capture the fleeing pirates.
"Go! Go!" Smoothie yelled, shoving Gunnar hard towards the opening. He stumbled, then scrambled into the narrow tunnel. Cracker, his biscuit armor all but gone, his true form battered and bleeding, followed close behind.
They were almost there. The tunnel beckoned. Freedom.
Then, Gunnar heard Smoothie cry out, a sound of surprise and pain. He turned, his heart lurching.
The Sentinel's giant metallic hand was closing in on them. Perospero and Cracker, who had been just behind Smoothie, had, in a moment of craven self-preservation, shoved her. Shoved her directly into the path of the descending clamp.
"Sister!" Cracker had yelled, a false note of concern in his voice.
"Forgive us, Smoothie! For the good of the family!" Perospero had cried, his eyes already fixed on the escape route.
The massive metal fingers closed around Smoothie's torso, lifting her from the ground, a horrifying, metallic shriek accompanying the movement. Her sword clattered to the floor.
"NO!" Gunnar screamed, raw and desperate. He tried to turn back, to help her, but the tunnel was too narrow, and the force of Cracker and Perospero pushing past him was too strong.
Smoothie's eyes, wide with shock and a dawning, terrible understanding of her brothers' betrayal, met Gunnar's for a fleeting, agonizing second. There was no fear in them, only a cold, burning fury, and something else… something that looked almost like… regret?
"It's goodbye, then!" her voice, strained but still powerful, echoed down the tunnel.
Then, Perospero and Cracker were at the tunnel entrance. "Quickly! seal it!" Perospero yelled, already fumbling with a hidden mechanism beside the opening.
The grinding of stone was a death knell. Perospero and Cracker, on the other side of the rapidly closing tunnel entrance, were ensuring their escape, sealing Akainu – and Smoothie – in with the collapsing chamber and the berserk, dying Sentinel. Gunnar, trapped in the narrow passage, could only watch in horrified disbelief.
Through the shrinking gap, he saw Smoothie. She was held fast in the Aegis Sentinel's massive, sparking clamp-hand, her body contorted at an unnatural angle. Akainu, a figure of molten fury, leaped with terrifying agility onto the Sentinel's arm, standing directly above her, his magma-wreathed fist raised for a final, devastating blow.
And then, Gunnar saw it. A single, crystalline tear tracing a path down Smoothie's usually impassive cheek. It caught the hellish light of Akainu's magma, glinting like a shattered diamond.
In that frozen moment, as darkness threatened to engulf her, Smoothie's mind, usually Iron minded and duty foucsed, fractured.
A flash: A younger Smoothie, no older than Gunnar was now, clutching a sword too large for her hands. Her siblings, Amande, Oven, Daifuku, their voices dripping with childish cruelty and adult ambition, "Too tall, Smoothie! Too strange! Mama only values strength, not your odd legs!" Another flash: Practicing relentlessly, wringing moisture from the air, from fruits, from unlucky sparring partners, desperate to prove her worth, to earn a sliver of genuine praise.
Another: Standing before Big Mom, her latest victory laid at her mother's feet. Mama Linlin, devouring a mountain of sweets, her eyes assessing, calculating. "Good, Smoothie. You are a useful tool. A strong weapon. Now, go fetch me more souls for my next tea party." Never a hug. Never a word of simple, unconditional love. Only value. Only utility.
She was always alone, even surrounded by hundreds of siblings. A commander, a princess, but ultimately, just another piece in Mama's grand, gluttonous game. No one had ever truly seen her. No one had ever… loved her.
The darkness of the golem's grip, the searing heat of Akainu above, the chilling finality of betrayal – it all pressed in. She was about to die, sacrificed, forgotten. A bitter, resigned sigh escaped her lips. It was, she supposed, a fitting end for a Charlotte.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
Then, a light. Not the harsh glare of magma, but something else. A furious, defiant glow that tore through the encroaching darkness in her mind. And a voice, young, desperate, but filled with an impossible resolve, echoing the word he had used with such hesitant formality, now laced with a raw, protective fury:
"WIFE!"
Smoothie's eyes snapped open.
The image of Gunnar's face, his golden eyes blazing, flashed before her. It wasn't a memory; it felt… present. But he was in the tunnel, wasn't he? Escaping. Safe.
But the light, the voice…
She blinked, the tear finally falling. The crushing pressure of the golem's hand, the suffocating heat of Akainu… they seemed to recede for a microsecond.
And then she saw him.
Not the small, struggling boy she knew.
Standing directly between her and Akainu, atop the Sentinel's damaged arm, was Gunnar.
But he was… transformed.
One half of his body, his right side, was a raging inferno of molten rock, strikingly similar to Akainu's own power. His left side was encased in jagged, crystalline ice that radiated an aura of absolute zero, steaming where it met the ambient heat. His crimson and white hair flowed wildly around him, whipped by an unseen, furious wind, each strand crackling with elemental energy. His golden eyes were no longer a child's; they were twin supernovas of pure, untamed power and incandescent rage. He was a miniature Ymir, a walking paradox of elemental fury, yet with a focused, terrifying lucidity.
He wasn't looking at her. His entire being, every ounce of this Hybrid Titan, was focused on the stunned Marine Admiral.
Akainu, fist still raised, stared at the boy-turned-elemental-demigod, a flicker of disbelief, then pure, murderous rage, crossing his molten features.
Gunnar, his voice a guttural snarl that was both freezing blizzard and volcanic eruption, spoke, his words directed at the Admiral who dared threaten his wife.
"You… will… not… touch her."
Akainu, momentarily stunned by Gunnar's impossible, terrifying transformation, quickly recovered his murderous composure. His magma-wreathed face contorted into a snarl of pure, fanatical rage.
"Another abomination!" he bellowed, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "The fruit of pirates, always bearing rotten offspring! You think this… costume… can stop Absolute Justice, boy?!"
He didn't wait for an answer. He lunged, his molten fist, now even larger, more incandescent, aimed to obliterate Gunnar. "Ryusei Kazan: MEIGO (Meteor Volcano: Dark Hound)!" A hound of pure, destructive magma, infused with his Haki, leaped towards the transformed boy.
Gunnar met the attack head-on. His own right arm, a conduit of seething, green-tinged lava, punched forward. "Ymir's Fury: Magma Claw!"
Lava clashed with lava.
The impact was cataclysmic. A shockwave of pure, unadulterated heat and concussive force erupted outwards, superheating the already collapsing chamber. For a horrifying moment, the two molten energies battled for supremacy – Akainu's refined, Haki-infused magma against Gunnar's raw, primordial, Devil Fruit-fueled inferno.
But Gunnar's control, his endurance in this new, terrifying form, was still nascent. Akainu's power, honed over decades of relentless battle, was overwhelming.
With a deafening roar, Akainu's magma hound overpowered Gunnar's claw. The boy was engulfed in a torrent of molten rock, a scream torn from his transformed throat. He was blasted backwards, a flaming comet, crashing through the already crumbling wall of the escape tunnel just as the last stones were grinding into place, sealing it completely. The sound of his impact, a sickening thud, echoed even through the solid rock.
"GUNNAR!"
The cry was torn from Smoothie's lips, raw and desperate, utterly devoid of her usual cool composure. It was the first time she had ever called his name with such unbridled emotion, such naked fear. The sight of him, her strange, infuriating, impossibly brave boy-husband, being consumed by Akainu's flames, had shattered her icy facade.
His terrifying transformation vanished as he crashed. When the dust settled slightly on Smoothie's side of the now-sealed tunnel, she could just make out his small, human form through a crack, slumped and unmoving, his clothes smoldering, his skin horrifically burned.
Akainu landed heavily on the Sentinel's arm, his magma still dripping, his gaze fixed on the trapped Smoothie. "The whelp is dealt with. Now, Charlotte Smoothie, your time is up." He raised his fist, the heat intense enough to make the metal around them glow. "For the sake of justice!"
Smoothie, her heart frozen, closed her eyes. She had been betrayed by her brothers, and now, the one person who had shown her an ounce of selfless protection was gone, burned alive trying to save her. This was it.
Akainu's fist descended. The end.
*CRACK-BOOM!*
But the impact never came.
Instead, the entire collapsing chamber, the very bedrock of the island, *shattered*. Not from Akainu's blow, but from something else, something impossibly powerful emanating from *behind* the sealed tunnel.
The stone wall that had just entombed Gunnar *exploded* outwards.
Akainu, caught mid-strike, was thrown off balance, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Smoothie's eyes snapped open.
Through the dust and debris, a small, horrifically burned figure, clothes in tatters, skin blistered and raw, leaped with an impossible, desperate strength. It was Gunnar. Human Gunnar. But his golden eyes blazed with an almost divine fury, and the air around his small, upraised fist *cracked* with those familiar, world-breaking fissures.
He wasn't transformed. He wasn't wreathed in ice or fire. This was something deeper, something innate, something that echoed the power of the man he called Father.
"**GURA GURA NO… SHŌGEKI (Tremor-Tremor… Impact)!**" he roared, his voice raw with pain and fury, pouring every last ounce of his will, his Genetic power, his desperate love, into this single, impossible blow.
His tiny, burned fist met Akainu's descending magma fist.
It wasn't a clash of elements. It was a clash of absolutes. The Gura Gura no Mi's power to break the world itself against Akainu's relentless, destructive magma.
The result was beyond comprehension.
The Aegis Sentinel's massive arm, caught between the two forces, *disintegrated*. Metal shrieked, buckled, and then vaporized. The entire collapsing chamber beneath them gave way. The very ground of the island split open, a colossal chasm tearing upwards, ripping through stone and earth, reaching, impossibly, for the hazy sky above. Sunlight, real, unfiltered sunlight, pierced the gloom of the underground ruin for the first time in centuries.
The metallic hand of the Aegis Sentinel, which had held Smoothie in its death grip, exploded outwards in a shower of molten shrapnel. Smoothie, freed, was sent tumbling through the air, the force of the shockwave propelling her away from the epicenter of destruction.
Akainu, caught directly in the path of the replicated earthquake, was blasted upwards and outwards, his magma form momentarily disrupted, a roar of pure, frustrated rage echoing as he was flung into the chaos of the collapsing island.
Gunnar, his small body having channeled a power far beyond its limits, hung suspended in the air for a moment, silhouetted against the newly revealed sky, before his strength finally gave out. He plummeted downwards, unconscious, towards the churning abyss where the island's heart had just been torn asunder.
[A/N: Hope you Enjoyed. I am trying my best to deliver the absoulte Best for you all.]