The roar of Ymir-Gunnar tore through Port Obsidian like a force of nature—not the cry of a beast, but the _groan of the earth itself_. It was tectonic, volcanic, glacial. It echoed like mountains breaking, like a blizzard screaming across the tundra, like a supervolcano preparing to end an age.
Before this god of destruction stood Vice Admirals Momonga and Bastille, and with them, Ain of the Neo Marines. In another lifetime, their courage might've earned them victory. But now, they faced a titan 219 feet tall—part glacier, part volcano, all wrath.
They did not retreat.
They were soldiers of the sea, iron-willed and unyielding.
"HE'S TOO BIG TO MISS!" Bastille shouted, voice cracked but steady. His hands gripped his chipped shark-slicer sword as dark Haki shimmered up the blade. Black-purple and violent. "IRON BODY: MOUNTAIN CRUSHER!"
He didn't charge. He _anchored_—planting his entire weight and will into a singular, explosive thrust as the Titan's massive foot began its descent. His target: the lava-wreathed knee coming down like judgment.
The impact was seismic. Steel met magma and glacier in a clash that echoed across miles. The shockwave flattened the last petrified forests. Bastille screamed—veins bulging, arms trembling—his sword straining against the elemental titan. And for a moment, just a moment, he stopped it. Ymir-Gunnar's stomp faltered mid-air, leg juddering with resistance.
Then came the inevitable. The sword cracked. With a sickening groan, the blade gave way. Bastille roared one last time before the sheer weight of the titan forced him into the ground, the earth shattering beneath him. But he had bought time.
Momonga didn't waste it.
"GEPPO! RANKYAKU: KAMI-E SLICER!"
He launched skyward—nothing but a blur. His Haki-hardened leg lashed out mid-air, unleashing a storm of pinpoint air blades. Not the wide slashes of amateurs—these were surgical. Dozens of razor-thin, armor-piercing cuts hammered a single weak point: a stress fracture on the Titan's icy torso.
Each slash was a mosquito bite to a mountain—but together, they began to fracture the glacial armor. Cracks spread like lightning across the frosted hide. Ymir-Gunnar bellowed, more in pain now than rage, swatting at Momonga like a god irritated by a fly.
A molten hand, the size of a battleship, swept toward the sky with blinding speed. Sonic boom. Air rupture.
Momonga bent like a reed, Kami-e softening his body just enough to survive. He twisted midair, narrowly avoiding the molten swat, but the heat scorched through his uniform and the blast sent him tumbling.
Ain moved. Swift. Quiet. Deadly.
While the Titan focused on Bastille and Momonga, she dashed toward the foot Bastille had tried to stop. Still planted. Still vulnerable.
Her palm glowed with the eerie light of her Devil Fruit.
"MODO MODO NO MI: MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"
She slammed her hand against his icy toenail—not a touch, a _surge_. Her entire body screamed as she poured everything into that single point.
Ymir-Gunnar's scream was different this time.
Agony.
The colossal toenail and surrounding ice disintegrated. Ancient frost turned to dust, layers of hardened glacier eroded into nothing. The Titan stumbled, his weight shifting uncontrollably.
"YOU... INSIGNIFICANT... GNAT!" The words thundered from the heavens as the Titan teetered. His balance was compromised. His body lurched.
Momonga righted himself mid-air. Bastille, bruised and broken in a crater, looked up with blood in his eyes and fire in his chest.
"NOW!" Momonga called. "ASSAULT THE LEG! FINISH IT!"
Bastille cast aside his ruined sword and charged. His fists, now wrapped in thick, obsidian-black Haki, slammed into the already fractured ankle like meteorites. From above, Momonga unleashed another storm of slicing Rankyaku—focused, relentless, unmerciful.
The ankle shattered.
With a sound like a glacier breaking off a continent, Ymir-Gunnar's leg gave way. The Titan lurched sideways, his massive form reeling, groaning like a mountain losing its foundation.
But he would not fall.
He was Gunnar, son of Whitebeard. A monster born of ice and fire. A beast who'd walked into hell and come out unchained.
He planted what strength remained and raised his arms to the sky.
"RAGNAROK… ERUPTION!"
The world ended.
From his lava side erupted a cataclysm of molten death—an apocalyptic wave of rock and flame that boiled the very ocean. From the ice side, a burst of polar energy flash-froze the air into jagged, flying shards, turning breath itself into daggers.
Heat and cold clashed, twisted, and annihilated everything.
Ain screamed as molten slag engulfed her, her body hurled backward in a trail of steam and fire. Bastille, mid-strike, was caught in the inferno—his armor melting, his flesh seared, his roar lost in the chaos.
Momonga, high above, barely threw up a barrier of Haki before the polar winds caught him. Frostbitten and bloodied, he crashed through the air, his speed finally failing him.
And then… silence.
The landscape was unrecognizable. Where once stood Port Obsidian, now lay a battlefield torn between hell and tundra—one half molten, the other flash-frozen.
And in the center, Ymir-Gunnar stood… briefly.
His form was cracked and broken. Chunks of his armor were gone. Lava trickled like dying veins. Ice melted from his limbs. His golden eyes flickered like dying stars.
Then, the titan shrunk.
The ice retreated. The lava cooled. Horns crumbled to dust. With a groaning hiss, the form of the Titan dissolved, piece by agonizing piece.
What remained was Gunnar—mortal again.
He fell.
Steam rose around his shredded body. Burns, frostbite, lacerations—he bore them all. His breath was shallow. His fists still clenched in defiance.
Ain lay somewhere in the rubble, a silent, smoldering wreck. Bastille was half-buried in hardened magma, unconscious, his once-proud horned helmet split down the center, his armor warped and molten. But Momonga—trapped in a crystalline sarcophagus of Gunnar's lingering ice—remained awake. His face, barely visible through a translucent patch, was a portrait of disbelief and drained resolve. Yet behind the exhaustion, his eyes still burned with the indomitable will of a Marine.
The ice cracked.
Hairline fractures danced across the frozen shell as Momonga summoned the last reserves of his Haki, forcing life into numbed limbs. Agony flared in every muscle as he pressed against his prison. A groan of splintering ice echoed, then a shatter—a spray of jagged shards—and he staggered free.
He stood, barely. His uniform hung in tatters; one sleeve gone entirely, exposing flesh scorched by frostbite. A streak of blood ran from a gash above his brow, his breath steaming not only from the cold, but from utter exhaustion.
His eyes swept the battlefield.
Ain and Bastille were down. Zephyr and Ace—gone. Only he remained upright. And Gunnar.
The titan lay motionless in the ruins, his immense frame still. Momonga's fingers curled around the hilt of his katana, the blade battered and chipped, his grip trembling not from fear—but from the weight of his injuries and the sheer toll of survival.
"You..." he rasped, his voice like gravel dragged across steel. Each step toward Gunnar was labored, a testament to stubborn duty rather than strength. "You're too dangerous... too destructive... to be allowed to breathe. Whitebeard's legacy... breeds monsters."
Gunnar didn't move.
Flat on his back, chest rising and falling with shallow effort, the voice reached him like an echo underwater. He tried to lift his arm. Nothing responded. His body was a corpse that hadn't stopped breathing yet.
A shadow loomed. Cold steel reflected in the glint of twilight as Momonga stood over him, katana raised high. His body shook—not from hesitation, but from the limit of what it could endure.
"This is justice," he said, as if trying to convince himself. "For the world's balance…"
He brought the blade down.
But it never reached.
Gunnar's eyes snapped open.
A raw, guttural sound tore from his throat, more primal than human, a roar dredged from the deepest part of his soul. His arm jerked up—not to deflect, but to seize.
Steel met flesh.
The blade halted, locked in place by fingers caked in blood and soot, trembling but unyielding. Gunnar's grip was iron. His voice, low and cracked, rumbled through clenched teeth.
"Not... yet."
With a violent pull, he dragged Momonga forward. Off-balance, wounded, the Vice Admiral stumbled—just enough.
Gunnar's other hand, no longer blazing with lava, now little more than battered, bloodied bone, coiled into a fist.
And then—something changed.
The air around his knuckles warped. No fire. No frost. Just... cracks. Minute, trembling fractures in the very atmosphere, as if the air itself was caving under pressure. The world bent subtly around his hand—gravity skewed, silence broken only by a distant, eerie hum.
The Gura Gura no Mi had awakened once more.
No words. No theatrics. Just a single, devastating punch.
His quake-infused fist slammed into Momonga's face.
The sound was sickening—a deep, muffled crunch, like stone cracking under a mountain. Momonga's head snapped back violently, the Haki he had mustered around his face failing instantly, shattered by the fruit's seismic power.
Ripples of force radiated from the point of impact, visible distortions that wobbled the air like heat mirages. Momonga didn't scream. He didn't fly back. He simply... crumpled.
His sword dropped. His body folded like a marionette cut from its strings, hitting the ground face-first with a lifeless thud. Blood pooled beneath his shattered jaw. He was out. Broken. Done.
Gunnar stood over him, swaying like a dying tree in the wind. The quake aura around his fist flickered, then vanished. Every inch of his body cried for rest.
But he was still standing.