The air on Ikki Island was a choking soup of ash, sulfur, and the raw, palpable energy of two colossal, raging titans. The earthen colossus, the Witch's final, desperate avatar, stood its ground, its obsidian crown scraping the storm-wracked sky, its milky eyes burning. Before it, Titan-Ymir, now crackling with the stolen, corrupted energy of the devoured bear-constructs, was a terrifying spectacle of frost and fire, its primordial rage reaching a fever pitch.
"It ends now, abomination!" the earthen titan's voice boomed, a chorus of grinding rock and the Witch's fading shriek. It ripped two colossal pillars of stone from its own torso, wielding them like titanic clubs. "**Pillars of Ruin!**" It charged, each step a localized earthquake, swinging its earthen weapons with devastating force.
Ymir met the charge with a roar that was both a blizzard's howl and a volcano's bellow. It didn't bother with weapons. Its own body was the ultimate armament. Its Inferno Gauntlet blazed, and its icy arm crackled with cryo-energy.
The stone pillars slammed down. Ymir crossed its arms, the molten gauntlet meeting one pillar, the icy forearm the other. "**Elemental Aegis!**" The impact was catastrophic. The stone pillar striking the Inferno Gauntlet exploded into superheated shrapnel and molten slag. The pillar striking the icy arm shattered into a million frozen fragments. Ymir barely flinched, the contradictory energies absorbing and deflecting the colossal blow.
Then, Ymir counter-attacked. Its Inferno Gauntlet,, pulsed with a sickly red-tinged fire. It punched forward, a straight, brutal strike aimed at the earthen titan's chest. "**Corrupted Conflagration!**" The impact sent a shockwave rippling through the titan's earthen form, red-black fire erupting from the point of contact, consuming the rock and soil like.
The earthen titan roared in pain, stumbling back, chunks of its body falling away, smoking and sizzling. It retaliated by stomping its massive foot. "**Ikki's Grasp!**" The very ground around Ymir writhed. Corrupted roots, thick as pythons and sharp as spears, erupted from the earth, attempting to ensnare Ymir's legs, to drag it down.
Ymir responded by slamming both its fists into the ground. "**Frostfire Nova!**" A wave of absolute zero spread from its icy fist, freezing the grasping roots solid. Simultaneously, a wave of pure, molten heat spread from its molten fist, incinerating the frozen roots and turning the very ground beneath them into a glassy, obsidian plain. The contradictory forces ripped the earth apart.
"They're tearing the island apart molecule by molecule, yoi!" Marco yelled, his voice strained as he and the other onlookers were forced to constantly shift their positions on the Moby Dick and the few remaining stable patches of Ikki to avoid the cataclysmic fallout.
The earthen titan, now visibly damaged, its form ragged and unstable, seemed to gather itself for a final, desperate assault. Its entire body began to glow with an intense, sickly green light. The sky above darkened further, and the remaining volcanic peaks of Ikki erupted with renewed, suicidal fury. It was drawing upon every last vestige of the island's corrupted life force. "**Final Lament of the Land!**" It raised its arms, and the very island around them seemed to respond. Massive shards of the island itself – chunks of rock, solidified lava flows, entire uprooted forests – were torn from the ground and levitated, forming a deadly halo of debris around the earthen titan. Then, with a final, earth-shattering roar, it launched them all at Ymir, a hailstorm of apocalyptic proportions.
Ymir stood its ground, its green eyes blazing with an almost sentient fury. It didn't try to dodge. It didn't try to block with its arms. Instead, it took a deep, shuddering breath. The air around it shimmered, distorted.
And then, Titan-Ymir punched the air.
Not with its icy fist, not with its molten fist. Just… punched.
CRACK-BOOM!
The sound was sickeningly familiar to the Whitebeard Pirates. It was the sound of the world breaking.
The air itself cracked in front of Ymir's fist, spiderwebbing with invisible fissures, just like when Whitebeard unleashed his Gura Gura no Mi.
The incoming hail of island shards, the very Lament of the Land, stopped. Not just stopped, but began to vibrate violently, then shatter mid-air, pulverized by the invisible, world-shaking force.
Whitebeard, watching from the Moby Dick, whispered, "Yes… he did it again…"
Teach, his eyes wide with manic glee, screamed, "ZEHAHAHAHA!"
The earthen titan, its ultimate attack nullified, its power source fading, could only watch in dawning horror.
Ymir didn't stop. It reared back, its colossal form coiling like a spring, every ounce of its primordial power, every flicker of its icy fire and molten rage, coalescing into its right fist. The air around that fist shattered before the blow even launched, the very fabric of space seeming to tear under the strain.
Then, with a roar that dwarfed all previous roars, a sound that promised utter annihilation, Ymir unleashed its final, devastating punch.
It wasn't aimed at the air. It wasn't aimed at the sky.
It was aimed downwards. Directly at the heart of the earthen titan, and by extension, at the very core of Ikki Island.
The impact was absolute.
There was no explosion in the conventional sense. Instead, the earthen titan simply… ceased to exist. It was pulverized, atomized, driven into the bedrock by a force so immense it defied comprehension.
And Ikki Island screamed.
The replicated Gura Gura no Mi, channeled through Ymir's colossal, frostfire form, struck the island's core like the fist of an angry god. The ground didn't just crack or split; it disintegrated. The entire landmass, already ravaged, buckled and imploded. The volcanic peaks collapsed inwards. The lava flows were snuffed out as the sea rushed in, not to flood, but to consume.
With a final, deafening groan that echoed across the now empty stretch of ocean, Ikki Island, its curse, its treasures, its monstrous guardians, and its very foundations, shattered into a million pieces and sank beneath the boiling, turbulent waves. Where a festering wound on the ocean had been, there was now only steam, churning water, and the faint, dissipating green glow of corrupted energy being swallowed by the abyss.
Ymir stood, momentarily, amidst the maelstrom of Ikki's demise, its colossal form the only thing left standing where an island had been. Then, as the last vestiges of Ikki vanished, it too began to falter, the immense expenditure of power, the replicated earthquakes, finally taking their toll. Its fiery side dimmed, its icy side began to crack, and with a low, fading groan, the monstrous titan began to shrink, to dissolve, the form of the child Boy slowly, agonizingly, re-emerging from the dissipating elemental chaos.