Chapter 258

—

At the New Marineford, a meeting was taking place where the Fleet Admiral, the New Admirals, and some important Vice Admirals were present.

"The news comes from a trusted source," Sengoku said as he stood in front of everyone. "In the Pirate Festival that happened a week ago, both the Sky Emperor and the Wrath Sin were seen wielding multiple fruit powers. Precisely, the late Admiral Kizaru's Pika-Pika no Mi, by Amon. Along with Whitebeard's Gura-Gura no Mi, wielded by Raki."

After observing the officers' shocked and disbelief filled faces, Sengoku continued speaking. "The latter, on the other hand, was seen in a different dragon form than before. It matches the description of Kaido we have, except for the fact she still had her wings."

Previously, except for the serpentine body that was covered in millions of feathers, Raki also had three pairs of wings, two pairs from her fruit and one pair from her Skypiean bloodline. But now, she only has one pair of wings.

"We can't be sure,” Sengoku continued. “But with Kaido dead and Amon known to meddle with devil fruits, there is a chance that Raki's previous fruit was replaced with Kaido's, while it could also be that the two fruits were instead merged together. Either way, it's no good news for the Marines."

"...What about the Eternal Log Pose of Laughtale?" One of the new Admirals, Ryokugyu, who had taken Tokikake's spot at the last moment, spoke. "Is the Sky Emperor in posses of that?"

With a deep sigh, Sengoku nodded. "Yes. From the looks of it… we might see the rise of the 2nd Pirate King soon enough."

The room went terribly silent at this.

—★—

"Mhm…"

Amon was in his office in Alabasta, his back leaning on the chair. But his mind was roaming around the entire world.

All around the world, dozens of his clones were at work—being controlled by his brain right this moment.

One of them was in Gion's base. Amon watched through its eyes as Gion walked inside her office with a hunched back. Soon after, he controlled that body of his to follow her, knock on the door, before going inside with the excuse of his heavenly massage technique.

By lowering the gravity around the room, therefore giving Gion the feeling of floating in the open sea, he then used a bit of his electricity to slowly calm her mind.

The easiest way to gain someone's trust was to make them feel better. In the last month, Amon's been doing exactly that with that clone of his. Though he needed to push a bit further to get the entrance leading deep inside her…

Amon retracted a bit of his attention from that body and instead focused on some other important ones… But honestly, there was nothing that important going around. He still focused on some parts though.

In Dressrosa, he told Monet he had a way to get Sugar's devil fruit out of her body without harming the girl. And so, he took the woman stuck in the body of a little girl to a different room.

Amon had ordered a clone of Sugar from Germa-66, and as Amon took Sugar to a room, another one of him brought Sugar clone to Dressrosa.

...There, he killed the original Sugar who's fruit took a few minutes to reincarnate—but when it did, her body didn't look like a child's anymore. She had immediately grown into an adult woman, though still dead.

Then Amon simply vaporised her body into nothingness using extreme heat.

After that, he put the clone Sugar, who had an adult's body too—since she lacked the original's devil fruit from the get-go—in the original's place. This wasn't exactly a mindless clone, just like Urouge. It even had a soul, that he confirmed with his Soul-Soul fruit. It was still Sugar, had the same exact personality, except she lacked the Toy-Toy fruit and she was as loyal as a dog to Amon and his words.

For reference, that's the same for Urouge too. The new and old one's souls are certainly different, but they have the same memories. Truthfully, that's all what Amon cared about for people that wasn't someone he truly cared about.

Next, Monet was certainly happy seeing her sister not stuck to a child's body anymore. But Amon didn't care about that and focused on his other clones.

Now, the actual important part began.

Except for Luffy, who Amon couldn't reach, the Straw Hats of this timeline had 8 more people.

Honey Queen, Zoro, Nami, Ussop, Sanji, Alice, Franky, and Bartolomeo.

The others were all original members of Straw Hat pirates. Except for Honey Queen and Bartolomeo, who joined Straw Hats by a pure stroke of luck. However, along with Honey Queen, now Amon had another spy in there—Franky.

As Amon said before, he had brainwashed Franky back when he retrieved Pluton's blueprints, so now Franky was but a puppet. Even Honey Queen didn't know about this, which was because Amon wanted to see exactly how loyal she was.

Fortunately for her, from the report the cyborg had given, she's been a perfect little spy for the past 10 months she's been with the Straw Hats.

That's why she was being rewarded in another room in Alabasta.

However, the spies didn't matter anymore. Not now, when Amon had killed Ace and made an enemy out of Luffy. On a whole, the Straw Hats did not matter at all. This time around, the commanders of the Revolutionary Army were the ones who notified them about the "3D2Y", but Amon planned to take over the world in less than the said two years. In other words, the Straw Hats would never meet anyway.

Except for Honey Queen, who Amon retrieved from a desolate island where she was sent by Kuma, the other Straw Hats were in the exact same islands they weren't sent to in canon.

The only other changes were the new recruits, Alice and Bartolomeo.

Alice was sent to an island filled with teddy bear-looking monsters, while Bartolomeo was on an island where earthquakes happened every hour.

Amon had brought both of them from there. Bartolomeo was killed because of his useful devil fruit, and the spoiled brat–who was Alice–was simply kept captive. Amon would need her if by any chance, he needed to blackmail Sengoku.

Zoro was in Mihawk's place, Ussop was on the island filled with large bugs, and Sanji was in Ivankov's Kamabakka Kingdom. Nami… on the other hand, was in the same Sky Island she was sent in canon.

She was on a Sky Island…

There were hundreds if not thousands of sky islands present in the world, and the island Nami was sent to was far far from Skypiea. That was surely the reason why Kuma had even dared to send her to the Sky, but still… Monkey D. Dragon dared to think he could put one of his son's companions under Amon's nose and except he'd do nothing to her…

'Then again, not like putting her anywhere else would have mattered anyway. This just helped to spite me a bit.'

Amon had decided before when his Goro-Goro awakened, he doesn't need Luffy's plot armour anymore. That was why he even killed Ace, to begin with. That's why he was hunting down Shanks, too. In that regard, eliminating the future obstacles that are the StrawHats wouldn't be a bad move right now.

But he was saving them so that he could lure out Luffy from the hole, therefore bringing both Shanks and Dragon out too.

In that plan of his, poor Nami who just happened to be sent to the Sky out of bad luck, was going to play the same role of the Celestial Dragon whore who died in the destruction of Skypiea. Meaning, he needed to build a brothel in Alabasta, where the King was too much of a nice guy to have built one beforehand.

–Suddenly, A knock fell on the door of his room.

"Come in." He said just as the door opened and a crying Vivi ran inside.

"Amon!!" Vivi's hair was messy, as she cried. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes were red. "C-can't you sense what's happening around the palace?!"

Of course, he could, but he didn't go. Because...

"M-my father is dying!"

...He had planned it himself.

—★—

Vivi led Amon to Cobra's room and ordered the other doctors and Royal officials to clear the room in an instant.

Then, she crouched down beside the sleeping King of Alabasta, Cobra.

"Please, heal him." She begged Amon with her eyes watery.

Amon stared at the scene with a well-maintained shocked face.

"It's at the last stage…?" he asked in disbelief. "I saw him last night, he was entirely fine. Then how did things turn so bad in less than a day?"

For years, Amon's been planning Cobra's death so that Vivi could rise to the throne. But now he was in Alabasta, he needed the throne for himself. And he needed it as soon as possible. Just simply asking Cobra might have done the trick, but Amon would feel much safer when the Nobles and every other citizen in the country saw him as the sole ruler, instead.

So, he's been messing with the medicine of Cobra for the last month he's been here. Cobra has been really stressed with the recent developments around the world, so the worsening of his health from high pressure and stuff that the medicines enhanced by many folds, was reaching its peak for the last few days.

Today, from the looks of it, the man's going to die. And that wouldn't be suspicious at all.

Amon crouched down with a frown on his face. He put his palm on the man's forehead as his frown deepened. "My mind was busy with the clones around the world, so my Observation Haki couldn't see this before, but… it's too late Vivi." Then in a low, regretful voice, he muttered, "If only I was notified 5 minutes earlier..."

"B-but!" Vivi grabbed his shoulders, her tears suddenly flowing like a fountain. "Y-you made the Skypieans regrow limbs, regrow their entire lower half. I-in fact, you brought Raki back from the dead, didn't you?! W-why can't you do something to help father?!"

Amon stared at her with well-hidden annoyance before sighing in regret. This was why revival wasn't a power everyone should be aware of.

"First of all," he slowly pushed Vivi's hands away from his shoulders. "Raki had a clone prepared, I just had to transfer her consciousness to that clone. Your father, on the other hand, doesn't have such a clone prepared. I can transfer his consciousness to another body, but that wouldn't be your father anymore as his consciousness would merge with the other present in the body."

The last part was a lie. But Vivi's mind was in such a chaos that she wouldn't be able to see through.

"T-then just heal his body." She cried. "As I said, you healed Tsumi's entire lower body, didn't you?"

Amon sighed. "Regrowing body parts doesn't mean I can cure illness." That was another lie. "If I could do that, why do you think Marco, the previous user of the Phoenix fruit, never cured Whitebeard's illness?"

She didn't know Amon had awakened the fruit, only he and the Sins knew about it.

"Then…" Vivi's wide eyes were streaming tears as she bit her lips. "Is there no other way?"

Amon stayed silent before sighing deeply and bringing Vivi to a hug.

"Vivi, nobody is immortal. One day, you, I, everyone will die. I will of course make sure you live as long as those people from the Giant race, but even you'd come to see the end one day." Amon's tone was sincere. "Sometimes, you just need to accept the inevitable."

After a long moment of stillness, from Amon's chest, Vivi's cry broke the blanket of silence that had been covering Alabasta's cold night.

Amon on the other hand…

'Guess it's time to build the brothel for everyone's favourite burglar.'

…Planned his next moves.

—★—

It's been 2 months since then, but Amon hasn't brought Nami to Alabasta yet. If he did some things immediately after Cobra's death, Vivi might get suspicious. Which would be a pain since he didn't have anyone else of the Nefertari bloodline to run Pluton.

So, he focused on other things in the meantime.

The outside world was in chaos, but the target had shifted. After Skypiea's destruction the Enherjars were being suppressed, killed, and massacred. However, after a mere 3 days as Amon took out Kaido, the tide had changed dramatically.

It's been 3 months since then. The chaos hadn't entirely calmed down even now.

After all, even with Skypiea destroyed, Amon was the richest and strongest man in the entire world. So, after he had toned down the chaos enough for his people to take a breather in the first month, he ordered his people to wield chaos as a weapon, instead.

With the incident of the Pirate Festival, as the news that Amon now held the Log Pose to Laughtale traversed through the entire world, everyone had their eyes on him.

People joined his side like a Beehive, and in mere three months, he now had 250 thousand people under his wing.

30 thousand of them were once Kaido's people. Almost all of the pirates in the Beast Pirates, along with the Flying Five, had turned their loyalty to Amon immediately as he had asked. He knew they weren't exactly loyal, but it's not as if he needed all his people ready to give their life for him.

However, even though he was rumoured to be the strongest man to ever live in history, many still chose his opposite side too.

New pirates started to appear, the Revolutionary Army's number exceeded millions—though the majority of them were normal humans—while the Marines started to gain new recruits as well.

So, after Amon's people started to retaliate largely, there was an unannounced war going on all around the world. However today, on Amon's birthday, he was going to make the war official.

Amon was never the one to care about birthdays, but it seemed simply sophisticated to do something special today—which he decided was to announce war against the World Government.

But the question was—how?

It took him three whole seconds to think of the best choice, and so, he went above Impel Down.

Bzzt~

Teleporting in the sky, Amon observed the tower hidden below the sea for a few minutes. Then knowing that the life of the criminals didn't matter at all, he raised his arm in the air.

Commanded by him, lightning started to crackle on the clouds before the entire sky darkened. Slowly, but surely, rain started to fall while Amon gathered lightning in a single spot above his raised hand in the form of a ball. He pushed his own lightning inside, which worked to strengthen the ball many times over, before he poured in a lot of Conqueror's Haki, as well.

Like that, the ball took a whole 30 seconds to form as the Marine guards below started to yell in horror and terror.

As if pleased at their scream, the bright purple ball turned and twisted, as it started to expand. Seconds later, the ball took the size of an entire town as it still roamed in the sky above Amon's hand. By then the purple colour had changed to pure black too.

This technique was Amon's version of «Raigo». Capable of taking down islands in a single shot, and Amon could spam it for days if he wished.

With a swift wave of his hand, Amon threw the ball of destruction to Impel Down.

It slowly went down from the sky towards the sea where the entrance of the prison was peeking from the sea.

Amon simply watched.

Almost half a minute later, the ball slowly sank into the sea as it came in contact with the tower hidden underwater, slowly engulfing it whole.

There was a long silence for a moment before a huge explosion of purple and black lightning happened. Only after the minute-long explosion had calmed down, could Amon confirm that the toughest Prison in the world, Impel Down… was erased from existence.

Before leaving, Amon used his fancy lightning powers to manipulate the clouds to form a message that would stay floating for days.

"Let's play the final game, shall we?"

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Author's Note: The Final War is here! Things will get real dirty.