In truth, the mission of these CP0 members was specifically to deal with the Elior Pirates. Weevil might not be able to take them all on by himself — but Elior wasn't alone. Law and the others were here too.
"Proceed according to the mission!"
The CP0 leader, Kaeya, spoke coldly. All of them wore masks, concealing their true identities.
Elior, however, could sense it — especially the man in front. He was no ordinary fighter.
At Kaeya's command, the other CP0 agents nodded and split off in different directions. At the same time, Weevil charged forward — his objective, as Elior had instructed, was to eliminate the CP0 agents — except for the one leading them.
"Sinners like you pirates have no place running wild in the holy institutions under the Celestial Dragons' divine rule!"
Kaeya attacked, reaching Elior in the blink of an eye with terrifying speed, a powerful aura bursting from his body.
He launched his assault.
A Devil Fruit user!
And his power… sheets of paper appeared out of thin air.
Elior's instincts flared. Something about this ability felt strange.
The paper slashed through the air with a sharp hiss, fast enough to cause audible friction with the wind.
These sheets… were razor-sharp.
A wall of ice rose before Elior, but as the paper hit, the ice began to crack and crumble under the relentless assault.
This wasn't ordinary paper — it was infused with destructive power.
"Let me enlighten you — the Paramecia-type Paper-Paper Fruit. Fully awakened."
The man spoke with smug confidence—bordering on arrogance.
"Controlling paper, huh?"
From behind the fractured ice wall, a sharp ice spike launched out, catching Kaeya off guard and blasting him away.
That same move had been blocked earlier by Tsuru, but Kaeya took the hit directly, like a living shield.
"Overconfidence" Elior said coldly, "isn't exactly a virtue."
"CP0? You're nothing but loyal hounds to the Celestial Dragons — worse than even the Admirals."
Elior charged. Just before reaching Kaeya, he passed a female Marine and snatched the sword from her hip — without hesitation, he coated the blade in Armament Haki. This blade felt far more comfortable than his previous ice blade.
More balanced — not ideal, but good enough for now. It would do until he found something that better suited his swordsmanship.
The Marine was Tashigi. The blade was Shigure.
"My sword!"
Tashigi gasped, instinctively reaching for it—until she realized it was Elior who had taken Shigure, her shock overtook her indignation.
"Tashigi, focus on the regular pirates! Don't worry about him!"
Captain Hina called out quickly, thinking Tashigi was trying to retrieve her weapon.
"But Captain Hina, that guy—!"
Hina snapped,
"That kind of opponent is way beyond us right now!"
She was right. A sword wasn't worth risking your life over.
By this point, Elior had already infused Shigure with Haki and launched himself at Kaeya.
The Paper-Paper Fruit… and it had awakened?
Elior was curious to see how powerful an awakened Devil Fruit user really was. It was said that awakened abilities could influence the environment itself—like how Doflamingo had transformed the ground into a sea of razor wire.
Kaeya, still dazed from the earlier blow, staggered to his feet.
"You've pissed me off, brat!"
With power rivaling that of an Admiral and the title of strongest among CP0, Kaeya had every reason to be confident — especially with an awakened Devil Fruit ability.
Behind him, a storm of paper floated in the air, resembling the looming energy of Kizaru's Yasakani no Magatama technique. With a wave of Kaeya's right hand, the paper barrage flew toward Elior.
But Elior now wielded a stronger weapon, and his sword aura had intensified. Shigure now coursed with a swirling dark red energy as he unleashed a massive crescent-shaped slash.
When the two powers collided midair, the explosion was violent.
Each sheet of paper carried explosive force, shaking the air and tearing apart the ground around them.
Elior charged again, ignoring another barrage of paper. Four swift slashes sent crescent-shaped waves through the air, shredding the explosive sheets and creating a deafening blast. Smoke and debris filled the area.
The moment after he sliced through the paper, Elior burst through the smoke and drove a powerful kick straight into Kaeya's chest. It was no accident — he had aimed precisely for it.
"I've already prepared my defense, you blasphemer! You'll pay for challenging the sacred authority of the Celestial Dragons!"
"Sacred authority?" Elior sneered. "Sounds like you're ready to die with your masters."
With a surge of force from his leg, he sent Kaeya flying dozens of meters, arcing through the air and crashing into the plaza below.
"He's in the plaza now!"
Without hesitation, Elior followed.
That arrogant Celestial Dragon lapdog had disgusted him — Elior knew he needed to finish him off here and now.
Shigure was now fully infused with Elior's strength as a master swordsman.
He was ready to bring everything to bear and end it.
"He's in the plaza!"
Countless Marines, including Sengoku and Garp, turned their attention to Elior.
There he stood, atop Marineford's steel fortress walls — rebuilt after the Golden Lion's rampage. The walls had risen when the Whitebeard Pirates charged in, and not even the Tremor-Tremor Fruit could easily break them.
The Marine was dead set on trapping Whitebeard's crew here.
Standing atop the towering wall, Elior surveyed the rising smoke, the chaos of pirates and Marines clashing below—then dove in without a second thought.
[Ding. Sign-in location detected. Would you like to sign in]
"So the plaza was the sign-in trigger?"
He'd been fighting here for nearly an hour without a prompt, and now suddenly it appeared.
"Sign in."
[Sign-in successful. Reward: Ability from A Certain Magical Index world — Railgun. [Note: Ability complex—further study recommended.]
"A Railgun, huh?"
Elior felt another surge of immense power awaken inside him. Power — he could never have enough of it.
The stronger, the better.
Without power, how could he command loyalty? How could he defeat enemies without resorting to desperate measures?
Now, Elior felt stronger than ever.
The power… was ready to erupt again.
For a moment, he felt invincible.
Was it just an illusion?
Maybe. But it felt damn real.
Railgun was insanely strong — surpassing Enel's current mastery of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
Enel could control up to 200 million volts. Railgun? A billion volts — effortlessly.
That's the difference.
At least five times more powerful.
And Elior, knowing just how terrifying Enel's thunder manipulation was, couldn't help but hunger for that power.
Railgun also manipulated electricity — and as with his use of the Demon's Extract, Elior wouldn't limit himself to someone else's fighting style. He'd innovate—make it his own.
With this new power, he could recreate Railgun's techniques and develop new ones like Enel's.
Call it adaptation. Call it evolution.
Elsewhere, Kaeya returned, furious after being twice humiliated.
He radiated immense power, surrounded now by flocks of flying paper cranes.
Whoosh!
With Shigure crackling with dark red aura, Elior vanished.
The next moment—clash!
A single slash shredded the oncoming paper cranes, triggering a thunderous explosion.
Dust and debris exploded from the impact, and the ground shattered.
Behind Kaeya, long strips of paper slithered forward like serpents, similar to how Doflamingo wielded his threads.
They were thin—but moved like lightning.
Clang!
Elior struck with his sword — and to his shock, the paper wasn't even torn.
"What the hell? That paper's tougher than steel?"
He knew the force he put behind that strike — it should have cleaved through anything.
Doflamingo's threads, after all, could pierce even Luffy's Armament Haki. That's what Devil Fruit mastery could do.
Even the seemingly weakest fruits could become terrifying in the hands of someone with talent.
Just look at how Doflamingo handled the String-String Fruit, or Katakuri with the Mochi-Mochi Fruit — ridiculous names, monstrous results.
Talent made all the difference.
The Gum-Gum Fruit? Trash, without Luffy's protagonist plot armor and creative evolution.
And now, facing this CP0 leader, Elior knew — this wasn't going to be easy.
He clashed again and again, his blade meeting the enemy's paper strips in a chorus of metallic collisions.
Like steel against steel.
"This is the power of the Paper-Paper Fruit! Far beyond your imagination! Kid, die!"
Kaeya roared, and behind him, it looked as if some crazed sorcerer had opened Gate of Babylon—a swarm of paper sheets surged forth like pythons, all aimed at Elior.
BOOM—
A violent explosion echoed through the air.
Countless sheets of paper surged toward Elior, and he slashed each of them apart one by one with his blade.
The thunderous blasts rang out across Marine Headquarters' plaza, and many onlookers couldn't help but turn toward the source of the chaos — toward Elior.
Naturally, Sengoku's eyes had returned to Elior the moment he reappeared.
He had, it seemed, temporarily subdued Kizaru.
And now he was fighting the strongest agent of CP0.
Sengoku, of course, knew who Kaeya was. In terms of status, Kaeya's authority — directly under the Celestial Dragons — arguably outranked even the Fleet Admiral himself.
Elsewhere, someone else couldn't take her eyes off Elior.
"What a powerful man..."
Hancock's eyes shimmered with fascination.
Meanwhile, the explosions continued to thunder, dust swirling upward, and soon both figures vanished from view—swallowed by the thick smoke and debris.
"So, the warm-up's over, huh? Celestial Dragon lapdog."
Kaeya could only hear Elior's calm, composed voice echoing through the dust.
Sizzle—
A sharp crackling filled the air — intense electrical energy surged, and through the smoke came a barrage of lightning bolts that exploded outward with a massive shockwave, knocking Kaeya back again before he could even steady himself.
And in the next instant — before Kaeya could recover — an enormous slash tore through the smoke.
It came like a hawk's lethal dive — dark red, splitting the air, rending the ground, and roaring toward Kaeya with terrifying force.
The slash struck him directly.
He was flung into the air like a severed kite, sent flying helplessly.
But the slash didn't stop there. It continued to rip through the air and ground, dyeing the battlefield in crimson energy.
The sky above had already turned dark with storm clouds, stirred up by the war — casting Marineford into an eerie twilight.
The crimson slash reflected off the stormy sky, making the entire area glow red.
Eventually, the slash slammed into the fortress wall—reinforced to be harder than steel—where it exploded with a deafening roar, metal screeching as if torn apart. The sound echoed for more than ten seconds before fading.
As for the plaza itself, a massive trench had been carved into the ground. While not quite as colossal as the ones Whitebeard created with the Tremor-Tremor Fruit in the original war, the sight of this three-meter-wide chasm still made every onlooker's skin crawl.