"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH—!"
THUNK!
"—AAHoh hey, I'm alive."
Glancing behind him, Leo could see that a tree had arrested his impromptu flight, with nary a scratch on the bark.
"Tough tree…" he remarked. Then the pain in his hind flippers hit. "Ow, fuck! Jeez, this guy hits almost as hard as Zoro!"
"Yaaar!"
At the sound of that voice, Leo turned his attention back to his limping opponent, crossing his blades in time to catch John's twin sabres. The impact made his swords creak ominously and sent shockwaves down his body. Shockwaves that hit the tree he was still balanced against promptly blew out the back of the trunk.
"You've… got to be… kidding me!" the dugong ground out as he struggled to hold the zombie at bay.
Seconds passed, neither fighter gaining an advantage. John was too strong for Leo to push back, but the tree gave him something to brace against. However…
'Can't… keep this up… forever…' Leo thought. 'Dunno what's gonna break first… me… the tree… or my swords… but something's gonna break…'
In the event, the dugong was beaten to the punch by John… flexing. Yes. Flexing his pectoral muscles, Leo noted puncture wounds in the corpse.
'So someone turned the bastard into a pincushion…' he deduced. 'If they were alive, I'd buy them a drink… and then bury their head in the table! Though...' Leo narrowed his eyes as he noticed several other distinctly different scars moving. 'Huh, looks like he was shot, too. I wonder if the bullets are still in the holes.'
Strangely enough, it appeared that the bullet holes were opening and closing in time to his… flexing…
'Oh, you can't be serious!'
Hastily pulling his swords back, Leo dropped to the ground, and none too soon. With one final, gargantuan flex, the bullets flew out of their holes to hit the tree.
The dugong had no time to process the sheer insanity of what he'd just witnessed, because finally, he had at least something of an opening. From his prone position, he stabbed both blades up, aiming for the neck. They didn't reach; Zombie John leaned over, the blades skittering off his voluminous coat, with the tears—
"Okay, that's just not fair," Leo whined at the metal plates now visible under the coat. Further whining was cut off by a frantic roll away from the blades that tore into the soil. Tail catching the ground, he Rip Tided away, back into the trees.
"Okay…" Leo panted as he leaned around the trunk and watched John come about. "So that was probably a one-time thing. I hope. He's still stronger than me, just as fast in melee, and an immortal zombie. With armour." He sighed, hanging his head. "Thank God Soundbite isn't here, because the only possible description of this situation is that it bites." The dugong only allowed himself to remain melancholic for a moment before rapping his hilts over his skull-shell. "Okay, back in the game! Think, Leo, think! Weaknesses, what are his weaknesses?"
Turning back to the shambling zombie, he noted with some surprise that it was, in fact, actually shambling, unlike the rest of the cadavers he'd seen that night. Every step dragged the left leg along the ground, despite the apparent functionality of the limb.
"So, slow to pursue. That's… actually pretty useful," Leo noted. "With Rip Tide, I can open the distance easily. Which would be useful if I actually had a ranged attack worth a damn!"
Suddenly, a peripheral glint of light snapped the Dugong out of his outrage, and that allowed a hasty duck to save him from becoming a head shorter. A poor tree that slid off its stump and crashed to the ground in front of him only emphasized the point.
This time, though, Leo attacked rather than defended once his opponent was within melee range. To his frustration, this was no more effective than it had been before. Zombie John's defence was ironclad, parries and well-timed sways deflecting the attacks.
"Damn it!" he roared, clashing his blades into a crossed formation. "Cross of the—aghk!"
The ace-attack was aborted by a flap of John's coat slamming into Leo's face. Due to its armoured nature, it wasn't unlike being slapped with a two-by-four. Or Nami.
Stumbling back, Leo tried to Rip Tide away again. This time, though, Zombie John reached into his coat and threw several knives that the dugong had to deflect lest he get skewered. Not only did this cut the Rip Tide short, but it also drew his swords into an entirely different guard.
"I call this attack 'Boot to the Face'!" the zombie cackled as he did just that.
Treaded soles met the dugong's face. The soles won, sending Leo flying again. Not very far, though. John, unslinging his coat with the ease of far too much practice, proceeded to catch his opponent in it and wrap the sleeves around his neck.
"A fit punishment for a pirate," the zombie general leered down at his opponent, his foot planted on his shell as he started to pull with all his might. "Wouldn't ya say, matey?"
Due to his position, all Leo could do was scrabble at the cloth wrapping around his neck, which was constricting his neck in ways that were decidedly uncomfortable. The lack of air, while unnerving, was manageable due to both his species' habitat of choice and Boss's own spartan training, but far more pressing was the fact that if he didn't know any better, he'd swear he could hear his spine creaking.
Unbidden, one of Chopper's more disturbing rants sprang to mind. This one had been concerning, given the various means of execution the Marines used. And from what he remembered, the true cause of death from hanging by the neck wasn't asphyxiation, but rather—!
Leo hastily slammed all of his strength into maintaining his Shell Body, but he could already tell that it was but a momentary reprieve: after all, where his own strength was limited and waning, the revenant's well of strength was fathomless.
But still, bleak as the situation was, Leo didn't panic. Rather, he thought back to his master's lessons and focused on one rule in particular: That even if the enemy seemed invincible, there was always a weak angle to exploit.
Leo glanced back and forth along the sleeves that threatened to end his life. The knot itself was impenetrable to his flippers, as was the left sleeve... but the right? Oh, now the right was the ticket to life and liberty, tattered and torn as it was, and all Leo had to do was grab at the most off-kilter patch he could find and rip.
The cloth promptly fell apart under his flipper, and a hasty Rip Tide found him far away again, propped up on his swords and wheezing, even as his mind flew a mile an hour.
'That... That sleeve wasn't a coincidence,' Leo thought to himself as he glanced at his opponent. 'Looking back at the earlier clashes... yeah, yeah, he definitely has a weaker guard on his right side.' The dugong grimaced as John slowly and calmly put his jacket back on, tutting at the missing sleeve. 'Not that that helps me, considering how a cracked aegis is still an aegis, damn it all...' Hanging his head, he shook it despondently. 'I gotta do the ranged attack, don't I?'
For a few seconds, he just wallowed in the self-pity, and then brushed it aside, standing straight again. Another blur of Rip Tide, and he was positioned to the right of John, who was still as slow as ever.
As the zombie shambled towards him again, Leo raised his swords high and to the right, pointing them skyward, parallel to each other. More importantly, he shut his eyes and listened.
He heard the wind rustling through the trees; John's foot scraping in the dirt and his clothes rustling together; even, in the distance, the sounds of fighting. The sounds washed over him, penetrated deep into his very soul. And, at the edge of the blades, he heard it. The air moves over the blade, making the metal sing.
'So, that's how it works.'
Opening his eyes, he saw that John was now making a beeline for him. Well, as much of a beeline as a rotting corpse with a limp can pull off. The point is, he wasn't deviating at all.
"Gulf…!" he cried out, before bringing his blades down. "Stream!"
Air and steel sang in harmony, twin blades of wind sprang into existence, merging into a singular force of destruction…
SKRANG!
Even as, before Leo's own horrified gaze, his actual blades shattered like so much fine crystal.
Still, as tragic as the turn of fate was, it didn't alter the intensity of his attack. John tried to dodge, he really did, but with a gimpy leg and quite a bit of armour weighing him down, all he managed to evacuate was his torso. His left-hand limbs, however, were hit full force. The arm, while cut to the bone, remained viable; the leg, however... well, for all that Captain John was a world-renowned pirate, there were very few pirates, be they dead or alive, world-famous or a nobody, who could fight with just one leg.
Leo stayed wary for a moment, keeping a close eye on the downed pirate for over a minute before finally allowing himself to relax, the tension ebbing out of his being—and with it, the adrenaline that was keeping the pain away. "Ow! Owowowowoooow, my tail!" he yowled, massaging the aching limb. "I really need to start building up these muscles, because mine are nowhere near strong enough for this shi—!"
"Yar har har… yaaaar har har har haaaar…"
Leo tensed up as a laugh wafted through the air, and promptly scrambled for any shards of his blades he could grab. "Shitshitshitshi—!"
"Ahhh, cool yer flippers, ya grubby worrywart," John wheezed, waving his hand dismissively. "Ah'm done. Going back to the locker soon enough, of that, ye can be assured. I'm just…" He chuckled, his grin widening minutely. "Relieved, I suppose ye could say."
Warily eyeing the immobile corpse, Leo palmed one of the shards and hopped over to the zombie, making sure to (hopefully) stay out of its reach. "What… do you mean by 'relieved'?"
"Yar…" John sighed, tilting his head back to stare into the mists. "…have ye ever heard of me, lad? Have ye ever heard of 'Long' John 'Silverteeth'?"
"Weeeell…" Leo winced, glancing to the side.
"Bah, 'tis no surprise," John shrugged carelessly, his empty gaze staring at nothing. "As ye can see, I ain't exactly young. Well, anyway, lemme make it simple for ye: In case ye couldn't already tell, I was a true pirate's pirate when I was alive. I looted, I pillaged, I swashed more buckles than I could count… from Reverse Mountain to the gates o' Mariejois, I was the scurviest, saltiest, most treacherous sea dog to ever sail…"
John's desiccated lips twisted into a scowl as he started poking at the holes in his torso. "And in the end, it all came back to bite me in the arse when I went so far as to betray my own crew. Robbed 'em blind and stowed the treasure away, where only I knew. I thought I could escape, thought I could live out my golden years in luxury…"
Leo's gaze slowly trailed down to the deceased swashbuckler's sieve of a chest. "But clearly, that didn't happen."
"Arr…" John growled morosely. "One of the most feared men o' me generation, an honest to god demon made flesh… and I was put down by me own mates, like a DAMN DOG!" the pirate suddenly roared furiously, slamming his fist into the ground. "THAT'S NO WAY TO DIE, DAMN IT ALL! THAT'S NO WAY TO END IT! TA, TA LEAVE THIS LIFE! I WAS SOMEBODY DAMN IT! I WAS FAMOUS, I WAS IMPORTANT, I WAS—! I was… I…" The old pirate slowly trailed off, his voice drawing down into a whisper before he let his head hang in shame. "I… was a pirate's pirate… a man's man… and they didn't even let me die like one…"
Leo's gaze lightened up ever so slightly. "Death in combat."
"The only true and noble way a man can die…" John nodded solemnly before allowing a leer to cross his face. "Well, that or in bed at the age o' eighty with me 'Long John' in—!"
"Yeahyeahyeah, we all know that one!" Leo hastily cut the pirate off, his face all but glowing.
"Yarharhar!" John cackled in amusement, eventually trailing off into a melancholy sigh. "Arr… anyway… Ye gave me the second death I never got in life, and for that I thank thee… and I've got a few things I'd like to give ye. Not like I'll be takin' them with me anyways, aye?"
"Eh…" Leo glanced to the side at the battle raging a little ways off (and the zombie that flew screaming into the air) before giving the pirate captain a nod. "Alright, but make it fast."
The zombie inclined his head, then jerked it to the side at where his swords had landed. "First off, me blades. They're just a pair o' no-named buggers, but they've got spine and spirit. Feel free ta use mine until ya find some new mates a yer own, savvy?"
"Ah…" Leo glanced at the sabres uncertainly. "Are you… Sure, they won't—?"
"What, 'mind'? HA!" John barked with a dash of honest humour. "They're pirate blades, lad! They don't give half a damn about who's swingin' them, just that they're in the thick of it. 'Sides, ye've got me blessing, it's fine... and ye'r in the thick of it as is, do ye really have the time to be picky?"
"…fair 'nuff, what else?" Leo waved for the zombie to continue.
"Second," John complied with a grunt, sliding a circlet from his arm and holding it out. "Me treasure. This here mark will guide ya to it. Learned too late that I can't take it with me… but maybe ye can put it to some good use. Better than letting it rot in some cave, aye?"
The swordless swords-dugong gave the mark a doubtful look but still accepted it without a word. After all, best to possibly have a lead on the treasure of the century to appease Nami than to wind up empty-handed at the wrong moment.
"Arrr, alright, alright, that's good... anyways, last of all…" John grunted as he slowly dragged himself into a sitting position, wincing at the phantom pains that were shooting through his dead nerves. "A final piece of advice. A true pirate… a true man…"
With remarkable speed, his good arm reached into his jacket and withdrew a flintlock pistol. "DIES FIGHTING!" he roared, his voice full of vim and vigour as he squeezed the trigger.
Or tried to, at least. The endeavour failed, due to every last inkling of strength leaving the revenant's body.
Leo smiled lightly as he slowly withdrew his extended and empty flipper to his side. "Knew that from the second I picked up the blade, sir," he whispered with respect.
John wheezed a chuckle around the shard of metal lodged in the back of his throat. "Per… fect…"
And with that, the twice-damned Silver-Toothed Pirate departed from the world again, this time with a smile on his face.
Leo heaved out a massive breath as he wrestled his frayed nerves back under control. Once that was accomplished, however, he took enough time to glance around and confirm that there were no more immediate threats in the area before regretfully turning his gaze to the hilts of his faithful, nameless katanas. He contemplated them for several seconds, then flipped them around and planted them in the earth.
"…At least," he reflected with a quiet whisper. "It was a noble end." He gave the trio of corpses one last glance before waddling off to claim his interim weapons.
Leo hefted the sabres, giving them a few test swings to assure himself of their weight before nodding in satisfaction. He then sheathed the sabres on his back.
Then a flipper rose to his forehead and all but tore away the blue cloth wrapped as a headband. Unfolding it, he then tied the entire cloth over his scalp, slightly shadowing his eyes, and looked towards where the rest of the battle was going on.
"Okay, you two," Leo breathed softly, his eyes hardened into flint and his teeth set in a glower. "Let's go and get ourselves acquainted by killing some fucking zombies."
And with a flex of his tail, he was gone.
-o-
Elsewhere in the forests of Thriller Bark, a battle cry rose above the trees.
"FUNURABA!"
'#77. Strong as hell, but slow,' Mikey noted as he ducked under a meaty tackle that obliterated an innocent tree. 'Alright… let's try multitasking.' Making use of the straight weeks of practice, Boss had hammered through his shell. Mikey swiftly spun his left-hand pair of nunchucks into their holster before, in the same move, he drew his left pistol, aimed and fired at the zombie. The bullet sank in and, to the dugong's dismay, it did exactly jack to stop the juggernaut from ponderously sweeping around for another charge. 'Also really toughohshit!'
The short, red-nosed zombie, emblazoned with the #55, had, while he was dodging, crept under his guard and was now swinging up a nasty-looking uppercut. Mindful of the rotund behemoth behind him, Mikey frantically attempted to lean back while staying anchored to the ground. To his surprise, for once his spine chose to comply, his vertebrae bending just so that, much like a tongue of seaweed, he swayed back and was left unharmed while an uppercut whooshed harmlessly past his face.
"Huh, so that's how it works," the dugong mused as he turned the sway into a backward handstand flip that took him under another one of the big #77's swipes. Landing from that, he pushed off from the ground—
"Kekekekeke! Now, fucking monkey!"
"Who are you calling a woohee?!"
And was promptly grabbed by the monkey-like #80 in mid-air.
"Catch MAX!"
"Let go of me, dammit!" Mikey snapped, slamming his head back. Had he tried this even a few days ago, the blow would have met only air, but with his newfound flexibility, it instead found its mark with a resounding (and embarrassingly hollow-sounding) CLONK!
The surprisingly strong hands that had gripped him fell away in favour of clutching their owner's skull, and Mikey took the opportunity to Tidal Swim away from the monkey in search of Hildon. The bat-like majordomo, however, had decided to hold discretion as the better part of valour, because he was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the orange-bandana'd dugong spotted yet another unfamiliar zombie skulking about. This one was solidly built and seemed… older than the rest, save Hildon. The black mohawk was pretty distinctive, too.
Two facts stuck out to Mikey about the revenant: that his leg was extended for some reason or another, and that there was also some sort of round object flying through the air from him to Mikey. A round, black object that, upon further analysis, once it drew closer, the dugong managed to identify.
'Huh. That's a bomb.' Then the dugong's overworked brain processed that thought. "OH, SHIT, THAT'S A BOMB! TIDAL SWI—!"
KA-BOOM!
It was, indeed, a bomb, and one that exploded right in his face at that. Luckily, his newfound flexibility did a good job dissipating the shock wave of the explosion; the worst he got was some mild burns and a forceful expulsion from the sky, and the latter was something he was well acquainted with from his training. Another Tidal Swim killed his momentum, allowing him to touch down in front of the zombie that bore the sigil #47.
"Ahahahahaha!" the zombie cackled, pirouetting on one leg with the other held vertical in the air. "Prepare to be schooled, monsieur!"
"'Monsieur'?" Mikey dubiously parroted before letting his expression fall flat. "Oh, whatever. Just die already."
A twitch of his flippers and one of his nunchucks lashed out at the zombie's skull. In response, said zombie… swayed out of the way with impressive flexibility for healthy flesh, let alone necrotized.
"Oh, come on!" Mikey snapped as he pulled back his weapon, pointing an accusatory finger at his opponent. "That's blatant plagiarism!"
"Look who's talking, monsieur!" the zombie snapped back, still in his raised-leg pose. "You're a walking plagiarism yourself! At least we have the guts to admit it!"
"You don't have 'guts', period!" Mikey snarled. "And what in Sebek's name are you—!"
A blur zipped by him, and the dugong glanced to the side to find his back flipper tied to one of the trees.
"Eh?"
In a second, arms, weaker than the Monkey's, latched onto his other flipper. A glance to that side showed the zombie with the large forehead clinging onto it with all his might.
"Eh?!"
"Hey. I think we should teach this punk what happens when someone messes with us on our turf."
"Yeah."
"Great idea!"
"Just punch them already, fucking brothers!" Hildon snapped from a nearby treetop.
"We're not brothers!" the last trio of zombies fired back before turning their glares on the captive Dugong. "But we can punch him!"
Now panicking slightly, Mikey tugged at the rope. Solidly attached, it didn't budge. He tried to get the zombie off him. That just dragged the zombie to the ground.
A rain of punches precluded any further attempts at escape.
"Kekekekeke," Hildon chuckled as the remainder of his zombie coterie joined him in watching the beatdown. "Ah, I love a plan well executed." Holding up his hands, over a dozen bat-themed cards appeared in his hands. "Too bad I didn't get to use more of my tricks! Ya-ha!"
BLAM! BLAM! B-BLAM!
"Don't worry," a battered and bruised Mikey intoned as four bodies dropped away from him, each featuring bullet holes in their necks and shadows soaring into the sky above them. "The fun's not done until one of us rolls out a real showstopper. And so far, you've been lacking!"
Another blur, and another bomb was deposited at his feet. Snorting derisively, Mikey gave it a hearty thwack with his tail that punted it into the trees, where it exploded harmlessly in a stream of annoyed bats. "Still lacking."
If he was worried, Hildon didn't show it. Instead, he just kept chuckling, even as Mikey kept a wary eye on the remaining zombies.
"Don't worry, fucking seal."
"I'M A DUGONG, DAMMIT!"
Once again, Hildon threw his hands out, only this time they were loaded with machine guns and bazookas. "I'VE GOT A FEW SHOWSTOPPERS READY TO GO!" The vamp-zombie roared as he opened fire.
Every single weapon fired at once in a hail of bullets and cannonballs. The former were deflected by Mikey's nunchucks, while the latter were simply dodged. Time slowed down as his brain focused solely on evading the projectiles. And it was only due to that that he saw the real attack coming: the big #77 zombie lumbering towards him and the only zombie as yet unaccounted for. Namely, #21, the one with the eyeshield on its helmet, zipping in at a speed that would have impressed Carue. Classic hammer and anvil.
But with the dugong now able to see it coming, he could do something about it. Twisting around and spraying bullets at the 'anvil' of the two, he used his other flipper to snap his nunchucks in just the right way so as to grab the fast zombie around the legs, yanking him to the ground. Another shot from his pistols sufficed to salt the zombie.
"Ya-ha!"
Then a shadow fell over him.
"Give 'em the hammer!" Hildon cackled as #77 slammed into the ground, throwing up a massive cloud of dust.
For a moment, the zombies waited, watching carefully for any sign of life below #77's big belly. When there was nothing, they let out a cheer, joined by several zombie cheerleaders that popped out of the nearby underbrush.
"Rip Tide."
That cheer was then brutally murdered in a back alley by Mikey's smug declaration. Hildon swung his eyes around to find the dugong smirking at him, even as his tail pumped out Tidal Swim after Tidal Swim to keep him airborne.
"I'll admit, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed," he noted conversationally. "But I've still got enough meat in my noggin to figure some pretty simple things out. And d'you know what I just figured out?" He began swinging his nunchucks into a nice and menacing blur. "I salt you, and this whole setup collapses."
Hildon, sweating furiously, held his ground. For two seconds. Then he turned around and flew away as fast as he could. "I didn't sign up for thiiiiiis!" he wailed.
Mikey, idly dodging another punted bomb, gave him a five-second lead before kicking off the air after him.
'Hum, I wonder,' he thought as he pursued the fleeing bat-zombie. 'Is it possible to combine Rip Tide and Tidal Swim? Kick ten times off the air? Have to ask Boss about that…'
The time for idle thoughts was soon over as Mikey came within striking range. His next Tidal Swim was not one of the simple pushes he'd done before; his tail coiled, folding as far as it would go, the muscles in his gut and back getting in on the action. This push wasn't so much a push as it was a rocket going off. Rearing back a flipper, Mikey reached Hildon with just enough time for the majordomo to look panicked before a heavy wooden stick slammed into his face with all of the dugong's momentum behind it.
CRASH!
Or, in layman's terms, Mikey's extra strength Tidal Swim gave the nunchuck hit enough force to send Hildon flying into and through the roof of the manor, the dugong riding the body down to the floor.
At least, until Hildon slammed into it headfirst, throwing the dugong off.
Hildon was quick to jump back to his feet, but going by the way he was stumbling about and his eyeballs were spinning like pinwheels, he was most likely suffering from a severe (if purely psychosomatic) concussion. "Weeelcome to Thriller Bark," he mumbled dizzily. "Weeee hope you enjooooy your sta—!"
BLAM!
Hildon's corpse crumbled into a pile of flesh and bones without even a whisper.
"Sorry, bub," Mikey snarled, smoke wafting up from his pistol's muzzle. "We're just passing through."
The dugong slowly stowed his firearm away as Hildon's shadowy soul ascended into the mist and out of sight. A brief glance to the left and right showed him to be alone, and the instant that that was clear, he flopped onto his back, allowing his screaming tail muscles a reprieve.
"Man… I knew we'd be getting stupidly strong here…" Mikey panted wearily. "But this... might just kill us first…"
He lay panting for a few moments longer... before allowing a savage smirk to cross his muzzle.
"Sweet Horus, I love this crew."
-o-
You know something funny? Wielding a dachshund bazooka that was shooting a continuous stream of fire, alongside an angel with her own bazooka shooting a continuous stream of fire, accompanied by a talking radio-snail and a talking fox and getting radio advice from a talking reindeer doctor, while spelunking in the esophagus of the corpse of a positively titanic giant, with the assistance of many disembodied arms, all in the middle of a massive freezer in a haunted mansion on an island that was converted into giant pirate ship sailing in the scariest sea known to sentient life this side of the Red Line?
Not as much fun as you'd think.
I mean, the experience itself was novel, sure, but that was it, and the novelty wore off fast. I mean, the stench of it all and the awkward position were bad enough, but what I really hated? It was that, in spite of standing a mere foot from a pillar of continuous hellfire, I was still freezing my tailbone off. Not to mention, I was possessed by an urge. An urge I was fighting but was about to give in to.
"Are we there yet?" I complained. Not whined, no matter what anyone else says.
"If you're feeling bored FROM THE MONOTONY, I can put on A SOUNDTRACK~" Soundbite offered, the innocent smile he was wearing doing absolutely nothing to mask the golden glints of mischief that his eyes had become.
"Does it have anything to do with the words 'fire', 'blaze' or 'inferno'?" Conis dryly asked.
Those golden glints of mischief immediately looked away, accompanied by an 'innocent' whistle. "...MAYBE?"
"Then kindly shut up," we bit out as one.
"Hmph, spoil—!" Soundbite started to huff, before blinking in confusion. "TURKEY?"
Conis cocked her eyebrow at my partner in confusion. "Is… that a Blue Sea expression, or… ?"
"NO, I MEAN THAT I SMELL TURKEY!" the snail clarified. "ROAST turkey at that!"
I blinked in surprise, but a tentative sniff at the air was all I needed to confirm my partner's words—though only for a second, because the moment I caught a whiff of whatever the hell he was sniffing, I had to clamp my hand over my nose with a groan of disgust. Yeah, that smelled like turkey, alright… if it was three months old and infested with maggots!
"Oh, what the hell?!" I gagged miserably. Sweet hellfire, like the stench of roasting pork wasn't going to put me off animal flesh for weeks as it was.
"Ergh, that is rank!" Conis concurred, sticking her tongue out miserably. "What, did we hit a patch of gases or something!?"
"Wait, did the smell down there just change?" Chopper eagerly cut in. "Stop firing for a second and check the wall! There's a chance you might have broken through the flesh and reached the spinal column!"
"Wait, really?!" I perked up, hastily letting go of Lassoo's trigger and thus allowing the mutt to shift back into his hybrid form, at which point he all but collapsed on my shoulder.
"Th… ank… goo… dne… ss…" Lassoo wheezed, his tongue listlessly lolling out of his slack maw. "I'm… gonna… sleep for a few… days…"
"Lassoo?" I asked in concern as he panted against me.
"He's just overheated, Cross," Conis assured me as she waved the smoke off of her bazooka's glowing muzzle. "Keeping that stream up for so long must have been pushing against his limit. You're lucky he's a living weapon; otherwise, you'd have to look out for barrel warping."
"Mmph, makes sense…" I nodded uncertainly as I helped Lassoo into his harness before scrutinizing the wall of the throat 'above' us. I was extremely grateful to see slightly charred bone through the crumbling ash that had once been esophageal flesh. As I was doing so, though, a thought occurred to me. "Ah, Conis? You wouldn't happen to have a spare barrel on you, would you?"
Our gunner gave me an odd look. "Nnnooo, though I'm going to see about talking to Usopp and Franky about fixing that. Why do you ask?"
"I ask because unless Lassoo can find it in himself to hock a few of his high-calibre loogies—"
"Kiss my exhaust vent, slavedriver," my gun growled halfheartedly.
"Then we're going to have to find a way to make our way around this gaping abyss so that you can blast his neck out with your Reject Dial."
Conis paled in horror before hastily slapping a desperate smile on her face. "C-Can we go with a plan C? Or D or… anything that doesn't involve me blowing my shoulder out!?"
"Er… an… alternative solution might be advisable, actually," Chopper commented with new hesitation. "I feel like a bit of a dumbass for only just realizing it, but…Oars' spine is as wide as Conis is tall, and most of that will be pure calcium, even denser than human bone to deal with the stresses of moving at that size. I… am honestly at a loss for just how you're going to sever it."
"Er…" Conis and I exchanged uncertain glances, trying to come up with an answer between us, but… yeah, we had nothing.
Well, thankfully, we were saved from having to come up with an answer because someone else did it for us.
"MY TIME TO SHINE!"
I snapped a shocked look at my shoulder. "Soundbite!?"
"You know it!" my partner in madness cackled before glancing upward. "CHOPPER! MY BIOLOGY'S A BIT RUSTY—READ, NON-EXISTENT—but basically speaking, this lug's spine should be one chain of barely interrupted bone, YAH?"
"Eh... It's a bit more complicated than that, but for our purposes, yes."
"PERFECT! And, follow-up question... frozen as this bastard is, HE WON'T CRUMBLE if his spine as a whole ceases to be, AYE?"
"Eeerrr...?" Chopper coughed uncertainly. "I... would not recommend sticking around in there longer than you have to if that were the case, but apart from that... you should be fine? Trust me, this is not even remotely something I have experience in."
"Soundbite, what exactly are you planning?" I asked, cautiously winding my line around my arm and slipping my headphones on in preparation for whatever the hell was about to happen. The fact that Conis didn't even need to be prompted to do the same was not very reassuring.
Soundbite bared his teeth eagerly as he affixed the 'ceiling' of the throat with a smirk. "BRACE YOURSELVES, mes ami. THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET very, very..."
And just like that, it felt like the air in the throat stopped dead.
"Quiet." Soundbite's maw widened malevolently even as he started to grind his teeth together. It was subtle at first, but, bit by bit, the surrounding air began to vibrate. No, not just the air. I was vibrating, right down to my bones.
"GASTRO-BLAST," rumbled a legion of the damned.
The screeching that followed was… it was beyond words. It penetrated past the ears, past the brain and rammed straight into the very soul, threatening to shake it loose from its metaphysical housings. And somehow? It managed to actually get louder. And louder and louder and louder until finally-!
CRACK!
The ceiling of mottled white above us splintered like a pane of glass.
"Stereo Edition," Soundbite buzzed in an exhilarated tone of voice.
I stared at my partner in awe before casting a fearful glance around as tremors started to shake the thrice-dead flesh we were surrounded by. "Sooooundbiiiiite, what the hell did you just do!?"
"Ooooh, ya know," Soundbite leered faux-innocently. "NOTHING TOO BIG… 'cept for shattering this FAT BASTARD'S C1-7! Good luck trying to get him to SO MUCH AS SCRATCH HIS ASS!"
Conis gaped at my snail in awe. "Soundbite, I officially take back every last mean thing I have ever said about you."
"EH!? YOU'VE NEVER said shit about me!"
"Ah…" Conis froze up for a moment before plastering a sheepish grin on her face. "Riiiight, I… never actually said those things aloud, did I? Aheheh… any chance we could just strike the last minute or so from the record?"
"THE HELL WE CAN! What the hell did you—!?"
"Whatever argument you're having," Chopper cut in with no small amount of urgency. "I recommend you do it outside of the zombified super-giant that just got its central structural support neutered. Just a reminder."
As if on cue, Oars' entire body creaked ominously, all of us exchanging nervous glances at the sound of ice cracking.
"Yeaaaaah, probably a good idea," I nervously agreed, our gunner and I already starting to make our way back up our respective lines. "Anything else? Any word from the front lines?"
"No battle updates, I'm afraid, or at least nothing really that pertinent…" the doctor assured us... before causing us all to tense as he switched to a tone of voice that caused Soundbite's grin to widen to utterly mad levels. "But I, on the other hand, have learned something quite interesting from Hogback. Something I think you'll be extremely interested in, Cross…"
"Ah..." I exchanged wary glances with my partner. "'Interested' in what way exactly?"
Somehow, Chopper's grin managed to stretch even wider. "The 'extreme amounts of collateral damage' way."
"…well," I slowly matched Chopper's grin tooth for tooth. "You're right, good doctor. That does sound extremely interesting."
Soundbite swallowed heavily before swivelling his eyestalks to glance at Conis. "Would you believe that there's a curse from CROSS'S WORLD THAT GOES 'May you live in interesting times'?"
Conis swallowed heavily as she glanced between me and my snail's borrowed mouth. "Yes, Soundbite. Yes, I very much would."
-o-
"Ragh! Stand still, you little leathery shit!"
"Not on your unlife, blubber-butt!" Raphey taunted casually as she swayed back like a strand of kelp, Gallant Hippo's sword harmlessly swishing through the space she'd occupied. The instant the blade was lodged in the soil, she snapped back up and lashed her sais out, using one to trap the blade in place and the other to stab several holes in the patchwork palaver's hide before it managed to wrench itself free and leap back, putting some distance between it and her. Still, for what little damage Raphey had managed to cause the zombie, she still felt she'd managed to accurately measure the zombie's worth.
And quite frankly, she was not impressed.
The Wild Zombie commander, Gallant Hippo, certainly had power and was fast for his size, but whoever'd gotten their shadow ganked to grant him his sword abilities had no idea how to fight a smaller, nimbler opponent with short weapons.
Sure, the longsword-and-buckler combo was well suited against other swordsmen or someone with a longarm, but if her opponent were still alive, he'd have likely passed out from blood loss by now, and that was only if he'd managed to avoid acquiring a nick in his femoral artery.
In short? The female of the TDWS had complete confidence that she could take him.
THWACK!
"GAGH!"
Then Lola flew past her, and Raphey was harshly reminded of the other opponent she was facing, whom she felt distinctly less confident about.
"You okay, Lola?" Raphey called out tersely, parrying Gallant's continued assault with one eye while keeping an eye out for her other rampaging opponent with the other.
"I'm not out yet!" came Lola's only slightly dizzy reply, followed by the sound of someone hocking a loogie. "Ah... though I really need to get off this island soon to see a dentist, 'cause I'm starting to run outta—!"
"RAAAAAAAAGH!"
"Woahshit!"
Raphey ground her teeth in irritation as Zola suddenly charged by her, murder in the warthog's eyes. Her mortal counterpart only barely got up her blades in time to initiate a lock. Hastily weighing her options in the face of the war-hog's (and no way in hell was that a typo) fury, Raphey came to a decision.
"Sorry, bub," she snarled up at her leather-necked opponent, causing him to twitch in irritation. "But I!" She parried his downward swing to the left. "Don't have time!" Another parry, this time to the right. "To play with you!" A 'relatively' simple six-foot dead leap above a leg-high (or tail-high as it were) slash. "ANYMORE!"
"Yooooou!" Gallant Hippo snorted out a nostril-load of steam, his rage spiking to the point where he threw his shield aside and strangled his sword's hilt with both hands. "Play with THIS!" And with that, the zombie lashed out with a titanic overhead strike.
An overhead strike that Raphey met with a defiant smirk. "Gladly."
An inch before the sword met her skull, Raphey snapped her flippers up, sais crossed and offset just so…
SKRANG!
So that the oversized blade slipped neatly into the gap between the weapons' prongs and the central shafts of her sais. With her newfound leverage, all it took was a simple twist-and-jerk of her weapons, and Gallant Hippo's sword snapped between the weapons like a dry twig.
Gallant Hippo wasted any chance to counter by holding his sword up to his face and staring dumbly at it. Complete with a dropped jaw. Raphey had enough savvy to wait to roll her eyes until after she'd lobbed a lump of salt into the gaping maw, but it didn't diminish her exasperation.
"Well, that was disappointing," she groused. "Seriously, what's a chick gotta do to get a decent fight around—"
"—aaaaaaaaaa—"
The dugong blinked in confusion. "—here? What the—?" All of a sudden, Raphey's instincts blared on high alert. She ducked her head—
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!"
—and winced sympathetically as Lola flew clean over her and slammed clean into the trunk of an admirably sturdy tree. After sparing her newfound ally a sympathetic glance, Raphey hesitantly turned around and swallowed heavily as she came face to steam-snorting snout with Zola, whose eyes were positively blazing with an unholy rage.
"Oh, the things I do for a good fight," Raphey groaned, slowly raising her sais into a defensive guard. "Hey, pigsticker!"
Zola's unholy rage, originally split between her and Lola, fully shifted onto the dugong, who couldn't help but allow herself a shiver. But even in the face of such fury, Raphey said what she needed to say.
"Your warts have some hog on them."
Granted, what she needed to say wasn't exactly the smartest thing to say, but going by how steam practically blasted out of Zola's ears, it had the desired effect.
"Gon' kill you! KIIILL YOOOOOU!" Zola roared, swinging her blades overhead at Raphey, who responded by raising her sais to meet them in a rehash of the maneuver she'd pulled on Gallant Hippo.
That course of action turned out to be a rather grievous mistake.
Two blades meant half the leverage from each sai, and with Zola abandoning all pretenses of technique and subtlety in favour of berserker rage, victory now came from brute strength rather than skill. And in the end, no matter how disproportionately strong Raphey and her fellow dugongs were, there was no way in hell she could win a direct clash of muscle against someone who outweighed her almost ten times over. As a result...
'Badtimebadtimebadtime!' Raphey mentally chanted as she was forced to backpedal, reduced to ineffectively flailing her sais in an effort to stave off the storm of blades and paying for her head's continued connection to her body with an alarming number of dents. 'Okay, so maybe making all enemies angrier isn't a valid tactic after all, I know this now. Now if only I could actually find a way to survive this fuckup so that I can actually apply it!'
Luckily for the pink-bandana'd dugong, before Zola could either overwhelm her or break her weapons, Lola—battered and bruised like hell but still kicking like a mule—came charging out of nowhere, her own blades lashing out in a flurry of slices and stabs that bit deep into her undead counterparts' necrotized flesh. It would have been impressive, if not for one small problem: Zola wasn't stopping.
In fact, the zombie found it in herself to lash one of her swords out and send Lola skidding back a few feet before renewing her onslaught on Raphey's guard.
Still, despite the rain of blows, Raphey still managed to lock eyes with Lola as she stabilized her footing. The pirate captain stared back, an unspoken message passing between them.
'Separate attacks are useless.'
Lola, her footing regained, hastily ran behind Raphey's steady retreat and prepared herself. Then, as Zola raised a sword to cleave Raphey's skull open like a rotten melon, it was met not with a sai but with Lola's crossed blades. Gritting her teeth, the dugong took the opportunity to jam snag Zola's sword with her sai and twist her blade anew. Thankfully, for all that the warthog's swords were larger and of better quality than Gallant Hippo's arms, you could only make a sword so strong with conventional steel, and the sword swiftly shattered under the longitudinal strain.
Down to one sword, Zola had to actually defend for the first time since the fight began, Lola's twin blades seeking out stitches while Raphey dug a packet of salt out from her shell and prepared it for lobbing, an eager grin on her muzzle.
"Aaaaalright, now hold still, you swine…" she muttered, tracking Zola and Lola's back-and-forth. Zola did not hold still, but luckily, she was also rather predictable in her burning rage, so it wasn't long before Raphey got the pattern down. "Just... a bit... Gotcha!" Snapping her flipper out, the dugong let the salt fly. The packet flew true, entering Zola's mouth mid-howl and resulting in the zombie immediately slumping bonelessly to the ground.
"Yes!" the dugong whooped, dashing over to where Lola was catching her breath and raising her flipper. "High-one, sista!"
"Ye—! Ah… wait a second..." Lola's whoop died in her throat mid-hand raise. "Uh... Raphey? You... salted her, right? Then... where's my shadow?"
Raphey paused, blinking in confusion. "Eh? The heck are you talking about? It's right… ah…" The blood evacuated her face as she replayed the last few seconds through her mind. "It's... uh... wait a sec—"
"Tusk Coronet!"
Both fighters whirled around just in time to catch a tusk in the side, the sharp bones digging into their flesh as the sheer force of the impact, plus a head-buck from the zombie, sent them both tumbling.
"I've got you now!" Zola crowed, slashing her weapon furiously even as she yanked the salt-packet out from the gap in her teeth where it had gotten caught. "You're gonna pay for insulting me! You'll wish you'd never said that there isn't a blue ribbon big enough to convince anyone to marry me!"
"No one said that!" Raphey snapped as she shakily pushed herself onto her tail. Unfortunately, in the face of the hog's undaunted charge, all Raphey could do was ineffectually fling her sai at the zombie before dodging to the side. The weapon clanged harmlessly off of one of Zola's tusks, but she didn't even try to change course due to her rage being focused entirely on—
"Lola!" Raphey shouted at her comrade in arms, who'd been disarmed in the impact and was, more importantly, standing right in her zombie's path of destruction.
Lola, for her part, could only flinch, clutching at the gaping wound in her side as she watched the impending doom bearing down upon her. Her face twisted with uncertainty and anguish, but then her eyes set in iron-willed determination, and she… anchored her stance and spread her arms wide!?
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU—!? RIP TIDE!" Raphey barked, taking off after the charging warthog. Even as she did so, though, she knew she wouldn't make it. She just knew that she wasn't anywhere near good enough with the move yet to get that much distance in one Rip Tide. Zola would get there first, smear Lola all over the dirt, and then do the same to her. Raphey had to do something, something—!
And then, just like that, impact. Pirate and zombie met...
"RAAAAAA—WHA!?"
And to Raphey's shock, Lola didn't even budge. In fact, the captain had managed to grab hold of her shadow's zombie by the tusks and was even managing to hold it back!
"Raphey!" Lola shouted, freeing one hand to grab her zombie's upper jaw. With a shove, the skull wrenched in half with a loud SNAP! "NOW!"
The dugong, coming out of her Rip Tide, acted instinctively before she could even begin to formulate a question. Her flipper practically blurring, Raphey withdrew another salt packet and, after making sure it was partially open this time, tossed it into Zola's gaping maw.
This time, the warthog properly gagged before slumping in Lola's arms, her umbral soul spilling from her mouth and immediately pooling at the ground beneath Lola.
The pirate captain shakily let go of the freshly-dead corpse, staring at the barely-visible imprint she was casting before sinking to her knees, tears of joy streaming down her face. Slowly, shakily, as if she couldn't believe it, she ran her fingers over her shadow, her soul, herself. "Straw Hats… I will never, ever be able to repay this debt."
"Yeahyeahyeah, time for that later, now hurry and give me your hands!" Raphey snarled as she rushed over to her ally and grabbed her wrists. "Sweet Sobek, that maneuver was gutsy as all hell, but it sure wasn't smart! We need to get these things bandaged ASAP!"
"Wha-ah!" Lola flinched as she tried to wrench her hands free of the sea mammal's grip. "T-T-That's really not necessary, I'm totally fine, you don't have to-!"
"The hell I don't!" Raphey snapped as she tried to get a look at the pirate's hands. "I mean, seriously! After something like that, your palms must be ripped to-!...shreds?" The dugong trailed off, boggled at the sight of Lola's totally uninjured palms. Heck, they were better than alright, they were... they were pristine! As gleaming and solid-looking as though they were wrought of pure steel, even!
Wait a minute.
"What the—? Powers?! But Cross never said anything about you... but this looks like armo—!…wait... armour... Armame—MMPH!?"
"Shhhhhut up!" Lola hissed desperately as she kept a hand clamped over Raphey's muzzle, her head on a swivel, cold sweat coating her from head to toe. "Don't use that word, don't you dare use that word or any others like it about me! I've worked hard to keep it a secret, but the trees and walls literally have ears, and if anyone finds out about it, my life is forfeit!"
"Mmm-bwah! Thanks..." Raphey gasped in relief as she was released before pinning Lola with a confused glare. "And what the hell do you mean 'forfeit!?' You have H—that! That means you're practically invincible, especially in Paradise, right?"
"Right and wrong!" Lola growled miserably as she yanked at her pigtails. "Yes, that is fantastically strong in the weaker seas, but that's the problem! That-users outside of the New World stick out like sore thumbs, so if anyone looks into me, they'll find my name, and if they find my name, then they find me, and then… then I'm dead!"
"Er…" Raphey tilted her head in confusion. "' They'?"
Lola chewed at her lip before hanging her head with a defeated sigh. "My… My family, alright? If word gets back to my family about where I am, then they'll come for me. And then, they'll… they'll…" She lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
"…that bad?" Raphey asked quietly.
An overtone of horror overcame the pirate captain as she swallowed heavily. "If I never see most of my family again before I die," she said in a slow and deliberate tone of voice. "Then I will die very happy."
Raphey was silent for a few seconds before nodding firmly. "Your secret is safe with me."
Lola sighed in relief, her whole body uncoiling as the tension exited it. "Thank you…"
"Thank us all later," Raphey waved her off as she started to turn towards where the rest of the fighting was taking place. "For now, that's one more shadow down, a load more to go. Let's get back to it!"
"Agreed!" Lola nodded, slamming her palm into her fist.
The two made to move forward, and almost immediately, they both slumped down onto the ground, clutching their sides in pain. "After we take a second to fix the fact that we're bleeding out," Raphey grunted.
"Agreed…"