Time on target, a concept Conis had told us about once while maintaining her arsenal. Basically, it was firing a barrage of ranged attacks of different types in such a way that they all hit at once. From what she'd described, it was something that usually took a lot of practice.
As it turns out, blind desperation worked in a pinch, as evidenced by the slew of attacks that pierced the air at once. To summarize, the horde consisted of…
"LIGHTNING BOLT TEMPO!"
A tangle of crackling electrical tendrils;
"BURN BAZOOKA!"
A pillar of hyper-heated and iridescent air;
"GASTRO-CANI COMBO: BASS MORTAR!"
A second pillar of hyper-heated air, only this one was surrounded by a shimmer of dangerously vibrating air.
"108-CALIBER PHOENIX!"
A wave of razor-keen air.
"ULTRA SPECIAL ATTACK: FLOCKING FIREBIRD STAR!"
And finally, a half-dozen blazing bird-shaped infernos.
That half the attacks were fire-based helped, too. In any case, every one of them struck Moria clean in the middle of his face, eliciting a howl of pain and rage liberally tinged with fear and, more importantly, sending the Warlord staggering back, and resulting in his teetering on the very edge of Freezer 900's cavernous interior.
Unfortunately, Moria chose then to show just why he'd been selected to be a Warlord by exhibiting enough wherewithal to hold his balance when he hit the freezer's railing, in spite of the clear agony written on his features. Still, that was something that could easily be rectified.
"Robin!" I ordered hastily.
"Cien Fleur!" Robin exclaimed, crossing her arms.
Arms sprouted like ivy all around Moria, grabbing at the pale bastard's body and doing their best to either push or pull him off the edge of the abyss. Unfortunately, the instant the hands made contact with Moria, everything went to pot again.
"RAAAAAAAAGH!" Namely, he appeared to snap for a second time, if that was possible, throwing his head back and howling to the heavens as the shadows exploded in a torrent of jet-black madness.
"DODGE!" Soundbite warned me.
"Sonnuva—!" I only just managed to duck under a pillar of shadow that came way too close to knocking my block off for comfort—!
"GAH!" "AGH!" "GRGH!"
But apparently, they came even closer for several others.
I spun around in panic, watching with naked horror as several of our crewmates and allies were batted around like rodents; Usopp was slammed into the ceiling and spit up a mouthful of blood, Conis was laid out flat by a knock to her temple that had Su frantically shaking her shoulder, and the Rolling Pirates that were still with us were bowled over by a stampede of shade.
But the worst part was catching sight of what looked for all the world like a many-fingered claw lancing at a Brain-Point Chopper, whose mind had stalled in panic.
"Shell Body: Hermit Sta—GAH!"
And then, just like that, Boss was standing before Chopper, his arms spread wide defensively… and the spears punching through his shell.
"T-To protect your comrades…" the dugong coughed out, blood spurting around his gritted teeth. "Even at the cost of your own body… that… is the greatest… of all… Man's… Gugh…" That was as far as Boss got before collapsing as the spears retracted from his shell and removed any support his limp body had left.
I could only stare at the display in numb shock, trying and failing to work out what I should react to first—!
"Look out!"
"Gah!" I grunted in shock when I was suddenly shoved from behind. I turned around to see what the deal was, and my blood froze.
Robin coughed in pain as she swayed on her feet, trying to stem the flow of blood that was flowing around the spike of shadow that had rammed through her side. She grimaced briefly before giving me a shaky grin. "Look on… the bright side… now we… match…" That was all she managed to get out before collapsing against the corridor's wall.
My next course of action became as clear as my vision was RED.
"PACHY-CHARGE!" I roared at the top of my lungs as I ripped Funkfreed from his scabbard and stabbed him at the rampaging Warlord, intent on treating him to a faceful of stampeding ivory and steel.
And going by the simultaneous roars that erupted from behind me?
"GUM-GUM JET BAZOOKA!"
"FLAMBÉ SHOT!"
"CLOVEN ROSEO METEL!"
"SUPER! STRONG RIGHT!"
"AUBADE COUP DROIT!"
I was so not the only one pissed off at that. Specifically, Luffy, Sanji, Franky, Brook and Chopper all rammed their respective limbs into Moria's gut at the same time that Funkfreed gored him.
Time seemed to freeze for a moment as the Warlord was bombarded by our attacks, his face a mask of agony and outrage. And then time resumed, and the pale bastard was sent flying as he so justly deserved. He shot out over the edge of the freezer's pit and even went so far as to slam into and stick to Oars' horn for a second before peeling off and plummeting into the darkness of the abyss that lay below us.
I panted heavily as I stood on the edge of the freezer, combing the pit for any signs of life or movement before heaving a sigh of relief as all remained quiet. "If that didn't kill that bastard, then at least it bought us some breathing room."
"He had better still be alive; he's done too much to get off that easily," Zoro snarled, shades of Asura flickering around him as he nursed a quilt of slashes layered across his body. "Not even Aokiji did this much damage to our crew."
"Only because he wasn't really trying to kill us," Chopper bit out as he knelt beside Robin, hastily working to patch her up. "The one advantage of fighting somebody fit for a mental ward: they don't actually aim when they fire. If he did, I wouldn't have to put in half as much effort as I am now."
Robin gave her current caretaker a bemused (if dizzy from blood loss) look. "Feeling a bit jaded, I take it?"
"Put it this way: I'm starting to see why Doctorine's tolerance for alcohol is so high," Chopper grumbled acridly as he stitched her up. "And you shouldn't be awake for this, so—" Without further ado, the Human Zoan jabbed a needle in her neck. It was a credit to how far his aptitude with chemicals had progressed that Robin blacked out with barely even a press of the plunger.
"Ergh, well, at least she's getting taken care of, and everyone else doesn't look to be in too critical a condition, so…" Lola grit out as she nursed a particularly nasty-looking bruise to her face. "While we have a moment of peace, would you mind explaining what the hell that freak show was while we were luring that bastard here!?"
I shuddered in agreement, inching away from the shadows nearest me. The Captain of the Rolling Pirates definitely had a point there; if ever there had been a case of a plan working too well, then that was it by far!
See, the plan itself had been simple enough: Soundbite called out to Moria with a voice that was incredibly generic, thus allowing Moria to mistake it for that of one of his old crewmates, Moria follows the voice into Oars's freezer while getting enmeshed in his shadow theatre and regressing to the loss of his crew, and finally, upon catching sight of Oars and flipping out, we beat the tar out of him. Easy, right?
Yeah, turns out we got leagues more than we bargained for when it came to the shadow aspect of our plan. To be specific, we sure as hell didn't expect Moria's sick, twisted mind to vomit out a scene yanked straight from Resident Evil! I still swear that there was texture to that ocean of… I don't even wanna imagine what he thought he was wading through.
"Got me beat," I said, shaking my head. "I know that Kaido wiped his crew out, sure, but even for an Emperor, I don't see how he could have possibly created a scene straight out of hell like that!"
"Unless I miss my guess, I imagine that that scene never actually occurred in reality."
We all looked at Brook in surprise as he observed Oars' corpse with an even more inscrutable expression than usual.
"W-Wait, you mean that Moria just imagined that whole thing?" Nami asked in disbelief. "But wasn't he supposed to be remembering the day his crew died?"
"And that's exactly what he did," Brook nodded morosely. "He reproduced not how that scene actually occurred, but the memory he is in possession of today. A memory that has been corrupted with his every recollection of the event, degrading over time until it is little more than a fleeting nightmare he dares not consider for even a moment. I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon…" He bowed his head sadly. "The final battle I fought with my crew suffered a very similar fate."
We all shared a moment of silence as we considered the implications of that particular statement before Luffy raised a questioning hand. "Sooo… if you know that, do you know what that creepy stuff he was saying was, too?"
We all held our breath as Brook raised his head. "I," he stated with great import and portentousness. "Have no earthly idea."
My head and most everyone else's heads bounced slightly as they jerked downwards. "Oooof course not," I sighed.
"Yeah, well… whatever it was, I can definitely say that it was creepy as all hell." Nami's Eisen Tempo hugged her as she shuddered. "I could barely even tell what he was saying, his voice was so garbled."
"Except… that wasn't HIS voice…"
I glanced at Soundbite in surprise, both at the fact that he'd spoken up after staying quiet for so long and on account of how his expression was ungodly wan. "You know what that was?"
Soundbite swayed his eyes noncommittally. "I CAN GUESS… like I said, the shadows WEREN'T SPEAKING IN HIS VOICE. And going by their words…" Soundbite grimaced, his face descending into the utmost of ashenness he was capable of. "I-I THINK HE WAS TRYING TO CALL OUT HIS CREWMATES' NAMES… but instead, all he could say was… was…"
Chopper's eyes widened as he made the connection. "All he could identify his old crew by…" he whispered in horror. "Was… their final words…"
Zoro snorted and shook his head. "He's barely even a person anymore. He's just a husk, every bit of substance he had utterly consumed by that one day." I did my best to ignore the tone of familiarity in his voice.
"Yeah, well, he's a husk that could still kill us if that didn't take him out," I quite reasonably pointed out. "Anyone want to place any bets on that?"
Silence for a few seconds, then Nami spoke up. "If someone placed that bet, I'd actually feel sorry for taking their money." Another pause as everyone, myself included, stared at her in shock. She shuffled back and forth on her feet, looking sheepish. "I mean, I'd still take the money, and I'd only feel sorry for maybe ten seconds…"
Ah, that was the Nami I knew.
"Point is, we need a plan for if—or knowing our luck and how hard-headed most all Warlords are, when he climbs out of that pit," I continued, indicating said gaping void. "Now, I don't have any ideas off the top of my head, but with a little brainstorming, I'm sure that—!"
"Uh, Cross?" I heard Luffy's voice echo from towards the pit. I snapped around to catch sight of my captain crouched on the railing, peering into the chasm, his head tilted to one side curiously. "Was the dark down there always so… uh, y'know, dark?"
With no small amount of trepidation, I inched over next to Luffy, leaned over the railing… aaand promptly choked on my spit as I found myself staring into the kind of absolute abyss that loves to stare back.
"Ahhh, sonnuva—!"
"HVERGELMIR!"
And just like that, before any of us could so much as twitch, the abyss broke the staring contest by, for all means and purposes, puking itself in our faces. In the space of a second, we were all devoured by the unholy bastard spawn of a riptide and a tidal wave, composed entirely of shadows.
It was hectic, absolutely out of control, nauseating even in spite of the fact that my stomach was bone dry… Basically? Soundbite had been right about one thing, way back when: spin cycle sucks.
After what felt like both an instant and an eternity, our unwelcome ride concluded with all of us—if the chorus of groans and cries of surprise around me was anything to go by—being unceremoniously dumped on our asses… somewhere. I would have looked around and confirmed where we were, but I had one pressing bit of business to handle first.
"BLARGHRL! Urk…" I wiped my mouth off with a bone-deep shudder. "I officially hate this island…"
"Get in line…" Brook gurgled as he worked his way into a sitting position, his calcium cheekbones somehow managing to look green. The fact that Chopper jostled him in his rush to get to our downed comrades didn't do him any favours either.
"Ugh…" Nami shook her head miserably as she recovered from her own gastrointestinal distress before warily glancing around. "Where… are we?"
"Erm…" Lola swung her head around and blinked in surprise. "It looks like… we're back outside? In the courtyard, even? What the…?"
I quickly surveyed our environs myself and realized that she was right: we'd landed in the very same enclosure that the crew had fought Oars in in the story. The place hadn't been ripped a new one by a rampaging titan, but it was hard to mistake the place, what with Perona's Garden hanging above us and the mast that propelled this maritime hellhole looming so close.
"Whoa…" Franky breathed, craning his head back as he tried and failed to spy the top of the mast. Then his face contorted into a scowl. "He went to this much effort, and still neglected it after it was done…"
"Of course he didn't care for it," I tsked darkly. "After all, what 'king' pays a second thought to their carriage when they think their throne lies right around the bend?"
The cyborg clenched his jaw, metal creaking. "When I get my hands on that bastard's slimy neck, I swear I'm going to—!"
"Shut up, Franky," Zoro ordered, not even looking at him.
"You son of a—!" Franky jerked towards the swordsman.
"He means shut up and listen, Franky," Sanji interrupted him, glaring intensely into the air.
We all hushed up, trying to listen for whatever it was they were talking about. It took some straining, but we found it. And I almost wished we didn't; the chorus of whispers that was echoing from the shadows was so much ice in our veins.
"Oh, now that's just disturbing," Nami muttered, shuddering as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.
"W-What's it saying?" Chopper swallowed heavily.
"Er…" I strained my ears, slowly starting to make it out. "I… think it's just one word, over and over again. Sounds like… 'Draugr'?" It took all of two seconds for that to sink in, following which I stiffened and exchanged a panicked look with Soundbite. "Ohshit."
"Draugr… I think I recognize that," Brook tapped his jaw thoughtfully. "Isn't that a creature out of Norse mythology? The 'again walk—'…ah." Aaand that was when the beri dropped like a supersonic meteor.
Though the sound of groaning and pounding feet that suddenly rose up was also a source of concern.
"Uhh… guuuuys?" Luffy asked slowly, a rare hint of uncertainty in his voice.
Soundbite shuddered with a grimace. "Well, we're officially a few hundred steps closer to burnout, AT THE COST OF A FEW HUNDRED MORE THINGS FOR US TO FIGHT!"
"But how!?" Brook demanded, strangling his sword's hilt. "We couldn't have missed that many!"
"That's because they're NOT ZOMBIES, THEY'RE DRAUGR!" my snail clarified. "REMEMBER WHEN I SAID his range skyrocketed? RATHER THAN INFUSING THEM WITH LIVE SOULS, he's just shoved them full of inert shadows AND IS USING THEM TO PLAY PUPPETMASTER. TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY… they're literal meat-puppets."
And as the horde of undead came into view, I could see the difference. It was subtle, all things considered. Like a sledgehammer to the face, which was particularly pertinent in that most of these rotting bastards looked like they'd suffered just that.
See, where before the zombies had at least been acting like relatively normal if malformed humans, now they were far more similar to the classical Romero zombie. Their movements were stiff, jerky… the perfect picture of shambling corpses.
But what really sold it were their faces. The zombies, they were undead, sure, but at least they'd had souls; stolen souls, imperfect substitutes for life, but they had emotional range, to an extent. But the creatures that were swarming towards us now, these, these draugr… empty, hollow rage and nothing more. If ever there was an example of unlife upon this island, we were staring them down right this moment.
"So, feeding them salt won't do any good anymore?" Sanji growled.
"Probably not, there's no tenuous bond to snap. BUT WORTH A TRY anyway, before we resort to PLAN B… OR A, SEEING AS THIS IS US WE'RE TALKING ABOUT."
"No sooner said than done," Brook stated, running towards the draugr and slashing faster than I could see. Some of the corpses turned and tried to grasp after him as he weaved through their ranks, but they didn't even come close to the skeleton's speed. A few seconds later, arms, legs, and heads were severed from a good chunk of the mob, but they hardly even slowed down. And more to the point, they were right on top of us.
"GO-TO TACTICS it is! Cross, PUT ME ON FUNKFREED!"
I nodded, picking the snail off my shoulder and planting him on the elephant-blade's crossguard. He took a second to properly anchor himself to the flat of the blade, and then screwed his eyes up in concentration.
"GET READY, 'CAUSE this is gonna tickle! GASTRO-PACHY COMBO!"
I was forced to strengthen my grip on Funkfreed's hilt when his blade suddenly started to vibrate, the sharp metal becoming fuzzy to the eye.
"TREBLE BLADE!"
Even in the face of the oncoming horde, I couldn't help but grin like a maniac at the fact that I was currently holding a frikin vibroblade in my hands. I… think at that point something just clicked in my head, because my grin widened malevolently as my adrenaline shot through the roof. "Alright, you undead rotting mooks," I hissed, slowly raising my left hand over my shoulder. "I know you can't understand me anymore, and I don't care. Because I'm gonna say what needs to be said, no matter what."
I grabbed Lassoo's grip and wrenched him into position, spreading my arms and weapons wide in invitation, accompanied by an absolutely mad cackle. "PREPARE TO DIE THRICE, YOU ZOMBIE BASTARDS! PFHAHAHAHAAAAA!"
Lassoo punctuated that point with a salvo of baseballs that exploded in the mass of zombies, blowing massive holes in their ranks. And then the wave of zombies hit us. The front line promptly melted away like snow in a spring rain, only to be followed by another line. And then another. And another.
In most ways, it was Alubarna or the Bridge of Hesitation all over again: a frantic defence not only against an enemy that outnumbered us, but also against our own exhaustion and injuries, thankfully mitigated by the fact that we were individually superior to all of said opponents. In that last respect, I was actually better off than before; between Lassoo blasting chunks out of the horde as they approached and Soundbite and Funkfreed's combination practically disintegrating any zombies it hit, my partners and I were probably accounting for the most draugr of any of us.
Unfortunately, the one way it differed from those fights was rather important: the draugr just didn't. Stop. Coming. Seriously, these guys were persistent even past the regular zombies, because those didn't have limbs or were just severed torsos trying to keep crawling after us. They also didn't break and probably never would. Even the age-old method of decapitation didn't help. That just left a headless body shambling towards us and a head snapping its jaws on the ground that we had to avoid.
Surprisingly enough, Nami actually seemed to be having the easiest time out of all of us, for all that one could have an easy time in the midst of a zombie horde. She was still hard-pressed to pay attention to where all the undead were striking from, of course, but her Eisen Tempo was doing a frighteningly admirable job of keeping them all at bay. If ever there was any doubt that Nami made a habit of holding back the full extent of her Clima-Tact's power, the charred and blackened corpses her lightning left in its wake did a good job of laying that doubt to rest.
But even Nami's style of attack, effective though it was, meant she had to fight three battles we all had to fight: against the walking dead, against our exhaustion and pain, and against the severed limbs and heads that littered the ground like so many land mines. And lemme tell ya, having to watch your every step was exhausting. The only solution seemed to be to destroy the bodies entirely, and actually destroying a human body is miles harder than it has any right to be!
…That would sound so wrong out of context.
Anyway, the result of it all was that we had to start giving ground very quickly, lest the zombie horde trip us up and overrun us. We had no margin: lose one fighter, and our entire defence crumbled. Whiiiich would mean all of our wounded were dead meat. So yeah, noooo pressure.
"SERIOUSLY?" Lola yelled as a freshly decapitated draugr kept walking towards her, hastily kicking it in the chest in order to give herself some breathing room, which was just as swiftly filled by a de-limbed draugr from behind. "We're chopping these things to pieces and they're not stopping!"
"I say we go back to anti-zombie plan number one," Franky growled, bashing away one corpse before rearing back his head—
"Fresh… FIRE!"
And spewing flames at the disassembled corpses. They kept moving, of course, but unlike with the shadow-zombies, it was clear that the flames were doing their job. The wrecked bodies fell apart even faster under the flames. And yes, they were falling apart, whole chunks of flesh falling off at a time before we even touched them. I could see it now that my blood had cooled enough for my vision to clear.
"I think he's right," I said, glancing at the cannon balanced on my shoulder as I shifted him forward. "Lassoo, Plaster-Palm Combo!"
My cannon chuffed in agreement before vomiting forth a spray of viscous tar that coated the fore portion of the horde, which he then followed up with a lick of flame that lit up the fuel. The entire front line of zombies was set afire and began to crumble away, and the zombies stepping over them also met the same fate.
I paused in surprise as I watched the conflagration spread with an almost disturbing efficiency. "Huh. Fire's working a lot better than it did before," I remarked as I dove back into the fray, Funkfreed quite literally shaking entire sections of the horde to pieces while Lassoo's bulk doubled as both a hefty shield and a brutal club.
"I actually have a theory on that," Chopper cut in via Soundbite. "I can't confirm without seeing things, but Moria's almost certainly pushing the corpses too hard. Without the pseudo-soul of a stolen shadow, all of these corpses are just that: corpses long past any prime they might have had. And now that they're dead again, rigor mortis is setting in, and they're becoming stiff. Basically, by puppeting the bodies like this, Moria is literally making his army fight itself to pieces!"
"Well, that's… great…" Zoro grunted as he quartered another shambling husk. "Still… way too many… of these… things…!"
"You know we're in deep shit," Nami grunted as she wrenched her staff back and forth in an effort to dislodge it from the ribcage she'd accidentally rammed it through. "When our battle-hungry first mate is complaining about the fight."
"Don't you dare keel over yet, Mosshead," Sanji growled. After Nami and me, he was probably doing the best of us all, treating the zombies like so many soccer balls. Though the fact that he had been using Diable Jambe from the start might have had something to do with it, too. "We fall, the girls die horrible, messy deaths."
"And why should I?" Zoro snorted aggressively as he tore through another throng of draugr. "Care if your prissy ass gets torn apart?"
"'Cause then they'll get the rest of the crew, too!" Luffy was provided with the utmost gravity he was capable of.
"…damn it," our swordsman snarled as he redoubled his aggressive efforts.
Almost immediately, however, a diving draugr nearly bowled him over before being kicked off, and everyone shut up in favour of dodging or knocking out of the air the many draugr that had decided dive-bombing us was a great idea. And the worst part of it was that it actually was a great idea, splitting our attention even more ways.
As I descended back into the unconscious flow of the fight, I was considering what the hell Moria was thinking. Swamping us in numbers would work, yes, what with all the corpses he had available, but it would be a slow process. Even the dive-bombing draugr were unlikely to speed up the process, too. With how utterly deranged Moria was now, I seriously doubted he had the patience for that. No, this was a distraction while he got something big pulled together, and I was really not looking forward to that.
On the other hand, maybe the draugr horde would take us out fast after all, judging from the groans coming from behind us, oh son of a—!
"Fuck! We've—"
"Been flanked, we know!" Lola bit out as she cast a venomous glance over her shoulder. "If we turn away, these… draugr will overwhelm us!"
"They're going to overwhelm us anyway if we don't deal with the flankers!" I snapped. "Lassoo, can you—?"
"Belay that, Cross!"
I gave a shaky grin as a Heavy Pointed Chopper waded into the thankfully thin line of draugr behind us, sending bodies flying with every sweep of his arms. With that immediate concern taken care of, I could share the thought I'd had earlier.
"Heads up, everyone!" I called out. "I think Moria's planning something big, and this is just a distraction!"
"Warn us again when you've got some kind of IDEA what we need to watch out for!"
I winced as Chopper snapped at me; this situation must have really been getting to him.
"He has a point, though; there's not much to plan on if you just say 'something… big…'" Lassoo's voice took on a whimper as he seemed to realize something. "Unless by 'big' you mean 'titan'."
The meaning sank in fast for me, and I wasn't the only one. Every eye darted towards the manor to find… nothing. Any relief we felt was short-lived, mostly because the draugr took advantage of our distractedness to push a full-court press that sent us scrambling back, but also because of a thought that followed shortly on the heels of the first.
"So… we got a plan… for when that thing… does come out…?" Sanji huffed and puffed.
"No, but—"
Suddenly, Funkfreed went through air instead of necrotized flesh, and yes, that did feel different, vibroblade or not. I barely had time to process that the draugr had just stopped when—
KRASH-BOOM!
…Okay. Oars had been scary enough when he was just an immobile mountain of meat locked in a freezer. His bursting out of Thriller Bark's manor like some demented parody of the Kool-Aid Man? Utterly terrifying. And that was before I got a good look at the changes to his appearance.
For starters, there was no life in his eyes or his movements. His eyes were black holes in his skull, his jaw hung limply from its sockets, and his body was both stiff and fluid in unnatural ways, as though he had bones in all the wrong places. By contrast, the roiling mass of black in his belly snaking up and around and all over, leaving no doubt that Moria was still in the damn driver's seat, was barely a footnote.
And then his gaze fell on us, and it all coalesced into one horrific whole, for as much as he lacked life, this thing that had once been Oars' corpse still had all the hallmarks of intelligence. Like, y'know, scanning his surroundings and picking a target. Namely us.
"JOTUN…" the behemoth rumbled, slowly but definitely starting to trudge its way towards us.
"Mister Cross," Brook said in a voice that would have been calm if not for how he was shaking in his boots. "I believe this is the part where you either come up with an outstanding plan to deal with this monster or you lose a large measure of your credibility as a tactician."
"I get it, I get it, I'm working on it," I responded, wiping away the sweat from my brow as I ran through the situation.
One second to review: Oars, a titanic giant—whoops, I mean gigantic titan—standing there and being puppeted by Moria. Capable of flattening us effortlessly if we gave him an inch, but going by his current state, undoubtedly hindered by the apparent frailty of draugr in general and the spinal damage we'd inflicted… and the ice too, if the way tracts of his skin were cracking were anything to go by. So, he wouldn't last long. Our goal wasn't to beat him to pieces; it was to accelerate how soon Moria caused the corpse to tear itself apart.
Another second as Oars wound up a fist: in the story, it took a whole-crew combination attack to just get him down… including that 'Pirate Emperor' thing, good thing I'd butterflied that abomination away—FOCUS! How did they get one up on him?
Yet another second as it came flying, even as I started to run like hell: they brought him down, beat his face in (to little effect), failed attempt at the Pirate Emperor, then the thing with Luffy's weakness to meat, and after that—eureka moment.
Fourth second as I took a flying leap, bracing myself and flinching as the shockwave from the literal megaton punch smacked me in the gut, mentally running through the eight fighters we had and their capabilities, and confirming one: "Chopper, are you good to use a Rumble Ball?"
"Wha—maybe? I took one in the freezer; I can take one more without going berserk, but I won't be able to control what form I change to!"
And that was five seconds as I landed and rolled into a ready position. "That'll do, just cycle through them as fast as you can. Here's the plan, everyone: Gum-Gum, Waver, Sky Walk, Jumping Point, and Bone Skinny. It doesn't matter how you do it, just get up on that thing's body, make sure it knows where you are and keep moving. It's literally all brawn and no brains, so it won't hesitate to bash itself to pieces with its full power! And everyone else—" I took aim with Lassoo. "Go for its feet!"
"RIGHT!" everyone shouted as they sprang into action.
"CANI-CANNON BARRAGE!" I pulled the trigger, and explosive baseballs bracketed one of the feet, tearing off flesh in chunks, while Zoro, Franky and Lola went to town on the other limb.
Meanwhile, our more acrobatic combatants started shooting around the undead titan like demented fleas: Chopper and Brook leapt into the air, landing gracefully on the Jotun's arm and darting for the torso. Luffy grabbed the other arm and rocketed up, reaching out at the apex of his arc to grab one of the horns. Sanji kicked off the air itself, positioning himself opposite Luffy, and Nami rode her Waver up its legs.
And then, all at once, they lashed out. Two feet, one at the end of a stretched leg and the other blazing, slammed into opposite temples. Hoof and blade carved into the chest, leaving deep trenches behind. And I could hear the lightning crawling up its back.
The giant, of course, reacted immediately, but poorly, by trying to simultaneously slap its chest, stomp one foot, and scratch its back at the same time. The massive overextension of muscles and the strain on the already-stressed tendons must have been massive, but the boom of the open palm hitting the chest and the resultant air-pressure was… less than encouraging.
But never mind that! Oars was shifting its foot! Opportunity!
"CANI-SLICK!"
Black oil sprayed out of Lassoo's muzzle, coating the ground beneath the Jotun's colossal foot, and I could only pray that the ground team got my idea.
"STRONG HAMMER!"
I shouldn't have worried. Franky immediately slammed his fist into the back of the Jotun's ankle. There was an almighty snap as something important broke, and more importantly, the foot slid forward on the slick, losing any remaining grip it had.
Five figures darted off the body as it suddenly described a 180-degree turn, flailing limbs demolishing more of the manor as it crashed onto the back of its neck - right on the spot where we'd powderized a few vertebrae.
We weren't done, of course. High above the body, a foot fit for a giant ballooned into existence before rising even higher into the air. For a brief moment, it hung there, and then it came crashing down, slamming into the titan's chest to a chorus of snapping bones.
Still, the titan attempted to rise, only for a black and red meteor to streak out of the sky and slam into the Jotun's forehead in a burst of flame. Bone shattered, shortly drowned out by the colossal skull impacting the packed earth below.
And still the damn thing was trying to get up! Despite the massive footprint in its chest, despite one leg not working at all, despite everything above its shoulders looking like it was made of so much jelly, it attempted to lift itself on its arms. And yet, it was clear to everyone that it wouldn't last much longer. Just needed one… last… damn… push!
"HEY, MORIA!" Soundbite roared, his jaw set in a murderous scowl. "HOW'S THIS FOR A LITTLE DITTY! GASTRO-NATION!"
Without warning, the air was suddenly filled with the most skull-churning, gut-shredding grindcore I'd ever heard. On its own, it was pretty bad.
"AAAAAAAAARGH!"
But going by how the shadows around us suddenly screamed, and Oars' corpse started to writhe like it was undergoing an exorcism? I think there was more going on than what I was hearing.
"Gastro-Nation?" I asked quietly, warily eyeing Soundbite as he ground his teeth, a look of intense concentration on his face.
"For 'domination," he grit out. "It's a triple-threat assault. FIRST LAYER IS TO MUTE THE AREA. YOU THINK WHAT YOU'RE HEARING IS LOUD? IT'S UP TO ELEVEN IN THERE. Second is that there's some Phony mixed in to stir the guts. But third? Ohohoh..." He shook his head slowly as a distinctly vindictive tone entered his voice. "THIRD IS WHEN I MAKE HIS BRAIN AND SKULL VIBRATE JUST SO. In the simplest of terms, it feels like his gray matter is grinding itself to paste from the inside out." Soundbite's grin grew absolutely satanic. "NEAT, RIGHT?"
"That's one word for it…" I muttered under my breath. I was silent for a bit before giving him an accusatory glance. "…you're gonna be blowing chunks because of this, aren't you?"
"Somebody get me a bucket…" he moaned queasily, letting his eyestalks hang. And despite quickly perking up, he still looked rather green. "OR COTTONTAIL'S TAIL."
"Somebody help me, I'm actually considering it," Su said offhandedly with no small amount of deserved awe as she watched Oars' corpse literally shake itself to pieces in its agonized convulsions. Massive chunks of flesh were sloughing off and shattering into chunks, though thankfully the flailing arms weren't producing oh for the love of—!
"DUCK!" I yelped as one of Oars' fingers soared towards us. Following my own advice, I threw myself to the ground, feeling a cold wind of a stupidly close miss brush my everything, followed by a loud crash. "Victory has never sucked so hard," I groused.
"Stupid giant… why couldn't Moria have used a sea king or something else that would be tasty?" Luffy grumbled as he got out from under the finger he's been slammed with.
"Wow, that nearly took your head off," Su blandly remarked.
"Get your LAST LICKS in, COTTONTAIL," Soundbite moaned. "'Cause I'm about to go MUTE. HURP!"
I repositioned my partner so that he was free to hock his lunch anywhere but on me as I watched the end of the body that had once been Oars the Titan. And what an end it was: simply put, the corpse gave up the ghost by just… literally falling apart at the seams. Every joint, every single one, came undone, and just as soon as it had started thrashing, the being fell still. There was simply nothing left for it to move. It… wasn't even a corpse, really. Just a pile of rotting, freezer-burned meat.
"I-Is it over?"
Hey, I knew that quavering voice! I turned around to find Usopp, leaning heavily on a tree branch, walking towards us. "Hey, you sure you're healthy enough to be walking around?"
"He's fine!" Chopper called out. "He wasn't hit as badly as everyone else, and if he didn't think he could handle it, he wouldn't be doing it. That's just who he is."
I thought over that, and then shrugged. If our doctor said so…
"Well, then, to answer your question, probably," I explained, indicating the mountain of flesh. "That was Moria's big trump card, and it's gone. Soundbite also rattled Moria's bell in the process." I frowned. "Though Oars went down pretty easily compared to canon. But then again, Moria was overstressing it, and we'd already damaged it pretty badly, so I guess that makes sense?"
"Cross," Nami started testily as her halo darkened. "If you are actually complaining about us having an easy time taking down a multi-story goliath, then so help me—!"
"I'm not complaining!" I hastily assured her. "Just… with our luck, if things turn out easier than expected, wouldn't you want to try and think of anything you might have missed?"
"Kill… you…"
"Gurk…" I choked, going ramrod straight. "Like, for example, a certain raging bastard still somehow having the strength to remain conscious?!"
Nobody had a response to that, on account of how they'd all apparently turned to stare at the renewed threat in gape-mouthed horror, and the second I joined them I completely understood why.
Bloodshot eyes completely rolled up in their sockets, a topographical map of bulging veins, pink foam dribbling from both corners of his mouth, and all tied together by the kind of shivering you only ever saw in the most hardcore of junkies and the kind of looks you only ever get by going through a meat grinder, besides. Yeah, I think it's safe to say that we are currently witnessing Gecko Moria at the all-time lowest point in his life.
If he were anyone else, I'd probably find this kind of tenacity admirable. Given who he was, what he'd done and what he was most likely planning to do to us, however…
"Kill… you…" Moria gargled through all the blood and whatever other fluids were clogging his throat. "Kill… you…"
Yeah, not my idea of fun.
"Okay…" I breathed sotto voce as I delicately raised Lassoo's barrel. "Everybody, he's still stalling out from pure rage. No sudden movements, nothing to set him off. Just get ready to take him out all at once, very, very—!"
"Kill… you… Kill… kill… kill…"
Ooooh, that vocal devolution was not a good sign.
CR-CR-CRACK!
Nor Moria's teeth were cracking in his mouth from just how hard he was clenching them. "KILL YOU ALL! NIIIIIDHOOOOOOOGG!"
The yell to attack was on the tip of my tongue when a mass of blackness that I barely recognized as a Doppelman erupted between Moria and us. I braced myself for an assault from the ragged simulacrum, but rather than attack us, the shady demon instead started clawing at the ground, ripping out handful after handful of… of…
"Uh… guys…" Luffy asked slowly, his voice rife with confusion. "How come the shadow's eating other shadows?"
As much as the very idea sounds utterly ludicrous… indeed, the Doppelman was shredding what shadows it could get its ragged claws on, tearing them out by the talonful and shoving them down its gaping gullet. I honestly couldn't comprehend the action until I noticed the thing starting to swell, and suddenly everything clicked into place like the gears of a freaking doomsday device.
"No… no fucking way…" I drew out in breathless terror, already starting to inch away on trembling legs. Fuck adrenaline rushes, if what I thought was happening was actually happening—!
"Cross! Talk! NOW!" Nami snapped, her panicked voice managing to ground me in reality.
"M-Moria once showed that he could manipulate reality, actual flesh, via manipulating the shape of someone's shadow!" I babbled. "How he warped it was harmless enough, but they still had the same general mass. B-But now, his own shadow, I-it's taking in extra mass from the shadows! A-And that name, Nidhogg…"
I gulped audibly, trying and failing to clear the ash that had filled my mouth.
"That's the name of… a dragon…" I finally croaked, staring at the gradually distending gut of the shadow demon in horror. "The dragon… of the end of the world."
It took all of two seconds for that to sink in, and as Doppelman began devouring a straight-up stream of shadows from the earth and both it and its caster really started to swell up, everyone recoiled in horror.
"Cross," Nami whispered with rapidly mounting dread. "Are you trying to say that Moria's going to turn himself into a dragon!?"
I shook my head, slowly at first but accelerating as my panic really started to hit its stride. "I think he's going to damn well try," I hissed, spinning around and throwing Funkfreed. "And I'm not planning on sticking around to find out!" I was halfway up the elephant's back before he'd even fully transformed, and he was stamping his legs impatiently as was.
"Hey, Cross, wait a—!" Luffy started to protest.
"LUFFY!" Chopper barked. He was carrying Robin, Conis, and a frantic Su on his shoulders, the latter two clearly still unable to move. "We can stay here and fight Moria, or we can get our friends somewhere safe, but if we try and do both, then someone's going to get hurt in a way I won't be able to fix!"
That brought Luffy up short. The rubber man cast a final glance at the Asgard-sized blimp that Moria had become before gritting his teeth, shooting an arm out to snag Boss and booking it like Garp was on his ass. "EVERYONE RUN!"
"Don't have to tell me twice!" Funkfreed brayed as he stampeded after our captain as fast as he could, Franky and Lola grabbing their way onto the sword's bulk as he passed.
And so, for the first time in the crew's history, the Straw Hat Pirates began retreating from the battlefield, hauling ass and hauling our friends' asses besides. What we would do once we got them to safety was still up in the air, but it was better than leaving them where they could easily be trampled in the pummeling, no matter who was on the receiving end. For now, I was just glad that the attack took so much setup, because it was buying us the time we needed to put distance between ourselves and the doubly mad Warlord.
Which was a damn good thing, because looking over my shoulder, I could scarcely believe how rapidly the situation had devolved: Moria and his shadow were both massively gorged, and the shadow's suction had grown to the point where, judging by how trails of shadow were lancing through the air to its maw, it was devouring the very same thorn hedge Moria had used to pen us all in. That was both encouraging and a reason for yet more panic.
Still, either way, the build-up meant we had time. I just hoped we had enough.
"Uh, guys?" Franky shouted warily. "Don't wanna start any panic or nuthin', but that shadow-puppet thing just stopped eating!"
I started to turn in my seat to look back—
KRNCHRRRCH!
And then I snapped my head forward and kept my eyes locked firmly dead ahead, because there was no way in hell that I was going to so much as glance at the source of that… that… ergh, even the mere thought brings me inches from tossing my entire digestive tract.
The closest approximation I can think of would be a meat grinder. A titanic, industrial-grade meat grinder. Snapping, crunching, squishing, ripping, grinding, all these sounds and more sounded through the air, and each was more flesh-filled than the noise ever had any right to be.
However, just as soon as the noises started, they stopped dead, leaving behind a far-too-still silence that permeated the air as thickly as the Florian's fog.
If only it could have lasted.
"GROOOOOOOAAAAAAARGH!"
"GAH!"
I let loose a yelp of both shock and pain as I was literally slapped upside the back of my head by a wall of pure sound and air pressure. So strong was the force of the bellow that we were all sent tumbling due to our mere proximity, not even Funkfreed's massive bulk capable of keeping him upright. The sound of shattering glass echoed in my ringing ears, the shards thankfully going nowhere near us. Instead, we were engulfed in wind-blown grit and ballistic bits of dead flesh, and I'm honestly unsure what was worse.
Lemme tell you, regaining your wits only to find yourself lying face down in a pile of desiccated human flesh and feeling like you've been worked over by the mob? Not an experience you want to have twice in one day, or at all. And yet, here I was having undergone that very same experience twice in the span of hours.
"Hate… this… island…" I moaned as I sat up and clutched my throbbing skull.
"You, me, and everyone who's been living on it for any amount of time," Lola tsked, wincing as she pushed herself to her feet.
"Contemplate burning this hellhole down later…" Nami grit out as she used a wall to claw her way to her feet, her clothes hastily patting down any dirt or rubble that the blast might have caked on her. "Figure out what just happened now. Did… did Moria really just—?"
"GROOOOARGH!"
We all froze as another roar echoed behind us. It was quieter, thankfully, but in all honesty? The lowered volume just made things worse. After all, higher volume leaves a bigger impact, but lower volume has all the details.
The gorey, echoing, twisted details.
In a moment of foolish thoughtlessness, I glanced over my shoulder in an effort to catch sight of our enemy—
"HURGH!"
And just as swiftly, I snapped my head back, hunched forward, and clamped my hand over my mouth in order to arrest a second helping of bile. I-I hadn't actually seen Moria's form in that glance, the dust and fog were still hanging too thick for that, but I'd seen its silhouette, and that was enough. Sweet Lucifer's hellfire, it was more than enough for a lifetime.
As it turns out, I'd been both right and wrong in my assumption. Right in that Moria had obviously tried to turn himself into a dragon, but wrong in that he'd failed. At least, I considered it a failure, because the silhouette of the thing I could see in the distance, roaring and thrashing and demolishing section after section of the manor with its every careless movement? That… that was absolutely no dragon.
It was stretched, twisted, warped in ways I can't even begin to conceive of, and at its core, the very core of its being, this thing was every kind of wrong possible, but the one thing I absolutely refused to call it besides human was 'dragon'. Because this thing… this was another beast entirely, and I… I don't rightly know what.
Chopper was curled up on his knees, heaving violently as he clamped his hooves over his nose. "I-I-I can't even… I don't… the trauma he just put his body through! How is he still alive… t-this is just… just…"
"You know what?" I heard Lola say with a strained but flat voice. "I've done a lot of crazy shit on these oceans, done a lot of crazy shit today for this crew. But no way in hell am I fighting that."
I winced and turned my head to reply, and then I froze up as I noticed something crucial. "That's… actually a very good and very viable idea because that thing ate the thorn hedge!"
"What!?" most everyone yelped in shock, spinning around to confirm that, yes, the writhing wall of shadows was gone and the route to the forest and freedom was indeed free and clear.
"I have never been more thankful for an enemy getting high on rage in my entire life," Lassoo breathed reverentially.
"And I never thought I'd say this, but same here," Zoro grunted, yanking Conis onto his shoulder. "Now come on, everyone grab a body with a pulse and let's get out of here!"
Everyone gave signs of assent, and we started moving accordingly—
"Go on without me."
When a very familiar voice caused everyone to freeze and turn to see our captain tossing his hat behind him and crouching down. Nami's clouds caught it automatically as Luffy's body turned red and began steaming.
"The plan all along was for me to kick Moria's ass, and I owe him that even more after what he's done to us," our captain spoke in a tone that didn't allow for even a hint of protest. "I'll finish him off. You guys go on and get back."
I exchanged hasty looks with my fellow officers before we all gave Luffy firm looks of our own. "We'll fall back to the treeline," I conceded. "But no way are we leaving you alone."
Luffy nodded with a steam-filled snort. "Good enough. Now, get moving. Franky!" He turned a side-glare on our shipwright.
"Right! Gimme a second, aaaand… there!" Said shipwright shifted around a bit in place before procuring a writhing bundle of darkness from… somewhere. "75 shadows, right up the old address! All yours, Luffy!" And with that, he tossed the umbral bundle at and into our captain, who hunched forward with a groan.
As Luffy transformed and Moria remained occupied with wrecking his own domain, I couldn't help but feel a slight inkling of curiosity. Sure, I knew that we'd kept a cache of shadows in reserve for this exact sort of situation, but I hadn't known Franky had been hanging onto them this whole time. I guess I'd kind of assumed he'd lost them at some point. After all…
"Where… exactly were you keeping those shadows?" I asked slowly as I gave his wardrobe, or rather lack thereof, a once-over.
Franky grinned. "Oh, I kept them in my—!"
"On second thought, never mind, I really don't wanna—!"
"GrrrrRRRAAAAGH! HEY! MORIA!"
Our collective attention was suddenly arrested by a very pissed and now very big and very blue Luffy shooting forward, skidding to a halt in front of the smoky shadow that was once Moria—no, that was Nidhogg now—and bellowing in outrage.
Then, Luffy sucked in a chest-expanding whoosh of air…
"I AM THE MAN WHO WILL BECOME THE PIRATE KING!"
And shook us all to our very souls with a bellow that was accompanied… not so much by a statement of fact, but more like a divine mandate. And while it inspired awe in most of us, others reacted a bit more… viscerally.
"GRR… GRAAAAAAAGH!" roared the unholy love child of Smaug and Tim Curry, head flung back.
Outrage that Luffy weathered with ease, glaring at the wyrm with neither fear nor hesitation, but simply primal disgust. "I'm going to be the Pirate King," Luffy repeated frigidly, with all the finality of declaring that the sky was blue. "And not you. It'll never be you. You can't be the Pirate King, because besides the fact that it's gonna be me?"
Luffy crossed his arms and stared down the monster.
"You're not actually a pirate."
I swear you could have sliced the following tension and silence both with a rusty spoon. But of course, like all tense silences, it was born only to be broken. In this case?
"GROOOOOOOAAAAAAARGH!"
By another ear-rending pseudo-draconian roar that, while it didn't send us all sprawling, still hit us like a semi-physical wave and left us all clutching our ears in agony.
All, of course, save Luffy, whose entirely sane reaction was to blur forwards, reel his arm back—
"GUM-GUM JET PISTOL!" CRUNCH!
And extend his fist into Nidhogg's jaw, sending the wyrm reeling. While the monstrosity was still reorienting itself, Luffy charged past its bulk and disappeared into the dust, heading into the manor's ruins. And once Nidhogg recovered, it ignored us in favour of giving chase with as much speed as its bloated, mangled frame could manage.
For a few seconds, we stared silently in the direction the two had gone. Then I felt a jab in my shoulder, and I glanced over to Funkfreed.
"One night, and I've gone from having a lifetime of no combat to almost too much," he breathed. "It's official: even if I don't survive this, I made the right choice joining the Straw Hat Pirates."
"We get it, we get it," Lassoo chuffed as he started wandering around and grabbing the TDWS onto his back. "Now less talking, more hauling!"
And so we all set about gathering up our fallen comrades from where we'd left them without a moment's hesitation. Well, actually some hesitation.
"Hey, does anyone have any idea what the hell Luffy was on about?" Franky asked, wincing as he heaved Carue onto his back.
"Hell if I know, but I imagine he's going to break it down for Moria in the same breath he breaks his face," I replied, before nearly face-planting as their blows shook the ship again. "In the meantime, let's get a little more distance, shall we? Being on the same island as this shitshow's gonna be bad enough, I am not intent on experiencing ground zero!"
-o-
Monkey D. Luffy winces as he ducks under a grasping claw, eyeing his right arm, recently returned from a meeting with Nidhogg's soft core. Even with seventy-five shadows strengthening his rubber body's natural toughness, thin tracks of blood crisscross the limb.
Another claw comes in, and he hops back, rearing back one leg. "GUM-GUM JET STAMP!" he roars, one sandal-clad foot slamming into Nidhogg and pushing it back. This limb, too, comes back bloody, the sandal reduced to so many straw scraps. The beast roars in pain and rage, and somewhere in his heart, he understands the unspoken question.
"Pirates sail the seas for a reason!" he yells, hopping over an overhead smash. As he winds back a fist, he continues to speak. "They sail for freedom! They sail for their dreams! I've run into a lot of people who called themselves pirates, but they had some kind of reason that kept them going, even if it was something stupid like money or power! You can't eat money, you can't eat power, and they don't help you get friends!"
The blow lands, pain stinging the limb like all the other blows. He ignores this, for he can take it, and his opponent is the one coming off the worst. That the shadows now grasp the limb is a far more serious problem. He only has time for an exclaimed "OH—!" before Nidhogg slams into him and doesn't stop. The shadows lick at his chest and gut and vest, stinging like so many mosquitoes, and the two crash into the manor, wood and plaster and even stone giving way under their far stronger bodies. This is too much for the much-abused building, and the walls give way, collapsing the structure onto their heads.
But even this doesn't stop Nidhogg, and it outraces the destruction, throwing him through the far wall. It shows no sign of stopping. He must stop it.
His sandals clap together, his muscles tense, and he roars: "GUM-GUM JET SPEAR!" A spearhead, formed by clasped toes, slams into Nidhogg's midsection, breaking its weakened grip and sending it flying back into the still-settling wreckage of the manor. For a moment, he takes his chance to catch his breath—and with a sudden pulse, he nearly loses control, his chest swelling up as the umbral souls empowering him attempt to return to their rightful place.
Time to end this.
Setting his feet, he pumps his fists in front of him, waiting for Nidhogg to reappear. And the shadow beast does not disappoint, erupting from the manorial wreckage, roaring its defiance and accompanied by a plume of splinters and rock dust. With no regard for thought or strategy, it charges at him head-on.
It is perhaps the worst thing it could do.
"GUM-GUM JET GATLING!"
This time, it is not a single blow that the shadows can grasp and tear. It is not a single blow that Nidhogg's form, long past caring about damage, can simply shrug off. It is a barrage, fast and unrelenting and offering no purchase.
It is with the one hundred and seventy-third blow that the inevitable happens: he freezes, slumping to his knees, veins rising all over his body… and in a burst of the darkest of black, seventy-five shadows flee the body of Monkey D. Luffy, his skin reverting back to the usual bronze. He doesn't move. He can't.
And Nidhogg is in no better shape. The great beast writhes on the ground, roaring—or perhaps screaming—in pain and rage and grief and a hundred other emotions. Through his exhaustion, he eyes the great mast looming above him, and knows that he will need to draw it up that towering trunk.
But he is tired, so tired. His muscles ache with strain and lactic acid, his heart gallops like a panicked horse, and his lungs vainly try to suck in enough oxygen. His very soul and will quiver with exhaustion, and a dozen different wounds sting him with pain.
And yet.
And yet every time his mind screams 'Fall!', he cannot. For he sees the monster in front of him, and he sees the smiles of his crew, his friends, and he knows down to his bones that he cannot let the two meet.
He will not fall. Only when the monster of shadow and hate falls, and not a second before. And it must fall soon; otherwise, the decision is not his.
"BUT YOU!" he roars, briefly glancing up. "You don't care about any of that! All you want is the throne, and for what?!" Standing to his feet, he pins it with the best glare he has. "For revenge?! Because you lost your friends?! You don't even remember them! You're just sailing because of your pain! Because you don't know what else to do! And you're making everyone else hurt, too, just because! You're not a pirate! You're not even a person! You're a shadow! A ghost! YOU DIED WITH YOUR CREW!"
Astoundingly, Nidhogg falls silent. A creature that roared and spat and snarled for its entire existence, that was always roiling and twitching and moving, freezes, utterly quiet. For several seconds that may actually be an eternity, the two stare at each other, and then he shuffles one foot back.
That movement provokes the beast, Nidhogg flipping to its feet and charging forward, still utterly silent. He stretches his arms up, grasping a spar and soaring into the sky as the rubber pulls back. Below, Nidhogg skids to a halt, reverses, and grasps the mast with its claws, beginning to climb. It climbs steadily, but slowly; he climbs in bursts, each taking him further up the mast. Blades of shadow shoot up, seeking to impale him, but swinging in the air as he does allows him to avoid all but minor nicks.
Within minutes, he has reached the top of the mast, the fog encompassing all, even at this atmosphere, and Nidhogg two spars down but rising fast. Gritting his teeth, he bites into his thumb and blows. His arm swells, the air flowing into his chest and then the other arm as he continues to blow. Within seconds, both arms are fit for a giant, and he cuts the flow in favour of taking a colossal breath into his chest, ribs stretching to fit. Sandaled feet grasp the mast, and muscles in the back and chest flex, spinning him around into a tightly wound spring.
"GUUUUM-GUUUUM—!"
And then Nidhogg is there, faster than he had any right to be. Shadow skitters off the massive arms, merely adding to the thin lines already present, but umbral jaws find purchase in his gut.
"Gah!"
Air hisses out from the punctured torso, and he knows he must act now. And thankfully, his opponent is right there. Two massive arms pump, smashing into Nidhogg from above, dislodging him and sending him spiralling towards the ground far below.
"GIAAAANT STOOOORM!"
And he follows, screaming, spinning like a top. Each fist is a meteor with the weight of a mountain, and they fall like monsoon rain, swift and unrelenting. The fists are too large to receive damage, and in any case, Nidhogg is now utterly senseless, unable to counterattack.
The torment only ends when it is squashed between a titanic fist and the small landmass floating on the sea. Dark shadows and a small dot in black and blue and bronze and red fly away, signifying to all one thing:
This fight is over.
-o-
KRACK!
"Son of a bitch!" I yelped, cartwheeled my arms in panic as the flipping island shattered beneath us.
I mean, it was to be expected of course after the cataclysmic beatdown we'd just seen Luffy deliver, of course, but it was another entirely to feel the very earth tremble beneath your feet. And then it was a tier all of its own when you and everyone around you had to scramble to stay together as massive rents and cracks ripped the earth apart, and seawater sloshed up and sprayed us in drenching, salty gouts.
Thankfully, the devastation was as swift as it was brutal, and as soon as it was over, we were left panting in shock, wet, dumbstruck… but alive.
Zoro huffed heavily as he stared at the crack before glancing at me. "Is this… going to be a regular thing?" he managed to get out.
I shook my head, a slight jerk in the motion. "Not until New World, that's for damn sure."
That got me a heck of a lot of attention, several people opening their mouths to speak at once—
"Wait…" Usopp cut in, hand shading his eyes. "Is that… Luffy?"
When they were all silenced by that query, they followed his gaze.
And indeed, right there in the sky, sailing on the breeze of his own rapidly exhaling breath...
"WHOA! SOMEONE CATCH ME!"
Was our captain, and the winner of this long and arduous fight, Monkey D. 'That Freaking GLORIOUS Straw Hat' Luffy!
"Oh, yeah, forgot he tends to do that…" I commented weakly. I paused briefly, tilting my head. "Somebody should catch him before he falls in the drink, huh?"
"I got this," Chopper said, weary but fond. Shifting to Heavy Point, he stepped forward, and then right, and then forward again, just in time for him to catch Luffy against his chest. His head leaned down, several curious hums coming from him, and then he turned around with a sunny grin. "Alright, he's not going to keel over immediately or bleed out anytime soon, so I hope you don't mind if I take a moment to celebrate the fact that we fucking survived that!"
I allowed a massive sigh of relief to exit my lungs, now that we were safe at last from that monster that Moria had somehow become. And out the corner of my eye, I could see everyone else—Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Franky, Brook, Lola, Usopp, Lassoo, and Funkfreed—doing the same. But it couldn't be that simple; the second I began thinking about the whole fight with a perfectly clear head, my blood ran cold as I realized I'd overlooked something.
"Hold everything, guys."
"Not that tone, please not that tone, not now of all times, Cross," Usopp moaned, he and everyone else immediately on their guard.
"Sorry, Usopp, but I have to," I said, Lassoo and Funkfreed moving back towards me as I scanned around. "Thinking over the situation, all of the zombies were purified. All of the Mysterious Three were taken out. All of our allies were present and accounted for. And the mansion was a long way away from the graveyard, isolated from all the noise we were making. I wasn't able to spare enough thought for this until now with Moria's Awakened rampage, but thinking about it now?"
I turned so that I was facing everyone.
"If we sedated him—which we did—who or what woke him up from it?"
I registered the looks of horrified realization come onto my friends' faces… but just barely. What happened next was Eneru all over again; it just happened so freaking fast. A dark shadow looming behind me, the sound of fabric leaving flesh, and a soft, almost gentle voice, speaking a single word.
"Me."
I barely had enough time to start panicking when I felt something touch my head. Then everything went dark.