Dr. Indigo was a genius. No matter how much they hated the way he used his surplus IQ, nobody could deny it. So when he heard the commands that Jeremiah Cross gave to the Straw Hat Pirates and failed to stop Luffy (and 'Black Bart' Bartolomeo, the damn traitor) from pursuing his captain, he knew there was really only one thing that a genius like him could do: flee the center of the chaos and ensure that if he had to fight, it would be on his terms, on his ground, and most importantly, in a way that ensured that no Human Zoans were getting their grubby paws on his precious research.
So Dr. Indigo had arrived at his laboratory mere minutes after the Straw Hats' invasion commenced, and had spent that time ensuring that all of his most valuable devices and notes were sealed away. He might have worried if their navigator was still up and about, but no one else would have the skills to get past his security. After everything was secured, he finally got around to unwinding the bandages from his head and reapplying his makeup.
The Hollow-girl's parting shot had destroyed much of his hair and left more than a little bruising on his face, leaving his appearance different from what he was used to. This, and the fact that they were invading the East Blue, vindicated his ingenuity to the world and inspired the doctor to redesign his appearance. White was the base as before, but several black markings adorned it.
His reasoning behind donning it was that he thought it would make him look more dangerous. He was right. With his makeup applied, he parked himself on the railing of the second level of his lab to wait for the Straw Hats' inevitable invasion. With his preparations complete, his wait was brief.
The doors swung open, and Indigo scowled, then grinned as he saw the very object of his ire before him. And with one of his most ingenious test subjects and the two other objects of ire in his life following behind him to boot! Today was actually looking up after all!
"Tony Tony Chopper. I've been expecting you," he said, chemicals brimming in his palms and ready to form into his Chemical Juggling at a moment's notice.
"Indigo," the Zoan growled ferally, glaring bloody murder up at the other 'doctor'. He paused, passing Perona's barely conscious frame off to Billy before straightening a touch. "Going for the Juggalo look?"
Indigo blinked, glancing into a nearby mirror. "I wasn't aware that this was a style… But then again, one does tend to miss a few developments when secluded from the world for twenty years."
Chopper snorted. "I only heard about it from Cross. It's appropriate, really; he described it as the 'Insane Clown' look, and that just sums you up perfectly."
Indigo's anger returned, earning Chopper a glare, but the mad doctor reeled it in enough to change the subject to what he knew would enrage Chopper the most. "I assume that you're here because you've found the sad state of your crewmates. The IQ plants are the only cure for Daft Green poisoning, but unfortunately for you…" Indigo flipped a vial of pink liquid into the palm of his hand. "The only sample of the antidote in existence at the moment is right here…" His grin widened maniacally as he crushed the vial in his grip, letting the liquid drip out from between his fingers. "And now it's gone. It took a great deal of research for me to figure out how to make it, so obviously an ignoramus like you doesn't have even a ghost of a prayer of—!"
"I already have the formula."
Indigo froze as Chopper took out a pair of vials bubbling with milky-white liquid. Indigo's eyes widened in shock and fury; he knew that appearance, it was his precise brew of antidote. All that was missing was the key ingredient of IQ that would stabilize the concoction and turn it pink.
"Warmth. Sympathy. Understanding," Chopper recited frigidly, ignoring Indigo in favour of the batch of curing IQ plants that the clown doctor had left out as a taunt, and which Chopper was now walking towards. "Hogback only considered the surgeon's knife, and you only consider the chemist's drug. You've forgotten what it means to be a doctor… if you ever were one."
Chopper spared Indigo a scathing look.
"Can you think of how I managed to reproduce the antidote with only a few hours of preparation, only missing the key ingredient?" he asked quietly.
"YOU COULDN'T HAVE!" Indigo screamed in denial, his already strained restraint snapping like a twig. "I'VE STUDIED THESE ISLANDS INSIDE AND OUT FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS. THERE'S NOTHING THAT COULD HAVE LET YOU FIGURE IT OUT THIS FAST!"
"Oh, but there is," Chopper corrected, tossing a handful of the plants into a mortar and grinding them up. "One thing that you overlooked. One thing that would have let you figure out all that you needed to in less than a day, the same way that I did."
Indigo silently fumed as Chopper raised his head and glared straight into his eyes.
"The natives have been fighting off Daft Green for years. All I needed was to ask how they did it, and while their means weren't the most efficient or the most effective, they were enough. What I've made here, it was only possible by perfecting what the inhabitants of Merveille spent generations constructing." Without looking, Chopper poured the ground-up IQ plants into his vials, swirled them slightly, and held them up to his eye as the concoctions turned the proper healthy pink. "All thanks to the intelligence and diligence of the very people you enslaved."
Indigo didn't move for several moments. Taking the opportunity for what it was worth, Chopper hurried back to his patients and carefully forced the antidote down their throats.
The second the mixture hit the girls' digestive tracts, they started heaving and coughing, feeling as though their innards were being run through by rusty nails, but the fact that they could move or breathe at all, combined with the steady disappearance of their ruddy green bruises, proved just how effective the doctor's cure was.
Nami blinked and gazed unsteadily at her crewmate as the haze cleared from her mind. "Ch-Chopper—? What's—?"
"Stay still," the human-Zoan ordered. "The antidote is working, but it still needs to clear the toxins out of your system. Just let it work, and you'll be fine in a matter of minutes."
"B-But what about—?!" Nami cut herself off with a choked gurgle as she noticed Indigo over Chopper's shoulder. "Ah. I see. Right, I-I'll just leave it to you, then." Nami quickly got into a sitting position on Billy's back and helped position the still-dizzy Perona across the giga-duck's back. "Stay safe!"
Perona shook her head in confusion. "Wait, wha—? What's going on?"
Before she could get any further, Billy spread his wings and shot out of the lab.
"WAAAAAH!"
Satisfied that his friends were safe, Chopper turned to face Indigo, slipping a gas mask from his pack and positioning it over his face. And not a moment too soon, as Indigo finally managed to reorient his thoughts, and in a bad way.
"…You… You honestly think?" Indigo snarled, his face twisting as flaming bubbles of chemicals started forming around him. "That you can waltz in here and challenge my mastery straight to my face?!"
A look of honest confusion flashed across Chopper's face. "Well, yeah? I mean, I'm a Straw Hat. It's what we do."
Something snapped within Indigo and, screaming wordlessly, he launched every single one of the nitroglycerin bubbles he'd generated at the furry blasphemer in an attempt to obliterate it. They certainly did a good job of obliterating the far wall in blossoms of fire, smoke, and shock.
Panting, the clown felt his rage recede, and warily eyed the site of the explosion. As much as he wished otherwise, there was no way that would be enough to take down a Straw Hat.
"Nitroglycerin. Used to reduce heart pressure, but also a powerful contact explosive."
'Sometimes,' Indigo mentally growled. 'I hate being right.'
Turning, the mad doctor brought Chopper into his peripheral vision and then into his main vision. To his aggravation, the Zoan was entirely unscathed from the explosion and was calmly pulling on some gloves at that.
"How—?" Indigo managed to choke out through his fury.
"You're smart, figure it out," was the terse reply.
The rage boiled up again, threatening to overtake him. But Indigo shoved it down with the ease of experience. He could not win this fight in a blinding rage; that wasn't his style. He needed calm analysis and some space. Which decided his next move.
Reaching into one of the many pockets of his voluminous lab coat, Indigo pulled out what looked like the unholy offspring of a horse syringe and one of those newfangled revolver pistols, the cylinder loaded with a variety of colour-filled vials. With most of his gases likely defeated by that gas mask, the acids were his best chance at doing away with the pest before him. As such, the malevolent doctor spun the cylinder to the vial loaded with hydrofluoric acid and, without a moment's hesitation, plunged the syringe into his veins and injected the payload.
Immediately in response to the infusion, Indigo's tattoos shifted so that they were entirely transparent, and Indigo called up more chemical balls, half nitroglycerin and half hydrofluoric acid, he'd prepared. The acid was launched at Chopper, and Indigo took some satisfaction from the look of shock that it produced on what he could see of the fuzzball's face. The nitroglycerin, meanwhile, took out the wall behind him, and he jumped through the new hole, landing on one of the bridges connecting the towers of Shiki's palace.
Then a masked reindeer bounded onto the other side, still unscathed.
"Hydrofluoric acid," the Zoan recited, casually tossing a vial up and down in the palm of his hand. "A powerful acid, and an equally powerful contact poison. Treatment is calcium glutamate for the skin and calcium chlorate for the internals."
"Piropiropiro!" Indigo laughed mirthlessly. "You certainly know your chemicals! And I'll bet you have a treatment for almost any poison I have!" The doctor spread his arms eagerly, syringe spinning in one hand and a ring of Chemical balls spinning to life in the palm of the other. "Let's see if you missed anything!"
Chopper was moving even before the balls lashed out, and they sprayed a bewildering array of substances over the area. More acid, as well as honey and oil, were sprayed in all directions, the latter igniting when nitroglycerin and other chemicals burst in explosions or gouts of flame or crackling electricity.
And all the while, that damn furball kept naming off every chemical he used!
"Hydrochloric acid. Less toxic, but no less corrosive. Wash with water immediately."
"Oil. Slick, and flammable, but otherwise not dangerous."
"Sulfur. Irritant, pain aggravator, and sensory inhibitor."
"Strontium. Explosive, radioactive, and prone to generating electrical currents. Recommend a good pair of running shoes."
"Honey. Sticky. Very tasty."
Growling, Indigo kept up the barrage and drew a baton from a hidden pocket. This opponent would require something more… hands-on. A quick sniff confirmed that the substance spread over it was still there. Turning back to his barrage, he watched, waited… and then moved. Chopper, who had been focused on evading the chemicals, didn't notice Indigo switching to melee until the baton cracked on the side of his head, sending him pitching onto the bridge.
The Zoan immediately tried to rise, but it was unsteady. "Aconitine," he heard Chopper growl.
"Got it in one, piropiropiro!" Indigo cackled. Mentally, he switched chemicals again, stripes turning white. "I'm sure you can feel the stinging, see the blurred vision! Now, decisions, decisions…" Indigo hummed thoughtfully, looking up into the sky. "What should I kill you with… Oh, silly me, I've already decided! Mass Jugg—!"
"Heavy Gong."
A fist the size of his own head slammed into Indigo's chest with an ominous cracking sound. The clown's eyes bulged, right before the laws of physics reasserted themselves and sent him crashing into the wall at the other end of the bridge. The chemical ball, now with no one to hold it up, splashed onto the bridge, Chopper hopping over the spot to stalk up to Indigo. The clown was digging himself out of the splintered wood when he arrived, confusion written all over his features.
"H-How…" he wheezed through grit teeth.
"Paeoniflorin," Chopper explained, holding up a small vial of pills as he calmly marched forward. "It has a detoxifying effect on aconitine."
"Th-That's… I've never heard of that!" Indigo protested.
"You wouldn't have, being twenty years out of date," Chopper replied coldly, exchanging the vial for a far more volatile form of ammunition. "It's only ever gone through animal trials. But, well, I was an animal at the time, and my teacher does have a reputation of being something of a crazy old witch, so I probably won't suffer serious side effects."
Growling, Indigo raised his hand to continue Chemical Juggling and then yelped in pain as a hoof came down on the appendage.
"You've lost, Indigo," Chopper stated, as if discussing the weather. "You lost because of short-sightedness, because you shut yourself away from the world, and above all else…" Chopper leaned forward and met Indigo's gaze with his own cyan glare. "Because you're simply not as good at either medicine or combat as I am."
Once again, something snapped within Indigo. "I will not," he growled. "Be looked down upon by some stripling pirate doctor barely out of medical school! Mass Juggling!"
A massive, pale-blue ball burst into existence above the two, and for the first time, Chopper showed panic, especially when Indigo grabbed his hoof.
"Piropiropiro!" he cackled, a madness all his own glimmering in his eyes. "Time for us to enjoy a nice cyanide bath! Come, let us venture into the great beyond together! Piropiropiro!"
And then, it fell.
Immediately, the initial effects made themselves known: dizziness, headache, pounding heart and sucking lungs. Gritting his teeth, Chopper shifted into human form, plunged a hand into his bag, pulled out a syringe, jammed it into his arm, and pressed the plunger.
After a few seconds, the symptoms receded, and Chopper heaved a sigh of relief. His eyes turned towards Indigo, who was visibly wrestling with his own symptoms. For a moment, Chopper considered his options, and then sighed.
Kneeling down, he retrieved a canister with a mask and another syringe. This was not missed by Indigo.
"Wh-What are you doing?" the clown groaned.
"Treating you, obviously," Chopper replied, shaking his head with a grimace in an effort to clear it. "You might be a bastard, but I'm still a doctor."
"N-No. No!" Indigo roared. "I-I r-refuse to—"
A cloven hoof slammed into a specific pressure point—read: Indigo's temple—and the other pirates' protests ended. "That's better," Chopper sighed. "Especially since I have to use the less pleasant antidote."
He was left to work quietly for a bit, stabilizing the mad chemist and then injecting him with a paralyzing agent. Then he hefted Indigo onto his shoulder and carried him back to his lab.
"Funny," a familiar voice remarked as he went. "I thought you'd be carrying back a mangled mess of bones and tissue like whatever you did to Hogback. And that you'd be just as raving now as you were back then to boot."
Chopper exhaled heavily, sparing the grinning spectre beside him a glance. "Hogback was a hero of mine, and I let my anger overtake me when I got my hands on him. The kind of hatred you feel for someone you used to look up to… It's so much worse than someone that you always knew was a monster."
He shook his head as he dropped Indigo onto the floor of his lab. "If he's a half-decent scientist, his laboratory should be strong enough to withstand the fall of Merveille. The Marines will handle the rest. But so long as you're here, you think you'd be willing to help me get past—"
"Sorry, furball, I've got bigger things to worry about than 'science'," Perona air-quoted impishly. "Buuut hey, since you saved my life, I'll tell your old ship to head your way; she's as good at lockpicking as Nami, right?"
Chopper exhaled and nodded. "Alright, thanks."
With a final grin, the Hollow flew off, and Chopper stalked past the fallen Indigo toward the most secure-looking door he could find.
"Alright, now let's see…" Chopper spun a scalpel in his hand contemplatively. "How does that old saying go… Ah, yes!" The reindeer's eyes flashed eagerly. "How much IQ could a reindeer store if a reindeer could store IQ?"
-o-
Elsewhere on the Grand Line, Miss Merry Christmas sneezed.
And she wasn't the only one, either.
-o-
"WAHCHOO! Urgh, damn allergies…"
Usopp sniffled and rubbed at his nose as he ran down the halls of Merveille. He could do this because he wasn't going as fast as he could; after all, for the moment, he was looking for another Straw Hat, or at least another Barto Clubber, to attach himself to. Idly, he reran just how tightly he'd secured the ex-Waver's Jet Dial in his workshop through his head. At least Nami was unlikely to do anything to him once this was all over.
Skidding slightly as he took a corner, he gritted his teeth at the distinct lack of combat sounds in his immediate environs. Why was it that the one time he wanted to run towards the fighting, he couldn't find any?! There were, like, ten thousand pirates in here, and over twenty combined Straw Hats and Barto Clubbers! That he hadn't found something was mindboggling!
Another corner, and this time Usopp skidded to a halt, his mind going back to Cross's lecture on tempting fate. Definitely one he'd be applying a little more from now on, since there was a pack of about a dozen pirates blocking his way. The only way, besides going back. Who designed this place?!
"Hey, it's one of the Straw Hats!" one of the pirates barked, and to Usopp's delight, most of them looked nervous.
"Don't worry, it's their sniper, the weak one!" another pirate added. "We can take him!"
One eyebrow twitched. Okay, being underestimated was nice, but were the insults really necessary? Regardless, Usopp plunged his hands into his pockets, getting a nice, gratifying flinch from the pirates.
"Oh, really?" he said levelly. "Do you really think you can take me?"
"Hell yeah!" replied that pirate, the rest of the mooks responding with a cheer.
Sighing, the sniper dove to the floor and rolled left, and none too soon. Bullets from the pirates tore gouges into the wooden floorboards. With the melee pirates now closing in on him, Usopp finished his roll in a crouch and brought his hands to his sides, cupped.
"Usopp Ultra…"
The pirates immediately all came to a screeching halt, visibly torn between running away and finishing their charge.
"Mega…"
"Come on, you cowards!" the talkative pirate screeched. "It's a bluff, you know that! And that isn't even the same move!"
One last hesitant glance, and the pirates resumed their charge. Usopp smirked.
"Turtle Wave!"
The sniper thrust his hands out. And the hapless pirates had just enough time to get a whiff of gas before the Flame Dial in one hand ignited the emissions of the Flavour Dial in the other. The result?
Instant flamethrower, and a lot of charred goons running back the way they came. Right, in fact, towards the gun-armed pirates that had hung behind, a fact that did not escape said pirates.
"Wait, stop!" the cry arose, too late, before their comrades were among them and also lighting them on fire. And, by extension, igniting the gunpowder in their weapons. The resulting explosions were a bad time… well, except for Usopp.
"Don't forget to stop, drop, and roll!" the sniper taunted, diving back into the fray a few seconds later, hammer lashing out and dropping the pirates to the floorboards.
Once the disparate outlaws were all laid out, Usopp raised his hammer high with a whoop of victory. "EAT IT! NONE STAND BEFORE THE KING OF SNIPERS, AT LONG RANGE OR SHORT! HAHA—!"
"THERE HE IS!"
"GET HIM!"
"Oh crap, there's more of you guys!?" Usopp's face contorted in shock as he caught sight of the mob rounding the corner and charging his way. Spinning on his heel, Usopp beat feet in the other direction, this time at full speed. Unfortunately, going around the first corner found himself blocked by a wall of solid muscle. Solid muscle that was cracking her knuckles.
"Gotcha!" the female pirate crowed, pulling back one meaty fist.
Instead of screaming or running, though, Usopp reached into another pouch and pulled out a long stick, one end of which quickly unfolded into the empty frame of a large black hammer. Ducking under the punch, he swung the inflatable hammer right at the bruiser's ribcage.
"Usopp Kinetic Pound!"
Said bruiser had just enough time to smirk as the hammer hit her ribs.
And then the Impact Dial on the frying pan's face went off.
The sound of snapping bone sounded out, accompanied by a "GLURGH!" as the bruiser coughed up blood. Momentum asserted itself, and the bruiser went soaring down the hall, through one of the flimsy rice paper doors, and out of sight.
Simultaneously, the recoil of the Impact Dial shredded the frame and sent the frying pan it lay on right into the one behind it, so that both went careening behind Usopp to the tune of squawks of pain. Catching the Dial in his hands, Usopp turned around and smirked at the pile of groaning bodies that had been his pursuers.
"All according to plan!" he crowed, adjusting his goggles as he palmed a Vision Dial and aimed it at himself as he assumed a very cool po—
BLAM!
"Right, crowd chasing and shooting at me, preen later, run now!"
This chase persisted, stretching through several more buildings of the compound. Not only did no one pop in front of him to cut him off, but not only were these pirates lighter on their feet than the last bunch, but he was running out of tricks; caltrops and stars alike only took out some of his pursuers and slowed down the rest.
"G-g-g-grrrgh—!" Usopp snarled to himself as he ran, his breath wheezing through his tightly clenched teeth. "What does a guy need to do to get some decent, sane help around here!?"
"Well, if you're actually ASKING FOR IT…"
Briefly, Usopp entertained the idea of flipping off the snail and continuing on his way. Then a bullet nearly took his bandana off.
"Yes, yes, I'm asking for it!" the sniper pleaded. "And I don't give a damn just how suggestive that sounds or how you can twist it, I'm that desperate, so just help me already!"
"ALRIGHT, YOU JUST HAVE TO HIT UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START."
"WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN, YOU LITTLE—?!"
"Eh, I'm just screwing WITH YA. Take the next left."
Nearly running past it, Usopp careened around the corner, only to be confronted by a completely unmistakable dead end. He opened his mouth to roast the stupid snail—
"I RECOMMEND ducking."
Before throwing himself to the floor, joined by the sound of his pursuers skidding around the same corner behind him.
KRAK-THOOM!
That sound was utterly engulfed by the sound of thunder, and for days afterward, Usopp would swear he felt a sizzle on his butt. At least his goggles prevented him from getting temporarily blinded. After a few seconds, the sniper slowly eased up and looked behind him. Surrounding a scorched hole in the far wall were his pursuers, strewn on the floor and twitching with lingering… static!? What on earth—?
"Usopp! Are you alright?"
And then he heard a familiar voice, and it all made sense.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Conis!" Usopp half-sobbed. It took an effort of will, but he managed to avoid clutching her leg, at least. Instead, he just hung on to the arm she gave him for dear life. "For a second there, I thought that damn snail had rung my bell for good!"
"Naaah, Soundbite wouldn't do you like that!" Su waved her paw dismissively. "He'd make sure there were far more bells and whistles on the ordeal. But anyway, you take care of Conis for me for a second, would you? I've got a little errand I need to run before we get out of here."
So saying, Su leapt off of Conis's shoulder and scampered off, taking the time to hop-stomp on a few stirring mooks as she went.
For several seconds, the two just stared, and then Usopp looked back at Conis. "So! Blitz Bazooka's working out as we hoped?"
The angel-gunner promptly brightened up and nodded eagerly as she showed off the second bazooka she was wielding in an underslung fashion with her left hand, mirroring the Burn Bazooka she had in her right. "Very well, yes! The charge time takes some getting used to, but your idea of swapping the Flavour-Flame combination for a Cloud-Thunder pair worked wonders! Ah, but more importantly…" She cast an analytical gaze over her unwitting opponents. "Any idea for your headcount so far, Usopp?"
"Huh? Uh…" The sniper's face scrunched up in thought. "Let's see… There were a few dozen in that first group—"
"Graaaaaahhhhhh!"
Both looked up to see a ragged, gaunt man brandishing a flaming sword, charging straight at them. Up went Kabuto, up went Conis' bazookas—
CLANG!
And then Usopp and Conis jumped back in surprise when, of all things, an anvil slammed through the ceiling and fell on the man's head, burying him in the floorboards up to his shoulders.
"I really wanted to keep that anvil, too…" came Merry's whining voice through the hole.
"Twiage is twiage, Mewwy," Carue sighed in response.
"Urgrgrghhhh," the man groaned, somehow still alive.
"Did… that just happen?" Conis wondered.
"Let's not question it…" Usopp replied, shaking his head. "Now, where were we… oh, right, body counts."
"Ah, yes," Conis said with a serene smile, patting her weapon. "A few dozen, you said? Impressive, though I think I have the advantage. This bazooka has taken down at least a hundred pirates every time I've fired it."
Usopp froze for a moment, then rallied. "You don't say? And how many times was that?"
-o-
The squawk of disbelief and sob of inadequacy at the answer echoed all the way in the courtyard, where another brawl was going on between the Golden Lion Pirates, the beasts of Merveille, and the TDWS.
"Did anyone hear that?" Mikey idly queried. Tightening the grip his nunchucks had on the massive snake he was currently sitting on the back of, he hopped off, flipped, and piledrived the snake straight into the dirt.
"Yeah. Sounds like the noises Leo makes whenever Zoro forces him into a spar," Donny replied. Planting his staff, he spun around in place, smacking his tail off the faces of every pirate in a radius the length of his body.
"YOU'RE THE LAST PERSON I WANNA HEAR THAT FROM, MR. 'GOT PRESS-GANGED BY THE MAD DOCTOR'!" Leo roared, his anger transferring into his blades, which launched two wind-slashes that carved a swathe through the pirates and downed a giant, sabre-toothed jaguar that had been roaming the perimeter of the brawl.
A sharp-fanged, demonic-looking grey kangaroo took that opportunity to leap at Leo, only to be cut down by a sai to the arm and chest. Raphey slammed into it a moment later, smashing it into the ground and grabbing her weapons back simultaneously.
"Watch your back, idiot!" she snapped, hopping off the kangaroo. As she blocked the swords of four separate pirates, the beast shakily got back to its feet, only to get smashed on the skull by Donny's staff.
"Pot, kettle!" the purple-clad dugong shot back.
"That's different, Leo got careless, I'm just being a good teammate!"
"Yeah, well—ack! Shell Body!"
Donny soared into the crowd, propelled there by a kick from the kangaroo. That was the last thing it did, as Leo swiped its hamstrings with his swords as he passed, joining Mikey and Raphey as they charged into the crowd after their teammate, tossing about any pirate with bad enough luck to be in their way.
Not that Donny especially needed the help. His staff was a blur, striking faces, necks, thighs, and all sorts of other soft spots. Already, he had a dead zone around him marked by bruised, unconscious bodies, and the pirates were calling up those of their number with guns.
It was those gun-wielding pirates that the remaining dugongs slammed into like falling anchors, Mikey even pulling out his pistols and shooting up a knot of rifle-armed pirates. As such, he was the first one to notice the new problem.
BOOM!
"Nori Arts!" he frantically yelped, swaying out of the way of a cannonball that had been ready to take his head off. "Look out, guys, someone got the bright idea to wheel in a cannon!" He glanced in that direction again. "Correction: someone got the bright idea to wheel in a lot of cannons!"
"Dammit!" Leo cursed. "Alright, I'm the fastest, so I'll see if I can get to the gun crews! Can you guys hold on by yourselves?"
"Um…" Raphey said nervously, her head tilted up. "I don't think we're gonna have to…"
The other three Dugongs followed their sister's gaze. A moment later, all four of them were in the middle of a Rip Tide, and not a second too soon.
While nothing was going to upstage the Straw Hats' grand invasion of the Golden Lion's palace, the sight of a group of mismatched, SIQ-gorged birds that had clearly been tamed from the archipelago's mutant menagerie carrying a galleon-sized ship over the palace was a close second.
Even more so if one were to see that the ones conducting the birds were a young girl who was communing with them without saying a word, and the rhinoceros-sized dragon she was riding, whose glare alone was enough to show why the birds were going against their fighting instincts.
Of course, this was leaving aside that there were several others who sailed on board that ship that were just as scary as the dragon, if not scarier. The birds anxiously awaited word from the tamer below that they were free to fly away and never look back.
The Dugongs fled not because of the birds, the girl, or the dragon. Rather, it was the fact that there was a galleon hovering above them, and it seemed as though it was about to—
KA-BOOOOM!
Fall. And many a hapless man and beast never knew what hit them.
The TDWS all winced as they recovered from the shockwave of the dropped vessel.
"Soooon of a…" Mikey cursed and coughed in the same breath, waving his flipper in front of his muzzle in an effort to get rid of the kicked-up smoke. "Did we just get upstaged?"
"That's what you're focusing on?" Donny groaned incredulously, shooting a glare at his brother through his teary-eyed vision.
"Nah, not really," Raphey assured Mikey. "They're arriving late in the game, after we already kicked things off. They're building off of us and all that, see?" The female Dugong pointed at the ship in demonstration.
Her stance then became a bit more rigid when the girl and the dragon she was riding took off from the deck of the galleon and landed in front of a group of nearby soldiers that had been stunned into silence by the ship's appearance.
"Lindy," the girl stated calmly, arms crossed as she regarded the soldiers with something akin to boredom. "These men planned on burning down the East Blue. Your home and mine. Kindly cut loose."
"With inappropriate amounts of pleasure, milady," her dragon purred in a deep, rich and rolling voice.
After that, things got… violent.
"… Okay, that's just not fair," Mikey whimpered in despair.
Neither Leo nor Raphey nor even Donny objected to Mikey's assessment of the situation. How could they when they had to compete with an actual, honest-to-Sebek dragon?
"We're just awesome that way, sorry."
The Dugongs jumped and looked at the girl who, at some point during the chaos, had dismounted the dragon and had walked up to the Dugongs. She rubbed her head sheepishly.
"Sorry, still not used to talking to animals verbally; I usually use my Whisper-Whisper Fruit to talk straight to their minds," she explained before beaming and rocking back and forth on her heels. "Anyway, I'm Apis, lookout of the Barto Club Pirates! I met with one of you earlier… Donny?"
"We got that you were on our side when you said that Shiki threatened your home," Raphey snorted. "Nice entrance, though."
"Heheh, thanks!" Apis smiled eagerly as she rubbed her finger beneath her nose. "But really, it was all Lindy. He's been having a lot of fun ever since he reincarnated and we joined Barty and everyone else!"
"RUN, YOU LITTLE MORSELS! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AND MY AMUSEMENT! OM NOM NOM NOM!" the dragon in question chortled as it chased after a horde of fleeing… everyone, to be honest, wings flapping like he was a titanic, green and furry chicken with a long neck. So, not like a chicken at all, really.
Apis' smile twitched slightly as she watched the display. "…maaaaybe a little too much fun."
"Y'think!?" Donny snapped incredulously.
"In all fairness, he did just reincarnate after plodding along in his old body for the past few centuries, so I think he's a bit high on his youth right now…" Apis reasoned.
The dugongs all stared blankly at her before sagging in defeat.
"It says a lot about the past few months that we don't even question that sentence, doesn't it?" Leo sighed.
"Yup," his siblings all groaned in agreement.
-o-
Nefertari Vivi was on cloud nine as she marched down the corridors of Merveille like she owned the place. And she did. The only person who could threaten her was Shiki, and he was busy being chased by Luffy and Bartolomeo.
With that in mind, as well as the lack of enemies nearby, she was mostly ignoring her surroundings in favour of practice with her powers. This took the form of swirling wind around her fingers, which was surprisingly hard. Working with so little air, getting it to go where she wanted instead of the wind's natural tendency to do what it wanted. But she was making progress as she passed another cross corridor, creating rudimentary shapes with the air, and she glanced down the corridor.
"Oh, that's a cannon," she remarked - and her eyes had just enough time to widen in recognition right before said cannon fired and the cannonball took her head off.
For a moment, her headless body stood there, air visibly swirling above her neck. Then the air re-coalesced back into her head, and she gave it a hearty shake.
"So that's what that feels like…" she muttered, her mind still spinning a bit as her gray matter reformed from gas. Turning her gaze down the corridor, she stepped towards the cannon and its crew, who had just finished frantically loading another cannonball and its powder charge. "Oh, no, none of that."
Holding up her hand, air swirled around it, wrapping around her arm.
"Sekhmet's Might!"
At the call, a massive gust of wind burst forth, picking up and hurling the cannon off of its carriage, also bowling over the pirates surrounding it. That the cannon then went off, blowing a hole in the wall, was salt in the wound.
The pirates took one look at the Logia now advancing towards them, and then at their wrecked cannon, and as one turned on their heels and sprinted the other way.
"Hmm, disappointing," Vivi noted, though she still followed them at a slow walk.
A few minutes of such walking turned up the same group of pirates, but joined by a good dozen of their fellows, all armed with a musket and a brace of pistols.
"There she is!" one of the pirates, dressed a little more fancily than the others, shouted. "Fire!"
A hail of gunfire tore down the corridor, with a similar result to shooting a shoebox. Well, a self-repairing shoebox. Made of sand. That was alive and kicking, nine kinds of—you know what, let's just say not really a shoebox at all.
"You do realize that I'm a Logia," Vivi pointed out slowly, her head tilted questioningly. "So unless you're packing seastone ammunition, you're just waving a fan in a sandstorm, correct?"
The only response from the pirates was to pull out their pistols and keep shooting.
Rolling her eyes, Vivi twisted up another wind, intoned "Sekhmet's Might", and launched it downrange. Six pirates were hurled about, and the wind blasted a sizable hole in the wall. That still left quite a few pirates, albeit very nervous ones.
"Hmm…" Vivi hummed, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Could use a bit better area of effect." Grinning, she produced a pair of miniature twisters in the palms of her hands. "Time to practice! And thank you ever so much for volunteering! I assure you, your contributions will be noted…" Her expression took on a feral quality. "Posthumously, of course."
If the way the goons all bolted was anything to go by, they were not keen on that idea.
Vivi cocked her eyebrow as she watched the dust settle behind the terrified goons. "Was that too much?"
After a moment of consideration, her grin took on an impish quality.
"Naaah!"
And with that, the hunt was on.
-o-
In a tunnel network beneath the palace parallel to the plumbing, one of Indigo's more recent creations bounded down the hall with an annoyed, somewhat afraid expression on her face.
A skeleton was sprinting after the beastie with an angry, very determined expression on its face. Or at least, it would have had one if it had a face in the first place.
"YOHOHOHO! META SKULL JOKE!"
"WILL YOU SHUT UP AND RUN FASTER, YOU SENILE OLD COOT!"
Bringing up the rear was a pompadour-touting cyborg, who was glaring after them with a livid expression.
…Let's back up a bit.
The mutated doe, which Indigo had altered at his captain's request a few weeks back to evolve more for speed than aggression, was running because Franky and Brook had specifically tried to capture it, because strapped to its chest in a well-secured harness was Cross's Snail Transceiver along with a vis-snail. And the moment that they had tried to seize it, the doe bounded off through a twisting labyrinth of earth, air, and water that only the Float-Float Fruit could have created. Shiki had chosen speed over bulk to ensure that the creature would be easier to control than his simian majordomo, but at the same time impossible to defeat, or at the very least, to catch.
Franky fell behind quickly as the chase continued, Brook maintaining pace for some time thanks to the unnatural lightness of his form, even allowing him to follow the doe across water. Ultimately, however, he met his match when the doe came across a lengthy chasm, blurred from view the moment she reached the edge, and reappeared on the other side a few moments later. Brook skidded to a halt, gritting his teeth as he observed the length of the gap, and the fact that it led right back to the blue sea. The doe faced him with a look that could only be the smuggest of satisfaction before bounding out of sight of the pirates.
"…Cross will not be pleased with this development, will he?" Brook mused uncertainly.
"This whole place will cave in on itself when Luffy beats Shiki. We'll get the transceiver back after that," Franky growled back, before turning around and trudging off towards the battle. "Come on; if we can't get the snail's box, we need to be out there helping the others against the rest of those monsters." A far more eager smirk flashed across the cyborg's mug. "And I've got just the plan for that."
-o-
The doe bounded on for another few minutes until it was sure that it had left the pirates in the dust, whereupon it slowed down to regain some stamina. She also took the opportunity to scan the surrounding landscape for a stream; Indigo's stamina enhancements were effective, but they sucked up water like nobody's business.
Finally locating the scent of fresh water off in the distance, the doe leisurely trotted in that direction, though she kept all her senses on high alert in case the pirates had found some way across the chasm. She only let down her guard when she reached the actual stream; the only signs of life were a flock of mundane seagulls sitting on the surrounding branches. The doe shuddered. Both Shiki and Indigo had had words about the fact that seagulls seemed blithely oblivious to the "rules" of Merveille. Very loud, very angry words.
Whatever. The doe bent down to drink. They were just seagulls, after all.
[Mine?]
The doe jerked her head up, ready to—oh. Just a seagull on the rocks next to her. Wearing a cute little hat, too. Bah, pointless. Back to drinking.
[Mine!]
This time, when the doe looked up, the seagull had produced… a French fry? Held in its wings. All her instincts blared at her that she was in danger, but it was a French fry.
[Mine.]
Slowly, and with great trepidation, the doe looked back up at the tree-bound gulls. Every single one of them had its eyes on that French fry. Her gaze whipped back to the seagull next to her, expression screaming, 'Don't you dare.
The gull tossed the fry right at her.
Immediately, the doe was swamped by what seemed like every seagull on the Grand Line, all pecking and flapping and trying to land on her. Despite the ensuing confusion, she did notice when the weight of the transceiver on her chest suddenly vanished. Snorting, the doe shook off the last few seagulls and tore after the speck of white she could see flying away as fast as it could manage into a patch of forest. Why a seagull wanted the thing the Alpha had given her to keep was beyond her, but given the consequences of failing that psychotic ape, she was not letting it get away with it.
Of course, there was one small problem with that idea: the gull could simply climb above the trees, while the doe had to slow down to avoid slamming into said trees. And yet, it simply didn't climb out of sight and fly away. The answer to this conundrum was obvious: it was taunting her. It had to be!
The gull glanced over its shoulder down at her, and then waggled its tail feathers in a way that was somehow smug. Oh yeah. It was taunting her.
Snorting angrily again, the doe picked up speed. Screw hitting a tree, this was officially personal; she would plow through them if she had to! And even better, the trees were thinning out! Once she was out of this stupid forest, she could bound off one of the trees, get some altitude, and take down that stupid seagull!
Bursting out of the trees, the doe prepared to execute her plan… only to hit a bit of a snag. A "pirate mosh pit"- type snag. And she was currently sitting in midair.
[I don't wanna be venisooooon!]
-o-
Flying high above, Coo smirked at a plan well executed. That deer wasn't going to be a problem anymore. Now, he just needed to get the transceiver to Cross, and—
Wait. What the heck was that whistling—?
Snapping his head up, Coo let out a squawk of panic at the eagle diving towards him talons-first, and immediately dove for the ground. That action probably saved his life; the eagle slamming into his neck from behind and driving him into the ground probably would've snapped his spine otherwise. Even then, both impacts knocked Coo for a loop and gave the bird of prey the time it needed to pin him to the ground with a single foot.
[A merry chase you led us on,] he heard the eagle gloat from on high. [But now, your flight is at an end.]
[Could you be any more clichéd?] Coo grumbled, only to grunt as the eagle ground his beak a little deeper into the dirt.
[Right, if that's how you're going to be, down to business, then,] the eagle sighed as it examined the talons on its free foot. [Hand over the transceiver, and I will ensure that you are dead before stripping the flesh from your bones.]
[Nice threat. But I'm afraid you've been outfoxed.]
Out of the corner of his eye, Coo saw the eagle gain a hilariously surprised expression, whereupon he was knocked off the newsbird in a pained squawk and flurry of feathers. Sitting up, Coo watched the featherhole tumble for a bit in the dirt, before he was suddenly pummeled into the ground by a blur of white slamming into the eagle, again and again and again, until the pompous hat-topper was little more than a twitching pile of broken bones and feathers.
Her job done, Coo's saviour strolled up to him with her head held high and her tail waving daintily behind her. Her swagger faltered as Coo cuffed her upside the head with his wing.
[I could've done without the awful one-liner,] he groused, brushing the dirt from his wings before glancing up at Su. [But thanks for the save. Though, how did you know to get here?]
[You're welcome,] Su rolled her eyes with a derisive snort, rubbing her ear. [And for your information, the slimeball directed me this way to get his box back; you actually saved me a lot of trouble on that front.]
The two animals fell silent for a moment, both of them processing the fact that they were speaking in their native tongues, and then looked up expectantly.
"Head for the throne room, BUT TAKE YOUR TIME," the Voice of Audio-God said grimly but distractedly. "CROSS AND I have never been THIS MAD BEFORE." And then he was gone.
Coo cocked his eyebrow. [Well, that makes sense…] He then glanced at Su out of the corner of his eye. [And convenient for you, I expect?]
Su shot her own clenched-eyed glare at the gull before sighing and scratching at her ear. [Alright, I suppose that's… mostly fair, but!] She snapped her head up and jabbed her paw in Coo's breast. [Let's be clear here! I can be dickish, and I was dickish in how I asked you for help, I'll admit—!]
[But that doesn't mean you're actually a dick, of course,] Coo nodded without missing a beat. [Don't worry, I get it. You'd just gone through hell when last we first talked, you were impatient when you talked to Windy, it's fine. Besides, you saved my tailfeathers just now, so I'd say our tabs are about even right now, ya know?]
Su pawed despairingly at her muzzle. [Saved them while you were helping us out, so…]
[Let's not get bogged down in that particular morass, alright?] Coo waved her off. [And… while I did decide to help you guys out while I was around, I flapped my way up here for another reason.]
The cloud fox's ear twitched slightly, and she snapped as shocked a look as her pinched eyes allowed at the gull. [Wait, you mean—?]
[Eh…] the News Coo wavered his wing uncertainly. [We dug up something. Whether or not it's useful, or even all that actionable, well…]
[I'm a Straw Hat, remember? We've gone off worse,] Su scoffed. [Gimme gimme, quickie!]
[Well, alright,] Coo sighed in defeat. [Just don't say I didn't warn you when you don't like it.]
And so Coo told her what he knew, and Su did indeed not like it.
-o-
"My, my, Shiki, you've been quite busy," Robin purred, thumbing through one of the many folders that she had found in the Golden Lion's library. "I do believe that Cross is going to be immensely pleased with these reports on the Blues' Marine bases. With any luck, some turnover of the chains of command will be… beneficial, to say the least."
It did make sense that Shiki would ensure that there was no threat to his military might in those oceans; forewarned was forearmed, as Cross himself had demonstrated many a time now, and Robin had a vested interest in making sure that her foster brother was well-armed indeed. And the details in the folders she read promised to be quite useful to him and his.
"Now let's see…" Robin hummed to herself as she cast a thoughtful gaze around the ornate bed chamber. Her myriad hands were in the process of ransacking, flinging books left and right and ripping boards from the walls. "If I were a megalomaniacal self-zealot intent on world conquest…" She trailed off for a moment before smirking and thumbing the brim of her hat. "Correction: if I were Crocodile, where would I hide my log of information on—GAH!"
The archaeologist cut herself off with a pained yelp as she snapped her original hand to her left eye, which was clenched shut on account of the rivulets of blood streaming from the eyelid. "Now I remember why I stopped using Ojos Fleur in full-scale theatres…" she groaned to herself, blooming another eye on her palm to see the damage. She frowned slightly; bloodshot and crimson, most likely a popped vessel, but she'd had worse and healed from it, even if this would take a bit of time.
With that done, she reordered her thoughts and focused on what had just happened. Robin took a swift inventory of her remote eyes, closing them as she went for her own peace of mind. In the end, all eyes were accounted for… except for…
"The one I had… on this room's outer wall…" Robin groaned, dragging her hand down her face. "Oh, this is going to hurt, isn't it?"
"OOK!" CRASH!
Robin was proven right—much to her chagrin—by a massive hairy palm crashing through one wall, pancaking her against the wall opposite, leaving her with more than a dozen bones fractured and half as many outright broken. Chopper would not be pleased with her, and it said a lot about both her faith in her crew and their doctor's prowess (and temper) that that was the first worry that came to her mind.
Or maybe it was just the concussion jumbling up her priorities.
Either way, when her senses returned, she found herself gripped tightly in the giant fist of a gorilla clad in red, holding her high off the ground.
The first instinct of Robin's scrambled mind was to rip her captor apart with a multitude of arms. She barely managed to keep this instinct under control because of the height; she might have been able to slow her fall with her Wing technique, but that technique required more focus and less risk of being ambushed while she recovered than she had at the moment.
As she ran through her other options, her eyes fell on the gorilla. And upon seeing the look in its eyes, she did the only thing she could at the moment:
"Someone… get this damn dirty ape… off of me!" she shouted, shoving as hard as she could against the iron grip she was in, with as many arms as she could comfortably muster.
"Grrrr," the gorilla growled menacingly, the other hand pulling back to do… something to her.
"Ahem."
Pirate and gorilla turned to witness a very specific aquatic mammal perched on the larger mammal's shoulder, nonchalantly smoking a cigar and giving the ape a flat look.
"You heard the lady. Let her go," Boss said calmly.
Predictably, the gorilla turned his ire on the dugong, instantly swatting his free hand down on the martial artist amphibian.
Less predictably, the gorilla's palm halted directly before the dugong, whose flipper had stopped the larger beast's hand in its path. Said Dugong now had a vein popping on his forehead.
"Let me clarify something for you, simian," the martial artist drawled. "What did I just say? That wasn't a request. SQUALL PISTOL!"
In the space of a second, Boss pulled back his flipper and jabbed it forward again.
CRUNCH!
"OOGRAAAAAAAAH!" Scarlet howled, flinging his captive aside in favour of cradling his broken hand. Boss immediately dove down, catching Robin in his flippers and setting her back down into the room she had been looking over before.
"Thank you, Boss," Robin said.
"Don't thank me yet," Boss said as he glowered past his friend's shoulder. "Find whatever you were looking for and then get the hell out of dodge. This isn't going to be a one-shot; I don't know how much SIQ he's had, but it's gotta be a massive overdose."
The archaeologist blinked in confusion. "How can you be so sure?"
The dugong pointed his flipper without a twitch of his expression. "Because while we Grand Line animals are freakishly tough, that is not typical of any natural evolution I'm aware of."
Robin followed Boss's flipper with her eyes, one of which started twitching when she saw the, to reiterate, very unnatural occurrence which Boss was speaking of. Namely, the fact that the gorilla's hand was pulsating before her eyes, the shattered bones within shifting and restructuring themselves back into their proper shape.
Robin nodded, shoving her hat down. "Right. You have fun with that."
"Ohohohoooooh, believe me…" Boss tilted his head just so, letting a vicious glint bounce off the point of his glasses. "I intend to."
The gorilla, meanwhile, howled and pounded its chest before ignoring Robin entirely as she escaped to bring its palm down on the floor. As he had intended to bring it down on Boss' head, this prompted a slow, stupid blink of confusion.
"Nori Arts," Boss intoned, reaching for something behind his back.
Snarling, Scarlet brought his palms up again and slammed them down repeatedly.
"Nori Arts, Nori Arts, Nori Arts."
And Boss merely swayed out of the way of each one of the room-shaking slaps. After the fourth, he flicked his flippers, sending something blurring towards his simian opponent.
That something was his blazing rope-dart, which slammed into Scarlet's gut with about as much force as a Diable Jambe. Between the heat and the impact, for a brief second, all the gorilla could do was hunch over, wheezing in pain.
It was a second Boss took full advantage of, looping the rope around Scarlet's neck and then jumping onto one of the roof beams.
"Rip Tide," the dugong intoned, blurring out of sight, but up. "Shell Body."
Reinforced dugong smashed through the roof like so much sugar glass, carrying Boss onto the roof and yanking Scarlet along by the neck. For a moment, the two hung in the air.
"TIDAL SWIM!"
Before Boss flipped in mid-air and kicked off with all his might. Once again, massive forces carried Scarlet along for the ride, neck first, and when Boss landed, another flick of his flippers unlooped the gorilla and sent him hurtling towards one of the towers… towering above the palace. And then into the tower.
"Hmm, that should be enough," Boss muttered, eyeing the impact point. The rubble there shuddered. "Or not. Sebek's Scale-Rotted Tail, that SIQ is—"
The boss's words died in his throat as the top half of the tower shuddered and then rose. And with the pink shirt Scarlet wore standing out in the blizzard-wrapped gloom, the cause was pretty damn obvious.
"You've gotta be kidding me…"
With a shout of "ORA!", Scarlet hurled the chunk of tower like a javelin at Boss, who knew immediately that he had no chance of blocking or deflecting it. And dodging would leave him open.
Time to think a little laterally.
"Typhoon Lash!" Boss roared, spinning on his flippers before unleashing the attack from his tail. It worked like a charm, neatly slicing the tower in two, at which point Boss hooked his rope dart around the top half and went along for the ride.
Whereupon Scarlet peeked over the side.
"Okay, so you're not a complete meathead…" Boss muttered. Tugging his rope dart again, he swung around, aiming his free flipper for the gorilla's unprotected back. "Squall Pistol!"
"Ook!"
WHAM!
The Squall Pistol landed, sending Scarlet staggering back, clutching his face. The punch Boss took in return sent him reeling, a fifty-piece marching band practicing in his skull.
"Note to self…" he groaned, shaking his head. "Don't take hits unless you have Shell Body on. And maybe not even then…"
The last of the cobwebs cleared, and Boss turned back to Scarlet, who was also up and about—and gaping in panic?
The dugong looked behind just as the pillar slammed into the central dome of Shiki's palace. "SHELL BODY!" Boss squawked, and a good thing, too, as the sudden stop hurled him into the side of the building. Scarlet, too, actually, which gave Boss an excellent view of what a gorilla ass looked like.
Grumbling, Boss pulled himself out of the wall and glanced up at his opponent. "Hmm, attack or reposition…" he mused. Below him, the pillar shifted. "Right, reposition it is!"
Spinning the head of his rope dart, he hurled it up, grasping one of the ledges, and then yanked himself up to land softly on the roof of the dome. No sooner had he landed than the dome shook.
"Whoa! Rip Tide!"
Blurring away, he saw, through the haze of the technique, a massive gorilla fist punch through where he'd once been, followed shortly by the rest of the beast, still no worse for wear. That called for a change in strategy.
"Let's see how you like ranged combat!" Boss barked as he came out of his Rip Tide. "Typhoon Lash!"
Super-sharp wind gusted out, and Scarlet dodged by a slim margin. Another followed, that dodged as well, and Scarlet decided that he didn't like being shot at. Roaring, he charged Boss, who simply Rip Tided out of the way and repeated the process.
This dance repeated two more times until Scarlet dodged another Typhoon Lash. This time, he was met with a rope dart to the face. Repeatedly.
"Got your dodging pattern down, ape!" Boss crowed, repeatedly swinging his rope dart. "You're not escaping this!"
Suddenly, the dart stopped. And wouldn't budge, no matter how much Boss tugged on it. That Scarlet was gripping the hook despite the flesh of his hand audibly sizzling probably had something to do with that.
"Uh-oh," Boss muttered, which was as far as he got before Scarlet gave the rope dart an almighty yank.
A hasty Typhoon Lash cut the rope—he could retrieve the hook when he didn't have a 500-lb gorilla trying to bash his face in—but by the time he was done, a massive fist was heading for his face. And he had neither the time for a Tidal Swim nor the leverage for a Nori Arts.
"This is going to hurt… Shell Body!"
The fist struck home, slamming Boss into the surface of the dome. Sensing blood, Scarlet didn't let up, slapping and punching the same spot repeatedly. Each shake of the dome caused a spiderweb of cracks to grow ever larger.
Unfortunately, he didn't notice Boss simply roll out of the way of the blows. So the Squall Pistol that hit him in the chin came right out of nowhere.
Grimacing, Boss watched the gorilla go down again, simply waiting for it to get back up. Even with Shell Body, that had hurt, though nothing that would stop him from putting down this ape. Especially if…
Yes, it was taking Scarlet longer to get up. Quite a bit longer.
"As I thought, SIQ regeneration can be used up," Boss remarked. "And without that… well. You're strong. Stronger than me, even. But there's more to combat than just strength." Boss shifted his stance, drawing his arms together at his side. "And I'm superior in every other way."
Shaking his head, Scarlet narrowed his beady eyes at Boss before roaring and charging.
"Six Arts for Six Kings," Boss murmured. "Six Kings for Six Oceans."
Deep within Scarlet's simian brain, he recognized that his opponent wasn't dodging. A small part screamed that this was a trap. The rest just wanted to get this pest out of the way. So he kept charging.
"Full Shell Style: Six Oceans Gun!"
Wrapped up in all six styles, it was child's play for Boss to first weave between Scarlet's crashing fists, and then deliver the Six Oceans Gun straight to his chest.
Bones shattered and organs pulped under the force, the momentum sending Scarlet hurling through the air. SIQ-fueled regeneration went to work, patching up the damage, but it was overtaxed by the rest of the fight, and running out of raw materials to work with anyway. Then that whole point was rendered moot when Scarlet hit the remaining tower. That was a level of damage the weakened regeneration simply couldn't cope with.
Back on the dome, Boss eyed his handiwork, and when, after a minute, Scarlet didn't budge, he let out a sigh of relief and sagged in pain, particularly his left flipper. Flexing tentatively, he winced as he felt his bones rub together just out of alignment. Annoying, but maybe he could subtly fix it while no one was—
CRACK!
"SON OF A BARNACLE-LATHERED BUOY!" Boss howled, clutching his shoulder in agony. "WHAT THE HELL—?!"
"Take better care of yourself, shitty blubberbutt," Sanji interrupted, idly tapping the boot he'd used to kick the dugong's shoulder back into place. "It'd be a damn shame if the only decent sparring partner I had on the ship was the mosshead."
Boss grit his teeth together before slowly looking at the nonchalant smoker and his gaunt companion behind him. His jowls slowly twisted into a wry smirk.
"…Will do, Sanji. So… how many idiots do we have left to smash into pieces?"
"Not enough to make it our main priority anymore," the gaunt man responded, fingering the heavy-looking tonfa he was carrying. "Guess now we turn to the loot, pillage, and plundering part."
Boss exhaled in what was almost a snort, but nodded. "Fine by me; I'm satisfied after that fight."
"Except that I'm not," Sanji snorted out a cloud of smoke, glaring daggers at the downed ape. "You did a pretty good job, but that damn thing dared to lay a hand on a woman! You should have beaten the gorilla way worse."
"Oh, yeah?" Boss cocked his brow at the cook. "Well, he's certainly not going anywhere. Go ahead, finish what I started."
"I'll do just that," Sanji huffed, eyeing the downed Ape still embedded in the remaining tower. Once he had calculated the appropriate amount of punishment to dole out, he hauled his leg back… and kicked a rock that tapped off of Scarlet's skull.
"Now he's had it," the cook declared with a satisfied nod. "Now come on, let's help our helmsgirl steal everything that's not nailed down!" And with that, Sanji ran off.
Boss blinked after his crewmate before slowly looking up at Gin. "Just confirming, seeing as there was a big chunk of time before I met the band of mental patients I decided to shack up with…" He pointed at Sanji's retreating back. "Was he always this crazy?"
"You'll need to be more specific," Gin deadpanned. "About women, or in general?"
"Both."
"Well, in that case… no. When I first met Sanji…" A smirk slowly spread across Gin's face. "Honestly? I think it was just bubbling below the surface back then."
Boss donned a smirk of his own. "Good."
"Good?"
"Good," Boss started to waddle off with a contented nod. "Means he's finally being honest with himself."
-o-
Though there were far more than 88 nutcases who had attacked the roaring, rampaging sword-wielders that had come after the highest authority in the palace, the fallen bodies, the many homeless limbs, and the streaks and puddles of blood dying the room red would have given even a certain Black Mamba a run for her money. Were Soundbite less incensed, he may have even pointed it out.
Unfortunately, that furious rage was still there. And so were the enemies who somehow thought that they would succeed where hundreds before had failed to take down the two Straw Hats, tearing them to shreds. Adding to the misfortune was the not unsound logic that led them to keep trying: no matter how powerful they were, they could only handle so many bodies, both at once and over time.
And while that was unsound logic against most of the Straw Hats, despite the rumour to the contrary, the crew was still mostly composed of humans. As such, Cross's stamina was wearing thin, and Zoro…
"GRK!"
Zoro grunted in pain as another tremor wracked his body, creating a split-second opening that a particularly persistent spearman shoved his weapon into. Thankfully, it was with the butt of the weapon, which allowed Zoro to dive right back in instead of falling to his knees clutching the new hole in his gut, but the slip-up was blatantly obvious.
"KEEPING A STRONG FACE AND ACTING LIKE nothing's wrong is fine when the carnage is done. NOT WHEN WE'RE STILL CREATING GROUND ZERO!"
"BITE ME!" Zoro shot back. Calling up the aura of Asura, he waded into the crowd, the flickering illusion carving through everyone in his path.
"AND AS FOR my personal armchair…"
"Kiss!" Cross snarled, braining and burning an overeager mook with Lassoo's smoking muzzle. "My!" He then caught another enforcer's blade with Funkfreed's tusks and used the lock to drag the enemy into a bone-fracturing headbutt. "Ass!" The final word was punctuated by Cross flinging Funkfreed and Lassoo at his opponents. The two weapon animals transitioned in midair into a rime-tusked elephant and a flame-spitting hound, respectively, smashing into the Golden Lions' frontlines and smashing them quite thoroughly, giving Cross the space and time he needed to catch his breath.
The time he took to shoot an offended, if slightly dizzy, look at Soundbite. "I'll have you know that I am in peak physical condition, and that we are doing perfectly fine at breaking these bastards all on our—!"
BOOOM!
Cross's boasting died quickly when perhaps the worst possible scenario introduced itself into the fight. See, while Vivi blowing the roof off the palace did achieve the desired effect of intimidation by expressing fury, that left the fighters within vulnerable to attacks from above. And in this case, said attack took the form of one of Shiki's more fortuitous recruits.
The said recruit was gray-skinned, bald, and slender, with a moustache halfway between imperial and horseshoe, gray beard stubble, a black-and-purple vest, a red sash, blue pants, pointed black shoes, clawed knuckle dusters on his hands, and a scowl on his face.
Ah, yes, and he also happened to be forty-five feet tall.
"Motherfu—!" Zoro growled.
"MOVE ASIDE!" the giant roared, stomping through the crowd, heedless of the allied pirates he crushed underfoot. "I'LL SHOW YOU THE TRUE MIGHT OF THE GRAND LINE!"
The pirates who weren't stepped on may not have had enough sense to stop fighting a losing battle, but they at least had enough self-preservation instincts not to get in the way of someone who was towering above them. This good sense backfired hard when Cross and Zoro batted the retreating pirates aside like lint, leaving the area around them clear of obstacles.
"Still not worried?" Soundbite asked flatly.
The first and third mates exchanged glances.
"Like hell," they answered.
Zoro crossed Kitetsu and Shusui in an X before him, flats facing outward. Cross ran toward him, jumping onto the blades. The swordsman's muscles bulged, and with a roar, he uncrossed his arms and flung Cross upward - away from the giant, instead impacting high up on one of the room's undamaged pillars. Cross reached out, metal-encased fingers digging into the pillar's wood.
The giant sneered, betraying his brawn-to-brains ratio; as fast as Cross was going, either the pillar or his arm should have broken. With great hypocrisy, he bellowed, "YOUR BRAINS ARE AS SMALL AS YOU ARE! YOU MISSED! NOW YOU DIE!"
Then he simply swung his blade-enhanced fist at the smaller pirate, and Cross leapt again to avoid the blow. Landing on the giant's arm, he ran up, reared back his right hand, and slammed his palm into the giant's face with all the force he could muster—
"IMPACT!"
—along with all the force he had just absorbed.
The giant reeled, stunned but still on his feet and not liable to go down anytime soon.
"And just for kicks—!" Cross snarled, flexing his palm again and firing half a dozen more blasts of kinetic force in the giant's face.
That was more than the giant could take, his head snapping back from the sheer impact, his knees buckling under him. Like some titanic tree that Paul Bunyan had taken an axe to, the giant tilted back and collapsed, shaking the entire building on impact.
"Tch," Zoro scoffed dismissively as he walked up to the downed opponent. "Still worried about this wimp?"
"…y'know, I WOULD SAY I wasn't and never was…"Soundbite sighed, slumping his eyestalks in resigned defeat. "IF ONLY I COULDN'T HEAR THE FACT THAT HE'S STILL AWAKE."
Cross and Zoro snapped incredulous looks at the snail. "What!?"
"GRARGH!"
The giant cut off any response Soundbite could have made by suddenly shooting back to his feet and batting Cross and Zoro aside with a single, almost offhanded sweep of his arm.
"CROSS!" the Zoan-Weapons cried in concern, breaking off from their assaults at the sight of their wielder being sent flying.
Cross grimaced, eyes clenching in preparation for the impact that was to come, but what actually came was most unexpected. He slammed hard into something, yes, but it was something that was soft like a cloud, and yet, at the same time, somehow as firm as iron. And it was massive - and moving to set him back on his feet. He realized exactly what was going on long before he set eyes on the one controlling the clouds, who was standing at the exit of the room where Shiki had departed.
"You morons," the Straw Hats' second mate scoffed with a shake of her head, not even sparing the pair a glance as she casually observed the room. "Remind me, who's supposed to be saving who here?"
"I dunno," the third mate responded with a frown that didn't quite seem convincing as he tried to push himself out of the cloud, though the 'footing' wasn't giving him any luck, and most likely not by chance. "We're here to rescue someone who's going to catch absolute hell for being a bonehead once we're free and clear. What about you?"
"A pair of jackasses with no sense between them." Nami finally turned her head to the pair to give them a catty grin. "Sounds like we both have horrible jobs, doesn't it?"
"Not as bad as them," the first mate snorted, gesturing to the giant and the remaining mooks, who were getting their footing and nerve back. "And if you're here to save us, how about finishing this?"
"The bloodthirsty Pirate Hunter conceding a group of opponents to the elegant Weather Witch?" she purred, her expression taking on an especially malevolent gleam. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."
"The ones that fell ain't the mighty ones, and more than 80% ARE ALREADY DOWN. YOU'RE JUST SWEEPING AWAY THE SCRAPS," Soundbite snarked.
"Snark later, zap now!" Cross demanded, staring at the pirates who were aiming their guns at them.
"I have something else in mind, actually," Nami said, spinning a portion of her Clima-Tact at her side. "Let's see if this worked…" She snapped her arm up and flung a Cool Ball skyward. "GLACIAL TEMPO!"
THUNK-CRASH!
The giant was not getting back up this time. Not with a hailstone as big as his head squatting on his skull. Not skipping a beat, Nami made a few more movements with her staff.
"And now," Nami hummed to herself, spinning her full Clima-Tact at her side and causing a new offshoot of her Eisen aura to split off and form a sphere of clouds, the clouds roiling and churning. "A weather forecast for all listeners! Exercise extreme caution in today's ventures, as a wind god has been sighted roaming the environs of Merveille! This deity is extremely dangerous, and has been noted to have a penchant for unleashing holy hellstorms of pure wind. If by some chance you manage to attract this deity's gaze, then in this weather woman's professional opinion…"
Nami's face became a mask of frigid fury as she jabbed her staff at the rapidly panicking pirates.
"You are royally fucked," she declared. "Divine Tempo: Aeolus' Ire!"
The ball of clouds split open, and a gust of wind blasted out from its cradle. A gust so strong, it was like the divine bent to Nami's will: the entire back half of the main hall was blown clean off its foundation, and the pirates along with it. It didn't matter how big or small they were, how tired or fresh, all were swept aside as though some greater entity had just decided to brush them aside like so much dust.
The male officers of the Straw Hats could only gape at the devastation wrought by their compatriot. So engrossed were they, in fact, that they barely even reacted as Nami's Eisen Tempo retracted and deposited them on the splintered ground.
"Ahhh, the power rush," Nami practically shivered as she balanced her staff across her shoulders, tapping her fingers along its length. "I'll never get tired of it, you hear me? Never."
Cross, never one to be left speechless for long, rebooted his brain first. "I can imagine how you feel… but at the same time, I don't think everyone is going to be so appreciative."
"WATCH OUT FOR YOUR CREW WHEN YOU'RE DOING AN AOE LIKE THAT, WITCH!"
"Case in point," Cross said as Lassoo and Funkfreed burst free of the rubble that was once the remainder of the room, with literal steel in the glares that they fixed on Nami.
"Oh, come on, it's not like you two aren't literally as tough as nails," Nami shamelessly purred.
The beast-weapons promptly reversed to being perfectly cordial, blushing and scratching the backs of their heads.
"Aw, shucks," Lassoo chuckled.
"Well, when ya put it like that," Funkfreed giggled.
"Morons, both of you," Soundbite rolled his eyes.
"Morons or not, you can't deny they're still pretty damn useful," Cross reprimanded with a light grin, picking up his newly reverted weapons and sheathing them on his back and side. He then glanced back at Nami. "And as pissed as I still am at you for your bullshit… I can't deny it's good to have you back, too."
Nami blinked at Cross before shaking her head and waving him off. "I'll deal with whatever the hell you're talking about later. For now…" She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, a particularly demonic grin spreading over her face. "Mind following me and helping me utterly ruin what little of Shiki's day has been left intact?"
The way that Cross and Zoro grinned back was answer enough.