Chapter 49
Cross-Brain AN: Loyal fans, the good news is that this chapter has several fight scenes that should satisfy those of you who were unhappy about things going perfectly so far. And the bad news is that this is most likely the only update you'll get until April.
Xomniac AN: Unfortunately, this chapter is shorter than we'd hoped, a mere 17K… and while it overjoys me that we consider a literal essay 'mere,' the fact remains that we just couldn't hold off any longer. But hey, you're still getting some action~! Enjoy!
Patient AN: Also, I suppose it's overdue that I got to add something to the A Rare Sentence page. In writing this chapter, I found myself saying, "Xom, you're comparing a giant warthog to a former master swordsman."
The goings-on at Thriller Bark were always unnatural. It was only natural, ironically enough, seeing as the island was populated by sentient paintings and trophies, there were creepers in the crypt, laughing ghosts flitting through the air, and said air was absolutely thick with eldritch fog. Unnatural was synonymous with 'normal' on the island.
But even as relatively unnatural as Thriller Bark was, the sight of a speedo-clad cyborg swinging around a giant pair of flaming oaks linked by a chain to bash down the walking dead as though he were playing a macabre, jumbo-sized game of Whack-A-Mole was a whole new level of 'weird' for the island's ghastly inhabitants.
"C'MON, YOU ROTTIN' ASSHATS!" Franky cackled, hoisting his flaming makeshift nunchaku. "I GOT
LOADS MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM!"
"HEY!" one of the zombies protested indignantly as it poked its head out from behind the XL-sized headstone it'd been hiding behind. "YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE FREAKIER THAN US! THIS IS OUR TURF! THAT'S
OUR RIGHT, YOU BIG METAL BASTARD!"
"Huh? Is that so?" Franky blinked in surprise. "Well, then, if that's the case—!"
SLAM!
"GAH!" the zombie howled in shock as both he and the gravestone were smashed into the ground.
"—I DON'T REALLY GIVE A DAMN!" the cyborg roared at the top of his lungs.
Currently, the Straw Hat-led war against the unnatural inhabitants of Thriller Bark was going apace. For all that the zombies outnumbered the living pirates nearly a dozen revenants to a man, the warm-blooded faction of the war vastly outskilled and/or outpowered most of the zombies. The gap was big enough, on average, to take out the zombies a handful at a time.
However…
"YOU BASTARD!" the smashed zombie roared, peeling himself off of the soil, lumps of stone falling from flesh ignited in several places
Franky frowned grimly as he was forced to take a step back on account of the flattened undead and a half-dozen others surging forward, a veritable tide of dead flesh rushing at him.
The fact remained that for all that the Straw Hats were holding their own against the zombies, neither were they making any progress. After all, the zombies might have been without any noteworthy skills, but they were also without any
pain. And without pain, that meant that they had no reason to stop
attacking. And not just personally either. Every minute, more and more zombies of all shapes and sizes were arriving from all over the manor and the rest of the island, adding to the bulk of the brawl. Sure, they were salting them all…
"RAAAAGH!" Luffy bellowed, his voice echoing a hundred times over with righteous fury. This fury was thoroughly reinforced by the reverberating roar of the flaming chainsaw that topped his pipe, complemented by the hockey mask he wore, and accentuated by the fact that he was a hulking blue muscleman almost as tall as Moriah.
The icing on the cake was the screams of the zombies and their desiccated flesh as they were
both rent asunder by the swings of Luffy's nightmarish weapon.
Franky held back a bark of laughter as he watched the zombies literally fall to pieces. And
sure, they were managing to incapacitate the zombies in a variety of other ways…
"CHAAAARGE!"
Franky's grin died as a fresh crowd of zombies literally threw themselves into fray.
…But the unfortunate fact was that for each one they put down, three more and counting took their place. It was just a dozen-to-one now, but sooner or later it'd be two dozen, then three, then however many more until either Moriah ran out of zombies or they started losing people, whichever came first.
And not even Luffy was stupid enough to bet on the zombies running out first.
Still, one thought cheered Franky and prompted him to heft his nunchuks again, and that thought was that the zombies weren't the only ones with reinforcements coming.
The Straw Hats had their own people waiting in the manor's wings, and once they were all good and ready they'd be getting reinforcements of their own.
"This is gonna take all night," Franky grumbled. Snorting, he readjusted his nunchuks. "Eh, whatever; Cross and the rest'll be here soon enough."
-o-
"This is taking
forever," I groused.
Unfortunately for us all, the process of getting from Point A (the dining room) to Point B (the base of Hogback's tower) was proving to be leagues more complicated than it had any right to be. Seriously, all we had to do was drop off Hogback, who wasn't even struggling due to Conis dragging his unconscious carcass along by the ankle. But there was an…
obstacle in the way of that particular endeavor.
"Right up ahead…" Soundbite informed us, his voice brimming with exasperation.
We took the turn he indicated…
"SONNUVABITCH!"
And our hit-and-miss guide expressed what we were all feeling as we were greeted
once again with a dead-end hallway.
"Fifth in as many minutes…" Lassoo chuffed dryly.
"'Easy to navigate', you said, 'know your way around this place like the back of your shell', you said," Usopp commented with a sidelong glance at my partner. "What happened to our self-proclaimed 'god of noise?' And while I'm on it, have you ever even
seen the back of your shell?"
"BITE ME!" the snail exploded. "I CAN'T HEAR SHIT
WHEN THERE'S NOTHING TO HEAR! These asshats have ghost walking down to an art form. MY MAP IS HIT AND MISS AT BEST. AND BESIDES THAT, I NEED TO BE CAREFUL TO MAKE SURE—!"
"Hey! What's going on here?!"
Soundbite's eye twitched furiously.
"That doesn't happen."
We all turned around to behold a quartet of shambling horrors staring at us from the intersection. Three of the patchwork wad-brains were wearing metal buckets on their head and the fourth was sporting… a… orange rubber traffic cone?
"…morbid curiosity here, where the heck did you dig that little piece of headgear up?" I wondered.
The zombies' response to my
wholly innocent query was quite rude… namely, they all roared and attempted to charge us.
'Attempted' being the key word here, seeing as Conis, Usopp and Lassoo promptly dispatched them all with an air of ease bordering on, well… boredom.
"Come on!" Lassoo yipped. "Isn't there anybody more—nope! Nope nope nope! Not saying it!"
"At this point, I'm bored enough that
I'd be willing to risk saying it," Robin muttered, before speaking up. "But before we stumble into
another dead-end passage, I'd like to try something else."
With that, hands sprouted from the floor, propping up the unconscious Hogback—and then repeatedly bitch-slapping him.
Seriously. There was no other way to describe it. And in fairness, it did the trick; Hogback's head jerked off the floor, wheezing against the napkin gag we'd thought to stuff in his mouth on our way out of the dining room. His expression as he froze under our combined gazes was priceless, too.
"Do try to face this with some dignity," Robin drawled, sprouting another hand on his neck that clamped onto a very
specific part of his throat. "Now, I trust you'll recognize that that is your carotid artery I'm holding, yes? Let me be blunt: if we deliver you to Chopper, there is a good possibility you will not survive the encounter with him. However, if we remain in these labyrinthine corridors for five more minutes…"
Hogback did his name proud when he squealed at Robin twisting the flesh she was holding.
"I can
guarantee that you will not survive
me. So, all of that being said…" Robin's hands sprouted all around the doctor and both shoved and pulled him to his feet, so that she could smile frigidly in his face. "Which way to your laboratory, Mister Hogback?"
Hogback shivered in place for a few seconds before hesitantly shuffling past her and back down the way we'd came.
I cocked an eyebrow and leaned in close to Robin as we followed. "Do you think he realizes that anything you could possibly do to him would be a fair sight kinder than whatever it is Chopper's got up his sleeves?" I whispered.
Robin's response was to chuckle beneath her breath. "Oooh, I'm certain he'll figure it out in due time."
"Well, seeing as we've got time to burn…" Lassoo hummed thoughtfully. "Anybody up for I Spy?"
"Any other day, maybe," Conis sighed with a despondent look as she reloaded her guns with fresh shots of salt. "Right now, I'm too preoccupied worrying about how Su is doing…"
For whatever reason, that set Soundbite off, sniggering like a loon.
-o-
"HEY, WAKE UP!"
THWACK!
"GWAH!" a painting-zombie snorted awake as a hefty weight was slammed into its jaw. That done, it glared bloody murder at its equally lopsided compatriot as it readjusted its top hat. "What was that for?!"
"Get pissed at me
later, you lethargic loitering louts!" the bodybuilder-like zombie snarled, swinging its head back and forth to address the entire hallway and the dozen or so paintings that had just been roused. "Right now, you need to get off your damn wall and get moving, quick!"
"Eh?" another of the paintings blinked in confusion, sleep still clouding its mind. "The heck are you talking about?! What's—?!"
KA-BOOM!
Almost as if in response, a catastrophic explosion rang out in the distance.
"We're being attacked, flat-faces!" the bodybuilder snapped, glancing fearfully towards the site of the explosion. "Full-frontal assault on the manor! It's all hands on deck, even Surprises like you!
So, get your flat-asses in motion already!"
"Gah, alright, alright!" the painting yelped, the lot of them hastily hopping their frames off the wall before dragging themselves away.
"So, what, we've got an attack on the front doors? Is it
really that bad!?" asked one of them.
"It's
worse, damn it!" the bipedal brawler ranted as he led the way. "We've got
no chain of command! Nin, Bao and Gyoro went to wake Master Moriah forever ago, but we haven't heard anything from
any of them! And from what I've heard, Hogback's insisting that we all steer the hell clear of his dining room so that he can keep the 'guests' he has fooled, Perona and Absalom both just up and disappeared into thin air,
and no laughing!"
"Wasn't gonna!" the painting hastily coughed out.
"Anyway…" the musclebuilder shook his head grimly. "Ryuma's trying to take command, but he's also itching to fight, so
that's no help. None of the other Generals have anywhere near as much clout as him, Hildon's never had to command so many of us at once, and there's the fact that there's
somebody in the damn manor slaughtering us wholesale!"
"Really? How are they doing it?"
"Nobody freaking knows!" The revenant threw his arms up in frustration. "They don't leave any survivors! All we know is that they're hitting them faster than they can react, and that for
some reason they always leave one zombie standing so that they can realize they're screwed before salting
them too! It's totally frustrating!"
"…Uh, how would you know that if they're all purified?"
"Because every site I've been to, most of the zombies look like they just fell in place, but there's always the one zombie that looks terrified. It's not hard to figure out that they watched the rest fall, and had just enough time to panic before they lost their shadow, too!"
"So… you kinda mean like your situation now?"
"Eh? What the hell are you talking abou—?"
The zombie froze in his tracks. Then, very slowly, he turned around, and what little blood was in his face left it as he took in the Surprise Zombies he had roused, one and all, lying on the ground, truly lifeless. He started frantically looking around, one musclebound hand over his mouth and the other clenched into a fist, ready to deck whoever tried to—
"Ahem."
A quiet cough came from beneath him, and he looked down to see a frankly adorable little white fox sitting at his feet, looking up at him with its head tilted. He blinked in confusion.
"I'm a little over a foot long, tiny, and I'm far faster than you could ever hope to be," Su flatly stated.
"Run."
If there was one good thing to be said about the situation, it was that that particular zombie wouldn't have to live with the shame of being terrified out of his wits by something smaller than one of his fists.
Instead, he chose to spend his final moments running like hell was on his heels, which… technically it was.
When he suddenly felt the rat's claws climbing up his back, the zombie screamed for help…
"BUT NO ONE CAME…"
And then he felt something get shoved down his throat and all was oblivion.
Su eyed the still-cool corpse and hopped off of it before glancing up at the air. "Third time you've used that line. Reference?"
"Ohhh, you're just living what I like to call a…" Soundbite chuckled malevolently.
"Genocide Run."
A minor sweatdrop hung from the back of Su's head at that. "Sounds… sinister."
"OHHH, IT IS, IT IS. BUT FOR ONCE,
I don't feel like a scumbag FOR LISTENING IN! This is actually kinda fun!"
"Heh, that's for sure!" Su snorted happily as she pounded one paw in the other. "I'm going through these clowns like Robin through Marine bones! It feels
nice to be doing this much damage!"
"Enjoy the dream, mon ami, enjoy—EH?
Hang on a…" Soundbite trailed off into silence for a second before 'tsk'ing in exasperation. "DAMN IT, THE ZOMBIES ARE
COORDINATING A FRONT, GOTTA BREAK THAT UP. You're gonna have to go blind for a bit. SORRY."
"Meh, fine by me, I'm getting good at this," Su waved her tail dismissively, even as she started padding back to the spider-tunnels. "Any parting advice?"
"Nah, you're—OH, WAIT, ONE THING! DID YA NOTICE THAT TOWER
FIVE FLOORS UP and six corridors westwards?"
"Eh…" Su swished her tail thoughtfully as she started spelunking the wall's catacombs. "I think so, while I was in the north wing. What about it?"
"Don't go into it, OR ELSE."
"Eh?" Su blinked in surprise, coming to a sudden halt. "'Or else' what?" She started to climb again, before suddenly slipping a foot when a flat, droning voice spoke bloody murder in her ear.
"YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME… GOT IT?"
"Aheheh… yeah, got it…" Su shivered fearfully.
"Glad to hear it!" Soundbite said, his smile back in his voice.
"Have fun!" And with that, the omnipotent voyeur's trademark electric whine snapped out of place.
The very instant she was out from under the vocal barrel, a mischievous smirk came across Su's muzzle and she made a beeline in a very specific direction. Six corridors west, and five floors up, and with only a few scant spider-mice in the way, she reached her destination no time at all.
Snickering eagerly, she pushed open a trapdoor that led up and into the tower's base - and then blinked in confusion at the hollowed out and, more importantly,
web-filled tube of stone.
"The heck…?" she mused as she slowly crawled up into the tower. "What is this place, the den of those rat-rachnids? Why the hell wouldn't Soundbite want me coming
here? I mean, psh, c'mon." She sat on her haunches and shrugged her forelegs with a shake of her head. "With the rate I've been tearing through those ratfinks, I doubt there are even over a dozen
left in this manor! C'mon, what's the big deal?"
"I believe that honor…" a silky-smooth voice purred above the cloud fox, causing a shiver to run up her suddenly ramrod-straight spine. "Would belong to
me."
Veeeeery slowly, Su tilted her head up, and stared headlong into the twitching rictus-grin of the
far too literal spider-monkey that was hanging above her by it's too-too-too many legs, as well as the dozen-or-so smaller but no less vicious grins that were crawling around it.
"Now, then," Tararan leered venomously. "What were you saying… about my
mice?"
The rodent-rachnid hybrids skittering around their boss all tittered malevolently in agreement.
"Uhhh…"
Su was saved from having to answer by an electronic whine heralding her backup's return.
"OK,
back in business, YOU MAY RESUME YOUR USUAL WORSHI—!" Soundbite choked off a sentence into his tirade, and remained silent for a moment before sighing morosely.
"Dare I ask WHY?"
"…I wanted the challenge?" Su weakly offered.
"…Ironically? THAT'S THE SAME JUSTIFICATION
MOST PEOPLE GIVE FOR THE GENOCIDE RUN."
Su's ear and tail drooped down miserably. "Ooooh
fuck me."
Tararan's head all but split in half as he opened his mouth wide, unveiling a pair of twitching mandibles.
"Gladly."
And with that, the beast wrenched its limbs free from the walls and allowed several metric tons of flesh and chitin to plummet towards the self-titled powder-fox.
"Yow!" Su yelped as she all but flung herself away from the falling spider-monkey-zombie, which slammed into where she'd been seconds before and kicked up a cloud of dust Skidding to a halt, she spared a half-second to glance over her shoulder before hastily shooting into motion as a titanic spider leg slammed clean through the brick she'd been standing on moments earlier.
"Hahahahaha! That's it, little tunnel rat!" Tararan cackled as he raised and slammed down another one of his legs, Su smoothly flowing around it.
"Run! Flee! You cannot escape!" Another leg slammed down, and only a hasty pirouette saved the cloud fox from two superfluous new orifices.
"Wasn't planning to!" Su snarled, finally skidding behind the massive zombie and tensing her legs for a leap. Tension that allowed her to jump
back when Tararan's massive rear slammed into the stonework, shattering it. "Are you
serious?!"
"Monkey monkey! I have no blind spots!" the zombie bragged.
"But you are a quick little tunnel rat, aren't you." Raising one of its hands, it snapped its fingers.
"Get 'er, boys."
Gritting her teeth, Su jumped back right as a small web stuck itself to the stone, shooting a glare up at the spider-mice infesting the lines above her.
"Right, that's it, I'm sick of being target practice!" she snapped, dodging several more webs before hopping up onto one of the larger—and more importantly,
drier-looking—ones attached to the walls. "Time for a counterattack!"
One spider-mouse, too low to the ground, was salted immediately. The rest just cackled at her before shooting more webs. With the lines, it was easy to dodge them; it was
much harder to actually
get at the damn things. They were hopping around like chinchillas on speed, and despite her lofty words about counterattacks, it was all she could do to stay ahead of their webs.
"Sticky Spider Net!"
And that was
without the giga-sized asshole crawling around below her complicating her life!
Bending back on her hind legs in a move that would have done Neo proud, Su watched in slack-jawed amazement as a stream of webbing thicker than she was only just shot past her, sweeping three of the spider-mice with it.
"Right, gotta remember him, too…" she muttered. Then a thought occurred to her, and she eyed the chittering spider-mice above her, then Tararan. "I~de~a~!"
Hopping onto the web she'd identified, she tracked the spider mice readying their attack runs. Just needed to get them in the right spot, and—
"Hey, Tartarface!" she shouted down.
"Monkey monkey! It's Tararan!" the zombie in question snapped.
"Couldn't care less~!" Su sang back, idly spinning around another web. "Look, this has been bugging me this entire time: is that actually
your ass you're sporting, or do you just have a plus-sized beetle chewing on your—?"
Any further taunts were killed flat by a wave of killing intent flooding the room and freezing everyone in place.
"You. Are. Dead,"Tararan chittered venomously, his mandibles twitching with ill-repressed desire to rip and shred.
Silence fell on the tower, the spider-mice shivering in terror… until said terror was aborted by seven shadows shooting up into the ceiling via Su flicking her paw at their slack jaws.
"Well, didn't quite get what I was planning for, but it's all working out so beautifully that I can't complain," Su sneered, her tail flickering again to bring up a visible gob of salt. "So. Shall we do this
properly this time?"
To her surprise and worry, Tararan's furious rictus-snarl melted into a sneer to match her own.
"Yessssss, let's."
Before Su could act, a chittering sound reached her ears, and she spun around to find the three spider-mice that Tararan had inadvertently webbed earlier on her six and puckering up to spit their webs.
"Ah,
shit," Su groaned, right before all three hit, wrapping her up in a neat little ball that bounced off the wall and onto the floor. "Owww… Lemme guess… I forgot that spiders don't get stuck in their own webs?"
"Eeheehee, eeheehee!" the spider-mice danced around joyously as they reveled in their victory. Or, basically, over ganging up on a single Cloud Fox without any notable offensive capabilities.
Fingers like steel wrapped around her face, and the cloud fox was lifted up and treated to a close-up view of Tararan's open gullet. Needless to say, it was
not a pretty sight.
"Dude. Whoever your dentist is, you need to—" Su began, before getting cut off by Tararan dropping her into his mouth and swallowing her wholesale.
"Monkey monkey… ah, blessed silence…" the spider-monkey-zombie sighed as he retracted his mandibles into his maw, the surviving spider-mice dancing around him in joyous exultation. That made the crash when their chieftain suddenly collapsed in a boneless heap all the deeper, his shadow-soul shooting out of his slack jaws.
A second after the astral embodiment escaped, Su hopped out as well, shaking herself down in order to dislodge what webbing remained stuck to her. "Honestly, now…" she sighed despondently. "Swallowing me whole like that, when my tail's weighing heavy with
salt? Unbelievable. I mean, really, apart from my bandanna, I'm
nude. Where did he
think I was keeping this stuff, up my
ass?"
"SOME PEOPLE JUST
really aren't smart like that!" Soundbite cackled.
"Eeeyup…" Su sighed, casting a sidelong glance at the remaining spider-mice. Somehow, all three clenched up even more. "Oh, you're still here? Alright, then, who wants the salt first?"
The mice promptly shot away like their abdomens were on fire.
Su gave them a little time to run before allowing a smirk to cross her muzzle. "I might be the first fox anywhere in the history of ever to say this…"
She then shot after the mice in a blur of white.
"But, oh, how I
love the hunt!"
-o-
"She took down Tararan on her own?!"
That would probably be the only time ever that Hogback and I spoke in perfect unison.
"IF BY TARARAN
you mean the uber-sized double-exterminator package, THEN YUP!" Soundbite grinned from eyestalk to eyestalk, specifically directing his leer at Hogback.
"Dunno where you got those brains of his, but I SUGGEST GETTING YOUR MONEY BACK! HEEHEEHEEHOOHOOHOOhahaha!"
"Yay, Su!" Conis pumped her fists enthusiastically, a massive grin on her face. "Good for her, I'm happy she's having fun!"
"In a… zombie-filled… haunted manor…" Usopp reiterated slowly.
That earned him an oblivious look from our gunner. "Yes, what's your point?"
Usopp worked his jaw for a second before slumping with a sigh of defeat. "Sometimes I miss the days when the world made sense, I really, really do…"
Hogback, meanwhile, remained frozen, staring back at the snail with a gaping mouth before slowly jerking his eyes forward, his fearful shivering redoubling. "This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be—!"
"Save some of that fear and terror for Chopper, Hoggy," Lassoo chuffed even as he kept his nose pointed in the air, sniffing for any traces of necrotized flesh coming our way. "Seriously, if you thought you were crazy
before—?"
"I am
not crazy!" Hogback snarled, life actually flowing back in him. "I am not and have never
been anything less than the absolute
picture of mental health! It is a legitimate fact proven, by a symposium of scientists the world over that I myself was a part of, that doctors are
incapable of suffering from the pedestrian affliction recognized as 'going mad'! The word you're looking for in
my field is 'medical genius'! And you can see the proof of it for yourself, right behind these—"
"I think…"
We all froze as a chilling voice cut in, and watched with varying levels of trepidation as a titan of fur and fury walked out from behind an upcoming doorframe.
"That your conclusion could use some independent scrutiny," a very heavy Heavy Point Chopper growled, glaring syringes into Hogback's by-now sweat-coated spectacles.
"Ugugugugugugugugu—
GURK!" The surgeon's sputtering was choked off by Chopper's fist clamping down onto the folds of his throat and single-handedly lifting him into the air.
"Let's see if you still stand by your opinion once I'm through with you, HOGBACK," our crewmate spat in his
ex-idol's waxy face.
"Damn, dude…" Soundbite whistled in awe.
"This is the first time I've ever actually used this word," Robin murmured with a slightly taken-aback look. "But ditto."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's freaky as all hell, we get that, we already know that from extreme personal experience…"
I glanced to the side and caught sight of the TDWS shifting around uncomfortably, their tails all twitching with ill-repressed eagerness.
"But now that he's got his pincushion, can we
go already!?" Leo pleaded desperately.
I shot a slight smirk at the dugongs. "Eager to get to the battlefront, I take it?"
"THERE IS AN ARMY OF
ZOMBIES OUT THERE
AND WE'RE NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF FIGHTING IT!" Mikey burst out, steam all but howling from where his ears would be. "DO YOU
SEE HOW THE NATURAL ORDER IS BEING PERVERTED HERE!?"
I snickered at the reaction before deciding to do them the favor of jabbing my thumb over my shoulder. "Alright, alright, at ea—!"
"THAT'S CONSENT, GOGOGO!"
"—Gwah!?" I transitioned into a yelp of shock when I was nearly bowled over by the quarter's freaking
slipstream! It was only Robin's hasty intervention that prevented me from falling on my ass.
"Tenacious little devils, aren't they?" she chuckled.
I took a moment to get my bearings back on track, a chuckle escaping my lips. "And we wouldn't have them any other way. And
speaking of mentally unsound crewmates, hey Chopper!" I was actually quite proud of myself for not flinching when he transitioned a fraction of his glare from Hogback's sweat-soaked face. "Don't mean to break your buzz here, but I think the roll you're on is
epic, seriously. I just wanted to let you know… don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"Uh…" Lassoo raised a paw uncertainly. "Isn't that kind of…
superfluous, considering your whole… 'Spandam episode'?"
My grin took on a decidedly blood-laden overtone. "I stand by every word I just said."
Hogback's whimpering intensified as Chopper, Lassoo, and Robin matched my grin, and that was the last I saw before our doctor started dragging him away by his neck, the doors to the lab's stairwell ominously slamming shut behind him.
There was a moment of silence before, naturally…
"ALRIGHT, THEN!"
Soundbite broke it with a bang.
"Break out your parkas, kiddies, BECAUSE OUR NEXT DESTINATION IS NONE OTHER than Freezer 900!"
-o-
The events that would one day be published as the first-and-final war of Thriller Bark continued to rage before the mansion where the masters of the island dwelled. No zombie on Thriller Bark was inactive now; the Generals were being roused, and every other cadaver was assembling to fend off the infamous Straw Hat Pirates.
The fight seemed even as it was; for all that the invaders knew the zombies' weakness, the ones who weren't smart enough to guard their mouths were long since purified, and the remainder were putting up a decent fight. On the other hand, for all that the zombies were impervious to pain, they were quite simply only able to stand against the pirates because of their superior numbers.
Yet, for all of the warring, two figures moved through the crowd, not attempting to strike any combatants. Likewise, none of the combatants attempted to strike them. They moved unimpeded, side-by-side, towards the dead center of the fight. A point where another similarly uninvolved figure was approaching, walking at a perfectly leisurely stroll.
The reason that nobody was attempting to attack either of the noncombatants was simple: neither pirate nor zombie had any desire whatsoever to interfere with three of the most infamous swordsmen known to Thriller Bark, whether they were on the same side or
not.
Zoro stayed a few steps back as Brook stood across from the zombie who bore his shadow, regarding him with the most polite of impassiveness. Ryuma, in turn, did nothing besides granting the skeleton the honor of his full attention. For an endless minute, all they did was stare at each other, their lack of eyes doing nothing to ease the tension that was driving all of their allies and enemies alike away from them.
Finally, Ryuma broke the scene when he tilted his head
ever so slightly to the side. "Yohoho…one more time, then, old boy?" the past-and-present samurai breathed quietly.
Brook stood still for a few seconds longer before slowly reaching up and drawing the brim of his top hat down over his eyes. "When we last met, my mind was awhirl with emotion. I let my grief and my desperation cloud my intuition as a swordsman. I see now what I could not then: that while you might hold my skills in spirit… in flesh, you far surpass me. And so, I concede any battles I might fight with you…"
The gentleman skeleton raised his head, and glared at the samurai with defiant resolve. "But I
refuse to end my fight here," he growled, heat flaring in his every word. "Rather, I choose to take the option that was robbed of me so many years ago: I started this fight and I have done all that I can…"
"Meaning that now," Zoro spoke up solemnly, stepping forward as he tied his bandanna around his head. "It's my turn."
Brook's demeanor promptly lightened up, and he gave the closest approximation to a sunny smile he could. "Ah, yes, and for the record, while I appreciate your help, the fact remains that you're my very last hope in the whole wide world for escaping this hell with my pride as a swordsman, so if you lose, I'm going to haunt you until well after you die."
Zoro scoffed as he drew both Kitetsu III and the
seriously old, yet equally ready, katana he'd found on the Rumbars' ship. "So, no pressure, then."
"Exactly!"
Zoro rolled his eyes a final time, before turning them on Ryuma. His swords remained at his side, relaxed, and yet his guard was ironclad. Ryuma, for his part, betrayed nothing, and after several tense seconds under Zoro's gaze he tilted his head back and chuckled.
"Yohohoho! I feel like some tremendous predator is sizing me up! It feels almost…" The cadaver tilted his head to his side. "Familiar."
Drawing his sword, Ryuma threw his head back and outright
laughed. "Yohohoho! I accept this battle!"
The samurai had scarcely finished speaking before Kitetsu and the old katana swung in, held at just the right length to bisect him at the neck and just below the breastbone, Wado sneaking in at the shoulder level. A black blade, a wavy water pattern decorating it, flashed up, halting the swords.
It could not, however, halt the momentum of Zoro's swing. Despite bracing, Ryuma was sent skidding to the side, though his guard remained raised.
This was a good thing, as Zoro crossed his arms, blades pointed outward with their points nearly touching. "Bull…" he growled, before sprinting forward. "Needles!"
To an outside observer, the sudden flip the swordsman went through as his blades met Ryuma's would have seemed like magic. Zoro, though, saw the truth: the zombie's black blade slipping between his, milliseconds before they would have stabbed him, and spinning. It was, essentially, a judo move with a sword, and as he landed, Zoro felt his respect for both the opponent in front of him and the owner of the shadow fueling said opponent go up a notch.
He had no time to think more on that, though, for Ryuma was on him, black blade thrusting forward to be caught on his crossed swords. Zoro made to counterattack, but the zombie withdrew himself, planting his other hand on the hilt and then double-tapping both Kitetsu and the old blade in a move that was both soft and delicate, and yet brought all the force of a hammer.
'Damn, a sword-breaking technique!' he realized just a second too late. Kitetsu rang from the abuse, but held; the uppity-old-timer in his
other hand, however… well, suffice to say he went out with a bang.
"Yohohoho!" Ryuma chuckled at the look on Zoro's face. "I'm terribly sorry, I know it's not sporting, but I just have this feeling, you see! My instincts, they're telling me that if I hold
anything back against you, then I shall surely perish! Yohohoho~!"
Neither of the combatants noticed Brook clamping his hands on his jawbone to refrain from saying 'But you're already dead.' The inattentiveness on Zoro's part was due to him recalling that Cross mentioned that this zombie came from the New World. Which meant…
"…Does that mean you're going to be using… what was it called… Haki?" Zoro asked with a grimace.
"Haki?" Ryuma parroted, his head tilting to the side. "I've heard rumors, but I'm afraid I cannot use it myself."
Zoro spared a glance over his shoulder at the fight's observer before heaving a sigh. "…I see," he mused, reaching up to Wado. "Well, in that case—!"
"Catch!"
Acting on instinct, Zoro snapped his hand out and easily snatched a sword with a very familiar pair of tusks on its hilt out of the air.
"Sorry to butt in like this," Funkfreed vibrated in his palm. "And I know I'm not
exactly the katana you're used to, which is why you're not using Brook's, but I've got a strong will and… and… and c'mon, this is a fight between two master swordsmen! A once-in-a-wielder's lifetime opportunity! I couldn't resist! Please let me fight!"
"My word, that sword is talking!" Ryuma exclaimed.
Ignoring the zombie's outburst, Zoro silently hefted Funkfreed a few times, before slipping back into his original relaxed stance. "Don't transform, or I'll throw you away, even if it kills me."
"Wouldn't even if you paid me…" the Zoan-blade breathed euphorically. "I wouldn't miss this for all the peanuts in the world."
That done, Zoro turned his gaze back to Ryuma. "Alright, thanks for letting me sort this out. Shall we get back to it?"
"Hold a moment," the samurai said, holding out a hand. "After that display, I believe I owe you…" He reached up to grip the collar of his scarf. "A courtesy of my own."
There was an immediate reaction to the samurai grabbing his neckwear, but it wasn't from him, and it wasn't from Zoro or Brook either. Rather…
"OH, CRAP, RUN!"
It was from his fellow zombies, who, content up until now with merely keeping their distance and observing as they fought the enemy pirates, were running away from the fight as though their undead asses were on fire.
"OUTTA THE WAY, OUTTA THE WAY!"
"WATCH YOUR HEADS!"
"RYUMA'S GOING ALL-OUT! HEAD FOR THE FUCKING HILLS!"
Brook whipped his head to-and-fro, watching in confusion as the zombies retreated with extreme prejudice, the rest of the Straw Hats and the Rolling Pirates hot on their tails, leaving nobody else around to witness the fight. "What on earth…?"
"You'll have to forgive them," Ryuma hummed as he tugged his scarf down. The action drew the undivided attention of his opponent, as it unveiled a knot of surgical thread that was taut against his throat. "More than a few of them have been the victims of…
unfortunate mishaps whenever I do this."
Zoro tensed as his instincts
screamed. "'This' being…?" he grit out.
Ryuma stilled, his lipless grin turning
feral. "Why… whenever I go all-out, of course."
And without further ado, Ryuma grabbed a thread of the knot and
yanked, pulling it undone and letting the lines loose.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, streams of dark
ooze began seeping out of his body. Arms, legs, torso, all bled profusely with
something that was clearly not healthy and just as clearly not organic. The flow lasted less than a minute, but it made the display no less disturbing.
Brook's hyoid bounced fearfully as he took in the desecration of his shadow's vessel. "W-What on
earth—!?"
"Hahahaha! Ahhhh,
yes!" Brook jumped in shock when Ryuma suddenly barked with laughter, swinging his torso left and right in obvious stretching motions. "Ooooh, this feels so good! I haven't felt this light in a long time! Now, then!" He eagerly held his blade up. "Just to be sure…"
The zombie-samurai swung his blade out, and all three of the Straw Hats stiffened in shock and (even a little bit on Zoro's part) fear as their battlefield suddenly became
devoid of all traces of fog.
"Ahhh…" Ryuma's sigh as he leaned his forehead against the back of his blade was almost euphoric. "
Much better…"
The Straw Hats all stared at the display before them. Then, Funkfreed whispered a single word, in a whisper that was equal parts terrified and exhilarated.
"Lead."
"Indeed…" Ryuma chuckled grimly, cracking his neck back and forth. "A precautionary measure Doctor Hogback implemented in me after the… third, I think? The third time I sliced a tower in half while practicing. Everyone was tired of cleaning up after me, so they decided that I'd be better off weighted down. I'm only ever allowed to truly let loose when I have need, and for
once…"
A glint entered Ryuma's socket as he fell into a positively
masterful ready-position.
"I have it…" the revenant breathed.
As Brook's already bone-white complexion grew even paler, Zoro's already eager grin became downright
feral, easily matching Ryuma's.
"Interesting."
This time, Zoro waited for the attack to come. He wasn't disappointed; Ryuma
blurred out of existence. Spinning around, he planted Funkfreed in the ground, black blade slamming into him an instant later. Rearing back, Zoro stabbed forward with Kitetsu, only for Ryuma to vanish again, blurring back into existence behind his opponent.
"Zo—"
That was as far as Brook got before Zoro leaned his head back, catching the black blade on Wado Ichimonji. With his opponent at least briefly locked, he pulled Funkfreed out of the dirt and spun, Kitetsu joining the Zoan blade.
"Hawk Wave!"
Ryuma jumped over the sweeping steel and the razor-sharp wind they created, his sword sliding off of Zoro's and carving a thin line on his cheek. The zombie landed, Zoro swung back upright, and then they charged, blades clashing and locking like a pair of bull elephants in full musth, the shockwave kicking up dirt and dust around them.
"Incredible…" Brook breathed.
"Impressive," Zoro grunted, before glancing at the sword in Ryuma's hands. "Now I recognize that sword: that's the black blade, the dragon-slayer Shusui." His eyes narrowed, seeming to come to a decision. "You're holding my sword."
"Hmm?" Ryuma's socket blinked, and then he stiffened in realization, narrowing it as he angled his Shusui so that it glinted in the battle-light. "Oho… so, this is
your sword, is it?"
The shadows of Zoro's bandana seemed to tint pitch-black, and his eyes shone like hot coals in the gloom. "Damn right it is."
"Hmph. Well, if that's the case…" Breaking the lock, Ryuma leapt back, holding his blade in a basic kendo stance.
"Come and take it."
With that, some sort of energy, in the kind of light blue of tropical seas and the hottest of flames, flared to life around the zombie. For a moment, the energy was just that: energy, wild and untamed, but then it started to take
form. And the form it took…
Brook's jaw nearly dislocated with how low it dropped. "I-I don't believe my eyes…" he whispered.
Was that of a
dragon. A 'mere' shade of one, perhaps, but a dragon nonetheless. Specifically, the energy coalesced into a positively
colossal eastern dragon, whose bulk remained coiled and writhing in the sky while its head bowed down to earth, bowed down to
Ryuma. The swordsman was still visible through the spectre's form, but the abyssal blade, Shusui, was indistinguishable from the titanic obsidian tusk that formed the dragon's underbite.
"One Sword Style," Ryuma
(The Dragon) intoned imperiously, the air thrumming with his voice, his voice thrumming with pure
power. "Dragon Fang Stance."
Ryuma
(The Dragon) raised his blade high
(coiled to strike). "Prepare yourself, Roronoa Zoro!"
It didn't take a genius to see the implications, and Zoro was moving even before Ryuma
(The Dragon) swung his blade down
(lashed out like lightning).
"Dragon(Heaven) Slayer!"
It was a good thing Zoro was moving before the attack was completed, as the strike of the dragon was almost
instant. And the impact… well, it wasn't so much an 'impact' born of the corporeal world as it was a force of almost
cosmic proportions. A whole tract of earth just…
ceased to be.
The fact that a goodly chunk of the forest was missing too was concerning as well, yes, but as Zoro observed the scar on the earth, couldn't help but feel like he was missing
something crucial.
"My apologies, swordsman…"
Zoro snapped his attention over to Ryuma
(The re-coiled Dragon) and blinked in confusion when he realized the opposing swordsman was staring skyward for some reason.
"But I simply could not help myself…" the samurai
(dragon) continued, his tone wistful.
With the undead swordsman apparently not going to attack for the moment, Zoro followed his line of sight. What he saw left him frozen. "No way…" he choked out.
Overcome with his
own curiosity, Brook followed his fellow swordsman's gaze, but his befuddlement persisted, head tilted to the side. "What are you all looking at? All I see is a beautiful night sky." He stared skyward a moment longer before a sheen of cold sweat somehow shone on his bony brow. "Wait a second…"
"Habit…" Ryuma
(The Dragon) sighed longingly as he watched the swath of stars shining down on them.
"Such an iron-wrought thing, no?"
"You make a habit of slashing the
sky open?!" Zoro bit out.
"Forget the sky!" Brook shrieked in terror. "He cut clean through the whole of the
Florian!"
"Well, that technique was developed for slaying dragons[-]. It only makes sense that it would be able to reach the sky, no?" Ryuma
(The Dragon) chuckled as the fog closed back up again.
"I'm quite proud to say that not one of my prey ever survived… and neither shall you."
"Tch!" Zoro grunted as he snapped his attention back to his opponent, who was rearing back for another strike. "108 Caliber Phoenix!"
The attack roared in to strike Ryuma
(The Dragon), but aura or not, the samurai
(dragon) was just as fast, and neatly sidestepped
(weaved around) the razor wind so that it carried on into the distance.
"A bird daring to stand up against a dragon[-]? Foolishness!"Ryuma
(The Dragon) scoffed.
"Let me show you how it's really done! Dragon(Heaven) Slayer!"
The dragon rent the heavens again, Zoro only just managing to dodge by grace of a frantic dive and roll, and the second he was on his feet he was sprinting towards his opponent. Unfortunately, while closing the distance between him and his opponent was an undeniable necessity, it had the unfortunate side effect of leaving him with a lot of forward momentum that made dodging the
next strike all but impossible.
So with dodging unfeasible, the only option left…
"Demon…" Zoro snarled, crossing his arms and blades across his chest, a shadowy cloaked figure shimmering into view behind him. "Oni Giri!"
Was to counter with the best he had.
CLANG!
Zoro barely withheld a sigh of relief even as, for only the second time in his life, the 'best he had' was utterly repelled. Thankfully, his ego was kept from bruising on account of how holding off a heaven-rending strike from a world-class swordsman was far less humiliating than his first experience, but there were two undeniable problems with this minor victory.
First, the recoil of his survival left him
wide open. And second, Ryuma
(The Dragon) was suddenly
directly in his face.
"Dragon[-] topples demon," the zombie
(Dragon) intoned grimly.
"Fall."
Shusui swung up, the dragon following, and the beast
engulfed Zoro, launching him up into the sky as it rent the Florian fog once again. Brook couldn't help but gape in horror as, moments after the dragon swooped back down to earth, a blur of a form plummeted towards the ground like a biological meteor. It was on the way down that the extent of Zoro's damage became apparent.
Small burns and cuts decorated the swordsman's body like a macabre wall pattern, dripping blood that flowed in thin streams. His shirt, naturally, was hanging in tatters, and his pants weren't in good condition, either. It was his eyes, though, that were the worst: they'd rolled up into the back of his head, leaving only the whites visible.
But, just before reaching the ground, a curious thing happened: Zoro's eyes suddenly snapped back into focus, and he flipped in midair, managing to stick a three-point landing before painfully pulling himself to his full height.
"I am getting…" Zoro growled out painfully.
"Fucking tired of losing my damn shirts…"
"Oh my
…" Brook gaped in awe.
"Hmph… you're quite impressive," Ryuma
(The Dragon) snorted with no small amount of respect.
"And you're annoying," Zoro snarled.
"I beg your pardon?" Ryuma
(The Dragon) cocked his brow in confusion.
"You're holding back," Funkfreed called out. "You can say what you want, but Shusui's too proud to lie. He's only holding back because you're not letting him go all-out."
"…is it wrong to want a good battle to last as long as possible?" Ryuma
(Dragon) intoned softly.
"It is," Zoro grunted as he slowly fell into his ready-stance, his arms crossed over his chest again. "When I can
take it."
Ryuma
(The Dragon) stared silently at him before slowly sheathing his blade
(drawing back, flames roiling in his maw).
"On your head be it."
And with that, he slowly slid his left foot forward, leaning forward onto it while his other shoulder faced his opponent, his hand hovering inches from the hilt
(coils writhed and snapped in the sky, muscles and tendons tensing and untensing like a wave of flesh).
All Brook could do was hold his breath as the tension slowly but steadily ramped into an almost
tangible howl, the wind thrashing and clashing between the two swordsmen. Until finally, Ryuma
(The Dragon) moved first.
"Dragon(Heaven)[GOD] Slayer."
This time, Brook couldn't see the attack at all, it was so fast. All he saw was a flash of light. And then, when the spots cleared from his vision, the manse of Thriller Bark was illuminated by the veil of moonlight that shone upon it.
This feat was made possible by the fact that an entire
hemisphere of Florian mist had been eviscerated in the strike, even taking the topmost parts of the manor's tallest towers along with it.
Brook was not
quite as distressed from this development as he would normally be, though, on account of how the manor had been behind Ryuma for the duration of the fight.
As Brook parsed this development, the dust settled and the two fighters became visible again.
There was just an instant of Zoro possessing six arms and three faces, so brief Brook almost believed he'd imagined it, that faded into him merely holding one sword pointed out. And Ryuma…
Well… there was simply no way to sugarcoat matters: the zombie was currently missing about, oh,
half his torso. The revenant was barely standing, and Shusui was only just hanging in his remaining outstretched hand.
"Im…impressive…" Ryuma wheezed, swaying on his feet as he slowly adopted a more at ease stance. His breath was no doubt scarce due to his lacking one of his lungs. "To turn my own attack on me… with interest, no less… masterful… but that form… the Asura, yes? I thought they were… creatures of destruction?"
Zoro chuckled, tinged with his own pain as he removed Wado from his mouth and started sheathing both it and Kitetsu, as well as dropping Funkfreed so he could stand on his own legs. "Common mistake. Two castes of Asura, one good and one bad. Vritra Stance is for offense, while what you just experienced was Varuna Stance."
"Counterattacks and defense… impressive…" Ryuma chuckled breathlessly. "If you have not named that attack yet… might I request… you utilize the term 'Samsara'? I believe…" His empty gaze grew slightly fond. "I have just experienced the truth of it…"
Zoro nodded solemnly. "I will."
"Glad… to hear it… ah, yes…" He held up Shusui. "He is yours, of course. But if I may… say my goodbyes?"
The Pirate Hunter didn't even hesitate to nod solemnly.
Ryuma nodded back before slowly turning his gaze to Brook. "I apologize…" he breathed somberly. "For my transgressions against you. My actions when last we met were… inexcusable."
Brook stared at him for a second before gripping his top hat and bowing his head. "And yet I forgive you anyway," Brook whispered. "In spite of the circumstances…" He slowly raised his head, and looked Ryuma in his empty eyes. "I am
proud that of all the bodies on this island, my shadow was granted the honor of giving the greatest samurai in the history of Wano, if not the
world, a second lease on life."
The Humming Swordsman drew his blade and raised it in salute. "Sir, it has been a
privilege."
Ryuma nodded shakily, then turned his gaze away and upward, towards the moon. The samurai regarded the silver disk in silence even as the fog slowly started to encroach on the heavens again, falling to his knees. Twin streams of tears welled from the corpse's empty eyes, glinting in the moonlight.
"After five long years of darkness… to see the heavens one last time…" he whispered.
After a minute more of contemplation, Ryuma slowly turned his attention downward and traced Shusui's blade in the dirt, running it through the by now salt-laden soil of the battlefield. And then, once he was satisfied, he held his grim blade out at arm's length and flipped it in his palm, so that Shusui's tip rested on his stomach.
"Hear my last request," Ryuma spoke up a final time, his voice unwavering and full of strength. "When you reach the shores of Wano, and they see your black blade, tell them this! Both times…"
Ryuma tilted his head back and sucked in a deep breath before bellowing to the heavens.
"I, RYUMA OF WANO, LIVED A GOOD LIFE!"
And with his last vestiges of strength, he shoved his blade up to the hilt in his stomach and jerked it to the side.
Almost exactly as the Florian devoured the final slivers of moonlight, Brook's shadow silently slid clean from the corpse's side, an aged hand fell from the hilt it had been gripping…
And so Ryuma of Wano died for the second time.
-o-
I stayed frozen at the dance hall's window a moment longer, staring outside in numb shock before slowly turning to face an equally astounded Robin. We both continued to gape before I got my wits about me and snapped my fingers before Soundbite, which shook
him out of his own shock and got him to do his duty.
"…So," I choked out. Hesitantly. "Anyone want to explain to me how the
hell I just caught sight of a beam of flipping
moonlight when this island is supposed to be
perpetually covered in fog?"
"Oh, oh, I can answer that, Cross!"
I blinked in befuddlement as I processed the voice I just heard. It sounded half like Disney's mascot mouse, and half like what I had heard the one time I let morbid curiosity overcome my good sense and I asked Soundbite to play what he heard of Nami's candlelit dinner with her gold.
Both the combination and the latter were…
deeply disturbing.
"And the answer would be…?" I trailed off in dread.
"I was actually a part of it! Suffice to say that Zoro's duel with Ryuma and the conclusion were supremely
epic. Ah," Funkfreed blinked in realization.
"We won, by the way, just in case I wasn't clear on that."
"YES!" I pumped my fist in triumphant relief. "That's two major birds with one big-ass stone; one of the strongest Zombies on the island's back at peace, and Brook has his shadow back now," I clarified to my confused companions, eliciting grins from them. Then I returned my attention to my conversation. "Aaand going by your euphoric tone, I'm guessing you had fun?
"Literally
the most fun I've had in my entire life!" Funkfreed laughed ecstatically.
"Put it this way, Cross: That fight mooore
than made up for all the wasted years I spent with Spandam. So… thank you, Cross, for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
My gut promptly felt like it'd taken a straight-jab dead center. "…aaaand cue the guilt trip that you got that feeling from fighting with Zoro and not me." I dragged my hand down my face with a groan. "Mrgh… Make it up to you in days to come by letting you hardline sword-form even when we
aren't in the middle of a fight?"
"Deal!" Funkfreed trumpeted eagerly.
"Though for now, I'll remain autonomous a while longer. 'Cause in the end, it really doesn't matter to me whether I'm going at it hybrid or au natural,
so long as I can be in the center of the brawl!"
"Yeah, yeah, good for you," Zoro grunted off-handedly, his distraction no doubt stemming from examining his new ally-in-war.
"So, anything else you need us to do?"
"Nah, nah," I waved him off dismissively. "Just go ahead and hitch a ride on Funkfreed and head back to the main brawl. Our work isn't done until every zombie on this island has been purified, or at least the vast majority before we wake Moriah up so that he can be
forcibly put down. I'm working on neutralizing the last major threat on the island, but I'll be heading your way as soon as that's done, so be ready, Funkfreed."
"No problem, Cross!"/"Got it."
"Perfect," I nodded in satisfaction. Once, the call dropped, I grinned from ear to ear and faced my comrades. "Now, then! Where were we exactly?"
"Right about here."
CLONK!
"Gah, what the—!?" I flinched as Usopp plopped a… classic yellow-with-black-cross hardhat on my head?
I blinked at both my own headwear and the identical one my sniper was wearing before giving Usopp a funny look. "You carry spare hardhats with you?"
Usopp returned my look with just as much confusion, if not more. "You mean you don't?"
I opened my mouth to answer, and promptly clicked it shut as I found myself lacking a valid answer. "Fair 'nuff… alright, then!" I popped a thumbs-up at my partner and our gunner. "Soundbite, mute. Conis, let 'er rip!"
Soundbite's grin stretched wide, and all noise outside of the hall's borders was promptly eliminated. "WE'RE CLEAR!"
Conis popped us all a thumbs-up before focusing on the control-box in her hand, which had wires leading from it to several bundles that lined the edge of the freezer's vault-like door. "Fire in the—!" Conis was cut off as she pushed in the plunger—
KRA-BOOM!
And the door's hinges were blown clean off its frame. The door itself stood a few moments longer. At least, until Lassoo trotted up and poked it with his nose, causing the hunk of metal to keel over with a cavernous moan and a resounding
THUNK!
Robin cocked an eyebrow at Conis as she removed her hardhat from her Stetson. "'Hole', I presume?"
Conis smiled beatifically as she handed the control box back to Usopp. "'Haunted mansion', actually!"
"Ah, of course, of course."
"No time for a horse, let's go!" I crowed, tossing my own hat back to Usopp and jogging ahead into the hallway.
I was immediately grateful for the running start, because the mere
concept of trying to inch my way into the chilling air that filled the hallway was frigid in itself.
"Brrr!" Usopp shivered as he ran after me, rubbing his arms with an almost desperate kind of franticness. "I knew the people who lived here were cold-blooded, but this is ridiculous!"
"Only the best for number 900, Usopp!" I informed him as I kept myself moving, unwilling to give my blood time to freeze. "Moriah didn't want to so much as
risk his crowning achievement becoming compromised!"
"Yeah, about that…" Lassoo panted, shooting me a quizzical look as he kept pace. "You haven't told us what this '900' guy is
like yet. I mean, you've said before that he's the strongest corpse here, but what separates him from the other zombies? Is he super-enhanced compared to the others, is he a chimaera of species, does he have a Devil Fruit, what?"
"Size," Soundbite responded grimly.
"HE'S THE STRONGEST THROUGH SHEER
size."
"So…" Conis started uncertainly. "He's a giant then?"
I nodded my head to the side, grimacing. "Well, he's
giant, I'll give you that much
."
That earned me a blink of confusion from the angel. "Uh… why are you putting it like—?"
Conis suddenly cut herself off dead. No gasp, no choked off garble, no nothing. Just… silence.
It was like that for each and every last one of us. One second noise and motion, the next utter stillness, none of us even daring to breathe. Why, you ask? Simple.
Because we'd just entered Freezer No. 900. And what stood, what
towered above us was, was…
so far beyond normal description.
Up until that point, I'd been content to label Oars as a 'mega-giant', a giant's giant because, well… that was all I really knew him as. But now… now I knew better.
Now I'd seen him in the actual flesh, seen his horns, pillars of pure bone towering above me. Now I'd seen his bulk, this… this… this
wall of patchwork flesh stretching out before me and disappearing below. Now I'd seen something once-living whose size could only be measured in units applicable to
maps.
Honestly, it was the freezer that
really told the true story. It was just… a
pit. A pit of darkness and cold and death. There has only ever been
one name for any creature that has dwelled in such a pit.
"Titan…" I breathed, my voice equal parts terrified and reverential.
"He was going to fight Kaido…" Robin whispered numbly. "With
this?"
It took all I had to shake my head. "Other way around. He needed
this to fight
Kaido."
Lassoo licked his chops nervously before raising his hackles. "Existential crises later, making sure that this thing never has the chance to wake up
now."
"Only one problem with that, Lassoo…" Usopp swallowed heavily. "How the hell do we kill something
that's already dead!?"
"Allow me to elucidate!"
I jerked out of my stupefaction as for
once I was actually grateful to hear the Sound of Madness. "Chopper," I sighed in relief. "I take it you found Hogback's blueprints for his
pièce de résistance?"
"Blueprints nothing, he outlined it perfectly before I could even touch him in an effort to save his own skin," Chopper snorted dismissively, donning a vicious leer.
"Not that it did him much good. Eheheheeeeeh…"
I allowed a single shiver to travel down my spine before refocusing. "Soooo I take it by the fact that you're calling us, you have a way to make this rotting husk double-dead?"
"Deader than even that. Doesn't matter how big or small the organism; if it suffers the fate I have outlined, not even the mightiest of Devil Fruits could revive it! It's genius genius GENIUS!"
I shot a glare at Soundbite, who leered tauntingly.
"Don't look at me~!"
I gave a disgruntled huff and rolled my eyes before glancing skyward. "Aaaand I don't suppose that the method for bringing about this 'fate' of yours is easy and painless for us to complete?"
Chopper's mad ramblings promptly died, and there was a moment of silence before he started chuckling nervously in his
own voice.
"Eheheh… weeeeell…"
"Oh, dear…" Robin sighed, though the smile she was wearing told a whole different story.
"Just get it over with," I dragged my hand down my face with a groan.
"Oh, come on, Cross!" Conis piped up with her usual cheer. "We do this, however uncomfortable, and we're all good! How bad—!" Credit to Conis, her hand was clamped over her mouth by the time I turned around, and she even had the wherewithal to chuckle sheepishly as she removed it. "Ah… sorry, forgot for a second there. Doesn't count if you didn't say the whole thing?"
"Yeah, see, here's the thing about that…"
And so Chopper relayed his plan to us. It was a good plan, a detailed plan, a well-thought-out and
logical plan… but there was just ooone problem with it.
A problem that led Conis and I to exchange sickly grimaces and speak the following words as one:
"This is going to
suck…"
-o-
"Lightning Bolt Tempo!"
ZAP!
"Kill-stealer!" Boss barked out a laugh as the zombie he'd been about to pummel was suddenly blasted away by a bolt of lightning. "But eh, so long as you're
here—" He shot a pumped-up thumbs-up at the shipbound team as they charged onto the battlefield. "Glad to have you!"
"Glad to
be here, Boss," Nami snarled through a nearly bestial grin, her crackling and tempestuous halo sending many a zombie running, albeit without much luck.
"Boss, what's the status report so far?" Vivi asked, balancing on Carue's back with one hand while spinning a salt-crusted Lion Cutter in the other.
"Eh, the battle ebbs and flows." Boss glanced at the frontline with an analytical look. "We make pushes and knock 'em down, even manage to salt a few, but then they push back and grab the downed ones away and patch them up so that they can fight again. The main issue here is exhaustion, namely that we get it and they
don't. We've been cycling well enough, but…" Boss trailed off for a second, blinking his eyes before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Anyway, yeah, we're, ah… starting to feel ten minutes of straight fighting hitting us… I mean sure, 'Nightmare Luffy' has been helping us hold the line…"
"But I'm not hearing that 'but' in your voice, am I?" Merry questioned despondently (or as despondently as a person could be when bashing one zombie over the skull with another).
"But…" Boss grit out as the blue behemoth leading their charge suddenly jerked to a stop and essentially
disintegrated into a geyser of umbral anima. And a mere twenty seconds later, there was their captain, hunched forward on his knees. "It looks like our damn time using him is up, meaning that it's gonna be a
slog from here on out." A sweatdrop hung from his shell as the zombies surged forward with a roar. "Soooo that's the bad news—!"
"BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS!"
KRA-KOOM!
Without warning, the zombie-charge was suddenly
blasted apart from the inside out, sending
dozens of the undead sprawling and the rest reeling in shock.
"FOR WE!" Leo barked confidently, leading the TDWS in maintaining a group-pose. "ARE HERE!"
"HA!" Boss puffed his chest out as his students glared down the zombies around them. "Looks like I actually might have been speaking too soon! Nice work, boys!"
"Woohoo!" Carue pumped his wing victoriously. "Tidesh turn quick! Owah cavalwy has awwived!"
"What a coincidence…"
Spines froze all along the battlefront as a grim susurrus wafted through the air.
The Teenage Dugong Warrior Squad were
particularly petrified, on account of how the voice came from a knight with a three-eyed mask and animalistic gauntlet-claws who'd
somehow appeared
directly in their midst.
"For you see," the knight hissed menacingly,
"We, the General Zombies of Thriller Bark, have also
arrived."
Acting fast, the TDWS
tried to lash out at their ghastly assailant—
"GAH!"/ "GRK!"/ "ACK!"/ "SONNUVA—!"
And
failed when said assailant's arms both split in half and bodily
snatched them out of the air by their throats.
"Allow me," the cadaver rasped with a shuddering breath.
"To introduce
you!"
And with
that ominous statement, the knight's torso suddenly spun around like a
rotor, whipping the TDWS about like ragdolls and flinging them to separate parts of the battlefield before they could react.
Boss's eye twitched, and it had
nothing to do with the renewed surge of heavily armed and even more heavily skilled zombies that was pushing back the Rolling Pirates. "So. I'll be taking four-arms and no-brains."
"Fine by me," Sanji huffed, waving his hand dismissively as he walked away, casually smacking down any zombies that tried to get in his way. "I'll go and find mosshead, dig him out of the flood of bodies he's no doubt going to bury his dumb green ass in."
"Let's see if Cross's advice about my thieving skills can be applied to my mass-pickpocketing routine…" Nami mused as she faded into thin air.
"Triage for me!" Merry cackled as she jogged away as fast as her minor limp allowed. "Time to play
mad doctor!"
"Let them eat salt!" Vivi proclaimed with an imperious wave of her hand before smiling sheepishly at Carue. "How does that sound to you?"
"Eh…" Carue waved his wing with a wince. "Good, but aye can't help but feel shome senshe of forebowding fwom it."
"Bah, I'll work on it," Vivi waved her hand dismissively. "For now though,
hiyah!" And with a kick of her heels, she and her duck shot into the fray. Or at least,
over it from the way Carue was kicking off the undead's heads.
Boss, meanwhile, stayed where he was, staring at the approaching three-eyed knight in silence before taking his cigar from his lips. "A few months back," he sighed, smoke whooshing from his muzzle. "I wouldn't have even given you the time of day for hurting my students. Buuut seeing as I'm now certain that they can handle themselves and nothing you clowns can throw at them will actually do jack shit…" He upgraded his dart's motion from pendulum-like swinging to full-blown rotation. "'Man of the Sea' Boss Dugong, Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates' ship guard. You?"
The knight snorted derisively.
"The dead have no need for names."
His four arms split anew into an
octet of bladed limbs.
"Die with the title 'Jorōgumo' etched in your heart."
Boss' eyes fell into a deadpan glare. "Charming."
And with that, any further words were foregone in favor of leaping at one another with the utmost of fury.
-o-
"Hey, Conis," I grunted as I reaffirmed my grip. "You ever get asked, as a kid, what you wanted to be when you grew up?"
"On and off for several years, though not anytime recently," she responded offhandedly, more focused on her footing than me. "Not many on Angel Island wanted to give thought to the future once Eneru took over, and after that…" The angel nodded her head to the side with a shrug. "Well, I found my calling with this crew, so not much reason to think of anything else, you know?"
"Fair enough, fair enough…" I mused. "Me, I got asked that constantly. Go-to for school counselors and parents, really. The answer varied, over the years. At first there were the classic answers."
"Which, for your world, would be…" Conis trailed off expectantly.
"Firefighters and police officers, both due to the heroism, AND THE ODD CONSTRUCTION WORKER.
COOL JOB, SEE."
"Ah, I see," Conis nodded in agreement. "Makes sense, I always thought the Cloud Workers looked cool myself."
"Yeah. There was actually a period where I was on an architect kick for a bit. Seemed easy enough, I liked geometry… then I learned how much art was involved and I dropped it like a hot potato. I draw like Luffy, see," I bit out, wiping the sweat from my brow.
"Naturally, naturally."
"Anyway…" I glanced downward before continuing. "After that, there was a bit of a wandering period, but right before I came here, I was actually studying to be an English Major."
That actually drew a blink of surprise from Conis. "Oh, you write?"
"Eh, not anymore. Not much point, ya know?"
"Er…?" she asked.
"Anyway," I pushed on. "The point I was trying to get at is that at no point did I ever envision myself a world-infamous/famous pirate, out having the wildest of adventures on the high seas—!"
"LOOK OUT
above."
"—Sonnuva—!" I hastily whipped my gauntlet above my head.
SMASH!
And winced as a frozen bat shattered on my forearm before sending a glare into the darkness above. "And I sure as
hell," I concluded. "Never saw myself rappelling down the gullet of a titan's frozen
corpse so that I can preemptively kill its brain!"
Conis chuckled in dry amusement as she shifted her bazooka's footing on her back before giving herself more slack with which to keep descending the wall of frozen flesh. "Cross," she scoffed. "I think it's safe to assume that
nobody has ever envisioned themselves in
any of the situations we've been involved in in the history of
ever."
"You mean besides every SUPER-OBSESSED FANBOY
AND FANGIRL ever?" Soundbite interjected.
I felt a snort and a shift on my back. "Less meta," Lassoo grumbled irritably. "More
moving. I'm freezing my tail off back here."
"On it, on it," I waved my mutt off. And with that, we resumed climbing down Oars' throat.
…I…suppose that whole bit deserves, if not outright
requires, some context, doesn't it?
See, the primary issue with trying to harm Oars? It wasn't just his sheer size, it was the fact that he was literally built for not just combat, but all-out New World
warfare. And apparently,
that necessitated a hide that was not only several
meters thick, but
also as hard as a damn battleship. No wonder Zoro could barely cut the bastard, Mihawk himself would have… alright, he'd probably be able to chop Oars in half lengthwise without even looking up from his morning papers, but my point about Oars being thick in more ways than just his head still stands!
I'd told Chopper how we'd incapacitated the titan in the story, and he was extremely impressed with his original self's genius. But unfortunately, Oars' stupidly massive and quite literal dead weight and our lack of means meant that we couldn't exactly replicate the circumstances. Still, he
was able to identify one viable weakness in the corpse's biological blueprint. Speaking of which…
"Hey Chopper!" I called mouthwards. "We're about… ah…"
"25, 30 feet down the throat from the mouth!" Conis offered.
"Yeah, that. We there yet?"
"Ahhh… lemme see, lemme see, what is that in inches, damn chart doesn't have a legend… ah, right! Alright, give it another five feet to be safe and then you should be good!"
"Do we really need to go this far down, Chopper?" I groaned even as I kept giving myself slack to descend. "I mean, we're
already inside his throat, what does it matter how deep we go?"
"It matters
because you need to be in precisely the exact spot to have a chance of hitting Oars' spinal column anytime soon!" Chopper explained with strained patience.
"I don't know what Moriah was expecting Oars to fight in the New World, but whatever it was, he had Hogback deck him out to hell and back. Even his throat is reinforced for several meters!"
"And you said he
needed this to fight Kaido?" Conis swallowed heavily.
"And we're going up against him ourselves. Fun, no?" I responded dryly.
"What you're looking for is a form of sweet spot," Chopper continued.
"An area of the esophagus after
Hogback was given the go-ahead to stop reinforcing, but before
the esophagus turns away from spine in favor of the stomach… er, command center… you get my point. Anyway, dig too soon and you'll hit reinforced muscle to match his epidermis. Too late, not exactly reinforced
muscle, but still a lot
of it."
"YEAH,
because we wouldn't want ANY MORE TROUBLE THAN WE'VE ALREADY HAD…" Soundbite grumbled.
"Like the zipline from hell wasn't fun enough."
"You do better with limited supplies, ass-biter!" Usopp snapped indignantly.
"Forgive me for not exactly having a steady grip on the free-hanging weight of two adults plus baggage," Robin concurred much more calmly, but also far more dryly.
"Thank you for not letting us plummet to our doom!" the four of us chorused with no small amount of desperation.
"A-Anyway, I'm fairly certain we're where you want us," Conis coughed uneasily, glancing… 'up', as it were, at the opposite wall of the cavernous flesh-tube we were in. "I suppose it
looks softer than what we were going down before. So, I suppose now…?"
"We start digging," I huffed, hefting a fully gun Lassoo from my back and pointing him 'upwards'. "Congratulations are in order, Conis, we're about to perform the most roughshod and unique lobotomy in the history of medicine."
"I'LL ALERT the folks at GUINNESS."
"Forgive me if I don't exactly seem eager," Conis snorted in an unladylike manner, hefting her own bazooka before knocking her cannon's muzzle against my own. "Cheers, Cross."
"Right back at ya," I grit out as I braced myself. "Alright, firing in three, two—!"
"Cani-Blast!"
"Burn Bazooka!"
FWOOM!
Conis and I both sighed in relief as our guns blasted out twin pillars of flame that combined into an
inferno. While the position was more than a bit awkward, at least the heat from the flames did
something to alleviate the sub-zero temperatures.
Still, though…
"Chopper, how long do you think it'll take us to dig through?" I asked.
"Erm… well, seeing as there's still several meters of flesh between you and the bone? IIIII'd get suggest you all get as comfortable as you can manage. Sorry?"
Conis and I both froze in place before we
slooowly turned our heads to glance at one another. I then opened my mouth to say something.
"If you suggest I Spy in
this place," she whispered solemnly. "I will punch your head from your scrawny shoulders."
"Wasn't gonna say nothin'!" I hedged hastily, glancing away with a whistle.
"Yeah, THE HELL YOU—!"
THWACK!
"YEOW!"
"Shut up, Soundbite," we chorused as one.
"Bastards."
-o-
"Tidal-Swim-Tidal-Swim-TIDAL SWIM DAMN IT A—oh, there we go," Leo blinked in honest surprise as he flipped himself over in midair and actually managed to kill his downward momentum. "Huh… so
that's how it's done… surprisingly easy once you get used to it."
"GROAAAAR!"
Leo blinked, and glanced down to a veritable legion of zombies.
"Drawing attention to yourselves like that?" the dugong smirked, drawing his blades. "Tsk, tsk, not smart."
That briefly drew the zombies up short, each looking at each other in confusion. And that opening was enough for Leo to cut his Tidal Swim, dropping to the ground, his blades whirling out and finding the necks of two zombies. Both promptly collapsed like they'd been turned to jelly, shadows flying into the sky.
"Alright," Leo said as he straightened. "Who wants some?" Not waiting for an answer, he jabbed one of his swords at a random zombie. "You. You want some."
Before the poor zombie could in any way deny that it wanted
any, Leo was up in his personal space, sword shooting up and through his throat.
That was enough for the rest of the zombies, who to a cadaver decided that discretion was, indeed, the better part of valor.
Or, to put it another way, they ran like children.
Leo, naturally, gave pursuit. Two fell to his blades just after they began to run, and with Rip Tide, the rest weren't going anywhere. The dugong was a blur of shell and steel, each strike unerringly finding a necrotized throat and carving it open. A few zombies, seeing that running was futile, tried to fight back. That was just as futile.
Finally, Leo swung his blades out only to find that he was standing alone on a field of unmoving corpses.
"Huh," he said, lowering one blade and holding the other up for inspection. "Nice. That salt paste of Chopper's is really holding up well. Now, what to do…"
Suddenly, Leo's head whipped around to a seemingly random spot of foliage. "I know you're there!" he called out. "Show yourself!"
The bushes rustled, and a corpse stumbled out. With bottle in hand, dressed in a tattered captain's coat and equally tattered striped pants, and stringy silver hair, he looked the perfect picture of a drunken bum, swords at his hip notwithstanding.
"…And here I was worried." Leo let his shoulders slump with a disappointed sigh. "And you even have
swords… bah, screw it, might as well get this over with. Rip Tide." And with that, Leo blurred from sight.
CLANG!
Somehow, that did not end with a salted zombie, but instead Leo's blade getting quite casually knocked away.
"What the heck?!" Leo yelped, hastily recovering from the hit, only to blink in confusion as the zombie merely took another swig of its drink. "O…
kay, let's try that again…"
So saying, Leo struck
again, tightening his swing, and once again it was casually batted away, the zombie continuing to drink in spite of his liquor continuously draining out. The dugong narrowed his eyes, flippers tightening their grip on his hilts.
"Alright, then…"
Vanishing in another Rip Tide, this time Leo didn't just attack once. Both of his blades blurred in, and while they kept getting batted away, the zombie was staggering backwards to keep up the defense. Different angles were tried: head strikes, body strikes from the side, thrusts. All were countered. All forced another step back.
And yet, the damn zombie just
kept drinking!
"You drunken bastard… This is a fucking
swordfight! A clash of blades and wills! And you clearly have skills, so stop
screwing around and take! THIS!
SERIOUSLY!" Leo roared, punctuating his final howl by slamming both blades into the zombie's guard. Said guard still stood firm, but the zombie was forced to inch back, and was jolted so bad he spilled a splash of his booze on his shirt.
That… actually drew some emotion from the zombie. He paused, casting a sightless glance down at the stain before returning his attention to the bottle, swirling about the remaining booze at eye level.
Without missing a beat, the zombie took another pull of his drink, and then out of
nowhere hurled the bottle at Leo with all the force his necrotized muscles could muster. The surprised dugong had the wits to cross his blades in a guard—
BLAM! SMASH!
"GAH!" Leo flinched in shock and terror as the bottle suddenly
exploded in midair for no apparent reason, spraying him with lead and glass and leaving him
reeling. He
tried to recover, to properly maintain his guard—!
THWACK!
"GUH!" But all he could do was grunt as the air was
literally punted from his gut by the pirate, sending him rolling across the field of bodies.
Once Leo's momentum stopped, he flipped himself to his stomach and hung his head with a groan. "Sonnuva
bitch, I need to get Shell Body down ASAP…" he wheezed.
"Yar har har… ye have me thanks, bucko…"
Leo snapped his head up, and beheld the fact that his opponent's
entire demeanor had pulled a complete 180. Where one moment had stood a lazy and slouched drunkard, there was now an actual
pirate, holding his head high with a confident leer and wielding a cutlass in one hand and a
smoking pistol in the other.
"Yer harsh tone and yer impressive skills with the blade have served ta
finally rouse me from this accursed stupor of mine," the zombie chuckled menacingly. "Finally, for the first time since I woke anew, I actually feel
alive! And it's with this very feeling!"
The zombie snapped his blade up and jabbed the tip at Leo.
"That I intend ta send yer shelled arse straight ta Davy Jones Locker!" he roared eagerly. "Prepare yerself, enemy-mine, for ye face the age-old scourge of the six seas, the most infamous lord o' piracy in all o' Paradise's history! Aye, I be he! The one, the only,
Captain 'Long' John 'Silverteeth'! YAR HAR HAR!"
Leo stared at the pirate in awe, his mouth agape, until he realized that something didn't quite add up. "Uhhh…?" he trailed off uncomfortably as he gestured at his
own teeth.
"ME CORPSE WAS DESECRATED BY THE SALTY DOGS I CALLED A CREW, YE IDJIT!" John roared indignantly. "TRUST ME, WAY BACK WHEN, I
HAD TEETH O' SILVER, AND EVERYONE IN THESE WATERS FEARED THEM AS THOUGH THEY BELONGED TO DAVY JONES HIMSELF!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say…" Leo pulled himself to his tail, swords at the ready, before slowly donning a smirk. "'Gramps'."
John stilled, his expression sinking into one of murderous rage. "Allow me to educate ye, ye salty
cur," he growled. "About how a
true pirate FIGHTS!"
And in a blur of movement, the clash was
on.
-o-
CRASH!
"Eurgh… Tidal Swim's cool and all, but now I need to figure out how to get rid of the damn
cramp…" Mikey groaned, working himself out of the ground. "'Course, I already know how Boss is gonna suggest I do it: Tail-lifts, and a
lot of them. That's gonna
suck…"
BAM!
Neither his expression nor his position changed as he drew one of his pistols and fired it to his left, right into the belly of a zombie that'd been reaching for him. His other flipper snapped out one of his nunchucks and effectively knee-capped another undead assailant that had been winding up to stamp on his head.
"Because I."
He flung out his nunchucks to his other side, neatly bisecting a zombie in a cloud of dust and sending both halves flying.
"Hate!"
Charging straight at a line of zombies trying to rush him, he swung his nunchucks like they were made of air, six blows sending six zombies flying, embalming fluid flying.
"TAIL-LIFTS!"
The last zombie in the line tried to run. All that meant was that he was hit in his back instead of chest; he still went flying.
Heaving out a deep sigh, Mikey holstered his pistol and relaxed a bit. "Whoo, I feel better now. If this is why Raphey hits things when she gets mad, I can see why!"
"Ya-ha!"
Mikey frowned and looked up at the strange cry. Up above was a zombie, but not just any zombie. This one had large, bat-like wings stretched over its arms, which were presumably how it was circling overhead.
"Kekekeke! I see you down there, little dugong!" Hildon cackled, continuing to circle. "Soon, I shall return with an
army of zombies!"
"Yeeeaaah, about that," Mikey slowly drawled, unable to hide the grin that stretched across his face as he realized that the throbbing in a certain
area had gone down. "Tidal Swim."
With two powerful kicks of his tail, the dugong shot up into the air, pistol coming out to take a shot at the zombie's mouth once he matched altitude. He never got the chance; Hildon yelped and turned around the second Mikey launched the first Tidal Swim, fleeing for his un-life.
"Hey, get back here!" Mikey snapped, pushing off the air after the zombie. What ensued was one of the more bizarre chase scenes ever: a zombie in a bat costume that
somehow allowed him to fly being chased by a manatee-sea turtle hybrid jumping off the air. Of course, as focused as Mikey was on the chase even he couldn't miss that they were heading for the central mansion of Thriller Bark. Any thoughts of cutting off the chase, though, were dashed when Hildon dove for the ground.
"Gotcha!" Mikey shouted, following in a dive of his own.
Both fighters promptly bounced off the ground and into the brush, one after another. As Mikey did so, he grabbed his nunchucks and reared them back, ready for whatever counterattack was coming.
Oh, wait, that's a lie. He certainly wasn't ready for Hildon to jam a machine gun in his face, though any claims that he screamed like a little girl were also lies.
"Rip-Tide-Rip-Tide-
Rip-Tide!" Mikey yelped, flinging himself back just as the zombie pulled the trigger. The bullets passed harmlessly to the side of the dugong as he skidded into the nearest clearing, glaring daggers at Hildon as he stepped out of the bush. He would have launched himself at the zombie, but a rustling from the shrubbery caught his attention.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mikey watched as the largest man he'd seen that
wasn't a giant stepped out of the foliage. Maybe not as tall as the Franky Family's big shipwreckers, but not far behind, and as wide as he was tall. Despite the rolls of fat, Mikey could make out powerful muscles underneath, an observation helped by some literal holes down to the musculature. And wonder of wonders, this one actually had an expression, albeit one of dopey happiness.
"What took ya so long, damn fatty?" Hildon groused. "And where's the rest of ya?"
"Sorry, Hildon," the big zombie sheepishly apologized. "We got a bit lost."
"Umf!"
That would be another zombie walking up beside the big one and pumping its fist, this one shorter but just as round, with a bright red nose that somehow hadn't decayed at all.
In fact, to Mikey's dismay, more zombies were practically crawling out of the woodwork. Off to his other side was another trio, much smaller and skinnier than the ones to his left. One was hanging upside down from a tree like a monkey, a piece of tape holding its nose together. Another had a forehead that seemed almost too long to be real, and gave off a palpable aura of patheticness. And finally, one taller zombie busily tying its thin hair back in a ponytail… and it then kicked up one of its legs near vertical once it was done.
"Ahahahaha!"
Behind came more rustling, and Mikey chanced a look back. These three were near indistinguishable, aside from hairstyle: one blond crewcut, one black mullet, and some… blond… starfish thing. The goggles were a better distinguishing mark, anyway.
"Huh?"
"Huh?!"
"HUH?!"
And then finally, one more appeared in front of Hildon in a burst of speed, this one wearing a strange helmet with a grid-like guard over the mouth and a reflective visor. More importantly, the dugong had only barely caught its arrival.
"Ya-ha! Everyone's finally here!" Hildon declared, raising his machinegun high. "You know what to say, boys!"
"WE'LL KILL 'IM!" all the gathered zombies roared.
"DAMN STRAIGHT!" Hildon concurred, blasting a round of bullets in the air.
"Great…" Mikey groaned as he readied his 'chuks, spinning them in anticipation for a fight. "Why do I get the feeling that the others are having an easier time of things?!"
-o-
"Nooooriiiii…
Arts!" Raphey flipped herself around in midair and managed to stick a
beautiful touchdown of a landing, her grin positively massive as she held her arms above her head. "Hahaha! 'Dodging is useless' my tail! I'm going to rub this
so hard in those morons' faces! …when I find them again, at any rate."
"CARVE 'ER UP! TURTLE SOUP, À LA CARTE!"
Raphey snapped around at the sound of the bellow, and caught sight of a tattered butcher's outfit and a massive cleaver heading for her suddenly raised sai.
CLANG!
She gritted her teeth at the force that slammed between the main blade and one of the side blades, but she managed to maintain her stance before placing both flippers on the sai, and
twisting it—
CHINK!
Snapping the massive cleaver down the middle. The butcher gaped comically at his broken blade for a couple of seconds. Then, with even
more force, he slammed a foot into her belly - and blinked in confusion when it did
jack all.
"Vad?" he questioned in an unintelligible language.
"I'm a girl with three brothers," Raphey smirked confidently. "Those three
know Shell Body. Me? I'm
good with it."
"Not so good with peripheral vision though, huh?"
"Wha—?" Raphey turned her head in confusion, and promptly widened her eyes in shock as she watched a
huge zombie with an even huger club lifelessly collapse to reveal her savior: a woman with pink hair and… a
great personality, wielding a pair of katana. "Ah… yeah…" Raphey chuckled sheepishly, even as she stabbed her sais into the butcher's leg and flipped him onto the ground, shoving a wad of salt down his throat. "Even with 'good' Shell Body, that would have been…
bad. Thanks a lot… uh…?"
"Lola!" the woman greeted amicably, even as she offhandedly decapitated a zombie that tried to jump her. "'Marriage Proposal' Lola, captain of the Rolling Pirates and really grateful for you Straw Hats helping us!"
"Raphey, 'Disciple of the Sea' and Straw Hat ship's guard!" Raphey greeted back with a smile as she crushed a zombie's knee. "Really nice to meet you, and may I say? I
love your make-up. Brings out your eyes!"
Lola gasped and smiled eagerly as she removed the arms from a tree-like revenant. "Why, thank you! And personally, I find that your headband
really compliments your shell. Just my opinion."
"What, this old thing?" Raphey waved her off with one flipper while holding a struggling zombie at flipper's length with the other. "I've had it for years! Appreciate the compliment!"
"Oh, no trouble, no trouble… oh, hey, real quick!" Lola asked eagerly. "Are you busy right now, by any chance. I mean, besides…" She gestured at the newly dead bodies at her feet.
"No no, not really," Raphey shrugged dismissively as she wiped some embalming fluid from her sais. "My bros can handle themselves, no sweat. Whaddaya need?"
"Eh…" Lola scratched the back of her head uncomfortably. "I've been
trying to find my zombie in all this mess, but I haven't been having any luck! My crewmates are all looking for their own and I don't wanna distract them, so I was hoping…?"
"Sure thing!" Raphey popped her an eager thumbs up. "So, what does your
deader-half look like?"
"ME."
The two females looked to the source of the voice, which turned out to be—
…No, even the narrators aren't willing to touch this. 'Giant, bipedal, pink warthog in a wedding dress with two swords' is all you're getting for the zombie leader of the mob of beast zombies that emerged to challenge Lola and Raphey.
"AT THIS POINT, I COULDN'T CARE LESS WHO YOU ARE," the zombie-Lola breathed murderously.
"YOU ALLIED WITH THE ONES WHO DEFEATED MY PRECIOUS ABSALOM, AND PUT HIM OUT OF MY REACH!"
Lola nervously tensed and untensed her grip on her blades as she turned to face her counterpart. "And you really think that you can take on
both of us at once?"
Zombie Lola—Zola, for brevity's sake—snorted darkly, brandishing. "Good point." She glanced over her shoulder at the crowd of animalian zombies. "HIPPO!"
"Front and center, ma'am!" a sharply dressed hippo barked, jogging towards with his shield over his chest as he raised his sword in salute. "An honor to serve with you, General! To strike down the curs who dare to invade our noble home!"
"'Noble' nothing, you half-cooked leatherneck," Raphey growled, scraping her sais together in anticipation. "We're taking each and every last one of you freaks
down. En-fucking-garde!"
And so the quartet fell into battle ready positions, glaring daggers at one another as they waited for someone,
anyone to snap the tension and kick things off.
Finally, Raphey slumped forward with a defeated sigh. "…actually, on second thought? I know I can't be the first one to say it, so I'm gonna be upfront here and get it off my chest: Lipstick on a pig."
The effect was instantaneous: the entire
surrounding battlefield froze, all the zombies staring at the Dugong in shock. And then all of them, save for Zola and Gallant Hippo, ran off
screaming in mortal terror.
Hell, even Hippo looked to be seconds away from doing just that, inching away from his partner-in-zombiehood with a terrified expression. "
Now you've gone and done it…" he whimpered.
"Eh?" Raphey blinked in confusion. "What, what's wrong? Why are you all acting so—?"
"Yoooou…"
"Erk!" Raphey and Lola
both recoiled in shock, the reason being the utterly
evil aura that was radiating from Zola.
"YOOOOU BASTAAAAARDS…" the hog-zombie rumbled, her teeth grinding and her tusks glinting with menace. This was accompanied by a glare at the two, her eyes all but literally
glowing with bloody murder.
"I DON'T EVEN CARE IF I DIE FROM IT, I'LL KILL YOU AAAAAALL!" And with
that final roar she charged the pair with all the power and rage of a runaway Sea Train.
"GAH!" Hippo yelped in shock, hastily running after her. "Zo—! I-I mean Lo—! I mean—!
WAIT!"
Raphey swallowed heavily as she steeled herself, the skin on her flippers slowly turning white around her grip on her sais. "Ready to face yourself?" she asked her partner.
Lola barked out a laugh even as her own knuckles turned white on her blades. "When is anyone? There's only one answer to that question!"
SKRANG!
Lola grinned eagerly as she locked blades with her knockoff, the pair butting heads and
neither giving ground.
"TRY IT!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "AND
FIND OUT!"
-o-
"Note to self…" Donny rubbed his head's shell with a groan as he shoved his way back onto his tail. "After I get Tidal Swim down pat, start training with Robin to deal with opponents who have more than… two… arms…" Donny trailed off slowly before slapping his flipper to his face with a renewed sigh. "And suddenly that is a threat that is
valid in my life. Unbe-freaking-lievable, one day my usual opponents are other dugongs, and now it's like I'm living in a
dream!"
"Might wanna make that a
nightmare, pintsize," one of the zombies surrounding the dugong leered smugly, pounding his fist as he approached. "Now, enough with the small talk, let's get to the part where we pound your sku—
URK!" The zombie cut himself off in a fit of gagging, on account of the end of Donny's bo-staff lodging itself in his throat, and then failed to say anything further due to his own shadow blocking his throat.
"Theeeen again..." Donny slowly let an eager grin spread across his face. "I suppose that dreams
are meant to be enjoyed!" And with that, he ripped his staff out of the zombie's throat and spun it into a ready-position. "Bring it on, you rotting, husk-brained bastards! I can kick your decrepit behinds blindfolded!"
The crowd of zombies all snarled and growled viciously at the
blatant challenge. "You little—! COME ON, GUYS!" one of them raised his voice to rally the rest. "There's one of him and an
army of us! And the best of our best are on their way too!
LET'S BEAT HIS SHELL INTO THE DAMN GROUND!"
Donny's eyes narrowed in concentration as the zombies began to charge him, already positioning his staff to prepare for his newly revamped and rebranded Arrows of St. George, taking aim at the frontmost zombies and tensing his lower body for the following movements—
"HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH
HAH! NOW,
WAIT JUST A MOMENT!"
All of the zombies promptly paused, the expressions on their rotting faces, one and all, screaming sheer terror. Which, given the fact that Donny did not know the voice in question, made
him nervous in turn.
"So, little dugong!" the voice laughed over the din of fighting. "You think you can just waddle on down here, with your fancy stick-a-ma-jig, and whack all your enemies into oblivion and then be home in time for soaps and cigars, eh?"
"Uh… I don't smoke—?" Donny began awkwardly.
"WRONG! The battlefield is a very, very violent and deadly place, rife with danger!
LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHIN'!"
"RUN!" screamed several of the zombies, separating like the Red Sea before scattering everywhere that wasn't close to Donny. All save for one. He was of average height for a full-grown man, his lips were pulled back in a way that perpetually showed the rotting top row of his teeth, and where his left eye was squinting, his right was wide open… or more likely, lidless. His skin was blackened in places, clearly from burns, and his outfit was a tattered cross between a business suit and a fireman's uniform, with a husk of a helmet hanging on his head and a fireman's axe on his back.
No, wait, in. Donny realized with no small amount of horror that the axe was lodged
in the zombie's back, the blade buried
right beside his spinal column.
"SO!" the zombie bellowed, strutting forward in an exaggerated saunter. "You're waddlin' along, swingin' your stickie-ma-bob to and fro, not a care in the world as ya slap the shadows outta zombies here and there,
WHEN SUDDENLY!" he yelled at the top of his lungs as he came to a stop a few feet before the dugong, jabbing his finger at him. Though the effect was somewhat ruined by him taking a lighter out of his pocket and flicking it open, producing a flame on top. "Ya come upon a simple general zombie takin' a break, breakin' out the ole zippo to have himself a smoke on the ole' puff-puff! You're going to smack him silly too, easy as peaches… when suddenly someone yells
'Look!'" He pointed to the side.
"'There's Big Mom doin' cartwheels!'"
Donny actually briefly followed the finger in confusion before returning his attention to the deranged deceased as he kept talking.
"However! As ya turn ta watch, your stickie-con-carne smacks inta the zombie's hand and WHAPPA!" The zombie actually slapped his own hand into the underside of his fist, sending the lighter flying high into the air. "The zippo's zipped off! But!" The zombie's overbite-ridden grin widened as he popped a finger. "What ya don't know is, that that zombie whose smokes ya just smacked…"
The zombie flung his arms wide. "Was embalmed using
lighter fluiiiiid!"
The blood fled Donny's face as he heard
that little tidbit. "Wait… y-you don't mean—!"
At almost that exact moment, the lighter chose that moment to land. Fortunately, it didn't hit the zombie but rather the ground in
front of him.
…
un-fortunately, it somehow managed to bounce off said ground and
shoot down the zombie's gaping mouth. With an audible
GULP! No less.
Both Donny and the Zombie were paralyzed for a moment until the zombie cocked his head to the side. "UH-OH!"
"SHIT!" Donny cursed furiously, diving away in panic.
KA-BOOM!
It was at moments like these that the smartest of the TDWS
seriously regretted evolution deciding to steal his species' capacity to retreat into their shells, because the feeling of flames licking off his tail was
way too close a call for his comfort.
Once he landed, Donny took a moment to pant and catch his breath. And for that moment, he allowed himself to
dare to hope that maybe, just
maybe that crazy-ass zombie had been dumb enough to blow himself to kingdom come.
The second that moment passed, however?
"HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!"
It was violently
shattered.
With horror and terror coursing through his veins, Donny flipped himself to his tail and turned around to behold the flaming
husk of a corpse that was slowly but surely shambling towards him, cackling madly all the while.
"As you can see!" the psychotic revenant's voice barked with undeserved authority.
"The battlefield is a very dangerous environment! But worry not!" He struck a confident pose, his fist placed firmly over where his heart was, or would have been, if it weren't probably already charcoal.
"I, Fire Zombie Bill, shall be the one to show you to safety!"
The zombie's ashen smile widened clean across his face as he reached over his shoulder and grasped the handle of the axe buried in him.
"LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHING!"
And with that, the zombie
wrenched—!
CRACK!
The axe came free, and Donny promptly gagged in horror.
Fire Zombie Bill blinked at the disembodied ribcage hanging from his weapon.
"Whoops! Need that!" That said, he shoved his axe back over his shoulder and jiggled it around a bit before removing it again, this time sans the extra calcium.
"There we go!" Upon noticing Donny's panicked expression, he tilted his head to the side, in a gesture that was probably
meant to be comforting but came off more like a predator observing its prey.
"Take a chill pill, wouldja? When I was alive, I was many things: a detective, a super villain, and even a count! But most important of all?"
Bill's grin extended to downright
demented levels.
"I WAS… AND STILL AM… A FIRE MARSHAL! HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!"
Xomniac AN: Eeeeyup. That's right, people. TPO brought it up and we ran with it. We. Went. There. Bow before us!
