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This Bites! (One Piece SI)

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As always, focus on the main feature.
We can wait for both, but we can wait longer for bonus material (omakes).
 
I kinda want to say go for full omake. If it's really planned out already, then for the most part writing/editing should be relatively fast. Also, if we only get half an omake with cliffhanger followed by chapter 50 and then the final half, it'll just mean we'll be stuck in cliffhanger hell even longer, considering that chapter 50 are still in the rough planning stages.

I would rather wait 2-3 weeks and have a full omake and another 2-3 for chapter 50, rather than have half the omake now, 2-3 for chapter 50 and then another 2-3 for the final half. Besides, the time that the cross-brain spends on writing the omake might allow them the time to finish planning 50.
 
So when reading that omake scene of T-Bone facing down Lucci, I got a flash back to this image. It totally conveys how I see T-bone in this story from now on.
 
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Chapter 50 - Thriller Bark Pt 4
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    • Chapter 50​

    Patient AN: Ladies and gentlemen, the following chapter may very well be the finest work of our Superego, without whom we could not have hoped to have made either this or the previous chapter.

    Hornet AN: I should hope so, considering this thing's 50% fight scene.

    Cross-Brain AN: Just as a last note, loyal fans? We called the cliffhanger we gave you seven chapters ago cruel beyond all cruelty. But the cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is even crueler.

    "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH—!"

    THUNK!

    "—AAHoh hey, I'm alive."

    Glancing behind him, Leo could see that a tree had arrested his impromptu flight, with nary a scratch on the bark.

    "Tough tree…" he remarked. Then the pain in his hind flippers hit. "Ow, fuck! Jeez, this guy hits almost as hard as Zoro!"

    "Yaaar!"

    At the sound of that voice, Leo turned his attention back to his limping opponent, crossing his blades in time to catch John's twin sabers. The impact made his swords creak ominously and sent shockwaves down his body. Shockwaves that hit the tree he was still balanced against and promptly blew out the back of the trunk.

    "You've… got to be… kidding me!" the dugong ground out as he struggled to hold the zombie at bay.

    Seconds passed, neither fighter gaining an advantage. John was too strong for Leo to push back, but the tree gave him something to brace against. However…

    'Can't… keep this up… forever…' Leo thought. 'Dunno what's gonna break first… me… the tree… or my swords… but something's gonna break…'

    In the event, the dugong was beaten to the punch by John… flexing. Yes. Flexing his pectoral muscles, where Leo noted were puncture wounds in the corpse.

    'So someone turned the bastard into a pincushion…' he deduced. 'If they were alive, I'd buy them a drink… and then bury their head in the table! Though...' Leo narrowed his eyes as he noticed several other distinctly different scars moving. 'Huh, looks like he was shot, too. I wonder if the bullets are still in the holes.'

    Strangely enough, it appeared that the bullet holes were opening and closing in time to his… flexing…

    'Oh, you can't be serious!'

    Hastily pulling his swords back, Leo dropped to the ground, and none too soon. With one final, gargantuan flex, the bullets flew out of their holes to hit the tree.

    The dugong had no time to process the sheer insanity of what he'd just witnessed, because finally, he had at least something of an opening. From his prone position, he stabbed both blades up, aiming for the neck. They didn't reach; Zombie John leaned over, the blades skittering off his voluminous coat, with the tears—

    "Okay, that's just not fair," Leo whined at the metal plates now visible under the coat. Further whining was cut off by a frantic roll away from the blades that tore into the soil. Tail catching the ground, he Rip Tided away, back into the trees.

    "Okay…" Leo panted as he leaned around the trunk and watched John come about. "So that was probably a one-time thing. I hope. He's still stronger than me, just as fast in melee, and an immortal zombie. With armor." He sighed, hanging his head. "Thank God Soundbite isn't here, because the only possible description of this situation is that it bites." The dugong only allowed himself to remain melancholic for a moment before rapping his hilts over his skull-shell. "Okay, back in the game! Think Leo, think! Weaknesses, what are his weaknesses?"

    Turning back to the shambling zombie, he noted with some surprise that it was, in fact, actually shambling, unlike the rest of the cadavers he'd seen that night. Every step dragged the left leg along the ground, despite the apparent functionality of the limb.

    "So, slow to pursue. That's… actually pretty useful," Leo noted. "With Rip Tide, I can open the distance easily. Which would be useful if I actually had a ranged attack worth a damn!"

    Suddenly, a peripheral glint of light snapped the Dugong out of his outrage, and that allowed a hasty duck to save him from becoming a head shorter. A poor tree that slid off its stump and crashed to the ground in front of him only emphasized the point.

    This time, though, Leo attacked instead of defended once his opponent was in melee range. To his frustration, this was no more effective than it been before. Zombie John's defense was ironclad, parries and well-timed sways deflecting the attacks.

    "Damn it!" he roared, clashing his blades into a crossed formation. "Cross of the—aghk!"

    The ace-attack was aborted by a flap of John's coat slamming into Leo's face. Due to its armored nature, it wasn't unlike being slapped with a two-by-four. Or Nami.

    Stumbling back, Leo tried to Rip Tide away again. This time, though, Zombie John reached into his coat and threw several knives that the dugong had to deflect lest he get skewered. Not only did this cut the Rip Tide short, but it also drew his swords into an entirely different guard.

    "I call this attack 'Boot to the Face'!" the zombie cackled as he did just that.

    Treaded soles met dugong face. The soles won, sending Leo flying again. Not very far, though. John, unslinging his coat with the ease of far too much practice, proceeded to catch his opponent in it and wrap the sleeves around his neck.

    "A fit punishment for a pirate," the zombie general leered down at his opponent, his foot planted on his shell as he started to pull with all his might. "Wouldn't ya say, matey?"

    Due to his position, all Leo could do was scrabble at the cloth wrapping around his neck, which was constricting his neck in ways that were decidedly uncomfortable. The lack of air, while unnerving, was manageable due to both his species' habitat of choice and Boss's own spartan training, but far more pressing was the fact that if he didn't know any better, he'd swear he could hear his spine creaking.

    Unbidden, one of Chopper's more disturbing rants sprang to mind. This one had been concerning various means of execution the Marines used. And from what he remembered, the true cause of death from hanging by the neck wasn't asphyxiation, but rather—!

    Leo hastily slammed all of his strength into maintaining his Shell Body, but he could already tell that it was but a momentary reprieve: after all, where his own strength was limited and waning, the revenant's well of strength was fathomless.

    But still, bleak as the situation was, Leo didn't panic. Rather, he thought back to his master's lessons and focused on one rule in particular: That even if the enemy seemed invincible, there was always a weak angle to exploit.

    Leo glanced back and forth along the sleeves that threatened to end his life. The knot itself was impenetrable to his flippers, as was the left sleeve... but the right? Oh, now the right was the ticket to life and liberty, tattered and torn as it was, and all Leo had to do was grab at the most off-kilter patch he could find and rip.

    The cloth promptly fell apart under his flipper, and a hasty Rip Tide found him far away again, propped up on his swords and wheezing, even as his mind flew a mile an hour.

    'That... That sleeve wasn't a coincidence,' Leo thought to himself as he glanced at his opponent. 'Looking back at the earlier clashes... yeah, yeah he definitely has a weaker guard on his right side.' The dugong grimaced as John slowly and calmly put his jacket back on, tutting at the missing sleeve. 'Not that that helps me, considering how a cracked aegis is still an aegis, damn it all...' Hanging his head, he shook it despondently. 'I gotta do the ranged attack, don't I.'

    For a few seconds, he just wallowed in the self-pity, and then brushed it aside, standing straight again. Another blur of Rip Tide and he was positioned to the right of John, who was still as slow as ever.

    As the zombie shambled towards him again, Leo raised his swords high and to the right, pointing to the sky parallel with each other. More importantly, he shut his eyes and listened.

    He heard the wind rustling through the trees; John's foot scraping in the dirt and his clothes rustling together; even, in the distance, the sounds of fighting. The sounds washed over him, penetrated deep into his very soul. And, at the edge of the blades, he heard it. The air moving over the blade, making the metal sing.

    'So, that's how it works.'

    Opening his eyes, he saw that John was now making a beeline for him. Well, as much of a beeline as a rotting corpse with a limp can pull off. Point is, he wasn't deviating at all.

    "Gulf…!" he cried out, before bringing his blades down. "Stream!"

    Air and steel sang in harmony, twin blades of wind sprang into existence, merging into a singular force of destruction…

    SKRANG!

    Even as, before Leo's own horrified gaze, his actual blades shattered like so much fine crystal.

    Still, as tragic as the turn of fate was, it didn't alter the intensity of his attack. John tried to dodge, he really did, but with a gimpy leg and quite a bit of armor weighing him down, all he managed to evacuate was his torso. His left-hand limbs, however, were hit full force. The arm, while cut to the bone, remained viable; the leg, however... well, for all that Captain John was a world-renowned pirate there were very few pirates, be they dead or alive, world-famous or a nobody, who could fight with just one leg.

    Leo stayed wary for a moment, keeping a close eye on the downed pirate for over a minute before finally allowing himself to relax, the tension ebbing out of his being—and with it, the adrenaline that was keeping the pain away. "Ow! Owowowowoooow, my tail!" he yowled, massaging the aching limb. "I really need to start building up these muscles, because mine are nowhere near strong enough for this shi—!"

    "Yar har har… yaaaar har har har haaaar…"

    Leo tensed up as a laugh wafted through the air, and promptly scrambled for any shards of his blades he could grab. "Shitshitshitshi—!"

    "Ahhh, cool yer flippers, ya grubby worrywart," John wheezed, waving his hand dismissively. "Ah'm done. Going back to the locker soon enough, of that, ye can be assured. I'm just…" He chuckled, his grin widening minutely. "Relieved, I suppose ye could say."

    Warily eyeing the immobile corpse, Leo palmed one of the shards and hopped over to the zombie, making sure to (hopefully) stay out of its reach. "What… do you mean by 'relieved'?"

    "Yar…" John sighed, tilting his head back to stare into the mists. "…have ye ever heard of me, lad? Have ye ever heard of 'Long' John 'Silverteeth'?"

    "Weeeell…" Leo winced, glancing to the side.

    "Bah, 'tis no surprise," John shrugged carelessly, his empty gaze staring at nothing. "As ye can see, I ain't exactly young. Well, anyway, lemme make it simple for ye: In case ye couldn't already tell, I was a true pirate's pirate when I was alive. I looted, I pillaged, I swashed more buckles than I could count… from Reverse Mountain ta the gates o' Mariejois, I was the scurviest, saltiest, most treacherous sea dog to ever sail…"

    John's desiccated lips twisted into a scowl as he started poking at the holes in his torso. "And in the end, it all came back to bite me in the arse when I went so far as to betray me own crew. Robbed 'em blind and stowed the treasure away, where only I knew. I thought I could escape, thought I could live out me golden years in luxury…"

    Leo's gaze slowly trailed down to the deceased swashbuckler's sieve of a chest. "But clearly, that didn't happen."

    "Arr…" John growled morosely. "One of the most feared men o' me generation, an honest to god demon made flesh… and I was put down by me own mates, like a DAMN DOG!" the pirate suddenly roared furiously, slamming his fist into the ground. "THAT'S NO WAY TO DIE, DAMN IT ALL! THAT NO WAY TA END IT! TA, TA LEAVE THIS LIFE! I WAS SOMEBODY DAMN IT! I WAS FAMOUS, I WAS IMPORTANT, I WAS—! I was… I…" The old pirate slowly trailed off, his voice drawing down into a whisper before he let his head hang in shame. "I… was a pirate's pirate… a man's man… and they didn't even let me die like one…"

    Leo's gaze lightened up ever so slightly. "Death in combat."

    "The only true and noble way a man can die…" John nodded solemnly, before allowing a leer to cross his face. "Well, that or in bed at the age o' eighty with me 'Long John' in—!"

    "Yeahyeahyeah, we all know that one!" Leo hastily cut the pirate off, his face all but glowing.

    "Yarharhar!" John cackled in amusement, eventually trailing off into a melancholy sigh. "Arr… anyway… Ye gave me the second death I never got in life, and for that I thank thee… and I've got a few things I'd like to give ye. Not like I'll be takin' them with me anyways, aye?"

    "Eh…" Leo glanced to the side at the battle raging a little ways off (and the zombie that flew screaming into the air) before giving the pirate captain a nod. "Alright, but make it fast."

    The zombie inclined his head, then jerked it to the side at where his swords had landed. "First off, me blades. They're just a pair o' no-named buggers, but they've got spine and spirit. Feel free ta use mine until ya find some new mates a yer own, savvy?"

    "Ah…" Leo glanced at the sabres uncertainly. "Are you… sure they won't—?"

    "What, 'mind'? HA!" John barked with a dash of honest humor. "They're pirate blades, lad! They don't give half a damn about who's swingin' them, just that they're in the thick of it. 'Sides, ye've got me blessing, it's fine... and ye'r in the thick of it as is, do ye really have the time to be picky?"

    "…fair 'nuff, what else?" Leo waved for the zombie to continue.

    "Second," John complied with a grunt, sliding a circlet from his arm and holding it out. "Me treasure. This here mark will guide ya to it. Learned too late that I can't take it with me… but maybe ye can put it ta some good use. Better than letting it rot in some cave, aye?"

    The swordless swords-dugong gave the mark a doubtful look but still accepted it without a word. After all, best to possibly have a lead on the treasure of the century to appease Nami than to wind up empty-handed at the wrong moment.

    "Arrr, alright, alright, that's good... anyways, last of all…" John grunted as he slowly dragged himself into a sitting position, wincing at the phantom pains that were shooting through his dead nerves. "A final piece of advice. A true pirate… a true man…"

    With remarkable speed, his good arm reached into his jacket and withdrew a flintlock pistol. "DIES FIGHTING!" he roared, his voice full of vim and vigor as he squeezed the trigger.

    Or tried to, at least. The endeavor failed, due to every last inkling of strength leaving the revenant's body.

    Leo smiled lightly as he slowly withdrew his extended and empty flipper to his side. "Knew that from the second I picked up the blade, sir," he whispered with respect.

    John wheezed a chuckle around the shard of metal lodged in the back of his throat. "Per… fect…"

    And with that, the twice-damned Silver-Toothed Pirate departed from the world again, this time with a smile on his face.

    Leo heaved out a massive breath as he wrestled his frayed nerves back under control. Once that was accomplished, however, he took enough time to glance around and confirm that there were no more immediate threats in the area before regretfully turning his gaze to the hilts of his faithful, nameless katanas. He contemplated them for several seconds, then flipped them around and planted them in the earth.

    "…At least," he reflected with a quiet whisper. "It was a noble end." He gave the trio of corpses one last glance before waddling off to claim his interim weapons.

    Leo hefted the sabres, giving them a few test swings to assure himself of their weight before nodding in satisfaction. He then sheathed the sabres on his back.

    Then a flipper rose to his forehead and all but tore away the blue cloth wrapped as a headband. Unfolding it, he then tied the entire cloth over his scalp, slightly shadowing his eyes, and looked towards where the rest of the battle was going on.

    "Okay, you two," Leo breathed softly, his eyes hardened into flint and his teeth set in a glower. "Let's go and get ourselves acquainted by killing some fucking zombies."

    And with a flex of his tail, he was gone.

    -o-​

    Elsewhere in the forests of Thriller Bark, a battle cry rose above the trees.

    "FUNURABA!"

    '#77. Strong as hell, but slow,' Mikey noted as he ducked under a meaty tackle that obliterated an innocent tree. 'Alright… let's try multitasking.' Making use of the straight weeks of practice Boss had hammered through his shell, Mikey swiftly spun his left-hand pair of nunchucks into their holster before, in the same move, he drew his left pistol, aimed and fired at the zombie. The bullet sunk in and, to the dugong's dismay, it did exactly jack to stop the juggernaut from ponderously sweeping around for another charge. 'Also really toughohshit!'

    The short, red-nosed zombie, emblazoned with the #55, had, while he was dodging, crept under his guard and was now swinging up a nasty-looking uppercut. Mindful of the rotund behemoth behind him, Mikey frantically attempted to lean back while staying anchored to the ground. To his surprise, for once his spine chose to comply, his vertebrae bending just so so that, much like a tongue of seaweed, he swayed back and was left unharmed while an uppercut whooshed harmlessly past his face.

    "Huh, so that's how it works," the dugong mused as he turned the sway into a backward handstand flip that took him under another one of the big #77's swipes. Landing from that, he pushed off from the ground—

    "Kekekekeke! Now, fucking monkey!"

    "Who are you calling a woohee?!"

    And was promptly grabbed by the monkey-like #80 in mid-air.

    "Catch MAX!"

    "Let go of me, dammit!" Mikey snapped, slamming his head back. Had he tried this even a few days ago, the blow would have met only air, but with his newfound flexibility, it instead found its mark with a resounding (and embarrassingly hollow-sounding) CLONK!

    The surprisingly strong hands that had gripped him fell away in favor of clutching their owner's skull, and Mikey took the opportunity to Tidal Swim away from the monkey in search of Hildon. The bat-like majordomo, however, had decided to hold discretion as the better part of valor, because he was nowhere to be seen.

    Instead, the orange-bandana'd dugong spotted yet another unfamiliar zombie skulking about. This one was solidly built, and seemed… older than the rest, save Hildon. The black mohawk was pretty distinctive, too.

    Two facts stuck out to Mikey about the revenant: that his leg was extended for some reason or another, and that there was also some sort of round object flying through the air from him to Mikey. A round, black object that upon further analysis once it drew closer, the dugong managed to identify.

    'Huh. That's a bomb.' Then the dugong's overworked brain processed that thought. "OH, SHIT, THAT'S A BOMB! TIDAL SWI—!"

    KA-BOOM!

    It was, indeed, a bomb, and one that exploded right in his face at that. Luckily, his new innate flexibility did a good job dissipating the shock wave of the explosion; the worst he got was some mild burns and a forceful expulsion from the sky, and the latter was something he was well acquainted with through his training. Another Tidal Swim killed his momentum, allowing him to touch down in front of the zombie that bore the sigil #47.

    "Ahahahahaha!" the zombie cackled, pirouetting on one leg with the other held vertical in the air. "Prepare to be schooled, monsieur!"

    "'Monsieur'?" Mikey dubiously parroted before letting his expression fall flat. "Oh, whatever. Just die again already."

    A twitch of his flippers and one of his nunchucks lashed out at the zombie's skull. In response, said zombie… swayed out of the way with impressive flexibility for healthy flesh, let alone necrotized.

    "Oh, come on!" Mikey snapped as he pulled back his weapon, pointing an accusatory finger at his opponent. "That's blatant plagiarism!"

    "Look who's talking, monsieur!" the zombie snapped back, still in his raised-leg pose. "You're a walking plagiarism yourself! At least we have the guts to admit it!"

    "You don't have 'guts', period!" Mikey snarled. "And what in Sebek's name are you—!"

    A blur zipped by him, and the dugong glanced to the side to find his back flipper tied to one of the trees.

    "Eh?"

    In a second, arms, weaker than the Monkey's, latched onto his other flipper. A glance to that side showed the zombie with the large forehead clinging onto it with all his might.

    "Eh?!"

    "Hey. I think we should teach this punk what happens when someone messes with us on our turf."

    "Yeah."

    "Great idea!"

    "Just punch them already, fucking brothers!" Hildon snapped from a nearby treetop.

    "We're not brothers!" the last trio of zombies fired back before turning their glares on the captive Dugong. "But we can punch him!"

    Now panicking slightly, Mikey tugged at the rope. Solidly attached, it didn't budge. He tried with the zombie clinging to him. That just dragged the zombie on the ground.

    A rain of punches precluded any further attempts at escape.

    "Kekekekeke," Hildon chuckled as the remainder of his zombie coterie joined him in watching the beatdown. "Ah, I love a plan well executed." Holding up his hands, over a dozen bat-themed cards appeared in his hands. "Too bad I didn't get to use more of my tricks! Ya-ha!"

    BLAM! BLAM! B-BLAM!

    "Don't worry," a battered and bruised Mikey intoned as four bodies dropped away from him, each featuring bullet holes in their necks and shadows soaring into the sky above them. "The fun's not done until one of us rolls out a real showstopper. And so far, you've been lacking!"

    Another blur, and another bomb was deposited at his feet. Snorting derisively, Mikey gave it a hearty thwack with his tail that punted it into the trees, where it exploded harmlessly in a stream of annoyed bats. "Still lacking."

    If he was worried, Hildon didn't show it. Instead, he just kept chuckling, even as Mikey kept a wary eye on the remaining zombies.

    "Don't worry, fucking seal."

    "I'M A DUGONG, DAMMIT!"

    Once again, Hildon threw his hands out, only this time they were loaded with machine guns and bazookas. "I'VE GOT A FEW SHOWSTOPPERS READY TO GO!" The vamp-zombie roared as he opened fire.

    Every single weapon fired at once in a hail of bullets and cannonballs. The former were deflected by Mikey's nunchucks, while the latter were simply dodged. Time slowed down as his brain focused solely on evading the projectiles. And it was only due to that that he saw the real attack coming: the big #77 zombie lumbering towards him and the only zombie as yet unaccounted for. Namely, #21, the one with the eyeshield on its helmet, zipping in at a speed that would have impressed Carue. Classic hammer and anvil.

    But with the dugong now able to see it coming, he could do something about it. Twisting around and spraying bullets at the 'anvil' of the two, he used his other flipper to snap his nunchucks in just the right way so as to grab the fast zombie around the legs, yanking him to the ground. Another shot from his pistols sufficed to salt the zombie.

    "Ya-ha!"

    Then a shadow fell over him.

    "Give 'em the hammer!" Hildon cackled as #77 slammed into the ground, throwing up a massive cloud of dust.

    For a moment, the zombies waited, watching carefully for any sign of life below #77's big belly. When there was nothing, they let out a cheer, joined by several zombie cheerleaders that popped out of the nearby underbrush.

    "Rip Tide."

    That cheer was then brutally murdered in a back alley by Mikey's smug declaration. Hildon swung his eyes around to find the dugong smirking at him, even as his tail pumped out Tidal Swim after Tidal Swim to keep him airborne.

    "I'll admit, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed," he noted conversationally. "But I've still got enough meat in my noggin to figure some pretty simple things out. And d'you know what I just figured out?" He began swinging his nunchucks into a nice and menacing blur. "I salt you, and this whole setup collapses."

    Hildon, sweating furiously, held his ground. For two seconds. Then he turned around and flew away as fast as he could. "I didn't sign up for thiiiiiis!" he wailed.

    Mikey, idly dodging another punted bomb, gave him a five-second lead before kicking off the air after him.

    'Hum, I wonder,' he thought as he pursued the fleeing bat-zombie. 'Is it possible to combine Rip Tide and Tidal Swim? Kick ten times off the air? Have to ask Boss about that…'

    The time for idle thoughts was soon over as Mikey came within striking range. His next Tidal Swim was not one of the simple pushes he'd done before; his tail coiled, folding as far as it would go, the muscles in his gut and back getting in on the action. This push wasn't so much a push as it was a rocket going off. Rearing back a flipper, Mikey reached Hildon with just enough time for the majordomo to look panicked before a heavy wooden stick slammed into his face with all of the dugong's momentum behind it.

    CRASH!

    Or, in layman's terms, Mikey's extra strength Tidal Swim gave the nunchuck hit enough force to send Hildon flying into and through the roof of the manor, the dugong riding the body down to the floor.

    At least, until Hildon slammed into it headfirst, throwing the dugong off.

    Hildon was quick to jump back to his feet, but going by the way he was stumbling about and his eyeballs were spinning like pinwheels, he was most likely suffering from a severe (if purely psychosomatic) concussion. "Weeelcome to Thriller Bark," he mumbled dizzily. "Weeee hope you enjooooy your sta—!"

    BLAM!

    Hildon's corpse crumbled into a pile of flesh and bones without even a whisper.

    "Sorry, bub," Mikey snarled, smoke wafting up from his pistol's muzzle. "We're just passing through."

    The dugong slowly stowed his firearm away as Hildon's shadowy soul ascended into the mist and out of sight. A brief glance to the left and right showed him to be alone, and the instant that that was clear, he flopped onto his back, allowing his screaming tail muscles a reprieve.

    "Man… I knew we'd be getting stupidly strong here…" Mikey panted wearily. "But this... might just kill us first…"

    He laid panting for a few moments longer... before allowing a savage smirk to cross his muzzle.

    "Sweet Horus, I love this crew."

    -o-​

    You know something funny? Wielding a dachshund bazooka that was shooting a continuous stream of fire, alongside an angel with her own bazooka shooting a continuous stream of fire, accompanied by a talking radio-snail and a talking fox and getting radio advice from a talking reindeer doctor, while spelunking in the esophagus of the corpse of a positively titanic giant, with the assistance of many disembodied arms, all in the middle of a massive freezer in a haunted mansion on an island that was converted into giant pirate ship sailing in the scariest sea known to sentient life this side of the Red Line?

    Not as much fun as you'd think.

    I mean, the experience itself was novel, sure, but that was it, and the novelty wore off fast. I mean, the stench of it all and the awkward position were bad enough, but what I really hated? It was that, in spite of standing a mere foot from a pillar of continuous hellfire, I was still freezing my tailbone off. Not to mention I was possessed by an urge. An urge I was fighting, but I was also about to give in to.

    "Are we there yet?" I complained. Not whined, no matter what anyone else says.

    "If you're feeling bored FROM THE MONOTONY, I can put on A SOUNDTRACK~" Soundbite offered, the innocent smile he was wearing doing absolutely nothing to mask the golden glints of mischief that his eyes had become.

    "Does it have anything to do with the words 'fire', 'blaze' or 'inferno'?" Conis dryly asked.

    Those golden glints of mischief immediately looked away, accompanied by an 'innocent' whistle. "...MAYBE?"

    "Then kindly shut up," we bit out as one.

    "Hmph, spoil—!" Soundbite started to huff, before blinking in confusion. "TURKEY?"

    Conis cocked her eyebrow at my partner in confusion. "Is… that a Blue Sea expression, or… ?"

    "NO, I MEAN THAT I SMELL TURKEY!" the snail clarified. "ROAST turkey at that!"

    I blinked in surprise, but a tentative sniff at the air was all I needed to confirm my partner's words—though only for a second, because the moment I caught a whiff of whatever the hell he was sniffing, I had to clamp my hand over my nose with a groan of disgust. Yeah, that smelled like turkey alright… if it was three months old and infested with maggots!

    "Oh, what the hell?!" I gagged miserably. Sweet hellfire, like the stench of roasting pork wasn't going to put me off animal flesh for weeks as it was.

    "Ergh, that is rank!" Conis concurred, sticking her tongue out miserably. "What, did we hit a patch of gases or something!?"

    "Wait, did the smell down there just change?" Chopper eagerly cut in. "Stop firing for a second and check the wall! There's a chance you might have broken through the flesh and reached the spinal column!"

    "Wait, really?!" I perked up, hastily letting go of Lassoo's trigger and thus allowing the mutt to shift back into his hybrid form, at which point he all but collapsed on my shoulder.

    "Th… ank… goo… dne… ss…" Lassoo wheezed, his tongue listlessly lolling out of his slack maw. "I'm… gonna… sleep for a few… days…"

    "Lassoo?" I asked in concern as he panted against me.

    "He's just overheated, Cross," Conis assured me as she waved the smoke off of her bazooka's glowing muzzle. "Keeping that stream up for so long must have been pushing against his limit. You're lucky he's a living weapon; otherwise, you'd have to look out for barrel warping."

    "Mmph, makes sense…" I nodded uncertainly as I helped Lassoo into his harness before scrutinizing the wall of the throat 'above' us. I was extremely grateful to see slightly charred bone through the crumbling ash that had once been esophageal flesh. As I was doing so, though, a thought occurred to me. "Ah, Conis? You wouldn't happen to have a spare barrel on you, would you?"

    Our gunner gave me an odd look. "Nnnooo, though I'm going to see about talking to Usopp and Franky about fixing that. Why do you ask?"

    "I ask because unless Lassoo can find it in himself to hock a few of his high-calibre loogies—"

    "Kiss my exhaust vent, slavedriver," my gun growled halfheartedly.

    "Then we're going to have to find a way to make our way around this gaping abyss so that you can blast his neck out with your Reject Dial."

    Conis paled in horror before hastily slapping a desperate smile on her face. "C-Can we go with a plan C? Or D or… anything that doesn't involve me blowing my shoulder out!?"

    "Er… an… alternative solution might be advisable, actually," Chopper commented with new hesitation. "I feel like a bit of a dumbass for only just realizing it, but…Oars' spine is as wide as Conis is tall, and most of that will be pure calcium, even denser than human bone to deal with the stresses of moving at that size. I… am honestly at a loss for just how you're going to sever it."

    "Er…" Conis and I exchanged uncertain glances, trying to come up with an answer between us, but… yeah, we had nothing.

    Well, thankfully we were saved from having to come up with an answer because someone else did it for us.

    "MY TIME TO SHINE!"

    I snapped a shocked look at my shoulder. "Soundbite!?"

    "You know it!" my partner in madness cackled before glancing upward. "CHOPPER! MY BIOLOGY'S A BIT RUSTY—READ, NON-EXISTENT—but basically speaking, this lug's spine should be one chain of barely interrupted bone, YAH?"

    "Eh... it's a bit more complicated than that, but for our purposes, yes."

    "PERFECT! And, follow-up question... frozen as this bastard is, HE WON'T CRUMBLE if his spine as a whole ceases to be, AYE?"

    "Eeerrr...?" Chopper coughed uncertainly. "I... would not recommend sticking around in there longer than you have to if that were the case, but apart from that... you should be fine? Trust me, this is not even remotely something I have experience in."

    "Soundbite, what exactly are you planning?" I asked, cautiously winding my line around my arm and slipping my headphones on in preparation for whatever the hell was about to happen. The fact that Conis didn't even need to be prompted to do the same was not very reassuring.

    Soundbite bared his teeth eagerly as he affixed the 'ceiling' of the throat with a smirk. "BRACE YOURSELVES, mes ami. THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET very, very..."

    And just like that, it felt like the air in the throat stopped dead.

    "Quiet." Soundbite's maw widened malevolently even as he started to grind his teeth together. It was subtle at first, but bit by bit the surrounding air started to vibrate. No, not just the air. I was vibrating, right down to my bones.

    "GASTRO-BLAST," rumbled a legion of the damned.

    The screeching that followed was… it was beyond words. It penetrated past the ears, past the brain and rammed straight into the very soul, threatening to shake it loose from its metaphysical housings. And somehow? It managed to actually get louder. And louder and louder and louder until finally-!

    CRACK!

    The ceiling of mottled white above us splintered like a pane of glass.

    "Stereo Edition," Soundbite buzzed in an exhilarated tone of voice.

    I stared at my partner in awe before casting a fearful glance around as tremors started to shake the thrice-dead flesh we were surrounded by. "Sooooundbiiiiite, what the hell did you just do!?"

    "Ooooh, ya know," Soundbite leered faux-innocently. "NOTHING TOO BIG… 'cept for shattering this FAT BASTARD'S C1-7! Good luck trying to get him to SO MUCH AS SCRATCH HIS ASS!"

    Conis gaped at my snail in awe. "Soundbite, I officially take back every last mean thing I have ever said about you."

    "EH!? YOU'VE NEVER said shit about me!"

    "Ah…" Conis froze up for a moment before plastering a sheepish grin on her face. "Riiiight, I… never actually said those things aloud, did I? Aheheh… any chance we could just strike the last minute or so from the record?"

    "THE HELL WE CAN! What the hell did you—!?"

    "Whatever argument you're having," Chopper cut in with no small amount of urgency. "I recommend you do it outside of the zombified super-giant that just got its central structural support neutered. Just a reminder."

    As if on cue, Oars' entire body creaked ominously, all of us exchanging nervous glances at the sound of ice cracking.

    "Yeaaaaah, probably a good idea," I nervously agreed, our gunner and I already starting to make our way back up our respective lines. "Anything else? Any word from the front lines?"

    "No battle updates, I'm afraid, or at least nothing really that pertinent…" the doctor assured us... before causing us all to tense as he switched to a tone of voice that caused Soundbite's grin to widen to utterly mad levels. "But I, on the other hand, have learned something quite interesting from Hogback. Something I think you'll be extremely interested in, Cross…"

    "Ah..." I exchanged wary glances with my partner. "'Interested' in what way exactly?"

    Somehow, Chopper's grin somehow managed to stretch even wider. "The 'extreme amounts of collateral damage' way."

    "…well," I slowly matched Chopper's grin tooth for tooth. "You're right, good doctor. That does sound extremely interesting."

    Soundbite swallowed heavily before swiveling his eyestalks to glance at Conis. "Would you believe that there's a curse from CROSS'S WORLD THAT GOES 'May you live in interesting times'?"

    Conis swallowed heavily as she glanced between me and my snail's borrowed mouth. "Yes, Soundbite. Yes, I very much would."

    -o-​

    "Ragh! Stand still you little leathery shit!"

    "Not on your unlife, blubber-butt!" Raphey taunted casually as she swayed back like a strand of kelp, Gallant Hippo's sword harmlessly swishing through the space she'd occupied. The instant the blade was lodged in the soil, she snapped back up and lashed her sais out, using one to trap the blade in place and the other to stab several holes in the patchwork palaver's hide before it managed to wrench itself free and leap back, putting some distance between it and her. Still, for what little damage Raphey had managed to cause the zombie, she still felt she'd managed to accurately measure the zombie's worth.

    And quite frankly, she was not impressed.

    The Wild Zombie commander, Gallant Hippo, certainly had power and was fast for his size, but whoever'd gotten their shadow ganked to grant him his sword abilities had no idea how to fight a smaller, nimbler opponent with short weapons.

    Sure, the longsword-and-buckler combo was well suited against other swordsmen or someone with a longarm, but if her opponent were still alive he'd have likely passed out from blood loss by now, and that was only if he'd managed to avoid acquiring a nick in his femoral artery.

    In short? The female of the TDWS had complete confidence in the fact that she could take him.

    THWACK!

    "GAGH!"

    Then Lola flew past her and Raphey was harshly reminded of the other opponent she was facing, who she felt distinctly less confident about.

    "You okay, Lola?" Raphey called out tersely, parrying Gallant's continued assault with one eye while keeping an eye out for her other rampaging opponent with the other.

    "I'm not out yet!" came Lola's only slightly dizzy reply, followed by the sound of someone hocking a loogie. "Ah... though I really need to get off this island soon to see a dentist, 'cause I'm starting to run outta—!"

    "RAAAAAAAAGH!"

    "Woahshit!"

    Raphey ground her teeth in irritation as Zola suddenly charged by her, murder in the warthog's eyes. Her mortal counterpart only barely got up her blades in time to initiate a lock. Hastily weighing her options in face of the war-hog's (and no way in hell was that a typo) fury, Raphey came to a decision.

    "Sorry, bub," she snarled up at her leather-necked opponent, causing him to twitch in irritation. "But I!" She parried his downward swing to the left. "Don't have time!" Another parry, this time to the right. "To play with you!" A 'relatively' simple six-foot dead leap above a leg-high (or tail-high as it were) slash. "ANYMORE!"

    "Yooooou!" Gallant Hippo snorted out a nostril-load of steam, his rage spiking to the point where he threw his shield aside and strangled his sword's hilt with both hands. "Play with THIS!" And with that, the zombie lashed out with a titanic overhead strike.

    An overhead strike that Raphey met with a defiant smirk. "Gladly."

    An inch before the sword met her skull, Raphey snapped her flippers up, sais crossed and offset just so…

    SKRANG!

    So that the oversized blade slipped neatly into the gap between the weapons' prongs and the central shafts of her sais. With her newfound leverage, all it took was a simple twist-and-jerk of her weapons and Gallant Hippo's sword snapped between the weapons like a dry twig.

    Gallant Hippo wasted any chance to counter by holding his sword up to his face and staring dumbly at it. Complete with a dropped jaw. Raphey had enough savviness to wait to roll her eyes until after she'd lobbed a lump of salt into the gaping maw, but it didn't diminish the exasperation she felt.

    "Well, that was disappointing," she groused. "Seriously, what's a chick gotta do to get a decent fight around—"

    "—aaaaaaaaaa—"

    The dugong blinked in confusion. "—here? What the—?" All of a sudden, Raphey's instincts blared on high alert. She ducked her head—

    "AAAAAAHHHHHH!"

    —and winced sympathetically as Lola flew clean over her and slammed clean into the trunk of an admirably sturdy tree. After sparing her newfound ally a sympathetic glance, Raphey hesitantly turned around and swallowed heavily as she came face to steam-snorting snout with Zola, whose eyes were positively blazing with an unholy rage.

    "Oh, the things I do for a good fight," Raphey groaned, slowly raising her sais into a defensive guard. "Hey, pigsticker!"

    Zola's unholy rage, originally split between her and Lola, fully shifted onto the dugong, who couldn't help but allow herself a shiver. But even in face of such fury, Raphey said what she needed to say.

    "Your warts have some hog on them."

    Granted, what she needed to say wasn't exactly the smartest thing to say, but going by how steam practically blasted out of Zola's ears, it had the desired effect.

    "Gon' kill you! KIIILL YOOOOOU!" Zola roared, swinging her blades overhead at Raphey, who responded by raising her sais to meet them in a rehash of the maneuver she'd pulled on Gallant Hippo.

    That course of action turned out to be a rather grievous mistake.

    Two blades meant half the leverage from each sai, and with Zola abandoning all pretenses of technique and subtlety in favor of berserker rage, victory now came from brute strength rather than skill. And in the end, no matter how disproportionately strong Raphey and her fellow dugongs were, there was no way in hell she could win a direct clash of muscle against someone who outweighed her almost ten times over. As a result...

    'Badtimebadtimebadtime!' Raphey mentally chanted as she was forced to backpedal, reduced to ineffectively flailing her sais in an effort to stave off the storm of blades and paying for her head's continued connection to her body with an alarming number of dents. 'Okay, so maybe making all enemies angrier isn't a valid tactic after all, I know this now. Now if only I could actually find a way to survive this fuckup so that I can actually apply it!'

    Luckily for the pink-bandana'd dugong, before Zola could either overwhelm her or break her weapons, Lola—battered and bruised like hell but still kicking like a mule—came charging out of nowhere, her own blades lashing out in a flurry of slices and stabs that bit deep into her undead counterparts necrotized flesh. It would have been impressive, if not for one small problem: Zola wasn't stopping.

    In fact, the zombie found it in herself to lash one of her swords out and send Lola skidding back a few feet before renewing her onslaught on Raphey's guard.

    Still, despite the rain of blows, Raphey still managed to lock eyes with Lola as she stabilized her footing. The pirate captain stared back, an unspoken message passing between them.

    'Separate attacks are useless.'

    Lola, her footing regained, hastily ran behind Raphey's steady retreat and prepared herself. Then, as Zola raised a sword to cleave Raphey's skull open like a rotten melon, it was met not with a sai but Lola's crossed blades. Gritting her teeth, the dugong took the opportunity to jam snag Zola's sword with her sai and twist her blade anew. Thankfully, for all that the warthog's swords were larger and of better quality than Gallant Hippo' arms, you could only make a sword so strong with conventional steel and the sword swiftly shattered under the longitudinal strain.

    Down to one sword, Zola had to actually defend for the first time since the fight began, Lola's twin blades seeking out stitches while Raphey dug a packet of salt out from her shell and prepared it for lobbing, an eager grin on her muzzle.

    "Aaaaalright, now hold still, you swine…" she muttered, tracking Zola and Lola's back-and-forth. Zola did not hold still, but luckily she was also rather predictable in her burning rage, so it wasn't long before Raphey got the pattern down. "Just... a bit... Gotcha!" Snapping her flipper out, the dugong let the salt fly. The packet flew true, entering Zola's mouth mid-howl and resulting in the zombie immediately slumping bonelessly to the ground.

    "Yes!" the dugong whooped, dashing over to where Lola was catching her breath and raising her flipper. "High-one, sista!"

    "Ye—! Ah… wait a second..." Lola's whoop died in her throat mid-hand raise. "Uh... Raphey? You... salted her, right? Then... where's my shadow?"

    Raphey paused, blinking in confusion. "Eh? The heck are you talking about, it's right… ah…" The blood evacuated her face as she replayed the last few seconds through her mind. "It's... uh... wait a seco—"

    "Tusk Coronet!"

    Both fighters whirled around just in time to catch a tusk in the side, the sharp bones digging into their flesh as the sheer force of the impact, plus a head-buck from the zombie, sent them both tumbling.

    "I've got you now!" Zola crowed, slashing her weapon furiously even as she yanked the salt-packet out from the gap in her teeth where it had gotten caught. "You're gonna pay for insulting me! You'll wish you'd never said that there isn't a blue ribbon big enough to convince anyone to marry me!"

    "No one said that!" Raphey snapped as she shakily pushed herself onto her tail. Unfortunately, in the face of the hog's undaunted charge, all Raphey could do was ineffectually fling her sai at the zombie before dodging to the side. The weapon clanged harmlessly off of one of Zola's tusks, but she didn't even try to change course due to her rage being focused entirely on—

    "Lola!" Raphey shouted at her comrade in arms, who'd been disarmed in the impact and was, more importantly, standing right in her zombie's path of destruction.

    Lola, for her part, could only flinch, clutching at the gaping wound in her side as she watched the impending doom bearing down upon her. Her face twisted up in uncertainty and anguish, but then her eyes set in iron-willed determination and she… anchored her stance and spread her arms wide!?

    "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU—!? RIP TIDE!" Raphey barked, taking off after the charging warthog. Even as she did so, though, she knew she wouldn't make it. She just knew that she wasn't anywhere near good enough with the move yet to get that much distance in one Rip Tide. Zola would get there first, smear Lola all over the dirt, and then do the same to her. Raphey had to do something, something—!

    And then, just like that, impact. Pirate and zombie met...

    "RAAAAAA—WHA!?"

    And to Raphey's shock, Lola didn't even budge. In fact, the captain had managed to grab hold of her shadow's zombie by the tusks, and was even managing to hold it back!

    "Raphey!" Lola shouted, freeing one hand to grab her zombie's upper jaw. With a shove, the skull wrenched in half with a loud SNAP! "NOW!"

    The dugong, coming out of her Rip Tide, acted instinctively before she could even begin to formulate a question. Her flipper practically blurring, Raphey withdrew another salt packet and, after making sure it was partially open this time, tossed it into Zola's gaping maw.

    This time, the warthog properly gagged before slumping in Lola's arms, her umbral soul spilling from her mouth and immediately pooling at the ground beneath Lola.

    The pirate captain shakily let go of the freshly-dead corpse, staring at the barely-visible imprint she was casting before sinking to her knees, tears of joy streaming down her face. Slowly, shakily, as if she couldn't believe it, she ran her fingers over her shadow, her soul, herself. "Straw Hats… I will never, ever be able to repay this debt."

    "Yeahyeahyeah, time for that later, now hurry and give me your hands!" Raphey snarled as she rushed over to her ally and grabbed her wrists. "Sweet Sobek, that maneuver was gutsy as all hell, but it sure wasn't smart! We need to get these things bandaged ASAP!"

    "Wha-ah!" Lola flinched as she tried to wrench her hands free of the sea mammal's grip. "T-T-That's really not necessary, I'm totally fine, you don't have to-!"

    "The hell I don't!" Raphey snapped as she tried to get a look at the pirate's hands. "I mean, seriously! After something like that, your palms must be ripped to-!...shreds?" The dugong trailed off, boggled at the sight of Lola's totally uninjured palms. Heck, they were better than alright, they were... they were pristine! As gleaming and solid-looking as though they were wrought of pure steel, even!

    Wait a minute.

    "What the—? Powers?! But Cross never said anything about you... but this looks like armo—!…wait... armor... Armame—MMPH!?"

    "Shhhhhut up!" Lola hissed desperately as she kept a hand clamped over Raphey's muzzle, her head on a swivel, cold sweat coating her from head to toe. "Don't use that word, don't you dare use that word or any others like it about me! I've worked hard to keep it a secret, but the trees and walls literally have ears, and if anyone finds out about it, my life is forfeit!"

    "Mmm-bwah! Thanks..." Raphey gasped in relief as she was released before pinning Lola with a confused glare. "And what the hell do you mean 'forfeit!?' You have H—that! That means you're practically invincible, especially in Paradise, right?"

    "Right and wrong!" Lola growled out miserably as she yanked at her pigtails. "Yes, that is fantastically strong in the weaker seas, but that's the problem! That-users outside of the New World stick out like sore thumbs, so if anyone looks into me they'll find my name, and if they find my name, then they find me, and then… then I'm dead!"

    "Er…" Raphey tilted her head in confusion. "'They'?"

    Lola chewed at her lip before hanging her head with a defeated sigh. "My… My family, alright? If word gets back to my family about where I am, then they'll come for me. And then, they'll… they'll…" She lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

    "…that bad?" Raphey asked quietly.

    An overtone of horror overcame the pirate captain as she swallowed heavily. "If I never see most of my family again before I die," she said in a slow and deliberate tone of voice. "Then I will die very happy."

    Raphey was silent for a few seconds before nodding firmly. "Your secret is safe with me."

    Lola sighed in relief, her whole body uncoiling as the tension exited it. "Thank you…"

    "Thank us all later," Raphey waved her off as she started to turn towards where the rest of the fighting was taking place. "For now, that's one more shadow down, a load more to go. Let's get back to it!"

    "Agreed!" Lola nodded, slamming her palm into her fist.

    The two made to move forward, and almost immediately they both slumped down onto the ground, clutching their sides in pain. "After we take a second to fix the fact that we're bleeding out," Raphey grunted.

    "Agreed…"

    -o-​

    Glancing back to confirm that the zombie he'd been fighting wasn't in sight, Donny leaped up into the nearest tree, his lack of Tidal Swim doing nothing to slow his ascension.

    "And those bastards…teased me…for learning…parkour," Donny huffed in frustration as he balanced on a branch, leaning against the tree trunk while he caught his breath. "But… my rage against them… will be fucking nothing… compared to what I'll do to Cross… if he knew about this ELEVEN-TIMES-DAMNED—!"

    "SO! Hiding up in a tree, eh?! Thinkin' it's all safe and sound? LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHIN'!"

    "Ohfuckme," Donny groaned breathlessly, his expression turning bland at the steady thumps vibrating up the trunk of the tree. Several seconds later, the vibrating stopped, and he deadpanned, "Timber" as his perch slowly tipped forward.

    The dugong barely reacted as the tree crashed to the ground, unceremoniously dumping the amphibian onto the unforgiving ground. Snorting, he flipped himself onto his tail to face the grinning, axe-crazy zombie, staff at the ready.

    "As you can see!" Bill laughed heartily as he leaned on his axe. "You must be veeeeery careful when you're on the battlefield, because ya never know when a random lumberjack might decide to wander along and decide 'ta break into a musical number straight outta MONTY PYTHON!"

    Donny's eye twitched furiously as he tried and failed to parse that statement. "Who the hell is—!?"

    "BUUUUURP!"

    "—WAGH!?"

    The dugong let out a yelp of terror as he hastily dove to the side to avoid a gout of flame that charbroiled the space he'd been occupying a second ago.

    "Urp! Oh, excuse me!" Bill coughed as he smacked his fist against his chest, lit up by the flames peeking out from under his ribcage. "Shouldn'ta eaten' that there West Blue cuisine before fighting! Spicy buggers, it feels like my insides are on fire!"

    "THEY ARE ON FIRE, YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH!" Donny howled, his patience ground down to almost nothing.

    Bill glanced down at himself, blinking in apparent surprise at the flames burning in his midsection. "Huh. Wouldja look at that, so they are. Well, you know what they say! CONSTANT VIGI—!"

    "Rip Tide!" Donny snarled out, slamming his tail into the ground and launching himself at the incendiary revenant.

    "Ah, jogging!" Bill sniffed primly, his only reaction to his opponent's disappearance being to step back and stick his foot out. "A noble pursuit! But ya always gotta be on the lookout for roots!" Donny, locked in his blur of speed, didn't notice his target's relocation until he hit his intended destination, by which point it was too late and Donny was sent sprawling tail over teakettle. "They're sneaky buggers, AIN'T THEY!? Never see them until you're SNAPPED UP LIKE A SNAPPER AT A SEA KING BAR MITZ—ah, whoops!" Bill lifted his leg and blinked at the blatant absence of a foot at the end of his leg. "Weeeell, looks like I'm the one on the backstep now! HAH HAH HAH HAH—!"

    "Oh, will you give it a rest already?!"

    "—GWAH!?" Fire Zombie Bill yelped in shock when he was suddenly face-to-face with close to fifty pounds of pissed off dugong swinging his very large and very heavy stick at his head. It took all the speed the General Zombie had to snap his axe up and keep up with the Dugong, fending off blow after blow from the student.

    "Let me tell you something, you literal flaming idiot!" Donny snarled in the revenant's face, his adrenaline allowing him to forge through the heat the living pyre was giving off. "You are the most infuriating, reckless, whacked-out nutjob I have ever had the sheer displeasure of fighting, and that is damn well saying something!"

    "I'm sorry to hear that, sonny boy!" Bill replied, voice dripping with insincerity. "In fact, that—!"

    Donny's staff jamming into his throat tragically aborted that line. "I said," the dugong bit out, shoving the General Zombie onto his back. "Give. It. A rest. Because on top of all that stuff I just said?!" The dugong leapt into the air, his staff raised above his head and ready to strike his foe down once and for all via the salt paste on the weapon's tip. "YOU'RE NOT FUNNY!"

    "Not… funny…?" Bill parroted as his opponent came down from the sky, sounding bewildered. "Not… funny…"

    All at once, a change came over the zombie. Stiff tension drained away, and the underbite grin fell away into a light, flat smile. Languidly standing, his hand shot out, grabbing Donny's staff before he could react.

    "What the—GRK!"

    And in one fluid motion, the other hand lashed out, flaming fingers searing Donny's flesh as he bodily rammed into the nearest tree.

    "Bitch," Fire Zombie Bill's mouth drawled, darkness and murder oozing from every decibel. "I am hilarious." The zombie's arm then swung out to the side and flung Donny halfway through another tree.

    Taking a minute to shake off the pain and dizziness, the dugong groggily pulled himself up. One look at the advancing Bill, his head held low and axe dragging in the ground as he slowly stumped his way towards Donny was all he needed.

    "Nope!" he declared. "Rip Tide!"

    Blurring from existence, he reappeared behind a nearby tree. Poking his head around the trunk, he saw Bill paused several feet away, glancing about.

    "Okay…" he sighed in relief. "Right. How am I gonna beat this guy? This super strong… super crazy zombie… with a fire axe…" Groaning, he slumped onto his flippers. "Oh, this is gonna suck. Why couldn't Leo be here? Or hell, Raphey, or even Mikey! They'd be all over this shit!"

    "Well, you're right about that."

    Only Donny's prone position saved him from the axe biting into his snout. Instead, it sprayed splinters everywhere on its way to cleaving straight through the tree he'd been hiding behind. Slowly, the dugong glanced up at the grinning, flame-wreathed face of the axe-wielding devil himself.

    "You don't strike me as the type to enjoy something like this," Bill drawled, raising the axe.

    "Shell Body!" Donny hastily yelped, crossing his flippers. And none too soon, the axe screaming down to slam into the iron-hard guard.

    Sadly, 'mere' iron turned out to be inadequate to the task. Axe and body collided with a loud clang, the head biting slightly into his flippers. Donny flinched from the trench rent into his limbs, and Bill didn't give him time to counter. Instead, he raised the axe, dugong still attached, and slammed them both into the nearest tree.

    "Argh!" Donny yelped, both from the pain of his collision with the tree and the axe head biting an even deeper crevice in his flippers. "Son of a—! Back! Off!"

    "Sure." And just like that, a boot planted itself in Donny's sternum and wrenched the axe from his flippers, leaving Donny to slump to the roots, cradling the rent flesh of his arms.

    "Argh..." Donny groaned, glancing up in confusion. "Wha-? W-Why did you—?"

    "Weeeell, you see..." 'Bill' replied, swinging his axe up and balancing it behind his neck. "The thing is, at the moment, I'm... a bit at a loss, really. I don't usually have to… ad-lib this much, usually have time to plan my routine..." The zombie's manic grin widened as he took a step towards the prone dugong. "So! What I need you to do... is run."

    Donny blinked. "Run?"

    "Yes!" Bill swung his axe out and pointed it into the woods. "Run. Flee. Abscond. Whatever verb you want to use, I don't particularly care. Just… do both me and yourself a favor, would you? Be creative about it..." He swung his weapon down so that the blade was hovering right in the middle of Donny's face, madness glinting in his rotted eyes. "Or else."

    Donny stared with bald-faced shock at the zombie. He was… giving him a chance to run? Why would—?

    The sudden appearance of the zombie after he'd fled the first time popped up in his brain. Right, because he could do that and it looked like he was seriously sadistic. Still, Donny wasn't about to look more time to live in the mouth, however furtive. But how to be creative…?

    "What would everyone else do?" he muttered under his breath, internally grateful Bill seemed to be inclined to wait for the moment. Though the way he was running his finger over his axe's blade did not exactly inspire what one would consider 'confidence'.

    Unbidden, an image of Leo popped into his head, blades drawn and a determined look in his eyes. "Well, if it were me, I'd just chop him up, easy-peasy!"

    '…yeah, save that I have neither the tools nor the skills to actually do that, you sword-con.'

    An image of Boss popped into his head, chest puffed out and his cigar pointed straight at him. "I'd hit him hard enough to knock his head off his neck!"

    'If I could do that, I'd have done it already!'

    Boss faded away, to be replaced by Raphey, who was sporting a wide smile and giving him a thumbs-up. "I'd use you as bait and run!"

    Donny's expression actually fell flat at that. 'Gee, thanks.'

    "Heh, no prob… heeeey wait a minute, I'm a representation of how you view the real me… YOU JACKASS, YOU REALLY THINK I'M THAT MUCH OF A BITCH!? WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU, I'M GONNA—!"

    Donny hastily derailed that train of thought in favor of conjuring Mikey into his mind's eye, smiling as though he'd just come up with the best prank of all time. And the idea he proposed was…

    Donny blinked in surprise. Of all the things he'd been expecting, it sure as hell wasn't an idea that was… honestly not that terrible.

    "SCREW YOU, ASSHOLE!"

    Jerking out of his thoughts, Donny snapped his attention up, took a swift survey of his opponent and identified the one point on Bill's body that wasn't on fire: his (presumably) fireproof helmet.

    "As Mikey always says, if it's stupid and it works," the intellectual amphibian muttered, moving his tail into position. "Then it's not stupid. Rip Tide!"

    Bill sighed as the dugong zipped away. "Spoilsport. Fun while it lasted though. Ah well, plenty of other intruders to—" He paused, his eyes narrowing as he saw Donny throw his staff into the ground and then landed on it, the wood bending alarmingly. "Hmm."

    What bends back must return, and so the staff snapped forward, hurling Donny at Bill, the latter of whom raised his axe to block. Instead of getting chopped in half, though, the dugong managed a graceful flip in midair and landed on Bill's helmet.

    "RIP TIDE!"

    And then kicked off again, soaring off into the forest while simultaneously sending Bill for a loop, which in this case meant twisting his skull around a full 180 degrees.

    Bill, for his part, was left stumbling around as he tried to synch his newly disjointed perspective with his body. Or rather, his body stumbled around while his head tried to direct it appropriately.

    "No, no, left. Left, you ignoramus! Just reach up and twist me to the left! Nonono, my left! Mmrph, this is why I'm the brains of this operation…"

    Far away (but not too far), Donny leaned against a tree, a silly grin on his face. "That worked… I can't believe that worked!" The grin promptly died painfully when he realized he was missing something. "...except that I left my staff behind, damn it, Mikey! Ergh..." He kneaded the bridge of his nose miserably. "Great, just great, that's gonna make this even harder…"

    'This' being beating Bill. Not an easy task, even with his staff. The only plan he could think of was drawing the axe-crazy zombie to someone who could actually beat him…

    Slow clapping sounded out through the clearing. "Well! I gotta admit, that was creative. Props!"

    Buuuut it looked like he wouldn't have time for that. Gulping, Donny angled his head back to stare at Bill as he loomed over him, preemptively preparing his Shell Body.

    "So," the zombie stated, tapping his fingers on the handle of his axe. "Wanna see a magic trick?"

    For a brief moment, Donny pondered saying 'no', but one look at the crazed zombie's grin killed that idea stone dead. "Uh... sure?"

    A coin flashed into Bill's free hand, an odd silver piece with one side marred by a jagged 'X'. "Got this from an old friend," the zombie informed him, twirling the coin between his bony fingers. "Now, I'm going to make this coin… disappear." And just like that, the coin vanished.

    Worse, Donny couldn't tell where it'd gone, and he was pretty good at spotting sleight-of-hand tricks. Then Bill reached for him, and the tension ratcheted up another order of magnitude. He stayed still, eyes, on the axe, as his opponent grasped something at the back of his head…

    WHAM!

    And then Bill pulled Donny's head into his knee.

    "GAGH!" Donny wheezed in agony as he reeled back, the pain centered around the chunk of metal he could feel lodged square between his eyes.

    "There we go…" Bill drawled as Donny stumbled back, his mind spinning as he tried to grasp at the coin lodged in his freaking skull. "That'll do. Let's mop this up so that I can have some time to plan out a real schtick! But for now?" The blazing revenant's grin widened as he raised his axe above his head. "It's time to cut and run!"

    "Grgh... Shell... Body..." Donny mumbled out dizzily.

    The axe came down, and bounced off of Donny's skull, the sheer recoil actually wrenching the zombie's arm out of its socket.

    The dugong's eyes refocused, and he smirked victoriously at the disarmed zombie. "Steel Hermit variant."

    Bill blinked stupidly, taking in both his lack of a limb and Donny's still intact skull, and as he did so a change came over the flaming revenant. In an instant, he stood upright again, the light in his eyes changed and he let his jaw jut out to an almost comical level.

    "Yeah, that's always a problem!" Bill—the original, comical Bill—stated casually. "Y'go out to chop some wood, you raise your axe, ya miss, and hit your foot!" He paused, thinking. "Or a rock, which knocks your arm off. That could happen, too. Ah well!" He raised his remaining hand in order to shoot Donny a two-fingered salute. "Be right back with my arm and more helpful tips for how to survive a warzone! Hang tight!" And with that, the blazing zombie loped off into the underbrush after his limb.

    Donny blinked as he processed the turn of events. 'OK, so the good news is that the... I'm guessing shadow is back in control, meaning I'm no longer dealing with a sadistic psychopath who wants me dead. Instead, I'm dealing with a lunatic who acts like a sadistic psychopath whose antics are going to kill me, unless the original mind takes over first and splits my freaking skull in two! WHAT THE HELL DO I DO—!?' Donny hastily rapped his 'knuckles' against his head. 'Alright alright alright, no more freaking out... just... just think, just think. Just think of how the hell I'm supposed to outsmart... that...'

    Almost as soon as the train of thought ran through Donny's mind, he slowly turned his head to observe the flicker of flames that indicated Bill's return.

    'Dumbass,' Donny finished, heaving a defeated sigh. 'Well… if Mikey's way worked once, may as well try it again.'

    "GEEZE!" the dugong exclaimed at the top of his lungs and with more cured pork than he'd ever risk letting into his voice with Luffy around, just as a newly whole Bill emerged from the underbrush. "This fight is really wearing on!" He ghosted his hand over his shell, ensuring that he garnered Bill's undivided attention. "I'd better have a snack to keep up my energy!"

    Moving fast, Donny reached into his shell, pulled something out, and the second his hand was halfway to his mouth, Bill all but blurred over to him and snatched the object out of his flipper.

    "Mid-battle snack, huh!?" the zombie barked, looking over the riceball he was holding. "Innocent doodad, ain't it? A nice and yummy treat ta get yer spirits up! LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHING!"

    Without further ado, Bill tossed the snack in the air and swallowed it in a single gulp.

    "Mm, tasty!" Bill crowed, rubbing his belly. "What was in it?"

    "Ooooh, you know, the usual." Donny crossed his fins behind his head as he ever-so-innocently swayed back and forth on his tail. "Rice, a bit of seaweed, some salmon…" A malevolent glint lit up the dugong's eye. "And salt."

    The Fire Zombie froze up mid-rub, his eyes shooting wide in shocked realization. "UH-OH!"

    BOOM!

    "GAH!" Donny leapt back in shock and terror when the zombie's cranium suddenly exploded in a geyser of umbral essence. "What the hell!? Damn it, even in double-death, that bastard just cannot do anything even remotely normal, can he!? Urgh…" The dugong glanced down at the chunks of… being that were sprayed over his shell. "This is gonna take forever to wash out…"

    "Hey, he took down Bill!"

    "Oh, come on…" Donny groaned, turning to the crowd of zombies that had just walked out of the underbrush with a somewhat-rusty stance for unarmed combat. "Alright, bring it on, you—!"

    The zombies surged forward, Donny tensed, ready for combat, and then blinked in surprise as said zombies surged around him, instead going for Bill. Drawing axes, swords, and other sharp instruments, they descended on his body, hacking and bludgeoning and just ravaging the body until it was little more than a stain on the ground. The dugong could only stare throughout the process.

    "Soooo…" Donny drew out at last. "I'm guessing he always acted like that?"

    "Yes," one of the zombies spat. "Hopefully, this will make sure he never comes back again... though..." He hung his head with a despondent sob. "I'm really not counting on it. Not after the killer dolphin."

    "Or the rabid coyote pack!"

    "Or that extreme chili con carne contest!"

    "Riiiiight…" Donny muttered, a hefty drop of sweat hanging from his skull "And... what about me?"

    "Meh, we don't care," another zombie grunted dismissively. "You're all screwed no matter what we do to you, so we couldn't care less. For now, we're gonna break into the alcohol stores and celebrate that we've finally gotten us a reprieve! See ya!"

    Donny briefly toyed with the thought of pointing out how logically alcohol wouldn't do much to long-necrotized gray matter, but he reconsidered in light of the fact that, to reiterate, he was speaking to individuals with necrotized gray matter in the first place. After all, at the moment, he had far bigger fish to fry.

    "Starting with where the hell did I leave my staff…" Donny muttered, scratching the back of his skull.

    -o-​

    Boss sighed as he gazed into the fog shrouding Thriller Bark. "Y'know," he mused conversationally. "When I came out into these seas, I expected two things: that I'd grow stronger, and that I'd get a lot of great fights. I've sure as heck gotten the first, can't complain about that, but the second…"

    Idly hopping back, he watched as a multi-armed zombie wearing a cracked and triple-eyed mask dove past him, claws swishing through empty air.

    "Case in point, there's you," Boss continued reassuringly, waving his cigar at the zombie. "I mean, you're not bad. Those extra limbs are an interesting gambit, after all, and you don't see arm blades like that often. And heck, compared to those fishmen in Mock Town, or that zipper guy, you're pretty good." He absentmindedly patted a trio of thin red lines in his side. "Hell, you hit me! Not many people can do that, y'know! Now, c'mon." He chomped down on his cigar and pounded his fists together eagerly. "No more playing around! I want to fight you for real!"

    Despite the mask, Boss had the distinct feeling that his opponent was trying to incinerate him with his glare.

    Boss blinked in surprise as the beri finally dropped. "You... actually were fighting for real, weren't you?" He dropped his head into a bow. "My sincerest condolences."

    "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU PITYING ME!?" the zombie roared, jumping straight for him, blades raised.

    Boss' entire demeanor shifted, a vicious glint shining in his eye. "Because you deserve it." And with that he swayed under the strike, swung his hook about the zombie and then Rip Tided away, dragging his opponent along for the ride. Upon coming to a halt, Boss gave his rope dart an extra firm yank, accelerating the General Zombie's airspeed to the maximum.

    "Squall Pistol," Boss smirked sadistically as he reared his 'finger' back. "Water Spout Shot!"

    The self-identified Jorogumo's flight ended with him getting all but impaled on Boss' 'finger'. He only remained in place for a moment, though, as the second Boss's brawn overpowered his momentum, the zombie was sent careening back into the nearest tree… and then through it to slam into the one behind it… and then onto the one behind that one. Needless to say, beyond a few scant twitches and spasms it couldn't have moved even if it wanted to.

    Boss observed his opponent's downed form for a few moments before scratching the back of his skull with a defeated sigh. "So disappointing," he groaned. Then he blinked as a dozen gun barrels were shoved in his face. "...well, this is certainly one way to make a guy feel special." He glanced around at his newest set of opponents, but stopped and grinned when his gaze happened to go upward. "Too bad I won't be your dance partner at the moment. Shell Body."

    The zombies blinked, their confusion lasting just long enough for a black sphere to land between them—

    BLAM!

    —and detonate, sending solid rock salt scything every which way. Every zombie surrounding Boss was simultaneously shredded and unshadowed, and those who were further away got no reprieve as several hundred pounds of frustrated cyborg slammed into them like a certain prototype train engine.

    "Grrragh, I'm starting to get SUPER pissed here!" Franky growled in aggravation as he mowed down line after line of zombies. "This is like the Bridge of Hesitation all over again! Except those bastards had the decency to stay down once you hit them enough!" The statement was backed up by how for every zombie Franky knocked down two got up, almost twice as pissed as before.

    "No kidding—Typhoon Lash!" Boss barked, the razor wind kneecapping several zombies. That still didn't stop them, as the cadavers just swapped to crawling. "Gah, the one time I find a doggedly persistent opponent and they're just annoying. Hey, you're taller than me, any clue how the rest of the fight's going?"

    Absently backhanding a zombie trying to sneak up on him, Franky flicked up his sunglasses and looked around. On the one hand, Lola's crew was trying desperately not to get overrun by the zombies, exhaustion and a steady depletion of salt badly hampering their efforts. Hell, even Merry, previously occupied with treating the many wounded, had waded into the fight, using one of the bigger zombies as a club. On the other hand, the rest of the Straw Hats were steadily grinding their way through the horde, though even there, the image of the Bridge of Hesitation continued to assert itself. Vivi was huddled behind Nami's Eisen Cloud, clutching her ribs with a visible wince and even Zoro's meatgrinder impression was fast losing momentum.

    "Not good," the cyborg grunted, spinning the nunchaku again to clear some space. "Lola's crew is barely hanging on, and Zoro's group will probably stop advancing soon. Hell, the only reason we haven't been completely buried in bodies is—!"

    "BAROOOOO!"

    "GUM-GUM STAMP GATLING!"

    "Yeah, that."

    The 'that' in question was Funkfreed in full elephant mode rampaging through the crowd of zombies, lashing out with nose, leg, and razor-sharp tusk. The elephant was putting on a particularly good showing, most notably through profligate usage of his latest technique—

    "PACHY-RIOT!"

    Which used the Jet and Water Dials that had been installed in the elephant-sword's hilt to blast a stream of high-pressure water out of the Zoan-weapon's nose. Unfortunately, the water wasn't salt-infused due to the combination making Funkfreed nauseous, but even unsalted, the blasts of liquid were sowing immense disarray amidst the zombie's ranks. Honestly, between Funkfreed's mass and the SWAT-levels of liquid being utilized, Luffy riding on the elephant's back and Stamping any zombies he could reach almost seemed like overkill.

    …though since no matter what the Straw Hats and their allies did there always seemed to be more of the bastards waiting in the wings, 'overkill' was a completely foreign concept for the situation.

    "Dammit, when am I gonna get a good one-on-one match?" Boss groused, lassoing a half-dozen zombies and swinging them out to bowl over a cluster of the undead. "I'm tired of fighting sardines, and the Generals are just trout in comparison! That zipper bastard was decent, but not nearly enough to give me a proper challenge, and besides, that was a month ago!"

    "Is this really the time? Weapons Left!" Franky snapped, explosives scorching another pack of zombies to well done.

    For a moment, Boss didn't respond as he decapitated the walking dead. "Sorry," he eventually replied with a sigh. "Not the time, I know, I'm just a bit… frustrated is all. I feel like a hamster on a wheel. It doesn't matter how hard I try, I just don't get anywhere."

    Franky paused for a second before returning to his bashing with a sigh. "Yeah, well, unless something changes fast we're stuck on wheel with-GAH!" The cyborg was cut off by a zombie popping out of the soil and clamping onto his leg. "Agh, dammit, get off!" he shouted, comically hopping on one foot as he tried to dislodge the stubborn corpse's death grip.

    Boss, sighing explosively, moved in front of Franky to cover him. He only had time to get off one Typhoon Lash before an entirely separate vacuum wave flew by and decapitated several fores, followed swiftly by four bodies landing in front of him.

    "Let's try this again!" Leo declared, pointing a saber skyward. "HELP! HAS ARRIVED!"

    Boss blinked in surprise at the development before swiftly scanning over his students. He took in Leo's borrowed blades, his battered face, and bruised neck. He took in Mikey's own bruises, mixed with shiny burns. He took in the crudely bandaged, bleeding wound in Raphey's side, and her sai, dented to hell and back. And finally, he took in Donny, his flippers bleeding, his face one big bruise, and his staff nowhere in sight. Not to mention how all four's tails were quivering with sore, exhausted muscles.

    Once he was finished taking stock, Boss stood to attention and puffed his chest out firmly. "Boys!" he called out, feeling a twinge of gratification at just how fast the apprentice martial artists snapped to attention. "You all look like shit. Go get patched up by Merry before you all keel over! Especially you, Raphaela. Don't think I don't notice that sucking wound in your side."

    "Rip Tide!" all four dugongs yelped, blurring out of existence.

    "Ahhh," Boss sighed, allowing himself to sag in relief. "Exerting control over the younger generation, is there no better stress relief?" He then perked up with newfound energy. "Welp—!"

    Before he could return to the fight, though, a commotion from the distant mansion caught his attention. He glanced over, and his jaw hit the dirt and his eyes tried to throw themselves out of his head.

    And from the way all sounds of combat had just ceased, he wasn't the only one.

    -o-​

    "No. 4 on the list of things I've always wanted to say!" I proclaimed as I stood atop my mount's skull, arms crossed defiantly. "The cavalry has arrived!"

    It was immensely gratifying to me to see the entire legion of the dead, the unfeeling immortal army that my crewmates had been fighting, freeze with more horror than they inflicted when they caught sight of me. Or, far more likely, they froze on account of my rather atypical mount. Of course, my crewmates' identical reactions were equally gratifying and far more amusing.

    Anyway, I could have urged my mount forward and mowed the enemy down then and there, but hell, where would have been the fun in that? As such, I took the better option.

    "ZOMBIES OF THRILLER BARK!" I announced, flinging my arms out wide.

    Which is to say, I grandstanded like a champ.

    "Allow me to take this opportunity to clear up two misconceptions that you might have! Misconception the first!" I held up a finger for all to see. "You all might think that I am currently riding atop an undead cybernetic Tyrannosaurus Rex! This is categorically false!"

    I widened my grin as I raised one of my feet from the skull of the long-dead titan lizard I was riding. "The truth is that I am riding atop an undead cybernetic Tyrannosaurus Rex…"

    I rammed my heel into the small of my mount's skull.

    "SKREEEEEOOOOOOONK!"

    And it promptly reared back and let loose both an iconic roar straight out of Spielberg's films—and a flesh-searingly intense gout of flames.

    "That breathes fire!" I cackled malevolently, Soundbite joining me in howling like the suicidally crazy morons that we were.

    Honestly, there really was no other course of action after fusing Hogback's cutting edge technology, Chopper's explosives, the necrotized tissue that had clearly been harvested from Little Garden, and a few million volts. Really, now. If not like that, then how the actual fuck were we supposed to react when we were charging into battle on the back of a zombified, cyborg, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the likes of which would make Harry Dresden eat his heart out...that also breathed fire?!

    I have to say, I was very proud of just how brightly Luffy's eyes were lit.

    But still, before I could properly assault the enemy with our gamechanger, I really did need to set the mood.

    "Misconception the second!" I bellowed out with Soundbite's aid, regathering the zombie's attention to my second raised finger. "Some of you might be optimistic in light of the fact that you are mostly beyond the bounds of mortality! I intend to correct you all from this grievous error in judgment by asking that you consider this one simple question!"

    I ground my heel into my ride's skull, prompting it to lower its head and glare at the zombies as it rumbled out a growl, both its organic yellow and mechanical red eyes glowing with pure malice as oil and saliva dripped from its fangs.

    "Just how 'deathless'," I leered tauntingly. "Do you really think you are?"

    Slowly, ever so slowly, the zombies looked away from the monstrosity before them, and at each other. Two seconds, they exchanged looks. And one second later, they promptly fled for the nearest nonexistent haven.

    "Yeah, that's what I thought," I smirked victoriously before raising my fingers and letting loose a resonating SNAP! "CHARGE!"

    "SKREEEEEOOOOOOONK!"

    And so, as I rode my undead fire-breathing cyborg T-Rex into battle against a zombie hoard, I did the one thing I could do.

    ...honestly, do I even need to spell it out at this point?

    "PFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!"/ "HAHAHAheeheeheeHOOHOOHOOHAAAA!"

    Didn't think so.

    -o-​

    Vivi gaped at the scene through a gap in Nami's Eisen cloud.

    Cross. Riding a T-rex. A zombie cyborg T-rex. That breathed fire.

    Honestly, the fact that Conis, Usopp, Robin, and Chopper were using their own specific methods to take down zombies from behind the heels of said T-rex barely even registered.

    It was a miracle that anything could have caught the princess' attention at that time, but something most certainly did: a clinking sound caught her, that of glass against stone. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but it was there. Curiosity piqued, Vivi glanced down to see a glass bottle rolling her way, some sort of liquid sloshing back and forth in it. Leaning down, she picked it up, popped off the cap, and gave it a sniff. The scent of organ-killing grades of alcohol assaulted her nostrils, and before she knew it Vivi was the bottle to knock a drink back.

    Only for a set of deceptively strong fingers to deftly pluck the bottle away.

    "You are not developing a habit," Nami flatly stated as she scrutinized the booze.

    Spluttering for words, Vivi finally just swung her hands towards Cross' rampage. "He is riding a zombie cyborg T-rex!" she protested weakly.

    "That breathes fire."

    "CRAM IT, ZORO!" Vivi spared a second to snarl.

    Lola snorted as she took advantage of the lull in the zombie's decorum to rendezvous with her allies. "Fair warning, Princess: If something like that bothers you now, you're going to rot your liver out by the time we reach the New World."

    "But—!"

    "Uh, Vivi?" Carue cut in with a raised wing. "Cwoss is fighting a zombie apocawypse while widing a fiyah-bweathing undead cybowg T-Wex. Ahnd winning. I think yoah awgument is invawid."

    Vivi's rant froze in her throat, and after several seconds trying to force it out, she slumped over in despondent defeat. "Yeah, alright…" she sobbed.

    As the zombies around them fell into desperate panic, Nami was directing her Eisen Tempo to conjure up a credible impression of a porcupine. Except instead of quills, she was bristling with flesh-vaporizing lightning. So... not really like a porcupine at all.

    In any case, the sound slowly shook Vivi out of her self-pity, and she glanced up just in time to catch sight of Nami taking a deep draught from the bottle.

    "Hey!" Vivi snapped, pinning her ranking officer with a glare. "What the hell happened to not developing a tolerance?!"

    "I already have a habit and a tolerance, so I'm good," Nami replied with a catty grin, taking another swig without a hint of remorse.

    "The hell you—!" Vivi started to protest, before turning contemplative as a thought struck her. "Actually, how high is your tolerance, anyway?"

    The navigator graced the Princess with a smug look. "I could down a hundred of these things and not feel a thing."

    The princess' lips promptly pursed, her finger wavering for a moment longer before slowly retracting. "Okay, yeah, you're probably in the clear…" She then glanced around at the sheer anarchy raging around them. "So… what do we do now?"

    "Eh..." Nami waved her hand side to side. "Not to beat an undead horse but... seriously, cyborg zombie dinosaur. Honestly, at this point, with the way they're going?" She held up a trio of fingers. "I give these dead-heads half an hour, at most."

    -o-​

    In truth, it took us ten minutes to mop things up. Ten minutes of uninterrupted, unmitigated, and utterly undaunted carnage the likes of which I doubt Paradise has ever seen before in all its many years of piracy. But, unbelievable or not, it was simply fact: In ten minutes' time… Thriller Bark fell silent.

    Victory was… honestly a bit disturbing, I will freely admit. I mean, it was one thing to wade through a bunch of KO and groaning enemies, but this... well, this time I was literally walking on top of a sea of bodies. Between the smell, the footing, my own mind ranting at me that I was walking on what had once been, for the most part, people, and the various watchers wandering around and stabbing corpses at random, occasionally freeing the shadows of zombies we'd missed… yeah, never had a Straw Hat victory tasted so gruesome.

    The ever-present gloom and doom of the Florian's fog wasn't doing us any favors, either, but honestly, that was kind of a positive seeing as we didn't need it anymore. At least that was one aspect of the celebration we weren't missing out on: the sheer joy of victory. The Rolling Pirates were all celebrating, cheering and dancing ecstatically at the retrieval of their umbral counterparts, and the prospect that they once again had the freedom to live in the sun.

    I decided to try securing such joy for myself as I moved over to where the rest of the crew was gathered. Soundbite on my shoulder, Lassoo on my back, and the other twenty all gathered in an area reasonably devoid of corpses, with Chopper fussing over everyone.

    "Well, Cross… this may have been rough, but if we're comparing this to Enies Lobby, I think you should try flipping the script more often," Nami muttered, slowly flexing her stiff shoulder.

    "Yeah!" Luffy nodded eagerly, the motion and exuberant mood making for a weird image when combined with the hockey mask he was still wearing and the chainsaw that was still affixed to the end of his pipe. "This was really fun, Cross! Especially the dinosaur! I get to ride it next!"

    "Heh, you look pretty cool too, Luffy!" I grinned at him. "And don't worry," I jerked my head back at where my mount was rooting through the battlefield, looking for anything it could consider to be fresh. "That thing's not shadow-powered, so you'll have ample time to ride it!"

    Luffy perked up eagerly—

    "We are not taking it with us," Nami blithely ordered.

    Aaaand deflated just as fast. "Awww…"

    "I still can't believe that there's even the possibility of it coming aboard…" Vivi groaned, dragging a hand down her face.

    "Neither can I, and I actually built it!" Chopper agreed.

    "Well, even if it's staying here, I know one thing for sure..." Mikey nodded solemnly... before shooting his flipper up with a grin. "I call next ride after Luffy!"

    "Wha—!? Hey, no fair, I wanna go next!"

    "No, me, me!"

    "No way, I'm—!"

    "FWEET!"

    "GAH!" Everyone flinched when a sharp whistle suddenly pierced the air, and we all traced it back to its impatient and... diminutive source.

    "Sorry to kill the mood, but I just gotta know before we really get into the swing of things," Merry groused as she fingered her crunched nose. "Is there anything else on this island that you forgot about in the briefing, Cross? Anything we gotta handle?"

    "Eh…" I scratched my chin thoughtfully as I cast a glance about the battlefield. "I… don't think so? But I could be wrong seeing as this has been hectic as hell to keep up with, so let's do a quick rundown. Trapped shadows, including those of the Rolling Pirates and our new musician?"

    "Restored," Brook confirmed with a tip of his hat.

    "And whatever ones aren't will be soon," Boss added, gesturing back at the corpse-stabbing Rolling Pirates.

    "AIN'T A LOT LEFT, and those that are still on the island WON'T ESCAPE ME FOR LONG," Soundbite vowed.

    "Alright... Certainty of Oars never moving again, shadow or not?"

    "It would take more work than Hogback will ever do on a corpse again," Chopper said vindictively before thoughtfully (and normally) tapping his chin in thought. "Not to mention more calcium than I think he could get in a lifetime."

    "Absalom?"

    "If he's in any state to fight again before we leave this island, I'll eat my Lion Cutters," Vivi said, before wincing and scratching her gut. "One punch from Luffy would have finished him off when Nami, Merry, Carue, and I had done our best. And when Sanji took over… well." She left it at that.

    "Perona?"

    "Worst case scenario, she'll wake up in a couple of hours; I'll go reinforce the sedative on her once I finish treating the Rolling Pirates," Chopper assured.

    "Sounds good. And all that that leaves is—"

    "MASSIVE, MASSIVE TROUBLE!" Soundbite suddenly screamed, all of us jumping and all of the Rolling Pirates looking around in shock.

    "What are you—?" I began.

    "What… is this."

    And with that, my words died in my throat.

    Slowly, fearfully, I turned on my heel and beheld a most terrifying sight.

    Paler than his already ghost-white norm, twitching and hyperventilating from sheer rage, and sporting a particularly incensed look in his eye, Warlord of the Seas Gecko Moria stood at the foot of his manor, taking in the absolute annihilation of the army he'd been pinning his hopes and dreams on for the past decade.

    "Straw… Hats..." he breathed, veins pulsing in his forehead and grotesquely thick neck. "You... You... You... "

    All around me, I saw my crew and our allies dive for weapons, prepare their attacks. I also knew that they wouldn't be anywhere near ready in time.

    "You…" Moriah snarled, more and more veins springing to life on his form, encroaching even into his eyes as his entire being shaking. "You... YOU... YOU... YOOOOU—!"

    And then, suddenly, Moriah twitched and fell silent.

    It was truly a spontaneous thing: one moment Moriah was building into a rant, obviously gearing up to go Blugori-shit on us, the next his entire being just seemed to jerk and he… stopped. His face was still the same, his expression the same, but he was just… frozen.

    Then, ever so slowly, he bowed his head, placing his face in his hands, and starting to shake. Slowly at first, but stronger and stronger, until his whole body was vibrating in place.

    And then…

    "—hishishishisihi…shishishishi…"

    It started. It was... light, at the beginning. Just barely there, just within our range of hearing. I had my suspicions about what it was we were hearing, though I really, really wished I was wrong. But I was forced to acknowledge the truth when Moriah suddenly flung his head back and howled with laughter.

    "KISHISHISHISHISHI! KIIIIIISHISHISHISHISHISHIIIIII!"

    Because truly, that was what it was: a howl of laughter. Gale after gale of terrifyingly deranged cackling flew forth from the unhinged warlord, and deeper and deeper did it drive a dagger of fear into my heart.

    But none among us was more terrified than Soundbite, who legitimately turned a pasty white on my shoulder.

    "No…" he croaked, horror and terror inundating every syllable as he shivered in place. "Nononono, this can't be happening, CAN'T BE HAPPENING…"

    "What is it, Soundbite?" I hissed out of the corner of my mouth, unwilling to take my eyes off Moriah for even half a second.

    My snail swallowed hard, barely capable of getting the words out. "HE FIGURED IT OUT…"

    And just like that, I couldn't move. Part of that was from every drop of blood in my veins suddenly transfiguring into liquid nitrogen.

    "CROSS!"

    But I'm pretty sure the rest was from the jagged thorny vine of a shadow that had burst forth from a gap between corpses and ripped through my side before I knew what was happening.

    There... wasn't any pain to it really. Just, one second the vine wasn't there, the next it was. I tried to grab at it, but I was a bit distracted by the mouthful of blood I suddenly coughed up. That was... inconvenient, because it made it difficult to speak.

    And... And I had to speak, I know I had to because, I needed to tell my friends something important. I needed to tell them to... they had to...

    "Run..." I gurgled.

    But too late.

    Too late because the next second, Gecko Moriah snapped his head down so that he was staring at us all with eyes full of malevolent, absolutely soulless rapture.

    "Niflheim," he whispered.

    That word caused the suddenly too-dark shadows to erupt with motion.

    That word set in motion the ultimate nightmare of Thriller Bark.

    Patient AN: Mm-hmm. That just happened. Moria was a New World veteran capable of matching the apparently invulnerable Kaido before he got lazy. And he just got the power boost he needs to be that threatening again. Will it be too much for the Straw Hats to handle?

    …

    …

    …

    Put it this way: this is our cruelest cliffhanger yet. But the one at the end of the next chapter is going to be even worse.
     
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    • "You are not developing a habit," Nami flatly stated as she scrutinized the booze.
    "Hey!" Vivi snapped, pinning her ranking officer with a glare. "What the hell happened to not developing a tolerance habit?!"
    Xomniac said:
    riding atop an undead cybernetic Tyrannosaurus Rex
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Thank you Dresden Files, for making this the gold standard mount for traversing undead armies.

    I now go into these expecting cliffhangers. Simply because those end up being the best spots for a scene break.
    Still an amazing job guys. It was all a fight, but it went by as quickly as fights tend to.
     
    Now I'm thinking that instead of Kuma showing up as in canon, it'll be Doflamingo or Sakazuki.
     
    BRILLIANT as always!
    ....Moriah is going to be more creative with his powers isnt he?
    "oh, you thought you dodged my shadow spear? psych! another spear shoots out from the side of the first!"
     
    So I'm guessing it's like Soundbite said. It's not something you really work through or anything, one moment you can't grasp the full nature of your devil fruit and then, pop, you understand.
     
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