Lia's POV;
Paulie was drawing a picture of Enies Lobby while the rest of us got finished with their last minute preparations. In the background the Straw Hat was raging on about rescuing Robin, they don't seem to have extra things like spare pistols, knives or medical supplies. Only Chopper has medical supplies.
Paulie's map showed a circular fence with a black blotch inside. There was an X mark in front of the fence, then came the main gate that connected to another gate with a town behind. At the end of the town was another gate called Court. It must connect to the Judicial Tower, a building separated from the town through the black blotch. At the far end of his map was another X, it was marked as Gate of Justice. He winked us over to him and began to explain. “Guys, I was once here, for railroad maintenance. This is the base from what I remember. We are here, in front of the fence.
We have to pass it and then open the Main Gate. Afterwards, we have to fight us through the literal army of Government Officials. At the end of the town lays the Court, it connects to the Judicial Tower, which is the only way to reach the Gate of Justice. Once Robin is there it's the end for us. If she passes that gate then she is gone.”
“What is the black thing?” Asked the Straw Hat.
“That's the waterfall, you'll see what I mean when we are close enough,” explained Paulie briefly before continuing with his 'war-plan'. “The Straw Hats and you Kage Pirates are the only ones who can fight the CP9 and this clown guy.
We are only 70 but will have to face close to two or three thousand soldiers. We from the Galley-La and the Franky Family will go in first and make room. You wait for maybe five minutes and then follow. Avoid any unnecessary fights, focus on the CP9.”
Straw Hat nodded in understanding. “Right, got it,” he said and then promptly left when the fat drunken woman, that is driving us, showed us the really massive gate behind the island. The Gate of Justice was bigger than I was as Kurama.
I wonder how much pressure I need to open that. The water might help me.
During my brief musing, the rest noticed that the Straw Hat was missing. The Franky Family and Paulie, not including the Straw Hats, were panicking. Nami, Chopper, Zoro and Sanji were already used to their captain.
I turned to Lara and gave her a hug with a kiss on the cheek. It made Paulie shout about indecent women and Sanji blabbering about love between two beautiful elven sisters. I ignored them easily. Lara knew what I want, of that I am sure.
“Listen up guys!”, announced Lara a moment later. “Lia and I will go ahead as well. You make sure that the rest of the Straw Hats are reaching the CP9. We are here to help and that means you are all going to try and stay alive. If you die I will bring you back. Death is no excuse for leaving the crew.” The dark humour was received with a few chuckles. But Chopper was frantically asking if she means what she has said.
“This is the perfect opportunity for us all to test out the new weapons or skills we have learned during the last month. These puny little Marines will have nightmares from today on. Lia and I will try to find the two unknown CP agents. They are a higher threat than the CP9. ” With that said we both jumped out of the train and followed the Straw Hat.
Both of us landed on the fence and looked over to the Sea Train. There were soldiers who looked at the gate behind them. The Straw Hat was standing on it, looking at the island behind.
“Bough!” clucked Mrs Chicken Wing suddenly. I turned back and saw how she came flying to us. She too seems to not want to wait any longer. She must be eager to fight the pigeon.
“The pigeon will be with Rob Lucci, Mrs Chicken Wing, you will have to follow Luffy if you want to find him”, advised Lara. Mrs Chicken Wing nodded in thanks and flew after Luffy. She landed on his shoulder and hitched a ride through him. Luffy did not seem to care, he was speaking with her eagerly while preparing to jump.
“Now then, what should we do? Can you feel the two new CP agents?”, asked Lara me. She was looking down at the now panicking soldiers. They haven't seen us yet.
I reached out with my senses and started to feel all the weak auras of the Marines. There were a couple stronger ones mixed in between but nothing that could be on the level of a CP agent. “Nope, so far I can't feel any of them. We will have to go farther inside,” I answered.
Lara nodded and jumped into the sky, I followed her. Together we flew over the first gate and then the second one. From behind we could hear the arrival of the Franky Family. It will take some time before they breach the second gate and are able to cross the island.
“Can we cause some havoc or are we going to take these new CP agents out before I can have my fun?”, I asked. Under us was Straw Hat, he was slower than us. He still needed to fight some Marines and he's not able to fly, which slows him down.
And he is a good distraction for us. Few people look up when there is a threat in the front.
“It might be for the best to take care of the strong ones first. I don't want to get any surprises later. Let's head to the middle of the island. There you can take another look. We'll see what we do then.” I nodded and we both jumped to roughly the middle of the town. There we landed on a tower and I started to search for strong auras again.
I had to blind out the hundreds if not thousands of weak presences that were the Marines under us. There were so many that I only noticed the two strong auras closing in on us when they were almost in striking range.
I did, however, sensed them in time and managed to push my arms out towards their direction. The generated wind was heavily amplified and a mighty gust of wind crashed into the bodies of the weasel woman and the clown guy.
They both have had used soru to jump at us from one of the lower houses. Each was blown away and crashed into a house. The weasel woman landed in a warehouse to the east and the clown guy got blown into a normal house to the north.
“Huh, seems like they came to us. How nice of them. Whom of them do you want to kill?”, asked Lara with a light chuckle. She has had drawn her weapons the moment I snapped my arms up and was ready to defend me in case my pressure was not enough.
I replied while taking a hand full of normal stone pebbles out of my pouch. “I'll take the weasel woman, she has had deflected my pebbles in Water 7. That slight can't stay unanswered.” Lara nodded and vanished in a burst of speed. Not a second later the house of the clown guy exploded from her impact. And something was thrown through four more houses.
Time for me to hunt me some weasel pelt.
I threw a whole hand of pebbles at the warehouse and watched how each projectile hit the building. Each caused an explosion that rocketed the foundation of the warehouse until it no longer could hold itself.
The building collapsed into rubble and a mighty dust cloud began to form. I could still feel her presence in the cloud. It wasn't the least bit diminished, she was unharmed. I threw another pebble at her but had to tilt my head to the side a second later.
Somehow she has managed to deflect the pebble back to me.
I was just about to throw a few more down at her, each stronger than the last when I remembered my embarrassing defeat at the hands of Sabo. I still get angry when I think about that fight.
Alas, it taught me a lesson that I intend to not forget.
With a flick of my wrist, three dozens sharpened knives flew out of my pouch and began to rotate around my body. Each was made out of a metal alloy made from Lara. None of them was a masterpiece like her daggers or her weapons for Jonny and Yosaku, but they still were way above the grade of a normal dagger.
Slowly they began to take speed up. Then began to hum and blur from sight, before I deemed the speed fast enough. Keeping it up now is only taking a minor part of my concentration. [Multitasking] is such a fine skill.
Back down on the ground, I could see that the dust has settled and that the warehouse was turned to utterly rumble. The unwounded CP woman with the weasel mask was standing atop of it. Her clothes were dusty, but not worse for wear.
She was holding a fan in each hand and starred up at me, so I waved down at her and gave her two bullet type metal pebbles. Each shot off with a ping and reached her in the blink of an eye. Each got also deflected by a swift and elegant swish of her fans. They crashed harmlessly into the ground next to her and produced a small crater from the impact.
So that's how she wants to play? Fine, let's see how she handles a few more.
My arm was a blur so fast did I shot off another ten projectiles. They were equal in strength but timed in such a way that each would hit at the same time and at a different place on her body.
Again, they got deflected. The weasel woman was using a highly refined form of Kami-e to either evade the bullets or deflect them with her fans. She had just made a spin on her left heel when her right leg shot up in a wide arc.
A tempest kick formed itself and raced towards me. It was precise and rather strong, yet ultimately nothing else but air pressure. It vanished before even crossing half of its way towards me.
So this woman is able to deflect or redirect my attacks, while also able to shoot tempest kicks and most likely also finger pistols at me from her position.
Let's see if she can handle heavier projectiles.
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I pulled a single black pebble out of my inventory and aimed it at her head. This one was similar to the metal balls Yosaku has for his sword. A highly condensed mass of metal. Roughly a ton in weight and formed into a ball for higher blunt force.
I threw it and the ball crossed the wall of sound right after leaving my hand. It wasn't much faster than the attacks I have used before, I don't want her to evade this one.
She didn't and tried to deflect the attack, only to notice that it was too heavy for her. She twisted her arms to the side and made a backwards somersault to get away from the attack. Sadly she was able to deflect it far enough to get out of the blast zone without much harm.
The attack caused a small earthquake and produced a minor sized crater.
I clicked my tongue and began to form a different strategy. Shooting her with half-assed attacks was clearly not working. And now she was also closing in on me with a combination of geppo and soru.
She's trying to get closer, in hope that I am not good at close combat. They might have gotten that intel from my fight with Sabo, it was public after all.
It was also a fight that was over a month ago. Lara helped me in making this weakness a lot smaller than what it was before. I'm still bad at hand to hand combat, I miss my overwhelming strength as Kurama. But I don't need physical strength if my enemy can't get close enough.
She used another soru to get speed and promptly impacted with air that was condensed to such an extent that it became solid. The next instant two compressed air bombs exploded next to her and her body was falling back down.
However, she caught herself and flipped over mid-fall. She then used a few geppo to stabilise herself, only to then evade another three bullet type pebbles from me.
I was just about to continue my attack when I felt over 30 rifles aimed at me. With a glance at them, I formed a wind barrier in the way of their bullets and each got shredded before coming close to me.
Down on the ground and nearby houses were dozens of Marines and agents of the World Government. They were trying to hit me with their weak excuses of rifles and pitiful aim.
A wave of my arm produced a series of air bombs all around me and a snip of my fingers let each of them explode in a white light. The compressed air expanded rapidly and blasted everything away that was too close. Which happened to be the whole block of houses under me.
None of the soldiers should have survived that.
Satisfied with the result, the ground was now nothing more than a wasteland filled with craters, I returned my full attention to the weasel woman. She hasn't done anything to stop me from attacking her subordinates.
Instead, she has taken the time it took me to kill them for a transformation. Apparently, her mask had more meaning than her high skill in weaselling her way around attacks. She was a Zoan user, a weasel to be precise.
I knew that she would now be even more flexible and faster, but didn't see how she will now be able to do more than before. My airwalls were still present and invisible to her. My knives were rotating around me and I was so high in the air that she needs time to reach me.
I quickly learned that a Zoan transformation was definitely a high boost in someone's overall abilities. She was using soru and geppo with such speed that she was close to me within seconds. What took her before half a dozen seconds, now only needed two or three. She was also deflecting my bullets and pebbles. Occasionally even sending them back to me.
She reached my airwalls and was just about to crash into one when she used it as a springboard to launch herself closer to me. Annoyed at the unexpected use of my defence, I threw my arm out at her and generated a wind blast that stopped her advance.
If only briefly.
This time she didn't fall back down but was using a couple of geppo to press on and get through the harsh winds. She was just about to reach me when she stepped inside the high gravity well I had placed around myself. With a grunt, she was pushed down and her body shot downwards.
I shot a bullet at her exposed back, but she twisted out of the way and evaded it. She used her own evasion to send five force blades at me. Two of her fans, two from her legs and another one from her tail. Naturally, all of them vanished shortly after coming into existence. They didn't even come close to reaching me. There is no way that a blade, made out of wind pressure, will hit me.
In return, I showed her how a real tempest kick looks like. I kicked out at her and a massive arc of condensed and sharp air raced at her. I made it purposely wider than normal, which weakens the effect but gives a wider area that gets hit.
With no way to evade this attack she braced herself and stiffened. Her tekkai enforced body got hit by the cutting wind and crashed down to the ground. My arc continued to expand and cut a trench into the town below.
Not wanting to give her time to think I threw a series of heavy bullets down at her. Each weighing more than a ton this time. They would hit in three pairs of threes.
The first three were intercepted by her fans, this time she even had the strength to deflect them. The next three were harder for her to evade and she only managed by using her tail to push herself out of the way with a tail geppo.
The last three impacted only the ground and produced another crater.
I was starting to get annoyed with her and was seriously contemplating of getting myself a Zoan fruit as well. Their stamina is freakish, she should have been exhausted by now. This many soru, geppo and evasions must be taxing. And yet, here she is. Already back in the air and on a zigzag course towards me.
She hasn't learned her lesson and was still sending force blades with her tail at me. Maybe she was trying to distract me? It wasn't working, lowering the air pressure of such attacks was by now taking so little attention from me that it was almost instinctual.
Again she was almost close enough to strike at me when she used another soru to increase her speed. Probably to get past the decrease in speed that will come with my gravitation well. I knew that she would do something, so I prepared accordingly and threw some steel dust at her.
The thousands of tiny metal pellets were acting like a shotgun and hit her mostly unprepared. She must have felt the attack with her Observation Haki. Because the instant the dust left my hand she had her fans in front of her face, her body tensed with a tekkai and her skin coated in Armament Haki.
Her own speed flung her directly into the attack and stopped her movement instantly. She was thrown backwards again. Might have even gone back down to the ground, had I not placed an airwall behind her.
Now she was pressed into the wall and couldn't move until the pressure of my thousand tiny pellets has stopped. A pressure that I was firmly keeping up.
I even was manipulating the pellets with one of my hands, something that gave each attack way more strength.
With my other hand, I took a nail out of my pouch and aimed. A direct attack, aimedat her head, will most likely fail, she can feel that there will be another attack and I don't know how sturdy her fans are. So far they withstood some pretty heavy attacks without looking damaged at all.
No, I aimed at her right leg. If she's slower then I will have an easier time hitting her. I tensed every muscle in my hand and prepared this attack to be at maximum power. The air began to ripple around my right hand and I enhanced the attack with the strongest Armament I could muster.
By far nothing compared to what Lara was able to do but enough to give both the nail and my hand a dark coating. Attacks like this are some of my strongest and take some time to prepare, as well as giving me some strain on both my fingers and stamina.
But the effect makes up for the preparations and slight exhaustion. I let loose and the nail vanished. It punctured right through her knee, through the airwall and into the battered ground. Nothing made it even slow down.
A mighty explosion ruptured the stone underneath us. Rocks and boulders were thrown away from the impact zone. The whole floating island shook from the impact and I'm sure that I shot the nail through the whole island into the sea below.
A true statement to Lara's strong Armament Haki, that she's able to endure that and only get some heavy bruising speaks about her extreme endurance. We haven't tested nails yet, but a normal pebble isn't able to get through her defence.
The weasel woman certainly wasn't able to block that. She made a high pitched squeal of pain, before being pushed down by the pellets that were still pushing into her. The airwall was no longer holding her, being shattered completely by my own attack. She was pressed into the ground and made a smaller crater inside the larger one I had just now produced.
I gestured at the dust cloud and dispelled it.
She was standing, using her tail to steady herself and lessening the pressure on her wounded leg. Now she was panting and looking exhausted. She must have more than a few torn muscles and aching lungs. I mean, I am increasing the strain on her body since the start of the fight.
Not enough to be instantly noticed and definitely nothing that would make her do mistakes. Sabo showed that he had enough awareness of his own body to realise that I was doing something to him. No, this time I was only increasing the pressure her muscles were experiencing with each move.
Her legs must feel like jelly after these many geppos and sorus. And each tekkai was ripping her muscles a tiny bit further apart. Her heart was having a harder time pumping the needed blood through her system and her lungs weren't able to get as much oxygen as needed. Oxygen that I was pushing away from our fighting ground. Only at my height and above me is enough to function normally.
One of these things at once might not have been enough, Zoan user are notoriously resilient, but all of this, over time, and during a straining fight is bound to show results. I just did not think that it would take this much time.
Still, she wasn't dead and that means that I would not come down.
I made a twisting motion with both my hands and began to let the air fly in a circular movement. Two small twisters started to form close to her. Rapidly gaining strength and increasing in size. They picked stones and other rubble up, turning it into projectiles of their own.
Some were flung out of the twisters and away. She evaded what came at her with a still elegant looking Kami-e. Others were flung further away and into another airwall. One that I had placed around our fighting ground. I have felt her sudden desire to escape and prevented her from running.
She has seen it as well and knew what this meant. I had closed ourselves off of the rest of this island. Only her and I were inside and she was trapped. She will have to beat me if she wants to get out.
I made three more twisters and started to move them closer to her. She evaded them by using a one-legged geppo. With only one leg she was way slower than before. Her tail was making up to her lost leg, somewhat.
It was not enough and she had to stop her ascension in order to evade my renewed hail of heavy metal pebbles. Only now they were picked up again by the twisters on the ground and thrown back up.
Manipulating the strong winds was easy for me and each twister acted as a springboard for my pebbles. They were thrown back up, slower, but still fast enough to put pressure on her.
It was only a question of time when one of them would hit her. It turned out that it was one from the twisters. She must have put more focus on those I was throwing directly, they were faster.
The over a ton heavy ball hit her left calf and interrupted her geppo. She made a forced somersault and got hit by two more pebbles, this time from me and into her back.
The heavy impact sent her back down, right into the flight path of one of my twisters. Hundreds of tiny stones, metal pieces and even boulders began to rain on her body. Each with the speed of a truck.
I took care to keep her inside the twister and even moved the remaining four around so that she would if she manages to escape, fly right into another one.
It took some time, but after a minute the twister began to have a red tinge. Soon after a red cloud formed itself and got carried on. I kept the twister strong and only stopped when I was sure that she was no more.
In the literal meaning.
I stopped the twister and the rubble that it had inside fell to the ground. Painted in red blood, the only thing that remained from her. There were no bones or organs, her whole body got grounded to a fine bloody mist.
Strangely enough, her fans survived the attack and weren't looking damaged at all. I think I will take them with me.
Now I allowed myself to relax a little. I concentrated on the auras around me and felt for the crew and Lara. She was still fighting the clown. The rest of us was thrown throughout the whole island. Seems like my fight took longer than first thought.
Yosaku and Jonny are fighting someone who is fairly strong, they are still at the front gate. Their aura is slightly weakened but does not feel fatally wounded. The man they are fighting feels more exhausted than them.
Nojiko and Josef are inside the Tower of Justice. Nojiko herself is standing on the roof with Ussop. Josef is close to Chopper, might be helping him with his wounds.
Noa somehow managed to get himself through the underground passage and is now climbing up to the bridge that leads to the Gate of Justice. He is ahead of Nami and the fat woman that is always drinking. Whereas Robin and Franky are already on the bridge.
And lastly, Fiara, she is using her self-made waver-skates to drive around the town. Flames and explosions are left in her wake.
That means that the Buster Call is almost here, time to prepare a little greeting.