(Eddy POV)
They were getting massacred. Half of them were down already and the other half was only standing due to Muret keeping them in the fight. And that had just reached its limit.
From the beginning, Eddy had taken one look at Ohm and decided that he wasn't going to fight that. His captain may have stood a chance, perhaps even Sarquiss if you squinted a lot, but Eddy, for heck, did not. So, why bother? Better to live and fight again another day. So he busied himself by following Muret around, taking care of anybody stupid enough to target her. Thankfully, Ohm wasn't interested in the doctor going around healing his victims, possibly because, considering how quickly and effortlessly he had put them down again, he probably didn't think it mattered.
When he had some breathing room, Eddy just watched Ohm fight. It wasn't traditional swordsmanship but it was beautiful in its own way. The amount of control required to wield that sword effectively was mind-boggling. But it was possible. Eddy may be seeing something that was the culmination of years of effort but knowing that it was possible made all the difference. What other justification did Ohm's swordsmanship need, other than the sight of Ohm easily fending off both Wyper and Zoro, a man with a bounty higher than Eddy's captain.
Zoro's swordsmanship was very different from Ohm's but also very different from what Eddy was used to seeing. Watching the former pirate hunter pull off moves that Eddy couldn't even dream of attempting right now, forced a bitter smile onto his face. What had he been doing all these years?
But whatever his feelings were on the matter, he wasn't blind enough not to recognise the opportunity presented before him on a silver platter. Like his old teacher had said, "a picture was worth a thousand words." How often would a country bumpkin like him have the opportunity to watch a fight like this? Not very often, that's for sure. So far, the best swordsman Eddy had known had been Sarquiss, but these two made the first mate seem like a bloody amateur.
Thus, Eddy did his best to burn the sight into his brain, every slash, every step, even how and when they breathed. Perhaps it was thanks to this single minded focus, that Eddy saw Ohm's sword hand snap in an unusual way.
Then every alarm was blaring in Eddy's head, some sixth sense screaming at him to turn around. And Eddy listened, wildly swinging his sword at a glint in the periphery of his vision. The screech of metal on metal (well iron cloud) was deafening as Ohm's blade was diverted from its original trajectory. Thus, instead of Muret's head, it ripped a chunk out of Eddy's side.
"Eddy!" Muret screamed.
It hurt. It hurt worse than anything Eddy had ever felt before. Then it got worse as Ohm flicked his sword for a second go, Eddy barely managing to interpose his own blade between himself and death. Thankfully, Ohm couldn't spare anymore time for Eddy, because Zoro had used that brief window to close the gap.
Uncaring for her own modesty, Muret ripped her shirt into strips before bandaging his wound. She smelled nice, he noted.
"We need to get you to a proper sickbay." she said and Eddy nodded in agreement. Proper treatment sounded very attractive at the moment. Plus, he would be of no more use here, but Ohm was in no mood to let any of them get away, and it showed.
“Holy, get them!” he ordered his dog.
If it weren’t for the last handful of Shandians bodily throwing themselves in its way to buy Muret and Eddy time to escape, they wouldn't have made it out of the ruins at all. As it was, they only just made it past the tree line, out of sight of the battle when Holy caught up to them.
This just wasn't fair.
“Stop! Don’t come any closer!” Eddy called out, holding out a hand even as he knew in his heart that it was futile.
Fifty meters.
“Sod off you bloody piss pot excuse for a fleabag!” Anger.
A bound. Thirty meters.
“For the sake of all that’s holy, stay away from us!” Frustration.
Another bound. Five meters.
“Stop! You mangy mutt! Please, I’m begging you. Stop!” Eddy cried, legs trembling, teeth chattering and yet somehow interposing himself between Muret and the beast. And much to Eddy’s surprise, the dog simply…stopped.
Eddy stared in disbelief. What had just happened?
“Holy, roll over.” Muret commanded, stepping out from behind him and towards the beast. Eddy wanted to tell her it was too dangerous but then the dog rolled over onto its back.
“Sit.”
Holy sat.
“Beg.”
Holy begged.
“Crouch.”
Holy crouched.
Muret rattled off several more commands in short order and the giant dog obeyed each and every one. Obviously, she had figured something out, but the blood loss was making it difficult for Eddy to think. Especially once the adrenalin began running out.
Muret briefly closed her eyes in concentration before smiling confidently.
“Knock yourself out.” She finally instructed. Holy did.
Her smile, when she turned back to him, was positively radiant.
“Let’s get you home, Eddy.”
He could only nod. She had never looked as amazing as she did now.
----------------------------------------
(Mani POV)
30. Mani ran. She ignored those around her, ignored the brief looks of disbelief that she would abandon them. What did they matter? They were just fodder. Only fit to be meat shields to buy her time to run.
28. Rather than focus on her, they should focus on the two freaks coming after her. Those two weren’t normal. Too fat, too ugly, too dangerous. When Braham got taken out, Mani had been the first one to react, but her throwing knives had been dodged effortlessly. And when she tugged at her wires to bring the knives bearing down upon the twins from behind? That had utterly failed too. They didn't even look at her knives.
25. Good reflexes they said. Only the priests had mantra, they said. The rest was small fry they said. These two were not small fry.
24. Bullets? Apparently not a problem. Her useless allies couldn’t aim for shit if their lives depended on it. In fact, their lives did depend on it, but that was beside the point. These two were the size of a barn door, each! How did the useless idiots not hit them?
20. Her knives she could understand. Her knives were slower than bullets. No one normal should be able to dodge bullets.
18. The Shandians were beginning to scatter. Their leader was down and they’d been reduced to near half their number already.
13. A larger blast took out a bunch of the remainder. Mani kept running, manic laughter ringing in her ears.
7. She ran before a toxic cloud of gas could envelop her. Others were not as fortunate, collapsing to their knees, gasping for air.
5. She ran out of the clearing and alongside the Milky Road, hoping that it would lead her out of here. Just like what remained of the fodder.
4. Another scream, another down. Burned alive, she could feel the heat. Too close. Way too close.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
3. An axe dial this time, cutting through a man not two meters to her left. Blood went flying everywhere.
2. The frontrunner collapsed, an impact dial caving in his face. The escapees split up, hoping to avoid the duo. One going left, one running back. Mani went right, hoping the hunters went after someone else.
0. They did. She could hear the screams, cut off mid-cry.
Then Mani was alone.
The two brothers hounded her relentlessly, but didn't bother catching her, always just nipping at her heels. This was a sport for them. A game and Mani was the prize. She could tell by how she was still alive while all the men were not.
It was by sheer luck that she ran into the Straw Hats, futilely trying to revive the charred corpse of their chef. Fools that they were, they didn't realise that no human could survive such burns. She would have run past the idiots and left them to their own devices. She really would have loved to do that, but the twins had apparently tired of the chase and blocked her escape routes.
Which left her with no choice but to fight. Mani just hoped her captain or someone strong found them before she died.
“These are Enel’s men, they have mantra and use several dials. Hotori uses axe and flame dials, Kotori uses impact and flavor dials. Don’t underestimate them.” Mani rapidly briefed her two new meat shields, hoping they would last longer than her previous batch. “They took down thirty people between them in ten minutes.”
Thankfully, Hotori & Kotori didn't seem very inclined to attack right away, doing their little song and dance again. The reason, became quite clear soon after.
“How dare you kill our brother Satori!” they laughed, doing a pirouette. “How dare you?”
“What? I don’t know any brother of yours!” Nami retorted, backing away from the corpse. Soon she was backed against the railing, Usopp a step behind her, Mani right beside her.
“Don’t play dumb! You guys killed our brother!”
“I told you, we don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nami denied. Usopp just trembled in fear.
“Satori is one Enel’s four priests. Apparently he was taken out yesterday.” Mani enlightened the Straw Hats, trying to look for an opening. There was no point in running anymore. Even if she hadn't been too tired to run anymore, the brothers were faster than her and would just chase her down. It was better to fight with a high chance of death than to run where death was a certainty.
Then realisation dawned on Nami. “So the priest the guys took out was…”
“See, you do know!” the twins howled.
“Yes, apparently their older brother. From what I hear, they look similar enough. Fat and ugly.” Mani answered before she could stop herself.
“That’s rude!” “We’re not fat! We’re rounded!”
She and her big mouth.
“You must pay!!!”
----------------------------------------
Mani felt like a fool. Was this it? All that terror? Because of this?
In the first few moments, things had looked as if the earlier horror would repeat itself, the two continually on the offensive, easily dancing around their desperate counter attacks.
But after Usopp had declared “I’ve got them figured out now.”, the trio had managed to fight the brothers to a stalemate. How did longnose learn how to use the dials so proficiently? Surely, they had arrived in the White Sea at the same time Mani’s crew had done? That shouldn’t have been nearly enough time.
The balance tipped decisively in their favor when Usopp’s ‘exploding star’ hit Kotori’s palm half-a-second before the gas was released. The resulting explosion staggered Kotori, giving Mani the opening she needed to pin his foot to the deck with a well-placed knife and take him out of the fight.
Additionally, seeing his brother in danger seriously rattled Hotori so much, that he went berserk. However, his attempts to burn them alive in retribution only resulted in a sudden explosion of fog. Mani did hear Nami mumbling something about ‘cold tempo’ and ‘fog tempo’ but whatever it was, it obviously worked, allowing the girl to give Hotori a good smack across the face with her staff. But not before jumping him and wrapping her legs around his neck to wrestle him to the ground.
The final blow was dealt, surprisingly by the arrival of Rivers. The sight of him flying a giant purple bird agitated the two brothers so much that they had a mental breakdown. One bullet and a knife later and the fight was over…permanently.
How…anti-climactic. It was almost as if the two had lost all their brain cells the moment they came within a ten-meter radius of the Straw Hat crew. What had happened to their mantra? Their superhuman reflexes?
How had Kotori not seen Usopp’s attack coming? Why had Hotori allowed himself to be hit? Nami wasn’t that fast. Though, as far as things went, having your face buried between a girl’s legs was probably not a bad way to go, even if said girl was only riding your face to smash your head in.
But what was most incomprehensible to Mani, was that Rivers, meek-but-pretend-he’s-not Rivers was the one to break the twin terrors. Why were they so scared of him? And what was with the bird and its cargo?
----------------------------------------
(Bellamy POV)
I woke up to the sound of thunder.
Everything bloody hurt. Bloody Enel. As I gathered my bearings, the ground suddenly shifted beneath my feet, which if I wasn't mistaken, meant that Enel had just gathered the survivors of his little survival game to the lost city of Shandora. At least that was what he had done in the show. So, unless my presence here had completely derailed everything, that was where I needed to be.
The view along the way wasn't pretty. There were bodies strewn everywhere, many of them charred like overdone toast. Shandians were scattered on the ground, slung over half broken walls and hung from the branches. I was running through a field of carnage.
How many had survived? Six like in the show? More? Less? What about my crew? Should I have left them at the Shandian camp? I barely took down one of the priests with a lot of help and luck. Who had my crew met? Was my crew alright?
They were just anime characters, a voice whispered in my ear. Irrelevant side characters, who few if any even remembered at all. But they were also real people. Each of them had their own story to tell, their own personality, their own goals. And to top it off, they were my crew and my responsibility from the moment on I called myself their captain.
But, if I babied them, how would they ever grow? Sooner or later, we would be in a situation again, where everyone needed to stand on their own. If they were not ready by then, they would be in even greater danger.
Like today…
No, my crew was going to be fine. My crew. Was. Fine.
I just had to take out Enel. I needed to focus on Enel.
Seastone. Wyper had seastone. Enel would likely underestimate me, as he had already taken me out once. He would obviously think, that he could do so again…easily, which meant that there would be no need for him to raise his guard against me. I needed to take the seastone and take out Enel. Simple enough.
As I entered the ruins of Shandora, I could hear voices up ahead. Then a flash of lightning and the rumbling of thunder.
With one final leap, I was in the courtyard and taking it all in.
Robin had apparently gotten fried like in canon, Laki was comforting Aisa. What was the girl even doing here? Zoro was staggering to his feet and missing a sword, while Nami was hiding behind a wall.
And slowly standing up was a bloody and trembling Wyper...
...with Enel lying at his feet.