– Bellamy –
The moment that Moria went flying, I was sprinting out the door as fast as I could. As a result, by the time his large derriere crashed through the doorway, I was already waiting for him with one of my legs drawn back. And being the Spring Human that I was, I could draw my leg back quite a bit.
"SPRING HAMMER!!!" I cheerfully called out as my boot-clad foot smashed into its mark precisely on target, launching the former Warlord back into the sky and away from the town. After all, I did feel slightly bad for being, at least partially, responsible for the damage done to the saloon and I didn't want to damage the rest of town. Moving the battle away from potential sources of collateral damage was the least I could do and it wasn't as if it was all that hard either. I could shatter rocks with my kicks, as many unfortunate boulders had found out. Booting a large blob of blubber a hundred yards or so down the road was quite simple in comparison.
Of course, a longer flight distance was usually accompanied by a longer flight time, which meant that even a veteran as rusty as Moria could regain his balance and land on his two feet. As such, once I caught up to him I found him ready and raring to go.
"DOPPELMAN!!" Moria screeched, summoning his shadowy clone to his side. In response to which, I pulled out my favorite dial and blasted the construct apart.
"Reject!"
Drops of shadow splashed everywhere, as a pathway to Moria was opened up. Taking only a split second to take in Moria's shocked expression, I let my springs propel me through that hole in Moria's defense, swinging my right first to deliver a haymaker into the side of his face. Or I would have, if a small, bouncy sphere hadn't interposed itself between my fist and its target. Of course, no matter how bouncy, a single one of Moria's little shadow balls wasn't nearly enough to stop me, but that hadn't been its purpose. It had only ever been intended to slow me down momentarily, buying enough time for one ball to become two, then four, then more until a veritable wall appeared between Moria and I. It was an effective defense against my reject dial, as the damage would be limited to a single sphere and Moria wasn't going let me punch my way through unopposed.
"Brick Bat!"
Hundreds of spheres turned into hundreds of bats, the swarm attempting to overwhelm me with pure force of numbers. Sharp teeth sought to rend and tear my flesh apart, but found only unyielding steel and that was if they managed to find purchase in the first place. Most of them were knocked out of the sky by a copious use of my new Spring Gatling, my arms effectively functioning like anti-air turrets.
By the time Moria called the assault off, I had to admit that unlike the opening exchanges our second clash had not gone in my favor. Sure, I had come out of it more or less unscathed, but at the same time I had not been able to land a proper blow on the former Warlord. And this realization allowed Moria to recover his inner equilibrium again, his entire posture relaxing as a confident smirk started to creep its way back onto his face.
"Kishishishishi! Do you see now, you arrogant child?" he cackled, wiping a smudge of dirt off his cheek. "Do you see how useless you are? What chance did you think you had against Doflamingo, when you can't even lay a finger on me?"
My answer was to hop away and create some more distance between myself and the re-forming Doppelman. Predictably, the shadowy clone chased after me, trying to either grab me or crush me beneath its body, but failing to do either thanks to my superior speed. And once I'd judged that the time was right, I put that advantage to good use by bodily launching myself at an unguarded Moria like a speeding bullet.
"Spring Snipe!"
Annoyingly, it wasn't going to be that easy. After all, he was a veteran and unless I was a speed demon like Kizaru, Moria was going to see me coming and react accordingly.
"Kishishishi. Kagemusha." my opponent intoned, casually activating the most useful technique he had to switch places with his doppelganger. Against most people, this was a good move to make. However, this time it would turn out to be a mistake for two reasons. First of all, he didn't have the element of surprise. I knew he had this move up his sleeve and as such, planning for the eventuality wasn't very difficult. And second, I was a Spring Human.
A quick flip saw the soles of my boots slamming into the unprepared Doppelman. Under normal circumstances the clone would have grabbed me, unperturbed by the severe deformation I had forced upon its abdomen, and proceeded to immobilize me. Soon after, its master would have proceeded to steal my shadow. Interesting tidbit about springs. Assuming no loss of energy due to friction or heat, a spring will bounce back with the same force it was compressed by. Add in the trampoline effect from Doppelman's stomach and my ability to freely manipulate the strength and size of my springs, and I was reflected away - for lack of a better word - at double my initial velocity.
"Grrrkh?"
As a result, Moria had barely begun to try and leave the battlefield when I kneed him in his spine, bringing him to the ground. From there, I went ham. Deathknock, gatling, simple slapping…I laid into him right and proper before my nascent haki nudged me to the side and away from a sudden spike piercing through the space I had just vacated.
"Ouch! That hurt, you little brat!"
"And you said I was struggling to touch you. Honestly, it wasn't even that hard."
"You…you…how dare you laugh at me!!!" Moria screamed, his furious eyes seeping into red as the tiny arteries began bursting from his rising blood pressure. He didn't seem to notice, wholly focused on my person and the grievous harm he wanted to inflict upon it. "Doppelman…Twin Edition!"
"Well, that's new." I commented to no one in particular, as two clones rose out of the ground. However, before I could ruminate on just when the former Warlord had picked up this little trick, my (now) three Moria-shaped opponents pulled out their giant scissor blades as one and charged in my direction. Within moments, I was desperately pushing both my kami-e and my haki to their utter limits, trying to weave and dodge the absolute storm of blades trying to separate either my head or my shadow from my body.
One thing you should understand was that controlling anything substantial, which was separate from your main body, required an insane amount of focus. To give you a frame of reference, despite unlocking my haki, manipulating a couple of separate springs took nearly everything I had and that wasn't even accounting for the subsequent headache that inevitably followed. Hence, it wasn't a coincidence, that the vast majority of those who performed such feats were veterans of the Grand Line if not the New World, people such as Buggy the Clown with his many floating body parts or Doflamingo and his string clone.
Even logia weren't an exception to this rule as inexperienced (and haki-less) users often failed to take full advantage of their abilities, being often limited to their invulnerability and the production of their respective elements. Caribou and Caesar were obvious examples of this.
Which led to the logical conclusion that Moria was actually very skilled in the usage of his observation haki, only that it was completely tied up in controlling his many, many shadows. As such, he simply didn't have the capacity left to use its precognitive abilities, which in turn probably explained why Luffy had been able to hit him in the first place. In effect, he was an exhibition case of someone taking his inward focus too far. Though perhaps he'd had no other choice if he wanted to use his Shadow Asgard ability without ripping himself apart.
However, in exchange for giving up on this external aspect of haki usage, Moria had been able to achieve near perfect coordination between his three bodies. And stuck between the three as I was, I was getting a first class demonstration of just how effective such masterful teamwork could be. By this point, I had abandoned the attempt to avoid everything entirely and had focused on keeping my shadow safe. This meant dodging what I could and tanking what I could not. Using tekkai to harden my hands certainly helped, but the circumstances forced me to use it sparingly, not least because I could not afford to become a sitting duck.
"Kishishishishi! Surrender your shadow, Springtrap!" Moria gleefully demanded, as I contorted my shadow out of the way of one of his many slashes.
"Seriously, your mood swings are ridiculous!" I shot back, deflecting two more blades away from my shadow and into a Doppelman's neck. Sadly, the head regrew not long after. At this rate, I was going to exhaust myself before he did, purely because the bastard kept switching bodies whenever he was about to be overwhelmed. I needed to break this deadlock I had inadvertently found myself in and the first step in doing so would have to be getting out of Moria's encirclement. Otherwise, I would remain stuck playing his game instead of using my speed and mobility to my advantage.
Abandoning defense, I pushed Moria back with a flurry of attacks before my spring sweep bisected his clones, momentarily incapacitating them and forcing them to regenerate. Then I turned around, leaping through the opening and into the wide open space beyond. I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for Moria's blade flashing out and taking my arm off at the shoulder.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
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– Hewitt –
For someone who claimed to have hundreds of pounds in wild animal muscle, Absalom didn't hit that hard. Ross used to hit Hewitt harder during their spars and that had been before his rival unlocked his bloody armament. Now, whenever Hewitt let one of his punches through, it felt like he was being hit by an artillery round. Which…Hewitt only knew, because that was what Laki had effectively turned her rifle into and his tekkai had served as a convenient target during a team exercise. Hewitt had also sworn to never get on her bad side, after Laki revealed that she only ever used her rifle at half-power unless she had no other choice because of maintenance and longevity issues.
So, all in all, Hewitt didn't have any trouble keeping up with his chimera-like opponent. In fact, once he'd analyzed his basic combat patterns, Hewitt had been this close to begin pummeling Absalom into submission, only for the slippery bastard to turn invisible of all things.
Things had evened out afterwards, as Hewitt was still able to keep up with the invisible man, thanks to his instincts which had been honed by the months of blindfolded haki training Hewitt had undergone. Unfortunately, that was all he had to go on, because Absalom didn't have the common decency to make any noise, prowling around like a feline predator. By this point, Hewitt was just thankful that the man hadn't gone after Muret, who was currently busy trying to pry her opponent's armor open as if it were a can of tuna. So far, she'd succeeded in removing their helmets, but was finding the remaining pieces to be a lot trickier to take off. Especially if the wearer was actively trying to relieve you of your head.
"You're open!"
"Tekkai!"
Like how Absalom was attempting to do, launching a kick at Hewitt's neck. Had he tried this a few months prior, it may have broken it. But as he didn't, Absalom found out the hard way what it felt like to kick a pillar of steel. A shudder went through the man's entire body, as the impact made its way from the shins to the ends of his hair, the pain effectively freezing him in place. It was all the opening Hewitt needed, the cook quickly releasing his tekkai and grabbing the offending leg floating by his neck.
"Today on the menu, we have gorilla and elephant steak with a dash of lion!" Hewitt grinned, tightening his iron grip and heaving with all his considerable might. "It's delicious but it requires some tenderizing first!"
"Wait! Wait wait waitwaitwait…gaakh!" Absalom let out before being slammed face first into the ground, the wooden tiling cracking from the impact. Hewitt didn't let up, smashing his opponent bodily and repeatedly into the increasing ruined floor. He only stopped when he had to guard himself from Absalom's bazooka rounds, though by that time Absalom's invisibility had worn off to reveal a very beaten up man.
"Do you give up?" Hewit asked, but Absalom didn't answer, too busy panting and glaring.
"..."
"I can keep going, you know." Pulling out his meat cleavers, Hewitt gave the downed man a meaningful look. "I really should have butchered the meat before tenderizing it but better late than never, right?"
A couple of clangs of metal on wood signaled that Muret had managed to work her way through the zombies' armor, somehow having used her scalpels to make surgical incisions at the links and rivets holding the metal plates together. Though, considering that she regularly pierced people's tekkai during training, maybe Hewitt should have seen this coming.
Perhaps it was the sight of their doctor…dismantling the zombies limb for limb, but Absalom nervously swallowed before surrendering. Dr. Hogback did the same moments later.
It was only then that Hewitt allowed himself to relax. He'd won and not just against anyone, but against a former officer of a Warlord's crew. One who had been surgically enhanced to have far greater potential than a baseline human such as Hewitt and one who even possessed the power of a devil fruit. And he'd done it without either of those advantages.
He still wasn't happy about what had happened on Tequila Wolf and he didn't think that he ever would be. He still wanted a devil fruit and haki and rokushiki mastery and a host of other things he did not yet have. And he wanted a dream he could pursue, one befitting the cook of an Emperor's crew. A dream like Eddy's dream of seeing what lay at the end of swordsmanship or to a lesser extent, Rivers' desire to visit every corner of the world in order to try out every snack in existence.
However, despite all that and everything which was missing from his life, Hewitt decided that he could allow himself to be happy with himself today. Just for today.
As the midday sun shone through a hole in the ceiling they'd inadvertently made, Hewitt could feel some of the dark clouds lifting from his soul, through which a foreign…something entered and made itself home. Letting out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding, Hewitt closed his eyes before leaning his head back to enjoy the warm sunlight caressing his face and the songbirds merrily singing a dozen kilometers away.
"Oh…so that's what it feels like."
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– Bellamy –
My arm was missing. Well, not missing per say. I knew precisely where it was, as the metal appendage was just lying there next to my feet. Which was disorientating by the way. And potentially concerning. Oddly, no blood though. Or pain for that matter. I should be more concerned, shouldn't I?
"Kishishishi! I've won, Springtrap!" Moria cackled, his clones silently joining him. "Your shadow is mine!"
Seemed like he hadn't used armament in that blow, so that was something at least. But even then, if my haki hadn't screamed at me just then to twist out of the way, Moria would have beheaded me instead of just taking my arm.
My balance was off, though that should have been expected. Thankfully, it wasn't a crippling injury in that I wasn't going to stumble and fall over immediately. Haki helped a lot in that regard, shoring up my vestibular system to help my brain adjust to this new state of things as fast as possible. Moria himself wasted my most vulnerable moments, just gloating. Then again, he wasn't looking too hot either. His face was a broken mess and half his teeth were missing, not to mention the mass of ugly bruises peeking through the tears in his clothing.
"It's not over yet." I ground out, lowering my stance.
"Oh, you still wish to fight? Give up, I cut your arm off." he smirked, "You no longer stand a chance."
"T'is only a flesh wound." I replied. I wasn't sure why I was feeling as fine as I was, but regardless of whether it was the adrenalin or a side effect of my coil chassis, I probably wanted to finish this quickly and go find Muret. "Spring…Hopper."
What did one do if your target had three bodies he kept switching in between to avoid suffering too much damage? The answer was simple. You hit all three at once, or as close to it for the difference not to matter. The original Bellamy's version had been fast enough to chain several jumps together per second. With geppou, coil chassis and my generally greater leg strength, I was exponentially faster. And with my observation haki active, I could actually see where I was going and hit my target.
Driving all the air out of Moria's body with a spring deathknock was just the start. Jumping in and out dozens upon dozens of times every second, I riddled Moria and his clones with thousands of punches by driving my spring gatling into their bodies every time. I rattled their brains, fractured Moria's bones and liquified his clones, pouring everything I had into this final gambit. Caught off guard by my speed, Moria didn't even get to scream as keeping air inside his lungs became a luxury. When I showed no signs of slowing down, getting faster with every jump instead, Moria eventually dismissed his shadows entirely and hunkered down to weather storm with black armament covering his body.
"You can't keep this up, Springtrap!" he coughed out, bloody spittle dripping onto the ground.
"I won't have to!" I roared back, leaping higher than I'd ever done, before shooting earthwards like a rocket, my one remaining arm drawn back to deliver one hell of a whammy. The ground shattered as my fist collided with his curved spine, my metallic skin meeting his black sheen. Trees were uprooted from the resulting winds, even as I willed my fist to break through his outer carapace.
I wasn't losing this fight. I refused to lose this fight! And I was ending it!
Right!
HERE!
Black flashed and black shattered, as my darkened fist found purchase in Moria's fleshy body and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. Like flecks of black light, the remnants of his haki dispersed like they had never existed in the first place. I sat upon Moria's back for a while, panting as if I wasn't completely metal right now, marvelling at the ebony sheen covering my right fist.
"Bellamy!" a voice called out and when I looked up, it was to the sight of Hewitt and Muret running in my direction.