– Bellamy –

But…even if nothing would change about the path I was going to follow in pursuit of my dream, regardless of the outcome… or perhaps precisely because it would change nothing… investigating where I stood today wouldn't hurt, now would it?

"Gear Second!" "Coil Chassis."

This wouldn't hurt at all.

"Spring Deathknock!" "Jet Pistol!"

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Fighting Luffy could mean two vastly different things depending on the circumstances. On the one hand, Luffy could be having the time of his life running around and seemingly goofing his way to victory, such as he did for much of the tournament in Dressrosa. In this case, the difference in strength usually favoured Luffy quite heavily, such that the risk of significant personal loss was so small so as to be negligible. And if it was negligible Luffy didn't have to care about it, meaning that he could seemingly play around with no worries.

"Gum gum jet spear!" Stubborn person that I was, my response to Luffy's attempt to plant his feet into my gut had been to dig in my own heels and meet him head-on. Figuratively speaking.

"Spring Shield!" And according to the laws of physics, if a rubber object met an unmovable wall, said object bounced off. Usually at the same angle of incidence relative to the orthogonal. Or in layman's terms, it was a simple matter to change Luffy's direction of motion…upwards. "Bye bye, Luffy."

"Whoa! I'm flying."

But should his opponent be a danger to the things Luffy held dear, then it was like a switch was flipped inside his mind. Gone was the happy-go-lucky goofball, only to be replaced by a deadly serious pirate who knew no compromise. While exceptions did exist – for how could they not – such cases tended to involve either an insult to his beliefs or a threat to the safety and well-being of his friends. A prominent example being his fight with Lucci on Enies Lobbie.

"Oh well, if I'm already up here… gum gum axe." The triple combination of gravity, Luffy's rubber tension and the downward pull of his well-trained leg muscles granted his heel a terrifying amount of momentum. The flooring tiles never stood a chance.

"Just so you know, I'm not paying for a new floor." I told him, my face set in a deadpan expression and one foot trapping his beneath my soles. Luffy didn't seem too bothered, choosing to pout instead of trying to escape.

"You moved, Bellamy. That's cheating."

"What in the world made you think I was going to stand around and let that hit me? That ain't normal behavior. You should know this."

"But that's what Gramps did all the time. As did most of those I've used this on."

"I hate to break it to you buddy, but your gramps isn't normal."

Now, our current situation clearly belonged to the former. However, did it mean that just because Luffy wasn't risking life and limb, he was holding back? No, not really. While he lacked the destructive potential that rage and desperation could provide, Luffy's more joyful approach did have its own benefits. One of the more annoying being his creativity running amok, almost like a child which had consumed a bucketload of candy.

"Spring Hammer!" Held in place as he was by my boot, Luffy had no chance to dodge my own kick to his backside. Not that he had any intention to.

"Gum gum Balloon."

"Luffy! Stop bouncing all over the place and get back here!"

"Okay." Luffy grinned, changing track as easily as he would eat a boar whole. "Gear Third."

"What in the world are you doing…?"

"Gum gum… giant chubby dive." And as I watched Luffy's humongously inflated body falling down towards me, I could think of only one thing to say.

"Oh, shit."

Seen in that light, Luffy's devil fruit awakening had, in essence, merged these two states into one to get the best of both worlds. Those being an unerring fixation on beating his enemy into the ground, coupled with the imaginative power of a toddler. To my knowledge, Kaido had been the first unfortunate soul in the original timeline, who had the displeasure of experiencing what a single-minded focus could do if it regained access to Luffy's absurd creativity.

"Huh? Where'd you go?"

"I'm underneath you, you idiot. Now gerroff me!" Heaving for all I was worth, I launched his giant body back into the sky, helped along by the restorative properties of a flatly compressed spring. "Why are you so bloody heavy all of a sudden? It doesn't make sense!"

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" With the gathered air escaping through the small opening that was Luffy's mouth, his body followed the path that inflated balloons usually did when you deflated them. A random one, that by some coincidence brought his rear end on a direct collision course with my person.

"…not sure what I was expecting to happen, but it certainly wasn't this." I muttered before stepping aside and letting the rubber man whizz past me into a wall.

Thankfully, it didn't look like that fact was going to be changing today, which was a big relief to be honest. After all, I was having a hard enough time already without reality deciding to flip itself on its head. I wasn't sure what I would have done if he'd reached awakening already.

Regardless, Rayleigh's training had obviously born fruit even if most of them weren't quite ripe yet. True, Luffy's observation was ordinary, his armament average and his conqueror's had no effect on me whatsoever. However, what he had learned was more than enough to make the task of landing a proper hit on the guy an arduous one. Not an impossible one though.

"Gear Second: Jet Gatling!"

"Kami-e. Gotta try harder, Luffy."

Reach was one aspect in which I was unlikely to ever truly match Luffy. Undoubtedly, it was a great advantage and Luffy used it well, his punches trying to herd me into a killing zone. However, a longer reach necessitated longer preparatory times and that meant openings I could exploit. Contrary to what it may look like to others, Luffy's jet gatling was nothing but a sequence of rapid punches coming at me one after the other. Obviously, this also meant that the number of fists I had to dodge at any one time was limited as well.

"Gum gum whip!"

"Too slow~"

And if range and raw power were his strong suits, speed was mine. After crouching to avoid the leg whistling past my hair, I responded by activating my Thunder Cloak, a technique which had originally started out as a collaboration move between Aisa and myself.

"That looks so cool!" Luffy gushed, starry-eyed. "Join my crew."

"…did you seriously just ask me that?"

"Duh. Of course I did."

A couple of feints followed by a Spring Ricochet distracted him enough, for me to deck him with a Deathknock and send him flying. It didn't do much more than that though, as by an unspoken agreement, both Luffy and I had been refraining from the use of armament. Naturally, this elongated the spar tremendously, because by virtue of our respective devil fruits both of us were practically immune to blunt force trauma.

"Done with the warmup now, Luffy?"

"Yeah. You're strong alright." He nodded, grinning with excitement. "I feel like I could go all out."

"Then what are you waiting for?" I asked, cracking my neck. I didn't have to wait for long. "Let's kick this up a notch."

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– Izou –

"Red Hawk!" "Raiken!"

The crowd roared again as the combatants clashed in a dizzying display of sparks and light. That most of the audience wasn't capable of following their movements any longer had obviously done little to dampen the Kuja's enthusiasm. Even the vaunted Snake Princess seemed suitably impressed, though most of her emotional reserves were being rapidly drained every time Luffy allowed a lightning coated fist to slip through his defences. Of course, the assembled Kuja seemed insensitive to their empress' plight and cheered all the louder.

Was this what being a proud parent felt like?

"Geez, you've raised a monster."

"I could say the same to you, Ace."

"Can't really take credit to be honest. That's mostly old man Rayleigh's doing." Ace replied before looking askance at his brother-in-arms. "Can you stop looking so inordinately proud of yourself?"

"Wouldn't you in my shoes? Between the Dark King and my humble self, I clearly have the superior student."

"Yeah… that's real humble alright. Why not outright claim to be the better teacher while you're at it?"

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Because that wouldn't be humble anymore. I thought that was obvious."

"Prat."

"Please, I'm a gentlemanly prat."

The exchange down below ended with Luffy and Bellamy skidding to a stop on opposite ends of the arena, their wide smiles unable to hide their exhilaration from the world. Then they were off again, fists being parried, knees being deflected and the occasional headbutt thrown in for good measure. It was a brawl, pure and simple. Yet, despite neither having studied a structured martial art, it was common wisdom that at a high enough level, all things coalesced into one. Izou would be the first to admit that he found their movements, unrestricted by predefined forms and standards, to have some artistic quality to it. Beautiful art at that.

Once more the two broke apart, Luffy clutching his dislocated shoulder where he'd tanked a Spring Gatling, whereas Bellamy had a hole in his stomach, where Luffy's haki infused Jet Stamp had ripped through his Coil Chassis. Scattered all over the place were tiny springs that should have filled the now empty space, flopping about like little worms.

"That looks serious. Shouldn't we call a doctor or something?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? Surprised me the heck too the first time I saw it." Izou nodded as the hole began filling itself, the component springs flying back into position one after the other. "Damn near thought I'd killed him when I shot him through the heart."

"What in the world…since when was the Spring-Spring fruit a logia?"

"While I do think that that was what Bellamy was going for, it's really not." Izou explained to his gob smacked crew mate. "Despite practicing detaching and re-attaching pieces of himself for months, the extent he can handle is quite limited. Not to mention that it's a much slower process in comparison to the real thing. He'll probably need another year to master it properly."

As fascinated as he seemed to be by Bellamy's new trick, Luffy hadn't been idly standing around like an idiot either. To a rubber man like him, fixing a dislocated shoulder was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, which he proved by pulling on his arm and snapping the joint back into place. And with his shoulder taken care of, there was nothing stopping him from pouncing upon his distracted opponent.

"Well, it's mighty impressive, nonetheless."

"That it is… even if Bellamy didn't need to showcase that here."

"What do you mean?"

"Bellamy's coil chassis isn't fragile enough for an attack of that caliber to inflict so much damage unless he allows it to. That reassembling thing he's doing was designed to let him shrug off one of Kaido's blows – just one mind you – and take advantage of the resulting surprise to finish the fight. Though that down there? That's Bellamy showing off."

With Bellamy still in recovery mode, Luffy quickly pushed his peer onto his backfoot, forcing him to yield ground little by little in the face of his onslaught. Izou, and the audience for that matter, were treated to a full display of the capabilities of the Gum-Gum fruit. From giant fists seeking to squish Bellamy against the ground to steaming fists chasing after openings like one of Izou's homing bullets, it seemed as if Bellamy could only painstakingly parry and delay the inevitable.

"I've got you now, Bellam… WHOA!!!"

At least, it had seemed inevitable until Luffy suddenly broke off what had most likely been intended to be the final attack, only to begin backpedaling for all he was worth.

He didn't merely stop either, going ramrod straight just in time for the metaphorical jaws of death to clamp shut right before his wide-open eyes.

"Did he do what I think he did?"

"Probably."

"In that case, that was pretty clever of him. Didn't know he could do that."

"I'd be surprised if you did. It's a pretty new development."

The key detail Luffy had missed was that not all of Bellamy's component parts had returned to him. A few springs had remained where they'd fallen, innocuously lying in between Bellamy and his attacker. Silently waiting for the right moment and when that moment came, they'd struck without warning. What Izou knew and Luffy had not, was that Bellamy maintained control over his springs even when they were separated from his main body. And if he could control them, he could shape them at will.

It opened up all sorts of possibilities for traps and the like. Such as the two newly transformed leaf springs snapping into an upright position and almost trapping Luffy in between them. Covered in armament haki as they were, Ace's brother could count himself lucky that his observation had sounded the alarm.

"Ack! Why's it so dark all of a sudden?"

Though, he probably needed more practice, as while he'd avoided the first trap, he failed to notice the second before it was too late. Six flattened leaf springs could quite easily be combined into a large, hollow metal cube, with their victim stuck in the middle. Oh, Straw Hat certainly tried his best to punch his way out, but his initial attempts barely put a dent in the thick metal. Then, to make matters worse, the cube slowly began to shrink.

"How do you like this, Luffy? It's a little trick I picked up from a guy named Mad Treasure."

"Gum gum jet gatling! I'm going to get out soon and then I'm going to kick your butt! Just you wait."

"I've got no doubt that you will try. The question is though, will you have enough time?"

"Gear third: elephant gun!"

That last one did dent the cube a little, encouraging Luffy to do it again and again. And again. Slowly wrenching his prison open by pure force. For his part, Bellamy didn't seem all too bothered at his creation coming apart at the seams with the screeching and groaning of metal. Rather, he was much more focused on bouncing all over the place, slowly at first but with ever increasing velocity, speeding up with every jump he was chaining together.

"Oh great, the box is gone. Now where's Bellam-Eh?"

It also stood to reason that if Bellamy could create a cube out of his springs, he could dismiss it just as easily. Which he did at precisely the right moment, timing the dissipation perfectly with his own passage through the space the metal barrier had occupied only moments prior. All, with one ebony fist drawn back, loaded and ready to fire.

"Spring Hopper – Deathknock!"

For some reason that Izou couldn't pin down, seeing Luffy get punched in the face by Bellamy's modified Spring Hopper seemed oddly poetic. Though for the life of him, he wouldn't be able to tell you why.

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The Golden Lion Roars Once More

Welcome to Marineford Daily News, your only source of accurate and unbiased truth.

The more experienced and worldly amongst us may yet remember that Gold Roger wasn't alone in causing death and destruction everywhere he went. Some of his vile compatriots are well known to you, monsters such as Kaido, Big Mom or the heroically slain Whitebeard. (That we mean heroic on the part of our brave marines probably need not be said but we say it anyway to make sure we're all aware of the right truth.)

Others are more obscure, and with good reason. Unlike the four emperors who remain at large to wreak havoc in the New World, one particular individual had been locked away in Impel Down and the key thrown into the deepest pits of the ocean. There he'd remained crippled and forgotten by the world… or so we'd thought.

Somehow, at some unspecified time, Shiki the Golden Lion escaped his rightful imprisonment. As the marine speaker revealed, the navy had attempted to track him down right away but their efforts had sadly not been crowned with success. The Golden Lion went to ground and was not seen again.

Until now.

After ripping a few islands out of the East Blue, latest reports place the legendary pirate on a straight course for the New World. Nothing in his path is safe, for unlike our tax collectors who take anything that isn't nailed down or the kitchen sink… Shiki takes everything. Including anything that is nailed down and the kitchen sink. Plus the house and island attached to said kitchen sink.

Whether or not his arrival will herald greater chaos in the struggle for Whitebeard's empty throne or the fortunate event of pirates slaughtering each other will have to be seen. But there's no question that we live in an age where the horrors of the past (such as Blackbeard's crew) walk amongst us once again.

This was Marineford Daily reporting.

And as always, please follow us to never miss an update on the best news reports this side of the Red Line.