On the opposite side of the clearing, the air grew heavy. Luffy and Kuro stood frozen, a predator and his prey. Kuro moved like a haunting specter, his form flickering in and out of existence; every strike he unleashed felt like a silent death sentence whispered into the wind.
Luffy didn't move. He watched. He waited.
Suddenly, a silver flash ignited in the air—a blade aimed directly for his eyes. Luffy's head snapped back, the cold steel whistling mere millimeters from his skin. He had escaped, but only barely. Before he could breathe, Kuro vanished again into the tall grass.
The silence was deafening. Luffy narrowed his eyes, tracking the rhythm of the rustling leaves. There. Five clawed blades shimmered in the sunlight, hurtling toward his chest. But this time, the world seemed to slow down. Luffy saw the trajectory. He saw the opening. With a sharp tilt of his body to the left, he pivoted on his heel.
"Gomu Gomu no... Pistol!"
The blow landed with a sickening thud. Luffy's fist buried itself deep into Kuro's ribs. The Captain's body folded; a spray of crimson erupted from his lips as he was sent reeling backward.
"Wh-what... a counter..." Kuro gasped, clutching his side. He looked down at the boy in the straw hat. Luffy wasn't joking anymore. He was calm. He was terrifying. "How dare you... you maggot... how dare you make a mess of me!"
Kuro's pride snapped. He rose slowly, his limbs twitching like a reanimated corpse. A jagged, hollow smile spread across his face.
"With this... I'll kill you. Right now."
He disappeared. Not just fast—he was gone.
Shing. Shing. Shing.
The sound of steel slicing air echoed from every direction. It was an invisible massacre, the terrain around them being shredded by unseen claws. Luffy spun around, eyes darting, but he couldn't pinpoint the source. A sudden chill raced down his spine.
Swoosh.
"Ack!" Luffy grunted as a deep gash opened on his knee. He didn't panic. He planted his feet and focused.
Shing—Hack! Another blade bit into his arm. Blood soaked his sleeve, but Luffy's gaze remained iron-clad. He ignored the pain, staring into the vacuum of the wind, analyzing the flicker of the shadows.
Then, he heard it: the faint whistle of the wind coming from directly behind.
Luffy launched into a backflip, the blades passing inches beneath him. While suspended in mid-air, he threw his arms upward, stretching them toward the sky like coiled springs. Below him, a black flicker materialized exactly where he had stood a second before.
"Gomu Gomu no... ROCKET!"
His stretched limbs snapped back with the force of a massive cannon. Luffy hurtled downward, his head aimed straight for Kuro's midsection.
BAM.
The impact was cataclysmic. Kuro was launched backward, his body tumbling uselessly across the dirt like discarded trash. He slammed into a jagged rock with a final, bone-crushing thud and moved no more.
Silence returned to the shore. Luffy landed softly, exhaling a long, jagged breath. He looked over at the wreckage. Kuro was slumped against the stone, his trademark eyeglasses shattered on the ground and his deadly claws twisted and broken. The "Man of a Thousand Plans" was out cold.
"Shishishishishi..."
Luffy let out a tired, triumphant laugh. He patted the dust from his vest, adjusted his straw hat, and began the long walk back to his crew.
"My win."
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.On the other side, Usopp was desperately clinging to his hit-and-run tactics. He would strike from the shadows, hitting the enemy in an opening before retreating, but then the air was filled with the deafening roar of gunfire directed toward him.
"Ackk!"
A bullet tore through Usopp's leg. He stumbled and fell, his face kissing the ground as the world spun. Move. Move, he hissed to himself, his body trembling as he tried to crawl, using every ounce of his remaining strength to drag himself forward. But the voices of the other pirates were getting closer, their laughter echoing like a death knell.
"Hahaha! You're finally down, you fucking piece of shit! This time you wouldn't be able to run."
The pirate loomed over him, the cold barrel of a gun pointed directly at Usopp's head. "Hahaha! You want to protect that girl, Kaya? I heard she's pretty." The pirate's face twisted into a lewd, sickening grin as he licked his mouth. "Before I kill her, I'll fucking rape her. I'll even choke her to death while I use her mouth. Hahaha! I will make her beg like a fucking dog who wants to be fucked all day. Sadly, you wouldn't be there to see it, you piece of shit."
But before he could fire the gun—shooooosh.
An object like a high-speed bullet shot through the air toward the talkative pirate. In a spray of crimson, his entire head was blown away; only his neck and twitching body remained standing for a horrific second before collapsing. Thankfully, Usopp had passed out from the shock of the shot in his knee and didn't see the gruesome scene.
The shot had come from behind a tree, where Cry stood. She was pointing her fingers, a single water drop dripping from the tip.
She then fired another series of shots towards the pirates who were now charging towards them. Every single one was hit with a headshot; their heads were gone, pulverized by a mere water drop. Cry looked at the last body that fell. She took a deep inhale, and a terrifying force began to pull. All those dead bodies were sucked towards her small mouth, their remains slowly turning little by little until they became salt, entering Cry's small mouth.
She patted her stomach, her expression unreadable. She walked towards the unconscious body of Usopp, reaching down to lift him gently into a princess carry, disappearing into the trees.
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To be continued