Things, Mez Bubo thought bleakly, could be going a lot better.
Not for the first time, he regretted his Devil Fruit. Sure, the Mist-Mist Fruit was great if you needed to blanket an area in toxins, but he couldn't do that right now, because some of these idiots would die, and if that happened Grigori would probably rip his head off. Even a precise attack was risky, with what Kid was throwing around.
"Magnetar!"
Bubo dodged to the left, avoiding the rapidly moving tornado of metal - metal the bastard had pulled from under the fucking cobblestones, the prick- by inches, feeling the wind pull at his longcoat. Too close, and Kid's attention wasn't even on him.
"Shambles!"
The universe blurred for a moment, and Bubo found himself on the edge of a roof. He stepped back hurriedly, glaring over his shoulder at the Surgeon of Death, who already looked fit to drop.
Ah, hell, at least it gave him a good view of the fight below.
It really wasn't going well.
Kid's opening move after Grigori had punched him into a wall had been to rip enough metal to arm a medium-sized army out of the ground, and throw it basically everywhere. He could just about make out the cyborg's form behind the rotating cylinder of metallic scales that surrounded him. And a half-dozen more man-sized storms were spaced around him, tearing up the earth as they chased down others.
One nearly hit Grigori, and the Nightmare captain blinked out of existence for a moment, before reappearing directly above it with a lightning-covered scythe raised. Bubo covered his eyes to avoid being blinded by the flash, but opened them again the moment it'd passed to see a pile of inert, half-molten metal, and a very annoyed-looking Grigori sprinting for Kid.
Kid threw a minotaur at him.
Bubo winced as the minotaur smacked Grigori right off his feet, sending them both tumbling to the ground in a heap. Diceros Keita looked like he'd been run through a blender, the Cape Buffalo Zoan seemingly content to lay there and bleed quietly. Grigori got to his feet, snapping a dislocated or broken arm back into place with a crack and a snarl, only to blink out of reality again as a massive metal fist cratered the ground where he'd been standing.
Bubo really wanted to know how the hell he did that. Biology only explained so much, and if there was some way to freaking teleport without a Devil Fruit he probably would've heard about it before.
The half-molten remnants of the tornado Grigori had destroyed began to move again, and Bubo sighed.
Of course.
His eyes flicked to the warehouse. Good. Macdonald and that freaky masked fucker had gotten the kids out, at least, he could see the boxer leading the last of them through a rear entrance -
And Kid was throwing one of the metal storms at them. Well, it was nice while things lasted.
"FOR FRIENDSHIP!"
What the actual fuck?
Vulkan Lives leapt out of freaking nowhere, and blocked the storm. With his torso. Blood went absolutely everywhere, but the insane black giant did not falter, massively muscled arms reaching out and grasping tight.
There was a cracking noise, and the storm subsided, inert metal clattering to the ground. There was a moment of utter silence, as Bubo contemplated the fact that he probably had just seen someone hug a magnetic field to death.
"Mez," a voice said to his side, as the chaos resumed, a metal-festooned Lives being hurled across town with an irate gesture from Kid and the remaining five storms grinding back into motion. One was restrained for an instant as golems rose out of the earth to block it, that instant long enough for Yeager's personal golem, Manson Havran, and Lytros Jeremiah to fall back. Another shattered on the implacable stone of Makaik Kammak's walls, the barriers folding around the yellow-armored captain and forming an impenetrable dome as the innumerable tiny blades buried it. Two more circled close, diverting a steam dragon from Wellington and a bear made out of ink by that ex-slave Baskonn to crash into each other.
The last configured itself into a tentacle, grabbed Tyson Crockett by his cone-shaped head, and hurled the man face-first into a building, which split in half.
"Mez."
Bubo blinked, and glanced at Siegfried. The albino ex-Krieger glared at him. "Good. Can your Devil Fruit produce something that explodes when heated?"
Bubo paused. "Maybe. Got a plan?"
The ex-Krieger smiled thinly. "Always." He paused as Law Shambles'd Keita's unconscious form onto the back of their little safe haven, joining some of the others who had been less lucky or who hadn't had the right powers to try to take on what Kid was dishing out. Which was a good third of the captains. "Right. Trafalgar, can you get Yeager, Manson and Helios here?"
"One...moment…" Law gritted out, before falling to one knee, leaning on his scabbarded sword for support. The other two captains appeared with a crack of displaced air (and displaced roof tiles, Bubo noticed), and Law collapsed.
Shit. He was the only doctor who wasn't currently - Bubo checked on the ongoing fight - throwing lightning bolts at a cocoon of metal with one hand while drinking from a bottle of something he could smell the spirits off of from here with the other.
"Well, that is inconvenient," Siegfried said in a tone like someone had brewed his tea improperly. "Manson, kindly see to the wounded."
"You do realize that I am not a doctor?" the other albino protested.
"Yes. Your Devil Fruit lets you change emotions, yes? Give them rage and throw them at Kid."
"...Alright, I'll get on that."
"Bubo, how much range can you manage?"
Bubo cocked his head. "Not much. Not if you want this contained."
"Hm. It will have to be enough." The Krieger pulled a carbine from under his greatcoat, cocking the bolt with practiced ease. "As much explosive mist as you can manage, as close to him as possible. Helios, spark it. The berserkers will cover you. Yeager, pull them free before Helios lights it."
And just like that, they had a plan. Bubo leapt off the rooftop, tucking and rolling, and even as he closed the distance he was already sorting through what he could do. The Mist-Mist Fruit was useful in the right hands, but he was still limited in the fact that it still had to be mist, and what…
Ah. Petroleum, gassified, droplets suspended. A fuel-air explosive, to crack Kid's shell.
But he still had to get close enough to gather it, and whirling metal was closing in.
Howls of rage sounded behind him, then beside him, and then ahead as the berserkers charged in. Keita, Elric, Carver, Bubbles, John, Attila, Thorakis, and Paulie. A minotaur, a charging bull, a wraith in bandages, an armored colossus, a laughing madman, a leaping centaur, a knight, and one very angry beard met the literal meat grinder, and forced it back for the briefest of moments, death missing Bubo by inches as an endless number of whirling blades found their homes in the flesh of others.
Forty meters. Grigori fell back, a last bolt of lightning splashing ineffectually on another storm.
Thirty. Another storm withdrew from Kammak's bunker, and whipped out at Bubo, only to stutter as the masked freak intervened, taking a tendril through the chest and laughing.
Twenty. Another storm blew through the last ranks of Yeager's golems, but Macdonald of all people stepped up, a blast from some black disc knocking it aside.
Ten. Bubo threw his hands up at the shell of whirling scales that surrounded Kid, and spewed forth vapor, a choking fog of it that shrouded the man's position in seconds. Then he threw himself back, feeling a burning line carve across his cheek as something of Kid's lashed out. He landed flat on his back, scrambling back for half a second before a hand latched onto his collar and he was airborne and tumbling through the air.
In the half-second glimpse he had of the cloud, he saw a small orb of heat and light slam into the sphere of vapor.
Then his vision went white.
It was easy enough to follow a trail, once the dead were, well, dead again.
The scent of C-cells, cloying and thick, but not me, not C, not the Oni, might as well have been a flag. A month ago, two, I wouldn't have been able to follow it, but my senses grew sharper by the day, same with my power. Every corpse, human or Sea King, added a little more, a few bare cells that were broken and remade to be mine.
And this? This will be a feast.
I frown as I run along the rooftops. It's less a feast, and more the putting down of a rabid dog.
Yes, yes, cloak it however you please, it's only happenstance that ripping out said rabid dog's heart and feasting on its entrails will make you more powerful by far. Perhaps even enough of a sin to build the truth of your wings.
Nonsense again. I shut the dragon out, and keep running.
There's other scents on the air, now. Blood. Entrails. Slaughter.
I cross over a street with one leap, crest a rooftop in a few steps, and I see what's responsible.
Three hounds, more wounds than flesh and bone, unmoving. Ostavila, her throat a red ruin, blood painting a wall. Her hands stretched out to Pravilno, sitting against the same wall with his hands pressed to his slit belly.
And Killer, standing among the carnage, scythes slick with blood. He turns to face me, and from the jagged crack in his mask I see crimson irises and black sclerae peer out.
Blue-white. This is something new, is it not?
A mental command leashes the dragon, and my wings burst free. "How long?" I snarl, feeling my blood literally start to simmer.
Killer cocks his head. "My whole life, of course." Spars of crystal punch free of his back, forming wings to match my own. "I don't get it," he says, in this flat tone that reminds me all too much of C. "How have the Shopkeepers not killed you yet? You're so...obvious. There's a dozen covenants and pacts we're held to, to keep us away from prying eyes, and yet you still live despite flaunting all of them. Even been given a new mask, and that implies they support you, mad as that might be."
More words than I've ever heard from him, more things than I'm comfortable thinking about, more implications that I know will keep me up at night. I don't care. I crouch, wings twitching, watching Killer for the slightest speck of movement. "Maybe I'm too pretty for them to kill," I say mockingly. "Who knows?"
"Hmph. To spare something mad and feral like you, a risk to all of us...what are you?"
I don't answer. I just leap, faster than thought, wings lashing out with spines of crystal and bladed feathers as I land - and hit nothing but air. What -
Pain, as something lances through one of my wings and my chest, and then -
THOOM.
I think I lose consciousness for a moment, before I find myself on my back, right arm and wing and a good chunk of my chest missing. Already growing back, of course.
Are you ever going to get into a fight without being horribly injured?
Shut up, you horrible old lizard. I leap to my feet, exchanging wings for tendrils in a heartbeat, and search for Killer - there, further down the street.
Explosives, then, how was he carrying -
Killer vanishes from sight, but lines carve themselves through the blood on the cobblestones, and I raise my tendrils just in time to feel something pin one to a wall. I don't give whatever explosive he's attacking with time to go off - a cut with another tendril frees me, and I leap away, swapping to wings again.
"Butcher's Feathers."
I'm not considerate of those dead or dying - indiscriminate fire is the way to go, and I let loose enough shards to cover the street. A snarl of pain and a lack of explosives trying to penetrate me is my reward, and I land to see Killer stumbling to one knee, flank stippled with shards. He whirls, scythes already turning, and this time I see his own wings lash out, sending shards the size of my arm flying towards me trailing smoke and flame. My own shards meet them halfway, and another explosion rips through the air, concealing him from sight. He bursts through a microsecond later, scythes swinging, but my wings meet them and I use the opening to headbutt him, the wooden mask cracking still further under the blow. He stumbles back, and I uppercut him with my just-regrown hand, the force of the blow tossing him onto his back.
"Get up," I snarl, feeling temperatures spike around me. "Get up, you bastard, I'm not done with you yet."
Kill him. Kill him now, before he -
Killer vanishes again, and before I can raise my wings again I feel something hit me in the chest with the force of a train, sending me into a building. The wood breaks, and though my spine doesn't it still hurts.
Then he's on me, and it's all I can do to put up arms and wings and weather the onslaught. Wings are first to go, followed by flesh and then bone and then -
And then it stops, because Killer's reeling back, restrained by bolts of cloth holding his arms back, a third yanking back on his head, and this time I don't hesitate.
I leap up, and use the only weapon I have at the moment, and my teeth rip into the ghoul's throat and snap his spine like a twig. Blood, richer and more potent than any other, fills my mouth, but I am not here to savor. Tendrils burst free and tear the ghoul to pieces as I turn my attention to what's actually important - Pravilno, slumping against the shattered storefront, blood pooling under him and the bandages he'd used to open Killer up for the kill flat on the ground.
Data input detected, accessing…
"Did you...get him?" he pants, eyes closed.
"We did," I confirm. He doesn't have long. Not with the amount of blood he's lost, is still losing, and not with doctors so far away.
"Os...ta?"
"She's okay. Just like you will be," I say, trying to keep my voice level.
Novel iteration detected. Analyzing.
The bandages covering his face shift. "Liar," he says, not a condemnation but a reprimand all the same. "Sorry I... couldn't keep up."
"You did enough," I say gently. "Both of you."
Establishing conversion protocol.
"Ah, heh...I wonder, will this be...the last…" His voice trails off, his body slumps, and little by little, the blood stops dripping to the floor.
Conversion complete. Novel sequences recovered.
Beginning assimilation and repurposing...now.
And I scream as my blood turns to fire.
In a place that was not a place, a hill of white clover, a vulture plummeted from the cloudless sky.
The dragon swallowed it whole, and smiled in the third way, for now it knew what it faced.
The world was a cruel and heartless place.
The dragon was a creature to match it, and jealous and hateful beyond that.
It would guard the one who had made it, sink itself deeper with every stroke of knowledge and bitter self-hatred, hold itself close…
Until they were made whole again.
Until acceptance.
Until they unmade the world of masks and shadows and secrets, in wrath and fury and slaughter, and birthed something new from the ashes. A new kingdom, a new home, a place to thrive and grow mighty and count the hoard of treasures mundane and mortal (and the latter infinitely more precious than the former) for an eternity of safety and dominion.
The dragon's smile widened, for it had a plan, and woe to those who opposed its maker or its master.
Vinci leaned on the haft of his scythe, considering.
The cocoon of half-melted metal that enfolded Kid made soft popping noises as it cooled. The various storms of metal had stopped, pieces falling to the ground. Everything indicated that Kid was dead, or at the very least unconscious.
He didn't believe that for a second. He wouldn't believe Kid was dead until he hacked the head off his corpse himself.
Maybe not even then.
"Grigori, the job's done, why are you still standing around?" Siegfried asked flatly.
He cocked his head, listening intently.
"Grigori, what are you-"
"And a three, a two, a one…"
The cocoon of metal exploded outwards. Vinci laughed, spinning his scythe and deflecting some of the fragments as Kid flopped onto the ground. He didn't look good - most of his skin was pink and peeling, and steam was rising from where the red-hot metal of his cybernetic arm met flesh. The steel appendage shattered a moment later, tossed aside, and Kid stood, fury in his eyes.
"I," he said in a completely dead voice. "Was planning to kill you slowly. But now? Now you're annoying."
There was a rattling noise in the distance, one that grew by the second, and within moments the sky began to darken as thousands of pieces of armor filled it.
Siegfried fired at Kid twice, and attacks from the others filled the air, but none of it so much as reached Kid as metallic scales leapt into the air to intercept and divert them.
"Mass Kinetic Kills. DIE!"
Metal rained down, accelerating far faster than gravity would permit, dragged by Kid's power.
Vinci sighed, and tapped the butt of his scythe on the ground. "Third Gear."
Ba-BUM-bum.
The newest of his hearts engaged, and with it the safeguards on the most potent of his abilities vanished.
Third Gear was an experiment. Second was intended for physical combat, but Third...Third was intended for massive esoteric work. Abilities that ordinarily couldn't be achieved without a powerful Devil Fruit, and that were only possible due to the combination of his inheritance of knowledge and his own unique experiences.
Part of this work relied on his scythe. He'd taken it to Herman's blacksmith mentor, once, curious if the use of his own electrical abilities on it had affected the temper. The old man had taken one look at it, smiled in a slightly unhinged way, and handed it back to him with a cryptic statement about never losing it, because making another channel would likely be difficult.
Vinci was still unsure what that meant, but he had noted that it was far easier to do what he was about to do if he used the scythe as a focus. Perhaps some property of the metal that he'd altered through exposure to his own bioelectricity?
He grinned as the metal rained down. "Guard. Repel. Annihilate. Threefold Paths. Execute."
It wasn't the name of a technique.
It was a command to the universe, him pitting his will and his hate against reality and for the briefest of moments convincing it to look the other way. Electrical generation paired with the displacement of energy and matter across dimensions and the sheer mental power required to visualize exactly what he needed, all for one brief, perfect instant of clarity.
Lightning wove a net above the battlefield, and the rain of metal slammed into it.
Only dust fell through, as it annihilated itself against his barrier.
Vinci fell to one knee as something broke inside him, the same power he'd harnessed turning against him, but he grinned wider still, and spat out a mouthful of golden-tinged blood at Kid's shocked expression.
"Go," he croaked, and the remaining captains burst into motion.
None of them so much as touched him. Attacks were swatted aside, people thrown away like toys, others left bleeding on the ground, as Kid stalked forwards, remaining hand clenching spasmodically. C tried to rip down Kid's defenses, but all it accomplished was a glare from the other redhead and an almost contemptuous gesture that slammed a dozen metal spears through him and hurled him into a wall. Vinci tried to get to his feet, but the technique had drained him too much and it seemed like moments before a hand was on his throat and-
C couldn't move.
He couldn't move and Kid was going for the Captain, was going to kill him, but he didn't have the power to stop him and-
The Captain was going to die, C was the only one who could do anything but he just wasn't strong enough, was never strong enough-
He couldn't, he couldn't fail, he wouldn't, he -
REFUSED.
Something cracked, the shards of his mask sliding free, and C laughed as at last he felt the truest part of him break free of where it had been growing all these months, a fine caress along his arms, whispering of power.
He was free.
-and blood splattered Vinci's face. He looked down, at the spike protruding from Kid's chest, then looked up at the expression of utter surprise on his enemy's face. Kid's hand left his throat, and Vinci's legs nearly buckled before he propped himself up on his scythe again.
The spike - the blade, actually, one attached almost seamlessly to C's shoulder, a gleaming and vibrant blue, its twin waving attentively alongside it - pulled itself out of Kid's torso with a wet sound, and the redheaded pirate's legs folded, dropping him to the ground.
For a moment, there was silence.
"Well," Vinci said, breaking it. "Good fucking riddance."