Here we go! 10th anniversary of my ff account and we're also at 100 episodes covered by this fic! This will be a fight heavy chapter by necessity (so we can get to the really good stuff soon).
Sanji, Sunny, and their duck entered the city after the wave of rebels. They couldn't be more than a few minutes behind the front lines but somehow the outer reach of the city seemed deserted. Walls were cracked with damage, wagons overturned, sacks and lumber left in the street as people took shelter further into the city and the guards followed or else lost to the rebels. On closer inspection as they rode by, Sunny could see a few crouched figures sheltering in alleyways, hiding, injured, or worse, he wasn't sure. Sunny leaned closer to Sanji, who he was riding in front of.
"Damn, I don't even know where to start, except getting ahead of them," Sanji said, probably just to fill unnatural silence. "Wait, hey, isn't that another one of those ducks?"
Sunny looked at the giant waterbird that had appeared around the corner, jumping up and down and flapping his wings. "I think he wants us to follow him." He observed, but it turns out he didn't need to say anything as their supersonic duck sped up to follow its friend.
A couple turns and a quick back-track Sanji and Sunny didn't necessarily want to take later, the second duck led them to a beaten up Usopp and Eyelashes.
Sunny jumped off their duck as it skidded to a stop, smacking Usopp's cheek when he didn't immediately rouse. "What happened to you guys?" Sanji echoed his words verbatim at the same time. Usopp sat up, rubbing his eye like he'd just woken up.
"Right! So, we ran into that crossdresser Sunny mentioned, he looked like Tashigi, so we started to run away but he caught up soooo fast. It was over in two seconds. One for him," he pointed to Eyelashes, who was grumbling as he stood, "and one for me."
"You couldn't have held out any longer?" Sanji shouted. "Your duck came and got us, but that aside, you let Mr. 2 get away, didn't you? That means...Vivi's in danger!"
Sunny caught a glint in the corner of his eye the same moment Sanji did. Sunny wheeled around, unleashing a thin jet of flame at the incoming projectile. Sunny didn't actually spot the fired arrow until a smoking piece of tinder clattered to the ground along with a singed arrowhead.
Just ten feet above, on the nearest row of squat buildings, three archers were aiming at them in a thwarted attempt at a sneak attack. They were dressed neither like royal guards nor rebels, so that had to make them Billions, the Baroque Works foot-soldiers.
"Sanji, go find Vivi. I'll take care of these guys and send up a signal once I find Kouza!" Sanji was the one holding onto Vivi's picture of the rebel leader but even if he wasn't human, Sunny was sure he wouldn't forget his face.
The other two archers released their arrows at Sanji and Sunny while the last reloaded. Sunny closed some distance and blasted the arrows with a barrage of dozens of tiny fiery projectiles. While the ember didn't fully burn up the volley of arrows, the attack was widespread enough it caused both of them to be knocked off its trajectory and clank to the ground.
A ghost of a smirk drew across Sanji's face. "All yours. See you in a bit. Usopp, catch up with Chopper, he went around the west entrance!" Then the chef was off. Then the sharpshooter was up and on his duck again in flash too, giving a nod of thanks to Sunny.
Sunny ignited. Their chef and sharpshooter were right to place confidence in him. These three were nothing compared to the fight he'd had just hours before with Mr. 2. For the first time, Sunny felt confident being alone. He knew his friends were spread around the city and fighting was around every street and alley but just like always, he'd take it one-step at a time up the side of the brick building. There was plenty of room for a pawhold between bricks and in just a couple bounds he'd climbed up to their perch and snagged the first archer's collar in his paws.
His weight and momentum bore down on the archer, pitching him forward and sending him somersaulting off his high ground. A slight adjustment midair had the archer's head smacking against the street and his bow splintering on impact. Sunny preemptively sent another pepper of embers, hitting one arrow and the second passing unscathed but going wide.
These mooks were hardly better than the ones in Whisky Peak, and attempting to keep out of range from him wouldn't buy them very much time. Sunny planned his route from a dumpster to a low roof before expelling a cloud of smokescreen. Once he'd climbed onto the roof, just feet above them, he felt for the edge, pinpointing them by their nervous shifting. Extinguishing his back flame, so to be undetectable, he sent a considerable ball of fire just to the left of one of them, bright enough to be seen through the smoke. Both archers swung in the direction, shooting off arrows blindly at what they assumed was the alight pokemon.
One arrow pelted into a brick wall, the other, from the sound of pain it garnered, hit the first archer. As the smoke dispersed, Sunny launched himself feet first onto the standing archer's head, sending him crumpling to the ground. Sunny burned up both their bows for good measure before continuing on toward the what sounded like the worst of the fighting. He left the unconscious or writhing archers behind, running toward the center of the city, where the tall clock tower stood over the city.
Careful not to get underfoot, or get involved in the fighting between the rebels and the royal guard, Sunny continued, for the most part unnoticed or bothered. If he were to accidentally get involved, he had no idea what side he'd take but at any rate, he had more important tasks to take.
He encountered another foe setting fire in an alley he was trying to pass through, a smooth quick attack to the gut and he fell back into the garbage fire he'd just set while Sunny ran through it with barely any detriment.
Another one came out of nowhere with a scimitar and only fast reflexes let him keep his head. A spout of fire had the man jumping out of his hiding spot into a barrel of water ten feet down, his weapon forgotten on the ledge Sunny had been running across. With a sigh, Sunny knocked it off the ledge, letting it bonk off the Billion's head.
All the people targeting him seemed to be the Billions, the ones who seemed to recognize him from his wanted poster but weren't strong enough for the special nicknames and certainly weren't strong enough to think they had a real chance against any Straw Hat in groups of only two or three.
FWWOOSH!
Sunny scrambled out of the way, narrowly avoiding a tub of water being poured from someone's second floor window onto another fire he'd been passing by in the alley.
...Not to say running through a war zone didn't come without its dangers…
Vivi
Vivi spurred Carue to go even faster as they took the steps up to Alubarna four at a time. This must be the closest we've been to flying since we were kids, she thought without humor. On reaching the top of the stairs, they continued on into the roar of battle, unaware of Usopp running to catch up, yelling and waving his arms far behind him.
"We need to get to the center of the city before the mob gets there," Vivi told Carue. But working through the crowds were nearly impossible with Carue and eventually she had to dismount after Carue had taken a stray gunshot to the side. After checking the wound didn't hit anything vital, she pushed Carue in the direction of the duck barracks. "You've done enough just getting me here, get yourself checked out."
Carue quacked sadly but eventually backed off and rounded the corner with a hitch in his step. Vivi was just praying for his safety when Usopp came, panting and sweating in exhaustion. "V-Vivi, there you are. I've been looking…"
"Usopp! Are you alright? You look…" He looked like he'd been in a fight, but well enough. Right, the fighting. Just like they'd said on the way, they had bigger concerns.
"I'm fine. Just give me a hand-"
"Of course," Vivi went to support Usopp when she felt a sharp slam to her side and barely caught herself on her forearms on the ground. She rolled her way out of a second kick while she was on the ground. "Usopp!" Vivi screamed, looking into her friend's eyes. Chopper had said Sunny met someone who could look like the people they fought. Instantly, her thoughts flipped. "What did you do with Usopp?"
'Usopp' grinned ear to ear. "He didn't stand a chance. I kicked to the ground in moments!" With a tap of his hand to his cheek he revealed himself in his original form. "I prefer not to spend too much time as ugly men like him or your father."
"You..!"
"Should worry about yourself! Okama Kick!" Only every last bit of strength and confidence she'd earned sailing with the Straw Hats this last month was enough to avoid the incredibly fast kick. Even then, she felt the rush of wind as the cloth sole of Mr. 2's ballet slipper zipped past her nose. So she didn't have a spare moment she needed to react when the second swipe slammed across her cheek, sending her flying.
It took her several moments to re-orient herself, but when the pounding in her head diminished, she realized that the screeching sound she'd been hearing was Carue, who had returned and was nobly facing off with Mr. 2, and losing soundly.
She pulled herself to her knees, then her feet. She drew her lion cutters, thinking about all the precious time she was wasting here, when her people were fighting, her friends were fighting. Kouza was fighting her friends.
When Mr. 2 had dropped his disguise, Vivi had seen the bandaged injury at his side. From the looks of it, it was serious. He wasn't undefeatable, wasn't indefatigable. If Sunny had done it, maybe she could too.
"Lion Cutters!"
Several attacks sent back and forth later, Carue had collapsed in a shivering pile of feathers, thoroughly beaten, eyes rolled back in his head. Vivi clutched her side and sweat and blood dripped above her eye. The okama too, was tiring. Two slashes of her lion cutters had hit his leg and chest.
"Looks like you won't last much longer!" the okama said.
"I'll last exactly as long as it takes to beat you and find Kouza," she responded icily, she'd been waiting to back him up against that wall away from Carue, she had a clean shot. Her lion cutters flicked out again.
"N-not so fast!" Mr. 2 said, his hand went to his face and instead of the okama, she was suddenly facing her father, her father she hadn't seen in two years. Her arm tensed with her lion cutters, her teeth grit. She ached to stop, just in case, in some way it was her father. After all, they didn't truly know how Mr. 2's powers worked. But she didn't have the privilege of not taking this shot. Maybe if she were a stronger fighter, sure there would be another chance. Maybe if she wasn't a princess in a country embattled in civil war. She was fighting for her people, her father would want nothing more than her and their people safe. Mr. 2 was not her father, could not hurt her father if she stopped him. She hoped that with all her heart and all her strength as she bore down with her lion cutters.
Slashes appeared across her father's torso as he-no, Mr. 2-yelled in pain. She stood there, panting heavily, arm shaking, eyes wide.
The man looking like Cobra got to his feet again-
"Vivi-chawn!"
Both combatants' gazes snapped to Sanji, approaching fast as a love-hurricane. "Vivi-chawn, I'm sooo happy to see you!" He stopped, joy sobering into anger as his eyes shifted from Vivi's bruised body to the man appearing to be Cobra. "You're hurt! I assume this is that face-stealing joker Sunny warned us about?"
"This is him," Vivi confirmed, eyes boring holes into the Baroque Works agent.
"Tch. I'm going to finish this battle, if you don't mind. You have more important places to be, right princess?"
Vivi blinked, refocusing her gaze toward the center of the city. "You're right. Please take care of Carue," she said, beginning to run.
"Keep your head up, Vivi-chawn," Sanji called.
Vivi looked back at him in slight confusion.
Sanji grinned wide back at her, pointing a finger upward. "Sunny's going to send up a flare when he finds Kouza. Keep your eyes on the sky."
Vivi returned the grin before sprinting off. Sanji waited a few moments, stuffing his hands in his pockets and tapping his shoe. "I'd light a cigarette but I'm too antsy to kick your ass for touching Vivi-chawn and forcing her to fight you looking like her father," Sanji admitted cooly.
"Wait a second!" Mr. 2 cried, changing his face to Tashigi. "You couldn't hurt me, right?"
Sanji's fists clenched, snapping out of his simmering rage, his visible eye seemed to burn with fire. "You laid a hand on the beautiful swordswoman too? I'll kill you, you bastard!"
Mr. 2 sweat profusely and switched to another crewmate. The rest of his body stayed the same but inexplicably, his head was Sunny's. It was a thoroughly disturbing sight Sanji wondered if he could ever scrub from his brain.
"You've pissed me off even more, care to keep it up?"
Sunny
Sunny had made it another two blocks into the heart of the city before two more people directly blocked his path. He jumped left then right, determining if he had a chance to run past them, but they seemed to be intent on stopping him, unlike the flurry of panicked citizens still rushing to get back to their homes around them. He wondered if these two, dressed as palace guards, shouldn't have something better to do than track down and neutralize a 44 berri bounty.
Would have wondered, rather, if they didn't reek of old booze, smoke, and everything else Rain Dinners smelled like.
"Stop! In the name of the king!"
"The king's still Cobra!" Sunny said. "And I doubt you speak for him!"
The shrew pokemon launched himself at the first Billion, from their perspective, without warning. Sunny slammed directly into his knee, hearing a crack and shout with pain, skillfully evading a blow from the fan-staff weapons they were both holding. He pelted past them, throwing a barrage of embers back at them as he ran, which set both of their palace guard head scarves aflame.
"You two could take a couple pointers from Mr. 2 on disguises!" Sunny called cheerily as he went to dash away.
The Billion who wasn't crumpling over his knee grabbed a small girl as she tried to run by. She shrieked and Sunny stumbled to a stop in shock.
Fire rolled down his spine and his paws were wheeling him around before he fully assessed the situation. He slammed into the arm grabbing her, which was knocked away easily. Sunny grabbed the edge of the cloak she was wearing and tugged her away a distance and interposing himself in between them.
He only realized how badly he'd misread the situation when the girl pushed her hood back. Sunny slowly turned his head to see her. Sunny's stomach dropped. Ms. Goldenweek smiled back at him as she moved her cloak to pull out her battle paintbrush and what Sunny expected to be her easel. Instead she brought out a paint can and in one fluid move, purple paint was splattering everywhere.
"Color: Purple Rain!"
Though Sunny rolled out of the way of the majority of it, he still got a face-full as he tried to evade the splash. It was all he could do to rub at his eyes. Purple, what had purple done? It was the one with the linoone. It was an illusion!
The man with a shattered kneecap backed up with the man whose clothes were still on fire as Sunny rounded on Ms. Goldenweek. He couldn't afford to take long in this fight. He'd promised them all he'd help Vivi…
Something long, thick and purple slithered out from behind the girl and Sunny's heart jack-hammered in his ribcage before logic took hold. She'd already tried that with him, his flames burned away what parts of the purple paint it could reach, but it was all he could do to try wiping the already drying paint from his eyes.
The ekans who was now staring him down rattled its tail and hissed as if it were sizing up its next meal. Tamping down his prey instincts, Sunny bolstered himself for a fiery sprint toward Ms. Goldenweek. He was steps away from her when he felt a mass of smooth, scaly muscle bowl him over.
Instinctively, the little rodent's flames redoubled, even as he felt the ekans rope around his midsection until he was completely restrained.
"How…can she do thi-is?" Sunny managed, shutting one eye in pain as the coils started to tighten, even over his flames.
The ekans hissed, whether in pain or her normal voice, Sunny wasn't sure. "Do you still think I'm some kind of illusion? Does it feel like one, little mouse?"
Sunny looked into the ekans' eyes, even knowing he shouldn't. Staring down a pokemon in battle when you weren't fully committed to facing them could weaken your spirit. Those eyes looked hungry. A drop of venom gathered on the glinting edge of her fang. His fire stuttered briefly.
"L-let me go! We're not…enemies h-here, we-" Sunny's head suddenly felt all spinny and ekan's face split into two before he refocused. His fire was beginning to lose its heat, its potency on his back as he began to suffocate.
There was definitely pain in her voice when she spoke again. "Cyndaquil are usually too much trouble to prey on, but this girl helped me so I will at least repay the favor before going on my way."
He couldn't afford to be here, pinned like a prey animal. He had come across the ocean, he couldn't succumb here. Not without helping Vivi, or Luffy. Sanji was depending on him. He wasn't the same cyndaquil who'd shivered hearing cautionary tales of ekans gobbling up straying hatchlings. Sunny summoned some of the little oxygen he could still take around the worsening pain in his ribs and spat an ember at her face. She hissed, bucked back as cinders hit either her eyes or her translucent eye lids.
"So you still have fight in you," she seemed surprised and a little gleeful. "Alright, mouse."
She sunk her fangs into the side of Sunny's neck. The sharp pain was only eclipsed by the mounting terror that it might truly be over. He couldn't move his body and he could feel her fangs holding his neck, cold pulsing into his veins as he struggled to breathe—instead of holding his head out of the way, Sunny pushed his face into her jaw and released every degree of heat he could muster. Burned until he felt his head would explode from lack of air, lack of anything. When he blinked, not only was ekans not biting down on him, she'd uncoiled herself and retreated.
Sunny tried to stand up, and half fell down, gasping for air. The lightheaded feeling didn't go away, neither did the numbness spreading around the bite wound. Ekans was in worse shape than he'd realized, too. When she moved her body, he caught sight of painful looking burns along her side, and she was swinging her head back and forth in pain as smoke billowed from her mouth like she was a fire-breathing dragon.
His whole body was starting to go numb and shaky but with a little bit of effort, his body still obeyed him. His heart wasn't pounding in his ears anymore, for better or worse, he could think a bit more clearly. He'd been poisoned because he'd let himself get caught. But it wasn't the end of the fight. They were both quite injured from their exchange. He pulled himself up to his feet.
Somewhere across the city, Usopp stood up against all odds, bones chipped and broken, cuts littering his body. His breath whistled out of his broken nose, his leg shook under his lean frame. And he declared, at the top of his lungs, that Monkey D. Luffy would be the King of the Pirates.
Chopper watched Usopp with tears in his eyes.
Sanji pulled supported himself against the wall, after defeating Mr. 2
Vivi ran as fast as she could toward the city center.
Zoro held back a full force strike from Mr. 1.
Nami, improved staff twirling through the air like an extension of her arm, defeated Ms. Doublefinger handily.
And a battered captain pulled himself out from under a mountain of sand, wheezing.
Sunny
Luffy. Zoro. Nami. Usopp. Sanji. Chopper. Vivi. Sunny pushed their faces to the forefront of his mind with sudden force of will he hadn't realized he had. He wanted to know where they were. If they were okay. If they needed him. His body was hot, but getting hotter. Steam billowed off his back. The numbness began to fade. After this battle, he'd find Vivi. After that, he'd find their captain.
He nearly missed seeing Ms. Goldenweek grab her paintbrush. Green paint came flying toward him, he struggled to collect his legs under him in time. But the attack didn't land. Sunny looked up to see the paint slip down ekan's back. When had she moved there? Ekans was now looking back to eye Ms. Goldenweek.
"I'm helping you to repay a favor. You asked me to battle for you. You don't get to interfere here in a battle two equals, or you insult my pride as a pokemon." She hissed. Though clearly confused, Ms. Goldenweek lowered the paintbrush at ekan's clear body language. Her tail stilled as she stared back at Sunny. This time, he held her gaze without faltering. Under his focus, the sky seemed to brighten and intense until Ms. Goldenweek had to shield her eyes from the sun. Ekans, who had neither opaque eyelids nor hands, could do nothing for the suddenly blinding light.
"You…" Sunny started.
"Let's finish this in one more attack," she said. "Then, no matter what, my debt is paid to this girl."
Sunny nodded. His fire flickered across his back, enhanced by the sunny day, his breath expelled as smoke, he readied. Ekans shot off the ground, Sunny charged to meet her.
Huffing, Sunny crawled out from under the smoking ekans body, one push at a time. He looked at her face, her eyes rolled back in her head and her burnt tongue sticking out of mouth, her breaths moving her strange, long body up and down.
"Agh! Let me up," Ms. Goldenweek evidently hadn't escaped the snake falling backwards and had been trapped under the purple pokemon, but was struggling to get out from under her.
Sunny shook out his fur, feeling the heat of the sun dim on his back. His eyes moved from the unconscious ekans to the girl. He didn't have the time to worry about the downed snake pokemon. "I beat you again. Go home."
With the injured Billions missing, Sunny sprinted out from the alleyway again, even more eager to reunite with the others.
Then, hundreds of yards above the clock tower, the sky erupted in fire and smoke.
So that was a long chapter.
So fanfic's story views and story stats haven't been working for the last few chapters so I have no idea how many people are reading, which makes it hard to feel encouraged to write this story. If you're out there and reading could you comment with a smiley face or something so I know you're out there? Thanks so much guys.