Without further delay, here's the next chapter! And watch out; Yoh is going to get some painful beatings in this chapter. Not because I hate him, but it's part of the story.

Chapter 19: Combat
The final battle is about to begin and everyone is excited. The two captains stand on top of the ship's head mast, which looks like a fox's head.

"I will go through the objectives for this game!" says Tim, who is on top of his Super Sparrow. "The entire ship is the battlefield—you can go anywhere in the ship, even the inside! To win the fight, you must knock your opponent out the ship! You can use any weapons you found on the ship too! There's no time limit. The game ends when someone is KO'ed!"

"GO YOH! YOU CAN DO IT!" Yoh's friends cheer on him.

"BOSS! BOSS! YOU ARE THE BEST!" cheer the Foxy Pirates.

Yoh and Foxy stare at each other…

Tim pulls a gun trigger and shouts, "FIGHT!"

The fight is on! Yoh simply uses a normal Over Soul, because he thinks that his opponent is a normal human, so using something powerful isn't necessary. He begins by charging at Foxy. The pirate hops out of the way and points his boxing glove at him. "Noro Noro Beam!" A pink beam shoots out from his hand and hits Yoh, freezing him in place; or rather, making him move forward really slowly.

"Oh… no…" says Yoh slowly.

"I can hit you off the ship like this instantly!" says Foxy. "But I don't want the game to end so fast, so I'll be nice to you and punch you inwards!" He stands next Yoh and shouts, "Foxy Rush!" He moves his fist very fast and punches Yoh rapidly. After he's done punching, he walks off.

"Eh? How come Yoh didn't get hurt or anything?" asks Pirika.

"I guess even the damage taken is slowed down," says Ren.

Yoh begins to feel pain coming up his body and he slowly moves through the air. After 30 seconds passes, he shoots towards the inner part ship at a very fast speed and crashes into a mast.

"Whoa! All the hits take effects after 30 seconds!" exclaims Horo.

"And that's gotta hurt!" adds Chocolove.

Yoh gets back up and looks around, and he sees a couple of arrows moving slowly towards him. Suddenly, the arrows speed up, so he quickly uses his sword to block it.

He sees Foxy standing on top of a cannonball and wonders in surprise, "How did he stand on it? Maybe he slowed down the cannonball!" He runs towards the group of slow moving cannonballs and jumps for one, wanting to stand on top.

"That cannonball has been slowed down for 30 seconds!" says Foxy. "It's gonna speed up!"

And he's right. The cannonball Yoh is aiming to land on flies off very fast and he falls down to the lower deck, where the audiences cannot see.

Yoh falls onto the lower deck, but easily lands on his feet. Foxy hops off from the cannonball he's standing on because 30 seconds just passed. He takes out a large badge in the shape of his own face and presses a button behind it. The badge moves forward at a moderate pace. He takes out more and fires them all.

"What are those?" asks Yoh.

"They are face bombs built in the likeliness of my face!" explains Foxy. "They may move slow, but they are really destructive!"

"I see… Hey, how can a bomb talk?" Yoh is referring to one of the bomb that seems to be talking.

"Because this is me!" says Foxy, who is moving in line with the bombs he fired and Yoh mistaken his head for one. He swings his fist at Yoh and punches him in the face hard, sending him back into a wall. He touches his face with his hand and sees that there is blood trickling down his face. "I should tell you that I just added spikes onto my boxing gloves! Heheheh! Now go ahead and accept those face bombs!"

KABOOM!

The audiences can see a large explosion coming from the lower deck of the ship, though they don't now what caused it. "What an explosion that is!" says Tim. "Yoh is surely blast to pieces! If any part of his body flies out the ship, then he loses!"

Tamao gasps in shock upon hearing this. "No! This can't be! Yoh can't die just like that!" says Horo.

"But wait… Who's standing there? It's Yoh Asakura! He is perfectly all right from the explosion!" exclaims Tim. "Is this the power of a 70 million berries pirate?"

Yoh's oversouled sword formed a large shield in front of him, and it protected him from the violent explosion. "Thanks a lot, Amidamaru." And then he hears a wicked laughter.

"Hehehehehehe…"

"Our boss's evil laughter radiates forth from the smoke!" says Tim. "It only means that he has something nasty up his sleeves! His laugh always strikes fear in the mind of the opponent!"

Yoh looks around cautiously; ready to avoid any incoming attack. Foxy steps out of the smoke in front of him, and he is all burned up and parts of his clothes are torned. "Hehehehe…"

"You're the one who got caught in the explosion!" says Yoh.

"Oh yeah? Take this! Noro Noro Beam!" Foxy fires a beam at Yoh, but the young shaman hops into the air and lands behind Foxy, slashing him in the back. "GAAAA!"

"I'll just break your arms so you can't use your beam!"

"Try and do so!" Foxy hops back into the thick white smoke, disappearing from Yoh's sight.

Yoh looks around carefully, and he sees Foxy's silhouette from behind the smoke, so he fires an energy shockwave from his sword to hit him. When Foxy gets hit, he breaks into pieces, and Yoh finds out that he only hit a wooden cutout in the form of Foxy!

Then several silhouettes of Foxy appear behind the curtain of smoke. "Can you find the real me? I bet you can't!"

Yoh thought for a while about what to do, and then an idea came to him. "How can I know which is the real one when they all have the same ugly two-piece haircut?"

Foxy is struck with grief upon hearing this, and he falls onto his knees and begins to cry. "Boo hoo… You're making fun of my hair! Sniff…"

Yoh sees one of the silhouettes down on its knee, so he found out which is the real one and runs to it and slashes Foxy on the side of the arm. "YEOUCH!"

"Gotcha!"

"You dirty brat! Noro Noro Beam!" Foxy fires a beam at him. Yoh quickly jumps out of the way and strikes Foxy again. "That's it! I'm getting serious!" He pulls a lever next to him and the floor beneath Yoh opens and he falls into it!

"WHOA!" Yoh quickly grabs onto the side of the hole to prevent falling down, but Foxy steps on his fingers and made him fall anyway. He falls onto the floor below, which appears to be a conveyor belt moving towards a light on the other side.

"It's the sea out there, Master Yoh!" warns Amidamaru. "You will lose if you fall into it!"

Yoh runs against the opposite direction of where the conveyor belt is moving. He quickly jumps up and grabs onto the side of the hole again, and this time successfully climbs back up. "Phew… I thought I'd surely lose… I really underestimated Foxy."

He sees an open door and a sign next to it, saying, "Come in here if you dare!"

"Our boss has ran into the ship cabin!" says Tim. "What can he be up to? Will Yoh go in or not?"

"It may be a trap, Yoh!" shouts Lyserg. "Don't go in!" But Yoh didn't hear him and goes into the cabin anyway.

-

Inside the cabin, Yoh is amazed at the amount of equipments inside. "Wow! There are lots of gadgets and weaponry here!" And then he notices a door in front of him closing.

Foxy is on the other side of the door, and the room he is in consists of a floor full of sharp spikes. "Hehehehe! Come on in and take on the spikes!"

"Celestial Slash!"

The wall behind Foxy explodes and he flies into the bed of spikes himself. "YAAAAAAH!"

"I knew you're there!" says Yoh.

Foxy gets up, his face and body bleeding all over. "You brat! How dare you!" He throws some cannonballs at him and quickly runs to the next room. Yoh avoids the cannonball thrown at him, but steps on one and slips. He gets back up and runs after Foxy.

Foxy hides into the sickroom and says to himself, "I shall use the Seven Foxy Transformations!"

Yoh sees the sickroom and thinks that he may be inside, so he goes inside. He sees a big fat ugly nurse sitting on a table. "May I help you?" asks the nurse. "Do you have a headache?"

"Nice disguise you got there, Foxy," says Yoh, knowing that it's Foxy in disguise.

"What! How can you see through my perfect disguise!" gasps Foxy.

"Your long nose gave it away! And you look pretty funny in that nurse costume too!"

Foxy falls onto his knees and cries, "No… I spent so long making a perfect disguise, and it came to naught…"

"Don't cry. I know how you feel." Yoh walks close to him to comfort him. Suddenly, Foxy pulls out a large clam with rows of sharp teeth and clamps Yoh's head in between it! Then he runs away.

Yoh yells in pain as he tries to pry the clamp off his head. After a bit of painful prying, he finally got it off, and blood is trickling down all over his face. "Ow… I shouldn't be so kind to him just now… Ouch! It hurts!"

He starts searching for Foxy again, and he eventually came to the kitchen, where he sees a fat cook chopping some vegetables. "What would you like to eat?" asks the cook.

"Don't try to fool me, Foxy," says Yoh.

"NOOOOO! YOU SAW THROUGH IT AGAIN!"

Yoh raises his sword and charges forward to attack, but just before it hits, Foxy quickly fires a beam straight into his face, slowing him down. "Argh…! Not… again…!"

Foxy gets in front of Yoh and punches him rapidly. "Foxy Rush!" After punching him several times, he walks to a button on the wall and presses it, and the wall behind Yoh opens. A pair of light can be seen shining from the darkness behind it.

"Don't worry what's inside!" says Foxy. "It's not a living creature, so don't worry!"

After 30 seconds passed, the punches given to Yoh take effect and he spats out some blood as he flies straight into the darkness behind him.

TO BE CONTINUED…

As I said, Yoh took quite a beating. If that's not enough, he's going to go through even WORSE in the next chapter. But as he always says, everything will turn out fine in the end again! So cheer up! He won't die!