Bad
It was taking all of Zoro's concentration to fight the entity that looked like the Shichibukai Kuma but didn't seem quite as strong, as fast or as skilled as the man whose actions had led to the swordsman's almost-death. It didn't feel right either, but there wasn't time to think it over when it was attacking them with highly destructive beams of light. Zoro was focussing hard on the feel of his chest heaving and muscles burning, the gentle fire of heavy exercise defining exactly what he had to work with. His other half wasn't here; hopefully wouldn't get here until after the battle was over.
The swordsman launched another attack at the Kuma look-alike, timing it perfectly to strike alongside Sanji and Luffy. There was a brief pause, then their enemy went down.
"Hah… hah…" Luffy gasped, holding onto his hat. "Is he that different? Then does he have a twin?"
"That's also a possibility," Sanji conceded.
"If he was the real one he's be teleporting around and avoiding our attacks," Zoro explained. "More importantly he doesn't use shockwaves and doesn't have those paw things!" Zoro had a healthy respect for that particular Devil Fruit Ability, though he could feel Fox' bone-deep certainty that she could work around it if necessary. Agility and Kairoseki blades were an effective combination even without the element of surprise. He'd felt her alarm when they were attacked, but she was still a good number of groves away from where the fight had broken out. "But if he's really a fake, that's a problem in itself: it means there's more than one of something as strong as him." There was a sound of shifting rubble and their opponent started levering itself upright, metal peeking through its damaged shoulder. "Damn."
Another round of attacks later and Zoro briefly lost track of how long his legs were. It was only for an instant, but quite enough to jar his back and wrench his stomach in trying not to get hit while falling over. He hadn't been too successful in avoiding hits: the Kuma thing had blasted him in the gut with a beam. It hadn't penetrated his skin but it was still a severe burn and it hurt. Part of him could tell it probably should have done more damage than it did and was unspeakably grateful for his lover's deeply ingrained habit of subtly reinforcing the people she cared about. No; her habit of teaching the very bodies of her nakama how to heal stronger than ever before, with ever-increasing adaptability. Fox didn't just heal: she taught your body how to fix itself, as much as it could. Which explained why bruises and scratches didn't seem to stick to Luffy for all that long anymore, as well as why eating meat was a genuine cure-all for the rubberman.
"Unnnghh!" he groaned, sprawled across the ground a good way back from the rest of the fight. Less damaged or not, he still really hurt. Not that it mattered right now: this fight needed to be over as soon as possible so they could lie low until Rayleigh had coated the Sunny. Fox' mother would put them up, Zoro was sure of it, so it was just a matter of winning.
It took Zoro using his Asura, Sanji using Diable Janbe and Luffy using his Gear Third, but they did manage to take down the Kuma copy eventually. Nami sincerely hoped this was all the excitement they would have today, as none of them were in any shape for a rematch.
"Where's Fox?" she panted.
"Grove fifty three," Zoro wheezed, "moving very quickly. Something about having a bad feeling?"
Nami felt her stomach plummet into her shoes. She didn't get on very well with Fox –there really wasn't much common ground between the navigator and the three years' older assassin– but the redhead recognised that the other woman had an excellent sense of proportion and never panicked. If anything, she was a little too laid back in the face of danger. For Fox to have a bad feeling…
It could easily be very bad.
"What kind of bad feeling?" she asked. Zoro frowned, eyes getting that now very familiar faraway look.
"Convergence of attackers… we've been found!" the swordsman said sharply just as a new voice rang around them:
"Ugh, you assholes really piss me off!"
Fox all but flew through the branches of the mangroves, jika-tabi and sharkskin gloves enabling her to grip to the smooth bark of the yarukimans and never slip. She'd been well out of reach when the first Pacifista tore into her crew but the Straw-Hats had risen to the occasion and defeated it. Then Sentomaru caught up with them with another Pacifista in tow, followed by Admiral Kizaru, who immediately targeted Zoro.
"Bloody Twinkletoes and his bloody perfect timing!" Fox hissed furiously as she darted through the branches sheltering grove fifteen, pouring all the healing strength she could into her lover without further disrupting his grasp on his physical identity. "Coulda been worse though… coulda been Meltyman." 'Meltyman' was Fox' highly inappropriate way of referring to the admiral who could turn his body into lava and was, to her mind, hypocritically hung up on the idea of the pirates being the Bad Guys. It isn't like the Marines don't kill just as many people; a life is a life, no matter who it belongs to. All have the right to ask for justice, be they innocent child or hardened criminal. The pirate you kill is no less worthy of vengeance than the marine he murdered before your eyes.
Fox didn't believe in justice; so far as she was concerned justice was all about drowning the world in blood until there was nobody left standing. There are no innocents. Fox subscribed to a small sect of a little-practiced religion that believed in acceptance of one's faults, forgiveness and divine grace. It helped her sleep at night, prevented her mind from tearing itself apart and made it so much easier to keep her blades in check in the face of blatant, unrepentant evil. Well, for the few seconds it took to invite the evildoer to reconsider his lifestyle choices anyway. Fox might have believed in forgiveness and second chances, but she also firmly believed that everyone was required to accept the consequences of their actions. Frequently those consequences involved dying by her hand in short order.
Rayleigh had arrived just in time to prevent Fox from doing something really drastic that would have got her into serious trouble –like killing Admiral Kizaru– but just as the assassin reached the edge of grove twelve Chopper transformed into the huge, mad monster she remembered vaguely from Enies Lobby and the real Bartholomew Kuma arrived on the scene.
Fox' bad feeling blossomed and grew teeth and claws. She all but flew the last few hundred yards, drawing her swords and falling upon the fully inhuman Pacifista just as her lover was torn away from her, launched into the air with impossible speed. The cyborg fell in pieces beneath her fury; Fox screamed like an enraged bird of prey at her loss, launching herself at the one who had injured her so.
Usopp trembled. He'd known Fox could be scary; he'd known she was strong. However he hadn't seen it for himself until now and he hadn't realised quite how wide the divide between her and the rest of the crew really was. Her swords had vanished in the instant after dismembering the cyborg that had been beating him, the now-vanished Zoro, Brooke and Sanji up and been replaced by knives, which had seemed counter-intuitive until she somehow got behind the newly-arrived Kuma who'd made Zoro disappear and used the blades to claw her way up his back, keening like a furious hawk as she did so. Kuma's immediate reaction to this apparently pointless behaviour indicated she was using blades made of Sea Stone and the unbelievable speed with which he shook, twisted and violently tried to dislodge her showed exactly how seriously the Shichibukai was taking the threat to his person.
It took a monumental eight seconds for Fox to be unseated and launched upwards, at the end of which Kuma advanced on them with chilling determination, blood dripping down his back. Brooke vanished next; Sanji pushed Usopp aside and attacked the Shichibukai but was deflected. Then a paw-marked hand hit the sniper's chest and he blacked out.
And it all goes down the tubes. Oh, and there is now a full complement of nicknames for the Admirals.