Kizaru stood completely still as Izuku blitzed towards him. Izuku swung his fist. Kizaru's face parted like a hologram around his arm. Barely having time to process the fact that he was fighting a Logia, Izuku braced himself a hair too late to absorb the uppercut Kizaru planted into his ribcage.
While hurtling through the air, Izuku flung a lightning spear down at Kizaru. Though the spear struck with the speed of a thunderbolt, it looked sloth-like in comparison to the instant sideways shift of Kizaru's position. The bolt shattered the stone. Kizaru didn't bother moving as sharp rocks flew through him.
The moment his feet hit the ground, Izuku went back on the attack. Haki came slowly to his clenched fingers, but the bare traces of black gleam forced Kizaru to dodge instead of merely standing there. Despite the threat of Haki, Kizaru looked unfazed in the face of Izuku's furious, snappy punches. He lilted from side to side, letting Izuku's fists graze his hair or coat, but never taking so much as a glancing blow.
"You should just give up," Kizaru said as he leaned around Izuku's kick. "That way, I don't have to break every bone in your body before handing you over to Magellan."
As much as the threat chilled him, Izuku had heard enough horror stories of what happened to pirates in the Marines' care to ever consider surrendering to their brand of justice. Instead, he flung a brace of thunderbolts off one arm while punching with the other. Kizaru flashed in between the attacks, flickering like a mirage before slipping inside Izuku's guard. Izuku didn't have time to react and took a heavy blow to the chest.
Retching and heaving, Izuku willed himself to stay upright and wiped a dribble of saliva off his chin. Kizaru looked him over and said, "Face it, kid, you're too slow. Last chance before I start breaking ribs."
Izuku realized he was right. It didn't matter how many attacks he threw out if Kizaru was fast enough to dodge every one of them. However, dodging required that he saw the attacks coming. If he had a way to blind him, somehow, or hide an oncoming attack, he'd get an opening.
Izuku glanced around the bridge. A few rifles and pistols lay scattered on the ground, and a few bullets had broken open, spilling black powder across the ground. The guns themselves were useless to him, but the loose powder gave him an idea.
Izuku roared and redoubled his punches, forcing Kizaru towards the scattered guns. Kizaru threw a few more punches, but Izuku gritted his teeth and soldiered on.
"Is this really the best you can do? Just throw more punches and hope I put my face right in front of them?"
Izuku swept low with a kick. Kizaru leapt over it, and in doing so, failed to notice Izuku's hand closing around a gritty pile of black powder. He only had a pinch coating his palm, but a dab of Tear Balm from the pouch at his waist gave it some extra oomph.
Channeling his inner Kacchan, Izuku charged at Kizaru and shouted, "Eat this! Flashbang!"
Izuku's hand sparked. Izuku had a brief moment to consider that maybe setting off gunpowder in his own hand was a bad idea and frantically use Tekkai before a flash of fire scorched his hand. Kizaru's eyes widened an instant before a cloud of smoke completely enveloped him. Powering through the pain, Izuku swung a fist into the thick cloud of smoke. His hand crashed through empty air. Izuku punched again and again, swinging until the smoke parted and revealed a clear view of the sea.
He leapt back, only to realize mid-leap that he moved directly into Kizaru's fist. His spine bent backwards, and Izuku only just loosened himself enough to keep it from fracturing entirely. He flopped over Kizaru's arm like a boneless fish and stumbled to his feet.
Kizaru dusted off his coat. "You're making me really tempted to simply kill you and be done with it. Do you have any idea how long it takes to get one of these coats freshly laundered? The staff complain every time I make them clean it. I'd simply do without, but then Sengoku complains if I look anything less than perfect and makes an even bigger hassle for me."
In hindsight, Izuku realized that blocking the Admiral's sight did little good if he could simply move somewhere far away before Izuku could even capitalize on the opening. His brain scrambled for any possible weaknesses as he sorted through everything he had seen so far. He knew he was up against a Logia, though the specific type eluded him. Movement was too fast to track, but linear. Izuku had to see what would happen if he pushed Kizaru's agility to its limit.
Using Kami-e and Soru at the same time proved very difficult. His body wanted to ragdoll everywhere, and his arms whipped around dangerously every time he took a sharp turn. The trade-off, however, was that, for the first time in the fight, one of Kizaru's punches missed. As Kizaru's fist whistled past his nose, Izuku remarked that Kizaru's linear, fixed movements had a hard time adjusting to random variables. Even so, Izuku couldn't concentrate on Soru, Kami-e, and Haki. Any blow he might have scored would have gone clean through Kizaru without either of them noticing.
A punch to the side took Izuku out of his musing. Izuku bent, but there was only so much bending sideways his body could take before a sharp crack knocked the breath out of him. Izuku rolled to a stop and cradled his broken rib.
"One down, three-hundred to go." Kizaru scratched his head. "Eh, counting seems like too much effort. Just make sure to tell people I broke every bone you've got and I'll stop when I think I've broken enough, alright?"
Izuku snarled and rose to his feet. He knew he had the right idea trying to outmaneuver Kizaru, but he had only so many ways to move around the Admiral on the ground. In the air, however, he would have three dimensions to work with.
Izuku kicked into the air and watched Kizaru closely. Kizaru held a hand over his eyes and said, "You better not make me come up there."
In response, Izuku threw down a thunderbolt. Kizaru let it pass through him and said, "I don't mind waiting for you to come down. You can't stay up there forever."
Izuku mentally cursed. He had plenty of practice with Geppo, and his body felt lighter than ever, but between the broken rib and the sheer effort Soru took, he was on a short timer. Without a way to force Kizaru to abandon the bridge, he'd have to land.
Izuku noticed the gouges in the stonework. He threw another lightning bolt, this time aiming for the bridge. A boulder cracked off and plummeted into the sea. Izuku rained down more thunderbolts. Stone split, and rocks flew into the air. Craters dotted the bridge, and entire sections sloughed off into the sea.
Kizaru surveyed the growing damage and sighed. As the section he stood on crumbled into gravel, he disappeared into a beam of light. Izuku, caught off guard, went hurtling through the air with Kizaru's boot print stamped onto his face.
"You're really going to make me work hard for this one, aren't you? And here I was, looking forward to getting a break for once."
Izuku spat a glob of blood and said, "I'm not letting you hurt any of my friends."
"Funny. You say that like you could stop me."
Kizaru flashed forward. Izuku dropped, and the punch clipped his shoulder. Letting himself flop through the air, Izuku darted in a random direction. He curved around in the air, letting the wind push him, as Kizaru shot towards him again and again like a ricocheting laser. Izuku's collection of bruises grew as the minutes dragged on, and his own flailing punches failed to find purchase, always a second too slow to catch the light pursuing him, but at the same time, Kizaru hadn't broken any other bones.
Their game of cat and mouse darted over the open ocean. Izuku dove and swerved as close to the water as he dared, hoping to catch enough of a blow to knock Kizaru into the sea. A kick from Kizaru knocked one of Izuku's legs into the ocean, and he had to frantically Soru with the other foot to get himself airborne before weakness overtook him.
"If you could just dive right in, that would be great." Kizaru cracked his neck while he waited for Izuku to get his breath back. "I've got plenty of Marines to fish you out."
Izuku darted off back towards the waves. He knew hitting Kizaru was beyond him, but his dip in the ocean gave him another idea. When he felt Kizaru hot on his trail, Izuku punched directly at the ocean, using enough force to slap the water with a wall of pressurized air. A wave kicked up in a giant crater around him, before rushing back together and jabbing the air with a watery spear.
When Izuku looked back he didn't see any sign of Kizaru. He searched the water, wondering how he'd keep the Admiral from drowning, when Observation Haki warned him. Izuku twisted, narrowly avoiding a fist to the head.
"Observation and Armament Haki. Hoo boy did Roger turn you into one scary pirate."
Izuku answered with a swipe with his leg. The leg stretched unnaturally, diffusing into a crackling whip of electricity that cleaved the air around him. As fast and wide as the attack struck, Kizaru darted easily around it and came in for another punch. Izuku yelped as the Admiral scraped his cheek raw.
With nowhere else to turn, Izuku darted off towards the ships. The Marines opened fire, peppering him with bullets and hurling Sea Prism bolas at him, but the tight formation of ships and the slew of projectiles kept Kizaru from closely pursuing him.
He couldn't beat Kizaru. A cracked rib and bruises all over his body told him so. However, he could give the Admiral something else to worry about. As he darted around a ship, he threw a thunderbolt into a frigate's rudder. The ship listed sideways as the shattered rudder was stuck in a turning position. The other ships frantically steered away, but one ship got clipped by the damaged frigate's prow and got stuck against it.
With Kizaru constantly on his tail, Izuku swept from ship to ship, burning masts, setting off gunpowder barrels, and sweeping men off the ship. As ships floundered in the open waters, the frigates behind them, ignoring their plight, plowed straight through them towards Enies Lobby. Izuku panted, taking a moment to survey the battlefield and get his bearings.
Observation Haki screamed at him. Izuku turned. An indescribable force, driven by the sheer momentum photons at light's speed can deliver, narrowly missed his head and drove straight down his shoulder. Izuku felt his collarbone crack, then a leg broke from the sheer speed at which he crashed into the water.
His whole body throbbed in agony as the chilly fatigue of the sea crept up on him. Far worse than the Sea Prism cuffs, the ocean crushed him with all its watery weight, dragging him towards its depths. Izuku felt his mind slowing down, felt the hundredths of seconds trickling through his mind slipping away like grains of sand, faster and faster, like an hourglass falling apart and spilling its contents everywhere. In that last moment of clarity, Izuku realized his good arm wasn't yet submerged. The sheer force of the impact left a column of air that the ocean had yet to fill in.
Izuku's fingers twitched. His lungs yearned for oxygen, fighting to breathe even if it meant choking on sea water. With a last burst of desperate strength, Izuku swung around and shouted, "Florida Smash!"
The ocean erupted. Izuku hacked and gagged on sea water, before taking in a fresh gulp of air and feeling alive again. His eyelids fluttered, and his head felt woozy, but as the deck of a ship loomed closer to him, Izuku turned and hit the deck feet-first.
The Marines hesitated a few seconds, thrown off by his sudden appearance, before charging. Izuku's right leg refused to support his weight, so he held his ground, bending around Haki and Sea Prism and punching Marines hard enough to fling them onto another ship.
Mid-punch, a beam of light slammed into him. Izuku crashed through the ship's mast, and another fist met him mid-flight. He crashed through the railing. Another fist. Up and down, back and forth, Kizaru punted Izuku around like a volleyball, spiking him through ships and slamming him towards the ocean before kicking him back into the sky at the very last second.
Izuku curled in on himself and focused on Tekkai. Kizaru's punches cracked his feeble defenses and the bones underneath. Teeth flew out in a spray of blood, his nose crumpled up like an accordion, and lunch violently spewed out of him from a gut-punch that fed him his own colon. Izuku felt his consciousness slipping away, and he struggled to hold on.
Kizaru grabbed his shirt collar, instantly yanking him to a halt. "And that's three-hundred." Izuku lost count of the number of times he felt something snap, but the number felt accurate.
"Some of those might be repeats," Kizaru said. "Maybe I should break some more to be sure."
"Screw you," Izuku wheezed. He got another fist in his ribs for his trouble.
"You know, I was in the middle of a good book when they called me. And now, I'm going to have to fill out so many forms for all those ships you broke. I'm really not happy with you right now."
"Sorry about that. I woke up in a metal box, and my day only went downhill from there, so I'm not happy either."
Kizaru rolled his eyes. He took out a transponder snail and said, "Yeah, I got the kid. It's the Rumble one, like they said. No, I don't see the other one, do I really need to- fine, but only if you do the paperwork for me. Mm-hmm, you're the best."
Kizaru rolled his shoulder and said, "Right, let's get you in some cuffs. I'd get you processed first, but looks like you made a mess of the courtroom, so I'll just use my authority as Admiral to declare you guilty of all charges. Sounds good?"
Izuku wrenched his arms, but Kizaru's grip refused to budge.
"I'll take that as a yes. It was nice knowing you kid, hope you don't-"
Izuku noticed it a fraction of a second Kizaru did. A bright sheen of light filled the view over Kizaru's shoulder. Kizaru lashed out, his limbs blurring into light, only to bounce off the mirror hurtling towards him.
Mei brought down an oversized mirror like a giant flyswatter. With Izuku under Kizaru, he was spared the blunt force trauma from the wall of glass, but he still went rocketing into the water with Kizaru. Before seawater filled his lungs, Mei's robotic hand hauled Izuku out of the water.
Flame dials attached to her back and feet like rockets kept her airborne. She twisted out of the way of cannonballs and asked, "You still alive, Izuku?"
"I think so."
"We got the truck back and loaded up. Let's get out of here."
Izuku cried at the thought of finally leaving. He spared a glance at the ocean as they flew off. Kizaru's Admiral coat bobbed in the waves, and dozens of Marines leapt in after him.
The moment Mei set him next to the train, Chopper swarmed over him, wrapping his body in splints, forcing slivers of bone back into place, and force-feeding him an entire gallon of milk. Izuku's teeth shot back in, and he felt his bones fusing together like wet lumps of clay. He experimentally flexed his fingers, and though every fiber of his body felt indescribable amounts of agony with every movement, he formed a fist with his bloodied fingers.
"We need to get out of here. None of us can take on Kizaru."
The Franky brothers, Franky included, blanched at the mention of the Admiral. Nami and Usopp joined them in stark terror, and even Robin became fidgety. Luffy, on the other hand, slammed his fists together and said, "Where is he? No one hurts my friends and gets away with it!"
"You can beat him up some other time," Izuku said. "Right now, we need to leave."
Luffy looked him over and nodded. "Right. We beat up some bad guys and trashed their place. Let's get some meat and party!"
The Franky brothers all cheered as Kokoro blew the whistle and fired up Rocketman. It chugged sluggishly, pulling the weight of everyone onboard and the truck lashed to the roof, but within moments, it glided over the floating rails towards Water Seven.
While everyone celebrated and chatted about sticking it to the Marines, Nami kept an eye on the weather. Thus, she was the first to sight white sails approaching on the horizon.
"They're blockading the rails!" Nami shouted. "We'll crash right into them!"
"Nagagaga! I can feel the rails whipping around. They cut the lines!"
Chopper and Usopp both shrieked. "We're gonna crash!"
Izuku turned to Mei and asked, "Is there a way we can hold the rails together?"
Mei lit up a dial in her hand. "They're hollow aluminum tubes, so they'll be easy to weld back together. But we'll need to get the ships out of the way first.
"We could shoot them with a cannon!" Usopp cried.
Nami swatted him over the head. "What cannon? We're on a train!"
Izuku eyed the horizon. "I don't think I can hit them from here.
"Sure you can. You have electricity, don't you?" Mei asked.
"Uh, yeah? But air's not a good conductor, and my charge fizzles out over long distances."
"Railgun."
Izuku's mind short-circuited. Then it rebooted, and the implications of firing metal shrapnel with electromagnetism hit him. "Zoro, cut off a piece of the train for me, would you?"
Izuku went to the roof and handed Luffy the metal lump. "Drop it when I say to."
Luffy nodded and held the metal over Izuku's chest. Izuku turned his arms into clouds of electrons. Bruises and battered flesh protested, but Izuku willed his arms to stretch into two long rails, pointed directly at the waiting fleet. Izuku had Usopp stand behind him, adjusting his aim, while Nami read the wind patterns.
"It's holding steady," Nami said. "You have one minute before it changes."
"And you're all lined up. Make sure we don't hit a wave before firing."
They moved out from behind Izuku, wary of possible backlash from the railgun. Izuku planted his feet on the roof of the train and set his sights on the looming sails. Despite a perfectly calm sea and not a trace of wind, instinct told Izuku it wasn't the right time to fire. He waited, and waited. Seconds away from giving up and firing anyway, he felt a twinge of rightness. He flung all the charge he could muster down his arms and prayed.
It felt like someone had tied a rope around Izuku's chest and very violently yanked him off his feet. A deafening explosion filled his ears, followed by the shriek of wind whistling past his ears. The air buffeting him made it impossible to open his eyes, and when he finally pried his eyelids open, he only caught a smear of brown filling his vision before his world flew apart in a shower of wooden splinters, shrieking marines, and seawater.
Shivering like a drowned rat, Izuku clawed at the wooden plank floating between him and the sea's chilly embrace. His legs locked up, but he had enough strength in his arms to haul himself out of the water.
"There he is!" A Marine shouted. "Open fire!"
Not trusting his Devil Fruit to help him out at the moment, Izuku leapt to his feet and Geppo'd to the floating chunk of the ship's deck that had survived the impact. One sweep of his leg knocked the firing line of Marines into the sea.
Izuku looked around and saw more ships. He gritted his teeth in frustration, thinking he had launched himself backwards into the pursuing ships. He shot lightning one way, shattering the bow of a ship, and hopped onto another. Within seconds, the fleet around him was nothing more than bobbing timbers and Marines treading water.
Luffy hopped over, Mei wrapped around one arm and a bundle of planks in the other. He set the wood next to the rails, and Mei hopped off to weld the rails back together. Izuku did a double-take. "Wait, what are you guys doing back here?"
"You got the charge backwards," Mei said. "Nearly took the mast off with that backwards shot."
"Oh." Izuku peered over the horizon. "Oops. I hope I didn't hit anything important."
Kizaru squeezed the last of the seawater out of his cloak and shook himself off at light-speed. The heat vaporized the moisture still clinging to him.
"Didn't even register her as a threat," Kizaru mused. "Got too lazy for my own good."
"Uh, sir? Our intercepting fleet has cut the rails, but they might have another way back. What are your orders?"
"We keep after them. Failure is not an option, and Sengoku would-"
Kizaru froze. He felt an ominous sense of danger approaching, but all he saw were clear skies and empty seas. He slipped into light-speed, watching the world crawl while he waited for whatever danger he sensed to arrive. He almost gave up and switched back when he saw it. With the world practically still, the metal shrapnel creeped along, as though it floated in honey. He hovered next to it, watching its steady crawl towards his ship, scratching his hair and wondering how something moving so slow could cause any harm.
When it made contact with the ship, he expected it to clatter off, or maybe get stuck in the prow. He did not expect the wood to splinter and crack as the metal inched its way through the thick beam. The cracks ran up the whole ship, and splinters exploded out in slow motion as the force from the impact rippled across the ship's prow. The deck buckled. Marines' faces morphed into slow expressions of horror as the wood flew out from under their feet and they sluggishly floated into the air.
Kizaru watched the metal projectile careen through the ship. Every wall, every barrel and keg, the sandwich a marine bit into the instant before the projectile tore it from between his teeth, all disintegrated in the path of the metal scrap. It plunged through the keel, and when it approached the water, the ocean parted in the projectile's path, as though an unseen barrier pushed everything away from it.
Only when Kizaru sped back up did he realize how monumentally he had messed up.
The force of the metal meeting the ocean was a thunderclap, ear-shatteringly loud and powerful enough to split the waves into a vast canyon. The water heaved, and ships on either side capsized, throwing their crews overboard. Timbers and water rained down in a deadly shower, perforating decks and sails and forcing Marines to take cover. Broken masts and chunks of keel impaled ships, making them flounder and run into the ships behind them.
In a fraction of a second, a single scrap of metal had destroyed half of Kizaru's fleet.
Kizaru looked around at the shattered ships and drowning crews and did some mental math. Tallying up the bounties on the Straw Hats against the costs to recruit and train every Marine currently stranded in the waves, and comparing the time it would take to track down and grind every Straw Hat into hamburger against the time it would take to fill out the mortuary forms and sign the premade letters to grieving families, Kizaru sighed and started fishing his subordinates out of the ocean.
A/N: I've been waiting a long time to write this fight. Big action set pieces like this one are always such a joy to write, and that accidental parting shot from Izuku was the icing on the cake. Side-note, are updates not working for anyone else? It's been almost a week since ffnet has sent me any emails, and I've had to manually check the site to keep up on my reading. Oh well. I'll still see your reviews, so fire away.
Also, just hit 500 followers on the dot. Woohoo!