"No…" said Schwarz. "No no no no nooooo…"
The forces of Minus World reached the city of Lant. With Balthasar von Esens, his sister, and two "archangels" serving as the vanguard, there were five thousand troops in total, including a hundred heavy artillery units, all ready to level the city and kill everyone in it who didn't submit.
Von Esens surveyed Piedmont Street, finding it empty except for the Worldwide Smoke members, a few corpses, and the unconscious Izmena.
"Zis is Piedmont Street, ja?" he inquired. "I vas told zere vould be an entire difision off Marines for my forces to slaughter here."
He looked up and down. "Instead, all I find iss a handful off valking corpses. A shame, truly."
Roxanne locked eyes with Rusila, and it felt like all her battle wounds had dissipated. Likewise, Lulupo locked eyes with the effeminate blue-haired archangel.
"Gabo!" he shouted. "What are you doing back?!"
"I received a promotion, truth be told," Gabo said. "Though I may have lost our little… lover's quarrel back at Panipuri, I proved my loyalty to the cause over the past six months."
"Tell me, Gabo, vhy should I not kill you vhere you stand?" von Esens asked. "Failure iss death in my organization."
"During my little spat with my ex, I… awakened. And my power now is not something to be trifled with, my liege. Give me one more chance, and I'll have the entirety of the South Blue under your control in half a year."
"Intriguing…" von Esens replied, stroking his beard.
"By the way, it's 'Gabriel' now, darling. Us archangels are King Balthasar's top enforcers. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Steve. We gang of four are each as strong as any of the pirate emperors' highest ranking commanders."
"Indeed. Gabriel and I were brought along because there was a high probability of an admiral showing up today," said Michael. "Though our king is the world's strongest, it helps to have backup in case something were to go awry. Alas, it seems there are no admirals here today."
"You…" growled Roxanne, not taking her eyes off Rusila.
"Me…?" Rusila asked playfully.
"You took what was most important from me six months ago. I'm going to have your head for that!"
Roxanne began stepping forward toward Rusila, who was picking her nose.
"Heehee! I get zat a lot! Do you vant to play viz me, lady?"
Roxanne pulled out one of her lightning bottles. "I'm going to get justice for Andy, you psychopath!"
"Psy-cho-paz…?" asked a confused Rusila. "Zat iss a new vord!"
"Roxanne, stand down," Schwarz ordered. "We need to retreat."
"I'm not gonna have another chance to get back at the BITCH who killed the love of my life!" Roxanne shouted.
Rusila gasped. "You said a bad vord!"
Roxanne uncorked the bottle, and with a loud thunderclap, lightning went flying at Minus World. Rusila jumped forward, intercepting the lightning with her bare hands, then casually played with it, twirling it around her fingers like a toy.
She then flung the lightning back at Roxanne, who caught it with her bending powers and stuffed it back in the bottle.
"How the hell did you do that?!" Roxanne shouted.
"Big bro says I haff to keep it a secret!" Rusila cheerfully explained. "But I don't need to store mine in bottles!"
Rusila held her hands out: lightning shot out of one hand, and a pillar of fire shot out of the other. The attack consumed almost the entire width of Piedmont Street, with the members of Worldwide Smoke only barely managing to dodge.
Roxanne stepped back up and squared up, sweating. "I'm not afraid of you!" she declared.
Quicker than the eye could track, Rusila closed the gap between them. "Oh, but you should be!"
She then slapped Roxanne across the cheek with enough force to send her flying all the way down to the curve in Piedmont Street, bouncing off the pavement several times on the way there before finally crashing through a wall. If Roxanne hadn't undergone that six months of training, she would have easily lost her head.
Rusila, seeing that Roxanne's head was still attached, put her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks. She turned to von Esens and asked "big bro! Can I finish her?"
"Not now, Rusila, ve still haff business to attend to," von Esens replied, to which his sister let out a whine.
He turned his attention to Shaska, who was finally coming to her senses.
"Now, ze crooked var-mongering business voman, Shaska ze Greedy…" he said, drawing his sword and stepping forward, armor making loud clanking sounds.
Shaska snapped up straight. "K-king guy…!"
"You say you are here to defeat me, ja…? Cahm, duel me! Now!" von Esens declared with a swish of his cape.
Soon, Shaska and von Esens were face to face, the former barely aware of what was going on, the latter with a murderous intensity in his eyes. The rest of Worldwide Smoke prepared for battle, drawing their weapons and forming up behind Shaska.
"This is bad…!" thought Schwarz. "She's in no condition to fight…!"
"King guy. Von Esens. Look, I'm… not exactly on my game today," Shaska said. "My sister… my sister who I loved more than anything… my sister who I hadn't seen in forty years… just died right in front of me… can't we… do this another time…?"
Von Esens just stared at her for a moment. Silence fell over the two parties. Then, von Esens began to chuckle.
"Heh heh heh… Hahaha… MAAAAAAAOOHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!"
All of Minus World erupted into laughter at this. Worldwide Smoke couldn't help but feel secondhand embarrassment for their boss.
"ARE YOU KIDDING, SHASKA ZE GREEDY?! Zis vas your idea!"
"Yeah, but—"
"Baht nahsing! You are pasetic! You say you are going to 'beat ze crap out off me', und yet vhen ze time comes, you are too scared! You are like a little girl, Shaska!"
Shaska teared up, but forced it back before the waterworks could start again.
Von Esens cracked his neck, then continued with "to tell ze truth, Shaska, I vas looking forvard to zis day! To show ze vorld zat efen ze mightiest bounty hahnter iss powerless before Minus Vorld! But zis? Zis iss jahst SAD. Jahst sad."
"What's your problem, kingy-ding?!"
"You already know my problem, Shaska. All I vant iss there to be true eqvality under my God. But zis can only be achieved vonce I sit on ze empty throne at Marie Jois. I vill make material vealth like yours obsolete in my utopia. All vill be shared, und ve vill all be happy."
"Is it really sharing if you're using force to do it?" Shaska mused. Von Esens was unimpressed.
Shaska shook her head and squared up.
"Fine… if it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll—"
Von Esens impaled Shaska through the chest on his sword quicker than she could react.
"O-oh…" was all she could respond with as she coughed up blood and her eyes lost their color. She held her hand up to grab the sword, but von Esens delivered a long, diagonal slash through her torso, nearly cleaving her in two. The rest of Worldwide Smoke were too stunned to react.
Shaska collapsed to the ground and massive amounts of blood began pooling around her as she was gasping for air.
"I think that's our cue to leave," Schwarz choked out, sheathing his sword.
"Oh? But ze fun iss jahst beginning!" replied a cheerful Rusila, who began swirling fire and lightning around her hands.
"Zis… zis vas jahst pasetic. Troops, kill zem all," von Esens ordered as he turned around and began walking away.
"YES SIR!" the five thousand man army called in unison.
"Lulupo, get Shaska with your hair. Try to keep as much blood in her as possible. Everyone else, recover as many of our soldiers as possible. I'll secure a path back to the Robinson," said Schwarz.
Lulupo did as he was told, scooping Shaska's quickly unconscious body up with his hair and taking off down Piedmont Street, making sure to get Delilah's unconscious body as well. The rest of Worldwide Smoke followed suit, running as fast as they could while attempting to dodge Rusila's lightning bolts and fireballs.
Schwarz brought up the rear, using his portals to cover the escape. He sent Rusila's attacks down over the Minus World army, who were ransacking the city looking for stragglers.
Von Esens, not hearing the sounds of any screaming, turned back around and shouted "vhy aren't zey dead yet?!"
Then, Ren got an idea that she whispered to Lulupo as they ran. Lulupo nodded as Ren pulled out her sniper rifle again. He scooped her up in his hair, and she used him as a sniper perch, albeit a bouncy one.
"Kill zem!" von Esens shouted. And for a split second, Ren had the perfect line of sight.
She pulled the trigger, and the bullet went flying.
Von Esens was too distracted to notice Ren's plan and, while the bullet didn't hit its exact mark on his forehead… it took out his right eye, causing him to howl in pain as blood poured down his face.
The king wasn't the type to take that lying down, though. As artillery fire rained down on Lant, he took off after Worldwide Smoke alongside his sister, who was still throwing fire and lightning. Then, a massive gust began to blow from behind the diabolical siblings, and Michael materialized out of it, running like the wind beside them.
"My lieges, allow me," he calmly said, forming a miniature tornado in his hands. "My Gust Gust Fruit will let me level the city and prevent their escape."
"No! Sahch intransigence vill be pahnished by MY hand!" von Esens shouted back, clutching his face with his off hand. He swung his sword vertically, creating a shockwave that ripped the street in two, but also missed Worldwide Smoke.
Worldwide Smoke rounded the corner… and then they were gone. Von Esens, Rusila, and Michael stopped dead, unable to find them. Von Esens' eyes (or, eye) flashed red, and he got a scan of the area with his Observation Haki. In the nearby buildings were unconscious Roxanne and Freddie, in the street lay an unconscious Izmena, and on the next street over was an unconscious Franco. The officers of Worldwide Smoke were nowhere near Piedmont Street anymore.
"Hm… it seems zat in zeir haste, our friends at Vorldvide Smoke haff left sahm off zeir crew behind…" von Esens said, stroking his beard.
"Big bro! I vanna kill zem!" Rusila whined.
"No… I haff a mahch better use for zem…"
"My lord?" asked Michael.
"Cahm, help me recahver zese bodies before ze army destroys ze city, my archangel," von Esens ordered, to which Michael bowed.
—-
Johnson kept up his pace on the battlefield in northern Lant. Left and right, he was knocking away Marines with mighty kicks from his ostrich legs. Unfortunately, the Marines greatly outnumbered the grunts of Worldwide Smoke by almost four to one, and soon Worldwide Smoke grunts began dropping like flies while the Marines kept being replenished with more and more reinforcements.
Then the shelling from Minus World began.
"C'mon! Who else wants some?!" Johnson shouted as a horde of Marine soldiers swarmed him. They were promptly dispatched by a Minus World mortar shell, which sent Johnson flying backwards, crashing into a wall (not through it), and damaging his precious robot backpack.
As Johnson got to his feet, he muttered "that can't be a good sign…" as blood dripped down his ostrich beak.
Then his transponder snail started going off.
Purupurupurucaaaalick
"Kinda in the middle of something!" Johnson yelled as he kicked away more Marines.
"This is Schwarz! The mission is a failure! Get the troops back to the forest ASAP and I'll warp you back to the Robinson! We need to make an emergency retreat!"
"Tell Shaska I told her so!"
"Shaska's almost dead from our encounter with the king! Just get your feathery ass back here!"
Caaaalick
Johnson stowed his transponder snail and shouted as loud as he could to the Worldwide Smoke troops. "WORLDWIDE SMOKE! RETREAT! THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER!"
"Retreat…?" asked a grunt before he was shot in the head and killed.
"RETREAT, DAMMIT! I'LL HOLD THEM BACK AS BEST I CAN! MOVE IT, SOLDIERS!"
Johnson planted his feet on the ground as the Worldwide Smoke grunts evacuated the battlefield. He took down countless Marines, but soon enough, the stream of Marines was replaced with soldiers from Minus World, who began flooding into the plaza where Johnson was fighting. While some of the Minus World soldiers clashed with Marines, the majority went after Johnson.
"Haaaaah… haaaaaah… I think… I think that's my cue to retreat, too," he panted. He shifted into his full ostrich form and took off toward the forest where the crew had initially disembarked.
Johnson tore through the village on the outskirts of Lant, running alongside the river. Sure enough, one of Schwarz's portals had been set up at the forest's edge. He bolted through it, and landed on the deck of the Humo Robinson, shifting back to his human form as he did so, then collapsing face down onto the deck.
As soon as Schwarz saw this, he called Zinnia at the helm via a transponder snail and yelled "PUNCH IT!"
"Punch what, Mister Sch–"
"IS THIS REALLY THE TIME?! ENGINES ON!"
The engines of the Robinson roared to life, and it began moving forward toward Vicks Davis Island, directly toward the blockade surrounding the island. Zinnia began frantically turning the wheel away from the island, but the Marine battleships began to follow them and started shooting their cannons at the Worldwide Smoke ship.
Schwarz ran about on the deck, throwing up portals to reflect the Marine cannonballs back to their battleships. Lulupo, after having dropped off Shaska and Delilah at the infirmary, quickly followed suit, jumping up and flinging the explosive cannonballs back with his hair. Ren took up a position in the crow's nest, shooting the cannonballs out of the air as best she could. In the distance, the crew could see the buildings of Lant collapsing and going up in flames.
—-
Isha, Puerco, and the medical grunts all scrubbed in for surgery, starting with Shaska, the most grievously wounded.
"Get as much type F blood as you can!" Puerco ordered, pulling on his gloves and a surgical mask. "This is gonna be a long operation!"
A grunt quickly cut the sleeves off Shaska's business shirt and connected numerous IVs to get in as much blood as possible, as well as anesthesia in case she were to wake up during the surgery.
"Hell of a day, huh?" Isha asked as she began digging around the wound to stitch Shaska's organs back together.
"You have no idea…" Puerco responded.
—-
News of the assault on Vicks Davis Island spread around the world like wildfire, and the failure of the Marines that day became one of the greatest stains on the World Government's reputation up to that point. Only the God Valley Incident decades earlier could compare.
At the World Government capital, the Holy Land of Marie Jois, the Five Elders who controlled the World Government once again called an emergency meeting in a pure white room with green furniture. One wore a hat and had a scar on his face, with a white beard and dreadlocks (Saint Jaygarcia Saturn). One was a tall, thin man with long, white hair and a big, bushy white mustache and beard (Saint Marcus Mars). One was bald with a large birthmark on his head, also with a bushy white mustache (Saint Topman Warcury). One was younger-looking, with pale blond hair and a beard (Saint Shepherd ju Peter). The last was bald, with no facial hair and carried a katana (Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro). All but Nusjuro was dressed in a sharp black suit; Nusjuro was dressed in a pure white gi.
"An entire island of Celestial Dragons was just slaughtered," said Mars. "It seems the Balthasars are stepping up their game."
"...now what?" Saturn asked.
"I vote that we step in personally," Nusjuro suggested.
"No," said Peter. "We don't want to reveal our strength just yet. Though if he comes to Marie Jois now, we may just have to."
"And the May Cube current surrounding the Twilight Kingdom makes it impossible for us to take the fight to him," said Warcury. "Somehow, he's able to navigate it as he pleases."
"It seems we have two options then," said Peter. "And both of them are out of our control. Either we wait for him to attack Marie Jois, where he'll be contending with the five of us, the admirals, and any of the Warlords we can happen to wrangle in the near future."
"I don't like that," Saturn added. "What's our other option?"
"...we put our faith in Shaska, the only bounty hunter who seems to be insane enough to pick a fight with him," said Peter.
"Put our faith in a commoner?!" shouted Saturn.
"She's crazy, but she poses no threat to our power," said Peter. "Unless… you have any proposals yourself?"
"What do we do if Shaska actually does collect the bounty?" Warcury asked. "Do we follow our law and leave her alone? Evading Heavenly Tribute is a serious offense."
"More likely than not, she'll bring his head here," said Nusjuro. "In which case, I say we kill her on the spot."
"I vote against that," said Saturn. "She's been a valuable asset in cleaning up the seas for decades. And killing such a prominent bounty hunter would dissuade further bounty hunters from doing the jobs that the Navy brass are too scared to do."
Silence rang over the room.
"So are we in agreement, gentlemen?" Peter asked.
Warcury sighed and said "I suppose it's all we can do at this point."
—-
Roxanne's eyes slowly began to open. She felt a gentle rocking motion.
"Am I… at sea…?" she thought.
She sat up, and realized something incredibly troubling: she was in a jail cell, chained to the wall in sea prism stone shackles.
"Oh no! The Marines captured me! NOOOOO!" she thought as her eyes nervously darted around her cell.
But then, she saw her cellmate, chained to the wall opposite hers: Franco, stripped of his weapons, robot appendages, and officer's coat. He was still unconscious.
Outside the bars to the cell came a voice, followed by the clanking of armor. The ten foot tall Balthasar von Esens (now wearing an eyepatch over his right eye) squatted down to Roxanne's eye level outside the cell.
"Hallo. Friend," he said with a sly smile.
TO BE CONTINUED