"You can't kill him...Out of all my men, I made you commander because you were the strongest and most ruthless, and now you refuse to kill a man?! You disappoint me!"
"I'm sorry Don Krieg...But this one man, I cannot kill! Is there any way...any way at all...that we could just spare this ship?"
"You disobey me! And then you dare order ME, what to do?!" Don Krieg readied his cannon and wearing a mask.
"Is Don Krieg really about to poison this entire area?!"
"All of you! Put on you masks!"
"Don Krieg...these cooks saved our lives!" Gin tried to reason with Krieg while pulling out a gas mask.
"Drop your fucking mask Gin! You're not part of the Krieg pirates any longer."
"What...But...Don Krieg...then I..."
"Drop the mask!"
"Do you think I'd just let you shoot that?!" Luffy tried to cross over but Krieg, learning from his mistakes, threw bombs all around him to block off any foothold Luffy could run across and showered his location in javelin shots again.
"Gin! Don't listen to that bitch Krieg!" Luffy shouted.
"Don't insult hi-"
"Didn't he literally trash your loyalty because you refused to kill the person that saved you from starving to death?"
"Don Krieg is the m-mightiest man aliv-"
"Didn't you watch the fight earlier between the man who destroyed your entire fleet, and Zoro who managed to keep up with him?" Luffy immediately countered.
"Your HERO is trying to kill you Gin!" Sanji buzzed in.
"I'm a traitor who let his sentiment get in the way of his duty...I deserve this." Gin said as he threw his mask away.
"MH5!" Krieg finally shot his poison bomb. The Krieg pirates then wore their masks while half the chefs either dived below the water or entered Baratie.
Sanji tried to push Gin's mask to his face but Gin was overpowering him. While the two were trying to save each other, Luffy threw the 2 over a hundred meters upwards, inhales a bunch of air, inflating his body, and shoves his head underwater.
Gin and Sanji, both still holding unto the mask, gets a bird's-eye view of the battlefield. They saw the gaseous MH5 spread through the area. Sanji specifically noticed the Going Merry which was quite a distance away from Baratie about to also get covered in the gas.
"Nami!" Sanji remembered about the pretty redhead.
"Tatsumaki!"
After they started falling down, they saw a tornado blow away not only the gas that was about to engulf the Going Merry, but also all of the gas near Baratie.
Luffy pulled his head out the water, looked up to find the two still midair, and then positioned himself where he felt they would land. Krieg tried to shoot javelins at Luffy again when he saw he was trying to save them, so Luffy threw the Sabagashira, the fish head pedal boat of Baratie, at Krieg which gave him enough time to catch them.
The instant Sanji and Gin landed on Luffy's inflated body, Luffy let go of the air and breathed out to kill their momentum. The two bounced up a bit after landing but were still virtually unhurt by the fall.
After being caught off a guard by Luffy, Krieg immediately started firing javelins again. Luffy didn't have a foothold to reach Krieg and was kept at a distance from him with the javelins so he didn't have the time to aim and slingshot towards him.
"I need a distraction..." Luffy thought out loud to himself, and Sanji heard him.
Sanji ran inside Baratie.
Luffy ran side to side trying to juke him towards any opening, which he couldn't find.
Sanji then ran out, aimed, and fired Patty's Charcuterie Meatball, the weapon that pushed Krieg back when he was inside Baratie. Krieg was able to barely block, but he was still knocked down, which gave Luffy enough time to wind up, aim and slingshot himself towards Krieg's floating heap.
"You want to punch me again?! Why don't try it now boy! I'm invincible!" Krieg challenged Luffy while now wearing his Porcupine Cape. Luffy instantly disappeared from Krieg's sight, before a fist went for his head from above, slamming him down.
"You were saying?" Luffy cheekily said.
"I'm the mighty Don Krieg!...This will not be the place that I fall!" Krieg declared, slowly standing back up. "I am not losing!" he shouted before proceeding to bash Luffy with his shield, which didn't do anything, because Luffy was rubber.
"Yes you are." Luffy stated as a matter of fact, and sent a knee towards his face in that broke his nose.
"You!" Krieg got back up again, then tied to shoot more javelins, but only 10 more javelins came out before he ran out.
"About time that thing runs out of ammo." Luffy said as he sent towards Krieg.
And learning from his lessons, Krieg covered his head. Even when Luffy threw punches and kicks that attacked his upper body, Krieg let his armor take it, being confident it could take the hits, and focused on headshots.
"Pussy! If you're going to cover, then..." Luffy threw a 1-2 combination, Krieg still covering up his head, so he didn't see Luffy really loading up on a kick, which struck his knee.
Krieg took a knee and dropped his hands, which gave Luffy a perfect opportunity for a spinning back kick.
Krieg took the hit better as he immediately went back to being on his knee than lying on the ground. He removed his shoulder plates and combined them. The combined plates sprouted a blade and a shaft on either side, forming a spear.
Krieg then twirled his spear around him. Luffy wanted to end it, but he hit the non-bladed part of the plate causing an explosion, and Luffy's was arm was blown back.
With Luffy being naturally more agile than Krieg, plus his admittedly rudimentary but still relevant boost in speed using Shakushi, Krieg was forced to get hit one or more times to hit once, but that one hit is done with his Battle Spear's explosive power and weight.
Gambling whether his head or Luffy's head could take more beatings was a risky gamble Krieg wasn't willing to take. He instead took a different approach by focusing protection on his head, lessening his chances of hitting, but instead of pitting their literal heads, Krieg instead pits his armor against Luffy's toughness.
"You want to go toe to toe, let's go toe to toe!" Krieg taunted Luffy, to which Luffy obliged. They went back and forth in hitting each other, with Luffy hitting far more but still getting hurt more because he was either hitting Krieg's armored hands, armored torso, or the blade of his spear. Because Krieg's spear has a longer reach and because he's on he's on a knee, Krieg was protecting his unarmored legs.
Finally, with one final burst of strength, the blade of the Battle Spear shattered. Krieg stumbled back, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief.
Luffy stood there, his chest heaving from the effort of his feat. Luffy was capable of handling explosions better than blades, and that was what primarily fended him off Krieg.
"You think just because you broke the blade, you could just get through it?!" Krieg once again used bravado to deflect the truth of reality from setting in. They went at it again, Luffy much more willing to go forward now because of the lack of blades. He would take the explosive blow to get closer to land headshots.
Krieg turtled up even more, now using his Battle Spear, which was now more of a bomb on a stick, more as a shield rather than as a deterrent. Luffy then solved that by pushing it towards Krieg, directly blowing it up on him.
Krieg was dazed by the explosion causing him to lose the grip on his spear. Luffy pounced on him, then slamming him on Baratie's fighting platform, right in front of Gin.
"Krieg lost?! I never thought he could lose...He was the tyrant of East Blue." Gin said while trying to help Krieg get into a more comfortable position by helping him up him through his left arm.
"Graauhh!...You...Gin...This...is all your fault!" Krieg said. While Gin was trying to help Krieg, Krieg woke up, grabbed Gin's neck with his left hand, and reached in his back for a a dagger and tried to stab Gin.
"Cat Executioner!"
Gin didn't even see anything before he saw Krieg's head drop to the floor and a man covered in bandages appear out of nowhere.
Zoro then looked at Luffy and raised his eyebrows.
"I only got soot on me...and maybe a few scratches...but that's it! I'm good to go." Luffy knowing Zoro was about to critic him, immediately defended himself.
"You took way too long. There was few times in the fight where you could've ended it and didn't. You were so careless that I had to finish the fight myself."
"I had him..." Luffy pouted, even though he knew everything Zoro said was valid, and that Gin would've died if he didn't intervene in the last second.
"I'd still like to try and buy the village bloodlessly...And if that doesn't happen, then I'd like you guys to...help me take care of the Fishmen."
The Straw Hats, Johnny and Yosaku listened to Nami's situation, with the Going Merry heading towards Conomi Islands where Arlong's territory is.
"Ok, so we try to pay them. If they fuck us over, we beat them." Luffy simplified.
"Basically." Zoro said while chopping at Krieg's gauntlets, trying to remove the embedded diamonds on it without scratching them.
"Have no fear Nami. I shall vanquish those fish monsters in your name." Sanji promised Nami, obviously simping for her.
"Nami, can you tell us about their abilities?" Usopp said, already resigned to the fact that they were sailing towards another fight where every member of the opposing crew is significantly stronger than him.
"Fishmen have at least 10 times the strength of a normal human, they're even stronger in water, great swimmers, and they can breathe underwater. Some of them have attributes similar to other aquatic creatures. What you need to worry about is his officers. Chew can suck a lot of water that he can use to shoot out projectiles with similar strength to guns. Hatchan has tentacles that can move almost as if each one has a mind of its own, specially dangerous when wielding his six heavy swords. Kuroobi is a skilled martial artist. Arlong himself has teeth and nose capable of ripping through metal." Nami expounded on each of their officers.
Usopp immediately buried his nose on a journal for hopes of finding something that he could use against the Fishmen. The journal came from the engineer that built Krieg's and Pearl's armor.
They rescued him, barely clinging to life. When he heard Usopp wondering out loud how Pearl's shield worked and how he could incorporate it to his own. He gave his journal of designs and special materials he came up with.
'Pyrous...waxed...that's why it only burns in the front, not on the back of the shields...tends to clump up...solid on room temp-" Usopp's concentration was broken when Zoro patted him in the shoulder.
"Relax, Usopp, you'll be fine. You might not be as physically strong as them, but you're no slouch yourself. I've seen you carry that bag of yours around that easily weighed over a metric ton. Plus, you've only grown stronger with our sessions."
"Yeah...What the hell was I worried about?! I'm the Great Pirate Usopp!...You haven't chopped up Krieg's armor yet have you?" Usopp asked, the gears in his head turning.
"Nope, I've only washed out the blood and been digging the diamonds out, why? Do you need something on it?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna dismantle it for something."
AN: I don't like author notes because I personally think they pad out the stories and it takes away from the experience, but this is for the people who've read into the foreshadowing. I originally planned for Gin to join, so I dropped a few hints, but at the end I decided not to because I couldn't think of interesting ways I could use Gin. So for all the people who could've sworn Gin was joining, he was, you're not crazy, I just didn't think of anything interesting for him to do after joining.
Also, thank you for reading and all the nice comments.
:)