Chapter 264
Zaraki's breathing had become noticeably heavier by the time Charlotte Linlin forced herself upright again.
Released Nozarashi rested against his right shoulder, its chipped edge dark with soot and blood while faint dark-gold arcs crawled along the steel, the blade still drinking from him even now.
Stabilization let Zaraki control how much Reiatsu he allowed into the release, but it had never made that consumption disappear, and the prolonged exchange with Linlin was beginning to collect its price.
His shoulder ached from the wounds he had already taken, his forearms felt heavy from repeated collisions with Napoleon, and the skin along one side of his body still burned where Heavenly Feuer Blitz had caught him, yet none of it diminished the grin on his face.
Linlin stood amid shattered candy and broken stone, several cuts marking her arms and shoulder, blood running down one forearm where Nozarashi had finally broken through the monstrous natural toughness that had earned her the reputation of an Iron Balloon.
Her presence remained enormous all the same.
She was hurt, but she was nowhere near finished.
'Good.'
If one clean wound had been enough to settle the fight, Zaraki would have been disappointed.
"Mama!" Perospero's voice carried from the battered edge of the harbor, and he looked ready to rush forward, but Katakuri caught him by the shoulder before he could take more than a few steps.
"Don't."
Perospero twisted toward him. "Don't?! Look at her!"
"I am." Katakuri's eyes never left Zaraki.
Future Sight gave him only the next few seconds, but he did not need anything more exotic to recognize the obvious:
Zaraki was breathing harder than before, his left shoulder was already damaged, and every high-output swing of that enormous released blade made the muscles in his right arm tighten and his stance settle a fraction more heavily afterward.
Katakuri did not know what Nozarashi was, how it worked, or why the strange dark-gold pressure around it differed from Haki, but he knew Zaraki was paying for every exchange, and that was enough.
"He's tiring," Katakuri said quietly. "Mama doesn't need us rushing into his blade while he still has enough strength to cut through anyone who approaches."
Perospero looked furious, but he stopped struggling, and across the harbor Zaraki noticed the exchange and understood the broad conclusion even if he could not hear every word.
Katakuri was waiting: sensible, if annoying.
On the Kuja ship, Gion gripped the rail with both restrained hands while several Kuja warriors tried to keep her from standing too quickly.
"Zaraki!"
He glanced over.
Her face was pale beneath the dust and bruising left by her capture.
"Kaido is already over the outer waters. Get back here while you still have a route out!"
The serpentine silhouette in the distant clouds made her warning difficult to argue with; Kaido had reached Whole Cake Island's outer approaches, and the thunder rolling behind him was getting closer by the second.
Zaraki looked from the dragon in the distance back to Linlin, and his grin widened.
Gion saw it and closed her eyes for half a second. "You really are an idiot."
Zaraki shifted Nozarashi down from his shoulder and brought the chipped cleaver across his body, point angled toward the ruined ground, then bent his knees slightly and settled into a stance that looked unfamiliar only because there was less waste in it than most people expected from him.
That was his answer.
...
Far out at sea, aboard Sengoku's lead intervention flagship, a projection Den Den Mushi carried Morgans' live transmission from Whole Cake Island into the command room.
Sengoku stood at the center table with both hands planted against the charts, while Zephyr, who had joined the intervention force before departure and refused to remain at Marineford after Gion's abduction, watched the projection from the opposite side of the room with a grim expression.
A second secure relay remained open to Garp's fast interception group, and Garp's face filled the smaller Den Den Mushi.
"That damned old hag is still standing!" His fist came down somewhere off-screen hard enough to shake his own relay snail.
Sengoku scowled. "Breaking your ship will not make ours arrive faster."
"Then make this one go faster!"
"We are already at full speed!"
Garp ignored him and stared at the broadcast.
Zaraki's condition worried him more than Linlin's wounds, the brat was still upright and every Marine who had watched his second fight with Kaido knew what happened when Zaraki pushed through accumulated injuries and refused to stop.
Sengoku's eyes shifted toward Kaido's dragon form in the distant background of the broadcast.
"Your interception failed."
Garp's expression darkened. "Kaido abandoned most of his ships and flew straight over the weather line. King's people forced my ship south long enough for the bastard to change routes."
"Can you still reach Whole Cake?"
"I'm trying."
"Try faster."
Garp bared his teeth. "You think I'm sightseeing?"
Zephyr finally spoke. "Enough."
Both old Marines looked toward him, but his gaze remained on Zaraki.
"We all know he should withdraw. We also know shouting that through a Den Den Mushi will not make him do it."
Garp gave a humorless laugh. "At least somebody here understands the brat."
Sengoku's jaw tightened. "He has Gion back. The objective is complete. There is no reason to stay between Linlin and Kaido."
"For us," Zephyr said.
Sengoku looked at him, and Zephyr folded his restored arms.
"Zaraki does not think in terms of acceptable objectives once a fight has already started. That is exactly why I do not think he is finished yet."
The room fell quiet.
Zephyr did not know anything about some miraculous reserve Zaraki had never disclosed; he simply knew the young man well enough to recognize the expression on the screen.
Zaraki had not reached the point where he believed the fight was over, and that was what worried Zephyr most.
...
Charlotte Linlin's breathing slowly steadied.
The blind rage that had ruled her since learning of Snack's death did not disappear, but decades of combat experience began forcing its way back through it.
Her enormous body remained battered and bleeding; she did not become younger, thinner, or magically return to the shape of her physical prime.
What changed was her posture: the reckless openings vanished, her eyes turned colder, and Napoleon shifted in her hand as she studied Zaraki instead of simply trying to crush him with the next available attack.
"Brat."
Zaraki raised Nozarashi slightly.
Linlin's grin returned, though there was less madness in it now. "You're better than I expected."
"That supposed to be a compliment?"
"No." She moved.
Observation Haki caught the start of the burst, but Zaraki's body was slower than it had been at the beginning of the battle.
Released Nozarashi was still pulling at his Reiatsu, his muscles had accumulated damage, and the half-second of warning Future Sight gave him did not magically make injured flesh move at full speed.
He brought the chipped cleaver across his chest, but Linlin adjusted, and Napoleon came around the guard from an awkward angle and bit into Zaraki's left shoulder.
Shhk—!
Pain tore through him.
The cut drove deep through muscle and sent a shock down his collarbone, and blood flooded the front of his coat as Linlin's strength hurled him backward across the shattered harbor, his boots carving trenches through the candy ground before he finally stopped.
"ZARAKI!" Gion's shout came from the Kuja ship, and Hancock's head snapped toward the impact at the same time, her expression tightening despite herself.
Zaraki dropped to one knee, his left arm gone partially numb.
He shifted Nozarashi entirely into his right hand and drew several heavy breaths through clenched teeth, but Linlin did not give him time to recover.
Napoleon rose again as Prometheus and Zeus circled behind her.
"You wanted a fight?" She advanced. "Then stop kneeling!"
Napoleon came down.
Zaraki looked up through the blood running along the side of his face, and his grin returned.
"Yeah."
He drove Nozarashi upward one-handed.
CLAAANG—!
The collision blasted fragments of broken candy away from them.
Linlin expected him to be weaker after the shoulder wound, and he was, but that did not mean he had stopped being dangerous.
Instead of trying to overpower her entire swing, Zaraki shifted Nozarashi against Napoleon at an angle and let part of Linlin's force slide past him; Mihawk's lessons had become instinct by now, and there was no reason to absorb strength that could be redirected.
The change was small, but it was enough.
Napoleon struck the ground beside Zaraki instead of his skull.
He stepped inside Linlin's reach and drove the flat shoulder of Nozarashi into her ribs with everything his legs could still produce.
BOOM—!
Linlin was forced sideways, and before she could reset her stance,
Zaraki turned the motion into a full one-handed slash.
Dark-gold arcs intensified along Nozarashi as he opened the Reiatsu flow another step, and the attack caught Linlin across the armored side of her torso.
She crossed Napoleon in front of herself in time to stop the edge from reaching flesh cleanly, but the impact still lifted her from the ground and hurled her backward through a candy building, the structure exploding around her.
Zaraki remained where he was for a moment, his right arm trembling around Nozarashi's hilt.
The blade wanted more.
'More.'
The rough voice reached him from within the weapon alone.
'You always want more.'
Nozarashi answered with an impatient pulse, and Zaraki laughed under his breath despite the vicious pain in his shoulder.
The fight was finally getting interesting again.
---------
Read 30 chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator