Chapter 73: Chaos is Your Friend!
Summary: The Battle Begins!
Warning! Chapters 72-74 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!
Chapter 73: Chaos is Your Friend!
'Everyone is in place, Captain, and we've got the stream from the Marines Base's Proko Mushi in view. The broadcast from Marineford has started, but it's just general buildup for now. No sign of any of the Warlords in the crowd, though all three Admirals are present.'
Luffy nodded silently from his own position in the bleachers of the Human Auction House as Vivi relayed to him via the Discovery's Den Den Mushi. Hina, not aware he'd outfitted the Discovery via copious use of his System Shop, had been shocked to discover that Luffy had access to a White Den Den Mushi. Attaching the ultra-rare Mushi to their main relay Mushi would prevent anyone from intercepting the signal of the specific family of Den Den Mushi they were using to organize their plan.
Currently, Vivi was acting as the primary relay back on the Discovery, with support from Robin. Specifically because Vivi could lock onto any of the crew with the combination of her Door-Door Fruit and Observation Haki, and Robin could extend her view through Air Doors to watch each of their groups. The pair were the quick-exit strategy for anyone that got in trouble, as well as providing some support via Robin and the ability to move some of the crew from one location to others if additional support was needed. Aside from them, Pagaya was also staying aboard ship in his Crystal Knight armor, as a strategic reserve and protection for the ship if it was somehow discovered during the operation.
As for Luffy's presence in the Human Auction House? In the best tradition of entrepreneurs everywhere, the Auction House had been pitching a 'major sale' to go with the 'fateful pirate execution' all week. As soon as the 'action' was over at Marineford, there was supposed to be a sale featuring lots of 'big name pirates' who'd been caught and enslaved. Honestly, as disgusting as it was, Luffy both admired the initiative and was gleefully willing to take advantage of the move.
The tiers of seating inside the place were fairly filled already, with large monitors showing a slightly-delayed version of what was happening at Marineford. Most critically for their plan, there was an entire box of seats filled with half a dozen Celestial Dragons and their attendants. Though there were a pair of unexpected complications present among them that were giving Luffy some mild concerns. One was a serious looking blonde woman, the other a tall dark-haired man with a goatee…and a pigeon on his shoulder. Both were dressed in black formal wear and scanning the crowd.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he knew who they were. The pigeon was sort of a give-away.
CP-9.
Both were registering as serious combatants to Luffy's Haki, though thankfully neither seemed to have any Haki of their own. Despite what he knew of them from his past-life memories, they didn't feel strong enough to change the plan around them. Some level of security had been expected and planned for, after all. At worst, if they couldn't be eliminated quickly, they might have to be pushed off for some of the other crew to deal with while Yamato and Luffy handled any big names that showed up.
Given that they'd failed to spot Luffy entirely as a threat, he was fairly confident it wouldn't come to that anyway. Though admittedly he was cheating like a bitch with spirit tags provided by Kaya that made him seem harmless and uninteresting unless you could overcome their effect. Observation Haki would have done so, but without that or something similar, he was just another face in the crowd to them for now. Yamato was too distinctive for that to have worked on, but that's why she was currently waiting out of sight but ready for her part anyway.
'It's starting. The executioners just stepped out with Jozu. Kuma is behind him, escorting the group to the execution platform.'
Luffy nodded to himself, counting the delay before the same thing appeared on the monitors here. Fifteen seconds. Smart of the Marines, really. If everything went tits up for them during the battle, they would have long enough to cut the public broadcast before the world could see whatever the disaster was. If they recovered, they could reengage and cite technical issues. Otherwise, they could spin the failure of the system however they wanted to for the public later to help cover up whatever went wrong. The Marine version of the broadcast that Vivi and Robin were watching through a tiny hole in their local HQ created by her Fruit, though? That broadcast wouldn't suffer the same issue, since the Marines were the ones that needed to react in the first place. Combined with the Mushi, his crew could react in real time to what was happening at the execution.
They just needed to choose their moment properly.
Something that was clearly on the mind of the Marines too, as Fleet Admiral Sengoku began gassing away about Jozu's crimes and the crimes of his leader Whitebeard. Clearly, the Admiral was intentionally stalling out, waiting for Whitebeard's response. They hadn't gone to such extreme lengths to execute one man, after all. No matter how prominent he might be. Meaning they needed to wait for the moment when the real guest of honor arrived.
Which was going to happen. That much everyone was certain of at this point.
The Marines hadn't been able to entirely track the Whitebeard Fleet, but they did know it had come together and was moving. That the bulk of it, plus quite a few allied crew, had vanished out of the New World, destroying every Marine scout vessel that had tried to keep track of them in the process. The very fact that those scouts had been killed to a ship was enough that they knew their trap was working. They, like Luffy and his crew, were primed for the moment Whitebeard arrived.
Marineford had been evacuated of non-combatants, and tens of thousands of Marines of high enough combat power to matter had been pulled in to defend their Headquarters. Even with every one of the 43 allied crews Whitebeard had, the best estimates had him outnumbered three to one. Though the per capita average combat strength favored Whitebeard and his allies, every single one of which were New World crews. Luffy could see as the cameras panned the crowd of Marines, that most of them were looking outward toward the Gates of Justice. Which was supposed to be the only safe way to approach the island of Marineford. But he, himself, remembered enough to be looking critically at the waters near the island itself. Assuming Whitebeard came up with the same plan, that would be where the first strike came from.
More importantly, Vivi had been clued in to watch the same, meaning she reacted faster than virtually anyone as four massive battleships erupted from the water right on top of the island at the same time that the Gates of Justice cracked open. Whitebeard was not fucking around, and this was no anime with dramatic pauses mid-battle. Those battleships, the lead one of which was the Moby Dick itself, came up firing, ripping holy hell out of the defensive siegeworks even as Whitebeard himself cracked the air and shockwaves battered the entire island.
More important to him and his, Vivi had practically shouted their emergence into the Den Den Mushi fifteen seconds before anyone at the Auction House knew the 'show' had truly started. In doing so it was she, not Luffy, who kicked off their own plans before anyone else got a chance to react. Almost in sync with the emergence of the ships on the public broadcast came the first strike of their one phase 1, triggered by Robin the instant Vivi had set the dominos in motion.
The Sabaody Archipelago Marine base had no warning at all as over a five tons of the high-explosive compound first created by Buggy the Clown went off directly underneath them and the entire base of their mangrove simply ceased to exist. The high-explosives, painstakingly planted by Robin and Vivi working together for the last several days, wiped out a large enough chunk of the tree base that the massive tree itself immediately beginning to tip. Its horrible, ponderous weight fell towards other mangroves, where its impact would set off quakes strong enough to level most of the buildings on those groves.
The sound of that explosion was audible from the Human Auction House.
Everyone looked towards it by basic human instinct.
Which, as it happened, meant they looked away from Luffy's position in the crowd.
The first bullet from Luffy's newly enhanced revolver lanced out. Accelerated to insane speeds by crystalline rails whose unique properties amplified the strength of magnetic fields far more than any metal, that first bullet slammed into and through the face of the blonde Ciper Pol agent before she could even hope to react. The overpenetration was rendered unimportant as it shattered into splinters in a fashion someone from Luffy's original world might have recognized as similar to a glaser round. Albeit one with a far higher initial break point to account for humans often being tougher in this world. The frangible bullet dumped its contents as it shattered in the process, freezing Kalifa's head solid before exploding a microsecond later. The combination turned her head into so many bloody, shattered pieces of ice as her body collapsed.
His second round missed Rob Lucci's shoulder by less than a millimeter as the man's instincts made him move, but his dodge didn't save him, and neither did his instinctive attempt to shift to his Zoan form. Microseconds after the missed bullet, a blackened fist practically ripped his head from his shoulders as Yamato entered the fray. She, much like Luffy, wasn't fucking around, and Lucci died instantly as her strength and Haki overwhelmed both his Zoan durability and desperate but inadequate attempt to activate Tekkai.
Dangerous as CP-9 was, they were out of their league and caught off guard, the pair dead before they could really react. They were followed a moment later by Disco, the manager of the Human Auction House, and the three strongest guards in the building. All dead to Luffy's HEFs, or High Explosive Freezer rounds. One of several new bullet designs they'd worked out while on Asuka island. Luffy himself used Soru to flash right to the middle of the stage and calmly ejected the shell casings from his new, intimidatingly oversized, revolver. He smiled grimly out at the stunned audience as he withdrew a prepped speed reload from his pocket and loaded it into the gun. The smooth action seemed to draw the horrified crowds gaze, as did the tiny pulse of Haki he used to get their full and undivided attention.
"There's no auction today, after all, folks. I suggest you all run. Oh, except you lot in the idiot fishbowls. Yamato? Please do the honors?"
Smiling beatifically, clearly having fun, his crewmate's hands flashed out…and shattered each of those fishbowl helmets with a single strike. She spoke with an equally cheerful tone of voice to the terrified nobles, even as she grabbed the largest member of the group and utterly shattered his arm before throwing him back in his chair.
"I do believe any attack on one of you demands an Admiral respond! With no exceptions allowed, no? Please do call them for us!"
One of the fools raised a golden gun and shouted, trying to fire at Yamato…only to lose his hand from the wrist down as Luffy shot it off. The noble screamed horrifically, even as a handful of lower level guards died trying to belatedly attack Yamato and the four remaining uninjured members of the group all frantically slammed attention buttons on custom Den Den Mushi. Ones Luffy knew would set off a very specific alarm to summon aid to them.
He was counting on that. As well as the fact that such orders automatically overrode everything else. Even personal orders from Fleet Admiral Sengoku.
Though he supposed even if the only Admiral that could respond decided not to, he'd be fine with the rest of the damage they were inflicting. After all, he could already sense Sanji, Nojiko, Usopp, Kaya and Chopper freeing the slaves and directing the non-combatant members through one of Vivi's Air Doors. An Air Door that would lead them straight to a high-security room on Alabasta where they'd be screened before release. Those they deemed combatants, such as the captured pirates this auction had been all about, were offered separate Air Doors leading to various spots around the Archipelago. Luffy and his crew refused to leave them as slaves, but they wouldn't risk letting dangerous elements loose on Alabasta either.
Nor was freeing the slaves the only damage being done. Even aside from the total destruction of the Marine base, Kuina, Zoro, Hina, Nami, Brook and Perona were currently busy sinking the Marine fleet present. The docks used by the Marines hadn't been a part of the base in this case, as their ships needed access to the outer layers of the mangroves to patrol, while the Marine base had been centrally located in a futile attempt to enforce some level of order on the Archipelago as a whole.
The whole point of this multi-armed strike, beyond the always-worthwhile result of freeing slaves, was to remove all the major local forces that could respond to the threat against the Celestial Dragons they'd just made. Yamato's cheerful comment had been exactly correct. There was no allowance or give to the orders that any attack on a Celestial Dragon would be immediately responded to by an Admiral. With no Admiral present locally due to the Marines concentrating power at their HQ to meet Whitebeard, that meant…
'Kizaru just vanished from Marineford!'
Luffy grinned, even as he stretched out his Haki and felt Yamato doing the same. Even if they weren't going to attack Marineford directly, they could and just had forced one of the strongest fighters the Marines had out of the battle. Even as panicky people began to practically trample each other to flee from the sudden dangerous situation, he and Yamato waited…then Yamato smoothly dodged as the Pika Pika no Mi user arrived as a beam of burning light. That light bounced away from her return strike instantly, turning into a stupidly tall man with long legs and the most hideous suit Luffy had seen since arriving in this reality.
"My, my…how annoying. I was very busy, you know."
Despite his casual tone, Kizaru's eyes were scanning everything about the situation. A bare moment after he spoke, Luffy felt Observation Haki reaching out from the man…only for it to be ruthlessly crushed by a pulse of combined Observation and Conqueror's Haki from both Luffy and Yamato. A tiny widening of his eyes was the only thing that gave away the Admiral's abrupt concern at that result.
"How surprising. The Oni Princess and Strawhat Luffy working together? And on today of all days? This is quite inconvenient, you know."
Luffy's smile was not a nice thing.
"That is the point, yes. As for working together…why on Earth wouldn't we be? Yamato's a valued member of my crew, after all."
A twitch at that, even as Yamato beamed, bouncing on her toes as she nodded in eager confirmation of that fact. The Admiral clearly hadn't been aware, despite the Marines from Asuka likely having reported her presence with the Strawhats. He supposed it must have been assumed that theirs had been a meeting of chance, rather than intention. Yamato was more powerful than Luffy currently, making her choice to join his crew look odd without a great deal of additional context the Marines wouldn't have.
"It's also rather supposed to be inconvenient. My brother wouldn't ask for my help, of course. But I do worry about him, so I figured I'd take a little stress off Whitebeard's people so Ace could worry less."
Another twitch, something else Borsalino hadn't known, though a less surprising detail. While they never bothered to hide it, Luffy, Sabo and Ace didn't broadcast their 'relation' freely either. At least Vivi had been whispering more about the ongoing fight at Marineford, confirming that Ace was there and actively leading his Division. Meaning he hadn't been captured when the group was separated. That fact made Luffy glad he'd decided to go through with this after all. Sure, there were completely logical reasons for this as well, and he wasn't quite as close to Ace as the original Luffy might have been. He still cared about his 'brothers,' though, and Kizaru was arguably the most individually dangerous of the Admiralty. Excluding Garp and Sengoku, obviously.
"Very, very irritating. I shall, of course, have to deal with you quickly. I am expected elsewhere, you know."
Kizaru had, notably, waited until most of the audience had fled. The Celestial Dragons and their servants remained, Yamato having knocked them out cold with a brief burst of Conqueror's when they tried to move. With his field now clear of bystanders, the Admiral exploded into motion, firing a barrage of lasers that Yamato casually evaded, even as he attempted a Light Speed Kick at Luffy. With Kizaru's own Observation suppressed completely, it was pointless, Luffy not just dodging but leveling his gun where the Admiral ended up. He didn't bother with a bullet, of course, instead merely using the revolver as a channel for his lightning. A quick-but-weak bolt of said lightning connected with Kizaru even as he faded to light.
When the Admiral faded back in well away from both of them, his initial probe defeated, his muscles were twitching where he'd been hit.
"Interesting, I had wondered how our powers would interact. It seems they at least partially cancel each other out. Useful."
Kizaru scowled at Luffy's comment, face having shifted even as his Haki attempted to push out again, only to once again be suppressed by two users who were on his level and working together. Both of whom were backing their own Observation with small amounts of Conqueror's. Luffy was, frankly, relieved that little trick was working. Kizaru would be a pain in the ass to fight if they couldn't win the Observation battle. As it was, with them dominating that particular piece of the fight, they could start reacting before he even moved, allowing them to keep up with him. There was a reason they'd courted this specific fight. Even if they might not win it, there was a very good odds they wouldn't lose it, either. Meanwhile, they'd removed someone who was arguably an army-killer from a field in which an army of people who couldn't fight him were present.
Kizaru opened his mouth to say something else, but Yamato had apparently lost patience with the lack of action. With an unnaturally wide grin on her face, she darted forward, blackened fist leading. The Admiral vanished, of course, but quickly found a lighting-coated Luffy was already present where he'd been headed. Lasers met bolts of lightning and the fight was on for real...
... ... ...
Kuina grunted as she used an Air Cutter to disrupt the much more powerful, but far blunter, slash of air that the weird-ass Giraffe Zoan had launched at her with his neck. Despite the ridiculousness of it, the attack did an annoying job of keeping her from closing the range with the Cipher Pol agent. Alone, he would have been a decent challenge but not a threat.
While he had a far more complete ability with the Rokushiki that she did, and his Zoan fruit gave him a lot of physical power, he didn't seem to have any ability with Haki at all. Add in that his style was also a poor match up for hers, and it should have been over quickly. His attacks in hybrid form were simply too slow, left too much of an opening into which Kuina should have been able to slide. Kuina was proud that her Observation was among the best in the crew, short only of her Captain and Yamato. Added to her ability to easily coat Wado Ichimonji in Armament, she should have made quick work of an opponent she was faster than and could easily read.
Unfortunately, he wasn't alone.
Working in near flawless sync with Giraffe-man was a broader-shouldered man with horns. To Kuina's great annoyance, she actually recognized the Devil Fruit the man was using as that of a pirate they'd turned in the bounty for clear back in the East Blue. Eldoraggo must have been executed, likely harvested for his Devil Fruit in fact, with that Devil Fruit then going to Cipher Pol. At least, that was the best guess she had as she was forced to dodge away from the concentrated beam of sound that was fired at her by the second agent. It wasn't fast enough to tag her, but the range option provided by the Goe Goe no Mi was providing support for the Giraffe Zoan. The combination making a modestly interesting fight into a serious challenge.
Well, that was fine by her. Grinning, Kuina began leaking her Spiritual Energy into Wado Ichimonji as she sheathed it, double jumping off the air to line up an battojutsu strike. She had a few tricks of her own she'd been dying to try out on a real enemy…
"Ryūtsuisen!"
... ... ...
"DAMN YOU AND YOUR STUPID PINK HAIR. STAY STILL AND DIE!"
Zoro grimaced around his katana as one of the stupid freak samurai with the weird hair's attacks managed to grab an arm again, nearly opening him to an attack from the Wolf Zoan who was far stronger and more durable. Despite managing to land a few attacks on the Zoan, they were mitigated by his opponent having a level of Mastery over Tekkai that Zoro hadn't known was a thing.
Admittedly, his Captain hadn't known much about Tekkai at all, but both he and Hina had told Zoro it wasn't normal to be able to move using it. The Wolf Zoan could, and Tekkai combined with his Zoan toughness had allowed him to survive hits from Zoro despite him infusing his katana's with Armament. The fact that the stupid pink-head's attacks were weird enough to confuse his Observation, which wasn't as good as the Captain's or Kuina's, wasn't helping at all.
Fine. If three blades weren't enough to overwhelm him, more would do.
"Kiki Kyutoryu: Ashura!"
The new technique wasn't finished yet, with only one set of spiritual-duplicate arms appearing instead of the two he was working towards. But it would be enough for these fools. Improvising an attack using them shouldn't be that hard. Focusing down on the pink fool to get him out of the way, he made something up on the fly.
"Santoryu Ogi: Rokuzen Sekai!"
Despite the attempt by the Wolf Zoan to interfere, Zoro smirked as two of his 'six' swords bit deeply into the pink-haired moron. Now he was getting somewhere! Unnoticed by any of the fighters, even Zoro, all three of his blades briefly retained a bit of black even after his Haki was withdrawn…
... ... ...
Hina's eye twitched as she kicked the weird zipper-mouthed annoyance, currently bound with so many of her chains and shackles that he looked like a doubly freakish ball, into the water. Hopefully, the incredibly aggravating little shit would drown! Honestly, she'd killed the other arrogant brat, Nero she thought he'd said his name was, on pure accident. She'd thought even a new member of the infamous Cipher Pol 9 would be better than he was, but the little prick had only just barely mastered the complete six powers. Despite not having collected the entire set herself, Hina was better at Soru, Geppo and Tekkai than that little shit had been.
Smirking as she lit a cigarette, she remembered realizing on Asuka that her otherwise knowledgeable Captain was fumbling with Tekkai. She'd needed to step in to properly teach it to Chopper, with Luffy almost incidentally picking up the basics of it by watching. A more than fair trade, honestly, given that Luffy had already helped her take the next step to unlocking Armament while they were on the White White Sea. Something that had come to a rude shock to the annoyingly resilient chatterbox that had been with the arrogant prick. A chatterbox that was now busy drowning after asking far too many questions about why Hina spoke like she did! It wasn't Hina's fault!
Grumbling, she moved back toward the ship the fools had poured out of. If she remembered right, that utterly lithesome little prick Spandam was in charge of CP9. She'd always wanted to kick that egotistical fool in the dick. Given that ships were still steadily sinking, she figured Nami, Brook, and Perona were still going fine with the regular officers…and Hina really didn't want to fight any more of the low-ranking officers than she had to. Most of them weren't evil, and she already felt the weight on her soul of having agreed with the plan to wipe out the Marine base here wholesale.
At least that particular Marine base had no true innocents, as far as she was concerned. Not with how frequently they dealt with the Celestial Twats and the Human Auction House…
... ... ...
Nami was honestly kind of bored as she twirled her Clima-Tact again, sending another bolt of lighting into more ship rigging, lighting it on fire. She casually flicked it out a moment later in a more traditional staff strike, taking a Marine Lieutenant who'd been trying to sneak up on her in the gut and throwing him overboard. He'd probably live, assuming that he could swim and didn't land on some flaming debris or something. Honestly, Perona swarming the ships with her Negative Hollows and Brook cleaning up the few patrols that had raced back to the docks instead of toward the destroyed base or Human Auction House made this sort of…meh.
Oh well. She wasn't really a fighter by preference and she was discovering that she sort of enjoyed setting things on fire. Particularly Marine ships! Imagining to herself that these were all the Marines who'd ever looked the other way for Arlong was rather cathartic. Particularly when some of them might even actually be among that number, given that this particular branch of Marines catered heavily to the Microdicked WG Dogs that had cut a deal with Jinbe to protect Arlong. Hmmm, that Fishman was supposedly some sort of Knightly sort, but she really did sort of have beef with him, didn't she? Maybe they'd have to hunt him down at some point so Nami could find out if he deserved to share Arlong's fate.
For now, she was content to settle for setting a bunch more Marine ships on fire. If she cackled maniacally just a little as she did so? Well, there was no one around to judge but Brook and Perona. Brook looked appropriately terrified and Perona seemed to approve. So she figured it was fine…
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: So...a looooootttttt of stuff I've been sitting on for a while is starting to come to a head in these chapters. I mentioned the mushi they had a long while ago, like clear back in the East Blue I think, but they haven't had much call to use them. Because Luffy acquired them through his Shop, he has access to all the possible types at various prices, including White Mushi. They just...really haven't had anyone they needed to call.
A/N 2: The mushi are minor compared to CP-9, though. I've been pulling my hair out for months trying to explain, over and over and over and over and over and over and over, to people that CP-9 didn't get Pluton's blueprints. The various disasters that the Strawhats and Alabasta have caused made the WG recall CP-9. The group had been embedded for years, with absolutely ZERO results produced. Without Robin to push things forward, they didn't have any hope on the horizon of changing things either, so they were recalled to take over protection of VIPs. This allowed the WG to free up Marines without making it obvious they were using WG assets to bolster a faltering position.
A/N 3: I know some people are going to be upset at how easily Kalifa and Luci lost. Frankly, though? This was a case where they were both genuinely outclassed and ambushed. If they'd gotten a chance to react properly, they might have put up at least some fight, particularly Luci. But what Luffy and Yamato pulled was, ironically, a brutal assassination rather than a fair fight. Without Haki of their own, the two just didn't have enough ability to react when facing a pair as strong as Luffy and Yamato. You'll note that most of the OTHER members of CP9 put up more of a fight. Though even there, because the crew is stronger than they would have been at Enes Lobby by a fair bit, I had to have the stronger fighters like Kuina and Zoro paired up against pairs of CP-9 to make it actually realistic as a serious fight.
A/N 4: If you guessed that the whole point of what they were doing was to draw off Kizaru? Give yourself a cookie! I left enough hints that many of you probably DID guess the gist. Though possibly not the scale. Which fell somewhere between the extremes I saw people guessing :-p.