88 Chapter 87

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Chapter 87

***

As Negan's body slumped towards the water and he lost consciousness, unlike Max he didn't have the endurance to take on Big Mom and her attacks. 

The Yonko was on her knees on Zeus and clutched her heart again, sweat rolled down her forehead and blood came out of her mouth. "Max…" she muttered in a hateful tone. Big Mom's heart clenched once again and the pain traveled all through her body.

***

At the same time because of that, no one amongst Big Mom's children paid attention to Negan as he fell on water. They were more worried about their mother who seemed to have heart problems.

Negan's eyes went dull underwater,  signifying that his brain functions had stopped. 

That was when the blue-haired mermaid, Mero, the one who had traveled with Negan through the seas stopped and looked at the person she loved and picked him up. 

"You can't die yet, we haven't even gotten married!" Mero cried out.

Suddenly, out of the darkness of the ocean, three figures came… they were three submarines and they surrounded her and their lights shone on them. Mero didn't know if they were friendly or not, so she hugged Negan and tried to give him some of her air. But it didn't work.

In the end, she only hugged him even tighter, the least she could do was use her body to protect him.

***

-Max POV-

Opening my eyes I saw a familiar ceiling greet me, it was the same one that I had on my ship. Wait, why did I even bother remembering a useless detail like this?

"So you are up?" Asked Raynare calmly. She seemed very tranquil and that told me she had taken care of everything already.

I saw the book in her hand and smirked. "Didn't know you were a book reader."

"Always have been. Though these last years I didn't have the time due to training to become stronger," she answered. "So make sure you live long enough to learn more things about me."

"Reading… it does sound like something you would do," I said, if she read between the lines it would be seen as a compliment on her intelligence. 

Raynare smiled, seemingly getting the hint. She was quite intelligent, and her wisdom will also grow with age.

She suddenly pinched my cheek a little too harshly and said. "Don't do something so stupid again."

I smirked and grabbed Raynare's hand, dragging her on the bed with me. "Did you take care of things while I wasn't around?"

Her face was close to mine and she looked into my eyes. I liked her purple eyes, they looked like gems. 

Unlike usual, she wasn't flustered which I gave credit to her for. After all, by now we had gotten quite close, we were way long past the way of getting flustered in each other's presence.

"Of course," Raynare nodded reassuringly as a small smile adorned her face. "Thankfully there haven't been any problems and even Negan lived somehow. He tried giving his life to buy time, and Big Mom and her crew didn't chase us anymore. So he did a good job, except for the dying part."

Giving her a peck on the lips I chuckled. "Cmon now, don't be so cruel, Negan might be a little annoying. But he is a trustworthy guy. So the submarines saved him right?"

"Yeah, you had the best doctors in there and Kureha was on a live call to the submarine too," she muttered, bringing her hands around my body and digging her head in my chest. "I am glad you were okay, your heartbeat was so weak. The doctors said that you had entered a form of hibernation to recover and your body was starving for some strange reason."

True, the Awakened Emperor Form had enormous energy consumption. Essentially it is just normal Awakening and usage of Life Return to increase the power, bone structure, muscle power, and skin density. 

I needed to find a way to go past that energy consumption hurdle. By now I was confident in fighting against a Yonko and with my Future Sight, I had a good chance at winning the fight against any Yonko. 

Can't say with certainty that I would win against a Yonko as fights have a lot of outside factors involved. Plus I needed to change my fighting style to defeat them fast, as long-drawn-out fights weren't good for me. 

Well, this problem can be solved, I just needed a way to store more energy in my body. Or maybe a pill that has all the necessary nutrients to offer the necessary energy? Kureha was the best doctor I knew, so she could come up with something like this.

Finally, I had reached a level where I could feel safe in the world. Now… I must do nothing during this time and wait for some things to play out. My moves can start playing at a higher level. 

A smirk unconsciously made its way into my face. 

Admirals were still a problem for me, they were mostly technique fighters and the same fighting style that worked on Big Mom wouldn't work on them. Each of the Admirals was very familiar with the Rokushiki Techniques. But that didn't mean that they were something I had to be worried about, now a chance existed for me to defeat them. After all, while people like Akainu were around Big Mom's level. Most Admirals weren't able to fight a Yonko head-on for long.

Though this was all speculation as I hadn't seen any of the Admirals fight all out and use their Awakening while fighting. But they weren't a big problem anymore, and as long as I wasn't outnumbered…

Everyone who wasn't Negan or Raynare was my enemy. So I needed to plan a strategy to defeat them. 

"By the way, having those submarines underwater was a good idea," commented Raynare. "Mayne if I knew about it would have been better, since we wouldn't have had to try and get back to our ship."

I could feel the skepticism in her voice. "Well, if you had gone for the submarines, both of us would have boiled alive due to Oven."

That was the truth, underwater we would be weakened and on top of my exhausted state. I wouldn't have been able to handle that and probably died. "By the way, for how long was I unconscious?"

"Two weeks."

Yeah, and my body still felt weak, so I needed more rest and not exert myself for a little while more. Welp, time to go and annoy a bedridden Negan, I have so many new philosophical sayings.

At heart I was still a philosopher who just knew how to hit hard… at least that was what Negan called me.

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Two months passed, and news of Kizaru fighting Rayleigh on Sabaody Archipelago came from the higher-ups. The orders were to not engage against the Dark King Rayleigh. 

So thinks had played somewhat similarly to canon in Sabaody.

During these times, I just rested and ate a lot, like so much that even Luffy wouldn't be able to eat so much normally. Most of the boredom went by teaching Negan chess and boring the hell out of him with some physiological idioms. 

.

Another big thing was the news of my fight with Big Mom spread out. The Yonko had suffered quite a lot. The titles of most of the newspapers read 'The New Hero of the Marines?' or 'The Second Coming of Garp?'. 

Well, any publicity was good publicity and a lot of new Marines were recruited. I could see that the World Government had no choice but to do this as Whitebeard had been getting quite dangerous lately. 

Just a couple of weeks ago the Red Line, the giant mountain separating the first part of the Grand Line with the New World... that unmovable structure shook.

A couple of Celestial Dragons had died as their houses on top of the mountain had collapsed, killing them on impact. Yeah, he was way more dangerous this way than in a face-to-face confrontation. 

Whitebeard's ability to destroy was top notch, no other Yonko could match it… no… no one else in the world could match it. 

Some World Government officials were scared that the old man would collapse the Red Line. So everyone was on edge. Though I doubted Whitebeard would do that since collapsing the Red Line would also destroy Fishman Island. But I didn't bother telling that to any of the officials, they didn't have any spies on Whitebeards' crew to know just how compassionate the man was and how important Fishman Island was to him. 

If I was in his position though, I would have threatened the World Government with collapsing the Red Line if they didn't return Ace. But I don't care for Fishman Island and would have collapsed the Red Line for real after some preparation and making sure that I wouldn't make an enemy of the fishmen. 

Either saving them or killing them all was the solution to not make enemies of the fishmen. They would be a troublesome existence as enemies since this world was mostly water.

....

As I laid down on my bed, a naked Raynare sleeping next to me, many other thoughts went through my head too. 

"Boss-man," Negan interrupted my thoughts as I heard his voice came from the other side of the door. "We have had our call to duty. It seems like the Marines' final confrontation against Whitebeard will happen."

Ah… so the Marineford War will come? Well, this is a good world stage for me too, some people needed to disappear during this war. People like that will grow like tumors on my side so it's better to get rid of them now while I can. 

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-Normal POV-

At the same time on an undocumented island in the New World, Blackbeard whose right side of his face had a huge burning scar.

His teeth were shown as the flesh in half of his face was burned. The man's eyelid too was burned, the eye under the eyelid was burned too and only showed as a white hue. The fight against Ace had been harder than expected this time and he hadn't fallen for any tricks. 

He smiled while reading a newspaper about Ace's execution. "Zehahahaha~ pops made a big wreck for this brat, we weren't able to get any new friends from Impel Down because of that."

***

A/N: Though this time Negan wasn't gonna die. I curiously flipped a coin like I had done last time when he was about to die last time. If it was heads, he would survive, I rolled once... it was heads. Rolled again... and it was heads again. Honestly, it was just for curiosity, but I feel Negan has stupid ammount of luck.

P.S: While fighting Katakuri, Max had mentioned that he had three submarines underwater in case of an escape. There were top-notch doctors in case he was injured too  So Negan essentially survived because one of Max's escape plans.