Davy Back Fight (Part 1)

(Four Days Later)

The crew has all reunited at the ship, the aches and pains from the last two weeks apparent on their face. Other than Rex, who was seemingly unscathed, every crew member is in some state of injury.

"So, how was school? Did you make any friends?" Rex asked with a grin, knowing that his crewmates had all joined various martial arts schools.

After Rex had used Hasshoken successfully on Joki, the old man, who Rex learned was named Spice, had graduated him on the spot.

While Spice taught him a few more tricks, Hasshoken was less of a concrete martial art with moves and attacks. Rather it was an inventive style that centered around the varied use of harmonized vibration.

As such, with his free time, Rex had visited each of his crew members and had purchased an expensive Den Den Mushi camera to take multiple photos for, ahem, clerical purposes.

It was necessary to document the exact size of Bonney's stomach following her training or the number of bruises on Kid after his pummeling in the case that future crew members would undertake similar conditioning.

The crew looked at Rex with seething hatred in their eyes. They knew how he had taken photos of them at their weakest points.

Still, there were no complaints. Everyone knew that Rex had also undergone some form of training, as the story of him beating Joki with a single, light palm strike had already made its way through Karate Island.

While everyone knew that Rex could probably floor Joki with a single punch, beating a man while blindfolded and only making a light attack made it clear he had learned some martial art style.

"I still don't get it!" Kid shouted out angrily. "How is it that we three got tortured, the rest of the crew got put through brutal physical conditioning and you're still the one who improved the most!?"

Rex flourishes his blue hair with a grin.

"Just natural talent I guess." Rex says, before his face turns serious. "Now, unto more important matters. Everyone should get a good rest tonight. I know you've all seen that the number of pirates on the island has gone up tenfold in the past few days, we're all gonna need to be at our best for the fight tomorrow."

The crew then begrudgingly accepts this proposal, all leaving disgruntled.

Rex scratched the back of his head embarrassedly. Maybe he should have gotten beaten up a bit in that Joki fight so it would at least look like he was struggling.

'No. There are more important things to deal with.' Rex thought.

For one, Rex wasn't 100% sure he could beat Foxy if it came down to that. After all, as opposed to the Foxy who was lazy, hid behind his crew and had developed quite a potbelly, the Foxy he would be facing was a champion boxer. Odds are, this Foxy would be not much weaker than the Foxy in canon.

Ironically, Rex felt that he might need to use some Foxy-esque tactics to win this fight. He would definitely need a mirror for some insurance.

Still, that was a problem for tomorrow's Rex.

(The Next Day)

Rex sifts through his immense collection of jackets.

Since collecting his first from Jonker, Rex had gotten several more jackets along his pirate journey. He had gotten a jacket from the marines, from the pirate hunters, from Joki. One from the Baterilla black market and another from each of the pirates he had defeated, not to mention there were royal robes in the imperial treasury.

What to choose? After all, jackets made the man. If he were to choose something off style, Rex couldn't imagine the comments that would be made.

In the end, Rex goes with the stolen pirate jacket. It was of good make, but had the coarse and rugged nature one would expect of a seasoned pirate's garb.

All the other affairs are trivial things.

Rex didn't use weapons, though he did keep a pair of pistols and some knives on him as hidden weapons, his devil fruit didn't need external resources like Kid's did and he didn't need to make any preparations so all that was left was to wait.

When the rest of the crew is ready, Rex chooses the 10 most elite members, as was stated in the invitation, and leaves the rest behind to guard the ship.

Of those ten members, Rex included Gem, even though the young boy had yet to fully warm up to him. With his devil fruit, Gem was stronger than most of Rex's crew, and he was more than willing to 'kick some pirate butts' as he put it.

Moreover, Rex felt that slowly but surely, he was wearing Gem down and soon Gem would accept his authority.

"I'm ready to beat some pirates!"

Gem shouts, coming dressed in a horrendous yellow vest with multicolored sunglasses. His pants were a mismatched brown and his hair was done up in a mohawk.

"Ok, so Sargo, you'll be replacing Gem." Rex says, turning to the previously rejected tenth place candidate.

"What do you mean!?" Gem shouted, excited for a chance to leave the ship that had been his prison.

Escaping never crossed Gem's mind, as Rex had convinced the naïve youth that he spiked each of his evening meals with poison and would only give him the antidote at the end of next day with another poison for that day.

"You're dressed terribly. You'll taint the entire reputation of the King pirates."

Killer and Kid frown at this, but knowing Rex's bizarre value in fashion and appearances, they don't speak up.

"What!? I'm dressed just fine!" Gem shouted, seeming to take personal offense to this comment.

"Sunglasses off, wear the outfit I laid out for you and have Karina fix that garbage on your head. Otherwise, Sargo is coming with me." Rex said, leaving a single line. "We're kings. And kings dress to impress."

"B-but…" Gem starts, but Rex just turns around and walks away. "Fine!"

Minutes later, Gem returns in an outfit reminiscent of his Mr. 5 days, with a few improvements. Rex nods and the crew move out together.

While the King pirates' elites was often annoyed by Rex's fashion requirements, they had to admit, their outfits mixed together well, with a clear dress code.

Some of the other pirates sneer and snicker at the 'fancy' pirates, but in their hearts, they feel envy at the King pirates' wealth. After all, it was obvious with one look that the fabrics used to make those clothes wasn't cheap stuff. The fact that the King pirates could waste that much money on clothes was indicative of their wealth.

Kid clenches his fist as he hears the snickers, but Rex stops him.

"Real Kings move in silence like knowledge, dropping a knife on all the fools who don't understand their swag." Rex says, channeling his inner rapper.

The sheer ludicrousness of Rex's words stops Kid from doing anything as they near the site of the Davy Back Fight.

At this point in town, no civilians dare to walk the streets, terrified of the sea of pirates who walked the street.

Rex sees a few corpses along the way and shakes his head. Those were likely the corpses of those few civilians who had tried standing up to the pirates.

While Rex hated to admit it, if you were weak in the One Piece world, standing up for yourself was suicide. It was better to just lay low and hope the pirates would pass you by or the marines would arrive.

"Oh, looky here, we got the honorable King pirates." A drunken, fat pirate slurs out. "Do you know who I am!?"

Rex takes a good look at the pirate, looking him up and down before shaking his head. "Never seen you before in my life."

"WHAT!?" The man shouted out outraged. "You weak loser, how dare you forget me. You and your stupid crew should bow before me. You poorly dressed idiots dare to kill my brother, burn his ship and crash it into the marines and don't bother to learn who I am! I am Dumbbeard, the spear master of the south blue. Now kneel before me or di-UGH!"

Dumbbeard bends over coughing up blood, Rex's fist in his stomach.

"Now I remember you. You're the guy I killed on the way to the Davy Back Fight."

Rex then grabs the man's head kneeing his jaw with full force.

"If you insult my strength, I'll just prove you wrong."

Rex flips Dumbbeard onto the street, punching his head into the pavement.

"If you insult my crew, they'll show you you're wrong with their strength."

Rex then stomps directly on Dumbbeard's crotch, retrieving a spear from his back.

"But when you insult my fashion."

Rex plunges the spear into his neck.

"You'll never breathe again."

Rex then pats off his hands, retrieving a cloth from thin air to clean off the blood from his shoes. Dumbbeard's pirate crew stares at him, their eyes bulging out of their heads.

"The Dumbbeard pirates are disbanded. Go become farmers and never enter my sight again."

The King Pirates grin broadly at this display. While Rex rarely got vicious, when he did, it was a sight to see. All the morals and ethics he preached went right out the window, with Rex slaughtering people like cattle.

Rex then keeps walking, as if he had only stepped on a bug on his way to the fight. The crew follows suit, grins threatening to split their faces in half.

The site of the Davy Back fight is an immense coliseum at the center of Karate Island. The coliseum was a venue where two martial artists of equal standing would duel to sharpen their skills.

Using his influence as a boxing champion of the South Blue, Foxy had rented out the entire arena for a day.

"Pirate group name?" A slender blue haired woman asks, looking down a list.

"King Pirates."

The woman moves her pencil down the list and smiles slightly. Rex sees her scanning through his crew, checking off four times before pointing Rex to his seat.

'So, that old Fox wants four of my crew. But which four?' Rex thinks, finding his seating area.

Knowing Foxy, he desired skilled practitioners of occupations or strong combatant most of all. While the King Pirates were extremely lacking in the former, they made up for it with spades in the later.

While Foxy couldn't possibly know about Gem, there were still four top level talents in the King Pirates, being himself, Kid, Killer and Bonney. Still, Bonney hadn't displayed much strength while with the King pirates, so Rex felt that the fourth person should be someone else.

Still, before Rex has time to ponder, a loud booming fills the coliseum.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Turning around, Rex's eyes gleam as he first lays eyes on the 'top prize' of this Davy Back Fight. The Big Fish pirates' Big Pan.

Pan was immense, easily standing at nine meters, almost ten. He had obvious fish-like features, but his immense size betrayed his giant heritage. A fitting host.

Still, as much as Rex wanted to run over to Big Pan and shout out 'mine!', he knew there was a process to this. Staying seated, Rex instead trolls through the audience, looking for any noteworthy opponents.

Rex notices that there are quite a few big shots of the South Blue here. Almost every pirate with a bounty between seven million and twenty million has appeared, but fortunately for Rex, no one stronger has made an appearance.

Eventually, the last pirate group, the Sloth Pirates, arrive, and the doors to the coliseum slam shut, being locked tightly.

"Fuehfehfehfeh!" A cunning laughter echoes out as a man appears on the arena. "My name is-a Foxy, and I am-a so proud-a to revitalize a tradition of pirates that has been-a forgotten for generations! What am I talking about? Well you all know that I-a refer to the Davy-a Back Fight!"

Foxy gets out in a thick Italian accent. Without it, Rex would have no means of reconciling the image of Foxy in his mind with the man in front of him.

Expecting the pot-bellied, red-nosed schemer who had face Luffy, Rex is instead faced with a chiseled tall and robust boxer. While Foxy's nose was still rather large and his lower body wide, his upper body was built like a tank. He was easily two meters tall and had massive, log-like arms riddled with muscle.

Rex shook his head; this fight wouldn't be easy.

"As you have-a all come here, you must-a all know the-a rules of a Davy-a Back fight. Still, I will go through them-a with you. With-a so many of you, the rules have been-a altered so that every-a pirate group in the top half will get to choose one member from-a pirate group ranked below them.

It will be done-a in the order of score, so the-a first place in any-a challenge will get to pick one member from any bottom half team. After that, the second-a place will get to pick one member from any bottom half-a team other than the one that the first-a place has chosen!

You have all-a brought ten members with you! With them, there will be-a ten games, with each loss-a costing you a member. Once-a member has played, win or lose, they cannot-a play again, nor-a can a member you-a steal play a round-a for you. Ten members, ten rounds, it is-a as simple as that. However, even if a member of your crew is stolen, they can participate in a future round, potentially a-stealing themselves a-back from the group that stole them.

Let me-a warn you, the moment you-a entered this arena, there is-a no going back. Until the games-a are over, no one leaves this coliseum!"

Rex nods his head, this approach made sense. As long as you were always in the top half, you would get your pick of the bottom half with your own crew being safe. Your position in that half would determine how good your pick was.

Rex smiled, other than Pan, he had little to no other motivating factors. The only other thing Rex would look out for was some capable female pirates. After all, his crew was heavily male-dominated and a lot of the, ahem, 'tension', was falling on Bonney and Karina. Without a few female pirates, Rex felt that he might have a mutiny on his hands soon.

Seeing that everyone was in agreement, Foxy grinned. He had rigged all the 'games' such that the ten pirate groups with the most desirable members would lose at least one game and his Foxy pirates would be able to poach their best member.

"The first-a game is very simple! A race-a between the lower-ranked members of your-a pirate groups. Any pirate with a bounty less than five million can-a participate in this-a race, and the score will-a be determined by who reaches the end-a first!"

Rex squints his eyes at this. While it wasn't explicit, he was clear that this was targeting a particular pirate group, namely the Sloth Pirates.

As their name implied, the Sloth Pirates were not well known for their speed, being large and bulky characters. Still, each member of their group was powerful with both their captain and lieutenant having high bounties of fourteen and eleven million respectively.

Knowing Foxy, Rex immediately deduces that each fight will target one pirate group with Foxy aiming to get first place through some, 'not so fair' means and stealing their members.

"Wire, you go up. Be careful of whoever the Foxy pirates send up. Don't embarrass the King Pirates."

Rex says after a brief thinking period. Wire was the fourth fastest crewman on the King pirates, and the second fastest Rex could choose, with only Bonney being a better candidate. Still, Rex wanted to save Bonney for a better fight.

"Yes Captain."

As one of the cadres from the Kid pirates, Rex paid some attention to Wire. He was talented, but not as good as any of his own cadres. Still, in terms of speed, Wire beat out Kid, losing only to Rex, Killer and Bonney.

Wire used a rather unconventional weapon in the trident, so his speed helped him get in hits he would otherwise not make.

With no further ceremony, Wire jumps down to the arena and lines up with the contestants.

"Let-a the Foxy Davy-a Back Fight, BEGIN!"