Chapter 49 - Thriller Bark Pt 3 2/2

And with that, he slowly slid his left foot forward, leaning forward onto it while his other shoulder faced his opponent, his hand hovering inches from the hilt(coils writhed and snapped in the sky, muscles and tendons tensing and untensing like a wave of flesh).

All Brook could do was hold his breath as the tension slowly but steadily ramped into an almost tangible howl, the wind thrashing and clashing between the two swordsmen. Until finally, Ryuma(The Dragon) moved first.

"Dragon(Heaven)[GOD] Slayer."

This time, Brook couldn't see the attack at all, it was so fast. All he saw was a flash of light. And then, when the spots cleared from his vision, the manse of Thriller Bark was illuminated by the veil of moonlight that shone upon it.

This feat was made possible by the fact that an entire hemisphere of Florian mist had been eviscerated in the strike, even taking the topmost parts of the manor's tallest towers along with it.

Brook was not quite as distressed from this development as he would normally be, though, on account of how the manor had been behind Ryuma for the duration of the fight.

As Brook parsed this development, the dust settled and the two fighters became visible again.

There was just an instant of Zoro possessing six arms and three faces, so brief Brook almost believed he'd imagined it, that faded into him merely holding one sword pointed out. And Ryuma…

Well… there was simply no way to sugarcoat matters: the zombie was currently missing about, oh, half his torso. The revenant was barely standing, and Shusui was only just hanging in his remaining outstretched hand.

"Im…impressive…" Ryuma wheezed, swaying on his feet as he slowly adopted a more at ease stance. His breath was no doubt scarce due to his lacking one of his lungs. "To turn my own attack on me… with interest, no less… masterful… but that form… the Asura, yes? I thought they were… creatures of destruction?"

Zoro chuckled, tinged with his own pain as he removed Wado from his mouth and started sheathing both it and Kitetsu, as well as dropping Funkfreed so he could stand on his own legs. "Common mistake. Two castes of Asura, one good and one bad. Vritra Stance is for offense, while what you just experienced was Varuna Stance."

"Counterattacks and defense… impressive…" Ryuma chuckled breathlessly. "If you have not named that attack yet… might I request… you utilize the term 'Samsara'? I believe…" His empty gaze grew slightly fond. "I have just experienced the truth of it…"

Zoro nodded solemnly. "I will."

"Glad… to hear it… ah, yes…" He held up Shusui. "He is yours, of course. But if I may… say my goodbyes?"

The Pirate Hunter didn't even hesitate to nod solemnly.

Ryuma nodded back before slowly turning his gaze to Brook. "I apologize…" he breathed somberly. "For my transgressions against you. My actions when last we met were… inexcusable."

Brook stared at him for a second before gripping his top hat and bowing his head. "And yet I forgive you anyway," Brook whispered. "In spite of the circumstances…" He slowly raised his head, and looked Ryuma in his empty eyes. "I am proud that of all the bodies on this island, my shadow was granted the honor of giving the greatest samurai in the history of Wano, if not the world, a second lease on life."

The Humming Swordsman drew his blade and raised it in salute. "Sir, it has been a privilege."

Ryuma nodded shakily, then turned his gaze away and upward, towards the moon. The samurai regarded the silver disk in silence even as the fog slowly started to encroach on the heavens again, falling to his knees. Twin streams of tears welled from the corpse's empty eyes, glinting in the moonlight.

"After five long years of darkness… to see the heavens one last time…" he whispered.

After a minute more of contemplation, Ryuma slowly turned his attention downward and traced Shusui's blade in the dirt, running it through the by now salt-laden soil of the battlefield. And then, once he was satisfied, he held his grim blade out at arm's length and flipped it in his palm, so that Shusui's tip rested on his stomach.

"Hear my last request," Ryuma spoke up a final time, his voice unwavering and full of strength. "When you reach the shores of Wano, and they see your black blade, tell them this! Both times…"

Ryuma tilted his head back and sucked in a deep breath before bellowing to the heavens.

"I, RYUMA OF WANO, LIVED A GOOD LIFE!"

And with his last vestiges of strength, he shoved his blade up to the hilt in his stomach and jerked it to the side.

Almost exactly as the Florian devoured the final slivers of moonlight, Brook's shadow silently slid clean from the corpse's side, an aged hand fell from the hilt it had been gripping…

And so Ryuma of Wano died for the second time.

-o-

I stayed frozen at the dance hall's window a moment longer, staring outside in numb shock before slowly turning to face an equally astounded Robin. We both continued to gape before I got my wits about me and snapped my fingers before Soundbite, which shook him out of his own shock and got him to do his duty.

"…So," I choked out. Hesitantly. "Anyone want to explain to me how the hell I just caught sight of a beam of flipping moonlight when this island is supposed to be perpetually covered in fog?"

"Oh, oh, I can answer that, Cross!"

I blinked in befuddlement as I processed the voice I just heard. It sounded half like Disney's mascot mouse, and half like what I had heard the one time I let morbid curiosity overcome my good sense and I asked Soundbite to play what he heard of Nami's candlelit dinner with her gold.

Both the combination and the latter were… deeply disturbing.

"And the answer would be…?" I trailed off in dread.

"I was actually a part of it! Suffice to say that Zoro's duel with Ryuma and the conclusion were supremely epic. Ah," Funkfreed blinked in realization. "We won, by the way, just in case I wasn't clear on that."

"YES!" I pumped my fist in triumphant relief. "That's two major birds with one big-ass stone; one of the strongest Zombies on the island's back at peace, and Brook has his shadow back now," I clarified to my confused companions, eliciting grins from them. Then I returned my attention to my conversation. "Aaand going by your euphoric tone, I'm guessing you had fun?

"Literally the most fun I've had in my entire life!" Funkfreed laughed ecstatically. "Put it this way, Cross: That fight mooore than made up for all the wasted years I spent with Spandam. So… thank you, Cross, for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

My gut promptly felt like it'd taken a straight-jab dead center. "…aaaand cue the guilt trip that you got that feeling from fighting with Zoro and not me." I dragged my hand down my face with a groan. "Mrgh… Make it up to you in days to come by letting you hardline sword-form even when we aren't in the middle of a fight?"

"Deal!" Funkfreed trumpeted eagerly. "Though for now, I'll remain autonomous a while longer. 'Cause in the end, it really doesn't matter to me whether I'm going at it hybrid or au natural, so long as I can be in the center of the brawl!"

"Yeah, yeah, good for you," Zoro grunted off-handedly, his distraction no doubt stemming from examining his new ally-in-war. "So, anything else you need us to do?"

"Nah, nah," I waved him off dismissively. "Just go ahead and hitch a ride on Funkfreed and head back to the main brawl. Our work isn't done until every zombie on this island has been purified, or at least the vast majority before we wake Moriah up so that he can be forcibly put down. I'm working on neutralizing the last major threat on the island, but I'll be heading your way as soon as that's done, so be ready, Funkfreed."

"No problem, Cross!"/"Got it."

"Perfect," I nodded in satisfaction. Once, the call dropped, I grinned from ear to ear and faced my comrades. "Now, then! Where were we exactly?"

"Right about here."

CLONK!

"Gah, what the—!?" I flinched as Usopp plopped a… classic yellow-with-black-cross hardhat on my head?

I blinked at both my own headwear and the identical one my sniper was wearing before giving Usopp a funny look. "You carry spare hardhats with you?"

Usopp returned my look with just as much confusion, if not more. "You mean you don't?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and promptly clicked it shut as I found myself lacking a valid answer. "Fair 'nuff… alright, then!" I popped a thumbs-up at my partner and our gunner. "Soundbite, mute. Conis, let 'er rip!"

Soundbite's grin stretched wide, and all noise outside of the hall's borders was promptly eliminated. "WE'RE CLEAR!"

Conis popped us all a thumbs-up before focusing on the control-box in her hand, which had wires leading from it to several bundles that lined the edge of the freezer's vault-like door. "Fire in the—!" Conis was cut off as she pushed in the plunger—

KRA-BOOM!

And the door's hinges were blown clean off its frame. The door itself stood a few moments longer. At least, until Lassoo trotted up and poked it with his nose, causing the hunk of metal to keel over with a cavernous moan and a resounding THUNK!

Robin cocked an eyebrow at Conis as she removed her hardhat from her Stetson. "'Hole', I presume?"

Conis smiled beatifically as she handed the control box back to Usopp. "'Haunted mansion', actually!"

"Ah, of course, of course."

"No time for a horse, let's go!" I crowed, tossing my own hat back to Usopp and jogging ahead into the hallway.

I was immediately grateful for the running start, because the mere concept of trying to inch my way into the chilling air that filled the hallway was frigid in itself.

"Brrr!" Usopp shivered as he ran after me, rubbing his arms with an almost desperate kind of franticness. "I knew the people who lived here were cold-blooded, but this is ridiculous!"

"Only the best for number 900, Usopp!" I informed him as I kept myself moving, unwilling to give my blood time to freeze. "Moriah didn't want to so much as risk his crowning achievement becoming compromised!"

"Yeah, about that…" Lassoo panted, shooting me a quizzical look as he kept pace. "You haven't told us what this '900' guy is like yet. I mean, you've said before that he's the strongest corpse here, but what separates him from the other zombies? Is he super-enhanced compared to the others, is he a chimaera of species, does he have a Devil Fruit, what?"

"Size," Soundbite responded grimly. "HE'S THE STRONGEST THROUGH SHEER size."

"So…" Conis started uncertainly. "He's a giant then?"

I nodded my head to the side, grimacing. "Well, he's giant, I'll give you that much."

That earned me a blink of confusion from the angel. "Uh… why are you putting it like—?"

Conis suddenly cut herself off dead. No gasp, no choked off garble, no nothing. Just… silence.

It was like that for each and every last one of us. One second noise and motion, the next utter stillness, none of us even daring to breathe. Why, you ask? Simple.

Because we'd just entered Freezer No. 900. And what stood, what towered above us was, was… so far beyond normal description.

Up until that point, I'd been content to label Oars as a 'mega-giant', a giant's giant because, well… that was all I really knew him as. But now… now I knew better.

Now I'd seen him in the actual flesh, seen his horns, pillars of pure bone towering above me. Now I'd seen his bulk, this… this… this wall of patchwork flesh stretching out before me and disappearing below. Now I'd seen something once-living whose size could only be measured in units applicable to maps.

Honestly, it was the freezer that really told the true story. It was just… a pit. A pit of darkness and cold and death. There has only ever been one name for any creature that has dwelled in such a pit.

"Titan…" I breathed, my voice equal parts terrified and reverential.

"He was going to fight Kaido…" Robin whispered numbly. "With this?"

It took all I had to shake my head. "Other way around. He needed this to fight Kaido."

Lassoo licked his chops nervously before raising his hackles. "Existential crises later, making sure that this thing never has the chance to wake up now."

"Only one problem with that, Lassoo…" Usopp swallowed heavily. "How the hell do we kill something that's already dead!?"

"Allow me to elucidate!"

I jerked out of my stupefaction as for once I was actually grateful to hear the Sound of Madness. "Chopper," I sighed in relief. "I take it you found Hogback's blueprints for his pièce de résistance?"

"Blueprints nothing, he outlined it perfectly before I could even touch him in an effort to save his own skin," Chopper snorted dismissively, donning a vicious leer. "Not that it did him much good. Eheheheeeeeh…"

I allowed a single shiver to travel down my spine before refocusing. "Soooo I take it by the fact that you're calling us, you have a way to make this rotting husk double-dead?"

"Deader than even that. Doesn't matter how big or small the organism; if it suffers the fate I have outlined, not even the mightiest of Devil Fruits could revive it! It's genius genius GENIUS!"

I shot a glare at Soundbite, who leered tauntingly. "Don't look at me~!"

I gave a disgruntled huff and rolled my eyes before glancing skyward. "Aaaand I don't suppose that the method for bringing about this 'fate' of yours is easy and painless for us to complete?"

Chopper's mad ramblings promptly died, and there was a moment of silence before he started chuckling nervously in his own voice. "Eheheh… weeeeell…"

"Oh, dear…" Robin sighed, though the smile she was wearing told a whole different story.

"Just get it over with," I dragged my hand down my face with a groan.

"Oh, come on, Cross!" Conis piped up with her usual cheer. "We do this, however uncomfortable, and we're all good! How bad—!" Credit to Conis, her hand was clamped over her mouth by the time I turned around, and she even had the wherewithal to chuckle sheepishly as she removed it. "Ah… sorry, forgot for a second there. Doesn't count if you didn't say the whole thing?"

"Yeah, see, here's the thing about that…"

And so Chopper relayed his plan to us. It was a good plan, a detailed plan, a well-thought-out and logical plan… but there was just ooone problem with it.

A problem that led Conis and I to exchange sickly grimaces and speak the following words as one:

"This is going to suck…"

-o-

"Lightning Bolt Tempo!"

ZAP!

"Kill-stealer!" Boss barked out a laugh as the zombie he'd been about to pummel was suddenly blasted away by a bolt of lightning. "But eh, so long as you're here—" He shot a pumped-up thumbs-up at the shipbound team as they charged onto the battlefield. "Glad to have you!"

"Glad to be here, Boss," Nami snarled through a nearly bestial grin, her crackling and tempestuous halo sending many a zombie running, albeit without much luck.

"Boss, what's the status report so far?" Vivi asked, balancing on Carue's back with one hand while spinning a salt-crusted Lion Cutter in the other.

"Eh, the battle ebbs and flows." Boss glanced at the frontline with an analytical look. "We make pushes and knock 'em down, even manage to salt a few, but then they push back and grab the downed ones away and patch them up so that they can fight again. The main issue here is exhaustion, namely that we get it and they don't. We've been cycling well enough, but…" Boss trailed off for a second, blinking his eyes before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Anyway, yeah, we're, ah… starting to feel ten minutes of straight fighting hitting us… I mean sure, 'Nightmare Luffy' has been helping us hold the line…"

"But I'm not hearing that 'but' in your voice, am I?" Merry questioned despondently (or as despondently as a person could be when bashing one zombie over the skull with another).

"But…" Boss grit out as the blue behemoth leading their charge suddenly jerked to a stop and essentially disintegrated into a geyser of umbral anima. And a mere twenty seconds later, there was their captain, hunched forward on his knees. "It looks like our damn time using him is up, meaning that it's gonna be a slog from here on out." A sweatdrop hung from his shell as the zombies surged forward with a roar. "Soooo that's the bad news—!"

"BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS!"

KRA-KOOM!

Without warning, the zombie-charge was suddenly blasted apart from the inside out, sending dozens of the undead sprawling and the rest reeling in shock.

"FOR WE!" Leo barked confidently, leading the TDWS in maintaining a group-pose. "ARE HERE!"

"HA!" Boss puffed his chest out as his students glared down the zombies around them. "Looks like I actually might have been speaking too soon! Nice work, boys!"

"Woohoo!" Carue pumped his wing victoriously. "Tidesh turn quick! Owah cavalwy has awwived!"

"What a coincidence…"

Spines froze all along the battlefront as a grim susurrus wafted through the air.

The Teenage Dugong Warrior Squad were particularly petrified, on account of how the voice came from a knight with a three-eyed mask and animalistic gauntlet-claws who'd somehow appeared directly in their midst.

"For you see," the knight hissed menacingly, "We, the General Zombies of Thriller Bark, have also arrived."

Acting fast, the TDWS tried to lash out at their ghastly assailant—

"GAH!"/ "GRK!"/ "ACK!"/ "SONNUVA—!"

And failed when said assailant's arms both split in half and bodily snatched them out of the air by their throats.

"Allow me," the cadaver rasped with a shuddering breath. "To introduce you!"

And with that ominous statement, the knight's torso suddenly spun around like a rotor, whipping the TDWS about like ragdolls and flinging them to separate parts of the battlefield before they could react.

Boss's eye twitched, and it had nothing to do with the renewed surge of heavily armed and even more heavily skilled zombies that was pushing back the Rolling Pirates. "So. I'll be taking four-arms and no-brains."

"Fine by me," Sanji huffed, waving his hand dismissively as he walked away, casually smacking down any zombies that tried to get in his way. "I'll go and find mosshead, dig him out of the flood of bodies he's no doubt going to bury his dumb green ass in."

"Let's see if Cross's advice about my thieving skills can be applied to my mass-pickpocketing routine…" Nami mused as she faded into thin air.

"Triage for me!" Merry cackled as she jogged away as fast as her minor limp allowed. "Time to play mad doctor!"

"Let them eat salt!" Vivi proclaimed with an imperious wave of her hand before smiling sheepishly at Carue. "How does that sound to you?"

"Eh…" Carue waved his wing with a wince. "Good, but aye can't help but feel shome senshe of forebowding fwom it."

"Bah, I'll work on it," Vivi waved her hand dismissively. "For now though, hiyah!" And with a kick of her heels, she and her duck shot into the fray. Or at least, over it from the way Carue was kicking off the undead's heads.

Boss, meanwhile, stayed where he was, staring at the approaching three-eyed knight in silence before taking his cigar from his lips. "A few months back," he sighed, smoke whooshing from his muzzle. "I wouldn't have even given you the time of day for hurting my students. Buuut seeing as I'm now certain that they can handle themselves and nothing you clowns can throw at them will actually do jack shit…" He upgraded his dart's motion from pendulum-like swinging to full-blown rotation. "'Man of the Sea' Boss Dugong, Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates' ship guard. You?"

The knight snorted derisively. "The dead have no need for names."

His four arms split anew into an octet of bladed limbs.

"Die with the title 'Jorōgumo' etched in your heart."

Boss' eyes fell into a deadpan glare. "Charming."

And with that, any further words were foregone in favor of leaping at one another with the utmost of fury.

-o-

"Hey, Conis," I grunted as I reaffirmed my grip. "You ever get asked, as a kid, what you wanted to be when you grew up?"

"On and off for several years, though not anytime recently," she responded offhandedly, more focused on her footing than me. "Not many on Angel Island wanted to give thought to the future once Eneru took over, and after that…" The angel nodded her head to the side with a shrug. "Well, I found my calling with this crew, so not much reason to think of anything else, you know?"

"Fair enough, fair enough…" I mused. "Me, I got asked that constantly. Go-to for school counselors and parents, really. The answer varied, over the years. At first there were the classic answers."

"Which, for your world, would be…" Conis trailed off expectantly.

"Firefighters and police officers, both due to the heroism, AND THE ODD CONSTRUCTION WORKER. COOL JOB, SEE."

"Ah, I see," Conis nodded in agreement. "Makes sense, I always thought the Cloud Workers looked cool myself."

"Yeah. There was actually a period where I was on an architect kick for a bit. Seemed easy enough, I liked geometry… then I learned how much art was involved and I dropped it like a hot potato. I draw like Luffy, see," I bit out, wiping the sweat from my brow.

"Naturally, naturally."

"Anyway…" I glanced downward before continuing. "After that, there was a bit of a wandering period, but right before I came here, I was actually studying to be an English Major."

That actually drew a blink of surprise from Conis. "Oh, you write?"

"Eh, not anymore. Not much point, ya know?"

"Er…?" she asked.

"Anyway," I pushed on. "The point I was trying to get at is that at no point did I ever envision myself a world-infamous/famous pirate, out having the wildest of adventures on the high seas—!"

"LOOK OUT above."

"—Sonnuva—!" I hastily whipped my gauntlet above my head.

SMASH!

And winced as a frozen bat shattered on my forearm before sending a glare into the darkness above. "And I sure as hell," I concluded. "Never saw myself rappelling down the gullet of a titan's frozen corpse so that I can preemptively kill its brain!"

Conis chuckled in dry amusement as she shifted her bazooka's footing on her back before giving herself more slack with which to keep descending the wall of frozen flesh. "Cross," she scoffed. "I think it's safe to assume that nobody has ever envisioned themselves in any of the situations we've been involved in in the history of ever."

"You mean besides every SUPER-OBSESSED FANBOY AND FANGIRL ever?" Soundbite interjected.

I felt a snort and a shift on my back. "Less meta," Lassoo grumbled irritably. "More moving. I'm freezing my tail off back here."

"On it, on it," I waved my mutt off. And with that, we resumed climbing down Oars' throat.

…I…suppose that whole bit deserves, if not outright requires, some context, doesn't it?

See, the primary issue with trying to harm Oars? It wasn't just his sheer size, it was the fact that he was literally built for not just combat, but all-out New World warfare. And apparently, that necessitated a hide that was not only several meters thick, but also as hard as a damn battleship. No wonder Zoro could barely cut the bastard, Mihawk himself would have… alright, he'd probably be able to chop Oars in half lengthwise without even looking up from his morning papers, but my point about Oars being thick in more ways than just his head still stands!

I'd told Chopper how we'd incapacitated the titan in the story, and he was extremely impressed with his original self's genius. But unfortunately, Oars' stupidly massive and quite literal dead weight and our lack of means meant that we couldn't exactly replicate the circumstances. Still, he was able to identify one viable weakness in the corpse's biological blueprint. Speaking of which…

"Hey Chopper!" I called mouthwards. "We're about… ah…"

"25, 30 feet down the throat from the mouth!" Conis offered.

"Yeah, that. We there yet?"

"Ahhh… lemme see, lemme see, what is that in inches, damn chart doesn't have a legend… ah, right! Alright, give it another five feet to be safe and then you should be good!"

"Do we really need to go this far down, Chopper?" I groaned even as I kept giving myself slack to descend. "I mean, we're already inside his throat, what does it matter how deep we go?"

"It matters because you need to be in precisely the exact spot to have a chance of hitting Oars' spinal column anytime soon!" Chopper explained with strained patience. "I don't know what Moriah was expecting Oars to fight in the New World, but whatever it was, he had Hogback deck him out to hell and back. Even his throat is reinforced for several meters!"

"And you said he needed this to fight Kaido?" Conis swallowed heavily.

"And we're going up against him ourselves. Fun, no?" I responded dryly.

"What you're looking for is a form of sweet spot," Chopper continued. "An area of the esophagus after Hogback was given the go-ahead to stop reinforcing, but before the esophagus turns away from spine in favor of the stomach… er, command center… you get my point. Anyway, dig too soon and you'll hit reinforced muscle to match his epidermis. Too late, not exactly reinforced muscle, but still a lot of it."

"YEAH, because we wouldn't want ANY MORE TROUBLE THAN WE'VE ALREADY HAD…" Soundbite grumbled. "Like the zipline from hell wasn't fun enough."

"You do better with limited supplies, ass-biter!" Usopp snapped indignantly.

"Forgive me for not exactly having a steady grip on the free-hanging weight of two adults plus baggage," Robin concurred much more calmly, but also far more dryly.

"Thank you for not letting us plummet to our doom!" the four of us chorused with no small amount of desperation.

"A-Anyway, I'm fairly certain we're where you want us," Conis coughed uneasily, glancing… 'up', as it were, at the opposite wall of the cavernous flesh-tube we were in. "I suppose it looks softer than what we were going down before. So, I suppose now…?"

"We start digging," I huffed, hefting a fully gun Lassoo from my back and pointing him 'upwards'. "Congratulations are in order, Conis, we're about to perform the most roughshod and unique lobotomy in the history of medicine."

"I'LL ALERT the folks at GUINNESS."

"Forgive me if I don't exactly seem eager," Conis snorted in an unladylike manner, hefting her own bazooka before knocking her cannon's muzzle against my own. "Cheers, Cross."

"Right back at ya," I grit out as I braced myself. "Alright, firing in three, two—!"

"Cani-Blast!"

"Burn Bazooka!"

FWOOM!

Conis and I both sighed in relief as our guns blasted out twin pillars of flame that combined into an inferno. While the position was more than a bit awkward, at least the heat from the flames did something to alleviate the sub-zero temperatures.

Still, though…

"Chopper, how long do you think it'll take us to dig through?" I asked.

"Erm… well, seeing as there's still several meters of flesh between you and the bone? IIIII'd get suggest you all get as comfortable as you can manage. Sorry?"

Conis and I both froze in place before we slooowly turned our heads to glance at one another. I then opened my mouth to say something.

"If you suggest I Spy in this place," she whispered solemnly. "I will punch your head from your scrawny shoulders."

"Wasn't gonna say nothin'!" I hedged hastily, glancing away with a whistle.

"Yeah, THE HELL YOU—!"

THWACK!

"YEOW!"

"Shut up, Soundbite," we chorused as one.

"Bastards."

-o-

"Tidal-Swim-Tidal-Swim-TIDAL SWIM DAMN IT A—oh, there we go," Leo blinked in honest surprise as he flipped himself over in midair and actually managed to kill his downward momentum. "Huh… so that's how it's done… surprisingly easy once you get used to it."

"GROAAAAR!"

Leo blinked, and glanced down to a veritable legion of zombies.

"Drawing attention to yourselves like that?" the dugong smirked, drawing his blades. "Tsk, tsk, not smart."

That briefly drew the zombies up short, each looking at each other in confusion. And that opening was enough for Leo to cut his Tidal Swim, dropping to the ground, his blades whirling out and finding the necks of two zombies. Both promptly collapsed like they'd been turned to jelly, shadows flying into the sky.

"Alright," Leo said as he straightened. "Who wants some?" Not waiting for an answer, he jabbed one of his swords at a random zombie. "You. You want some."

Before the poor zombie could in any way deny that it wanted any, Leo was up in his personal space, sword shooting up and through his throat.

That was enough for the rest of the zombies, who to a cadaver decided that discretion was, indeed, the better part of valor.

Or, to put it another way, they ran like children.

Leo, naturally, gave pursuit. Two fell to his blades just after they began to run, and with Rip Tide, the rest weren't going anywhere. The dugong was a blur of shell and steel, each strike unerringly finding a necrotized throat and carving it open. A few zombies, seeing that running was futile, tried to fight back. That was just as futile.

Finally, Leo swung his blades out only to find that he was standing alone on a field of unmoving corpses.

"Huh," he said, lowering one blade and holding the other up for inspection. "Nice. That salt paste of Chopper's is really holding up well. Now, what to do…"

Suddenly, Leo's head whipped around to a seemingly random spot of foliage. "I know you're there!" he called out. "Show yourself!"

The bushes rustled, and a corpse stumbled out. With bottle in hand, dressed in a tattered captain's coat and equally tattered striped pants, and stringy silver hair, he looked the perfect picture of a drunken bum, swords at his hip notwithstanding.

"…And here I was worried." Leo let his shoulders slump with a disappointed sigh. "And you even have swords… bah, screw it, might as well get this over with. Rip Tide." And with that, Leo blurred from sight.

CLANG!

Somehow, that did not end with a salted zombie, but instead Leo's blade getting quite casually knocked away.

"What the heck?!" Leo yelped, hastily recovering from the hit, only to blink in confusion as the zombie merely took another swig of its drink. "O…kay, let's try that again…"

So saying, Leo struck again, tightening his swing, and once again it was casually batted away, the zombie continuing to drink in spite of his liquor continuously draining out. The dugong narrowed his eyes, flippers tightening their grip on his hilts.

"Alright, then…"

Vanishing in another Rip Tide, this time Leo didn't just attack once. Both of his blades blurred in, and while they kept getting batted away, the zombie was staggering backwards to keep up the defense. Different angles were tried: head strikes, body strikes from the side, thrusts. All were countered. All forced another step back.

And yet, the damn zombie just kept drinking!

"You drunken bastard… This is a fucking swordfight! A clash of blades and wills! And you clearly have skills, so stop screwing around and take! THIS! SERIOUSLY!" Leo roared, punctuating his final howl by slamming both blades into the zombie's guard. Said guard still stood firm, but the zombie was forced to inch back, and was jolted so bad he spilled a splash of his booze on his shirt.

That… actually drew some emotion from the zombie. He paused, casting a sightless glance down at the stain before returning his attention to the bottle, swirling about the remaining booze at eye level.

Without missing a beat, the zombie took another pull of his drink, and then out of nowhere hurled the bottle at Leo with all the force his necrotized muscles could muster. The surprised dugong had the wits to cross his blades in a guard—

BLAM! SMASH!

"GAH!" Leo flinched in shock and terror as the bottle suddenly exploded in midair for no apparent reason, spraying him with lead and glass and leaving him reeling. He tried to recover, to properly maintain his guard—!

THWACK!

"GUH!" But all he could do was grunt as the air was literally punted from his gut by the pirate, sending him rolling across the field of bodies.

Once Leo's momentum stopped, he flipped himself to his stomach and hung his head with a groan. "Sonnuva bitch, I need to get Shell Body down ASAP…" he wheezed.

"Yar har har… ye have me thanks, bucko…"

Leo snapped his head up, and beheld the fact that his opponent's entire demeanor had pulled a complete 180. Where one moment had stood a lazy and slouched drunkard, there was now an actual pirate, holding his head high with a confident leer and wielding a cutlass in one hand and a smoking pistol in the other.

"Yer harsh tone and yer impressive skills with the blade have served ta finally rouse me from this accursed stupor of mine," the zombie chuckled menacingly. "Finally, for the first time since I woke anew, I actually feel alive! And it's with this very feeling!"

The zombie snapped his blade up and jabbed the tip at Leo.

"That I intend ta send yer shelled arse straight ta Davy Jones Locker!" he roared eagerly. "Prepare yerself, enemy-mine, for ye face the age-old scourge of the six seas, the most infamous lord o' piracy in all o' Paradise's history! Aye, I be he! The one, the only, Captain 'Long' John 'Silverteeth'! YAR HAR HAR!"

Leo stared at the pirate in awe, his mouth agape, until he realized that something didn't quite add up. "Uhhh…?" he trailed off uncomfortably as he gestured at his own teeth.

"ME CORPSE WAS DESECRATED BY THE SALTY DOGS I CALLED A CREW, YE IDJIT!" John roared indignantly. "TRUST ME, WAY BACK WHEN, I HAD TEETH O' SILVER, AND EVERYONE IN THESE WATERS FEARED THEM AS THOUGH THEY BELONGED TO DAVY JONES HIMSELF!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say…" Leo pulled himself to his tail, swords at the ready, before slowly donning a smirk. "'Gramps'."

John stilled, his expression sinking into one of murderous rage. "Allow me to educate ye, ye salty cur," he growled. "About how a true pirate FIGHTS!"

And in a blur of movement, the clash was on.

-o-

CRASH!

"Eurgh… Tidal Swim's cool and all, but now I need to figure out how to get rid of the damn cramp…" Mikey groaned, working himself out of the ground. "'Course, I already know how Boss is gonna suggest I do it: Tail-lifts, and a lot of them. That's gonna suck…"

BAM!

Neither his expression nor his position changed as he drew one of his pistols and fired it to his left, right into the belly of a zombie that'd been reaching for him. His other flipper snapped out one of his nunchucks and effectively knee-capped another undead assailant that had been winding up to stamp on his head.

"Because I."

He flung out his nunchucks to his other side, neatly bisecting a zombie in a cloud of dust and sending both halves flying.

"Hate!"

Charging straight at a line of zombies trying to rush him, he swung his nunchucks like they were made of air, six blows sending six zombies flying, embalming fluid flying.

"TAIL-LIFTS!"

The last zombie in the line tried to run. All that meant was that he was hit in his back instead of chest; he still went flying.

Heaving out a deep sigh, Mikey holstered his pistol and relaxed a bit. "Whoo, I feel better now. If this is why Raphey hits things when she gets mad, I can see why!"

"Ya-ha!"

Mikey frowned and looked up at the strange cry. Up above was a zombie, but not just any zombie. This one had large, bat-like wings stretched over its arms, which were presumably how it was circling overhead.

"Kekekeke! I see you down there, little dugong!" Hildon cackled, continuing to circle. "Soon, I shall return with an army of zombies!"

"Yeeeaaah, about that," Mikey slowly drawled, unable to hide the grin that stretched across his face as he realized that the throbbing in a certain area had gone down. "Tidal Swim."

With two powerful kicks of his tail, the dugong shot up into the air, pistol coming out to take a shot at the zombie's mouth once he matched altitude. He never got the chance; Hildon yelped and turned around the second Mikey launched the first Tidal Swim, fleeing for his un-life.

"Hey, get back here!" Mikey snapped, pushing off the air after the zombie. What ensued was one of the more bizarre chase scenes ever: a zombie in a bat costume that somehow allowed him to fly being chased by a manatee-sea turtle hybrid jumping off the air. Of course, as focused as Mikey was on the chase even he couldn't miss that they were heading for the central mansion of Thriller Bark. Any thoughts of cutting off the chase, though, were dashed when Hildon dove for the ground.

"Gotcha!" Mikey shouted, following in a dive of his own.

Both fighters promptly bounced off the ground and into the brush, one after another. As Mikey did so, he grabbed his nunchucks and reared them back, ready for whatever counterattack was coming.

Oh, wait, that's a lie. He certainly wasn't ready for Hildon to jam a machine gun in his face, though any claims that he screamed like a little girl were also lies.

"Rip-Tide-Rip-Tide-Rip-Tide!" Mikey yelped, flinging himself back just as the zombie pulled the trigger. The bullets passed harmlessly to the side of the dugong as he skidded into the nearest clearing, glaring daggers at Hildon as he stepped out of the bush. He would have launched himself at the zombie, but a rustling from the shrubbery caught his attention.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mikey watched as the largest man he'd seen that wasn't a giant stepped out of the foliage. Maybe not as tall as the Franky Family's big shipwreckers, but not far behind, and as wide as he was tall. Despite the rolls of fat, Mikey could make out powerful muscles underneath, an observation helped by some literal holes down to the musculature. And wonder of wonders, this one actually had an expression, albeit one of dopey happiness.

"What took ya so long, damn fatty?" Hildon groused. "And where's the rest of ya?"

"Sorry, Hildon," the big zombie sheepishly apologized. "We got a bit lost."

"Umf!"

That would be another zombie walking up beside the big one and pumping its fist, this one shorter but just as round, with a bright red nose that somehow hadn't decayed at all.

In fact, to Mikey's dismay, more zombies were practically crawling out of the woodwork. Off to his other side was another trio, much smaller and skinnier than the ones to his left. One was hanging upside down from a tree like a monkey, a piece of tape holding its nose together. Another had a forehead that seemed almost too long to be real, and gave off a palpable aura of patheticness. And finally, one taller zombie busily tying its thin hair back in a ponytail… and it then kicked up one of its legs near vertical once it was done.

"Ahahahaha!"

Behind came more rustling, and Mikey chanced a look back. These three were near indistinguishable, aside from hairstyle: one blond crewcut, one black mullet, and some… blond… starfish thing. The goggles were a better distinguishing mark, anyway.

"Huh?"

"Huh?!"

"HUH?!"

And then finally, one more appeared in front of Hildon in a burst of speed, this one wearing a strange helmet with a grid-like guard over the mouth and a reflective visor. More importantly, the dugong had only barely caught its arrival.

"Ya-ha! Everyone's finally here!" Hildon declared, raising his machinegun high. "You know what to say, boys!"

"WE'LL KILL 'IM!" all the gathered zombies roared.

"DAMN STRAIGHT!" Hildon concurred, blasting a round of bullets in the air.

"Great…" Mikey groaned as he readied his 'chuks, spinning them in anticipation for a fight. "Why do I get the feeling that the others are having an easier time of things?!"

-o-

"Nooooriiiii…Arts!" Raphey flipped herself around in midair and managed to stick a beautiful touchdown of a landing, her grin positively massive as she held her arms above her head. "Hahaha! 'Dodging is useless' my tail! I'm going to rub this so hard in those morons' faces! …when I find them again, at any rate."

"CARVE 'ER UP! TURTLE SOUP, À LA CARTE!"

Raphey snapped around at the sound of the bellow, and caught sight of a tattered butcher's outfit and a massive cleaver heading for her suddenly raised sai.

CLANG!

She gritted her teeth at the force that slammed between the main blade and one of the side blades, but she managed to maintain her stance before placing both flippers on the sai, and twisting it—

CHINK!

Snapping the massive cleaver down the middle. The butcher gaped comically at his broken blade for a couple of seconds. Then, with even more force, he slammed a foot into her belly - and blinked in confusion when it did jack all.

"Vad?" he questioned in an unintelligible language.

"I'm a girl with three brothers," Raphey smirked confidently. "Those three know Shell Body. Me? I'm good with it."

"Not so good with peripheral vision though, huh?"

"Wha—?" Raphey turned her head in confusion, and promptly widened her eyes in shock as she watched a huge zombie with an even huger club lifelessly collapse to reveal her savior: a woman with pink hair and… a great personality, wielding a pair of katana. "Ah… yeah…" Raphey chuckled sheepishly, even as she stabbed her sais into the butcher's leg and flipped him onto the ground, shoving a wad of salt down his throat. "Even with 'good' Shell Body, that would have been… bad. Thanks a lot… uh…?"

"Lola!" the woman greeted amicably, even as she offhandedly decapitated a zombie that tried to jump her. "'Marriage Proposal' Lola, captain of the Rolling Pirates and really grateful for you Straw Hats helping us!"

"Raphey, 'Disciple of the Sea' and Straw Hat ship's guard!" Raphey greeted back with a smile as she crushed a zombie's knee. "Really nice to meet you, and may I say? I love your make-up. Brings out your eyes!"

Lola gasped and smiled eagerly as she removed the arms from a tree-like revenant. "Why, thank you! And personally, I find that your headband really compliments your shell. Just my opinion."

"What, this old thing?" Raphey waved her off with one flipper while holding a struggling zombie at flipper's length with the other. "I've had it for years! Appreciate the compliment!"

"Oh, no trouble, no trouble… oh, hey, real quick!" Lola asked eagerly. "Are you busy right now, by any chance. I mean, besides…" She gestured at the newly dead bodies at her feet.

"No no, not really," Raphey shrugged dismissively as she wiped some embalming fluid from her sais. "My bros can handle themselves, no sweat. Whaddaya need?"

"Eh…" Lola scratched the back of her head uncomfortably. "I've been trying to find my zombie in all this mess, but I haven't been having any luck! My crewmates are all looking for their own and I don't wanna distract them, so I was hoping…?"

"Sure thing!" Raphey popped her an eager thumbs up. "So, what does your deader-half look like?"

"ME."

The two females looked to the source of the voice, which turned out to be—

…No, even the narrators aren't willing to touch this. 'Giant, bipedal, pink warthog in a wedding dress with two swords' is all you're getting for the zombie leader of the mob of beast zombies that emerged to challenge Lola and Raphey.

"AT THIS POINT, I COULDN'T CARE LESS WHO YOU ARE," the zombie-Lola breathed murderously. "YOU ALLIED WITH THE ONES WHO DEFEATED MY PRECIOUS ABSALOM, AND PUT HIM OUT OF MY REACH!"

Lola nervously tensed and untensed her grip on her blades as she turned to face her counterpart. "And you really think that you can take on both of us at once?"

Zombie Lola—Zola, for brevity's sake—snorted darkly, brandishing. "Good point." She glanced over her shoulder at the crowd of animalian zombies. "HIPPO!"

"Front and center, ma'am!" a sharply dressed hippo barked, jogging towards with his shield over his chest as he raised his sword in salute. "An honor to serve with you, General! To strike down the curs who dare to invade our noble home!"

"'Noble' nothing, you half-cooked leatherneck," Raphey growled, scraping her sais together in anticipation. "We're taking each and every last one of you freaks down. En-fucking-garde!"

And so the quartet fell into battle ready positions, glaring daggers at one another as they waited for someone, anyone to snap the tension and kick things off.

Finally, Raphey slumped forward with a defeated sigh. "…actually, on second thought? I know I can't be the first one to say it, so I'm gonna be upfront here and get it off my chest: Lipstick on a pig."

The effect was instantaneous: the entire surrounding battlefield froze, all the zombies staring at the Dugong in shock. And then all of them, save for Zola and Gallant Hippo, ran off screaming in mortal terror.

Hell, even Hippo looked to be seconds away from doing just that, inching away from his partner-in-zombiehood with a terrified expression. "Now you've gone and done it…" he whimpered.

"Eh?" Raphey blinked in confusion. "What, what's wrong? Why are you all acting so—?"

"Yoooou…"

"Erk!" Raphey and Lola both recoiled in shock, the reason being the utterly evil aura that was radiating from Zola.

"YOOOOU BASTAAAAARDS…" the hog-zombie rumbled, her teeth grinding and her tusks glinting with menace. This was accompanied by a glare at the two, her eyes all but literally glowing with bloody murder. "I DON'T EVEN CARE IF I DIE FROM IT, I'LL KILL YOU AAAAAALL!" And with that final roar she charged the pair with all the power and rage of a runaway Sea Train.

"GAH!" Hippo yelped in shock, hastily running after her. "Zo—! I-I mean Lo—! I mean—! WAIT!"

Raphey swallowed heavily as she steeled herself, the skin on her flippers slowly turning white around her grip on her sais. "Ready to face yourself?" she asked her partner.

Lola barked out a laugh even as her own knuckles turned white on her blades. "When is anyone? There's only one answer to that question!"

SKRANG!

Lola grinned eagerly as she locked blades with her knockoff, the pair butting heads and neither giving ground.

"TRY IT!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "AND FIND OUT!"

-o-

"Note to self…" Donny rubbed his head's shell with a groan as he shoved his way back onto his tail. "After I get Tidal Swim down pat, start training with Robin to deal with opponents who have more than… two… arms…" Donny trailed off slowly before slapping his flipper to his face with a renewed sigh. "And suddenly that is a threat that is valid in my life. Unbe-freaking-lievable, one day my usual opponents are other dugongs, and now it's like I'm living in a dream!"

"Might wanna make that a nightmare, pintsize," one of the zombies surrounding the dugong leered smugly, pounding his fist as he approached. "Now, enough with the small talk, let's get to the part where we pound your sku—URK!" The zombie cut himself off in a fit of gagging, on account of the end of Donny's bo-staff lodging itself in his throat, and then failed to say anything further due to his own shadow blocking his throat.

"Theeeen again..." Donny slowly let an eager grin spread across his face. "I suppose that dreams are meant to be enjoyed!" And with that, he ripped his staff out of the zombie's throat and spun it into a ready-position. "Bring it on, you rotting, husk-brained bastards! I can kick your decrepit behinds blindfolded!"

The crowd of zombies all snarled and growled viciously at the blatant challenge. "You little—! COME ON, GUYS!" one of them raised his voice to rally the rest. "There's one of him and an army of us! And the best of our best are on their way too! LET'S BEAT HIS SHELL INTO THE DAMN GROUND!"

Donny's eyes narrowed in concentration as the zombies began to charge him, already positioning his staff to prepare for his newly revamped and rebranded Arrows of St. George, taking aim at the frontmost zombies and tensing his lower body for the following movements—

"HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH! NOW, WAIT JUST A MOMENT!"

All of the zombies promptly paused, the expressions on their rotting faces, one and all, screaming sheer terror. Which, given the fact that Donny did not know the voice in question, made him nervous in turn.

"So, little dugong!" the voice laughed over the din of fighting. "You think you can just waddle on down here, with your fancy stick-a-ma-jig, and whack all your enemies into oblivion and then be home in time for soaps and cigars, eh?"

"Uh… I don't smoke—?" Donny began awkwardly.

"WRONG! The battlefield is a very, very violent and deadly place, rife with danger! LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHIN'!"

"RUN!" screamed several of the zombies, separating like the Red Sea before scattering everywhere that wasn't close to Donny. All save for one. He was of average height for a full-grown man, his lips were pulled back in a way that perpetually showed the rotting top row of his teeth, and where his left eye was squinting, his right was wide open… or more likely, lidless. His skin was blackened in places, clearly from burns, and his outfit was a tattered cross between a business suit and a fireman's uniform, with a husk of a helmet hanging on his head and a fireman's axe on his back.

No, wait, in. Donny realized with no small amount of horror that the axe was lodged in the zombie's back, the blade buried right beside his spinal column.

"SO!" the zombie bellowed, strutting forward in an exaggerated saunter. "You're waddlin' along, swingin' your stickie-ma-bob to and fro, not a care in the world as ya slap the shadows outta zombies here and there, WHEN SUDDENLY!" he yelled at the top of his lungs as he came to a stop a few feet before the dugong, jabbing his finger at him. Though the effect was somewhat ruined by him taking a lighter out of his pocket and flicking it open, producing a flame on top. "Ya come upon a simple general zombie takin' a break, breakin' out the ole zippo to have himself a smoke on the ole' puff-puff! You're going to smack him silly too, easy as peaches… when suddenly someone yells 'Look!'" He pointed to the side. "'There's Big Mom doin' cartwheels!'"

Donny actually briefly followed the finger in confusion before returning his attention to the deranged deceased as he kept talking.

"However! As ya turn ta watch, your stickie-con-carne smacks inta the zombie's hand and WHAPPA!" The zombie actually slapped his own hand into the underside of his fist, sending the lighter flying high into the air. "The zippo's zipped off! But!" The zombie's overbite-ridden grin widened as he popped a finger. "What ya don't know is, that that zombie whose smokes ya just smacked…"

The zombie flung his arms wide. "Was embalmed using lighter fluiiiiid!"

The blood fled Donny's face as he heard that little tidbit. "Wait… y-you don't mean—!"

At almost that exact moment, the lighter chose that moment to land. Fortunately, it didn't hit the zombie but rather the ground in front of him.

…un-fortunately, it somehow managed to bounce off said ground and shoot down the zombie's gaping mouth. With an audible GULP! No less.

Both Donny and the Zombie were paralyzed for a moment until the zombie cocked his head to the side. "UH-OH!"

"SHIT!" Donny cursed furiously, diving away in panic.

KA-BOOM!

It was at moments like these that the smartest of the TDWS seriously regretted evolution deciding to steal his species' capacity to retreat into their shells, because the feeling of flames licking off his tail was way too close a call for his comfort.

Once he landed, Donny took a moment to pant and catch his breath. And for that moment, he allowed himself to dare to hope that maybe, just maybe that crazy-ass zombie had been dumb enough to blow himself to kingdom come.

The second that moment passed, however?

"HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!"

It was violently shattered.

With horror and terror coursing through his veins, Donny flipped himself to his tail and turned around to behold the flaming husk of a corpse that was slowly but surely shambling towards him, cackling madly all the while.

"As you can see!" the psychotic revenant's voice barked with undeserved authority. "The battlefield is a very dangerous environment! But worry not!" He struck a confident pose, his fist placed firmly over where his heart was, or would have been, if it weren't probably already charcoal. "I, Fire Zombie Bill, shall be the one to show you to safety!"

The zombie's ashen smile widened clean across his face as he reached over his shoulder and grasped the handle of the axe buried in him.

"LEMME SHOW YA SOMETHING!"

And with that, the zombie wrenched—!

CRACK!

The axe came free, and Donny promptly gagged in horror.

Fire Zombie Bill blinked at the disembodied ribcage hanging from his weapon. "Whoops! Need that!" That said, he shoved his axe back over his shoulder and jiggled it around a bit before removing it again, this time sans the extra calcium. "There we go!" Upon noticing Donny's panicked expression, he tilted his head to the side, in a gesture that was probably meant to be comforting but came off more like a predator observing its prey. "Take a chill pill, wouldja? When I was alive, I was many things: a detective, a super villain, and even a count! But most important of all?"

Bill's grin extended to downright demented levels.

"I WAS… AND STILL AM… A FIRE MARSHAL! HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!"

Xomniac AN: Eeeeyup. That's right, people. TPO brought it up and we ran with it. We. Went. There. Bow before us!