__________ POV Narration__________
"Haha!"
Enel laughed as he grunted and swung his fist one more time, breaking the ground underneath him and causing all of the hands that were sprouting from around him to disappear.
Robin hummed as sweat rolled off her forehead. They were using their remaining time wisely.
Robin was the one to suggest the sparring. She wanted to see just how far she had come. And Enel agreed with only a few conditions.
He was going to restrict himself to only using his body, no devil fruit abilities at all.
In essence, if he used his devil fruit in any way then he would lose the spar. They also decided to make an interesting bet...
'Whoever loses will be at the whims of the winner for an entire day.'
It was a fun bet for sure, and it incentivized both of them to do their best... Well, within reason.
The Emperor still was quite reluctant to hurt her. Robin could feel him holding back with each strike.
And in truth, it didn't make her sad or mad in any way. Instead, she felt motivated.
'I'll show him that I am no longer the same woman he saved from that Bridge Building Slave Camp!'
She had a goal, and she was going to reach it by any means necessary. So, she gave Enel a shaky smile and immediately brought her hands together.
"Gigante Fleur: Sea Serpent!"
Her voice rang like a loud bell on that small battlefield.
Two gigantic arms sprouted from the ground, one behind Enel and one behind Robin.
They both turned black and slapped at Enel like agile snakes, moving in ways that were impossible for a regular human.
The Sky King couldn't help but be impressed at that point. Immediately, both of his fists turned dark as he punched at the two gigantic arms.
He punched at a very specific angle, causing both of the palms to slide by his sides and counting in their paths.
"Good! But not enough!" The Emperor shouted as his darkened palms shone under the sunlight.
Robin, however, seemed unphased. Her arms continued moving.
Enel's eyes sparked red for a second as he caught a glimpse of the future and looked to the sides.
The gigantic arms seemed to coil around one another instead of continuing off to the side.
They formed a makeshift tower around the Emperor, and more arms sprouted, forming a large and rather sturdy prison.
At the top, two arms pointed down.
"Gigante Fleur: Serpent Tower!"
Enel's eyes darted around as he noticed all of the walls of the 'Tower' turning black.
The Emperor could see a few eyes popping out of the 'walls' always out of his reach, disappearing and reappearing constantly as Robin decided to always keep a literal eye on him.
His eyes shone a bit as he felt genuinely impressed by her progress. He felt some pride in seeing how far she had come.
But he didn't forget where he was and what he was doing. Instead of praising her he opted for trying to irritate her.
"What's the plan here missy?! You know very well that now I can harm you through each one of these arms you used to build the tower!"
The Emperor spoke out in an amused voice, he clenched his fist and relaxed his body as he used his observation haki even more, trying to look into Robin's next attacks.
"Hmph, as if you'd be able to harm them! My Armament isn't that weak Enel!"
The Emperor blinked a few times as he heard Robin's rather haughty voice through the fleshy walls of the 'Serpent Tower'.
"We'll see about that!" Enel decided to immediately put that to the test, his hand forming a tight fist as he punched at the wall nearest to him.
He watched as the flesh on the wall rippled, he felt his punch connect and even slightly enter into the wall. But at the same time, he could feel that he had done no damage to it.
"Iron Body and Armament... Coupled with Paper Arts?!?"
Enel immediately stepped back as a few arms sprouted from the wall and tried to grab at him.
He dodged them and backed off to the centre of the tower again, his eyes widening in amazement.
At that point, he couldn't even hide the pride in his gaze and smile.
'To think she'd be able to come up with something like this... I guess the Straw Hats no longer have just a 'Monster Trio'...'
It seemed that the properties of Robin's devil fruit allowed her to come up with a way to use Paper Arts and Iron Body at the same time, something that was extremely difficult to pull off normally.
She had done it, easily and at a scale that Enel hadn't ever seen in the past. The arms formed an extremely tough net around him.
'Still, I should be able to break out of here..."
Enel then heard Robin's voice ring out from outside.
"Crush!"
In an instant, gigantic palms sprouted from the walls. They all rushed towards Enel from many angles, forming what looked like a dome of palms.
The Emperor immediately acted, his feet stepping heavily into the ground. His toes dug in slightly as he formed a fist which immediately turned black and gained a blue-ish aura around it.
His fist moved towards the ground like a meteor, even catching fire just before it met the earth.
An eardrum-shattering bang was heard as the ground underneath Enel was blasted apart almost instantly, the shockwave of which seemed to stop the palms in their tracks.
But to Enel's surprise, the 'Serpent Tower' was still intact.
'That wasn't enough to break it?!?'
The Emperor had made a gigantic crater in the ground with that punch, but unlike before, breaking the field wasn't enough to dispel the hands.
Instead, they just grew a bit more to cover most of the crater that Enel had formed.
'Shit... I guess I have to use 'that' after all...'
At that point, the Emperor just sighed.
He immediately finished from his position, using Soru and reaching one of the walls with ease.
He touched the fleshy wall, and immediately dozens of arms sprouted like flowers from the wall, entangling his body from several angles and even trying to choke him out.
Enel didn't do anything to stop them or to block them. Instead, he just closed his eyes and rubbed the 'wall' in front of him gently.
immediately his willpower moved, bursting forward, entering the arm and wreaking havoc inside.
The Emperor could hear a small hiss of pain from the other side of the wall, and in that moment he stopped.
The tower around him fell. And all of the arms that were holding him also disappeared into petals.
Enel's smile lessened a bit as the wall in front of him fell and revealed an exhausted and injured Robin, she seemed to be specifically rubbing her right shoulder.
"So-"
"Thanks for not breaking my arm there..."
Enel was about to apologise, but Robin didn't even give him the chance.
The outcome of the fight was rather clear in her eyes. Enel had been holding back the entire fight, that technique she had seen him train daily was certainly more devastating than she thought.
She had figured that if she strengthened her Will enough, she'd be able to resist it. But Internal Destruction wasn't something that could be so easily blocked...
It was an advanced application of Armament Haki at the end of the day. Even though Enel had held back a lot, Robin still felt a lot of pain in her arm.
Enel had likely not wanted to use it against her either, feeling it was unfair and that it would injure her too much, which was true.
She knew what he was about to say, but she didn't feel like hearing him say sorry for actually fighting during a spar.
Enel seemed to be able to finally pick up on that now, so he just shook his head and patted her shoulder.
"You're welcome! It was a great fight though, I was certainly not expecting you to show that much strength."
Robin gave the emperor a shaky smile and just shook her head.
"Well, at least I tried. I wanted to see how well I match up to you." The Archeologist crossed her arms and closed her eyes, leaning slightly into Enel.
"You did great, I have no complaints." Enel patted her head a bit and continued giving her the same warm smile she had grown accustomed to.
"No then... I wonder what you are going to do to me during the following day..." Almost as if it was at the press of a button, Robin's smile turned mischievous as she remembered the details of their 'bet'.
Enel gulped at that moment, his eyes narrowing as he seemed to be deep in thought for a few seconds.
"Well... Nothing really. It seems our time has run out already." The Emperor shook his head and turned his head to look to the side, where a rather bizarre group of people was approaching their little training area.
Robin sighed in disappointment as she also finally noticed that everyone had arrived.
It was certainly a bizarre group, to say the least. Garp was dragging a struggling Luffy around in a headlock.
Sanji and Zoro were butting heads constantly about who did the most work when raiding a Beast Pirate Camp.
Zephyr was just eating some Dango and whistling leisurely.
Francisco was already healed it seemed, and he was sharing some Dango with Bonney.
Shiki was just floating around while snoring. And Brook was making some jokes to lighten the mood.
The rest of the Straw hats were also just doing their own things, mainly stressed out about being near Enel's legendary crew members.
Killer and Kid both walked around boldly, although Enel could still feel quite a bit of fear inside Kid.
And Law was rather relaxed, he actually seemed quite happy to see the Sky King.
Enel smiled after seeing them all together.
He had felt each and every one of them arrive at the foot of the mountain individually at different spots. Their paths seemed to intertwine while climbing up the mountain.
Enel's spar with Robin had made enough noise to attract them to the right location, so it was no surprise that they had shown up at such a time.
At least they saved Enel from Robin's teasing.
"Everyone, welcome!" Robin seemed to forget about her teasing too when seeing the rest of her crew, she ran from Enel's side and went on to hug Nami with a face full of relief.
"Heh, you two sure were having fun here," Garp grunted while looking at the ruined state of the field.
"Gramps, let me go!" Luffy continued shrieking while being stuck in the same arm lock.
"I ain't letting you go and get yourself killed randomly!" Garp just scoffed at his Grandson's request.
"Captain! Thank you for coming to my rescue..." Francisco completely ignored the Monkey family and decided to walk forward to his captain and bow.
After escaping prison, Shiki made sure to track him down and bring him to Bonney, where he was punched in the head a few times by her for being reckless and then healed.
"It's only natural Francisco, I'm glad to see you're back in top shape." Enel smiled and patted his 'Right Wing' on the shoulder.
"Gihi, I do have to be in top shape, don't I? We're about to storm Onigashima, aren't we?" Francisco giggled a bit and spoke out in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
"What? All of you bastards want to take Kaido down as well?!?" Kid shouted, his fist clenching as Killer seemed to be trying to calm him down.
"Get in line kid! Everyone wants a piece of that Dragon bastard. I know I can't wait to get my hands on him..." Garp scowled at Kid, who seemed to shrink back a bit in front of the former Marine Hero.
"I also have a score to settle with him..." Francisco said as he grabbed at the handle of his blade.
He had managed to retrieve it after escaping captivity... The Saber of Xebec.
Thankfully Kaido didn't recognize it or didn't care and just allowed the guards at the Slave Camp to throw it in the storage.
"Heh, I've been looking for a good fight for months now too." Zephyr cracked his knuckles with his metallic arm and gave everyone a confident smile.
"I also want to shove some dirt down that bastard's mouth..." Shiki stated as he continued floating in place above everyone else.
Enel smiled as he could feel most of the weaker straw hats present growing distressed at the aggressive atmosphere.
"Now now, let's calm down. We can use all that aggression later when actually faced with Kaido." Enel crossed his arms and cracked his neck.
"Alright! So who gets to go first?" Kid asked and crossed his arms. He was still rather adamant about fighting Kaido himself.
At his question, plenty of people started saying that they wanted to go first. Luffy even managed to somehow escape Garp's hands and try to claim dibs on the honour.
"Oh, you guys think you'll be going one after the other?" Enel tilted his head with a bit of confusion in his gaze.
He didn't wait for an answer, as he didn't want to get stun-locked by their stupidity. Instead, he continued speaking with a wide shit-eating grin.
"Nah, you will all be jumping Kaido."
__________________________________________________________________
Hope you liked the chapter!
Finally got around to writing this. Tbh, the holiday season got me busier than usual, from gift shopping to making festive foods and work/gym, I barely have enough time to shit :)))
Story Shoutout : Hell Difficulty Tutorial
Discord, again: https://discord.gg/xQTK8caFEQ
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster on Patre_on, you'd also get 15 chapters in advance (or 10/5 depending on tier)
__________ POV Narration__________
"Haha!"
Enel laughed as he grunted and swung his fist one more time, breaking the ground underneath him and causing all of the hands that were sprouting from around him to disappear.
Robin hummed as sweat rolled off her forehead. They were using their remaining time wisely.
Robin was the one to suggest the sparring. She wanted to see just how far she had come. And Enel agreed with only a few conditions.
He was going to restrict himself to only using his body, no devil fruit abilities at all.
In essence, if he used his devil fruit in any way then he would lose the spar. They also decided to make an interesting bet...
'Whoever loses will be at the whims of the winner for an entire day.'
It was a fun bet for sure, and it incentivized both of them to do their best... Well, within reason.
The Emperor still was quite reluctant to hurt her. Robin could feel him holding back with each strike.
And in truth, it didn't make her sad or mad in any way. Instead, she felt motivated.
'I'll show him that I am no longer the same woman he saved from that Bridge Building Slave Camp!'
She had a goal, and she was going to reach it by any means necessary. So, she gave Enel a shaky smile and immediately brought her hands together.
"Gigante Fleur: Sea Serpent!"
Her voice rang like a loud bell on that small battlefield.
Two gigantic arms sprouted from the ground, one behind Enel and one behind Robin.
They both turned black and slapped at Enel like agile snakes, moving in ways that were impossible for a regular human.
The Sky King couldn't help but be impressed at that point. Immediately, both of his fists turned dark as he punched at the two gigantic arms.
He punched at a very specific angle, causing both of the palms to slide by his sides and counting in their paths.
"Good! But not enough!" The Emperor shouted as his darkened palms shone under the sunlight.
Robin, however, seemed unphased. Her arms continued moving.
Enel's eyes sparked red for a second as he caught a glimpse of the future and looked to the sides.
The gigantic arms seemed to coil around one another instead of continuing off to the side.
They formed a makeshift tower around the Emperor, and more arms sprouted, forming a large and rather sturdy prison.
At the top, two arms pointed down.
"Gigante Fleur: Serpent Tower!"
Enel's eyes darted around as he noticed all of the walls of the 'Tower' turning black.
The Emperor could see a few eyes popping out of the 'walls' always out of his reach, disappearing and reappearing constantly as Robin decided to always keep a literal eye on him.
His eyes shone a bit as he felt genuinely impressed by her progress. He felt some pride in seeing how far she had come.
But he didn't forget where he was and what he was doing. Instead of praising her he opted for trying to irritate her.
"What's the plan here missy?! You know very well that now I can harm you through each one of these arms you used to build the tower!"
The Emperor spoke out in an amused voice, he clenched his fist and relaxed his body as he used his observation haki even more, trying to look into Robin's next attacks.
"Hmph, as if you'd be able to harm them! My Armament isn't that weak Enel!"
The Emperor blinked a few times as he heard Robin's rather haughty voice through the fleshy walls of the 'Serpent Tower'.
"We'll see about that!" Enel decided to immediately put that to the test, his hand forming a tight fist as he punched at the wall nearest to him.
He watched as the flesh on the wall rippled, he felt his punch connect and even slightly enter into the wall. But at the same time, he could feel that he had done no damage to it.
"Iron Body and Armament... Coupled with Paper Arts?!?"
Enel immediately stepped back as a few arms sprouted from the wall and tried to grab at him.
He dodged them and backed off to the centre of the tower again, his eyes widening in amazement.
At that point, he couldn't even hide the pride in his gaze and smile.
'To think she'd be able to come up with something like this... I guess the Straw Hats no longer have just a 'Monster Trio'...'
It seemed that the properties of Robin's devil fruit allowed her to come up with a way to use Paper Arts and Iron Body at the same time, something that was extremely difficult to pull off normally.
She had done it, easily and at a scale that Enel hadn't ever seen in the past. The arms formed an extremely tough net around him.
'Still, I should be able to break out of here..."
Enel then heard Robin's voice ring out from outside.
"Crush!"
In an instant, gigantic palms sprouted from the walls. They all rushed towards Enel from many angles, forming what looked like a dome of palms.
The Emperor immediately acted, his feet stepping heavily into the ground. His toes dug in slightly as he formed a fist which immediately turned black and gained a blue-ish aura around it.
His fist moved towards the ground like a meteor, even catching fire just before it met the earth.
An eardrum-shattering bang was heard as the ground underneath Enel was blasted apart almost instantly, the shockwave of which seemed to stop the palms in their tracks.
But to Enel's surprise, the 'Serpent Tower' was still intact.
'That wasn't enough to break it?!?'
The Emperor had made a gigantic crater in the ground with that punch, but unlike before, breaking the field wasn't enough to dispel the hands.
Instead, they just grew a bit more to cover most of the crater that Enel had formed.
'Shit... I guess I have to use 'that' after all...'
At that point, the Emperor just sighed.
He immediately finished from his position, using Soru and reaching one of the walls with ease.
He touched the fleshy wall, and immediately dozens of arms sprouted like flowers from the wall, entangling his body from several angles and even trying to choke him out.
Enel didn't do anything to stop them or to block them. Instead, he just closed his eyes and rubbed the 'wall' in front of him gently.
immediately his willpower moved, bursting forward, entering the arm and wreaking havoc inside.
The Emperor could hear a small hiss of pain from the other side of the wall, and in that moment he stopped.
The tower around him fell. And all of the arms that were holding him also disappeared into petals.
Enel's smile lessened a bit as the wall in front of him fell and revealed an exhausted and injured Robin, she seemed to be specifically rubbing her right shoulder.
"So-"
"Thanks for not breaking my arm there..."
Enel was about to apologise, but Robin didn't even give him the chance.
The outcome of the fight was rather clear in her eyes. Enel had been holding back the entire fight, that technique she had seen him train daily was certainly more devastating than she thought.
She had figured that if she strengthened her Will enough, she'd be able to resist it. But Internal Destruction wasn't something that could be so easily blocked...
It was an advanced application of Armament Haki at the end of the day. Even though Enel had held back a lot, Robin still felt a lot of pain in her arm.
Enel had likely not wanted to use it against her either, feeling it was unfair and that it would injure her too much, which was true.
She knew what he was about to say, but she didn't feel like hearing him say sorry for actually fighting during a spar.
Enel seemed to be able to finally pick up on that now, so he just shook his head and patted her shoulder.
"You're welcome! It was a great fight though, I was certainly not expecting you to show that much strength."
Robin gave the emperor a shaky smile and just shook her head.
"Well, at least I tried. I wanted to see how well I match up to you." The Archeologist crossed her arms and closed her eyes, leaning slightly into Enel.
"You did great, I have no complaints." Enel patted her head a bit and continued giving her the same warm smile she had grown accustomed to.
"No then... I wonder what you are going to do to me during the following day..." Almost as if it was at the press of a button, Robin's smile turned mischievous as she remembered the details of their 'bet'.
Enel gulped at that moment, his eyes narrowing as he seemed to be deep in thought for a few seconds.
"Well... Nothing really. It seems our time has run out already." The Emperor shook his head and turned his head to look to the side, where a rather bizarre group of people was approaching their little training area.
Robin sighed in disappointment as she also finally noticed that everyone had arrived.
It was certainly a bizarre group, to say the least. Garp was dragging a struggling Luffy around in a headlock.
Sanji and Zoro were butting heads constantly about who did the most work when raiding a Beast Pirate Camp.
Zephyr was just eating some Dango and whistling leisurely.
Francisco was already healed it seemed, and he was sharing some Dango with Bonney.
Shiki was just floating around while snoring. And Brook was making some jokes to lighten the mood.
The rest of the Straw hats were also just doing their own things, mainly stressed out about being near Enel's legendary crew members.
Killer and Kid both walked around boldly, although Enel could still feel quite a bit of fear inside Kid.
And Law was rather relaxed, he actually seemed quite happy to see the Sky King.
Enel smiled after seeing them all together.
He had felt each and every one of them arrive at the foot of the mountain individually at different spots. Their paths seemed to intertwine while climbing up the mountain.
Enel's spar with Robin had made enough noise to attract them to the right location, so it was no surprise that they had shown up at such a time.
At least they saved Enel from Robin's teasing.
"Everyone, welcome!" Robin seemed to forget about her teasing too when seeing the rest of her crew, she ran from Enel's side and went on to hug Nami with a face full of relief.
"Heh, you two sure were having fun here," Garp grunted while looking at the ruined state of the field.
"Gramps, let me go!" Luffy continued shrieking while being stuck in the same arm lock.
"I ain't letting you go and get yourself killed randomly!" Garp just scoffed at his Grandson's request.
"Captain! Thank you for coming to my rescue..." Francisco completely ignored the Monkey family and decided to walk forward to his captain and bow.
After escaping prison, Shiki made sure to track him down and bring him to Bonney, where he was punched in the head a few times by her for being reckless and then healed.
"It's only natural Francisco, I'm glad to see you're back in top shape." Enel smiled and patted his 'Right Wing' on the shoulder.
"Gihi, I do have to be in top shape, don't I? We're about to storm Onigashima, aren't we?" Francisco giggled a bit and spoke out in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
"What? All of you bastards want to take Kaido down as well?!?" Kid shouted, his fist clenching as Killer seemed to be trying to calm him down.
"Get in line kid! Everyone wants a piece of that Dragon bastard. I know I can't wait to get my hands on him..." Garp scowled at Kid, who seemed to shrink back a bit in front of the former Marine Hero.
"I also have a score to settle with him..." Francisco said as he grabbed at the handle of his blade.
He had managed to retrieve it after escaping captivity... The Saber of Xebec.
Thankfully Kaido didn't recognize it or didn't care and just allowed the guards at the Slave Camp to throw it in the storage.
"Heh, I've been looking for a good fight for months now too." Zephyr cracked his knuckles with his metallic arm and gave everyone a confident smile.
"I also want to shove some dirt down that bastard's mouth..." Shiki stated as he continued floating in place above everyone else.
Enel smiled as he could feel most of the weaker straw hats present growing distressed at the aggressive atmosphere.
"Now now, let's calm down. We can use all that aggression later when actually faced with Kaido." Enel crossed his arms and cracked his neck.
"Alright! So who gets to go first?" Kid asked and crossed his arms. He was still rather adamant about fighting Kaido himself.
At his question, plenty of people started saying that they wanted to go first. Luffy even managed to somehow escape Garp's hands and try to claim dibs on the honour.
"Oh, you guys think you'll be going one after the other?" Enel tilted his head with a bit of confusion in his gaze.
He didn't wait for an answer, as he didn't want to get stun-locked by their stupidity. Instead, he continued speaking with a wide shit-eating grin.
"Nah, you will all be jumping Kaido."
__________________________________________________________________
Hope you liked the chapter!
Finally got around to writing this. Tbh, the holiday season got me busier than usual, from gift shopping to making festive foods and work/gym, I barely have enough time to shit :)))
Story Shoutout : Hell Difficulty Tutorial
Discord, again: https://discord.gg/xQTK8caFEQ
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster on Patre_on, you'd also get 15 chapters in advance (or 10/5 depending on tier)
