Natural Enemy 2-13

The deck wasn’t all that useful as a floor by this point, the raging storm making it more or less a suggestion. Suggestion was the best word for it, given that trying to keep his balance was taking all of his effort and most of his focus, especially as the merchant ship heaved up on a swell that felt three stories high. Whoa! Kai’s eyes went wide as his knees bent automatically, sandaled feet digging into the grooves between the planks as he prayed for traction. When it finally crashed back down again, the entire world tilted with the ship a full thirty degrees to the left.

J-jesus! Rain slicked the wood so bad it might as well have been ice, all that traction meaning nothing as everyone crashed into each other; the entire deck a mosh pit.

With another dozen more pirates rushing out from inside the merchant ship to back up Beula, it was definitely the wet, violent, life-or-death type of mosh pit.

"Move!" Kai shoved a groaning pirate off him with a grunt, throwing the man back into the scrum a split second before a blade flashed in the lightning.

He ducked. 

Steel whistled through the space where his bucket hat had been a second ago. 

Movemovemove! He didn't punch back, no footing or traction to if he didn’t wanna risk tumbling head over heels all across the deck. Thick fingers just grabbed the guy’s greasy leather belt and used the ship’s own momentum to help him along. 

The ship tilted left; the pirate went left.

And he didn’t stop until he slammed right into the railing with a crunch almost loud enough to be heard over thunder.

"One down." The back of his hand came up, wiping rain and someone else’s blood out of his eyes. "Too many to go. Great odds. Just... great."

Kai twisted, hand meeting a chest with an explosion of water from his palm. His leg snapped out the opposite way with a kick, rainwater rippling from his sandal sole as another pirate went flying. The rain beating down might have hurt a bit, but it was a gift on its own; his reserves topping up with every instinctive pull from his own core of water. 

“Surge…” Kai dashed forward, water propelling him faster than he could sprint, and met a pirate charging his way. The man loomed large as he wielded a spiked bat as tall as Kai was, blue face paint already running free in the rain as he roared at Kai. “Tap!”

Three palm thrusts hit a chest twice Kai’s size, explosions of water bursting across the wide torso. For a second, lightning burst across the sky and then the giant dropped. …okay, who’s next.

As if to answer, a flash of purple caught his eye, Kai snapping his head to the side. Really?

Cutter Cain stood back on his feet… kinda.

The bounty hunter’s white shirt was stained gray with deck grime, the ruffles torn nearly clean off and his hair plastered to his skull. Despite looking like a wet rat, Cain wiped his mouth and grabbed his blades from the deck before his eyes locked onto someone.

“Hey!” One sword raised, Cutter Cain pointed at his chosen enemy. “You!”

Kai followed the path of the cutlass and blinked. Him?

Cain’s target was picking his way through the chaos like a spider, the gray-skinned man’s dual rapiers flickering out as he clashed against the knife thrower and the gun-girl. Despite being outnumbered, both his opponents were already bleeding from a few holes, the pirate doing his very best to ventilate anyone stupid enough to get close.

“Ugly bastard!” Cain’s insult came out a snarl, the man clearly trying to sound like he hadn’t just been smacked like a fly. "Dance with me."

Still talking. Kai rolled his eyes as he ducked a wild haymaker from one of the whale’s goons. Guy is still talking. Does he have an off switch?

Cain charged, footsteps sloppy and scrambling but somehow still as fast as before. Gray-skin raised his head and clicked his tongue, the pirate bringing his rapiers up to meet Cain’s cutlasses. 

By the time they clashed with a clang, Kai didn’t have time to watch the show as a shadow fell over him.

A shadow almost big enough to block another flash of lightning.

Who the… Kai turned … frick?

The baldie loomed over him barely eight feet away standing in front of a lamp, the man at least a foot taller than Kai. Water streamed off his sunburnt skin as he grinned over at the small bounty hunter with half-lidded eyes. "Little fish.”

I don’t like that name. Kai stepped back, eyes dropping to Taro’s gut. “...how bout us big guys team up, right? We can split your boss’s bounty?” He gave the big man a grin. “Share the meat?”

Taro’s smile vanished, eyes suddenly focused. “Share meat?”

…guess not?

The shirtless pirate charged.

Deck planked groaned under the weight of his stampede, arms spread wide to grapple as he sumo rushed Kai.

Crap.

Kai braced himself, both feet planted wide and arms already open to meet the guy. I can take him. Yeah, he definictely could— Nope.

His brain did the math in a split second. On dry land? Maybe. 

On a slick, tilting deck with zero traction? Taro had the momentum and way more mass. If they locked up now, Kai was going for a swim. 

The pink man was five feet away, then three feet; the smell of coconut oil and stale sweat hit Kai like a physical wall as the man screamed out loud. “SHARE MEAT?”

Kai looked down.

Both hands shoved down toward the deck, aimed at the wood between them. Slippery when wet. A focused, high-pressure sheet of water surged from his palms and coated the already-slick planks just as Taro’s foot came down for the final step.

It didn't plant.

"Whu-!"

Taro’s eyes went wide, both arms grabbing at air as his massive momentum refused to stop with nothing holding him back. The pink-skinned pig shot past on Kai’s half-baked slip-and-slide, a flailing ham-hock of an arm whistling over the kid’s head.

Taro kept going, sliding right through the melee.

One of Cain’s crew — the big guy with the machete — was busy tearing his way through the few pirates left standing from the Krusty Krew, so busy he didn’t see the pink avalanche coming .

Strike. Kai winced as Taro slammed into him from behind and a good few hundred pounds of sunburnt pirate took him off his feet as they both hit the railing at full speed.

It didn’t hold.

With a scream of splintering timber and two very distinct yells —one deep, one surprised— Taro and the machete man went over the side.

Two birds. Shaking his head, Kai turned back to the center—”Whhaaa!” — and slipped.

Both sandals suddenly lost traction on the planks as his arms pinwheeled like Taro’s, Kai barely keeping his balance as a patch of white foam expanded rapidly under his feet.

What the? His eyes went wide. Bubbles?

Yes, bubbles.

Thousands of them.

"Fomu Fomu no... Suds Slide!" A giggle cut through the thunder, high-pitched and eager as Kai snapped his head up. “Time to swab the deck!” The blond from before danced across the deck, the scrawny teenager moving like he was on ice skates as he slid effortlessly atop the suds that were pouring from the soles of his shiny black shoes. “Fomu Fomu no Suds-Splosion!”

The guy — Robby? — spun, a circle of foamy white exploding outward to swallow the rain as Kai ducked it. Wood shattered behind and in front of him as the foamy projectiles hit like grenades, exploding across the merchant deck while Robby just skated by, giggling the whole time. 

Blue eyes locked on blue, eager pinpricks meeting confused eyeballs. Another Devil Fruit? Kai still didn’t know how those things were supposed to work, because Barnacle Bill might have been weird with his element (?) but this… This is just a Conduit power, right?

"You look dirty!" Robby’s scream pulled Kai out of his head.. "You need a bath!"

"I just took a shower," Kai frowned, trying and failing to find stable footing on a dry patch of wood.

Robby didn’t seem to take that as an answer as the blond thrust his hands forward —"Fomu Fomu no Bubble Blitz!" — and a barrage of hardened soap bubbles shot out like bullets.

Kai didn’t waste a second as he raised his own hands — “Water Gun: Stream Shot!” — and a pressurized hose-worth of water surged out.

The water hit the bubbles and cut through, more than half of them popping as Robby ducked the water with wide eyes. Nggh! But for the rest, the bubbles kept coming, Kai taking three to the arm that felt like hammer blows.

He stumbled back, the wind knocked out of him. 

"Scrub-a-dub-dub!" Robby laughed as he kicked off a crate, sliding toward Kai with a fist full of soapy bubbles. “Fomu Fomu no Suds Slap!"

“Hydro…” Kai reached out with his good hand, grabbing the moisture in the salty air and condensing it in one hand; tight, thin, and high-pressure. “Lash!”

Robby’s eyes widened, the soap-user

Kai swung the whip, water slicing through the air with a sound like a cracking pistol. It cut right through the wall of bubbles around Robby’s legs, wrapping tight around the blond’s skinny ankle.

The blond looked down, blue eyes going even wider. “Bu-?”

"Gotcha!” Kai grinned and yanked.

Hard.

Robby’s feet flew out from under him. "Wha—?"

Whipping his arm to one side, the suds-user swung through the air in a wide arc, screaming his head off until—

THWACK.

Kai slammed him face-first into the main mast.

The blond stuck there for a second  like a thrown piece of dough, before sliding slowly down to the deck, eyes rolled back. The bubbles stopped flowing.

“Water beats soap.” Weird bit of elemental rock-paper-scissors over, Kai looked around a-

“Cutter Cain wins again!”

Oh, brother!

Cutter Cain stood tall, the man bleeding from a few cuts to his chest, shirt and coat torn half to shreds, but the man was still smiling. His opponent — Inkwright — was lying in a heap of limbs at his feet, both rapiers broken. “That’s what you get for challenging the finest sword to the East of Forya!” The man’s grin grew as he raised his head, looking up at the one pirate they were all here for.

Big Beula Billions was standing near the helm of the merchant ship, just watching the chaos with bored, black eyes.

"Round two, you fat whale!” Cain circled wide, bursting forward as lightning flashed behind him like a spotlight.

In a near blur, he came up behind her, both cutlasses coming down on the back of her massive neck in a vicious chop of an arc.

Beula didn't turn around as one arm reached up behind her.

Her hands — thick, gray, leathery mitts — snapped closed as she caught the blades barehanded.

Cain froze in mid-air, eyes going wide as Beula squeezed.

…oh. Kai’s mouth looked like Cain’s as the steel shattered, shards of metal raining down on the deck on both sides of the whale woman.

Beula lifted her arm back in front of her, Cain dangling in her grip as the stunned man somehow held on to two broken sword hilts.

"Die.”

A headbutt was all it took, the sound of a coconut being split with a hammer, and Cain dropped to the deck like a puppet with cut strings.

Beula snorted and raised one oversized foot to stomp the cocky bounty hunter into paste.

"Captain!" The juggler from Cain’s crew threw a pellet.

A flash of light filled the air a split-second before it gave way to gray smoke, thick enough to make the whale choke as she stumbled back.

"Grab him! Go! Go!"

Blue eyes watched through the haze as the juggler and the bikini girl dragged Cain’s unconscious body toward the rail and threw him over the side, both of them jumping into the drink after him. 

There was no splash.

Kai stood standing in the center of the wreckage, white t-shirt plastered to his skin, transparent and stained with blood that wasn't his as his chest heaved.

He looked up.

Beula Billions wasn't looking at the fleeing Wave Cutter and she definitely wasn't looking at her fallen crew. The rain slicked her pale blubber, making her shine like a nightmare with each flash of lightning as those black beady eyes remained firmly on Kai.

With a grunt, she picked up the anchor, the thing scraping across the deck beside her as she took a few steps over.

Kai swallowed, his throat clicking; suddenly dry despite all the water.

It was just him.

No Cain. No crew. No distractions.

Just a chubby fourteen-year-old kid and an eight-foot wall of death worth twenty-four million Beri.

"Hi?” His voice was a rasp.

Beula smiled, eyes dead and teeth flat. "You're still here.”

"Yeah." Kai clenched his fists, water swirling around his ankles as the hum under his skin turned into a roar. "I’m still here."

And he was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing.