Chapter 230: Disparity, Overwhelming Strength And Arrival
__________ POV Narration __________
Luffy and his crew had already reunited with Bege and the other people that took part in the assassination plans.
They were running around inside the mirror world in a panic.
Bege was already arguing with Luffy.
"Why the hell would you give the signal that soon, eh?!!?" The Mafia boss was well and truly relying on Luffy, or someone from his crew, to give the signal in time.
"... I thought Enel was gonna help us..." The Straw Hat seemed genuinely discouraged, as he remembered the Sky King just looking at him as he fought with Katakuri, the Doudgh User.
"Well, he did end up helping us in the end, but I think that wasn't his goal today..." Robin muttered as she remembered seeing all of the Big Mom Pirates and the Vinsmoke family getting intercepted by Enel's lightning.
"Don't try and defend your boyfriend Robin! Big Mom would've actually died if he helped us..." Zoro was admittedly a bit salty, which led to him speaking in a harsher manner.
Sanji just shook his head. "This is all my fault in the first place... I got us all involved in this..."
"Shut your mouth!" Zoro and Nami both ended up punching him in the head, not wanting to hear any self-deprecating bullshit from their cook.
"Hey, let's look at the positive side... At least we're getting away, right?" Ussop spoke out as he rode on Chopper's back to keep up with the rest.
"... About that..." Zoro sweated a bit as he remembered looking back through the mirror he had come from and seeing Brulee being saved by her brother.
"We need to look for the Mirror user and try to capture her again..." All of them essentially stopped in their tracks when hearing that.
"W-what?!" Nami was completely mortified, the rest also seemed confused, before it clicked in...
Caesar hadn't even managed to escape alongside them.
Without the user of the Mirror Fruit, they had no way of genuinely getting out of the Mirror World.
They needed to at least be in contact with the unconscious body of the user to travel through the mirrors, but they now had no way out.
This realization made Bege start swearing loudly, as he was now trapped within an Emperor's territory.
"G-guys... Look at that mirror..." Ussop then pointed to one of the mirrors in the distance, where something seemed to be emerging towards them...
It was none other than Katakrui, carrying his sister's unconscious form in order to travel into the Mirror dimension.
He stepped into the mirror world and his eyes were already locked onto the group of pirates/would-be assassins, he then placed his hand on the mirror at his side, and more people started pouring in.
More and more of his siblings followed, especially the injured and the unconscious ones also started being dragged in.
Everyone was shocked to see the state of so many of the Charlotte Family, then one of them also looked to the side, to see countless mirrors cracked.
Within those cracks, an image formed.
An image of a man with golden hair covered in lighting, a pair of drums spinning constantly on his back, his arms crossed and position casual as he essentially laid down in mid-air.
"Yahahahaha~" His laughter shook the skies as they rumbled and formed a vortex the skies at his command, in the middle of that vortex was revealed the figure of a burnt and unconscious Big Mom.
She seemed to have already dropped her blade, her body was filled with injuries and covered in a black tint, having been charred for a while.
Her Haki may have protected her, but she was in no good shape. She was just freefalling back towards the Island.
Prometheus was locked in a cage of clouds, and Zeus was rushing to catch his creator in a panic.
Such a shocking scene left an imprint on the minds of everyone that saw it.
Enel didn't even look like he was struggling, he genuinely looked like he was enjoying his rest on a fluffy bed of clouds while Big Mom seemed to be on death's doorstep.
Such a disparity of strength between emperors was simply mindboggling for Bege and the others.
To them, Big Mom and her Sweet Commanders were absolute monsters deserving of fear. But now, the biggest monster in their eyes, Big Mom, appeared like nothing more than a toy in the Sky King's hands.
Luffy just smiled widely, already expecting such a scene to happen.
'Of course! Enel is strong after all!'
He was also happy that Enel had helped them in the end.
Robin only had a worried look on her face, knowing that Enel was previously planning to ally himself with Big Mom as well.
She couldn't help but fear they had ruined his plans completely regarding Big Mom. She was also worried for Oven, someone she had gotten to know quite well on the Sky Archipelago.
Katakuri seemed to have finally noticed that scene as well. His eyes widened in shock as he saw his mother's injured state.
His eyes then turned red as his gaze settled on the pirates in front of him with even more hatred.
"Things were going well until you all decided to act up... Enel wouldn't have taken things this far if not for you..."
The Dough Commander slowly started walking forwards, his trident scraping on the ground as his siblings scrambled to take the injured further into the mirror world and help them.
To the side, amidst the chaos, Sanji caught a glimpse of his family through another crack in the mirror.
Needless to say, they were not doing too well.
They were already wearing their combat suits, but they were all clearly in various stages of injury. And they were still encircled by Big Mom's cadres.
The cook of the Strawhats couldn't help but clench his teeth, Zoro noticed that and scowled.
He still remembered Sanji's sister saving Luffy's life as well, so at that point, as the second in command, he made a drastic decision.
"Brook! We're going after the mirror woman! We gotta help the Vinsmokes too now..." He already knew what to do.
Luffy also noticed that, nodding his head and deciding what his role was going to be... Taking on the enraged Katakuri.
Katakuri tried to stop Brook and Zoro, but he wasn't able to as they both sent a flying slash towards him and Luffy entered Gear 2 and started raining punches on his torso, all of which went through him.
But the swordsman and musician passed him by at great speeds.
Even though his Future Sight helped him have an almost guaranteed hit, there were too many enemies to take into account.
Especially after Bege and his associates started shooting towards him too.
That coupled with Franky's laser beams, Ussop's pellets and Sanji's kicks, was a bit too much for him to just keep dodging with ease.
The Sweet Commander then roared and used his Conquror's Haki in a bid to knock out his opponents or at least slow them down.
But Luffy didn't give him such an opportunity, and the two of them immediately clashed.
The world stilled around them as they clashed, and they both had a determined look in their eyes.
No one from Luffy's side was knocked out thankfully, even Bege managed to hold on, although some of his associates were out for the count.
He prepared to give the order to shoot, but Luffy raised his hand, stopping him.
"All of you! Go ahead without me! Help Zoro and Brook get the Mirror Nose Lady and escape! I'll take him out!"
The Straw Hat pirates immediately moved out, listening to their captain's orders.
Bege complained about how that was an unnecessary risk, but he also knew that Katakuri was likely going to be able to stall them easily.
Even if Big Mom was getting roughed up, the Big Mom Pirates were still too strong for them to deal with, so a retreat was more than necessary.
Katakuri alone was enough to make them scramble and escape. Oven was also bound to come out of incarceration because of the chaos, and he was also an opponent that Bege wasn't confident in taking on.
As the Straw Hats and Bege scrambled for Brulee, Enel still looked at Big Mom's unconscious form with a bit of wariness.
He entered his awakened form and decided to take things seriously, it was then that he noticed just how powerful his awakened form was.
To the point where Big Mom couldn't even begin to compare to him.
He was easily able to wrestle control of the clouds around him, separating Zeus from them and letting him live essentially just to catch Big Mom and support her.
Although he went slightly serious and caught her in a flash storm, he still didn't want her to die or anything of the sort.
If anything, discovering how large the gap between them was made Enel realise that killing her wasn't worth ruining his friendship with Oven anyway.
She was now deemed as not a big enough threat to warrant death. And there was also the possibility of her eventually coming around and helping, or not getting involved at all in the upcoming war.
If Enel's plans were to come to fruition, then the 'Grand Army' that Kaido was also preparing was going to be disbanded before the war even began.
Kaido himself would be dead after helping awaken Luffy, though Enel would have to keep an eye on that as well since he didn't know how much the Dragon Emperor had changed.
All that was left to worry about was Big Mom, who also seemed to be aiming at growing her powers before the war.
Her fear of Francisco seemed to have turned her completely against him. And Luffy's stupidity certainly didn't help things along.
But things could still be salvaged.
'Still... To think that this disk is that powerful...'
Enel looked back at the spinning drums on his back.
He remembered awakening, and in that instant Big Mom was already swinging her sword, Napoleon, towards him.
She was even using 'Cognac(Emperor Blade)' covering Napoleon in Prometheus and her own Conquror's coating while trying to behead Enel once and for all.
But the blade didn't even get close to grazing Enel's skin before the spinning disk rushed in front of him.
The drums spun endlessly even as sparks rose from the point of contact of the ring and Big Mom's blade. If anything, the drums seemed to turn into a saw blade for a few seconds, spinning even faster as they started cutting into Napoleon.
In that instant, Napoleon screamed in pain as it wrestled with the spinning drums, Big Mom's hands trembled as she tried to press down onto Enel unsuccessfully.
Eventually, something that neither Emperors expected happened, Napoleon stopped screaming for a moment, giving his mother one last smile before he melted in her hands, the heat was so strong that even Phromoeteus was repelled, before being entrapped in clouds.
Big Mom was then also caught in a similar prison, alongside Zeus who did his best to protect her.
The scariest part was that Enel didn't even try to block that blade or destroy Napoleon. He was going to just dodge the attack. But the drums seemed to have a mind of their own, and they moved instinctively to protect him.
He did remember Luffy's devil fruit supposedly held a part of Nika within it, one that could influence his mind to some extent.
He didn't experience that with his fruit. But it was possible that a part of Raijin's consciousness lived on within those drums and in the tattoo on his back.
But he had no way of knowing, nor did he have any way of speaking to a pair of lightning drums. So he could only speculate.
Knowing the old God's temperament, it did match the actions of the drums... After all, the old god likely would've been too prideful to even consider dodging such a 'weak' attack.
That thought was also what ended up making Enel laugh.
In a strange way, his strength had grown exponentially. But he clearly still had a lot of work to do regarding his control.
He hadn't wanted to destroy Napoleon at the end of the day. Thankfully his control over clouds seemed to have become even greater.
He could now essentially create them with ease too.
He did so by burning up water from the sea and turning parts of it into vapour, vapour that he then energized and condensed to form clouds endlessly.
He no longer needed any dials, nor did he need to hide a ship nearby to act as a cloud machine.
'I still have a lot of exploring left to do... I must discover what other abilities I have besides the Drum and overall power and perception boost...
Awakenings are never really that simple, and Luffy's allowed him to even affect reality itself with his imagination...'
The Emperor couldn't help but sigh as his gaze turned back to Big Mom, who was being lowered to the ground gently by a Zeus that was freaking out.
At that moment, his senses settled on a man that just appeared by Big Mom's side.
He was tall and filled with muscle, he had one mechanical arm and leg, and his hair was shaped in a strange clover style.
'... Oven...'
The Emperor scratched the back of his head as he realised that he now had to face his friend after essentially brutalising his mother...
'Let's hope things don't re-escalate further... Better go and meet him now...'
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Hope you liked the chapter! Took me a bit to write again, but I had fun while doing it :)) Anyway, I'm going to just go sleep now since it's late af
Story Shoutout! Thanks to the_onez3 for the recommendation: The Final Desperation
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