Chapter 233: Duel, Rematch And Target
_________ POV Narration _________
In the mirror world, away from Enel's prying eyes, Katakuri and Luffy were both fighting with renewed vigour.
The other Straw Hats had already fled, Luffy had ordered them to leave him to fight alone. It was honourable, but the Sweet Commander wasn't exactly all that friendly towards Luffy.
Katkauri no longer had the time to look in the mirrors to the outside world, but he already knew that the impossible had happened... His mother had lost.
He knew that she was going to be safe, however.
Oven was still unaccounted for, and he knew that no matter what disagreements they might've had in the past, he'd never want his mother to die.
He didn't really expect Oven to win against Enel or anything of the sort, but at the very least he could dissuade the Lightning Emperor from taking her life.
Katakuri himself wasn't having the easiest time fighting Luffy.
For some reason, the StrawHat Pirate was able to easily get used to his future sight, to the point where the Sweet Commander suspected that the fledgling pirate had developed it mid-battle.
Still, Katakuri hadn't received all that any injuries exactly because of his future sight, and Luffy had been constantly getting rag-dolled and injured more and more.
The Straw Hat Wearer was now also missing a tooth and looked like he had been pierced by spikes in several areas of his body.
Surprisingly, even as he was spilling blood on the ground constantly, he still managed to give Katakuri a hard time.
And that was when it happened.
"Gear Forth: Snake Man!"
Katakuri's eyes narrowed as he look at Luffy's changing form, from his previous bulky appearance in gear 4th, he had now shifted to a different, more compact, style.
"Gomu Gomu no Black Mamba!"
In an instant, his punches started moving at speeds that were several times faster than his usual speed in Gear 4th.
That sudden change led to Katakuri being unable to dodge a punch, it hit him in the stomach and send him skidding backwards for a few seconds before he dug his heels into the ground and came to a stop.
"Tsk..." The Large man spat out a bit of blood before looking at Luffy with a serious gaze.
'I guess he's not as much of a greenhorn as I thought he was...'
The Sweet Commander decided to take his opponent more seriously from that point on.
Even though Luffy was a child, he now showed that he had enough strength and speed to actually damage him.
And so, the Sweet Commander huffed, and the fight started up once more.
Meanwhile, the Straw Hats were already gathering at their ship, the Thousand Sunny.
The situation had gone well beyond what they had expected.
The fact that they all lived through it, and even witnessed a fight between Emperors, was beyond impressive.
Although calling it a fair fight felt strange seeing how easily and quickly Big Mom got taken down.
Hell, they had only really seen a few hits from Big Mom that were dodged quite easily before the fight took to the skies.
And even now, after Big Mom had fallen down, Enel was still resting leisurely in the skies.
He had left Oven with his siblings, to tend to his small wounds. He felt something strange approaching, which was why he rose to the skies anyway.
His senses spread far and wide, but his mind still needed to process everything, and it did so at speeds far surpassing that of regular humans.
In a sense, his thoughts had truly reached the speed of lightning, and he was sure that he could now travel at Light Speed without much issue.
But there was still a lot of 'information to shift through. The strange changes around him did But his future sight was still activated, and this time he could feel it...
'... A second round, huh?'
Back on the Thousand Sunny, already a few kilometres off from the shores of Whole Cake Island, the entire straw hat crew also started looking.
"W-what's that?!" The first one to notice it was Sanji, his senses blaring before anything even happened.
He pointed upwards, directing the attention of every straw hat to the skies.
At that moment, right above Enel, something broke the clouds.
A gigantic shadow was cast over the entire island, forcing everyone to look upward.
A gigantic red eye, its irises were just as unnatural as its size, as it seemed to be bigger than the entire island, staring directly at the Emperor, who was no longer relaxing.
'The World Government's already acting, huh?!'
Enel clenched his fists as he knew that he couldn't allow a repeat of his last encounter with that strange eye to happen.
Nico Robin, who was already resting on the Thousand Sunny, couldn't help but look at the sky with fear and concern as she recognized the scene perfectly.
She still remembered being dozens of kilometres away in that blimp, and almost being blown away by just the shockwave of the attack that the Eye had released.
"We need to get further away! That thing destroyed Baltigo!" She shouted as she quickly put her hands together, countless arms grew from the ship and started steering it away from the island.
The crew was confused at first, but quickly joined in after hearing Robin talk about Baltigo. It meant that Whole Cake Island was likely going to be erased as well, and they knew they wouldn't be able to do much in that situation.
Eventually, Jimbei and his crew also appeared under their ship and helped them get further away.
But not everyone was keen on just running away.
"What about Luffy?!" Zoro asked as he looked up at the eye, taking out all of his swords and preparing for the worst.
"Luffy's still in the mirror world, he'll be fine!" Bege appeared on the deck of their ship, running out from one of the rooms to the side.
He looked up and gulped.
'... How is a human even supposed to face something like that?!'
The mafia family leader couldn't help but feel cold sweat on his back as he looked at the small figure of the emperor which stood right underneath that gigantic eye.
Enel crossed his arms, his body becoming stiff as the drum ring on his back started spinning faster and faster as if enraged by the presence of something.
Although calm and collected, the Emperor was still a bit concerned.
'I don't have anywhere near enough time to take everyone off the island...
Even if Brulle was awake and aware of this and tried to bring everyone into her dimension with my help a lot of people would still die...'
He didn't fear for his own life. At any point, he could simply disappear from that place and appear in a completely different half of the New World unobstructed.
Although the eye seemed to stare at him, it didn't seem capable of stopping him from using his devil fruit, much like it hadn't been last time.
The main problem was that he couldn't stop that light...
'I couldn't stop it back then...'
But what about now?
His eyes widened as he came to that realization.
In a sense, he held a bit of fear in his heart for the attack that had once taken his hand and had even almost killed him.
Maybe it was a bit of unresolved trauma? Although losing his arm didn't quite affect his overall strength, he was still affected mentally by it.
Although he had regained it, some of that fear was still present.
But the drums behind him didn't seem to feel any fear. Rather... The feeling that Enel could sense from them was... Contempt?
'Well... If a fragment of Raijin's will is within this Drum ring, then I guess feeling contempt when sensing IMU makes sense...'
It genuinely felt like the leader of the World Government was trying to take Enel out using only one eye.
In the past, one eye might've been enough. But now?
Enel had awakened the powers of a God. A god that had, at one point, killed IMU completely.
Even if he wasn't completely alone in killing IMU, he had still done so multiple times.
'Right... Why should I even be afraid about the others not being able to dodge this, when I can simply just destroy it?'
Enel, wielding the most destructive power in the world, had no reason to fear the attack of anyone.
The drums on his back resounded through the skies, the clouds that had been blown away by the eye all whirled around it, unwavering and unafraid.
So what if his attacks had failed to damage the eye in the past? He was a different person now.
So different in fact that he needed to heavily hold back against an Emperor of the Seas in order to not kill her.
He had never gotten the chance to fully test his new powers ever since awakening...
But against IMU's eye?
'At least I get a chance to go all out!'
Just as the beam of red light started descending towards the ground, Enel's figure appeared in front of its path.
The flying disc on his back moved to his arm hovering right above his palm.
The drums seemed to sound as thunder filled the skies above, slightly shrouding the edges of the eye as the pupil in the middle seemed to widen slightly.
Without giving the red light time to even reach him, Enel sent the flying disk upwards.
It immediately came in contact with the light, light sparked as the blue spinning ring turned completely black, and then glowed purple.
The drums quickly turned into blades as the flying ring turned into a deadly weapon that kept getting bigger and bigger.
The red light gave way in less than 4 seconds, it broke apart and split into two as it continued as dying-out strands of energy headed for the ground.
It still left deep scars on the land, but it didn't expand in any way.
There was no more power to it. Instead, the eye seemed to be concentrating on stopping the spinning ring of lightning that was currently aiming to break it apart.
The people from the ground and the Thousand Sunny all looked up to see a shining light. A gigantic purple glowing saw was heading directly for the centre of the eye.
It was at that point that the spinning ring made contact with the eye, it was too fast for anyone to keep track of it in real time, and only those with advanced Observation could even begin to try it.
Most just saw a blinding light and then...
*BOOOM*
An explosion covered the entire sky with the sound of resounding thunder. It was so deafening that it forced everyone on the island and near it to cover their ears.
Enel himself winced a bit when hearing it and feeling how destructive the flying disc was, he was sure that he had inadvertently busted the eardrums of some of the people below.
The entire sky shined a bright purple for a few seconds, and then it happened.
The eye broke apart visibly, and smouldering pieces of it fell towards the ground as the spinning disk caused more damage than any attack Enel had ever used in the past.
'This would be more than enough to destroy an island... Scratch that, it may be enough to erase a good part of the Red Line...'
Enel realised now, that he essentially had the capability of joining the 4 Cardinal Seas that made up the Blue Sea and breaking down the Red Line completely with a few strikes.
'So this is the power of a God, huh?'
Enel smiled as he watched the gigantic spinning saw cut the eye in half with ease as more and more pieces of it broke down and fell towards the ground.
Before long, the gigantic eye was nothing more, falling off from the sky, many pieces of it were completely disintegrated at the Thunder God's destructive disk.
And the spinning saw blades turned back into drums as soon as the eye was destroyed, the ring immediately returned to Enel's side, floating behind him casually, as if nothing had happened.
"... So much for that." The Emperor then scowled as he realized the implications of IMU's attack.
The Government definitely knew that he had awakened. So they shouldn't have even tried to kill him with that eye...
In the first place, his appearance at the Whole Cake Chateau shouldn't have been something that they learned about so quickly.
The entire conflict with the Big Mom Pirates had barely lasted 10 minutes. It wasn't enough for them to learn of his presence there, there was too much chaos.
And he would've known if anyone tried to contact people from the outside world on the Whole Cake Island, no one could escape his radar.
'Wait... Was their target Big Mom then?!?'
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Hope you liked the chapter! Took me a bit to write, am pretty busy lately
Anyway, I have to handle moving. Ya boy is finally getting his own crib.
I finally found a place and signed the lease and everything.
Been busy recently but things are bound to calm down by the end of this week.
Story Shoutout: The Final Desperation
Discord, again: https://discord.gg/xQTK8caFEQ
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