Confrontation in the Square

Rain hissed against scattered fires. Smoke rolled across the square, carrying ash, embers, and the stink of scorched wood. People screamed from the surrounding streets while the remains of the scaffold groaned and collapsed inward.

Desire lifted her head. Her blue eyes moved quickly over the wreckage before she looked down at me.

“Boss, you get hit?”

“My nose might be lodged between your tits.”

“That doesn’t count. Can you move?”

I drew a careful breath, flexed my hands, and rolled the shoulder that had struck the street. It hurt like hell, but nothing shifted where it shouldn’t. “Everything’s still attached.”

“Then get up.”

She pushed herself upright and hauled me with her. My clothes were soaked, my shoulder hurt from hitting the street, and every hair on my body felt charged with enough electricity to stand on end.

Barto remained in front of us with his hands crossed. Rain struck something a few feet ahead of him and spread across its surface, briefly outlining a broad, curved wall before the water slid away.

I reached out and touched it.

The barrier was perfectly solid.

“What the fuck is this?”

Barto glanced back at me. “My barrier.”

“Your what?”

He separated his fingers. The invisible surface vanished, and my hand passed through the space where it had been.

“Barrier-Barrier Fruit,” he said. “I can make invisible walls.”

I stared up at him. “You ate a Devil Fruit?”

“Yep.”

“You told me you could fight. You didn’t think an unbreakable magic wall was worth mentioning?”

Barto rubbed beneath his nose with one finger. “I was saving it for a dramatic reveal.”

Desire retrieved her pipe from the street. “He does that.”

Before I could explain that useful information was best revealed before a tower tried to crush his boss, laughter rose from the scaffold wreckage.

Luffy climbed out of the broken stocks and stood upon a tilted support beam. His clothing was scorched, smoke curled from his shoulders, and his straw hat had somehow remained on his head.

“I’m alive!” he shouted. “Lucky!”

Barto forgot our conversation.

He stared at Luffy as if he were the only person left in the square. “He smiled.”

Desire wiped rain and ash from her face. “What?”

“He smiled when the sword was coming down. He thought he was dead, and he fucking smiled.”

“He’s an idiot.”

Barto didn’t answer. He kept staring.

A scorched hand rose from another section of the wreckage. Buggy’s blackened head floated after it, followed by his torso, boots, and the rest of his scattered body. His equally singed cock-parrot fluttered out last and slapped against his cheek until Buggy snarled and shoved it away.

Cabaji dragged himself from beneath a broken plank. “Captain! How are you still alive?”

“Because a flashy genius like me doesn't get upstaged by a rookie's miracle!” Buggy coughed out a lungful of black smoke, his detached hand flying up to furiously point at Luffy's retreating back. “Don't just stand there gawking! Turn that rubber bastard into ribbons!”

That was when Smoker finally moved.

He stood upon the edge of the rooftop with his jitte resting against one shoulder and his white coat snapping behind him.

“Take them all.”

Marines poured into the square from every surrounding street.

Rifles came down from the rooftops. Men stationed at the intersections leveled their weapons while the Marines rushing into the square drew sabers and charged. The Buggy Pirates met them with a roar, and the whole execution ground vanished into a churning mass of striped shirts, blue-and-white uniforms, circus costumes, pistol smoke, and flashing steel.

Alvida pushed off with one super-smooth bare foot and skated directly into them.

A Marine swung his saber at her head. She curved beneath the blade, her open cloak streaming behind her naked body, and drove her iron club into his stomach hard enough to fold him over it. Another tried to catch her from the side, but his hands slipped uselessly across her waist. Alvida twisted away from him, swept his feet out from under him, and knocked the next man across the street with a backhanded swing.

She didn’t slow down. Rain gleamed over her breasts, stomach, hips, and long thighs as she skated through the charging Marines. Sabers slid harmlessly from her skin. Hands failed to hold her. Every smooth turn carried her into another cluster of men, and every swing of her club left bodies rolling across the flooded stones.

Buggy’s crew rushed in behind her.

Barto, Desire, and I stayed right where we were.

Fighting spread across the entire square within seconds, but the main mass of Buggy Pirates remained ahead of us. Barto held his position on my left with his fingers crossed while Desire stayed close on my right, pipe raised in both hands.

A rifle fired from one of the rooftops.

The bullet struck Barto’s barrier with a sharp metallic crack and dropped into the street. A second hit near it, followed by a third. Each impact outlined the invisible wall for an instant before disappearing beneath the rain.

Desire flinched at the first shot. Barto did too, though he kept his fingers locked together and the barrier held.

Neither of them looked eager to charge into the fight.

Across the square, Luffy jumped from the remains of the scaffold and landed beside Zoro and Sanji. The three Straw Hats immediately turned toward the southern street.

A solid line of Marines stood between them and the exit.

Luffy charged anyway.

His arms stretched backward through the rain, then snapped forward and punched two Marines off their feet. Zoro came through the opening behind him, black bandanna tied around his head and white briefs clinging to his ass and thighs. His swords flashed through the crowd, knocking aside sabers and cutting the barrels from rifles before the Marines could fire.

Sanji rushed beside him and his kicks landed faster than I could follow, sending men tumbling into their own ranks.

The Marines closed around them. More pushed in from the surrounding streets, but Buggy’s pirates were fighting those same men from the opposite side. The southern end of the square became a confused three-way collision as Straw Hats, Marines, and circus pirates all tried to force their way through one another.

Luffy didn’t stop.

He caught hold of a streetlamp, stretched himself backward, and launched all three of them over the next line. They landed beyond the worst of the fighting and kept running.

I watched Zoro’s black bandanna and naked legs disappear first. Sanji’s black suit followed, and Luffy’s straw hat vanished into the rain behind them.

The three Straw Hats had escaped Loguetown’s execution square.

Buggy saw it happen. “Straw Hat!” His floating head shot above the melee, teeth bared while his disconnected boots were busy kicking a Marine in the teeth.

“You don't get to ruin my flashy execution and just walk away!”

Alvida crushed a swordsman’s ribs with her club and shot Buggy a look of pure disdain. “Then quit screaming and catch him, idiot!”

“Assemble the Bara Bara Car!”

Several pirates broke away from the fight carrying two wheel axles and a compact engine packed with enough explosives to make its purpose immediately obvious. Buggy seized the axles with his hands and feet, arranged his torso over the motor, and dropped his head onto the front.

The engine coughed, spat fire, and launched the Bara Bara Car across the square.

Alvida pointed her iron club toward the wrecked scaffold.

“Set the Slide!”

To my complete disbelief, four pirates produced long metal panels from beneath their cloaks.

I remembered those panels. Alvida had spent half a day aboard the Big Top training the crew to form a collapsible launching ramp. She’d tested it by skating down the main deck, across a greased plank, and directly through the door of Buggy’s cabin.

Apparently, some of the crew had been lugging the fucking thing around Loguetown all day in case she needed a dramatic speed boost.

They snapped the sections together and braced one end up in the air with their combined strength, arms extended overhead. Alvida climbed to the top, planted both smooth bare feet upon the slick surface, and dropped into a crouch.

Then she pushed off.

It was a jarring reminder of the sheer strangeness of her Devil Fruit powers. The ramp was a relatively modest structure, but without a single ounce of friction to hold her back, gravity turned that short drop into a massive, explosive speed boost. She hit the flooded cobblestones without losing a fraction of her momentum, skating along the uneven street like a greased eel shooting across a wet deck. Her cloak snapped behind her, her white hat somehow remained upon her head, and her naked ass vanished into the rain after Buggy’s car.

Neither of them made it out of the square.

Smoker came down from the rooftop in a flood of white.

His smoke swept through the execution ground in one enormous surge. It climbed around the struggling pirates, rolled beneath them, and tore the entire Buggy crew out of the fight at once.

Alvida was snatched from the street while she was still skating. Buggy’s car spun into the air, its wheels turning uselessly as smoke wrapped around his separated head, torso, hands, feet, and cock-parrot. Cabaji rose from his unicycle. Dak, the ramp carriers, the gunners, and every pirate still fighting the Marines were ripped from the ground with them.

Within seconds, the entire crew hung suspended above the center of the square.

Barto’s barrier remained between us and the confusion. Desire stood pressed close to my other side, both hands tight around her pipe.

Smoker’s gaze passed across our corner of the square without stopping. We weren’t standing with the captured pirates. We were just a normal man and two local punks who’d found themselves too close to a public disaster.

His smoke didn’t come near us.

“Launcher ready!” a Marine shouted.

A team near the eastern entrance raised a thick-barreled weapon and fired.

The cylinder burst open above the suspended pirates. A heavy black net unfolded in the rain, spread around the entire group, and pulled tight.

Smoker released his power.

Pirates, detached body parts, shattered wheels, iron clubs, and pieces of Alvida’s ridiculous slide crashed into the street together. The weighted edges of the net struck the stones and cinched inward, trapping the whole crew in a single heaving mound.

Smoker descended beside a three-wheeled motorcycle that some Marines had just driven up and gotten out of.

“Secure the prisoners,” he ordered. “Everyone else, after Straw Hat.”

Most of the Marines immediately broke toward the southern streets.

Officers shouted instructions as squads divided among the alleys leading to the harbor. Smoker mounted his vehicle, its engine roaring beneath him, and accelerated after Luffy with a trail of white smoke streaming behind him.

Within a few minutes, the execution square had almost emptied.

The civilians were gone. The last fires around the scaffold were dying beneath the rain. Smoker and most of the garrison had left in pursuit of the Straw Hats, leaving only a small detachment to guard the captured Buggy Pirates.

Several Marines kept rifles trained upon the net. The others stood around it with drawn sabers, watching the surrounding streets for any rescue attempt.

For the first time since the lightning struck, the square became quiet enough to think.

Barto let his barrier vanish and lowered his hands. His fingers were trembling.

“That was Captain Smoker,” he said. “The White Hunter.”

“I know who he is.”

“He picked up the whole fucking crew at once.”

Desire wiped rain from her face and looked toward the nearest side street. “And the Marines still haven’t counted us with the pirates. We should leave before they do.”

Barto nodded immediately. Whatever fascination Luffy had inspired was buried beneath the much more immediate desire to avoid prison.

“Day job’s over, boss. You hired us to help with one thief. You didn’t say anything about fighting the Loguetown garrison.”

“You asked for long-term work.”

“Yeah, before the White Hunter turned into a smoke cloud and threw thirty pirates into a Seastone net.”

Desire rested her pipe against one shoulder. “I’m with him. Alvida’s gorgeous, and this crew looks like fun when nobody’s being mass-arrested, but I’m not getting pinched five minutes after joining.”

They started toward the nearest exit to the square.

“It’s normal for you two to stick by me.”

Barto’s retreat stopped. Desire’s gaze shifted from the nearest escape route back to me. Neither suddenly became fearless. Barto still looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, and Desire tightened her grip upon her pipe until her knuckles whitened, but leaving me was no longer one of the options they were considering.

“What’re we supposed to do?” Barto demanded.

I smiled and put a hand upon each of their shoulders.

“Watch this. It’s normal for the Marines in this square not to pay any attention to me, Barto, Desire, or anything we do.”

Then I walked toward the prisoners, taking both of them with me.

Barto fell into place on my left while Desire walked on my right. Neither spared the surrounding Marines more than a passing glance. The guards would ignore us. That was simply how this worked, as obvious to my two minions as it was to the men being made to overlook us.

After the first few steps, my hand slid from Desire’s shoulder, down her naked back, and beneath the waistband at the rear of her soaked shorts. I shoved my palm between the wet cloth and her skin, cupping one slick buttcheek while my fingers pushed straight into the deep crack of her ass.

Desire shifted that hip toward me and gave my hand more room without breaking stride. She didn’t need to check whether the Marines had noticed. My fingers remained wedged between her warm cheeks while armed men stood only yards away, and she accepted the perverse liberty as easily as if that were simply where her boss’s hand belonged.

It steadied me more than I wanted to admit.

I was strolling into a Marine cordon with one hand buried down the back of a topless punk’s shorts, openly groping her wet ass while soldiers with sabers and rifles guarded an entire pirate crew. Desire rolled her ass against my palm as we walked, Barto kept his attention upon the net, and none of us gave the Marines any more importance than streetlamps.

One guard shifted half a step to give Desire room. Another continued watching the prisoners while we passed directly in front of his rifle. Nobody challenged us or found anything noteworthy about where we were going.

Up close, I could finally make out Alvida. Her white hat had been knocked off, her open cloak was tangled around several pirates, and the Seastone mesh pressed across her naked back and ass. Buggy had landed somewhere deeper in the pile. His head was trapped beneath Cabaji’s thigh while several detached hands twitched uselessly farther down.

Alvida saw me first. “Took you long enough.”

“I waited until Smoker left.”

Buggy managed to wrench his mouth clear of Cabaji’s leg. “Get this fucking net off me!”

I reluctantly pulled my hand from Desire’s shorts and crouched beside the net.

Desire shoved the end of her pipe beneath one weighted edge. I caught hold of the net beside it, and together we lifted.

That was all it took.

Dak rolled through the opening first. Two more pirates crawled out behind him, grabbed the mesh from the safe side, and heaved it higher.

The rest of the crew poured free.

Alvida slid out among them. Buggy’s separated pieces shot through the gap a heartbeat later.

A Marine finally shouted an alarm, but by then it was already over. The guards were outnumbered several times over and caught completely by surprise. The freed pirates crashed into them from every side, knocking weapons aside and beating the Marines black and blue.

Buggy’s hands seized two rifle barrels and twisted them toward the sky. His feet kicked a third Marine from opposite directions while his body assembled in the air. The cock-parrot sprang back to life with him and hurled itself into a swordsman’s face.

Alvida pushed off across the stones. Her iron club struck the officer in charge before he finished giving his first order, then swept through the two men beside him.

The final Marine dropped his saber and raised both hands.

Buggy’s body snapped fully together. He shoved Cabaji away, straightened his scorched coat, and glared across the defeated soldiers before turning toward me.

I smiled. “Still think my power’s useless?”

“It’s aggressively boring,” Buggy scoffed, waving a dismissive hand.

“You were trapped under a net.”

“A net I was just about to brilliantly escape from! You ruined my grand finale with your dull parlor tricks!”

“A net I removed while every Marine in the square watched me do it.”

Buggy folded his arms, jutting his chin out stubbornly. His cock-parrot copied him as best it could, curling beneath its head in a sulky imitation.

“The only thing you were about to brilliantly escape into was an Impel Down cell, Buggy,” Alvida sneered.

She retrieved her white hat from the flooded street, casually flicked a smear of ash from the wide brim, and settled it back onto her head. Her voice cut effortlessly through the rain and his bruised ego.

“You were squealing like a stuck pig under Cabaji's ass while my first mate cleaned up your mess.”

Buggy’s face flushed violently beneath his greasepaint. “I wasn’t squealing! It was a tactical, flashy-”

“It was pathetic,” Alvida interrupted.

She stepped past the fuming clown and slid her naked, rain-slicked side flush against me. She draped one arm over my shoulder, her fingers trailing down my soaked shirt to rest possessively over my belt. Her dark eyes swept over Barto and Desire, taking in their shocked awe, before settling back on Buggy with total, arrogant satisfaction.

“He doesn't need your cheap explosions or circus routines,” she purred, her wet breasts pressing warmly into my arm. “He walked straight through a Marine blockade and pulled your entire crew out of the fire without blinking. That’s what a real pirate looks like, Buggy. That’s Iron Cock Tsujo.”

She leaned in and bit my earlobe, just hard enough to sting, her breath hot against my wet skin.

“He’s exactly the monster I’m molding him to be,” she murmured to me, before turning her sharp glare back to the rest of the square. She raised her iron club over her shoulder. “Now shut your mouth, Buggy. Collect our weapons, grab your circus freaks, and get to the harbor before Smoker finishes with Straw Hat and I let Tsujo leave your pieces behind for him.”

Buggy opened his mouth to argue, took one look at Alvida's club and my unbroken smirk, and wisely decided to start screaming at Cabaji instead.

We made for the harbor as the storm worsened, dragging our wounded, scattered weapons, and the surviving pieces of Buggy’s ridiculous car through streets that had become rivers. Halfway there, an insane gale struck from nowhere and sent every pirate, loose body part, and Marine in sight tumbling nearly an entire city block before vanishing as suddenly as it had come. Nobody stopped to question it. We staggered onward and reached the Big Top just as Loguetown’s shore batteries opened fire. Buggy’s detached hands cut the mooring lines while the rest of us scrambled aboard, the sails snapped full in the unnatural wind, and cannonballs threw towering fountains around the hull as the ship pulled away from the harbor.