The battle began just as Fred had anticipated.
And just as Fred had anticipated, there was no battle, but a one-way massacre.
"What the hell is that armor made of?"
"Is there no hole through which a bullet can slip into?"
The gangsters couldn't make a single scratch on Stephen's armor, while the iron giant... or so they began to call him... devastated them with great ease.
With each swing of his enormous multipurpose hammer he destroyed at least three people while the firearms integrated into the armour accurately killed those that tried to attack him from behind
"GET AWAY!!"
Among all the practically identical filler gangsters one stood out among the majority. He was bigger, more robust, with a subtly different face and also, unlike his companions, he not only carried a Thompson M1, but a big bazooka.
A big bazooka aimed at Stephen!
By now it was clear that fighting him with swords and conventional weapons was an absurd waste of time, resources and lives, but the big gangster had the hypothesis that the iron giant wasn't completely immune to explosives.
BANG!
BOOOOMMM!!!
A hypothesis that the gigantic gangster would never refute, since a bullet from Stephen entered the barrel of the bazooka and made it explode from the inside just as he had done with the ship's cannons.
"Fuck... that guy is the one who destroyed our cannons!"
Seeing this proactivity to destroy the bazooka, most of the gangsters understood that the explosions could be one of Stephen's few weak points and that they should attack him only with that tactic but...
There weren't as many bazookas available and no gangster wanted to die like his partner. A stupid death caused by the heat, shock wave and shrapnel from his own weapon exploding in his face
For that reason, the tactic to confront Stephen for the vast majority of gangsters could only be one...
"STOP RUNNING LIKE CHICKEN!" Shouted Stephen, who didn't like chasing people on the beach with his heavy armor on. "IF YOU DON'T STOP NOW I WILL KILL YOU HARDER!"
However, obviously they didn't pay attention to him. Virtually all of Stephen's opponents ran for their lives towards the left flank, with very bad luck of...
"Negative Hollow!!"
Enter Perona's attack range...
"I deserve to be reincarnated as a fly and feed on shit"
"Don't cry for me, I deserve to die"
"I would be happy to know that I am not the father of my children."
No bullets, no swords, no explosions, no punches... nothing they did worked in Perona. All the attacks passed through her as if she were a ghost.
And to make matters worse, his attacks were unstoppable. The dozens of ghosts that she summoned were also immune to all attacks and every time they passed through someone that person fell to the ground with a depression worthy of study.
The only consolation for the victims and their companions is that this depressing attack was apparently not fatal. However, although the effects weren't physically harmful, being temporarily incapacitated in the middle of a battlefield like this was enough to put anyone in mortal danger.
After all, there were high chances of receiving one of the many stray bullets that flew from all places, becoming the collateral damage from a nearby explosion, being crushed by people falling from the sky that had previously been sent flying by a hammer blow and…
"KYAAHHHH!!!"
Slash!
Becoming the target of a large metal hawk trained to kill if necessary!
"Good job Hawky!" Perona shouted, congratulating her great co-worker "Later I'll give you more cookies!"
Every time Perona knocked someone out with her powers, Captain Mnugget finished the job by slicing their necks with his powerful and hard claws, wings and metal beak to prevent them from getting up again.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Clack! Clanck! Clanck!
Furthermore, it was impossible to damage him with normal bullets!
His hard yet flexible metal body made all the bullets bounce off easily, allowing him to attack his depressed victims with total impunity, nonchalance and even cockiness before the desperate gaze of his fellow mafia members.
"Damn it! Why is everyone here immune to bullets!?"
"He's laughing at us! Look at his face! He's as disgusting as Fred's! This fucking pet look like his owners!"
"FUCK!
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BIRD MADE OF!?"
PLAMMM!!! CHAF!
"It's made of HTX-109 metal, one of my favorites." Stephen said as he cleaned his hammer with beach sand to knock out the brains of the guy who asked the last question. "A little expensive according to Fred, but it's very good quality ..."
Although neither Fred nor Stephen knew it yet, that hard, resistant and expensive alloy created by Vegapunck called HTX-109 was the same material that would be used to make part of the body of the future pacifists based in Kuma linage factor. So hard that not even pre-timeskip Zoro could cut it and so tough that even injured pre-timeskip Sanji's leg when he kicked him.
Both Captain Mcnugget in its entirety and Stephen's armor and hammer were made of that metal that was worth 100,000 berries per kilogram. 100,000 berries per kilogram capable of making you invulnerable against filler villains
Whatever they did and wherever they ran, the gangsters felt totally helpless! None of Fred's subordinates were easy targets, unlike them!
"Oh shit... he followed us!
"RUN! COME BACK TO...!
"Negative Hollow!"
"I don't deserve to kneel in this sand"
"I deserve to be reincarnated as a suppository in a nursing home."
PLAMMM!!! CHAF!
"KYAAHHHH!!!
Slash!
They couldn't do anything against the combined attack between Perona, Stephen and Captain Mcnugget!
"Oh that's good, they don't run here
Do you mind if I help you a little around here?" Stephen asked Perona and Captain Mcnugget, whom he didn't want to ruin their fun without first asking permission. "Almost all my gangters have come to your side."
"No problem, I like teamwork!" Perona responded affirmatively before asking her winged companion, "Right, Hawky?"
"KYAHHHHH!!!" Captain Mcnugget agreed, doing the cool guy pose with his wing with extra mobility thanks to Stephen's modifications. "Kyahh!!"
The decision of the gangsters on the right flank of the conflict to regroup on the left flank turned out to be a fatal mistake.
Thanks to the coordinated work between the teenager, the girl and the enemy bird and the fact that they were too close together, the only thing they managed to do was be defeated more easily and quickly than when they were more dispersed.
"FUCKING MONSTERS!
"They're massacring us and we can't do anything to stop them!"
"RETREAT, RETREAT!
COME BACK TO…"
A good plan, but...
Slash!
There was no safe place to retreat to!
Attacking the main force of Bege's gang and covering the retreat zone was Fred, who slit the throat and decapitated any enemy in sight, just like he had just done to the guy who ordered the retreat.
"MUA HAHAHAHAH
…
I'm already bored of cutting off so many heads" Fred said as he grabbed the neck of the corpse that he had just decapitated and that was now gushing blood as if it were a geyser "Let's try something new"
He applied the powers of his Akuma No Mi on the neck and...
Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz!
Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz!
From that moment every drop of blood that came out under pressure from the enemy's decapitated neck turned into Japanese hornets!
"AAAAHHHHH!!! NOOOOOO!!!!"
"SO MUCH PAIN! SOOOO PAINFUL! HOW CAN IT HURT SO MUCH!? MY ARM IS FALLING APART!"
"MY EYE! HAS BITTEN ME IN THE EYER!!! AAHHHHHH!!! MY OTHER EYE!!! I'M BLIND! BLIND!"
"HELP! SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!!! "GET THEM OFF OF ME!"
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH YOU IDIOT OR THEY WILL COME IN THROUGH... AGHHHHH AAAHAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!"
Deadly beings that could be counted in thousands that began to harass, bite and sting every mafia member around their hive except for Fred.
"MUA HAHAHAHAHA!!!
WASP SOURCE NO JUTSU!" Fred shouted as he decapitated another filler mobster and performed the same process as before until he used every last drop of his blood to create an army of the deadliest wasps on his original planet "Shino Aburame would be proud of me"
The gangsters couldn't do anything to stop this plague. Fred's sword was impossible to follow with their eyesight and was practically impossible to destroy those insects with their guns...
It was as if a scene from hell had descended upon the planet!
Even Fred's allies were perplexed by this dantesque spectacle.
"That's... disgusting and horrible and..." Said Perona on the verge of vomiting due to her natural aversion to insects and infernal scenes that come out of a horror movie. "I don't know how to express this with words... it's too horrible."
"Yeah...
Seeing wasps coming out of a human neck has taken away my appetite." Stephen also agreed, although for somewhat different reasons. "The blood that Fred transformed contained iron...
Sacrilege!"
More and more hornets came out of the corpses that Fred decapitated and the pile of corpses didn't stop increasing with every passing second!
Well, that was at the beginning. At a certain point, Fred not only transformed the blood of the guys he killed, but also their entire bodies before they could fall to the ground. Thus spreading his plague of hornets with greater intensity.
An while the gangsters were too focused on fleeing, killing the hornets or simply panicking, Fred danced happily in the middle of the chaos, spreading more death and life with his swords among all those even more defenceless than before gangsters
"Tralalala…
This is fun, but..." Fred said as he moved at absurd speeds beheading gangsters. "What other method should I use next?
¡There was nothing the gangsters could do!
Their submachine guns weren't weapons suitable for killing murder hornets
Everything was lost unless someone had a flamethrower to burn the bugs...
FRRRJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ!!!
Something that the gangsters just happened to have!
"BURN TO DEATH!!!" Yelled a mobster with a burn on his face who paradoxically pointed and fired his flamethrower towards a cloud of murder hornets "DIE YOU DEMON SPARES!"
And he also pointed the [Demon] Fred, the source of the insects!
'Oh, a flamethrower...' Fred thought as he watched without concern how the flames burned his bugs and advanced towards him. 'Finally a challenge'
Fred wasn't worried about that attack!
Although he was unable to transform those hot flames into harmless organic matter he had many obvious ways to avoid them.
Use his more than remarkable speed to get out of the path of the flames…
Use his Akuma No Mi to open a hole in the ground and like a mole make his way to his enemy…
Use one or more human shields to advance through the flames without much problem
Explode the fuel tank with a shot causing a large explosion that would kill its carrier...
He had many, too many options...
Instead, he chose a more novel method for the island's inhabitants...
A FLYING ENERGY CUT PRODUCED WITH A SWING OF HIS SWORD!
SLASH!
A vertical slash that passed through the fire, cut its target in half, collaterally damaging the flamethrower's fuel tank and collaterally killing even more nearby gangsters!
BOOOMMM!!!
"CARAMBOLA!!" Shouted Fred, with mixed feelings about his last attack 'I thought that my cutting energy attack would spread to cut off the gangsters behind that guy
I need to practice a lot more until I can reach the level of my idols…'
Fred's slashing energy attack was a move that was as spectacular as it was lethal. An unexpected attack for the level of these seas that caused surprise, but above all more fear among his enemies.
"Oh… god…
Can he do that too?"
"Is that another of his Akuma No Mi powers?
What kind of monster are we fighting?"
But their reaction was nothing compared to his greatest ally's.
"WAS THAT ONE OF THOSE LEGENDARY ENERGY CUTS!?
WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT YOU HAD ALREADY LEARNED HOW TO DO IT!?" Stephen inquired. If it weren't for his metal helmet, his jaw would have dropped to his waist by the surprise. "You've been here for days and not only have you not mentioned it, I never saw you training it!"
"I wanted to surprise you in the middle of the battle!!
MUA HAHAHAHAHA!!!" Said Fred that although he couldn't see Stephen's stunned face through the helmet, he could imagine it with 100% accuracy "Come on, don't make that face.
Later I'll train you so you can do it with the hammer."
"YOU PROMISED IT!" Stephen shouted as he smashed another skull with his hammer, which he brandished with much more enthusiasm than before as he confirmed that another of Fred's absurd fantasies had become real before his eyes.
And that increased motivation on Stephen's part only made things more complicated for the gangster side. The group of minors had managed to reunite and their coordinated action was destroying the army of gangsters more easily than before.
The ghost girl Perona incapacitated any enemy around her with great ease while Stephen, the bunker with legs and hammer, finished off everyone who was depressed with the aid of Captain Mcnugget, his favourite steel bird. By now there should be hundreds of corpses on the island's beach, but that wasn't the case since Fred was transforming them into wolves and bears that created more chaos and death among the enemy ranks.
And it didn't seem like there was anything the gangsters could do to prevent that massacre!
"Father...
What do we do?" A high-ranking gangster asked Bege despite the risk of angering him. "At this rate they will kill us all!"
But fortunately for him Capone [Gang] Bege didn't have time to get angry with his own subordinates, much less when he was the one who had gotten them into this situation.
'Curse...
I didn't expect this..." Bege thought, who almost smoked the cigar he had in his mouth all at once. 'Who could have expected that everyone here would be immune to bullets and be so strong!?'
The plan upon disembarking was to keep the three or four combatants busy with a hail of gunfire while other of his men invaded the town in search of hostages. However, that plan went to hell the moment they discovered that their enemies were immune to bullets.
They couldn't keep them occupied for even a second and it was impossible for them to sneak towards the village, anyone who tried to leave the beach was killed or depressed almost instantly
With that big setback the only thing Bege could do is use his numerical advantage to try to tire his enemies and, hopefully, find weak points to exploit...
But Bege didn't have any luck with this plan B either!
His enemies were still as invulnerable as before and were becoming more and more lethal and imaginative with every soul they reaped… and to top it off they didn't seem to get tired at all
It was as if they were children with infinite stamina playing an extremely fun game!
It was evident that Capone Bege and his gang had encountered an enemy totally incompatible with them and now they could do nothing about it.
'Should we retreat?
No... I don't think this guy will let us...' Bege thought, desperate but still trying to maintain his usual poker face despite having the worst possible hand in that game and no chance of quitting
He couldn't think of many scenarios in which they could be victorious, but escaping with his two remaining ships was certainly not one of them. After experiencing how three of his ships had been destroyed from the inside and seeing firsthand how Fred was turning the corpses of his men into mangy beasts, the boast that the young bounty hunter gave him a few minutes ago became a prophecy in his mind
He really imagined Fred and his human bunker brother destroying their boats with tree bullets and after shipwrecking being eaten by sharks created by Fred. There was no human way Bege could survive that, much less if he wasn't even able to swim.
'Shit...
This isn't good'
Capone Bege tried hard to come up with some of his brilliant plans to change the situation, but none of the plans he came up with were much better than his doomed escape plan.
No matter how much he tried to think, he didn't see a plausible solution...
"FATHER!! WATCH OUT!"
That shout from one of his subordinates brought Bege out of that contemplative state he was in. A shout to warn him that Fred was already tired of killing filler gangsters and had chosen to attack the rival leader directly, precisely Bege's favourite strategy.
Fred released an energy slash with his sword that was heading straight for his right arm!
Slash!
Clanck!
And although the energy slash fully impacted its objective, it didn't obtain the expected result.
"DAMN BRAT!
DO I RELLY LOOCK LIKE SUCH AN EASY TARGET TO YOU!!" Capone Bege shouted, with both arms intact, sime he activated his Akuma No Mi at the right moment
Using the Shiro Shiro no Mi, which turns its user into a castle man, Bege partially turned his arm into stone to block Fred's energy cut, thus avoiding a more than certain amputation in exchange for a tiny and almost insignificant scratch.
"Oh!
So your Shiro Shiro no Mi has that use as well?
I'm impressed" Fred said non-sarcastically. He had never seen in the manga or anime that Bege had this defensive... and possibly offensive... ability without completely transforming into a giant castle. This possibility made him reevaluate his opinion about this Akuma No Mi. "It could also be a good melee Akuma No Mi, but it's being wasted by its user"
"Hmm...
And that stone seems harder than normal stones" Stephen said, also impressed by the appearance of Bege's arm and how he had stopped and attack that had previously cut through the steel "I would love to investigate this material... even if it's not metal"
"He can also turn his clothes into stone?" Asked Persona, who for some reason related to the tastes usually preferred by the female sex, focused her attention on transformed clothes "Did the clothes also eat that Akuma No Mi or something like that?"
"Well... it's the strange logic of the Akuma No Mi's and its coexistence with clothing and equipment" Fred responded while suppressing his instincts to avoid using a Simpsons reference "But you're not the one to ask that, girl who transforms into a ghost."
"It's true, if only YOU could transform into a ghost you would be totally naked now!
Now that I think about it, it's odd…" Said Stepen, who along with Fred began to stare at Perona and her clothes after noticing that unusual detail.
Focused stares that made little Perona very uncomfortable, who after realizing that strange fact felt almost naked even though she wasn't "KIAHHH!!
Pervert, you're a pervert, stop looking Fred!"
"I haven't said anything!
Why're you only reproaching me?" Fred said indignantly before counterattacking meanly "Besides, as if I were going to be interested in the curveless body of a ten-year-old girl
If it weren't for the hairstyle, the clothes and the strident voice you could even pass for a boy right now."
"YOOOOOOUUUUUUU!!! ANNOYING BULLY!
"HOW CAN YOU SAY SUCH HORRIBLE THINGS TO A LADY!?" Perona shouted incredibly angry. So angry that she attacked her ally "NEGATIVE HOLLOW! NEGATIVE HOLLOW! "NEGATIVE HOLLOW!"
Try as many times as you want, it won't work." Fred responded, grateful for always being so negative that not even Perona's powers worked on him. "Little flat girl…"
"STEEL-STEEL-STEEL!
"You're a very good comedy duo," Stephen said, trying not to cry with laughter. "STEEL-STEEL-STEEL!
Stop!
You're going to make me flood the inside of my helmet!
STEEL-STEEL-STEEL!"
However, while the children were having fun on that battlefield, the world was still spinning for the rest of the living beings around them.
"...
This...
Take advantage now that they ignore us to take refuge inside me," Capone Bege said to his men, who shrank and entered inside his body through a trapdoor that appeared in his stomach. "It's insulting, but convenient..."
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You'll be able to see 8 chapters in advance in my Pa-treon
pa-treon.com/user?u=83938371
Third part in few days
I hope you like reading this story as I do writing it and that you leave me your comment, review and vote if that's the case.