Others could appreciate it, though! Admittedly, their version of the irony lay elsewhere.
"Who would've thought that out of the four of us, Usopp would be the first one to put kills on the board?" Johnny said, letting the bloodstained steel ball roll from his palm and fall to the ground.
It really was rather ironic—the most frightened member of the family had turned out to be more 'bloodthirsty' than all the others. Johnny, Yosaku, and Sanji had practically been charging ahead in their eagerness, only for Usopp, who had complained nonstop and trailed behind everyone else, to 'beat' all three of them.
"Who cares!" Yosaku said, moving forward and pulling his 'butcher's axes' from behind his back. "At least we'll be the ones who finish everything here."
"Agreed!"
Someone else, however, thought otherwise.
"Candle Lock!"
Having seen firsthand just what kind of incredible abilities Yosaku possessed, Mr. Three made the perfectly reasonable decision not to kill him but to immobilize him instead. After all, what good was incredible regeneration if you could not move even a finger? Naturally, Galdino could not fully immobilize Yosaku immediately, so he began with the young man's legs. Predictably, Yosaku made no attempt to dodge the attack, and his legs were engulfed in Mr. Three's molten wax. Wax that hardened instantly. The end result looked roughly as though Yosaku had stepped into a rectangular tub full of liquid concrete and remained there until the concrete set. With open curiosity, the young man tapped the mass trapping his legs with one of his cleavers. It sounded as though he had struck a solid steel block.
"Idiot!" Galdino laughed. "My wax is every bit as hard as real iron! There's no way you'll ever cut through it! Now you'll never get—"
He never finished. His face stretched in astonishment. Yosaku truly would not have been able to cut wax that tough with his cleaver. No matter how much Zoro had tried to teach the young man to 'cut iron', he still had not mastered the necessary technique. Yosaku did, however, possess incredible physical strength. Two punches were enough to shatter the 'lock' around his legs into fragments. And although Mr. Three's wax really was as hard as iron, it broke apart like the concrete mentioned earlier. Then Johnny delivered the finishing demonstration for Galdino. Bending down and picking up a chunk of wax that had landed near his feet, he wrapped his hand in flame, after which everyone present watched the piece in Johnny's hand melt like perfectly ordinary wax despite all its ironlike hardness.
"Damn!" the young man said, sounding disappointed. "I'd better not fight him!" he concluded the obvious.
Naturally, it was obvious only to the family. To everyone else, his words sounded like complete nonsense. Johnny had not only demonstrated the ability to create fire, he had instantly identified the primary weakness of Mr. Three's power. And rather than exploit that weakness to win an easy victory, he had done the exact opposite and refused to fight the man at all. Was that not absurd?
"Then I'll take him!" Yosaku said happily in turn.
His delight was understandable as well. Mr. Three's ability matched poorly against Yosaku's own powers, putting him at a disadvantage from the outset. In other words, Yosaku had gained an excellent opportunity to 'level up'! Not a strong opponent, perhaps, merely an inconvenient one—but still far better than ordinary 'cannon fodder'.
And thus the long-awaited battle finally began. Everyone had different reasons for looking forward to it, but it began all the same. Yet, as so often happened, the battle itself almost immediately took a completely unexpected turn. At least for Johnny. Somehow, while Sanji and Yosaku each took one opponent for themselves, Johnny ended up facing everyone else. And not just the numbered agents, but the ordinary 'extras' as well.
"Holy shit! Talk about getting lucky!" the young man practically blossomed when he fully realized the situation. "Come on, guys, no need to be shy or wait your turn! Attack all at once!" Johnny extended one arm and cheerfully beckoned all his opponents forward with his fingers.
At the same time, he activated his Devil Fruit power. Tearing yet another set of white karate clothes—or something vaguely resembling them—to shreds, the young man began growing rapidly, covering himself in fiery-black scales, sprouting claws on his hands and a tail behind him. Within seconds, Johnny transformed into a three-meter monstrosity capable of killing people with weak hearts through appearance alone. It was worth noting that during his previous transformation he had not become nearly so large, nor had curved, branching horns grown from his head. Now he stood almost one and a half times taller than his normal self and looked distinctly like the Demon King from some fairy tale. His ability had changed slightly yet again. Johnny really was gradually turning into a full-fledged dragon.
The Baroque Works agents deserved some credit. Despite the young man's dramatic transformation, the agents opposing him were not especially shaken. Nearly all of them were experienced people, making it difficult to truly surprise them with a Devil Fruit power—especially when their own numbered agents included Fruit users as well. All of that filled the ordinary Baroque Works members with confidence in victory. Although, in fairness, among the numbered agents facing Johnny, only Miss Doublefinger felt a faint fear and uncertainty. Her personal experience, far greater than that of the other members, made itself known. She sensed the threat radiating from Johnny better than anyone else. The rest felt no such concern at all and acted accordingly.
"Go, Mr. Four! Moguro Tenpou: Mogugyo!"
Miss Merry Christmas transformed almost simultaneously with Johnny himself. Only where he had turned into the aforementioned Demon King with an obvious trace of dragon blood, the woman transformed into an enormous, fat, ugly mole. She immediately burrowed underground, leaving a huge tunnel behind her, and the previously mentioned Mr. Four jumped inside. The development surprised and amused Johnny considerably, making him even happier. Fighting other Devil Fruit users was always different from fighting ordinary people and often brought far more trouble, surprises, and enjoyment. Logias excepted, of course. Fighting those idiots was boring and uninteresting. At least without well-developed Armament Haki.
"Okama Kenpo: Hakucho Arabesque!"
As usual, someone immediately appeared who wanted to ruin Johnny's good mood. Not only did the young man have no desire to fight Mr. Two, he did not even want to touch him. Accordingly, Johnny could have only one answer to Bentham's attack:
"Karyu no Hoko!"
A massive wave of fire erupted from Johnny's fanged maw and swallowed a good half of the clearing along with a large portion of the people opposing him. A moment later, the surrounding world drowned in the heartrending screams of hundreds of people burning alive. It was important to understand that the changes in Johnny's Fruit power were directly connected to his own level of strength—the stronger he became, the stronger his Fruit became, creating a synergistic effect. The fire wave Johnny could breathe now surpassed every previous flame attack of his by dozens of times in both power and destructiveness. Like comparing a flamethrower jet to the flame of a church candle.
On the other hand, despite all its power and scale, such an attack was too slow and broad to serve as a primary weapon against genuinely strong opponents. While ordinary Baroque Works agents died by the hundreds, the numbered agents avoided the wave of fire without much difficulty. Mr. Two, against whom the attack had originally been aimed, suffered the most. Not only was the transvestite closest to Johnny when he attacked, he also considered dodging beneath his dignity and met the wave with a powerful kick. As a result, his hairy legs were no longer quite so hairy. More importantly, however, he truly managed to deflect Johnny's fire attack with nothing but a kick. That alone deserved respect. If not for his appearance, Johnny would have been perfectly willing to fight him head-on without using his Fruit power at all.
"I have to admit, you aren't quite as weak as—" Johnny genuinely intended to compliment his opponents, but he was interrupted in the rudest possible manner.
BOOM!!!
A monstrously powerful blow to the head, multiplied by the damage from a violent explosion, hurled Johnny far to the side. He did not fall, but his feet carved two long furrows through the ground, each a good twenty meters long. His ears rang so violently that he was completely deaf for several seconds. But a dragon's regeneration was not to be underestimated. Only a few seconds passed before Johnny had already recovered completely—just in time to meet another attack with a punch from his scale-covered fist. He did not properly understand what he had hit. Something small and white, yet considerably more destructive than a cannon shot. Powerful or not, however, the attack was nowhere near enough to break Johnny's defenses. His scaled fist endured both the impact itself and the explosion that followed without difficulty. And naturally, he did not allow another unexpected strike to the head to catch him off guard almost simultaneously with the first. The young man merely leaned slightly forward, letting another small white cannonball pass behind his head.
Or so he thought.
BOOM!
Instead of flying past as it should have, the little white thing exploded directly beside his head, completely unexpectedly for Johnny. By leaning forward, he had placed himself in a somewhat unstable position, but the greatest problem was the total surprise of the explosion. Wasn't that thing supposed to explode only when it hit something? Since when did it have a timer? Johnny was caught off guard again. The result was that he was stunned once more, though less severely than the first time. In compensation, however, it knocked him off his feet and slammed him face-first into the ground with gusto. Worse, before he had time to recover—only a couple of seconds!—Johnny felt himself sinking underground. Still dazed from the explosion, he could do nothing but instinctively dig his fingers into the earth. And then he saw a huge hole directly ahead of him, from which Mr. Four's imposing figure emerged, already swinging his enormous metal baseball bat. The sight of that baseball bat became the key to Johnny's latest revelation.
"Baseballs!" As usual, the realization arrived a little late. "That's what those things are!"
All he managed to do after saying that, before the blow reached his head, was cross his arms in front of his face. And he did not regret it in the slightest. Johnny learned firsthand that Mr. Four's lack of intelligence was more than compensated for by his very considerable strength. The impact swept him away like a feather, and his bones audibly creaked—the damned bat, as it turned out, weighed no less than several tons! If that blow had landed directly on his face, Johnny readily admitted that his participation in the battle might have ended right there. Dragon scales, dragon regeneration, dragon strength—everything had limits. A blow that powerful directly to the head, even if it did not knock him out permanently, would certainly have taken him out of action for some time. And that time would have been more than enough to deal with him without haste or excessive effort. Johnny was forced to admit that he had badly underestimated his opponents, particularly their teamwork. Each numbered agent was markedly inferior to him in almost every individual parameter, but fighting together, they complemented one another rather well. That fact became even more obvious when Miss Doublefinger herself appeared directly in the path of Johnny's flying body after Mr. Four's blow.
"Stinger Hedgehog!"
In an instant, Zala's entire body transformed into a huge spiked thing resembling a sea urchin. A direct collision with that obstacle became a ve-e-ery painful experience in Johnny's life. Even so, his scale-covered back proved sturdy enough, and his 'flight' slow enough, to keep him from turning into a human colander. The problem was that the numbered agents really did work together excellently. They were not friends—in fact, they strongly disliked one another—and they had never fought together before, yet experience was experience. Johnny had barely had time to rejoice in the toughness of his hide when a rapidly spinning Mr. Two appeared directly above him.
"Okama Kenpo: Ano Fuyu no Sora no Memoir!"
Despite the utterly ridiculous names of both the fighting style and the technique, the strike itself was genuinely terrifying. Bentham's extended leg, posed like a ballerina's, drove into Johnny's completely unprotected chest like a ten-ton spear. It was not so much that the young man failed to react as that he simply could not, literally impaled against Miss Doublefinger's spikes. Bon Kurei demonstrated in practice why he occupied a higher place in Baroque Works' hierarchy than Mr. Four with all his prodigious strength. The dull-witted Babe did not compare. Mr. Two might look and behave like a dressed-up rooster, but his strength was real. And the blow from such a man landed on Johnny precisely when the latter was in the worst possible position to receive it. The young man had only one thing to say about that.
"Oh, shit!"
In sharpness and durability, Miss Doublefinger's spikes were every bit the equal of spikes made from high-grade steel, and even dragon scales and muscles could not withstand that combination. In a single instant, Johnny acquired two dozen wounds of varying severity. Several spikes pierced his lungs, quickly filling his mouth with blood. The shittiest part for him was that Sanji and Yosaku, entirely occupied with their own opponents, had disappeared into the jungle long ago. They had no idea how delicate his current situation had become and therefore could not help him. His opponents did nothing to improve matters either. By now, every numbered agent fighting Johnny had fully realized just how monstrous a threat he represented. Each of them could see that despite every attack and wound he had endured, he remained not only alive and conscious, but clearly intended to continue fighting. At that moment everyone finally stopped underestimating one another. Johnny most of all.
"Karyu no Hoko!"
The attack came out frankly awful. It depended heavily on lung strength, and Johnny's lungs happened to be having serious problems at the moment. Even so, it bought him several seconds by completely hiding him from his opponents' sight. He needed nothing more. A great deal could change in several seconds. A very great deal. Johnny, for example, had enough time to cover himself completely in fire, while his long tail proved more useful than ever before. Bending sharply until it looked uncannily like a scorpion's raised stinger, the tail stabbed directly into Miss Doublefinger's body between her spikes. Then it struck again at lightning speed, and again. Three rapid blows in two and a half seconds. They were not particularly powerful, but Zala's Fruit gave her an inconvenient defense rather than an overwhelmingly strong one. Those three tail strikes were more than enough to batter her internal organs. Yet the decisive factor was Johnny's fire. In effectively one second, he turned himself into a full-fledged bonfire with Miss Doublefinger now 'roasting' on top of it. Who would tolerate that? Certainly not her.
The moment Johnny felt the 'spiked hedgehog' beneath his back begin changing into a normal girl again, her spikes shrinking and withdrawing from his body, he immediately took advantage of his own strength. Cauterizing his wounds with flame, he used that same tail to spring rapidly back onto his feet. But now this was a very, very different Johnny. The gaze of his fiery eyes and the young man's movements lost every trace of humanity, changing the aura around him almost completely. Had he begun the fight in this state, the numbered agents would have needed ten times more effort to inflict any damage on him at all.
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