Summary: Time to spring a trap with their faces! Also, hopefully stack a few nasty surprises of their own inside it...

  Warning! Chapters 44-47 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!

  Chapter 47: Springing the Trap

  The crew hadn't wasted too much time pnning and preparing. They'd all agreed with the idea that the longer they waited, the more likely that 'god Enel' would resort to other tactics. As such, within barely more than an hour, they were heading for Upper Yard. Following the directions from a stammering local who looked very uncomfortable, doubly so when Kaya comforted him over that fact, they'd found themselves on a 'Milky Road' headed into the 'sacred' territory.

  The charade broke the instant they crossed the tree line.

  It didn't break in a fshy way. There was no fsh of lightning or ambush attack. Instead, it was Luffy, not Enel, who made the first move. He'd been feeling Enel's Observation Haki, or Mantra if you wanted to use the local term for it, since their second day on Angel Isnd. The man apparently didn't have quite enough range to cover the entire isnd, but his presence regurly poked and prodded, snooping around like a stalker despite its owner being kilometers away. Beyond intentionally obfuscating his own strength, Luffy had chosen to ignore it…and he stopped ignoring it moments after crossing the tree line into Upper Yard.

  Few enough people even knew about Haki that, even among those that did, it wasn't common knowledge what happened when two Observation users met each other. The interaction of two Armament users was more well known, as it was observable to outsiders. Generally, the Armament user with the greater combination of skill and willpower would, either slowly or quickly depending on the degree of difference, hammer their way past the weaker user's Haki.

  Fewer people stopped to consider that this meant about Haki as a whole.

  Haki wasn't just a pcebo. Nor was it a name for a purely physical phenomenon. It was a spiritual ability, that drew open raw will in its many forms. Desire, passion, determination, drive, stubbornness. Anything that could push someone into forcing the world to bend to accommodate the will of the Haki user. Observation Haki, in particur, had no retion to sight, sound, or any other senses. Walls didn't stop it, distance mattered only in how much will it took to cover an area. It was a purely spiritual ability that only barely acknowledged that the traditional senses existed. A blind man could 'see' with Haki. A deaf man could hear. It wasn't actually seeing or hearing, but it was interpreted by the limited brain of a human being in such a way.

  It did mean, however, that just as with Armament Haki, Observation Haki interacted with other Observation Haki. Just as with Armament, two spheres of Observation Haki conflicted with each other as the wills driving each sphere of 'control' came into contact. Luffy had chosen to keep his own Haki tight into his body, using it only to disrupt Enel's ability to read him. Something it would have done anyway, and which it was doing to greater or lesser extent for the others in his crew that could use it. Enel would have found Kuina and Kaya virtually impossible to read passively, for example, as they both had sufficient control of their own personal bubble of space that he'd have needed to btantly overwhelm their will to 'see' into it. Something which they would have noticed immediately.

  It was a pity for Enel, then…that Luffy had pnned for this conflict.

  The instant they passed the tree line, Luffy stopped holding back. He pushed his own sphere of control over the spiritual space around them out in an instant, viciously shredding the unprepared 'god's' own spiritual sense of the area. Between one eyeblink and the next, Upper Yard went from an open book to Enel, to a bnk canvas beyond his own immediate senses, Luffy's own boosted range more than enough to cover the entire space just as Enel's own was.

  Enel tried to regain control, of course.

  Such was the man's own skill with his 'Mantra,' that anyone other than Luffy would have struggled to continue suppressing the space against him. Luffy, however, had cheated like a bitch and backed up his own considerable skill with multiple System-purchased Perks. Haki Domination and Haki Savant meant that Luffy met the other man's attempt to overcome his suppression of Enel's Mantra with an iron wall of iron will. Enel's attempts to 'see' beyond his own immediate personal bubble of space bounced off that wall with brutal finality. Close in, the 'god' would still be able to use his Mantra to a certain extent. But over any serious range? The space of Upper Yard was now Luffy's and Enel was as blind to it as everyone else.

  Of course, be it out of rage or panic, Enel's immediate response was to summon a giant circle of lightning and try to strike the entire area where he'd st sensed their ship. But there, too, he was immediately foiled. Luffy had invested more heavily in this one fight than in any other confrontation to date, and it paid off now as he shot his own bolt of lightning into the other man's attack and brutally grounded it into his own body. The complete, Perk-backed immunity he now had to even Devil Fruit produced unnatural lightning paid for itself instantly as the attack simply ceased to exist, swallowed entirely by Luffy's immunity.

  Grinning with no humor at all, Luffy replied in kind. He formed a single, brutal lightning strike, zeroed on Enel with his Observation Haki and carrying the little amount of Armament he could force into a strike at that range. He felt a faint echo of pain radiating from the space he couldn't see immediately into around Enel. It was enough to know that Enel had felt that, even through his own logia immunity. Let the bastard panic properly, as he was forced to realize he might have just picked a fight with someone he couldn't handle. For now, it was time to strike elsewhere before their enemies had any chance to realize how very, very wrong they'd been about exactly whose trap this was.

  "Enel has been blinded, and there are four sources of strong Haki aside from him, presumably the priests that directly serve him. They are spread out, but I'm unwilling to split us up too much, given that Enel should be able to move quickly. We'll split only into—crap."

  Luffy's mildly annoyed curse was in response to Enel proving he wasn't an idiot after all. The bubble of null space around the other man, into which Luffy could already feel little, had abruptly condensed and turned completely impenetrable as the man turned his Mantra into a shield. Luffy could still track him by the very absence of presence. A blind spot that stood out for the very fact he was blind to it. And that blind spot had moved, rapidly, Enel near-instantly covering the distance between where he had been and the strongest of the priests. Apparently, he was disturbed enough to start issuing active orders. Ones Luffy would had no idea about.

  "He's moved to one of the priests. We can't afford to split up until we have a better idea of what he's doing, as he might be concentrating his own forces. Break out the Dial Road device. We'll go off-script farther."

  Kuina nodded, acknowledging the order before barking her own. The Dial Road device was something he had worked on with Pagaya, though the engineer hadn't known why Luffy was interested in the concept. Normally, there were two types of Milky Roads. Extremely temporary ones that faded in a matter of minutes at most, typically generated by Dial skates for use in Sky Combat. Those were the first type. The other type were permeant roads that were engineered by specialists, typically anchored to bits of actual Isnd Cloud and used for making things like the pathway up from the White Sea to the White White Sea.

  Luffy had wanted something in between.

  Something he'd gotten by working with Pagaya on a 'theoretical,' and then quietly using his own skills and Dial purchases to rig a frame for said theoretical. A frame that Kuina was now ordering dropped and tched into pce in front of the Discovery. Using the space between the ship's dual hulls as a mounting point, the broad frame pointed a number of rge and extremely potent Milky Dials forward and at various angles. The rgest, in fact, that Luffy had been able to find. They hadn't even been all that pricey, since most people considered them near useless at that size. To Luffy, however, they'd been perfect. An array of them, pced as they were now, could create a temporary-style Milky Road strong enough to support the Discovery herself. Which is exactly what happened when he called out for the device to be activated…and Nami shifted their course.

  Everyone held their breath, then blew it out in collective relief as the until-now-purely-theoretical device worked. It wasn't fast. Nami had needed to chop their speed in half. But they were now moving the Discovery completely off the pre-established paths that the Milky Roads of Upper Yard had mapped out. Not only did that steer them away from any prepnned traps, but it also meant that the locals couldn't even guess where they were going to be, now that their Mantra couldn't help them to find the Strawhats. The action had completed the dropping of a 'Fog of War' over Upper Yard. One that applied only the Enemy, as Luffy could still map what was going on with his control of the spiritual space over the territory.

  "He's moved from one priest to the next. Looks like he's going in order of power. And the first priest is moving to link up with a rger group of weaker enemies. It appears Enel is attempting to concentrate his forces. We'll move on the strongest priest and this group he's linking up with. If we can deal with them before Enel gathers everyone, we'll be in a better position."

  No one argued, and Hina and Kuina both nodded sharply in approval. A good sign, since they were the two best strategists present aside from himself. In fact, to be entirely fair, Hina was probably better than him in that department, considering her experience. Something he was going to have to remember to make use of in the future. Luffy quickly ordered the needed course change, then estimated their movement speed. He frowned quickly as he realized it wouldn't be enough. Time to risk a bit, banking on the Fog of War.

  "We'll have to split up to hit them before he can concentrate. Nojiko, Zoro, Hina. You'll go with me and we'll hit the solo priest and the group he's meeting up with. Kuina, you're in charge here. Shift course 12 degrees to starboard and head toward the center of the isnd. Keep Kaya in the loop. She's the only one that will be able to reach far with Observation in the mess I'm deliberately making of it. She should be able to give you a warning if someone approaches. Don't engage Enel directly without me, unless forced to it."

  Kuina nodded. Her lips were pressed into an unhappy line at the order not to engage, but she understood it. Zoro wouldn't have, which is why he was going with Luffy instead of staying with the ship. Nojiko and Hina, aside from strength, were also by far and away his best crowd control experts. Which was important, given that he was sensing roughly 400 people in the direction the strongest priest was heading. Only maybe 50 of those had strength enough to be dangerous, and then only with multiples of them versus Luffy's weaker crewmembers. With Nojiko and Zoro easily being his two most ruthless fighters, the majority of that bulk of numbers wouldn't survive first contact. Hopefully. It left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth to pn for that, but half measures wouldn't be doing anyone any favors here.

  Affording no more than a nod of assurance to Nami, Luffy gestured for the mentioned group to follow him and unched himself forward from the Discovery with Geppo. Zoro did likewise, while Hina preserved her own stamina by joining Nojiko on a crystal ptform that zoomed after them. They quickly left the Discovery behind, and Luffy sighed in relief as he realized Enel was only just moving on from his second priest…who wasn't moving toward the other and the group of fighters. That was slightly concerning, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Knock out the threat he could, hopefully get back to the Discovery before they make contact with anything serious. That was the best he could manage with the information he had.

  Thankfully, Zoro and Nojiko were able to keep up a fairly decent percentage of his non-lightning augmented speed, which was fast enough that they covered the distance to their target in a matter of minutes. Enel was just leaving his st priest, with the two others having linked up and started to move down the Milky Road Luffy was mostly sure would have taken them to the altar where they'd likely been intended to be sacrificed. The st priest must have been the one with the mount, Shura Luffy thought was his name, as he quickly began to catch up with the other two.

  That was good.

  It meant that the enemy hadn't yet realized they'd left the original path. With any luck, the extra road the Discovery had made would already have started to vanish before the priests backtracked to the point it diverged. That would force the enemy to outright scout their own territory, unable to be certain just where his ship had vanished too. So far, so good. It wasn't going to st, of course. But the more damage they could inflict before the enemy got back on bance from their unexpected blindness to events, the more likely they'd all make it through this.

  Pulling his attention away from the overall picture as much as possible without losing his iron grip on the spiritual presence of Upper Yard, Luffy barked a warning they were about to make contact…and opened the fight in the most brutal manner possible. Unworried about the WG hearing about it for once, he let loose a potent burst of Conqueror's Haki directed at the enemy just as he burst into the clearing they were meeting at. Coming right on its heels was a devastating wave of sound. He'd formed and directed it carefully, so it didn't blow back on his companions, and no preparation or resistance they'd gained from contact with Enel mattered one wit to Luffy's secondary element. The wave of Haki knocked all but the strongest to their knees…and the follow up wave of sound outright killed a weaker dozen and induced violent nausea in everyone still alive. Even the priest. The priest and his dog, which was far more affected than most present for obvious reasons, passing out from the pain of the sound alone.

  That fact caused Ohm to scream in rage, even as blood dripped from his ears. He moved to attack in a frenzy, only to be forced back as Nojiko and Zoro followed up Luffy's attacks. A brutal rain of razor-sharp crystal and a dicing swirl of wind bdes shredded their way through the bulk of the small army. Disoriented and in pain as they were, less than a dozen of the 423 people present managed to block the assault. Some of those that failed to block lived by luck or superior durability…but the vast majority simply died where they stood, kneeled, or y. Luffy left the remaining few, at least one of whom registered as moderately strong, to his companions…or tried to. Zoro had seen that Ohm was armed with a sword, and his one-track mind had instantly ignored all tactics to zero in on him. Cursing, Luffy shifted targets, making for the strongest of the others even as Hina and Nojiko dealt with the remnants.

  The man Luffy targeted was ugly as fuck. A massively built man who should not have been allowed to wear a toga. A garbled shout of 'Stomach Mountain' was followed by him attempting to body sm Luffy…only for Luffy to ftly meet him head on with an Armament coated left fist. The man was sent flying back with a scream, and Luffy followed up with a decapitation strike with his jian. The man's life ended as his head flew off his shoulders, and Luffy turned to assess his crew.

  Hina and Nojiko had finished with the rest of the chaff, Hina looking a little grim at Nojiko's willingness to simply kill all of those she'd fought. Hina had, instead, bound those she came across with her Devil Fruit, leaving them effectively out of the fight. He made a note to keep an eye on that difference of priorities, Nojiko was easily his most violent crewman and he might need to consider reining her in a bit if she was going to disturb Hina. Most of his attention, however, was quickly focused on the fight between Zoro and Ohm.

  Zoro was…honestly showing that Luffy needed to force him up against more unusual tactics. Ohm's iron-cloud sword-whip-thing was giving Zoro fits, and the only reason Zoro wasn't wounded yet was that the swordsman was liberally pulling on Armament to tank the hits that got through his guard. Thankfully, before Luffy could decided if he needed to piss Zoro off by aiding in the one-on-one fight, the Santōryū user finally managed to make proper full-contact with the whip-sword, slicing a third of it off entirely as his Armament-unfused katana found purchase.

  Ohm's sheer surprise nearly killed him in the next moment, with his Mantra being crippled so close to Luffy and his sword abruptly too short, he failed to completely avoid one of Zoro's air cutters. The bde of air pressure sliced along Ohm's ribs, causing him to flinch…which only put him farther on the back foot as Zoro pressed the attack. For several seconds, Ohm was barely able to stay ahead of Zoro, and even when he recovered and gained a little space, it was clear he was in trouble. Despite wanting to do the practical thing and end it, Luffy grit his teeth and let his swordsman have his fight, even as he shifted his attention back to the broader picture.

  He was just in time to witness Enel tearing apart his overall pn as completely as he'd torn apart the other man's.

  Enel had stopped moving for a short period after talking to his st priest, but that minute or two of stillness was revealed to have been preparation. Between eyeblinks, hundreds of pinpricks of lightning struck throughout Upper Yard…and if Luffy hadn't been focusing fully on his Observation again he would have thought it the blind shing out by a frustrated 'god.' Instead, he caught just the bare edge of what was actually going on, sensing Enel using his logia form to ride the electrical charges between the various lightning strikes. His presence masking with his Mantra slipped just enough under the pressure of the tactic for Luffy to feel it as the man bounced between every single one of those lightning strikes, mapping Upper Yard in moments.

  Two of those lightning strikes had been within visual range of the Discovery. One had been close enough to see their own fight. Luffy howled in rage as Enel made the same decision he had. Cut off the reinforcements rather than head straight to the boss fight. The next singur bolt of lightning struck at the Discovery…and Luffy was forced to react.

  "ZORO, QUIT FUCKING PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD! Hina, Nojiko, get a top view and use your judgement! Enel went for the Discovery!"

  Without another word, Luffy shifted into his ball-lightning form and sped back toward his ship, hoping that his crew would hold out long enough for him to arrive…

  ... ...

  Kuina and Kaya were the only two that managed to react when the bolt of lightning that struck the deck turned into a pale man with a golden staff that crackled with electricity. Somehow, he already knew she was the most dangerous person there, and she only barely got Wado Ichimonji up in time to block. Even then, only her Captain's paranoia saved her, the rubber he'd almost sacrilegiously insisted she insute the hilt of her sword with cutting the power of the lightning that traveled down the bde. It didn't prevent the shock entirely. There was simply too much electricity, too close, and perhaps thirty percent of it jumped the air gap to ground itself on her instead of her sword. But there, too, her Captain's efforts bore fruit. His 'buff' of electrical resistance cut the power of the strike down to something that only ripped a strangled shout from her as her muscles refused to fully obey and spasmed.

  Refused to fully obey.

  With the elemental resistance in pce, she retained just enough motor control to roughly complete her parry of the staff, continuing her rotation in pce and ncing out with a kick ced with the racing energy of Armament Haki as she forced herself to summon it faster than ever before. Enel, for that's who this man had to be, seemed to sense the danger of that kick as he swayed back, eyes widening as it clipped him and sent him spinning despite his attempt to shift to his logia form.

  His surprise didn't stop him from retaliating. Lightning nced out, not just at Kuina but at the entire crew. Nami's Observation was up to shifting the bolt flying at her to ground it with her clima-tact. Usopp deflected a bolt toward himself with a bullet that shifted its course. Sanji, who'd only recently unlocked both forms of Haki, just barely managed to get a Haki-Bckened foot between him and the strike, but took enough volts in the process to blow him backward into the pilot house wall. Vivi, Chopper and Robin failed to block at all, all three of them going down with screams of pain, only Luffy's buff preventing the lightning from doing worse than locking their bodies up.

  Kaya utterly no-sold the bst sent her way with some sort of spirit-shield and shocked even Kuina by striking back like a viper.

  Two Armament-bckened fingers found purchase on Enel before he could fade away from them, Kaya's own Observation more than enough to counter his Mantra with Luffy's will still pressing down against Enel's. The 'god' cried out in pain as his left arm simply stopped working, and he whirled away with actual fear in his eyes directed at their least violent crewmember. Then it was Kuina's turn, as her now-fully-bckened-with-Haki katana came back around and sent a tight series of thrusts at the lightning man. Each thrust carried a burst of air, more a punch of it then an air slice, but Enel frustrated them all by whirling his staff in a shield of buzzing lightning. Then he flickered away in a burst of electricity, and viciously aimed not at Kaya and Kuina, but at Sanji who was just getting back up.

  Kuina growled, pressing the attack, even as Kaya scowled and stepped between Sanji and the far more concentrated bolt of power that would have id him out. This time, she didn't repeat her shield trick, but somehow caught the lightning with one hand, shifted it through her body to the other hand, and sent it back at Enel. The return bolt was a much deeper purple than the incoming had been, and Enel treated it as even more dangerous than the blows from Wado that he was barely managing to weave around. He actually willing took a thin slice across one cheek from Kuina in order to avoid the bolt, and Kuina understood why as that bolt burned a hole right through the side of the Discovery behind him.

  Armament Haki. Somehow, Kaya had not only redirected Enel's lightning but added her Armament Haki to it. Though Kuina had to grin, despite her awe, as she saw Kaya flinch at the new hole in the ship. Luffy was not going to be happy about that. Even if he'd undoubtedly forgive her for the damage. Pressing the advantage, she nearly managed to make contact with the bastard before he simply…fled. The reason why became apparently an instant ter as Luffy arrived with a terrifying snarl on his face and the bckened tip of his jian thrusting through where Enel's heart would have been. He paused just long enough to spit out a few words.

  "Three priests coming up behind you!"

  Then, he was gone, vanishing after Enel. Seconds ter, those priests made their presence known and the crew was far too busy to worry about their Captain…

  ... ...

  Luffy's rage was a cold thing.

  It had been true of both his past life, and of his time in this one, a trait that carried over. Blind anger and the raging inferno of the barbarian berserker was for fools. Real rage, useful anger that focused instead of blinding, was cold and ruthless. The arctic inevitability of a grinding gcier that focused so totally on its path of destruction that all else became unimportant. Luffy's rage was a cold razor that cut with a clean precision that matched his choice of weapon perfectly.

  It was also hard to truly trigger.

  Hurting his ship annoyed him greatly, enough to deliver disproportionate violence onto whoever had done it. But it didn't actually make him rage. Wapol, had Luffy not already known who he was, likely would have lived despite his affront. Even if a few broken bones would have been inevitable. His fight with Crocodile hadn't been fueled by rage at all. He'd enjoyed that fight, and honestly had only felt a very disconnected anger at what the warlord had done to Abasta and its people. An anger, in truth, that was more about Vivi's anger than his own. In the aftermath, when he'd gotten to see some of the suffering Crocodile had caused, he'd been angry. But Crocodile had already been dead by then.

  Enel, on the other hand, had done the one thing he really shouldn't have when he'd attacked Luffy's crew. It's wasn't that Luffy didn't understand the logic behind it. He'd done the same thing, arguably more brutally than Enel, when he'd led his away team to smash the bulk of Enel's forces. There was no pretense in Luffy that Enel had somehow broken the rules, or done some dishonorable. The man had made a viable tactical and sound strategic move that Luffy could fully realize and acknowledge as valid.

  He also didn't give a single fuck that any of that was true.

  Enel had hurt some of his crew.

  Enel was going to die.

  That was the beginning, middle, and end. An end that Enel was slowly beginning to realize as the two of them cshed again and again as Luffy chased him across Upper Yard. Luffy wasn't having it all his own way. Not even close. Enel was skilled. He was no zy logia user who'd put no effort into anything but his Devil Fruit. No, Enel was a viciously dangerous, deceptively strong, and seriously skilled melee combatant. His Mantra was the equal of Luffy's Observation Haki, only Luffy's Perks continuing to give him the edge in that realm. And the older man might actually be a bit better with that staff of his than Luffy was with his jian. All Luffy's immunity to lightning had bought him was a level pying field. Not a guarantee of victory.

  Which is why the slowly building desperation in Enel's movements might have confused someone looking at a breakdown of their abilities in a purely clinical way.

  Despite the obsession of many worlds and their peoples with swords, the truth was that staffs were often the bane of a sword wielder. That wasn't a universal truth. Neither weapon was, in all honestly, a rock-paper-scissors sort of trump to the other. They were, however, as anyone who has ever fought on either side of a serious fight between them, a serious annoyance to each other. The reach and double-ended threat of a staff was incredibly annoying to get through as a sword user. While on the flip side, the greater speed and dexterity of a sword made it horribly annoying for a staff expert to do anything but defend. The difference, and why swords users often found their bane in staff experts, was familiarity. Statistically, sword fighters knew how to fight…sword fighters. They only rarely encountered a serious staff user, while the staff fighter accrued far more experience against one of the most common martial weapons in existence.

  Absent their Devil Fruits able to make much of a difference, with neither of them able to truly hurt the other with their Fruits, many who knew this fact would have pced their wager on Enel. Despite Luffy's regur spars with Nami, they wouldn't necessarily have been wrong to do so, either. Except, of course, that in doing so they would have failed to take account of the sheer number of other tricks Luffy had up his sleeve to create openings.

  His gun was impractical here. He hadn't even tried to use it due to the sheer speeds both he and Enel were capable of moving at as they shifted in and out of lightning form. But that meant the hand that usually wielded it was free to dig into every dirty trick he could come up with. Their constant elemental shifting meant that his sound-based abilities were basically useless. But his Armament Haki was not. On three separate occasions, he'd deliberately taken a blow with his free hand in order to slow Enel's staff with a grab for just an instant. The man had quickly learned to super-heat the ends of his golden staff with his electricity to make that a worse choice, though even the heat was somewhat strongly countered by the combination of Luffy's resistances and Haki.

  Five times, instead of grabs, Luffy had abused his inventory to fill his hand with something that gave him an opening. A burst of light from a Light Dial that had acted like the fsh of a fsh bang had been only partially effective. An impact dial had disrupted Enel's flow by absorbing all impact of one hit. A fistful of sand that had forced his opponent to flinch despite knowing he could phase through it. A second sword that had surprised his opponent so much that Luffy had inflicted his most serious injury yet in the form of a long gash along Enel's left arm. An arm that had sadly started working properly again after Enel made a fistful of lightning jumps. Most recently, Luffy had even employed a previously theoretical trick by dumping seawater from a barrel out without the barrel. Enel had avoided most of it, but taken another shallow cut as enough had hit him to momentarily weaken him from the seawater contact.

  Luffy, utterly focused and fully willing to py every card he had, was slowly battering and dicing Enel to pieces. He hadn't gotten by without taking a few lumps of his own, but the blows that had gotten through on him had run afoul of full-body Armament Haki that no-sold most of their strength. Enel was slowing down, couldn't run anywhere that Luffy couldn't follow, and didn't have a reliable way to cause damage despite technically nding more hits than Luffy had.

  They already both knew how this was going to end. They just had to py every card between here and the final hand.

  ... ...

  The first obstacle that the priests coming at the Discovery from behind faced wasn't Kuina and Kaya. Both of them had moved somewhat far forward during the conflict between themselves and Enel. No, it was Usopp and Robin that got the first blows in. Usopp hadn't been harmed by Enel's attacks, but both Kuina and Kaya closing the range with Enel and staying in close had limited his ability to do anything. He'd waited for a chance, for a shot at Enel, but hadn't ever gotten a clean one. Now, however, up in the crow's nest as he was…he was the first to spot the priests as they followed the new Milky Road to the Discovery.

  The priests weren't really working together. Meaning that the first to close with the ship was a man in faded orange, flying on a giant bird and bearing a nce glowing with heat. The bird was fast now that its rider was allowing it to accelerate away from the other priests. But speed mattered little to Usopp, used to trying to track his Captain's bullshit lightning powers with his Observation Haki. With Luffy's focus now almost entirely on Enel, his own Haki had to compete directly with the rider's Mantra, but Usopp was one of the top three Observation users in the crew. Kaya and Luffy were better. No one else was. Even if Kuina had better combat instincts and a stronger overall will, which closed much of the gap.

  The result, then, when the two wills met…was suppression for the Priest Shura and his bird taking a trio of rifle rounds he only barely managed to steer his mount into making non-fatal. His desperate maneuvering caused him to veer off from the attack, and his Observation Haki was too tied up with Usopp to notice the hands that had formed under him. The words Dos Fleur: Ball Crunch would haunt his nightmares for eternity as two brutal fists, attached to arms on the saddle he was standing on, punch him somewhere very delicate. His high-pitched scream caused sympathetic winces in every male that heard it, even as he lost control of his mount and both of them plowed head-first into a tree. Honestly, the man was rather likely rather thankful in the moment as he felt his consciousness fade.

  The ease with which one of the priests had gone down caused a moment of pause, before the other two shook it off. They'd closed the distance while Usopp and Robin dealt with Shura, but the other members of the crew had all had their own chance to react as well. Nami was the first to sh out, finding it extremely easy to form a 'spring' out of the Milky Road with a stamp of her foot and push of her new Fruit ability.

  She hadn't had much time with it yet, but aside from adjusting to her Pegasus form and new base strength, the one thing Luffy had pushed her to experiment with was spring formation. It had proven to be far more versatile then expected, even if Nami was fairly certain she was barely scratching the surface so far. One of the few tricks she'd already figured out was how to form a 'spring' at range, even if so far it was restricted to a surface.

  The ocean was, unshockingly, basically impossible to manipute with a Fruit. But other sources of 'pure' water were actually outright easier to manipute that something like bare ground. Which is how the ball-shaped Priest riding a string of balls in mockery of an eastern style dragon was forced to abruptly dodge as a high-pressure 'spring' cut through where he would have been. He then had to dodge a second time as Vivi's peacock sshers appeared unching out of an air-door where he'd first dodged towards.

  Nami couldn't yet make more than one Spring at a time, and Vivi wasn't even sure it was possible to make more than one 'door' portal at a time. This left the nky, darker-skinned priest to Kuina. With Kuina's Observation and the final priest's Mantra being roughly equal, the man was able to dodge the series of air-pressure sshes that she send his way. The only one he couldn't dodge he produced some sort of murky purple cloud from a set of Dials hidden in his sleeves in order to block. The resulting cloud was much thicker and more viscous than Milky Road cloud, eating the sshing wind with no difficulty. The series of attacks still kept him from closing however, and the man was soon under pinpoint fire from Usopp.

  The ball-shaped priest quickly proved the more dangerous, sending several of his chain of ball forward right after he dodged Nami's and Vivi's opening combo. Sanji attempted to intercept one…only for it to literally blow up in his face, only the foresight of having covered his leg in Haki saving him from serious injury. Chopper, forewarned by the explosion and having already consumed a rumble ball, was able to shift to his Guard Point just in time to absorb the impact of another such explosion without harm. Robin attempted to spawn arms to catch the priest out, but without her own Haki just yet she found two of them subjected to impact Dials that caused her to cry out in pain as a portion of that damage was echoed back to her.

  An instant tter, by unspoken agreement, Usopp shifted targets and began to shoot down the balls of cloud. The priest controlling them shrieked in outrage as Usopp's own Haki was able to counter his Mantra and more balls than not began to take hits, forcing the man to move for cover among the trees. Usopp's switching of targets allowed the second priest to close…only to be met mid-air by Kuina using Geppo. She'd adjusted far better to fighting like that than Zoro, and the man quickly discovered that his murky purple clouds were no match for an Armament-bckened Wado Ichimonji. He was forced to skate backward away from her, attempting to use his Impact Dials against her…only to discover that she had more than enough muscle control to simply cold stop her swords from hitting them, preventing him from charging the Dials.

  Unlike Zoro, Kuina wasn't as obsessed with duels either, not compining as Chopper darted in from the side, adding pressure to the target with his Horn Point. Combined with another high-pressure spring from Nami, and the nky man was too hard-pressed to fully avoid one of Kuina's strikes, which cut deeply enough into one shoulder to render that arm useless. Slowed in his defense, he attempted to retreat, only to find that Kaya had suppressed her presence completely enough to get behind him. She spped a seal-tag on his back and, between eyeblinks, he was asleep. Kuina, not ruthless enough to simply finish an unconscious man off, caught him with a shake of her head, dragging him back towards the Discovery.

  They reached the ship's deck just in time for Satori to smash into the armored hull of the ship with bone-shattering force. Kaya tisked as the man fell to the ground insensate, spping another sealing tag on him before beginning to administer first aid. Kuina looked at both of the downed Priests with a frown.

  "That was…sort of disappointing. That Enel fellow was strong enough that I was hoping for a bigger challenge from his minions."

  Nami was the one that answered her, shrugging as she did.

  "Outnumbered too badly, maybe. Or possibly they relied on tricks they'd set up in their own areas? The must usually have the home field advantage."

  Kuina shrugged back, ignorant of which was the case, even as she sighed and lept off the ship again. Best pick up the one that Robin had brutalized at the start and make sure he'd gotten one of Kaya's Sleep Tags too…

  ... ...

  Luffy was battered and bruised, his clothing so heavily damaged that it was practically falling off, even as blood dripped from several gashes where Enel's increasingly inventive tricks had managed to best his Haki. Yet, there was a grim humor in his eyes as he looked at the corpse of the man who'd dared to call himself a god. The man whose head he'd crushed with a spare kitchen sink.

  "Guess there is some truth to that saying, after all. Even if Sanji will likely be annoyed we need to track down another sink that has Dials built in."

  Admittedly, the blow he'd struck in the end by blindly pulling heavy objects from his inventory after his jian had been melted probably hadn't actually been what killed the false god. That had been reserved for the cluster of six high-caliber seastone bullets Luffy had emptied into his vital points from his revolver. It had been what knocked him out, though. Which he was absolutely going to mention every time he told this story. The bastard might have been skilled, but if what Luffy knew was even half accurate, he didn't deserve to be remembered with anything but derisive ughter…

  Shaking his head and turning away from the cooling corpse, Luffy reached out his exhausted will and caught a fsh image of Upper Yard before the attempt colpsed. Still, even with only a fsh of insight, it was enough to tell him that the fighting was over. Zoro was apparently lost somewhere no where near anyone else, but wasn't fighting. None of the Priests were registering as conscious to him. And his crew all seemed to be fine.

  Good enough.

  Exhausted and bleeding from several wounds despite his spiritual healing working on them, he slowly began to trudge back to the Discovery. There was still work to be done, as none of the locals likely knew what had happened just yet. Not to mention that Robin would want to find the poneglyph here, they needed to ring the golden bell, and it was still possible the Shandians would come into conflict with them. Lots to do still, really. All of that, however, could wait until they'd all united again…and his head stopped pounding from pushing his Haki too far. It could definitely all wait that long. If it couldn't he'd just let Nojiko kill a bunch of dickishly evil people until it could, then suffer the consequences and Kaya's disappointed looks ter…

  ... ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N: So, I HOPE I did I decent job of showing that Luffy seriously struggled against an opponent for the first time. Enel was genuinely a threat to him, and the only reason it wasn't even diceier was because Luffy's foreknowledge let him preemptively take actions that would put Enel on the back foot.

  This, I hope, serves to show that Luffy isn't actually super OP. Yes, he's better off than his canon counterpart. But he's not a Yonko. He can't Steamroll the entire Marine Officer Corp, either. Excluding Garp as a special case, Luffy is essentially roughly a Vice Admiral in comparative power. He's maybe on the higher end of that spectrum (again, ignoring Garp), but he'd STRUGGLE against any of the Logia Admiral Trio (Ice, Magma, Light).

  In truth, as he is, he'd probably lose if forced to fight any of that trio to the death. He'd be better off if it he was just trying to escape. But, unless he had backup, he'd most likely lose against any of that trio. Likewise, any of the Yonko and a few of the more powerful Warlords like Mihawk would sp him down without too much effort as he is currently. He's strong, but he's not truly broken. Which, again, is literally the reason for the title of the series. His System let him become Halfway Broken. But only Halfway. He still has a ways to go...

  A/N 2: Once per release, I remind people that...I have a Patreon Page! Nothing I write, fanfiction wise, is ever permanently paywalled. That said, I do have Early Access chapters. There is currently another 18,000+ words of One Piece - Halfway Broken in Early Access (Chapters 48-52). Also, of course, you also get access to my other Early Access chapters for my other stories. There is typically around 40-60k words of various works in early access at any one time. I always appreciate any support, since it helps me free up more writing time...but most of all I hope you just enjoy the stories!