[EotB] 046. Power Overload (Patreon)

15 years before Romance Dawn (1524.05.06)

Marine Captain Pavo would usually take no pleasure in beating on an already injured young girl – he hadn’t joined the navy to take advantage of his strength and authority, like some others he could name – but he’d make an exception for this one.

If what he’d heard from the reports was true – and she had to be the one responsible for tonight’s utter chaos; there couldn’t be many ‘beautiful maids with long black hair and glowing pink eyes’ running around the city – then she certainly deserved whatever Pavo was about to give her, but more than that... The sheer callous disregard for his dead comrade’s body...

Pavo had spoken to Petty Officer Wandal just this morning. He’d been a promising young man, not overly talented, but disciplined and kind, with plenty of grand ambitions to rise up the ranks of the navy. Pavo had given him a few tips. He never would have imagined that conversation would be the last they would ever share.

In response to his admonishment at her atrocious behavior, the girl only pounded at the door behind her, no doubt warning her confederates hiding inside.

Was she fomenting a slave revolt? Was that what this was all about?

She was probably a slave herself, come to think of it, with that skimpy uniform of hers – heavily damaged and dirtied but still recognizable as a fetishized servant’s outfit.

Hmph. If she expected Pavo to forgive the murder of his colleagues and the destruction she’d brought to the Holy City simply on account of her unfortunate circumstances, she had another thing coming. Experiencing suffering was not an excuse for anyone to spread that suffering around.

How many innocent people had already died tonight because of her?

Too many, but these would be the last. Pavo would make sure of it.

That was his Justice.

With a shake of his shoulders, he shrugged off his coat and centered his stance, his hands rising in a boxing guard. His tail flexed threateningly behind him.

“Surrender and I’ll let you live, girl,” he said, offering her one last chance, though he privately hoped she wouldn’t take it. He wanted to personally teach her the consequences of her crimes, with his own fists. “You’ll be judged and sentenced in accordance with the law. Otherwise... I’ll be perfectly within my rights to exercise lethal force.”

The girl still refused to speak. Instead, she tilted her head and gave Pavo a smile as beautiful as it was cold. At the same time, she met his eyes. They too were absolutely frigid, despite their strange glowing iridescen– oh, shit!

Pavo had let his anger get the better of him. Abruptly, he remembered the warnings of the girl’s Devil Fruit, just in time for his body to freeze in place, even his lungs uncomfortably locked mid-breath.

An instant later, the girl appeared in front of him in what had to be a Shave, the hem of her uniform’s skirt snapping in the wind of her sheer speed, and a textbook-perfect spinning high kick slammed into the side of Pavo’s face, bypassing his guard entirely.

The kick was fast, but Pavo should have been able to dodge or block, maybe even counterattack, if only his body had listened to his orders. Instead, he ate the blow in full, without even the benefit of bracing himself for it.

The impact sent him flying straight across the street and through the front windows of a tailor’s shop. Glass and wood falling like rain around him, he plowed into and through the shop’s counter and rolled to a stop against the far wall, the reinforced fabric of his uniform scuffed and torn.

Pavo coughed and shook his head. After a moment to get his bearings, he pushed himself to all fours, only to spit out a couple of teeth dislodged by the heavy blow, watching them clatter on the floorboards into a puddle of bloody spit.

...Getting a surprise attack off on him, huh?

Did that little bitch think he was some kind of pushover?

Pavo’s blood boiled hotter still as he clambered back to his feet, his tail sweeping the debris from around him. He stomped angrily back out of the shop.

Outside, the girl had walked up to the second dead Marine. Seaman First Class Harith. Pavo knew him too, of course. He was a good man, who always made sure to send half of his salary back home to support his aging parents.

He didn’t deserve to be killed like this.

And he certainly didn’t deserve having his killer use his corpse as a prop, hands on her hips, one foot propped on Harith’s back like a victorious hunter posing for a photograph with her latest kill.

Glaring at her, Pavo spat out a gobbet of blood to the side and wiped his mouth. “That offer of surrender has expired. Time for you to go down.”

The girl only smiled again – Pavo found the sight just as alluring as before, but he made sure not to meet her gaze again; even without the reports warning him, he should have guessed Devil Fruit the moment he saw her inhuman eyes – and beckoned him with a taunting finger.

Pavo obliged her.

He rushed forward with a Shave of his own and chambered a punch, only to reconsider when the girl hooked her foot under Seaman Harith’s corpse and lobbed it at him.

Despicable!

But as much as it galled him, Pavo didn’t make a grab for the body and simply dodged past it, electing to stay focused on the fight instead of protecting his subordinate’s dignity. He would beg for Harith’s forgiveness later.

Ignoring the distraction she threw in his way unfortunately wasn’t enough to put his opponent on the back foot, but it at least gave Pavo enough time to twist around and meet her next kick with a wide sweep of his tail.

Like so many others before her, the girl underestimated just how much strength Pavo’s Devil Fruit-granted appendage possessed. The tail sweep struck the girl’s leg with enough force to push it back and force her off balance.

Her eyes widened at the unexpected resistance, and Pavo capitalized.

“Take this!”

A second tail sprouted from the end of his spine, splitting off from the first, and with a flex of powerful muscles, slammed into the girl from the other side, right into the wound already marring her flank, folding her around the long limb.

Pavo saw his opponent visibly clench her teeth around a scream as she went flying, but unfortunately, her pain resistance proved good enough to let her react in time. She spun mid-air and landed on the wall of the barracks feet-first, cushioning the impact.

Still, when she dropped back down to the ground, she favored her other side, and fresh blood soaked through her dress and her once-white apron.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Pavo said, a taunting smirk on his lips. “That’s nothing compared to the pain of the Marines you killed.” He shook his head. “You should have surrendered when I gave you the chance, little girl.”

The girl sighed. “Yes, it does hurt,” she admitted freely, though none of that pain was reflected in her voice. “Congratulations. Your tails are very strong.” She fell into a martial arts stance of her own. “May I have some more?”

Pavo felt a vein pulse angrily at his temple, but he refused to be baited by her insolence. “Very well. As you wish, then.”

With that, he resumed his offensive, his hands coming up again.

The boxing stance itself was a feint, however, and instead of going for a jab, the moment he was in range, he spun around, both of his tails swinging for his opponent with a loud whoosh of displaced air, one going low and the other high in case she tried to jump over them.

The girl proved that her injury hadn’t harmed her agility when she ducked low – so low that her chest was basically pressed flat against the ground. In fact, not content with just ducking his swing, one of her legs stretched far out in front of her until she was essentially doing the splits under Pavo’s attack.

His eyes widened at the display of sheer flexibility.

They widened more when that outstretched leg caught his own ankle, right when his balance was leveraged into his spinning tails.

“Wha–!”

With his pivot leg kicked out from under him, Pavo toppled, straight down onto the girl crawling at his feet. She rolled onto her back as he dropped, her elbow rising to meet his approaching face.

The girl’s arms were fairly toned, but nothing too impressive. When she struck, however, she did so with entirely disproportionate strength. Pavo’s head snapped to the side, and he felt yet another one of his teeth break loose, a spurt of bloody froth escaping his mouth.

His head was ringing badly enough that he barely felt his skull bounce off the cobblestones.

He still had the presence of mind to realize that his enemy would capitalize on his moment of weakness. The fight might actually end right here.

To his shame, Pavo was forced by desperation to whip out the trump card he usually reserved for serious fights: three more tails burst out of spine, swinging wildly around him to cover him while he recovered his wits. One of them hit something – the girl, hopefully – and allowed Pavo to finally make his way back to his feet, a hand cradling his aching jaw, blood dripping freely down his chin.

Shit. At this rate, he would have to eat through a straw for the next few weeks.

He was going to kill that slippery little bitch.

When he looked up, his five tails – the current limit of his control over the Tail-Tail Fruit – writhing all around him in an unpredictable and deadly dance, it was to find his opponent leaning against the wall of the barracks, safely out of reach, a hand pressed to her ribs.

Ah, so he had hit her, then. Good.

Still, he’d gotten the worst of that exchange. He needed to be more careful. She clearly wasn’t just some random slave.

Rather than a battle of close-quarters combat, he needed to turn this into a contest of Devil Fruits, where his greatest strength lay.

So, instead of rushing toward his opponent again, Pavo crouched and focused on the power of his Fruit. Behind him, his array of tails grew, not in number, but in individual length and girth.

Like this, they would of course become more powerful, but also less practical, not just because of the inertia inherent in moving such massive objects, but also because each one’s weight pulled at the rest of his body every time they moved. If he didn’t want his own attacks to yank him off his feet, he needed to keep all of his extra limbs balanced against each other, a couple serving as counterweights while the rest could move.

That was hardly a trade-off worth mentioning, though. It just meant Pavo always kept a couple of tails on defense around his own body.

“Let’s see you deal with this,” Pavo muttered.

Indeed, three tails swinging at her constantly, from seemingly random directions, were enough to strain the girl’s ability to dodge, her movements lacking their previous measured, easy grace.

...Or so it seemed, yet time and again, she managed to slip away. Pavo’s tails slammed into the ground and the walls around him. Several of the nearby buildings, more fragile than the fortress-like slave barracks, collapsed into rubble under his strength, while his target flitted around like a particularly elusive – and annoying – fly.

Until finally, after quite a bit of maneuvering, Pavo managed to trap her between all three of his tails, two swinging in a rough pincer while the third came down at her from above.

Pavo smile ferociously. This was it. There was no way for her to escape anymore.

The girl clearly thought the same, because she didn’t even try.

Instead, she visibly braced herself until the very last moment, when, with a loud exhalation of air, her entire body bending with the effort, she sent a cartwheel kick into the closest tail just as it was about to strike her. There was enough force in the kick for the impact to sound like cannon fire, and for it to divert the tail from its course, just enough to pass above the girl and collide with the one coming from above, and then with the third, entangling them with each other.

“...!”

For a second, it was all Pavo could do to watch, open-mouthed and dumbfounded – if she had that kind of strength, then why did she bother spending the last few minutes dodging frantically?! – but then, the girl was rushing in his direction.

He paid for his moment of inattention.

With a Shave, the girl landed in a crouch on one of the tails that were supposed to protect Pavo, where she paused for a moment – just long enough to stare into his still-widened eyes.

Shit, not agai–!

Pavo’s body – and all his tails – froze once more.

The girl flung herself toward him, and Pavo prepared himself for another devastating strike to the face. He was certain that he was tough enough to take it, but how many teeth would he have left by the end of this farce?

Except, the girl didn’t chamber another kick. Instead, mid-air, she reached into the front pocket of her bloodstained apron. Her hand came out holding something colorful Pavo didn’t have time to examine before she shoved it into his mouth.

Then, the blow came, just as Pavo regained control of his body, a knee crashing into his chin, his teeth clacking painfully as his jaws slammed shut. The fraction of a second Pavo had to brace himself, this time, meant he took the blow better than he otherwise would have.

But it did force him to bite down on whatever it was the girl had forced past his lips.

What was...?

Pavo’s eyes grew wide with terror at the vile taste suddenly filling his mouth.

There was no way he would fail to recognize it. Even now, years later, it was still engraved in his memory, so indescribably awful that he would never forget it.

A Devil Fruit.

The distraction – the horror – of that taste would have given his enemy all the time she needed to line up another attack and even finish Pavo off for good, but she didn’t bother. Instead, she retreated.

How... Why did an escaped slave have a Devil Fruit in her pocket?!

Unfortunately, Pavo didn’t have time to chase answers. Most of the Fruit was still in his mouth, but it only took the slightest mouthful swallowed, the barest drop of its juice making its way down his gullet, for it to take root.

Already, Pavo could feel his own body react, trying to absorb this new alien power.

Except... the spot inside him the Fruit was supposed to fill was already occupied.

Pavo clutched at his chest, as if he could somehow tear through his own stomach and pull out the Fruit he’d just been forced to eat. “No! No, no, nonono!”

His body swelled uncontrollably, power building and building and building inside him, devoid of any outlet. His skin, stretched beyond its limits, tore and split, blood gushing out and dripping around him, a puddle already forming at his feet.

His denials morphed into wordless screams of pain.

When his body finally exploded, Pavo almost welcomed the end of his suffering.