[EotB] 049. Knight of God (Patreon)

15 years before Romance Dawn (1524.05.06)

The woman couldn’t be part of the reinforcements the Marines around Hancock had just called. Not only had it only been seconds since, but her uniform clearly didn’t belong to the navy – the colors were almost diametrically opposed. Furthermore, judging by the almost palpable aura of contemptuous amusement she was radiating, she didn’t much care about the bodies lying dead or broken in Hancock’s wake.

Hancock was rather confused, until one of the Marines looked up. A shocked expression flashed across the man’s face, and he exclaimed, “A Knight of God?!”

Which... Hancock was even more confused, because who the fuck were those? She must have forgotten even more of the manga than she’d thought.

Still, she could hazard a guess. Considering the World Nobles viewed themselves as gods, it wasn’t hard to draw a connection. The ‘Knights of God’ were probably some sort of private army dedicated to them, or maybe an elite police force based in Marie-Joie. There would presumably have to be some sort of law enforcement agency permitted to deal with crimes committed by World Nobles against World Nobles.

Either way, if Hancock’s Observation was to be believed, this woman had bad news written all over her.

“My Lady,” the same Marine said, clacking his heels together and saluting her, which prompted the rest of them to do the same, heedless of Hancock’s presence right behind them. “Have you come to reinforce us? Be careful, this criminal uses a Dev– urgh!”

Whatever warning the man had been about to say was cut short when the Knight flicked her hand. Her little knife curved gracefully at the end of its long chain, flying through the distance between them in an flickering instant, and opening its target’s throat from ear to ear.

The other Marines flinched and dropped their salutes when their brains caught up to their eyes.

For her part, Hancock didn’t react, didn’t even blink, too busy analyzing the sort of trajectories she could expect from a chain weapon like this one. It might be tricky. She’d never faced anyone armed with such a thing.

For a moment after the sudden attack, the Marine who had spoken remained in his previous position, hand raised in salute at the side of his head. By the time he slowly slumped to his knees, his head drooping over a veritable waterfall of blood gushing down the front of his white uniform, the knife had already slapped back into his killer’s hand.

The woman idly examined the blood coating its edge and drawled, “I don’t recall giving you permission to speak to me.” Distaste twisted the faint smile still pulling at her lips. “And certainly not to call me your ‘reinforcements’. As if I’d be playing second fiddle to a bunch of insects.” When none of the Marines dared to respond, a tense silence falling over the scene, she let out a little sigh and continued with a shake of her head. “I can’t believe Lord Figarland actually sent me out here. Waking me up in the middle of the night for it, too. Who cares about a little fire, as long as it doesn’t touch Pangaea Castle?” She sighed again, and shrugged. “Oh, well.”

She pushed herself off the edge of the roof and dropped the few meters down to the street below. It was the sort of height that would have definitely hurt an untrained civilian – maybe broken a leg, if they landed poorly – but anyone in this world of superhumans with even a modicum of training would have hardly felt even a jolt. Which was why Hancock was momentarily surprised when it seemed as if the woman’s legs collapsed from under her the moment they touched the ground.

Instead of actually sprawling across the cobblestones, though, her body twisted around itself, essentially flowing a centimeter above the floor with disturbingly serpentine fluidity, then rose right back up like a rearing cobra in human skin. Her arms hung bonelessly at her sides, a curved knife dangling from each wrist by thin silver chains. Her eyes were fixed on Hancock with unsettling intensity.

“In retrospect, I suppose I should be grateful. Not every day I find such fresh canvas to paint and mold.” A shudder of pleasure visibly shook her body, making her wriggle from head to toe. Her stance was still so loose and unstable, standing with her legs crossed at the ankles like a dancer waiting for the starting beat, that the small motion actually made her sway in place, as if she was about to collapse off her feet again. Her gaze swept up and down Hancock’s body. She licked her lips. “Still lacks a bit color, but that’s easily remedied...”

With that, one of her arms swung up, and the chain unwrapped from around her arm. Fast as lightning, the knife attached at the end of it sliced into Hancock’s shoulder in a spurt of blood.

“See?” the woman said when she reeled the knife back in, her smile widening. “Color.”

“...”

Hancock gritted her teeth and ignored the pain. The injury was only skin-deep, but... Her Observation had warned her the attack was coming, and she had tried to dodge. It had just been too fast for her body to actually move in time.

Unfortunate.

This really might be tricky.

She let out a slow breath, rolled her shoulders, and settled into a proper stance.

The Knight’s smile grew to disturbing proportions, her whole face twisting with it. “Yes, yes! Very good! Make it an actual fight!”

And then, she rushed in, moving faster than any of Hancock’s previous opponents had ever done, her body slithering forward, hovering as close to the ground as earlier.

Salome would have been proud to see a human imitating her kind so accurately.

Hancock hadn’t forgotten the Marines with guns still arrayed all around her – it would only take one bullet – but by simple necessity, she pushed them to the back of her mind and focused the whole of her Haki onto her approaching opponent.

She threw a low kick the moment the Knight entered her range. Like much of Hancock’s movements, the kick was infused with the machine-like precision granted to her by Life Return.

It still proved insufficient.

The woman flowed sinuously around Hancock’s kick. Her arms, trailing after her, swung out just as she slipped between Hancock’s legs.

Hancock ignored the bite of the knives in her flesh as they carved yet more minor wounds up and down her legs. Instead, she locked down the Knight’s location behind her with her Observation, then seamlessly transitioned into a mule kick at her opponent’s face.

With the same inhuman flexibility she’d already demonstrated, the Knight spun in place, her upper body still barely brushing against the ground, though gravity really should have pulled her down at this point. Her head moved aside just in time to let Hancock’s kick whiff past harmlessly, not even disturbing her hair.

Shit.

The woman didn’t let the opening slip by her. With another boneless twist of her body to redirect herself, she crawled up Hancock’s back, her knives sinking into her shoulders to provide her with handholds.

Those would have been much deeper wounds, if Hancock hadn’t reinforced her flesh with enough Armament Haki to reduce the damage.

Her resistance still didn’t stop the Knight from draping herself over her back.

As if to prove just how casually she was taking this fight, she refrained from simply slitting Hancock’s throat right then and there – as if she couldn’t have finished the fight in the first exchange by opening her femoral arteries when she cut into her legs. Instead, she rested her chin in the crook of Hancock’s neck, their cheeks pressed together intimately.

“Oooh, you’ve got some Haki to you, huh?” she crooned. “Not bad, not bad. I’m glad you’re at least trying to make this fun for me, honey.”

Hancock didn’t respond beyond sending simultaneous left- and right-handed Finger Pistols toward the woman’s head in a bid to force her away.

She did jump off Hancock’s back, but not before prying one of her knives out of Hancock’s shoulder and hooking the inward curve of its edge under her jaw instead. When she flipped over Hancock’s head and leaped away, the knife was dragged along behind her, opening a deep gash up Hancock’s cheek, one to match – and outmatch – the shallower cut she’d put on her other cheek earlier, when she’d made her entrance.

Only a last-second flinch prevented Hancock from losing one of her eyes.

“Agh!”

She reflexively pressed a hand to her face, feeling warm blood pool against her palm and drip down her face, while the Knight alighted from her jump a few meters away and burst out laughing.

“Hahahaha! Yes, this is it!” She spun and twirled in place like a ballet dance, then hugged herself, her hands wandering lewdly over her own body. “You’re starting to look colorful enough, now. Don’t worry, darling, we’ll soon turn that boring, milquetoast, conventional beauty of yours into something truly unique!” Her eyes suddenly widened and gleamed with unholy enthusiasm. “Oh! Maybe I should keep you around, really take my time with you. You are quite the canvas, after all, and I have free spots in my studio. Hmm... Something to think about...”

...No, thanks. This bitch had been insufferable enough already in the short couple of minutes Hancock had known her. If it came down to it, dying would be preferable to prolonging their acquaintance.

Thinking of going out on her own terms was premature, though.

Hancock hadn’t lost, yet.

With nothing she could do about her injuries, she clenched her teeth and fought through the pain, then pulled her hand away from her face and fell back into her stance. She let out a harsh gust of breath and focused back on the fight, pulling back the threads of her Observation that the pain had momentarily scattered.

The Knight looked quite pleased to see that. She let out a girlish little giggle. The hands that had been stroking and groping her own flesh lashed out. Both knives flew off, trailing their silver chains.

Hancock dodged the first – only to find the second a moment away from sinking into her chest, its trajectory altered at the last moment with a tug at its chain.

Well, if she’d needed any proof that the Knight’s Observation Haki beat her own...

She was about as outmatched against this woman as Marine cannon fodders were against her.

With no better option, Hancock raised her left hand into the knife’s path. The blade sank to the hilt into her Armament-black palm, which was quite painful already but soon found itself reduced to irrelevance when the woman whipped the knife’s chain, sending a wave of force traveling through it and into the knife itself.

The blade was sharp enough – and infused with enough Armament – that it sliced clean through Hancock’s hand. With a gush of blood and new spike of agony, her pinky and ring finger fell away, severed clean off.

“Nnnnngh!”

Hancock clutched at her wrist, as if she could somehow stop the pain from spreading up the nerves in her arm. She clenched her teeth against another scream, to a renewed peal of laughter from her opponent.

“Hahahaha! No, no! Let it all out! Go ahead and scream, the louder the better!”

The pain was distracting enough that Hancock didn’t hear the rattling or chains or notice the soaring knife until it was too late.

This time, the wickedly sharp blade sank into her eye unopposed.

“AAAAAAAAAGH!”

Again, this could have been the end. The knife could have pierced through her brain and killed her instantly, but the Knight apparently wasn’t done playing with her food, so she reeled back the chain before her weapon could do lethal damage.

She nodded happily while Hancock fell to her knees, once more cradling her face. “Yesssss, just like that!” She let out a heated sigh, and her hands started moving over her body again, this time without the slightest modesty. One cupped a breast, while the other trailed down toward her crotch. “I take back everything I said at the start; this night has been incredible! Oh, I can’t wait to get to know you even better than this!”

Losing her eye was the single most painful thing Hancock had ever experienced, with the possible exception of her soul dissolving in the corrosive void of death. Her thoughts briefly whited out, but this time, she desperately clung to the tattered remnants of her composure and grasped her Observation with an iron grip, refusing to lose her awareness of her surroundings.

Because she still hadn’t lost.

With every injury Hancock sustained, with every pained scream wrung from her throat, with every drop of blood she shed, her Devil Fruit told her in no uncertain terms how horny the Knight of God was getting.

The woman absolutely wasn’t faking how arousing she found Hancock’s torture. Lust positively poured from her soul in torrents. She felt like she was about to climax.

And Hancock didn’t think she needed both eyes to activate her power.

So, when her Observation Haki assured her that the Knight was staring down at her, admiring her newly maimed face, Hancock pushed through the agony and looked up, meeting the woman’s gaze with her own, halved though it was.

Though she didn’t know if it would have any effect, Hancock leaned on her power, leveraging all of her metaphorical mental weight into activating her Devil Fruit, as hard as she could.

If Hancock had still held any doubts that lust truly worked as a catalyst for her power, this put them to rest.

Unlike with Commodore Calderon, there was no wave of stone gradually transmuting her target’s body at speeds discernible to the naked eye. Instead, the petrification was instantaneous, flesh turning to stone with startling, almost violent suddenness, such that a spectral sound – a short, high-pitched shriek, almost like braking tires screeching on asphalt, overlaying a deep, booming background clap; an unnatural combination Hancock had never encountered in nature – echoed not in her ears, but in her mind, like the fabric of reality was screaming at the abrupt violation.

Even through the pain suffusing her battered body, and even though her only remaining eye was once more aching – more badly than it had at any point tonight, in fact – Hancock felt her lips stretch into a smile at the sight of the immobile stone statue standing before her, still in the same indecent pose the Knight of God had held.

Heh. Who’s laughing now?

Well, Hancock was, but not for long, and not just because she was losing blood at an alarming rate.

The Marines around her, who had so far been content to stand awkwardly on the edge of the fight – and whom Hancock, quite honestly, had forgotten in the rush of combat – didn’t seem keen to let her savor her victory, either.

“Lady Knight!”

“Shit, she’s been petrified!”

“A Knight of God is down! Where is our backup?! Send all the men you have!”

“Drop that snail and aim your gun, you idiot! Open fire, all of you! Fire, fire, fire!”

More than the rifles pointed at her, Hancock couldn’t get over the genuine, heartfelt concern and distress she heard in some of the Marines’ cries. The wretch had summarily executed one of their comrades for no reason only a minute ago, and they were still so slavishly obedient.

It was so fucking unsightly that Hancock’s stomach roiled with disgust and her blood boiled in her veins.

It was a shame she was in no state to kill every single one of them.

Before Hancock could try and escape, however – Fisher Tiger would have to content himself with only that much support – a booming voice echoed over the neighborhood, loud enough that its passage actually stirred the smoke rising from the nearby fires.

“DID SOMEONE REQUEST REINFORCEMENTS?”

And then, Garp the Fist came dropping from the stratosphere, landing in the middle of the ravaged street with all the subtlety and force of a thermobaric bomb.

Hancock didn’t even have time to blink before the shockwave of his arrival kicked her in the chest and sent her – and everyone else – flying.

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Bonus chapter this week.Thanks for your support.