The clouds surged like a raging tide, swallowing the entire sky. They swelled so thick it felt as if the heavens had dropped to arm's length. A white ocean of cloud blanketed everything, smothering the sun's rays and dimming the world below. The cloud-sea itself glowed faintly, yet that light could not pierce through to the surface of the sea.
The billowing overcast rippled and a face the size of a football field rose from the mist.
It was the visage of CP0 Director Cloud. "Ares," his voice rolled like thunder, "to fight me is to fight the clouds of nature itself. You have no path to victory."
He was everywhere at once, the cloud-sea itself omnipresent.
"Cut the babbling. Been in CP0 so long you can't find anyone to talk to?" Tengetsu Ares frowned, every muscle drawn taut. He had no idea what technique Cloud would unleash next, but a spectacle that grand could only herald a devastating strike.
The giant face in the clouds smiled. "As you wish. Show me the strength of 'Bloodhand' Ares!"
"Hand of God!"
The cloud-sea heaved, concentric ripples spreading outward.
Slowly, a colossal fist pushed out from the clouds tower-block huge, several times larger than Ares himself. Even a giant would look small beneath it. As it plunged, the fist darkened to ink, Armament Haki plating it edge to edge. Air screamed from the pressure, a gale keening like ghosts.
" Tch."
Watching from the deck, Kaido sucked in a breath. Cold sweat slid down his cheek. In that instant he felt painfully small, like an ant in the path of a mountain. Terror rose from his very bones.
"Is this… really the power of a human?!"
The descending fist promised to pulp anything it touched. Nothing should survive such a blow.
Ares lifted his gaze to the sky. The "divine" fist fell like a mountain. "So this is your Hand of God? Hah nothing gets my blood burning like this!"
He sank into a half-crouch. Blue dragon scales armored his forearms as the muscles beneath bulged; his biceps swelled like bellows, veins thick as pythons snaking over them steel cables cinching a bomb to keep it from exploding.
A pure, brutal geometry of force.
"Haa!!"
"Dragon Fist Dragon's Roar Wave!"
Ares snapped a spear-straight right. His biceps collapsed as if deflated but the punch hurled a shockwave skyward, a transparent lance that warped the air with a mirage-like twist.
The blast met the falling god-fist.
BOOM.
The explosion cracked the heavens. A visible white ring tore out from the impact and raced to the horizons. At the center, force devoured force the black cloud-fist and the punch-wave annihilating each other.
A dead even clash.
High above, the giant face stirred, Cloud's will rippling through the overcast. A punch shockwave… His mastery of body arts is even fiercer than his swordplay. A beat later: But
"Let's see how many of these you can stop."
"Foot of God!"
A titanic sole, thousands of square meters across, dropped from the clouds like a mythic deity invoking Heaven and Earth. A mountain in freefall.
Ares repeated the motion, another Dragon's Roar Wave drilling upward.
Another shattering counter.
The cloud-sea rolled on, birthing one giant fist, then another iron-black foot. Strike after godlike strike fell. In mere minutes, collision piled upon collision; the sea vomited wave after wave, each taller than the last.
This was no longer a duel between humans. It was the brawl of gods every technique a world-rending calamity.
Kaido and the bald swordsman, Saint Khristin, could only stare, stunned.
Amid the symphony of explosions, Cloud felt a rare twinge of respect. "Monstrous brute force… and that strange Armament Haki. He's withstanding my entire 'Divine Arts' series…" He exhaled through his teeth. "Beating him won't be easy."
But the World Government's secret weapon had not climbed to CP0 Director on a single trick. His control of a Logia was near the limit.
The sky changed again.
The clouds flowed like a living sea, suddenly sluicing down in cataracts as if a dam had burst. Four different cloudfalls boxed Ares in, folding into a sealed cube.
"Cloud Domain Air Stripping Art!"
Once the cloud world sealed, the air within began to vanish.
Sound died. Ares' ears went hollow, as if he'd gone deaf. He pulled a breath and tasted nothing. No oxygen.
He couldn't linger.
"Dragonflame!"
He spat a torrent of fire and watched it vanish a heartbeat later.
He shifted instantly. Dragon talons tore the air; he carved brilliant crescent slashes that screamed faster than usual oddly fast, in fact, and the speed made his eyes narrow even as he struck. The blades of wind raced for the cloud wall
and, at the last instant, the wall bubbled. Dozens of great, ballooning nodules bulged out to meet the slashes.
Boom.
BOOM.
BOOM
Explosions chained one into the next. The shockwaves hammered Ares, but his body held; the blasts stole the edge from his cuts, and none of the slashes punched through. No fresh air seeped in.
Still, he'd seen the trick.
A minute bled away. His organs began to complain, signals flaring from everywhere at once. He didn't know exactly how long he could function in a vacuum
but he knew this: he had to break the cage, and he had to do it now.
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