"Barrier Sphere!"
At the grand, imposing entrance of the Four Priests, Karina didn't hesitate. She invoked the Barrier-Barrier Fruit, forming a spherical barrier that wrapped around herself and the other three—Nami, Robin, and Perona.
"Robin, Perona—taking it from here is up to you."
With everyone secured inside the sphere and her nerves settled, Karina glanced to the two beside her.
"Harahara… leave it to me."
Perona folded her black parasol and flicked her free hand. Four white, baby-faced, pout-lipped Negative Ghosts poured from her palm.
They drifted straight through the indestructible barrier and scattered toward the Four Priests.
"Move!"
Seeing that eerie power for the first time, the four vaulted from the treetops. Using Skypiea Dials or raw strength, each blurred forward—some thrust at the ghosts, some circled wide to strike at the barrier itself.
Shura of the Trial of Strings chose to attack a ghost head-on.
Called the Celestial Knight, he spurred his mount Fuza and lunged with a spear fitted with a Heat Dial, driving the tip through a Negative Ghost.
What followed made all four priests blanch.
The spear passed through the ghost, or rather, the ghost passed through the spear, then through Fuza, and finally through Shura.
Clang.
His spear slipped from his hand.
A heartbeat later, both Shura and Fuza dropped to their knees.
"This world is pointless… If there's a next life, I want to be… a shell…"
"Gaa… gaa…"
Drenched in despair, Shura droned. The sentient Fuza, equally despondent, croaked as if echoing its master.
"Seis Fleur: Clutch."
As soon as the two lost the will to fight, six arms blossomed across their bodies, gripping neck, arms, and legs, then wrenched them backward.
Bones snapped like dry twigs.
Shura and Fuza were out cold.
Robin and Perona's eyes cut to the remaining three.
Their faces changed at once.
"Avoid those things—don't hold back!"
Gedatsu barked. Jet Dials strapped to his shoes roared as he skated through the air, slipped past a Negative Ghost, and blitzed to the barrier.
"Jet Iron Fist!"
With Jet Dials on his elbows too, he hammered a full-speed punch into the sphere.
A dull boom cracked the air.
Gedatsu's eyes bulged bloodshot, nearly popping from their sockets. A mountainous force rebounded off the barrier, shattering the wrist that his gadget had inflated beyond its true strength and blasting him away.
"Seis Fleur: Clutch."
Before he hit the ground, arms bloomed along his body again.
More bone-snaps mid-flight.
He crashed and didn't rise.
"I'm sorry… If there's a next life, I'll be a crab."
"Living's a pain. I shouldn't have come into this world…"
More snapping followed.
With Shura and Gedatsu felled in an instant, Satori and Ohm lost their composure and their Mantra. Each was pierced by a Negative Ghost and then folded up by Robin's Clutch.
Second only to Enel on Skypiea, wielders of a Haki rare even on the first half of the Grand Line—men who in the Blue Sea could serve as supernova officers or first mates—were erased by Karina's trio. To be precise, by three of the four.
Karina and Perona controlled the field; Robin delivered the sentences.
This was why Karl dared to leave with the Blue-Eyes—he trusted Karina's strength without reservation.
The year belonged to Karl and Ace in headlines. In truth, it also belonged to Karina, Perona, and Robin as a unit.
If Karl hadn't learned the highest application of Armament from Rayleigh, there would be no path to beating this team except exhausting Karina's stamina. The combo was shamelessly airtight, the whole far greater than the sum.
Two Paramecia in the rule-bending class: the Barrier-Barrier Fruit's near-absolute defense, crackable by only a few powers; the Ghost-Ghost Fruit's near-absolute control, resisted by only a few.
One defends, one controls.
Add a third with attacks that ignore the barrier both ways.
Perona's Ghost Bombs can do it. Robin's Flower-Flower Fruit is even better.
Karina defends, Perona disables, Robin executes.
Even among the Worst Generation, that trio ranks top three.
They weren't vases beside Karl; they were his greatest force multiplier.
Once Nami becomes an ability user too, five people and one dragon will stride sideways through the first half of the Grand Line—and make noise even in the New World.
Back to the scene.
The Four Priests who had strutted the hardest were the ones beaten the hardest.
At that moment, Karl arrived at Enel's shrine atop the Blue-Eyes.
"Little White—Gale Burst Cannon!"
Karl didn't bother announcing himself. The dragon loosed a pillar of white brilliance, a beam like God's Judgment itself, at the shrine.
A matching thunder pillar speared out from within almost simultaneously, as if Enel had been watching all along.
The two lances met and blossomed into a massive bloom outside the temple. Lightning and light interwove, heat seared outward, scarring walls carved with triple tomoe and scorching the ground in blotches near and far.
"Yehahahaha… I've been waiting, Blue Sea boy."
A bolt flickered, and Enel appeared midair before Karl and the dragon—his teleport glossy, flashier than even Karl's godspeed. He hung as if standing on the sky, towel hood covering his topknot, long earlobes tipped with earrings, bare-chested with black tomoe drums strapped to his back, golden staff in hand, loose lantern trousers, bare feet, rings gleaming on fingers and toes. His gaze looked down on all.
It was the god of Skypiea, wielder of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit—Enel.
"Little White—wait for me above."
Even knowing now was no time for play, Karl couldn't help the spark in his eyes. He patted the Blue-Eyes' neck and chose a one-on-one.
The dragon rumbled and shot skyward with the black stone coffin.
Karl stepped off the dragon and vanished in a Soru blur, streaking at Enel.
No banter. His right fist sheathed in flowing Armament Haki, he drove a killing straight at Enel's face.
Against a power as broken as the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, there was no point probing like he had with Crocodile. Armament can seize a Logia's body, but unlike true counters—rubber's insulation, or seastone—Armament is not absolute. A Logia who has perfected elementalization and Observation, or who fights on home terrain, can let lesser Haki slide through like smoke. You interrupt the casting; you don't always hurt the man. It takes battle to create a window to land flesh.
Karl had ended Crocodile with timing like that. Whitebeard could interrupt Kizaru's jump with a quake and still not hurt him.
So here, against a top-tier marriage of Observation and element, Karl opened with his peak Armament.
Enel's Mantra, wrapped over an island and tireless, flashed a premonition across his mind. His face tightened. He'd meant to let the punch pass through for the thrill of the shock on a mortal's face, but at the last fraction he was simply gone behind Karl.
Lightning speed.
A golden staff in one hand, his other palm leveled at Karl's back.
"God's Judgment."
Wrist and forearm blazed, becoming a thunder pillar that would swallow Karl whole.
"Gale Burst Cannon."
Karl's godspeed and Observation weren't for show. He read Enel's position the instant the god flickered and, even as he spun, white light swelled in his throat. He exhaled a pillar to meet the storm.
Light smashed lightning. The world went white and blue. Thunder cracked without end. Arcs shrieked across the air.
When the radiance and crawling volts died, both descended.
Enel fell like a strike. Karl looked a touch worse for wear.
He wasn't a Logia, and with no new armor forged yet, he hadn't bothered to armor his clothes. The chibi-dragon T-shirt was cinder, leaving the corded lines of his torso bared.
His body was unmarked.
Either beam could have erased a ship, but neither could pierce flesh that had undergone two evolutions.
"Not bad."
Acknowledging the strength, Karl rolled his shoulders and grinned. "Name's Karl. What's yours?"
"Hmph. You're not bad either, Blue Sea boy."
The contempt faded from Enel's eyes, though his face stayed lofty. "To take this god's strikes and to wield that odd power that can wound a god—you have the right to know my name."
"I am the ruler of Skypiea, the one who commands nature's thunder. I am God Enel."
<><><><><><>
Read Advanced Chapters on : patreon.com/Kaizo247
~ Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~ Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]