Ryuma noticed Sunny D. Bogard getting away. He was crossing buildings at an alarming rate.
“Adrian is such a novice . How do you let the prize possession escape? Ryuma immediately gave chase to the Pirate Captain, scaling the buildings at unnatural speed. He was only a novice in Haki but it worked out for the best. He’d caught up to Sunny in no time and proceeded to tackle and slap cuffs around the devil fruit users wrists.
“ Don’t make this difficult kid.” , Ryuma retorted.
Tackled to the ground, Bogard grimaced at his captor. Just before they landed and the cuffs could wrap around his wrist, his red cloak came around like a sentient ribbon and slapped at the man like whip against its rebeller.
Red Hood grounded his hand into the dirt before clenching the soil, pounding the earth, and standing to face his new challenger. He looked fairly young though his attire suggested he was high up in the Marine hierarchy.
A captain maybe?He threw the dirt aside in anger.
“Get the hell out’ve my way. I don’t have the patience to deal with another chained mutt!” he spat out insultingly.
“ Oh . We have a feisty one here.”He responded to the boy’s remark with an attack. His arm was infused with black haki to strength the blow. Ryuma called this attack ,
“ Iron Fist Justice."Bogard inched his foot back but decided differently on retreating. The man’s fist was slower than he first thought it’d be. It was something he could dodge.
He tilted just out of range of the marine’s blow and rocketed forwards, a full-power punch from his flesh hand heading towards his jaw.
“I said get the hell outta my way!”The marine welcomed the punch with open arms. It meshed into his face like net wrapped around a captured fish. But alas, it couldn’t move the marine. He laughed as a droplet of blood left his mouth.
“ Not bad. That probably would’ve hurt, if I wasn’t proficient in the ways of haki. “He then proceeded to strike with a set of roundhouse kicks, each infused with haki. These were followed by a barrage of, punch each one faster than the last. This was his rapid kenpo technique. Each attack had grew successively stronger than the last.
The bones beneath his flesh-hand felt broken; pain surged up his arm and for once in his life he regretted not having two mechanical limbs up top. He clenched his teeth, knowing he still had a fight to win.
Instincts told him to pull his thrusted arm back to guard his face. It was all that saved him from being completely knocked out. He blocked the first two kicks but the third had overwhelmed him and sent his bruised and broken arm upward, the next few punches exposed his earlier breakfast and swelled his right eye.
The last one was caught and squeezed by his red cloak. It threatened with a strength far greater than Red Hood’s own to apply more pressure.
“What the fuck was that!? You’re cheating somehow aren’t you! You weren’t that fast or strong a moment ago, I know this, I sensed it’d…” He was interrupted by a pain that arced through his abdomen.
He felt bad new emanating all around him. His instincts were being overwhelmed. He should run, he told himself.
“ Cheating?” , he scoffed.
This isn’t even half of my power kid. You picked the wrong fight. Now accept your fate like a good little boy and let me cuff you." . Ryuma followed his barrage with a punch to the gut. The impact was enough to shatter a few ribs. His goal was to render the pirate immobile , meanwhile keeping him breathing.
Ryuma then proceeded to snap the seastone cuffs around the helpless boy’s wrist.
Immposible… I’m not even on the Grandline yet. he mumbled in his mind, while doing so the remainder of his breakfast slipped from his mouth and onto the ground due to the gut shot.
There was so much he had messed up in Loguetown. He had lost his navigator to a barrage of bullets, he couldn’t find his trusty sniper: Jax, and now he was about to be sent off to some unknown jail. His journey to become king was over just that quickly.
Well damn, I guess I was just another wannabe. That sucks. he admitted in a bummed manner.
Bogard stared passed the marine with sudden fear in his face, seeing the hulking figure behind him block out the sun and cast them both in its shadow.
A thin shadowy line left its beady, glowing red eye. And like a massive python striking, it gripped the man by the back of the neck with crippling strength and raised him two feet past it's already intimidating eight-foot height.
Bogard scuttled backwards until he felt a cold pole against his back.
“How terribly pathetic of you, Boggy-boy. To be beaten by scum like…this.” The figure looked over the prone figure in its hand. Bogard knew he wasn’t dead yet. No not yet, he was simply paralyzed from the neck down by fear.
Ryuma was caught by surprise as he was lifted 8 feet into the air by what seemed to be a suit of armor. He felt the air slip from his lungs and the armor giant squeeze his neck like a soda-pop can. He made out a few words before he faded into unconscientious…” To be beaten by scum..”
That’s exactly what Ryuma felt like. He’d failed where he should’ve succeeded easily. It was over the marine as he drifted off to the dream world. Would he die ? Or was he already dead?
Boggy-boy? Why did that name invoke such a deep response from his memories. A concussive pain thumped against his skull and erupted thoroughly through his body. Where was it coming from?
The suit of armor held the limp body in its hand, as if to study the unconscious form.
“You have to kill this man. Do you know why, Boggy-boy?” He barely grasped her question, flashes of a dove-inhabited island with white stone women were consuming him with greedy, vast, visions. The suit of armor stepped forward and that action sent his mind into a blank spiral. A deep fear raised up and overwhelmed him mightily until he had no choice but to give it his attention.
“Answer the question,” Its spectral, shredded voice demanded.
“W-What question?” he shouted back.
The Knight sighed into the air.
“Boggy-boy, you have to kill this man to take your first step towards your dream. Your real dream, not this Pirate King bullshit that Dressrosa has fantasized for you. You have a throne to take. The King of Thorns will move onto the Winter Clover soon, we need you here, and we need you strong. Kill him, show me that what we did for Sunrai weren’t for naught. That you became tempered. ”Bogard took several seconds to process the impossible. He knew he wouldn’t retain or understand anything the Knight had just said, so he focused his energy on stalling the fear in his heart so that he could put on the pretense of strength. He nursed his arm with his red-cloak, its material snaking around to cradle the broken arm before latching on to its parallel form.
Kneeling, not out of choice, he spoke with a shaky understanding.
“I don’t know what you’re saying… I don’t understand what just left your mouth but what I do understand is that you just- just completely took down someone who I stood zero chance against. How?” The Knight placed its hand on its hip.
“You should’ve paid more attention, the man mentioned it himself. Take this as a lesson of being aware of everything, Boggy-boy.”That moniker slid out its mouth again, as if it was some pet-name for him. For now, considering his injuries and the Knight’s weird pressing of murder, he disregarded it. He weakly got to his feet and simply stared at the eight foot monstrosity.
“You just gonna hold that body all day?” he asked.
“Only until you kill him in the eyes of the public.” “How do you expect me to do that? You talk like this place isn’t hiding all its citizens in homes and shelter.” he muttered indignantly, looking away.
“There are two reporters with cameras, one directly behind me, say thirty meters away. And another north-west from you, say about three-hundred and two meters away. I’d bet my money on the one behind me getting the shot. All you have to do, is kill this man.” Its legs clank loud in the stale wind as it took five steps back, turned to face him, and presented the man towards him. Dark-plated fingers played imaginary keys on its neck.
The Knight ripped the man’s coat from off his shoulders and tied it around his neck before beginning to fly overhead.
“I’m outta view of the camera now. No worries, he’s far too frightened to reveal himself and has no idea what we’re saying. You strike now and the glory will be all yours. Your bounty will rise and your fame will spread from here on out, King Lornheartz, will hear of your name. And he’ll learn to fear it. ”Bogard struggled with the questions in his head, so many hows and whys were jumbled in his mindspace that it was near suffocating. Instead he focused on the one sliver that was neither of those.
“Who are you?” A edge of anger that had not been there cut into its shredded, screwed voice.
“None of that matters at the moment! Kill this man so I may leave. I have very little time left, do not make me use the remainder of which to rip your other arm off your body, Boggy-boy. I love you but my patience is wearing very, very thin.”Bogard gritted his teeth as the Knight continued to nurture the thought of him killing the already half-dead man. When weighed against having most of his limbs ripped from his body, the option seemed elementary. But still, the ability to not decide for himself, the chains that were instantly wrapped around him was unnerving.
Gritted teeth stretched into a howl as he ignored the debilitating pain of his broken arm, spiraled the red cloak around his sword-shaped hand, and dashed towards the hanging man. Bogard lept into the air and as he came down the red of his cloak shredded like silk, hardened into steel, and cut through the man’s flesh with a squishy, crunching , horrendous popping sound.
He heaved before yanking his hand from out the marine’s chest cavity. A girlish giggle came from the Knight not a second afterwards.
“Good, Boggy-boy. Very good. I wish I had more time to speak with you but the doves flutter away for this vessel. Someday we’ll meet in person, I promise this, my dear sibling.” The marine’s corpse thumped against the ground in front of him and the armor clattered against the earth behind said marine.
The moment the suit was gone, he felt the pressure that weighed on him spiritually evaporate. And yet, the weight of what he had just done had now revealed just how heavy it really was. He had no objections of killing someone blocking the path to his kinghood but a man that was already dead,
now that left a sickening feeling in his stomach.
He holstered his arm in his cloak again, ignoring the continuous flash of some object in the distance ahead of him. The slow climb onto the rooftops and steady trek towards Jak’s last direction was silent and burdened.
I feel imprisoned now, less than a free man for some reason.
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